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While Japan's political mainstream has the CDP and the LDP as dominant forces, there is political extremism to the left and the right.
Neither left- nor right-wing extremists managed to wrest power from the LDP in post-war history, but they managed to influence public opinion on certain topics. These include foreign relations of Japan, the role of the military, territorial disputes, and national symbolism. On some topics, like the Yasukuni Shrine, all three elements play a role.
The public and the government appear to tolerate certain forms of public disorder as inherent to a properly functioning democracy. Demonstrations usually follow established forms. Groups receive legal permits and keep to assigned routes and areas. Placards and bullhorns are used to express positions. Traffic is sometimes disrupted, and occasional shoving battles between police and protesters results. But arrests are rare and are generally made only in cases involving violence.
Although members of extremist groups represent only a minute portion of the population and present no serious threat to the government, authorities are concerned about the example set by the groups' violence, as well as by particular violent events. Violent protests by radicals also occur in the name of fringe causes without meaningful public support. Occasional clashes between leftist factions and rightist factions have injured participants.
According to the 1989 Asahi Nenkan, there were 14,400 activist members of the "extreme left wing" organized into five major "currents" (ryū) and twenty-seven or twenty-eight different factions. Total membership was about 35,000. New-left activity focused on the New Tokyo International Airport at Narita-Sanrizuka (Sanrizuka Struggle). In the early 1970s, radical groups and normally conservative farmers formed a highly unusual alliance to oppose expropriation of the latter's land for the airport's construction. Confrontations at the construction site, which pitted thousands of farmers and radicals against riot police, were violent and killed dozens people. Although the airport was completed and began operations during the 1980s, the resistance continued, on a reduced scale. Radicals attempted to halt planned expansion of the airport by staging guerrilla attacks on those directly or indirectly involved in promoting the plan. By 1990 this activity had resulted in some deaths. There were also attacks against places associated with the emperor. In January 1990, leftists fired homemade rockets at imperial residences in Tokyo and Kyoto.
In terms of terrorist activities, the most important new-left group was the Japanese Red Army (Nihon Sekigun). Formed in 1969, it was responsible for, among other acts, the hijacking of a domestic Japan Airlines jet to Pyongyang in 1970[ citation needed ] and the 1972 Lod Airport massacre. It also participated in the Laju incident, an attack on a Shell oil refinery in Singapore in 1974, and seized the French embassy in The Hague that same year and the United States and Swedish embassies in Kuala Lumpur in 1975. In 1977 the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines jet over India in a successful demand for a US$6 million ransom and the release of six inmates in Japanese prisons.
Its activists developed close connections with international terrorist groups, including Palestinian liberation movements like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Japanese Red Army also had close ties with the Kim Il-Sung regime in North Korea. The group was tightly organized, and one scholar has suggested that its "managerial style" resembled that of major Japanese corporations[ citation needed ].
Following heavy criticism at home and abroad for the government's "caving in" to terrorists' demands[ citation needed ], the authorities announced their intention to recall and reissue approximately 5.6 million valid Japanese passports to make hijacking more difficult. A special police unit was formed to keep track of the terrorist group, and tight airport security measures were instigated. Despite issuing regular threats, the Japanese Red Army was relatively inactive in the 1980s. In 1990 its members were reported to be in North Korea and Lebanon undergoing further training and were available as mercenaries to promote various political causes.[ citation needed ]
Fusako Shigenobu, the founder and leader, was arrested in Osaka, Japan in November 2000.
Right-wing extremists were extremely diverse. In 1989 there were 800 such groups with about 120,000 members altogether. By police count, however, only about fifty groups and 23,000 individuals were considered active. Right-wing extremists indulged in a heady romanticism with strong links to the prewar period. They tended to be fascinated with the macho charisma of blood, sweat, and steel, and they promoted (like many nonradical groups) traditional samurai values as the antidote to the spiritual ills of postwar Japan. Their preference for violent direct action rather than words reflected the example of the militarist extremists of the 1930s and the heroic "men of strong will" of the late Tokugawa period of the 1850s and 1860s. The modern right-wing extremists demanded an end to the postwar "system of dependence" on the United States, restoration of the emperor to his prewar, divine status, and repudiation of Article 9. Many, if not most, right-wingers had intimate connections with Japan's gangster underground, the yakuza. Japanese right-wing extremists (Uyoku dantai) are notable for their use of black buses, which often carry loudspeakers broadcasting nationalistic slogans.
