The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of Japanese Anticommunism

Abstract

This article deals with the Japanese political and military response to the February and October revolutions. Between 1918 and 1925, Japan took advantage of the power vacuum in Northeast Asia and intervened in the Russian Civil War in order to pursue new opportunities for enrichment and expansion. This article demonstrates that Japanese anticommunism originated during the Intervention and was largely a reaction to the Korean communist anti-imperialist movement, which threatened the stability of the Japanese empire. The article demonstrates how discourses of communist revolution, its containment and the issue of imperialism became entangled in Japan’s empire.