Koza Faction

   The Koza faction is one position in a fierce debate, which began in the period 1927–1937 between Japanese Marxist economists and historians regarding the nature of Japanese capitalism and the modern Japanese state. The Koza faction emphasized a two-stage revolutionary process because of the importance it placed on the continuing existence of remnants from Japanese feudalism, which made Japan a special hybrid case. According to the Koza faction, Japan required a bourgeois democratic revolution as the process by which the country had developed capitalism had distorted its civil society. The Meiji Restoration (1868) that marked the beginning of the modern Japanese state merely reorganized landownership but perpetuated the continuation of feudal and semi-feudal relations. On some readings, this meant that Koza Marxism reflected the concepts of “national community” and “family state” influential in the development of Japanese social science.

   The Koza faction position was based on the 1927 and 1932 theses communicated to the Japan Communist Party (JCP) by the Communist International. According to these theses, Japan was expected to have a bourgeois democratic revolution similar to Russia prior to its own socialist revolution. This became the official position of the JCP. However, the influence of the Koza faction has extended beyond the Communist Party. Political and historical analysis of the “Emperor system” (tennosei) in Japan and numerous historical novels which have emphasized the feudal elements in Japanese society all reflect the Koza faction influence.