Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

That the most principled resistance to the war had come from dedicated Communists gave these individuals considerable status. When Tokuda Kyūichi and several hundred other Communists were released from prison, they became celebrities and instant heroes in a society whose old heroes had all suddenly been toppled. Similarly, Nosaka Sanzō’s arrival in January 1946 after a long journey from China attracted a great crowd. He, too, received a hero’s welcome; even conservatives, it was said, joined in. Within a few months, Nosaka was elected to the Diet in the first general election held under occupation auspices. Defeat gave such Communist leaders charisma, imbuing them with an aura of integrity and political acuity. By the same token, defeat helped establish Marxism and the Communist Party itself as sources of clear, secular, universal principles that transcended the disastrous, particularistic values of the imperial state.