Japanese leaders' fear of internal dissent in 1945-baseless or not?

Japanese fears of internal revolution in 1945 were

  • absolutely baseless

    Votes: 2 16.7%
  • fairly reasonable

    Votes: 10 83.3%

  • Total voters
    12

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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In the second half of WWII Japanese leaders started increasingly expressing fears of internal disloyalty. Some feared that a "Japanese Badoglio" could take over and surrender to the Allies as occurred in Italy. Even more painted dark scenarios by 1945 of a popular internal uprising overthrowing the Emperor and imposing Communism if the war were not ended soon.

Were these views by Japanese politicians, officers and aristocrats baseless nightmares or not?

If these were baseless fears and their people would have been obedient unto death, how could the Japanese leaders have gotten their perceptions of their people so wrong?
 
The overall fear was pretty reasonable, even though the specific (that it would be a communist-organized uprising) wasn't.* Signs of war-weariness were apparent among the rank-and-file of Japanese society and the oncoming famine would likely not improve things.

*In 1944, the Soviet ambassador to Japan did make a crack about how if the USSR were to successfully invade and occupy the home islands, they would have to run a anti-communist campaign. I suspect he was simply having a laugh at the Kempeitai's paranoia rather then making any kind of point.
 
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