Behind the Bastards - Part Three: The Slavery Loving Fascist who Built Modern Japan

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Mia Wong is joined again by Robert Evans for part three of our episodes on Nobusuke Kishi.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, you know, the important thing about growing older and getting wiser is learning when you shouldn't make a what's xing my wise joke about a series of profoundly horrific crimes against humanity. And I I've grown as a person. So we're just going to go into the episode and not think at all about what it is I was going to say before I stopped myself and narrowly avoided cancellation. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history, of whom I would have been one had I completed the sentence that this introduction was meant to be

initially as it was originally planned. But I didn't. So you motherfuckers can't cancel me. That's right. I'm going to go. Unfortunately, unfortunately, this also means that you will never be installed as as as a leader of a country by the CIA. I don't don't say never. Don't say never. You never like what do what do you what do you what do you what do you I mean anybody look a man can dream. Christopher, we're talking more about Manchuria today. We just went through a lot of war crimes. Where are where we where we what do what do you what do you what do you what do you where what do you where where what where what is it time or what is it time for the reckoning as you title. Yeah, it is. Yeah, she should do the reckoning. Fuck yeah. Spicy. Let's go.

Yeah. So we are back in Japan. We are back in 1945. And we are back in well, I guess we are back and we are back in the US occupation. And okay, no, I think I'm a pretty natural reaction to to seeing the the words a US military occupation is to assume as going to go badly. And it is. But it actually didn't start out that way. And it didn't start out that way because the first phase of the sort of Japanese occupation by the US is run by a bunch of new dealers. And these guys look to Japan and we're like, okay, so what if instead of fascism, we did the new deal. And so they do a bunch of stuff that's like really leftist, like, like, for example, the big one that you could never do in the US. I they do this huge land reform package where they force all the

landlord to own a certain amount of land to like sell it to their tenants. And, you know, there's like there's like two years, you know, 1945, 1947, where, you know, the US like is actually kind of trying to make Japan like better or more democratic and less shit. But all of that comes to an end in 1947, basically a result of the Cold War. And this this is called the reverse course and signifies basically what American business interests like take control of of of Japan. And, you know, like in 1950, they they do this thing called the red purge, where they like they just do these mass firing of like suspected communists and just like, yeah, and anyone who's sort of like vaguely associated with the left, just get fired from their jobs, both in the government

and private sector, this is this coordinated, like, if I'm not mistaken, this is kind of around the time when there's also a lot of protests against the American occupiers, because a bunch of GIs are raping ladies. Yeah, that's like another major thing that's that that drives a lot of like the the the early protests post war in Japan. Yeah, they're also just like shooting people and we'll get more into soldiers, just randomly murdering people. Excellent. But, you know, I guess actually speaking of soldiers, randomly murdering people. So one of the reasons why fascism is never really sort of like crushed in Japan is that the head of G2, which is the armies intelligence section, is also a fascist. And, you know, this is no way. Yeah. And I said,

like, this is not me calling Charles A. Willerby a fascist, the like this guy is going to go on to become like Franco's promoter in Europe, like MacArthur calls him a fascist. Wow. MacArthur, the guy who suggested nuking cities in China to win the Korean War. If that dude calls you a fascist. Yeah, probably pretty fucking fascy. You know, and this is a big issue because Willerby's job, like the actual job he is there to do is to like just completely obliterate the rest of the Japanese fascist organizations and Japanese fascist societies. And what he does instead is he used the G2's kind of intelligence corps to do union busting and staging false flag attacks and blaming them on the Socialist Party. And he does one other thing that's both incredibly

important to this story and important in the Japanese history. He decides he wants to start negotiating with the Yakuza in order to sort of like use the Muslim weapon against the left. And in order to do this. Oh, rad. Yeah, it's great. It's great. You can see where this is going. Versions of this happen in Italy with the mafia too, right? Yeah. And I think, yeah, I, you know, the Italian office is interesting because every once in a while they like will back a leftist. Like that's like how the sort of weird red brigade stuff happened. But like the Yakuza, they're just fascist. Like there's no, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's great. And yeah. And so, so Willerby goes to Tsukumo prison, which is like, this is, this is the giant war criminal prison

where the US is holding all the war criminals. And he meets with Kishi's cellmate. Now Kishi's cellmate is a guy named Kodama Yoshio, who is, he's like a giant Yakuza boss. He's involved in the drug trade. He was also arrested for his plot, his part in the incredibly named League of Blood incident in 1932, which is his giant like fascist plots, just assassinated a bunch of business owners, little politicians. And, you know, so he gets arrested for, this is 1932, and he gets arrested and then he gets released. And then, you know, because again, the Japanese empire is just a giant cartel with like a state attached to it. He spends the entire war as Japan's like procurement guy, which means that he's running around like basically trading heroin for like

tungsten, radium guns and like other stuff to fight the war. And so Willerby meets with this guy, because he also, you know, he still has a monster Yakuza connections and he has like 175 million dollars that he made from the war just like on him. And so Willerby cuts a deal with Kodama that's like, okay, I'll get you out of war crimes jail if you become an American intelligence asset. And Kodama is like, this is just all wins. And so he, Kodama like immediately like basically reforms this like, I don't even, I guess you call it like the United Front of like crime and fascism. It's like, it's this group, it's this association of like 400 right wing, like fascist and criminal organizations that Kodama just like runs. And, you know, he's going to spend the next 30 years

basically just running Japanese politics from the from the shadows and being basically like the Yakuza politics guy. Now, Kishi, how Kishi escaped the noose in 1948 is a subject of some debates. Like, so the US doesn't charge him with the sex slavery crimes or like the forced labor crimes what he's charged with is violating like crimes against the peace, which is like starting an offensive war. But like, even that, even if you just stick to that, like he is the guiltiest man in human history, like he signed the declaration of war against the US, like the coolest conviction ever. Like, yeah, that really also ought to like just as a rule, if you're like someone else who lives in that country and a guy is like, hey, I want to continue being influential, you know me,

