Fuwa points out sovereign independence has been key to JCP development

   The following is the gist of the speech on August 9 by former Japanese Communist Party Central Committee Chair Fuwa Tetsuzo at the assembly in Tokyo commemorating the JCP 85th anniversary under the theme “85 years of the JCP and the present stage of its development.”

   The Abe Cabinet, consisting mainly of forces that praise the past Japanese war of aggression, suffered a serious setback in the recent House of Councilors election. In the United States, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution urging the Japanese government to make an official apology to former wartime ‘sex slave’.

  The JCP is the only party in Japan that opposed the war of aggression and the despotic rule up to 1945. This is why it can fairly and squarely criticize the Abe Cabinet for its anachronistic policies that favor pro-Yasukuni forces that insist that Japan’s past war was a just war.

   The TIME Magazine ran a report about the JCP describing it as communists still alive and well in Japan, the second largest economy, in contrast with the communist parties of Italy and France which saw a drastic decline from a peak they attained in the immediate postwar years, when the JCP was still smaller.

   This took place because the JCP established its sovereign independence relatively early in after World War II, a line that completely rejected outside interference with Japanese revolutionary movements, even by foreign parties that achieved successes.

   The JCP firmly established its sovereign independence after learning hard the lessons from an inner-party turmoil known as the “1950 Question”, and it fully played an important role in repelling any intervention from the former Soviet Union and the Mao Zedong group of China in the 1960s.

   The JCP Program has been the guideline for exploring an alternative to the LDP government which is now at a complete deadlock both in domestic and foreign policies. All JCP branches and supporters’ associations are called upon to carry out a drive to establish a new politics in line with the JCP Program.

   We must maintain a long term and revolutionary outlook that will help us open a bright future even as we face difficulties. Let’s us endeavor to establish a world of peace and social justice!                - Akahata, August 10, 2007