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Thread on a figure of Japanese history many may not even be aware of but who played a large role in the wartime government of the Japanese Empire and post-war right-wing politics and its cozy relationship with organised crime: Yoshio Kodama. I must provide a bit of context first.
Kodama's life begins in 1911 and in 1920 he was sent to live with distant relatives in Korea where he worked tasking industrial jobs. Such a living turned Kodoma towards socialist theory and then towards ultra-nationalism and he joined a series of far-right groups such...
...as the Kenkoku-kai. During his time in this group, Kodoma attempted to hand Emperor Hirohito a written appeal for an increase in patriotism but was arrested by the motorcade police before he could do so and sentenced to 6 months in jail.
He went on to found the Independence Youth Society which had links to the Society for Heavenly Action which went on to be involved in assassination attempts on Japanese cabinet members in 1934. Kodama was sentenced to three years in prison.
He would be released from Fuchu Penitentiary in 1937 and would then become a staff officer at Army headquarters which led him into the Foreign Ministry's information bureau. He spent a lot of time in China and the East Indies and US Army intelligence credited him with the...
...establishment of a large network of spies and collaborators in Manchuria and throughout the rest of China. After Pearl Harbour Kodama would supply important materials for the war effort through the purchasing of things like tungsten and guns before reselling them at a...
...higher price. I say purchasing but it was at gunpoint and pretty much forcing the Chinese to sell materials at ridiculously low prices. Through this enterprise Kodama amassed a fortune of $175 million in industrial diamonds, platinum, and banknotes.
The Kodama Kikan was a huge economic force controlling a wide variety of things from salt to mines, farms, fisheries, the Shanghai Kempeitai. Kodama even dabbled in heroin-for-mineral deals.
Come the end of the war Kodama was working back in Japan as an advisor to the Prime Minister at the age of 34. Ironically, Kodama had a role to play in a non-violent surrender but this did not spare him from the wrath of the US occupation who imprisoned him and classed him...
...as a Class A war criminal. However in post-war Japan, Kodama was useful to the Americans as many former right-wing figures tended to be. He was never tried nor charged and it's likely that this is because of his extensive knowledge on China and the Japanese left-wing.
Prior to his arrest, Kodama had entrusted much of his wealth to another accused war criminal - Karoku Tsuji who used Kodama's fortune to finance the founding of the Liberal Party. In 1955 this party emerged with the Democratic Party to form the LDP we know today. Kodama was...
...easily the most powerful person in the party. The Americans, naturally, were also funding the Japanese post-war right which had been denied for decades but was eventually declassified in CIA documents in the 90s.
In the post-war years, Kodama's connections with both the CIA and the Yakuza strengthened. One such instance was when he ordered the Meiraki-gumi to disrupt and attack striking miners at Hokutan coal mine in 1949. Kodama was a go-to for both the CIA and the Yakuza as the CIA...
...was quite fond of the Yakuza being used to suppress the Japanese-left wing. The habit of gangsters breaking up strikes and trade unions in Japan became a relatively common occurrence. These are Yakuza breaking up a strike in 1960.
This may seem all fine and well using organised crime to keep the Japanese left completely ineffective but the downside to this is that it creates a corrupt political structure intertwined with gangsters. This would lead to the Yakuza being able to take control of a large....
...portion of the Japanese economy. I honestly don't know much about Japanese politics today but in the decades following WW2 their influence in Japanese society from business to politics was insane. The Japanese mainstream right has always had links to the Yakuza.
Anyways, yeah. You probably get the picture that the CIA needed Kodama to help fight the reds and Kodama recognised this and recognised he could make money from providing them intelligence. In 1949 the CIA paid Kodama to organise the smuggling of tungsten out of communist...
...China. He was given $150,000 but the ship never arrived and Kodama kept the money, telling the Americans that the ship had sank. Information on Kodama is quite hard to come by in English so this is what little I've come across so far.
