Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 433, The Implosion.

Last week, we covered the career of Japan's foremost transistor salesman, Ikeda Hayato,

and along the way discovered that he was far more than just a transistor salesman.

Arguably, he was the architect of the conservative ascendance in Japan that arguably has persisted to this day.

But here's the thing. I don't want to take anything away from Ikeda, who was an enormously skilled politician, regardless of what you might think of his politics.

But part of what enabled his success was his opposition, who, frankly, committed a truly

ridiculous number of own goals in the aftermath of probably their single greatest political victory

ever.

Ikeda was brilliant, but his political opponents were also kind of a hot mess.

So today we're going to talk about that opposition, in the form of the Japan Socialist Party,

which looked poised in the 1960s to become a massive political force, only to be consigned

to practical relevance by the end of the decade.

Just to be upfront about a couple of things.

First, this episode is intended to be a bit of an extension on a much older series of episodes, the five-part Red Star over Tokyo episodes, starting with episode 176, which cover

the history of the Japanese Communist Party.

We will recap a bit of the key pieces of information

as needed, but we're mostly going to focus on the Socialist Party's trials and tribulations.

I also want to be upfront about one other thing that I would be remiss not to. It is fair to say

that not all of the socialist problems were of their own making.

First, of course, it's hard for an opposition party to do well when the government is presiding

over a period of massive economic growth, which the conservative liberal Democrats were in

the 1960s. And even before then, the economy had been steadily trending in the right direction for about a decade,

...