Having followed a complicated course, different in many points from that of the capitalist countries in Europe, since the Meiji Era (1868-1912) the question of freedom and democracy in Japan has taken on its own peculiar features and character.

First: Unlike Western European countries, the Japanese ruling bourgeoisie did not become a vehicle of democratic demands, but promoted the suppression of freedom and democracy since its early days under the absolutist Tenno (Emperor) system.

The Meiji Restoration (1868) overthrew the feudal Tokugawa Shogunate and initiated the country's rapid capitalist development from above. A series of bourgeois freedoms such as freedom of business, of the buying and selling of land, and choice of one's occupation began to be introduced. At the same time, the established absolutist Tenno system proceeded to strengthen its barbarous military police rule to suffocate the freedom and democracy of the people. "The Constitution of the Empire of Japan" (1889) laid down in Article 1, "The Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal," and in Article 3, "The Emperor is sacred and inviolable." Sovereignty rested with the Tenno, and the Diet, though it existed, acted as a rubber stamp to give "consent" to the governing acts of the Tenno. The people were stipulated to be "subjects" of the Tenno. In particular, women were held in servile subjection, banned for a long time from participation in political meetings, and completely deprived of voting rights.

"Freedom of speech, writing, publication, public meetings, and association" was limited to being what was "within the limits of law" (Constitution of the Empire, Art. 29); the Security Police Law and other suppressive laws, and particularly from the 1920s, the Public Order Maintenance Law ruthlessly suppressed freedom of thought and religion, as well as speech, assembly, association, etc.

The Zaibatsu, great industrial and financial combinations of Japan representing the big bourgeoisie, who were making frantic efforts to intensively exploit and plunder the workers, banded together with the parasitic landowner system to collude with the absolutist Tenno system, and became the promoters of militarism and wars of aggression under the slogan, "Make the State richer, make the military stronger," and the suppressors of freedom and democracy.

Second: In this historical situation, the struggle of the Japanese people to win freedom and democracy was carried from the earliest days upon the shoulders of progressives and revolutionaries, in particular, the working class and the party representing the class.

Hand in hand with the struggle of the peasants against heavy taxes and conscription, the Movement for Freedom and People's Rights developed from about 1877, demanding the establishment of a parliament, the enactment of a Constitution by the people, guarantee of freedom of thought, assembly and association for the people, and so on. This Movement had great historic significance as a bourgeois democratic movement, but was broken by the Tenno government's savage suppression and persecution.

The new main flag-bearers of freedom and democracy were socialist movements, as well as class-based trade unions and peasant movements. In 1898, the Society for the Study of Socialism was formed by Sen Katayama and other people, and in 1901 the Social Democratic Party was formed as the first socialist party in Japan. The socialist movement advocated realization of the principles of equality, the abolition of the Security Police Law, the Newspaper Ordinance and other suppressive laws, for the sake of freedom of the press and speech, assembly and association, freedom of workers to organize, universal suffrage and abolition of the House of Peers, realization of the eight-hour day for workers, protection of tenant farmers, etc., and thus further elaborated and developed the demands for freedom and democracy that had been advocated in the preceding Movement for Freedom and People's Rights. The democratic movement, which had been maintained principally by progressive intellectuals since the Meiji Era (1868-1912), then developed into what was called "Democracy of the Taisho Era" (1912-1926).

(B) The Japanese Communist Party was formed in 1922 to succeed the tradition of freedom and democracy in modern Japan. The JCP, from a position of people's sovereignty, boldly upheld the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Peers, made demands for the first time for equality between men and women, and universal suffrage for men and women aged 18 and over, and called for the right of workers to organize, freedom of publication and assembly and the right to strike, and for an eight-hour day for workers, and the transfer of farmland to tenant farmers.

The clear position of the JCP for the people's sovereignty was in direct contrast to the "national polity" of the day in which sovereignty was vested in the monarch. The JCP's stand against wars of aggression, for freedom and equality of nations and against colonial domination was also in frontal opposition to the bellicose militarism of the State.

