Political dissidence in the Empire of Japan
[1] In 1911, twelve people, including Kōtoku, were executed for their involvement in the High Treason Incident, a failed plot to assassinate Emperor Meiji.
Uchiyama was an outspoken advocate for redistributive land reform, overturning the Meiji emperor system, encouraging conscripts to desert en masse, and advancing democratic rights for all.
He criticized Zen leaders who claimed that low social position was justified by karma and who sold abbotships to the highest bidder.
[7] After government persecution pushed the socialist and anti-war movements in Japan underground, Uchiyama visited Kōtoku Shūsui in Tokyo in 1908.
In 1885, Fukuda was arrested for her involvement in the Osaka incident, a failed plan to supply explosives to Korean independence movements.
Ikuo Oyama was a member of the left-leaning Labour-Farmer Party, which advocated universal suffrage, minimum wages, and women's rights.
[citation needed] Modern girls (モダンガール, modan gāru) were Japanese women who adhered to Westernized fashions and lifestyles in the 1920s.
However, after a military coup in 1931, extreme Japanese nationalism and the Great Depression prompted a return to the 19th-century ideal of good wife, wise mother.
The antimilitarist movement in Japan was highly active at the time, with posters protesting the Japanese aggression in China being widespread.
[42] His painting Man on the Horse (1932) depicted a plain-clothed Chinese guerrilla confronting the Japanese army, heavily equipped with airplanes and warships.
Flight (1937) was a painting that depicted two Chinese women escaping Japanese bombing, running with three children past one man lying dead on the ground.
[47] Yasuo Kuniyoshi would work for the Office of War Information during WWII, creating artwork that depicted atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan, even though he was himself labeled an "enemy alien" in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
[50] In 1943, the British Army hired Shigeki Oka to print propaganda materials in Kolkata in India, such as the Gunjin Shimbun (Soldier Newspaper).
When Bletchley Park, Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), was concerned about the slow pace of the SOAS, started their own Japanese language courses in Bedford in February 1942.
[52] Richard Sorge was a Soviet military intelligence officer who conducted surveillance in both Germany and Japan, working under the identity of a Japanese correspondent for the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung.
After the war, Masaki became an idiosyncratic defense lawyer, successfully forcing many recognitions of police malpractice at great risk to his life.
Again, the use of satire without explicit call to political action allowed Ubukata to avoid prosecution through the end of the war, although two issues were banned.
[57] Kiyosawa Kiyoshi was an American-educated commentator on politics and foreign affairs who lived in a time when Japanese militarists rose to power.
He wrote a diary as notes for a history of the war, but it soon became a refuge for him to criticize the Japanese government, and to express opinions he had to repress publicly.
Kiyosawa showed scorn towards Tojo and Koiso, lamenting the rise of hysterical propaganda, and related his own and his friends' struggles to avoid arrest.
He also recorded the increasing poverty, crime, and disorder, tracing the gradual disintegration of Japan's war effort and the looming certainty of defeat.
[64]: 14–15 His faith in Nichiren Buddhism motivated him toward "active engagement to promote social good, even if it led to defiance of state authority".
[65] Consequently, Makiguchi (as its leader) and the lay organization following the Daishonin's teachings (the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai) soon attracted the attention of the Special Higher Police (similar to the Nazi Gestapo).
[66] As the war progressed, the Japanese government ordered that a talisman (object of devotion) from the Shinto religion should be placed in every home and temple.
Bowing to the militaristic regime, the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood agreed to accept the placing of a talisman inside its head temple.
[67] In 1942, a monthly magazine published by Makiguchi called Kachi Sōzō (価値創造, "Creating Value") was shut down by the militaristic government, after only nine issues.
Makiguchi, his disciple Josei Toda, and 19 other leaders of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value Creating Education Society) were arrested on July 6, 1943, on charges of breaking the Peace Preservation Law and lèse-majesté: for "denying the Emperor's divinity" and "slandering" the Ise Grand Shrine.
The details of Makiguchi's indictment and subsequent interrogation were covered in July, August, and October (1943) in classified monthly bulletins of the Special Higher Police.
Ramseyer postulated in 1965 that Makiguchi attracted the attention of the government's Special Police due to the aggressive propagation efforts of some of his followers.
[73][74][75] Saitō Takao caused a stir in his time for delivering a fiery speech against the Sino-Japanese War, leading to his expulsion from the Diet.
