Mr. Miyamoto Died At 98

Kenji Miyamoto, former presidium chairman of the Japan Communist Party's Central Committee, died Wednesday.


The Yomiuri Shimbun
Miyamoto was born in 1908 as the first son of a merchant family in Yamaguchi Prefecture. While a student at Tokyo Imperial University, he won first prize in an essay contest sponsored by Kaizo magazine, leaving Hideo Kobayashi (1902-83) to place second. His essay, titled "Haiboku-no Bungaku" (The Literature of The Defeated), focused on novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), and earned Miyamoto a reputation in the literary world.

...In 1933, Miyamoto was arrested for violation of the prewar Peace Preservation Law and remained in prison until the end of World War II in 1945. During his imprisonment, Miyamoto refused to renounce his communist beliefs.
The JCP's official history states: "After his arrest, Kenji Miyamoto never succumbed to barbarous torture and adhered to the party's policy. He maintained complete silence during his roughly seven years in captivity, which led to the start of hearings in his trial. During his trial, Miyamoto continued to fight [the authorities]."

....What earned Miyamato a great deal of attention was his policy of independence. In 1991, he issued a statement concerning the dissolution in that year of the Soviet Communist Party. The statement said the JCP "welcomes the end of a historical great evil marked by great-power ambition and hegemonism."


The fall of the Soviet Communist Party was followed by a decline in the power of other communist parties in the world, demonstrated by changes in their names. The JCP's success in surviving as a political party amid a decline in communism can be partly attributed to the JCP's adherence to its policy of independence.


....The JCP has rewritten the wording of its platform to fit the changes of the times, hoping to pursue a practical and flexible policy line. However, the JCP's basic philosophy and makeup, nurtured during the days of Miyamoto's leadership, remains unchanged.
(Jul. 19, 2007)

Mainich
Former Japanese Communist Party leader Kenji Miyamoto died of old age at a hospital in Tokyo on Wednesday, party sources said. He was 98.
After becoming the party's secretary-general in 1958, Miyamoto promoted having a majority in the Diet through peaceful means and independence from foreign communist parties. He resigned from official activities in 1997.

....Miyamoto was arrested at the end of 1933 over the death of a party member and imprisoned until October 1945.
On the international front, Miyamoto and his party acted independently from the former Soviet Union's communist party and Chinese Communist Party.
When the communist regime collapsed in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe in the late 20th century, Miyamoto said that Soviet Union-style socialism had been defeated, but added that the Japanese Communist Party was different.
(July 18, 2007)

Some readers of Taro's blog might be surprised at there being a communist party in Japan. However, JCP demonstrates us that it is different from other communist parties such as the Soviet and Chinese Communist Party.

The Yomiuri News has more detailed comment on Mr. Miyamoto and his JCP. According to the Yomiuri, the JCP's success in surviving as a political party can be partly attributed to the JCP's adherence to its policy of independence.

JCP seems to pursue its original communist ideology. Is it what is called a communist from an orthodox communist view? I don't know whether or not it is a good idea.

By the way, I was very surprised that there also exists a communist party in the US. I didn't know that.