ABSTRACT
With his secession from the Kokumin Dōmei and the issue of his supra-party ‘Manifesto to the Japanese People’, Nakano entered the most controversial period of his career, lasting until the year before his death, which from the standpoint of his biographers presents both the greatest dramatic interest and the greatest difficulties for sympathetic treatment, in view of the disastrous outcome of policies he then advocated. During this time his key strategy was to ride the storm of the mounting world crisis and its repercussions in Japan, gambling on the prospect that the established structure would crumble under the stress of events and open the way to a reallocation of power in which he could effectively participate. It was therefore rather a time of action, improvised to meet rapid change, than of theorising, though he showed a good deal of resourcefulness in turning his stock of theory to account in meeting the demands of the moment. Only at the end of this period did he finally find it impossible to sustain a line that was both credible and distinctive.