I'm the guy who helped declare war in the US. You would think that like everyone would be like, well, we shouldn't be listening to anything you say. Yeah, that didn't go very well. You would think. And, you know, I've seen some stories that talk about like some sort of like group of American businessmen interceded on his behalf. I don't know how reliable that is. The other explanation, and this is true regardless of exactly what happened to Kishi, is that like the Tokyo War Crime Tribunal just kind of gave up like trying to actually prosecute people because it was too much work and it was like the Cold War was happening and they just didn't care anymore. And so they do just like a bunch of absolutely half ass proceedings and, you know,

they rush like Tojo to the gallows and a few people are the people that wanted to kill. And then everyone else just goes free. And so on Christmas Eve, 1948, nobisuke Kishi, the man who enslaved mature and ran the fascist war machine, walked out of prison. And because his brother, because his brother, future Prime Minister Ito Isaku, Sato Isaku, is the cabinet chief secretary, Kishi is immediately driven to the Prime Minister's house. Come on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's immediately driven to Prime Minister's house where he trains his prison oranges for a business suit and utters the immortal words, quote, well, I guess we're all Democrats now. Oh, God. Ew. Gross. Yeah. Not good. Bad. Not cool or good.

Ew. And thus, and thus nobisuke Kishi, archfascist bureaucrat, entered the new world of electoral politics. Oh, God, that's you love to see it. Yeah. It's like if Werner von Braun had run for Congress. Yep. Yeah. As opposed to just running NASA. Yeah. And, you know, okay, so initially, he starts putting together basically like the old fascist base. So like he gets some small business owners, he gets some like old school, 1931, like fascist terrorists, he gets his friends at Nissan are like, yeah, we love this man sure he is shit. Like, we're giving him all of our money. And the other, you know, one of the other like very disturbing things about what happened after the war is that so,

you know, I talked to the last episode, so Kishi, Kishi found this thing called the Ministry of Munitions, which is just like the super it like super it like ministry, it's all does all this planning stuff. And basically, all of his old like fascist reform bureaucrat buddies who in the ministry munitions keep their jobs. And the whole the ministry just turned into the ministry of international trade and industry. And, you know, and MIDI is this called MIDI, MIDI is the core of Japanese post war development. And it's, you know, it's all the old fascist shit that Kishi was doing before, except the difference is that it's, it's now being used to sort of like it's being used to fuel the American war machine in Korea

and Vietnam instead of filling Japanese war machine also in Korea and Vietnam. So yeah, this is purging the fascist is going well. And when I say going well, I mean, in 1952, the US just like gave up any semblance of trying to get rid of fascism and just unpurge everyone they'd purged. We pardoned a lot of them. We gave the others jobs. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, interesting with Kishi. So, so the prime minister at the time is Yoshida Shigeru, who was like, this is not a good guy. Like he was also a fascist for the war. But he tells the Americans, do not unpurge this guy, like do not unpurge Kishi. And it's extremely funny because, you know, as I mentioned last episode, like Yoshida is like is related to Kishi. Like,

you remember that uncle that Kishi really liked who like raised him for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So that guy's daughter, like is Yoshida's wife, like they know each other. Like Kishi knows this guy's family. And she's still just like, do not do this. Do not let this guy come back into politics. And the US is just like, no, fuck it. Well, he's back. Kishi's back. Yeah. And, you know, so Kishi, you may not have heard of us. We're the United States. Yeah. We don't think things through. Nope. Well, I mean, you know, I would say this, this works out great for the US. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and Kishi, so Kishi runs this, this electoral federation thing in 1952. And it just gets like destroyed. Like, because 1952, everyone's like,

we don't like this guy. And I mean, he has like, he has a lot of money. He has like hundreds of millions of yen. And so they get like whacked. And so Kishi starts like wheeling around the political scene going, okay, like, what can I latch on to? And like, he, he almost joins the right wing of the socialist party, which would have been the single weirdest pit of it I've ever seen in my life. But his brother convinced him to join this, the ruling sort of center right liberal party instead. And, you know, like, this is Yoshida's party. And Yoshida, like, doesn't like Kishi, but the liberal party is also falling apart. So he's like, okay, we need Kishi support. And so in 1953, Kishi joins the party, joins the party and wins the seat in the diet. Now,

