Nosaka Sanzo

Born Mar. 30, 1892, in Hagi. Japanese and international labor movement figure.

Nosaka graduated from Keio University (Tokyo) in 1917. He took part in the Yuaikai workers’ organization and, in 1922, began working in the Japanese Federation of Labor. He joined the Communist Party of Japan (CPJ) in 1922. In 1924 he helped found the legal body of the CPJ, the Bureau for the Study of the Problems of Industrial Labor, and became the bureau’s head. He was arrested in 1928 but was released from prison because of illness in 1930. Nosaka became a member of the Central Committee of the CPJ in 1930. Sent to Moscow in 1931, he represented the CPJ in the Comintern. At the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) and to the ECCI Presidium.

In 1940 Nosaka moved to China, where he helped organize the League for the Emancipation of the Japanese People, which agitated among Japanese prisoners of war. He returned to Japan in January 1946. At the Fifth Congress of the CPJ in February of the same year, Nosaka was elected to the CPJ’s Central Committee, Politburo, and Secretariat. He went underground in June 1950 in connection with the American occupation authorities’ prohibition of political activity on the part of all members of the CPJ Central Committee. Nosaka was elected to the CPJ Presidium and to the post of first secretary of the Central Committee at the party’s Sixth National Conference in 1955, becoming chairman of the Central Committee in 1958. He was a member of the Japanese Diet from 1946 to 1950, was reelected in 1956, and has been a member since.