He would go on to visit the Soviet Union in both 1925 and 1927; and ran for the Labour-Farmer Party in the first regular election in 1928 (Fukuoka's 3rd district) but ended up being unsuccessful.

In March 1928 he was arrested under the suspicion of violating the Peace Preservation Law, and would go on to spend 18 years in prison.

[5] Upon his release, he was reportedly hoisted to the shoulders of a crowd of Communists and Koreans chanting anti-imperial messages.

Tokuda was involved in the 1947 general strike and in 1948, he survived an assassination attempt by a dynamite-laden soda bottle thrown at his feet while he was giving a speech.

In the opening session of the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on 14 February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev asked delegates to rise in honour of the Communist leaders who had died since the last congress - and named Kyuichi Tokuda, whose name was nearly unknown in the Soviet Union, on equal terms with the recently deceased Joseph Stalin.