Yoshida, she is getting help from a lot of places in that election, because 1953 is the first post war election after the American occupation. And if you know anything about elections that happened in fascist countries immediately after the end of World War Two, you know that Yoshida is being backed by the CIA. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you know anything that happened about elections that happened in these countries after World War Two, you know that they didn't. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah, this is interesting because it's like, I think this story is weirder than like the Italian stories. Like, you know, and this, you know, so, so the way this is funded is that at the beginning of the Korean War, like the U.S. needed a bunch of tungsten and American intelligence basically

was like, we need to keep the socialist party from literally ever taking power, like at all costs. And so they talked to Kodamos that that Yakuza guy from before the war, who Willerby had like broken out of jail, and they get him to smuggle a bunch of tungsten that had been left over from Japan's World War Two stockpiles to the U.S. And then they like, they pay him $10 million and the CIA throws in $2.8 million of their own. And that money is like that that money is how the liberal party like wins 1953 elections. It's great. It's great. I mean, it's going to get worse. That seems fine. I bet we did good stuff with all that tungsten. Yeah, we absolutely bombed the shit out of Korea. I bet it didn't get fired into multiple countries worth of civilian.

It's great. Okay. Anyway, we all, yeah. No, yeah. So, so, you know, Kishi gets elected as part of the liberal party, but, you know, Kishi is a backstabbing son of a bitch and he immediately turns on Yoshida and like starts announcing him. Yoshida kicks him out of the party, but Kishi is able to get this like breakaway faction to join him and he forms something called the Democratic Party. And through a lot of incredibly complicated electoral bullshit, like they're able to oust Yoshida's prime minister. And then Kishi has this giant plan to like reunify the two wings of the, the like, basically reunify the two wings of the right. There's like his wing is Democratic Party and there's a liberal party and he has to reunify them. And the reasoning he wants to do this,

because he wants to control it. But the other reason that the reason that actually happens is that the Socialist Party had split in like 1948 or something in 1955, they come back together. And that just like freaks all the conservatives out and they're like, okay, okay, fine, like we'll, we'll, you know, we'll join this new party. And this new party they form is called the Liberal Democratic Party. Now this is important. The reason I spent so much time talking about this is that the LDP is the single most important party in Japanese politics. And in the 66 years since they were founded in 1955, the LDP has been out of power for six. They were in power for the other six. Jesus Christ. Yeah, this is Japan is Japan is almost one party state. Yeah, yeah,

it's unbelievable. And you know, and this is this is Kishi's party. Like he is the guy who single handedly built this party. This party would not exist. If Kishi had not gone into the Liberal Democratic Party, like tore them apart and then forced them to join his breakaway faction. And you know, like he's the reason why it exists. And this, this party, like this is the party that's the basis of the entire modern Japanese political system. Cool. And yeah, it's great. Kishi, you know, he makes himself the general secretary of the party and wins, you know, in his first election, he wins an absolute majority in the diet for the LDP. But, you know, instead of becoming prime minister himself, he spends his time sort of biting, like sort of building up

American support for him. Now, you know, we talked about the CDP, I mean, the CIA had been heavily involved with the Liberal Party and they've been heavily involved with Liberal Democratic Party, like from the start. I mean, this is from a New York Times article. We financed them, said Alfred C. Lomer Jr., who ran the CIA's far East operations from 1955 to 1958. We depended on the LDP for information. He said the CIA had used the payments both to support the party and recruit informants from it from its earliest days. And so the CIA, like they're working with the LDP on like a candidate by candidate basis. Like the CIA has to run electoral guys and the electoral guys will like go to a candidate and go, we need you to win this seat and they'll like hand, like

personally hand them money. And so, you know, this is where you get the first of the Dola's brothers entering, entering the political arena. Hell yeah. And then the, and then it like, actually, I saw that in 1955, you also get the second Dola's brother, Secretary of State, John Foster Dola's, who like basically just straight up, yeah, like he just like straight up my 55 is like the liberal, like he's like tells the Japanese, like the Liberal Party will unify with the Democratic Party. And like, if you don't like vague threat insert here. And so John Foster Dola's directly responsible in many ways, both the Dola's brothers are responsible for Kishi, like forming the most important political party in the history of Japan.

And all of this ends with Kishi becoming Prime Minister in 1957. And he, he just immediately starts doing crime. So yeah, I mean, what else are you going to do? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, like this Kishi's like a Kishi's an incredible money launderer from his time in Manchuria, like, you know, and he devises a scheme to like make some money off of the reparations payments that Japan had to pay to the countries that had invaded after the war. And so he basically what he does is he negotiates to have these reparations payments like paid in Japanese goods and services. And so he buys those Japanese goods and services with state money from his own corporate political allies. And then yeah, he turns, yeah, it's great. It's great. He's using

the reparations payment to like pay off his like fascist buddies. And then he does the exact same thing to like the Japanese foreign aid projects. It's also all just Kishi's like buddies paying themselves. And you know, Kishi, he also like he develops the system of like, so she like constantly rotates to cabinets in the time that he's privileged, like constantly. And the reason he's doing this is because it's basically a way to buy off his political allies. So like, you know, you give an ally a cabinet minister and they get a loot, a bunch of money. And then once they've taken enough money, you put in the next person to put in the next person to put the next person. And you know, he's also just like, he's not only doing this with with like sort of politicians and

