Why is a Communist Japan so unlikely?

Just to be clear, I'm talking about a Japan that becomes communist from within and prior to WW2, not one that gets Operation Downfall'd into communism. Whenever it gets brought up, it's dismissed, but I don't see why it's so fundamentally unlikely.

It can't be the lack of development of an urban proletariat, since urban workers were (IIRC) less than 20% of Russia's population pre-1917. Japan was also developing on the back of feudal structure, just like Europe, so its class system had similar roots to that of Europe (and Europe was quite susceptible to socialism).

Militarism doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense either. Plenty of Latin American nations have oscillated between military rule and socialism, and Russia was most certainly a quite militaristic nation, internationally speaking. Is it the fact that the militarist system in Japan was so successful, with all their military victories up until the Second Sino-Japanese War, so the populace wouldn't be liable to start hating the military structure that's done so much for them? It seems like it'd be pretty easy to have a PoD that's Japan loses the Russo-Japanese War or something, disgracing their military structure.

The whole "democracy is the anathema of radicalism" doesn't make a ton of sense either, since democracy developed pretty late in Japan (during the Taisho era).

I'm honestly having a good deal of difficulty in trying to come up with more reasons why Japan couldn't become communist. So why is it assumed that Japan couldn't?
 
Strong belief in the class system by even the peasentry and their belief that there Emperor was a God.
 
It actually really isn't that unlikely. The Japanese Communist Party was pretty strong mid-century despite being extremely brutally suppressed before 1945 and not exactly treated with kid gloves even afterwards. IMO the main problem with Japan going Communist on its own accord is ultimately the same that we would see in Poland or Finland - they have a Communist neighbour that scares them. Without the USSR and later the PRC acroiss the sea, Japan has a slightly better chance of going red on its own. There'd still be the powerful propaganda machine of the established order, the nationalist military and the new moneyed elites to take into account, but it worked elsewhere. There is nothing inherently different in the minds of the Japanese that predestines them to being monarchists, it just takes the same degree of dislocation and trauma to produce revoluztion that it does everywhere.
 
Don't forget about the Army and Navy ministers in the Diet. They can call upon the Army and Navy respectively to put down any attempted Communist takeover. The soldiers and sailors of the IJA and the IJN were indoctrinated with the Bushido code to the point that any attempt to convert them to Communism has the word 'fail' written all over it. Besides, many of the men in Japan's armed forces enlisted because of the extreme poverty they were in and because of the fact that the Army and Navy provided for them. Until the Commies can stage a coup that results in the removal of the Diet, their promises to the people were just that- promises.

I'd also like to point out that even if members of the Communist Party of Japan were elected to the Diet, they wouldn't have any power to do anything because all the power in the Diet belonged to the hands of the cabinet of ministers appointed by the Emperor.
 
The caste system hasn't prevented some Indian states to try out Communism.
IIRC the communists tend to be from the lower castes, however. Still a valid point, but communism isn't exactly easy if the lower classes don't feel oppressed by the current system (that said, I don't know if that was the case in Japan at this time or not; after all, the communists had to come from somewhere...).
 
Don't forget about the Army and Navy ministers in the Diet. They can call upon the Army and Navy respectively to put down any attempted Communist takeover. The soldiers and sailors of the IJA and the IJN were indoctrinated with the Bushido code to the point that any attempt to convert them to Communism has the word 'fail' written all over it. Besides, many of the men in Japan's armed forces enlisted because of the extreme poverty they were in and because of the fact that the Army and Navy provided for them. Until the Commies can stage a coup that results in the removal of the Diet, their promises to the people were just that- promises.
Couldn't this factor disappear though, if the IJA is less successful or has different policies early on? An IJA that doesn't have the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors or that is beaten back by Russian troops after heavy casualties in the Russo-Japanese war is very different from the historical IJA.
 
Strong belief in the class system by even the peasentry and their belief that there Emperor was a God.
And it's not like any states like that *China* with a traditional belief in the divinity or divine right of the crown, and a long running caste system *Russia* ever went communist.
 
Okay, so historically the Russo-Japanese War, while it laid the seeds for the October Revolution, also destabilized Japan. Her financial system was not doing so hot by the time they started negotiating a peace, and she had suffered an awful lot of casualties because of her over-reliance on human wave tactics.

What if Russia does better? Let's say they do well enough to keep all of Sakhalin and add Manchuria to their sphere of influence, thus putting the Russo-Japanese War in the category of "failure" in the minds of the people and leaving Japan even worse off economically. Could you see the sort of destabilizing, Revolution-before-the-Revolution happen with radical left-wing organizers in Japan?
 
Communism. Rule by a permanent bureaucracy, lifetime employment regardless of market conditions, a large centrally-planned economy in which the government makes all the long-tern decisions regarding finance and industrial development... How was this any different from how Japan was actually run during the 1950s-1990s, when they rose to become one of the world's major economic powers?
 
Top