For these reasons, the Japanese Communist Party was deprived entirely of freedom of open activities, was denounced as an "enemy of the nation" and was the most ruthlessly suppressed anywhere in the world under the Public Order Maintenance Law and by the Special Political Police (Tokko). Sudden arrest, torture which often led to slaughter, threats, long detention, Tokko-masterminded preliminary hearings and dark-age style trials were routine practices applied to JCP members. D¸ring the 15 years of the war of aggression which began in the northeast region of China, and especially as the war developed into the Pacific War with an anticommunist military pact between Japan, Germany and Italy, Tennoist power extended the dark fascist system to such an extreme as to suppress even staunch liberals and religionists. Victims of the Public Order Maintenance Law recorded at least 1,682 deaths, 75,681 who were sent to the prosecutor after arrest, and hundreds of thousands who were arrested but not sent to the prosecutor.

The extinction of the last breath of freedom and the rights of the people meant precisely that the peoples of Asia and Japan had to suffer indescribable distress and sacrifice. During the 15-year war, as it is called, the number of deaths in combat or from illness at the front reached 2,300,000; over 500,000 died in Japan itself, 300,000 civilians died abroad, and the number of civilians who sustained injuries or loss of property in the war totaled some 8,800,000. People of all strata suffered from immeasurable damage and hardships. The war cost the lives of over 20 million people in China and other Asian countries. These facts still now sharply tell us how important it is to win and defend, even piece by piece, every freedom and democratic right of the people.

© The result of World War II brought about a major turn in this dark history and entirely changed the situation as regards freedom and democracy. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Japanese ruling circles, which were defeated by the antifascist Allied Forces, had to agree to "democratization." The Potsdam Proclamation, which laid down the conditions for Japan's surrender, demanded, among other things, the elimination of all obstacles that would hamper the revival and strengthening of democracy, the establishment of freedom of speech, thought and religion, and fundamental human rights, the eradication of militarism, and the building of a peaceful, democratic Japan.

The people, who had to regard the Tenno as a divine being, and accept his absolutist rule as "national polity" before and during the War, and who suffered from the tyranny under which they were deprived of their rights for so long, now were able to take part in movements demanding democratization and freedom. The JCP, which for the first time gained the right to conduct open activities, took the lead in this movement.

The reactionary ruling circles of Japan tried various forms of resistance to democracy, which was still considerably restricted under the U.S. occupation. But in spite of this, the new Constitution was promulgated in 1947, stipulating that sovereignty rests with the people. This Constitution of Japan, undergoing particular processes before enactment and reflecting the complicated situation of that time, still keeps such provisions like the Tenno as a "symbol," which is contradictory to a democracy where full sovereignty rests with the people; yet it does have positive peace and democratic clauses. Its spirit can be expressed by the earlier mentioned Five Principles of the Constitution.

Article 97 of the Constitution expressly states that "The fundamental human rights by this Constitution guaranteed to the people of Japan are fruits of the age-old struggle of man to be free." Hard struggles fought for freedom and democracy by progressive people, such as by the Movement for Freedom and People's Rights and by the Japanese Communist Party, constitute an important part of the "struggle of man to be free."

(D) Today confrontation on freedom and democracy in Japan is developing in new ways different from in prewar days.

First: As regards the suppressors of freedom and democracy of the Japanese people, the prewar absolutist Tenno system was replaced after the war by U.S. imperialism and its subordinate ally, Japanese monopoly capital.

U.S. imperialism, the major force of the Allied Forces that occupied postwar Japan, in order to make Japan its main bulwark for aggression in Asia, violated the Potsdam Proclamation and built the San Francisco Treaty system to make Japan a de facto dependent country. U.S. imperialism and Japanese monopoly capital are the very sources of infringement and suppression of freedom and democracy of the Japanese people.

Second: As regards the substance of the tasks for freedom and democracy, the major task of the prewar days was to win Freedom of Existence and Civil-Political Freedom by resisting feudal and premodern suppression; multi-faceted new tasks have been added to this, to win Freedom of Existence and Civil-Political Freedom by resisting the outrages and suppression of monopoly capital, and to win the Freedom of the Nation by completely ending Japan's subordination to the United States.