like businessmen, he's doing this with the Yakuza. So what if the, the, you know, he makes like a sworn Yakuza guy, like his ministry of agriculture. And then there's the wonderfully named Bambuko Ono, who Kishi- That is a cool name. Yeah, it's amazing. And he, he, Kishi makes this guy the secretary general of the liberal democratic party. And he stays in that position until Ono dies in 1965. And Ono is wonderful because he, he gives a speech to 2000 Yakuza members in the 60s, where like, he just straight up says like, yeah, I'm Yakuza, but I do it by being a politician instead of being a criminal. It's like, it rules. And so, and you know, the other thing that's happening is that Kishi's, she's still, you know, Kishi's connected to sort of Kodama and Kodama's

like whole like Yakuza American intelligence network. And so when Lockheed Martin is trying to get the Japanese defense force to buy their like F-104 Starfighter over Northrop Grumman's F-11F, their guy in Japan, who just happens to be an old G2 intelligence guy is like, I know a guy. And the guy that he knows is Kodama, who he pays like millions of dollars in bribes to is like, they give him like a $600,000 commission on every plane they sell to get this sold to the Japanese government. And so Kodama goes to his Yakuza connections in the government, which is, you know, his Yakuza buddy and newly mentioned LDP Secretary General, Bamako Ono, and his good friend Nobusuke Kishi. And Kishi buys the Starfighter and Lockheed just like keeps Kodama on retainer

for like the next 30 years. And, you know, I want to give people a sense of like, how embedded this like intelligence fascist Yakuza network is in the LDP, because it's not like this is the thing that's only Kishi and it goes away. Like, like in the 1970s, Kodama gets hired again by Lockheed to do exactly the same thing. And he pays out like several million dollars in bribes. Like he bribes the Prime Minister again. And this time he gets caught. And, you know, he took so much money from like the Americans and bribes people that like, he managed to piss off both the far right and the far left. And so, you know, they start protesting his house. And on May 23rd, 1976, a fascist porn star named Misua Maneo, who'd been a huge Kodama fanboy, rent boy, that shouldn't exist.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's great. It's great. It's gonna get better. Yes, he rents a plane. He like circles Kodama's house, like shouting pro imperial slogans into a microphone. And then like he screams bonzai and flies the plane into his house. Like this is this is in 1976. Kodama's house is kind of rad, to be honest. That's that's you know what? You got to give it up sometimes that critical support. Very cool. Undeniably, rad mood. Kodama lives through this. Yeah, but does he really? A guy coming out in his house in 1970s, like a fascist porn star, Kamikaze at his house, and he lived through it. Yeah, I mean, that is basically the end of him in politics, but it's like, it's great. It's great.

Yeah, that is a flex. Yeah, this is a profoundly fascist party, profoundly fascist people in it. And yeah, so back in 1957, he's dealing with like his first real political scandal, which is that a on January 3, 1957, a U.S. soldier named Gironde, like basically just for fun shot an empty grenade cartridge out of a grenade launcher at a Japanese woman who was like collecting shell casings and military based self or scrap and she dies. Oh, God. Yeah. And you know, and this this pisses off everyone in Japan. And you know, I mean, especially

it's like she's revealed later, she's a mother of six and everyone just loses their mind and Eisen and you know, and this is huge fight over it. And Eisenhower wants to like try him in an American court and Eisenhower is like his forces is like literally forced to like try him in a Japanese court because like if he tried to do it in an American court, like people would have literally like brick by brick dismantled every milking like American military base on the islands. And so she's main concern here is that this is going to like fuck up his political stuff. And so he develops this plan and where he's going to go to Eisenhower and make a bunch

of demands about this U.S. Japan security treaty. And this thing, this is like one of the other things that's been causing protests is that this treaty is like it's 1951 originally and it's it's really weird. Like it lets the U.S. like send troops into Japan to put down, quote, internal riots or disturbances, which is yeah, there's like in terms of like a peace treaty. And the other thing is less and less the U.S. involve itself in civil wars. And like, you know, in a bunch of Japanese countries, but not like there's like no precedent for this. Like there's never been a peace treaty that like between two free nations

that allows this. So you know, and you get these massive protests, like people people people like build giant wooden fortresses and man them for like 40 years in the middle of American artillery ranges, like that there's all of this stuff. And you know, Eisenhower meets with Kishi and is like and Kishi just goes like, you have to revise this tree and Eisenhower is like, OK. And so Kishi like stakes basically his entire political career on on on revising this this U.S. Japan security treaty, which comes known as ONPO. And you know, like it really looks like he's going to like pull this off. He's going to get treaty revisions. He's going

to be incredibly popular until Kishi just like Kishi just he's got like that extra bit to fascist. And the extra bit to fascist was he tried to pass something called the police duties execution law, which is like sound good. Yeah, like that's that's that just already seems like we're on a bad start. Yeah. Yeah. Like like this this is a police law so fascist that like his other fascist hardliner buddies like in the LDP are like we won't let you pass this because you'll get you'll get eaten alive. Yeah, basically like what it does is it it lets it lets the Japanese it would have let the Japanese police do warrants or warrantless searches and seizures. Oh, cool. Yeah. And you know, and everyone's

