Common Ground of Democracy: Anticommunism in Allied-Occupied Japan

By examining the thought of three intellectual groups—“Old Liberals,” non-Marxist social democrats, and Rōnō-ha Marxists—this article shows there existed an anticommunist discourse in Allied-occupied Japan. These thinkers agreed that Japan should become more democratic, but no one saw the communists and direct action groups as a true democratic force or identified in Soviet society an ideal path forward to Japanese democracy. This finding ultimately calls into question the cold war–informed binary view of postwar Japan and suggests that Japan’s orientation into the U.S.-led democratic camp was grounded on this anticommunist culture.