During the postwar period of half a century, the movements of the people for freedom and democracy have been different streams converging to form a single titanic current. The peace and democratic clauses of the postwar Constitution have found a firm place in the hearts of the people, and the struggles carried on by the Japanese democratic forces have more than once frustrated the plan of the reactionary forces to revise the Constitution for the worse. People's movements in defense of their lives and living standards have made a solid development, and areas where progressive local governments have been established to achieve full local autonomy covered 40 percent of the total population of Japan in the 1970s. Through the great national experiences, including the nearly 80 years of despotic rule since the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the many years of wars of aggression, the postwar U.S. occupation and the Japan-U.S. military alliance, and the effects of the big-business-oriented "high rate growth" policy, the energy of the people, who are striving for Freedom of Existence, Civil-Political Freedom and Freedom of the Nation, has now developed a great potential. Not only does this struggle inherit the tradition of modern democracy, but it also combines with the most contemporary antimonopoly democratic demands for social control over the outrage of monopoly capital, and further with the anti-imperialist national demand for independence of the nation; it has the possibility and perspective for powerful development. Women's social and political awakening and their rise to action in the movement has been remarkable enough to develop into a great force for social progress.

Having consistently fought an indomitable struggle for freedom and democracy since its foundation in 1922, the Japanese Communist Party is determined to make maximum efforts at the head of the people's movement.

This position of the party is an independent and creative development of the original position of scientific socialism as regards the question of freedom and democracy. It is not a mere temporary tactic but the consistent character of the policies and activities of the Japanese Communist Party at present and in the future.

Meatball I am especially interested to see what you think of democracy in japan.

I don't know what your source for this information is, but it makes the Japanese sound like they're very evil and their concept of democracy is wrong. I'm going to dispell the misconceptions that could be created because of this post (because I assume "meatball" is refering to me):

First of all, all that rubbish about post WWII Japanese democracy makes it sound as if Japanese ruling class removed Japanese civil rights, suppressed the women, and made Japanese citizens servents. First of all, all the facts were twisted to make Japanese sound evil. First of all, it is true that women had few rights in Japan when the constitution was written in the laste 19th century. But think about this, at the same time, America did not legalize women's right to vote until 1919 with their 20th Amendment. This took the American government over a hundred years to do so. Many European countries failed to obtain women's suffrage until much later. The latest was in the seventies. The 1970s! I think that making the Japanese sound like sexist bigots is completely uncalled for considering that the Europeans are the biggest sexists in the world. American conservatives still try to put women "in their correct place in society" (which they believe = the kitchen).

About Japanese "bourgeousie" as the article put it. The Japanese zaibatu is nothing different from what the great American heros, Carnegie, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and Vanderbilt did during the Second American Industrial Revolution. These people completely ignored human rights, forcing people to work long treacherous hours at unsafe working environments. The Japanese, having only been this new western nation for around only a couple years did not have the necessary laws to prevent inhumane treatment of workers. Having only the laws that were in European countries and America, Japan did not have child labor laws, workers rights, and other laws protecting the people. Japan merely imitated Western nations and so, this is what they ended up with. Immediately people began to notice the terrible vices of an industrial nation and began to legislate laws that guaranteed certain rights. Japan currently has one of the most liberal laws in terms of human rights in the world. Japanese citizens have rights that even American citizens do not have.

If you compare prewar America and prewar Japan, you will be surprised to see many many similarities. In fact, more Americans were treated terrible in terms of percentages than Japanese during these years. Even till this day, a large number of Americans, AMERICAN CITIZENS, are deprived the right to vote because of their color of their skin. I don't know about you but I don't think that that is very democratic. America has a whopping forty percent voter turnout rate! And their leader wasn't even elected by popular majority! The President, W. Bush, was chosen, I repeat CHOSEN by the Supreme Court! What kind of democracy is that! Less than a quarter of the population chose Bush as their leader! That is not democracy.

Japanese government, even the Imperial Japanese government, has provided education, one of the greatest in the world, for every single one of its citizens and even non-citizens. Japanese people rose the literacy rate of Japan to near 100% during the early 20th century, a time when only a priviledged percentage of Americans went to public schools. And when I say Japan, this included Korea at the time. Japan managed to increase Korea's literacy rate dramatically and provided modern plumbing systems to both the Japanese cities and Korean cities.

I don't know how "democratic" Japan is by your definition, but Japan has a higher voter turnout rate than America, people have more rights than Americans, we elected leaders, not chosen leaders, we have better equality than Americans. Japan has not always been a perfect democracy (during the late 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Japan was not a democracy) but the government has always managed to protect our people, what a government is suppose to do. Not all people were represented, it was not a perfect democracy, but still, the Japanese people were happy.

Japan is still working towards "a more perfect union" as the American Declaration of Independence states. No democracy is perfect but Japan I think has done a fairly good job to this point. Now is a time that we should really work hard together to make this country a better place.