like, OK, so this is just like this is this is this is this is pre-war fascism again. So you know. And you know, you know, I think I think he thinks he can get away with this because he's done a bunch of other like fascist culture war sort of stuff like he he he does this thing where he makes everyone take these like moral lessons and like all the students take like moral lessons and has these like evaluations of teachers because he thinks there's like they're two communists and once fascist propaganda like taught instead. And you know, I want to make it clear there is no parallel between this and anything that is happening in the US right now. Go back to sleep. There's nothing here. Everything's

going to be fine. It's like, yeah, no, no, no one in the US is raging a bunch of political campaigns about what teachers are teaching in school because they think it's too leftist. No, that has not happened. But you know what does happen in the US like in services? That's right. That's that's God willing, the only thing that will ever happen in this country in the future going forward because when you get right down to it, what else do we need but products, services, and of course, the blissful, gooey, moist, sticky, what come drenched products of products and services. What? Oh, okay. Well, let's just go to ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated

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So Kishi, yeah. So Kishi's gotten a bit too fascist. And he also, he does this thing where, so the way that like the norms of the Japanese political system worked was that like, you're supposed to, before you pass a bill, you're supposed to talk to the opposition about it, and then there's supposed to be a debate. And Kishi's just like, yeah, fuck that. Like, he just like snap introduces it without like, he basically, he takes a snap vote to extend the diet and just like snap forces everyone to try to vote on it. And this is like maximally bad politics by Kishi. Like, you know, it's like, the norms of democracy are like actually important to Japan and they're important because this is a country that was a decade

and a half ago, literally fascist. And Kishi's trying to pass this bill that is bring fascism back. And so, you know, everyone gets pissed off, like three of his cabinet ministers resign. And this also pulls the whole left together. And they formed something called the People's Council. And they started, they started a general strike, dropped the bill, and Kishi, you know, and then they win. And Kishi forced to pull the bill and it, you know, it makes it way weaker politically. And when he tries to get his security, like on pro the security treaty ratified by, by the diet, those same groups form this even larger group called the People's Council for Preventing Revision to Security Treaty. And this thing

is massive. It's got a hundred and thirty four different organizations in it. You know, the biggest of them are the Japanese Socialist Party, the General Council of Trade Union in Japan, who are very powerful trade union federation. And then there's Zengoku Dren, which is the Japanese radical student movement too. We will, we will talk more about in a little bit. Yeah, the Japanese Communist Party is also sort of involved in this, but like, they don't want to let them join for political reasons initially. But you know, the other thing about this, like it's not just like leftist orgs, like Japan's professional association, association for like thespians is in this coalition. Like, yeah, there's, you know,

there's a lot of people who are like, there's a lot of groups that are like, not inherently political groups that are in this. And yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, this is basically, this is the product of like all the stuff the left has been doing for the past basically since the war like ended. And so, you know, and these guys point out that, you know, so Kishi is able to get the clause out about the U.S. interfering to suppress riotous civil wars, but there's still a clause that says the U.S. is allowed to send troops to deal with quote, all threats to Japan's peace and security, which, you know, yeah, threats to peace and security, like people doing politics we don't agree with. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. This is gonna end well. Sure. Yeah. It's, yeah. So, so the People's Council search station is like enormous protests. And, you know, they go on for a few months and it doesn't really do anything until Zingoko Ren, who is the radical student organization, goes rogue. And the important thing was Zingoko Ren is that like, so A, they're not directly tied to any of the parties and B, they are like way more willing to fight the cops than anyone else here. And so the People's Council is planning this like massive series of protests. And Zingoko Ren looks at like, you know, this is like their eighth giant protest. And Zingoko Ren goes, okay, well, those did nothing. So this one's not going to do anything either.

So they form a plan to storm the Japanese parliament building. And, you know, the People's Council like finds out about this plan and they're like trying to stop Zingoko Ren from doing it. But Zingoko Ren like negotiates with like the Tokyo's like trade unions and they're able to just do it anyways. So, you know, 500,000 people across Japan and like 80,000 people in Tokyo show up to this protest. And like in the middle of the March, Zingoko Ren just like charges the police barricades, beats back the police and like forces their way into the diet and takes control of it. And, you know, they hold it for like a day and they leave. And people, people do not like this, like the, you know, like even like

the socialists and Japanese Communist Party like condemn them for it. And, you know, public opinion turns against them. And there's this whole like disaster. And, you know, Zingoko Ren gets like a lot of shit for this, because, you know, like they stormed the, they stormed the diet building. But, you know, it's worth remembering that like everyone else, like everything else in our modern fashion was doing just like didn't work. And what Zingoko Ren did here was drew an enormous amount of attention to the movement. And this is it. And, you know, that's actually, that's a vital part of like what happens next. And what happens next is that the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party does like, I think like the funniest

set of political tricks I've ever seen in my life, where, you know, like they have, they have this whole thing they want to do where they're trying to just like, they're trying to delay the vote, because I think if they delay the vote fast enough, like long enough, Kishi will just like get like kicked out of the private administration by his own party. And, you know, in this, they're able to drag this on until like, like 1960. And Kishi, like, you know, he, like Kishi's own party won't let him do a floor vote on the bill, because like they're mad at him. And so on April 4th, 1970, he creates the Onpo Special Red, Special Measures Committee from LoyalDP members, which was called the

