Thread by @akoz33

Here is a story that should be known better than it is, about how a very brave judge invalidated a fraudulent election, in spite of great pressure and personal risk. And it happened, of all places, in wartime Japan.

Many people will be surprised that an election of any kind could actually take place in what they assume was a "fascist state", let alone that a judge could invalidate it, (or more correctly, a part of it, in one prefecture). But in fact such an election did take place in

April of 1942, , while the Pacific War was in full swing. Moreover it was not entirely unfree even by present day standards.

Political parties were dissolved in 1940, but their members continued to sit in the Diet where they enjoyed Parliamentary immunity.

The Diet continued to meet regularly. It contained some well know personalities, known for their opposition to the regime.

Wartime Japan had no official governing party. In 1941 a Diet Members Imperial Assistance League was formed. About 70% of the members

of the House of Representatives joined it, but the rest refused to. They formed several groups, the largest of them being Dokokai, with 37 members. It was lead by Hatoyama Ichiro, the father of a post-war prime minister, but its most famous member

was 83 year old Ozaki Yukio, who had been elected to the House of Representatives in every election since its
establishment in 1890. Throughout his life Ozaki was an outspoken critic of government oppression.

In January 1942 Prime Minister Tojo announced that a general election would be held in April. He decided to do so in the belief that patriotic fervour generated by the war would result in a more pliable Diet (strange idea for someone still believed to have been a dictator...)

The government then produced a list of "recommended. candidates" but could not prevent others from challenging them. The government list consisted of 466 candidates for 466 seats but there were 613 independent ( unrecommended) candidates.

Liberal and socialist candidates run as individuals and did not from a common list. The only other list was one of 46 candidates was formed by Japan's fascist party

Tohokai (Society of the East) established by Nakano Saigo, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, both of whom he had met. Nakano's suicide in 1943 after being put under house arrest was one of the great sensations of Japan's wartime politics.

Two independent candidates were arrested during the election campaign. One of them was Ashida Hitoshi who committed the crime of praising the humane treatment of prisoners of war by the Americans. The other was Ozaki.

Ozaki quoted in a speech an-old comic poem:

A house for sale
Writes the third generation
In an elegant Chinese style.

It was understood as a criticism of the current Showa period, which was the" third generation" since he the Meij Reform (Meiji Taisho, Showa).

But the government chose to interpret it as an insult the emperor and Ozaki was arrested for "lese-majeste". Both Ashida (who became a prime minister after the war) and Ozaki were released on the day of the election but Ozaki was put on trial. He was eventually acquitted by

the Supreme Court and won his seat in the Diet.

Next, it is necessary to say something about the Supreme Court in pre-war Japan. It was remarkably independent and very
powerful - in fact quite comparable to the US Supreme Court.

The judges were appointed for life by the Emperor from among most respected legal scholars and could not be removed except by a disciplinary procedure involving the other Supreme Court judges.

Arguably their power exceeded even that of SCOTUS judges (it was much weakened after the war and judges do not have life appointments and are subject to elections by the public) Japan's Meiji Constitution explicitly rejected the principle of tri-patriate division of powers

into legislative, executive and judicial one. Judicial power it was argued, was a part of the executive power which formally was vested in the Emperor. But the Emperor never acted directly (he did so only when the officers who normally advised him and acted on his behalf were

divided. It was because of this that in 1945 Admiral Suzuki, then Prime Minister, had to ensure that the Cabinet would be split on the matter of Japan's surrender, for only such a split could ensure a direct intervention by the Emperor
- the only thing that could induce the

army to accept such a decision. Judgements of the Supreme Court were issued in the name of the Emperor, carried the authority of Imperial Decrees, could not be appealed against and had to be carried out without a delay. The independence of the Supreme Court was often inconvenient

for the government which could do nothing once a judgement was made. The most common tactics was, therefore, preventing cases reaching the Supreme Court, often by means of open or hidden pressure on defendants or plaintiffs.
The 1992 election was, on the whole, fairly clean.

Unrecommended candidates won about a third of the seats, essentially as many as they had occupied before, so Tojo's idea was seen as a failure. Among the more notable results were victories by Ozaki and by Saito Takao, who had been expelled from the Diet in 1940

for criticising the war in China (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sait%C5%8… )
He got the highest number of votes in his prefecture. But in Kagoshima prefecture a number of unrecommended candidates who had mt been elected claimed that the local governer had illegally interfered with the

election process. They appealed to the courts. They were represented by the above mentioned Saito Takao, who himself got elected in spite of government's efforts to prevent it. Their case reached the Supreme Court which put one of its members, judge Yoshida Hisashi to

investigate. The investigation lasted three years, during which an enormous pressure was put on Yoshida. He received anonymous death threats, his family lived in
fear. Finally on the 1st of March 1945 he ruled for the plaintiffs and promptly resigned from the Supreme Court.

He remained under strict secret police survailance till the end of the war. But the election in Kagoshima had to be rerun. However, it was by then subject to frequent American air raids
and only half as many people voted as in 1942. The opposition nearly doubled its vote.