The ritual suicide of one of Japan's most prominent novelists, Yukio Mishima, following a failed attempt to initiate a rebellion among Self-Defense Forces units in November 1970, shocked and fascinated the public. Mishima and his small private army, the Shield Society (Tatenokai), hoped that a rising of the Self-Defense Forces would inspire a nationwide affirmation of the old values and put an end to the postwar "age of languid peace."
Although right-wing extremists were also responsible for the assassination of socialist leader Inejiro Asanuma in 1960 and an attempt on the life of former prime minister Masayoshi Ōhira in 1978, most of them, unlike their prewar counterparts, largely kept to noisy street demonstrations, especially harassment campaigns aimed at conventions of the leftist Japan Teachers Union. In the early 1990s, however, there was evidence that a "new right" was becoming more violent. In May 1987, a reporter working for the liberal Asahi Shimbun was killed by a gunman belonging to the Sekihotai (Blood Revenge Corps). The Sekihotai also threatened to assassinate former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone for giving in to foreign pressure on such issues as the revision of textbook accounts of Japan's war record. In January 1990, a member of the Seikijuku (translatable as the (Sane Thinkers) School) shot and seriously wounded Nagasaki mayor Hitoshi Motoshima. The attack may have been provoked by the mayor's critical remarks concerning Emperor Hirohito.
That attack came two days after the left-wing Chukakuha (Middle Core Faction), opposed to the imperial system, claimed responsibility for firing a rocket onto the grounds of the residence of the late emperor's brother and a day before the government announced the events leading to the enthronement of Emperor Akihito in November 1990. The enthronement ceremonies were considered likely targets for extremist groups on the left and the right who saw the mysticism surrounding the emperor as being overemphasized or excessively reduced respectively, but no serious incidents took place.
More recently, the Zaitokukai have been focusing their attention on anti-Korean demonstrations.
The Japanese Red Army was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971, and was most active in the 1970s and 1980s, operating mostly out of Lebanon with PFLP collaboration and funding from Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, as well as Syria and North Korea.
The Liberal Democratic Party, frequently abbreviated to LDP or Jimintō (自民党), is a major conservative and Japanese nationalist political party in Japan.
Japanese liberalism(自由主義 or リベラリズム) formed in the nineteenth century as a reaction against traditional society. In the twentieth century 'liberal' (自由) gradually became a synonym for conservative, and today the main conservative party in the country is named Liberal Democratic Party. The defunct Democratic Party was considered in part a centrist-liberal party, as are most parties which derived from it. The liberal character of the Liberal League is disputed, as it is also considered to be conservative by some. This article is limited to liberal (リベラル) parties with substantial support, proved by having had representation in parliament.
The Japan Socialist Party was a socialist and progressive political party in Japan that existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was founded as the Social Democratic Party of Japan by members of several proletarian parties that existed before World War II, including the Social Mass Party, the Labour-Farmer Party, and the Japan Labour-Farmer Party. The party represented the Japanese left after the war, and was a major opponent of the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party.
Yoshio Kodama was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist and a prominent figure in the rise of organized crime in Japan. The most famous kuromaku, or behind-the-scenes power broker, of the 20th century, he was active in Japan's political arena and criminal underworld from the 1930s to the 1970s, and became enormously wealthy through his involvement in smuggling operations.
Japanese nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts the belief that the Japanese are a monolithic nation with a single immutable culture, and promotes the cultural unity of the Japanese. Over the last two centuries, it has encompassed a broad range of ideas and sentiments which have been harbored by the Japanese people in relation to their native country, its cultural nature, its political system, and its historical destiny. It is useful to distinguish Japanese cultural nationalism from political or state-directed nationalism, since many forms of cultural nationalism, such as those which are associated with folkloric studies, have been hostile to state-fostered nationalism.
Uyoku dantai refers to Japanese ultranationalist far-right activists, provocateurs, and internet trolls often organized in groups. In 1996 and 2013, the National Police Agency estimated that there were over 1,000 right-wing groups in Japan with about 100,000 members in total.