nickname, the Onpo Kamikaze Squad, which is, you know, this is his attempt to try to figure out like, how to like get through all of, like get this like treaty through before his support collapse, like the diet session ends. And like literally the day the session is going to end, and he's going to lose the opportunity to force his vote through, he starts doing his plan. And the Socialist Party, like, know something's bad is going to happen. So they hire a bunch of like quote unquote secretaries, who they hire them and they bring them in the building and they barricade the office of the speaker of the lower house to keep him from leaving his office. We're something that like, I wish like our politicians were

like, man, our politics is like our parliament's so boring. Like nobody's barricading the speaker of the house, like in their office. It's very sad, you know, and this and the speaker like tells them to move and they don't. And so he calls the police to remove the Socialist Diapers by force. And this is a huge deal. Like this is this is the second time ever that the police have ever entered the diet chamber. And it's the only time before a sense of ever like physically remove diet members. And so you know, this whole thing's being being being like broadcast on live TV. And there's there's the police just like dragging these like parliament members out of this building, like kicking and screaming

and like, you know, and they catch like the speaker, like fighting his way to the rostrum and he calls a vote to extend the diet session like two minutes before it's supposed to end. And like he wins the vote. And there's the camera, the camera is like, it shows it pans and it shows all the LDP like ministers clapping. And then it pans and it pans to the other half of the diet. And the other half of the diet, every single person in the opposition is gone. There's none of them are there. And because the opposition is completely gone. Kishi makes this like unexpected snap vote to force a treaty through with no debate. And you know, and because of some like legal bullshit, he's able to figure out a way that

like the treaty will still go into effect, even without the upper house approving it, as long as they just stay in session. And the Japanese public like just they're unbelievably pissed off. Like even the pro treaty people look at like the ex fascist guy, like removing the opposition party by force and holding a previously unknown snap vote. Yeah, like they watch like all of this is just on TV. And it like, like it sets off three general strikes. And you know, at this point, the protests basically become an anti Kishi movements and like everyone in the country, like, including like the conservative newspapers are calling for him to resign. The business leaders turn on him to the point where like, they start

funding Zengokuren, like they start funding the Communist student movement to like weird organized crime people because they're like Zengokuren's mainstream faction is anti is anti Kishi. Yeah, that's how like wild this. And you know, and like the other thing is like other like ordinary people just like start showing that the protests. And so like like 30 million people, which is like a third of the total population shows up to like an anti Kishi protests between 1959 1960. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's like it pisses off. And this is this is like this is the defining event of like the sort of like the media postal generation. Like this is the thing they remember. Like, so we'll get to this in a little bit.

But Shinzo Abe, who was the longest serving Japanese prime minister, he came out of office like last year. So he's Kishi's grandson. And he talks about like, yeah, he learned politics like, like, while he was on Kishi's knee and Kishi was telling him about what was happening in the streets. Oh, yeah, was fine. Yeah, it's yeah, it's not great. And you know, you know, this part, though, is extremely funny. Like there's there's a great story about just like this kindergartner like on the street who asked the famous political scientist Ishida Takashi, why doesn't Kishi just resign already? Like he's lost to kindergartners. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, everything the other thing is happening with this is that so Eisenhower was supposed

to show up in Japan on the 19th, so he can be there for the 21st, which is supposed to he's coming to this giant visit that's supposed to be like the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the US and Japan. And this is also the treaty goes into effect. And so, you know, you on June 4, there's the largest general strike in Japanese history. And then on the 15th, there's another general strike that has 6.4 million people in it. And at this strike, you know, a bunch of like street performers, artists and writers like go to like give a petition to the to the to the Parliament. And they all get attacked by this like giant fascist mob with like wooden poles with nails in them. And the mobs is changing. We will

kill you and beat and beat them dead. Jesus. Yeah, like 80 people are injured. And again, like these are like these are like like theater actresses, classic fascism stuff. Yep. It's like, ah, yes, we will beat these theater actresses and poets. And this this this this this will make us strong. Yeah, that scans. Yeah. And so 11 people are injured and 11. And so 80 people are injured and 11 people get hospitalized. And meanwhile, it's like we're going to storm the diet again. And you know, it worked the last time. Yeah. Well, but the funny thing is this time it does work and it works because so they fight the cops for a long time and it's kind of a stalemate and the cops do this counterattack. But in

this kind of attack, they they trample a Tokyo University undergrad named Kamba Michiko to death. And that yeah, that causes the crowd to just like go wild because you know, the police just trampled a child to death. Yeah. And so 4,000 students storm the diet and they hold it until 1 a.m. in these like running street battles with the police. And this is where like like everyone turns on Kishi. Yeah, the combination of the cops like murdered a girl and they beat up a bunch of theater actresses is just too much. And at this point, it becomes clear that, you know, if Eisenhower comes to Japan, they won't be able to keep him safe because they can't hold the sheets. Yeah, that that could be a little bit of a

faux pas for Japan. You know, and you know, Kishi Kishi like really wants this to happen because like the Eisenhower visit in the treaty like this is this is like all this is like this is this is everything he's been working for since he became prime minister. And so he has this plan to like mobilize the self defense forces, which is what the Japanese army is called. Yeah, because euphemisms. Yeah, but he tries to like he has his plan to like mobilize an entire division of like the army and march them through the streets to clear the streets and get Eisenhower in. And even like he's like his defense chief and the head of national police is like, you can't do this, like there will literally be

