ABSTRACT
THE ALIGNMENT of the Japan Communist Party (JCP) between Moscow and Peking is a subject that exercised the minds of scholars even during the period when the two Communist centres worked together in apparent harmony. 1 There have always been good a priori reasons for supposing that the JCP might find it difficult to decide its allegiance if ever there were a showdown between the two. With a number of Communist regimes and parties it would have been easy to predict which side they would take in the dispute. North Vietnam, for instance, by geographical propinquity, traditional cultural and political dependence, her weakness in comparison with her Chinese neighbour, and her low level of industrialization, was an obvious candidate for the position of Chinese satellite. Japan, however, was not so simply placed. An Asian country with a European level of economic development, within short flying range of Vladivostock as well as of Peking, her world status that of a power potentially able to influence others as much as to receive influence-she hardly provided her Communists with the theoretical or practical basis on which to make an easy choice of loyalty. Once the Sino-Soviet dispute began they were faced with three possibilities-alignment with one or other of the two disputants, and ‘independence’ or ‘neutrality’.