Right-wing terrorism, hard right terrorism, extreme right terrorism or far-right terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by a variety of different right-wing and far-right ideologies. It can be motivated by Ultranationalism, neo-Nazism, anti-communism, neo-fascism, ecofascism, ethnonationalism, religious nationalism, anti-immigration, anti-semitism, anti-government sentiment, patriot movements, sovereign citizen beliefs, and occasionally, it can be motivated by opposition to abortion, tax resistance, and homophobia. Modern right-wing terrorism largely emerged in Western Europe in the 1970s, and after the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it emerged in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Left-wing terrorism or far-left terrorism is terrorism motivated by left-wing or far-left ideologies, committed with the aim of overthrowing current capitalist systems and replacing them with communist or socialist societies. Left-wing terrorism can also occur within already socialist states as criminal action against the current ruling government.
The Revolutionary Cells were a self-described "urban guerrilla" organisation that was active between 1973 and 1995. The West German Interior Ministry described it as one of West Germany's most dangerous leftist terrorist groups in the early 1980s. According to the office of the German Federal Prosecutor, the Revolutionary Cells claimed responsibility for 186 attacks, of which 40 were committed in West Berlin.
Japan Air Lines Flight 351 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Fukuoka that was hijacked by members of the Red Army Faction of the Japan Communist League on March 31, 1970, in an incident usually referred to in Japanese as the Yodogo Hijacking Incident.
Radicalization is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicalization. Radicalization can result in both violent and nonviolent action – academic literature focuses on radicalization into violent extremism (RVE) or radicalisation leading to acts of terrorism. Multiple separate pathways can promote the process of radicalization, which can be independent but are usually mutually reinforcing.
Seikijuku is a far right Japanese imperialist group based in Nagasaki Prefecture, founded in 1981. The group was responsible for a number of violent incidents, including the 1990 near-fatal shooting of the mayor of Nagasaki Hitoshi Motoshima who stated that Emperor Shōwa was responsible for the war. In 1984, the group disrupted a Fuji TV recording session with flares.
The New Left in Japan refers to a diverse array of 1960s Japanese leftist movements that, like their counterparts in the Western New Left, adopted a more radical political stance compared to the established "Old Left," which in the case of Japan was emblematized by the Japanese Communist Party and Japan Socialist Party. After emerging in the lead-up to the 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the movement grew and diversified before climaxing with the Zenkyōtō movement which barricaded dozens of Japanese universities in 1968–1969. Much like its counterparts in the West, in the 1970s, the Japanese New Left became known for violent internal splits and terrorism, which caused the movement's influence to wane.
The Sanrizuka Struggle refers to a civil conflict and riots involving the Japanese government and the agricultural community of Sanrizuka, comprising organised opposition by farmers, local residents, and leftist groups to the construction of Narita International Airport. The struggle stemmed from the government's decision to construct the airport in Sanrizuka without the involvement or consent of most area residents.
Sicarii (Daggermen) was a Jewish terrorist group active in Israel that took responsibility for a series of terrorist attacks between 1989 and 1990 on Palestinians and Jewish political and media figures considered sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. They named themselves after the ancient Sicarii rebels, a group of Jewish zealots who opposed Roman occupation of Judea.
The Communist League, sometimes abbreviated Kyōsandō and better known by its nickname The Bund, was a Marxist Japanese proto-New Left student organization established in December 1958 as a radical splinter group within the nationwide Zengakuren student federation. The organization took its name from the original Communist League established in London, England in 1847 under the guidance of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whence it derived its nickname "The Bund."
The Japan Socialist Youth League, Liberation Faction, usually abbreviated Kaihо̄-ha, was a Japanese radical Marxist group active in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Japanese New Left. Kaihо̄-ha had a young workers wing and a student wing. Their student wing was called the "Anti-Imperialist Student Council". They wore blue helmets when engaging with hand-to-hand combat with other radical groups or the police.
The Red Army Faction was a militant communist organization active in Japan from 1968 to 1971, when it split to form two successor groups, the Japanese Red Army and the United Red Army. The Red Army Faction originated as a schismatic militant sub-faction of a larger New Left student organization called the Communist League. Advocating immediate, armed uprising against the forces of Japanese monopoly capitalism in preparation for worldwide revolution, the Red Army Faction planned a variety of attacks on police and government officials, as well as criminal activities such as bank robberies to fund their planned communist revolution. Most notably on March 30, 1970, members of the group hijacked Japan Air Lines Flight 351, eventually flying the aircraft to North Korea where the hijackers were granted political asylum.