an uprising. And so Kishi is like Kishi undeterred is like, okay, so I'm going to go I'm going to go to my Yakuza contacts. So he goes to Kodama and he has he has his plan to get 18,000 like Yakuza hardliners like 10,000 guys who work for the Yakuza street vendors and 10,000 like veterans, right? We cult members to clear the streets. And he's going to give them like the government's going to give them like trucks and like food and first aid teams and like command posts and $2.3 million and like airplanes and helicopters. Oh, that couldn't end badly. Sure. Yeah. What even his cabinet is like, Kishi, you can't do this. Like you're going to start a civil war. Again, a lot of fascists being like, boy, seems like

that's too much fascism. Yeah. Yeah. Kishi, Kishi is like, Kishi is the fascist that other fascists are like, whoa, hey, now, like this is too much fascism. But you know what's not too much fascism, Chris, unless it's a black rifle coffee ad, then unless it's another black rifle coffee head or an Exxon mobile ad or one of those weird Christian cult ads we've been kind of getting. Or there was a literal ad for the California Highway Patrol. Yeah, definitely an ad for chips. That's fascism. So I don't know. I've lost the point that I was trying to make here. We don't endorse the fascist ads, but it's time for ads and we're sorry if it's something random. We didn't select and it's horrifying. We do apologize.

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Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, good stuff. Well, we had some ads. All right, I want to hear how this all gets resolved now that this guy's been like, what if we twist that fascism dial up to 11 and all of his friends were like, that kind of seems a little bit high because it seems like we've pissed everybody off with all of the violence we've been doing. Yeah. Yeah. It ends, I'm not going to say well, but Kishi eventually backs down and is just like, okay, Eisenhower, if you come, we can't protect you.

Eisenhower, Kansas is a visit and on the day of the tree is supposed to be ratified, 300,000 people show up around the diet in Tokyo, but they can't actually stop the tree from being ratified. The tree is being ratified automatically. There's nothing they can do. They stand there and it's this very grim scene. Everyone's wearing black armbands, like black bandanas to celebrate, to mourn the death of a protester, but there's nothing they can really do. The next day, there's this general strike and there's some more protests the day after, but Kishi has the final document he needs to sign, smuggled him in a candy box so it couldn't be stolen by protesters.

Nice. So he signs it and the next month on July 15th, Kishi is forced to resign and the movement just collapses. So it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, they got Kishi. They did. This is the only consequence that Kishi is ever going to face in his entire life. That's not quite true. It's one of exactly two consequences he's ever going to face in his entire life and he survives both of them. But on the other hand, this treaty still went through and the sort of left that had built up the Stoptis becomes incredibly demoralized and they splinter

and fragment. This is the end of Kishi's mainstream political career. But he doesn't go away. He sort of stays around behind the scenes as this fixer. He does a few more things at the end of the war. He sounds like he's kind of nixened a little bit where he's got some soft influence, but also nobody wants to really be seen in public with the guy. Yeah. Well, okay, I will say that there are a few people who do want to be seen in public with this guy. And the biggest of those is called the Unification Church, which is this like...

Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's fanatically anti-communist religious cult. Great. Yeah. Allegedly. Allegedly.

Definitely. Yeah. And Kishi is the guy responsible for bringing these people into the LDP's base. Good. So the head of this party is a guy named Moon. And he gets convicted of tax fraud in the 90s or 80s and 90s. But there's a thing in Japan, he gets convicted in the U.S. And there's a thing in Japanese law where if you've been convicted of a crime, you can't enter the country. So this should have stopped Moon from coming to Japan. But even in the 90s,

the Moonies are still so firmly embedded in the LDP that even in the 90s, the vice president of Japan personally intercedes and allows them to enter the country illegally. And yeah, that's great. This is what Kishi is doing in the last days. And you know, one other thing, one very weird thing happens at the very end of this, which is that the day before he resigns, Kishi's at this dinner gala and this dude stabs him like six times. And then he gives this extremely weird quote that was like, it's something like, yeah, I stabbed him six times, but if I was trying to kill him, he would be dead. And there's all this, and nobody actually knows why he tried to assassinate Kishi or

didn't try to assassinate him and said just stab him six times. There's a lot of theories. The guy was like an old fascist from like the 30s. He was like 60 at this point. And his stated response was that he talked to the family of the girl that had died, but he doesn't make any sense because this guy's a fascist. And there's another theory that this is a yakuza hit because Bamako Ono was pissed off that Kishi wouldn't help him be prime minister. So he was just like, okay, I'll send the guy to stab you. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of very weird theories about this, but it's sort of unclear what happens. And Kishi survives this. And even though the LDP is now Kishi-less quote unquote,

the structures and political organizations that he put in place are, you know, they're still here to this day. And that brings us to Kishi's grandson Shinzo Abe, the longest surfing prime minister in Japanese history, who finally left office last year because of an ulcer at his rectum, which, you know, critical support to his rectum ulcer. Oh, man. Oh, gosh. It's not good when I laugh in unison with Robert. Sometimes good things happen to good people. Yeah, fair enough. Now, Abe is a member of a group called Nippon Kagei, which is a fascist group that according

