Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 179, Red Star Over Tokyo, Part 4.

It was late 1945, and the floodgates were opened.

Despite being something of an anti-communist himself, General Douglas MacArthur, the leader of

the new American occupation government of Japan,

made a decision to play nice with his allies.

In 1945, that still included the Soviet Union.

Sure, they were dirty Bolsheviks, but they'd also helped crush the Nazis and the Japanese.

We may have our differences.

But surely, we can work them out. We're all

adults here. We definitely don't have to start a decades-long Cold War over it all, right?

So Douglas MacArthur, in a show of faith to his Soviet allies, and because the draconian political

laws of the Japanese Empire repulsed his democratic sensibilities,

repealed the peace preservation law, and opened up the prisons, at least for political prisoners.

Objectors to the old government of every stripe were let loose, communists and socialists among them.

This was the renaissance of the Japanese left.

All the old government controls that had kept it about as fringe as it was possible to be

were now gone.

To add fuel to the fire, the imperial government, which had spent so much political capital

attacking the left, was now as discredited as it was possible to be.

Nobody, after all, likes a loser.

The old Japan Socialist Party was resurrected before 1945 was even done,

...