Red Schism

Two top Japanese Communists, Kyuichi Tokuda and Yoshio Shiga, occupied adjoining prison cells for 17 years, used to tap messages to each other through the wall. Since they were freed at war's end, communication between Tokuda and Shiga has grown more difficult. Threes weeks ago it broke down badly in a row that all but split Japan's Communist Party.

Tokuda, the party's No. 2 man, supports No. 1 Communist Sanzo Nozaka in his "soft" tactical line. They have cooperated with other parties and rarely attack U.S. occupation policies. This line has been sharply criticized by the Cominform, speaking for the Kremlin.

Shiga, the party's No. 3 man, has sided with the Cominform against the policies of 1 and 2.

The dispute came to a head at a recent central committee meeting. Shiga warned against Titoist tendencies in the Japanese party leadership. Nozaka and Tokuda, he charged, showed "sectarian" disregard for criticism, ignored "the great role [of the] Cominform . . . and Soviet Union in the forefront of internationally advancing people's power," and stuck dangerously to outmoded notions of a popular front with bourgeois elements. "The time has come, comrades," exhorted Shiga, "to bend our utmost efforts toward the bolshevization of the party." When Nozaka and Tokuda squelched the memo in which Shiga set forth his views, Shiga let it leak out to the rank & file.

Akahata, Tokyo's Communist newspaper, denounced the circulation of Shiga's memo as "subversive." At first Shiga declined to make a public retort. "Intraparty affairs," he said, "should be solved within the party." Last week Akahata repeated and amplified its reprimand; it also printed a terse apology from No. 3. Then, within their central committee, the comrades rehashed the issue in hot & heavy argument. The solution: a statement reproving Shiga but leaving him still in his influential post. Japan's lesser comrades looked on, baffled and bewildered by the complex top-level schism.

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