Japan's Peace Preservation Law of 1925: Its Origins and Significance

Abstract

I T WOULD BE DIFFICULT to find a book on Japan's interwar history that does not mention the Peace Preservation Law' of 1925, but despite this law's notoriety it has received inadequate scholarly attention. Consequently, it remains highly controversial and little understood. As one of the chief symbols of police suppression, it has been roundly attacked by Japanese scholars, not a few of them its victims, who, in their determination to pin the label of 'fascist' on the interwar state, have lacked the cool detachment necessary for a balanced evaluation of this important law's origins and significance.2 Therefore, in order to gain a fresh perspective, we should discard the deterministic view that the 'imperialistic,' 'capitalistic', and 'totalitarian' interwar state automatically spawned repressive laws. Indeed, the limited usefulness of such blanket labels as 'fascist' or 'totalitarian' quickly becomes evident. Instead, we should analyze the obvious questions: Why did the weak leftist thrust against the powerful state come to be perceived by the plural elite as a serious subversive threat? And why did the state enact a special law to control leftist radicals in 1925? In addition to these basic questions, others emerge after some spade-work in the legal history of the interwar years. For instance, from a strictly legalistic point of view, the loopholes which, the state insisted, the 1925 law had been designed to plug, might perhaps have been covered by a simple addition to the criminal code.3 Furthermore, the new peace law, although it was the most visible part of the dike thrown up to contain the ideological flood rushing across Japan, was but

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