to a US congressional report believes that quote, Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946 and 1948 Tokyo war crime tribunals were illegitimate and that the killings by Japanese troops in the 1937 Nanjing massacre were exaggerated or fabricated. And they also openly called for a restoration of the monarchy and institution of Shinto as a state religion. And Abe himself has like repeatedly stated that Japanese military sex slaves use the term comfort women because, you know, the euphemism is helping to denialism. But he, you know, he, he like has said on multiple occasions that these sex slaves were never forced to be raped. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Cool, dude. Yeah. No, bad guy. Yeah. And you know, and he's also, he's also a big champion. He's like the champion of like, so one of the key, she's like other signature issue when he was a politician was rearming Japan because he was pissed off that like Japan couldn't still be a land. And when I say rearming, I don't mean defense force. Like he wants, like he wants Japan. He wants Japan to have an effective military that can invade shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He wants to, he wants to be an empire again. And yeah. And Abe is also like a giant rearment person. Sure. And baby, our baby. And yeah. And he also, he visits something

called the shrine called the Yasukune Shrine, which is this shrine to like soldiers who died serving the Japanese emperor. And you know, this, the shrine has this, this thing called the book of souls, which like has the name of like everyone who died, like serving for the emperor or whatever it was like to lay people on it. Now, in this book are 1068 people who were convicted of war crimes. And also the 14 Class A war criminals who died were executed who are also considered martyrs. And this includes Tojo. It's, it's yeah. And you know, now for very obvious reasons, China and Korea and both the Koreas, this is like the one of the few things both Koreas like really completely agree on is that they get

absolutely pissed off about prime ministers visiting the shrine, visiting, you know, a shrine to the people who enslaved, raped and murdered tens of billions of their people. But you know, Abe did it anyways, because modern Japan is Kishi's Japan. Despite the protests, despite the strikes, despite a third of the country taking to the streets, he won. The only thing he didn't get was the armament. And so, you know, the mass rapes in Korea and Vietnam will be left to the Americans, not the Japanese. But we all now live in the world that Kishi created. Cool.

Yeah. All right. What a happy story you told us. Yeah. You know, I promise at the beginning of this episode that at the end of the episodes, I would ask you, is, is this the worst rehabilitation of a fascist war criminal? In terms of like the actual amount of power he got, probably. Yeah. I think, I think probably. Because yeah, you've got like guys like Von Braun, but like Von Braun was bad and it's fucked up that he got rehabilitated. But the thing he went on to do wasn't bad. It was helping to put a man on the moon, which is like fine. And you've got, I don't know, there's

that Nazi general who the CIA used to set up a spy ring and he did some fucked up stuff. But I think had certainly had less geopolitical influence than this guy. Yeah. I think this, this is definitely, I'm racking my brain, but I'm not coming up with one to top it. Yeah. Whoo. Yeah. I should have started this episode with what's rehabilitating my fascists. That would have been better. That would have been a probe. And it turns out the what is my government. You love to see it. You love to see it. Well,

Chris. Is that, is that the entire thing? What do you, what do you, what do you, Chris? I don't feel good about that, to be honest. What do you, what do you, what do you, what do you think Nicholas Cage's hair smells like? Nicholas Cage's hair. Yeah. What do you think his hair smells like? I've been looking at a picture of him for the last three hours. That explains this so much.

Chris, you have, I have, I have, I don't, I don't, I don't think it smells very good because like, you know, isn't Nicholas Cage constantly, well, because isn't he constantly like doing bad movies because it needs money for his like, isn't it like an elephant habit? He's like some weird. No, he's, he's addicted to buying dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think his hair smells like nail polish remover with a hint of poop.

See, I was going to say fake apples, but like the, the specific fake apple smell that they put in like agricultural products, like medicine for horses, like Ivermectin fake apples. That's fair. Hint of poop. I don't know. We'll see. If you've smelled Nicholas Cage, hit us up on social media. Let us know. Tell us who's right. One of us has to be. I think you might be right though. I think it might smell like that really bad apple flavored like alcohol. Also, Yeah. A little bit of that. A little bit of that hint of poop.

All right. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Someone out there has smelled Nicholas Cage's hair and they'll let us know who's right. Let us know. Let us know. That's really, really what we're doing. That way we're not just, we're not just staring at a photo of Nicholas Cage for three hours. Let's get back to that. Because it was, it's been a long day, Sophie. Everybody needs something to, you know, perk them up. Yeah, I know. I started my day six hours before.

The halfway point. Look, at the midway point of the day, some people have another cup of coffee. Some people stare wordlessly at a photograph of Nicholas Cage while their friend talks about war crimes for three hours. Chris, where can people follow you? Yeah, you can follow me being extremely depressed about this at It Me CHR3 on Twitter. If you want to read a slightly less depressing thing that I wrote, I wrote a piece for Laosan that's like about Tiananmen, which I swear is less depressing than this, if only sort of marginally. Yeah. Yeah, I also, I work for Cool Zone now, so I'm on.

Yeah, I expect a lot of Chris. A lot of other things. Yeah. You can't get rid of me now. Nope. So have a good day and remember, tell us what Nicholas Cage's hair smells like. Yep. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup?

Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become

the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know. Because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts.