KATO Tetsuro's Global Netizen College, International Exchange Center, Tokyo, JAPAN

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　　 Do You Know "Shigeki SAKIMURA", the first Japanese who attempted to join the United Nations in 1943-1944 in Sweden and worked against the Nazi-Japan Axis with W.Brandt, G.Myrdal, B.Kreisky etc. in "Stockholm Little International"?

Aug. 1, 2009My essay below,

Declassified CIA documents reveal plan to elect U.S. sympathizer as PM following occupation (The Daily Mainich, July 27, 2009)

A declassified U.S. document has shown that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to make key conservative politician Taketora Ogata Japan's prime minister in the 1950s, in a bid to place the nation under U.S. control.

The document describes a plan by the CIA to make Ogata -- former leader of the Japan Liberal Party, who played a leading role in merging conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 -- the prime minister, adding that it would allow the United States to manipulate the Japanese government to suit its interests.

Waseda University Prof. Taketoshi Yamamoto, Hitotsubashi University postgraduate school Prof. Tetsuro Kato and Rikkyo University instructor Noriaki Yoshida took a year to analyze the five-volume, 1,000-page CIA document declassified in 2005.

Called "The Ogata File," it details personal information on Ogata as well as the records of CIA and the Department of State officials' contact with him from 1952, when he joined the fourth Cabinet of then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, to 1956, when he died.

U.S. officials met with then Prime Minister Yoshida and Ogata, who served as deputy prime minister, on Dec. 26, 1952 and urged Japan to set up its own intelligence organization. The plan failed after meeting stiff opposition from the Foreign Ministry and the public, but still won influence for Ogata with the CIA.

Ogata, an advocate of a two-party system who was widely viewed as a possible successor to Yoshida, subsequently became leader of the Japan Liberal Party. As the proponent of the merger of conservative parties into a single entity, he was also expected to be the first president of the LDP.

Then Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama, who headed the Japan Democratic Party, was enthusiastic about resuming diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. However, the CIA, which believed that the Soviet Union was trying to help the Leftist Socialist Party and the Rightist Socialist Party into a single party, viewed it an urgent task to integrate conservative forces. The CIA thought Ogata was most suited to be Hatoyama's successor, and dispatched agents to accompany Ogata -- codenamed "POCAPON" -- on his regional campaigns in 1955.

Operation POCAPON ran from October to December of that year, during which agents contacted Ogata on a weekly basis and attempted to make him prime minister as symbol of anti-Soviet and anti-Hatoyama forces. In turn, the CIA came to rely on Ogata as a source of information on the Japanese government and political world. Information provided by Ogata was passed on to then CIA Director Allen Welsh Dulles.

Shortly before the House of Representatives election in February 1955, Ogata asked CIA agents to tell Dulles not to worry about the outcome of the race. He promised to a CIA agent shortly afterwards that he would lay the groundwork for conservatives to gain an absolute majority in both houses of the Diet within a year if he became prime minister. He added that if necessary, Japan would revise election legislation.

However, the LDP adopted a collective leadership system when it was launched in November 1955. Ogata was unable to become leader of the party, and died in January 1956.

The CIA commented that Ogata's death was unfortunate for the governments of both Japan and the United States. There is a record showing that Dulles sent a telegram of condolence to Ogata's bereaved family.

Hatoyama finally became the first president of the LDP two months after Ogata's death. The CIA then targeted Okinori Kaya, who later served as justice minister, and then LDP Secretary-General Nobusuke Kishi, who subsequently became prime minister.

"It's an important material that shows the circumstances surrounding Japan-U.S. diplomacy during the Cold War," Prof. Kato said. "The CIA wasn't a secret organization at the time. Nor was Ogata a convinced spy."

Click here for the original Japanese story (Mainichi Japan) July 26, 2009

June 1, 2009

Dear my Mexican students,

By the urgent mandatory order of Hitotsubashi University and Japanese Government, due to the alarm of WHO's "phase 5" of Swine Flu, I have to return to Japan as soon as possible. It is very regretful that I cannot stay here until my planned date of May 28, but the emergent situation forced us my sudden return. Fortunately in unfortunate results, I could complete my main task of the visiting lectures for you, and will be back here again for the conference which is postponed to September. I hope that the Japanese and Mexican academic/cultural exchange will continue in near future, and the best recovery of all Mexican people from this hard time. Thank you and see you again !

Your Sensei, Prof. Tetsuro KATO

At the beginning of May, all countries began to guard the entrance of swine flu virus from Mexico, but the Chinese and Japanese policies were exceptionally hard and rigid.

China, which was suffered condemnation at home and abroad for their slow response to the Sars crisis of 2003, reacted swiftly to the threat of swine flu. China cancelled the direct flights between the two countries and banned the import of pork products from Mexico despite WHO statements saying that meat poses no risk of infection. China suspended flights from Mexico, after the first confirmed case of the virus was found in Hong Kong. At the Hong Kong hotel where the swine flu victim stayed, about 200 guests and 100 workers were confined to the premises for a week. China's robust response to the swine flu has provoked strong criticism from Mexico. Mexican President Felipe Calderon accused China of taking "repressive and discriminatory" actions against his citizens. The Mexican plane stopped at three Chinese cities to pick up stranded nationals. China sent its own plane to Mexico to pick up 200 Chinese citizens.

Japan is well known for its paranoia of foreign diseases, as some 10 million people in Japan are infected with seasonal influenza each year, and some 10,000 people die from complications. The media began a sensational campaign to defend Japanese from "awful Mexican flu." The alarm of Japanese living overseas to return was a part of protection policy of Japanese nationalities. It was called a "Shoreline operation."

The government provided medical care to those who enter Japan from affected countries, especially from Mexico, and issued orders for doctors and nurses to board aircraft from Mexico at Narita airport to check passengers and crew for infection of a new virus. All arrivals were required to fill out health questionnaires, and doctors had checked people who complained of flu like symptoms while they were still on board, using temperature-measuring devices to detect passengers with a fever. Thousands of travelers had to wait for hours in their seats before inspectors could clear them to pass through immigration. About fifty people, including a US citizen, were cleared of swine flu after flying in from the United States with Japan's first case of the virus and spending a week quarantined in a hotel by the airport.

Contact information and test results for those without symptoms were sent to local health centers, which kept in touch with the recent arrivals. If no symptoms appeared within 10 days of leaving Mexico, the government admitted little risk of infection. I was fortunately in this category, but could not go out from home 10 days after my arrival to Tokyo. During these overreactions in Japan, Mexico could control the epidemic and get successful recovery. Colmex opened again on May 7. I hoped to return to Mexico as soon as possible, but the anti-virus atmosphere covering Japan could not allow me to go out freely. I could only introduce the new real situation in Mexico to Japanese citizens in my website. All of my remained works for CEAA were postponed to September.

But soon came the "Mexicanization" of Japan. On April 17, a 17-year-old male high school student in Kobe city, Hyogo Prefecture, who had no record of overseas travel, was announced as the first domestic confirmed case. As the number of H1N1 cases had risen rapidly in the urban areas of Kobe and Osaka, authorities said the real number of infections could already be in the hundreds with the virus spreading fast in the densely populated island nation. Japan soon became the fourth epidemic country of the new influenza virus after USA, Mexico and Canada.

"New York Times" on May 21 reported, "Spread of Swine Flu Puts Japan in Crisis Mode." It said, "the outbreak has come as a particular shock for hygiene-obsessed Japan, where hand-washing is religiously taught in schools, children play in sanitized sandboxes, and everything from underwear to ballpoint pens comes with supposed antibacterial properties." Facemasks became a common sight in Japan. More than 4,800 educational facilities -- kindergartens, and elementary, junior and senior high schools, universities -- in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures have decided to suspend classes for one week following the confirmation of new flu infections in the prefectures. Over 1200 Japanese schools canceled field trips usually scheduled this month and the next in light of the emergence of a new strain of influenza. Japan's government, schools and companies are on high alert over the flu. Prime Minister Taro Aso even appeared on a television program to ask his people to stay calm.

Tens of thousands of masked spectators visited the Expo '70 Stadium to watch the Asian Football Confederation Champions League. Unmasked spectators were banned from entering the stadium.

Schools and companies asked students and employees to wear masks but the masks were sold out. In an Osaka court, the judge, prosecutors, lawyers and defendants appeared with masks on their faces, along with the audience. Most daycare centers, kindergartens and nursing homes were closed in and around Japan`s second-largest city. More female workers also took a leave of absence to care for their babies and parents.

The swine flu scare has also affected Japanese companies. Mobile communications giant NTT DoCoMo halted an exhibition to release its new mobile phone models. Certain companies have recommended that their employees work from home and others have canceled job fairs or news conferences.

But Japan soon faced the similar dilemma which Mexico experienced in late April. The Japanese economy is not doing well. Last quarter, GDP fell at an annualized rate of 15.6%. Exports in the first quarter were down at an annualized rate of 70.1%. Private investment was down at an annualized rate of 49.7%. The percentage of university students who received job offers before graduation in March declined for the first time in nine years. Massive layoffs from the current economic crisis were falling heavily on foreign workers, many of whom were opting to leave the country to seek work back home.

According to the Tourism Ryokan Association of Osaka and Kyoto, reservations amounting to 360,000 nights at hotels or other lodging facilities were canceled within four days after the first confirmation. Travel agencies and hotels in the two cities were sufferred losses of 4.3 billion yen (US$ 45.7 million), so they asked for financial support from the government.

"It is necessary to take steps to limit damage to public health and maintain social and economic functions," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said. "The government will take all possible measures by closely cooperating with other countries, based on the recognition that countermeasures are also important for crisis management." The government decided to provide financial support for primary, middle and high schools that have had to pay cancellation fees for calling off school trips due the new strain of influenza.

The WHO also had the same dilemma in global economic crisis. The WHO chief Margaret Chan expressed her concern at the opening of the World Health Organization's annual assembly followed a sharp increase in swine flu infections in Japan and fears that the virus could take hold in another continent beyond its source in North America. She warned that the world might be facing the calm before a swine flu storm. But when she faced pressure from Britain, Japan, China and other nations not to rush into declaring a pandemic, the phase 6, she had to resign the declaration.

At the end of May 2009, there are more than 13,400 confirmed cases of the flu in 48 countries with more than 95 deaths. In addition to financial and economic crisis, the world faces another kind of global crisis. Some may call it ﾒMexican fluﾓ of the world in 2009. The world learned the need of global governance for humankind. It must be the "politics of pandemic" in 21st century.

March 23, 2009 I am now staying in Mexico City as a visiting Professor at El Colegio de Mexico. I will live in Mexixo until the end of May. But I still search for "Shigeki Sakimura" in Germany, Sweden and China. If you have any information on his activity, please let me know by e-mail to

April 2, 2008

In his autobiography "Links und frei: Mein Weg 1930-1950"(Hoffmann und Campe, 1982), he refered to the "Kleine Internationale (Little International) " in Stockholm 1943-1945. To this anti-Nazi social democratic group belonged, not only Willy Brandt and his close Austrian friend Bruno Kreisky (later Chancellor of Austria), but also many emigre intellectuals and activists in Stockholm from Norway (Lars Evensen, Inge Scheflo), Denmark (Henry Grunbaum), Finnland, Poland (Anwalt Maurycy Karniol), Hungary (Wilhelm Bohm), Germany (Fritz Tarnow, Stefan Szende), Austria (Bruno Kreisky, Ernst Paul), France, Island, Czecho, Spain, Palestina, Britain and USA (Victor Sjaholm), and of course Swedish Sosialists. The representative of Swedish socialists in this group was Gunner and Alva Myrdal, later Nobel Priza Winner couple in Economics and in Peace, and Myrdal circle (Richard Sterner, Ole Jodal, Torsten Nilsson etc.). They discussed the hope of postwar peace in Europe, new design of postwar economic order, and international solidarity of world-wide social democracy.

Willy Brandt said in the page 341 (image) of his autobiography"Links und frei: Mein Weg 1930-1950", "One young Japanese, who escaped from the Japanese Embassy in Berlin and shelterd in a Stockholm hospital, visited our group. But he was soon brought back to Berlin . Probably he might face to a tragic end." This "young Japanese" was surely Shigeki SAKIMURA, and he could live through to the postwar perod in China and Japan. This is only one testimony that Shigeki SAKIMURA was once in the "Stockholm Little International" with Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky and Gunner Myrdal . If someone know on this "Stockholm Little International", please send me the information to katote@ff.iij4u.or.jp . It is a wonderful information for our study on "Shigeki SAKIMURA".

Jan. 1, 2008 After my fieldwork in Sweden and Germany in 2007, I published an article "Emigre Intellectuals in the war of Information : From Teido KUNIZAKI to Shigeki SAKIMURA" in a Japanese journal "INTELLIGENCE", No.9 (Nov.2007), Regretfully, it is in Japanese. About Dr. Teido KUNIZAKI, you can see it in my article Personal Contacts in German--Japanese Cultural Relations during the 1920s and Early 1930s , in, "Japanese-German Relations, 1895-1945 　War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion" (Edited by: Christian W. Spang, Rolf-Harald Wippich , Routledge 2006, and in an interesting site "Executed Todau.Com." On Shigeki Sakimura, please see New York Times" May 1, 1944 and " Time", June 5 1944.

July. 5, 2007 About Shigeki SAKIMURA's exile 1943-1944 from Germany to Sweden, we now have a German book, " Karena Niehoff. Feuilletgonistin und Kritikerin. Mit Aufsaetzen und Kritikenm von Karena Niehoff und einem Essay von Joerg Becker.(FILM & SCHRIFT, Band 4. Muenchen ,Verlag edition text + kritik, January 2007).According to this book, SAKIMURA employed a Jewish girl Ka rena Niehoff as an assistant of his work at the Berlin Branch of Japanese Iron and Steel Industrial Association, when he published a German book "Neuordnung der japanischen Wirtschaft"(1942). When Ka rena Niehoff was arrested in February 1943 as a half Jew, Sakimura wrote a petition to the German Court for her release from the jail and was thereafter watched by Nazi-GESTAPO. The real reason of his emigre to Sweden is still unclear. He went to Stockholm at the end of September 1943, entered a hospital from the end of 1943, lived in Korsbarsvagen 6, Stockholm, and would not return to Berlin. Probably he was helped by the Swedish anti-Hitler intellectual group, organized by Prof. Torsten Gardlund of Stockholm Economic University, and contacted with Prof.Franz Mockrauer, an exiled SPD scholar who had Sakimura's German draft paper "Die Berufsausbildung der Jugend im nazistischen Deutschland". His words interviewed by the New York Times corrspondent George Axelsson might be true from his honest feeling. But the Japanese Embassy in Stockholm, major general Makoto Onodera,and the Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Ohshima in Berlin, could not allow such an open statement against the German-Japan Axis by a Japanese scholar. He was threatened about the safety of his family in Japan, had to return to Germany, and arrested by Shozo Sato, the Japanese secret police in Berlin. Japanese Embassy confined and watched him in a house in a suburb of Berlin, Bernau-Eichwerder. Frits Reuterstrasse 7, bei Frau Paul, and separated from other Japanese and German friends. In May 1945, when Hitler's Germany was defeated, he was informed to return through the Siberian railway to Japan, where the war still continued.

By an official report of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Shigeki Sakimura escaped from other 182 Japanese group in Berlin in May 1945, and became missing. Actually, according to his later talk to his son after his return to Japan in 1955, he entered in Changchun in China in September 1945. But the route and the sponsor of his escape travel from Germany to China is still unknown. He never talked the detail and kept secret about his foreign life even after he became a university Professer again in 1956. According to his son's memory, Shigeki Saklimura was employed as an interpreter by the American Consulate in Changchun in 1946 (he could speak Japanese, Chinese, English, German, French, Russian, and Swedish !), soon mooved to the Beijing's American Consulate. The American Consulate moved to Taiwan when the new communist government of China was established in September 1949. But Shigeki Sakimura still remained in Beijing and sent some economic information to the US Department of State. According to the new Chinese book "Anti-Spionage Activities in Beijing at the begining of Communist Chine"(March 2006), Sakimura was arrested by the Chinese secret police under the charge of an "economic spy of USA" with his Japanese assistant Takeshi Misawa, just the same time of the arrest of seven "assassination group against Mao Zedong". He got five year's imprisonment by this charge, who informed price of foods and living goods in Beijing's market at the time of the Korean War. We still do not know if this unbelievable story is true.

Nov. 1, 2006 I am now searching for a secret peace action by one Japanese in Nazis-Germany.

His name is Shigeki SAKIMURA (1909-82), who graduated Tokyo University in 1932, became research assistant and lecturer of the Department of Economics at the Imperial University of Tokyo. He was sent to Germany as an attach of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin in 1941. He published one German book "Neuordnung der japanischen Wirtschaft" in 1942. But at the end of 1943, he went from Germany to Sweden, and probably contacted the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services) to inform the real situation of German war industry and to ask the possibility of his own exile. " New York Times" May 1, 1944 reported him as " the first Japanese of any note to attempt to join the United Nations, the first to admit openly that the Axis cannot win the war", and " Time", June 5 1944 published the "Foreign News: Way of a Rebel." It said, "Shigeki Sakimura was one of the submerged, and now forgotten, intellectuals of Japan. As a student he explored the social sciences, brooded over his country's oligarchic economy, dallied with Marxism. At 30, the hardworking, high-strung scholar became a full professor. Two years later, in 1941, his Government sent him to Berlin as Embassy attach, to study German heavy industry. Slight, bespectacled Professor Sakimura poked around the Reich, peered critically into factories pumping out iron, steel, light metals, chemicals and other vitals of war". Although his hope of "Exile" to Sweden was not clear, he could not stay long in Stockholm and returned to Berlin in June 1944. Some secret documents of the OSS support the fact reported by American journalists at the time. He was forced to go back to Berlin, probably by Nazi-Gestapo and Japanese Embassy in March 26, just before the famous Assassination Attempts on Hitler on July 20,1944.

After the collapse of Hitler's Germany, he did not return to Japan. It was mysterous, because almost all Japanese in Europe at the time went back to Japan by Trans- Siberian Railway. He entered in China, where he worked as an information adviser of the American Consular Office in Beijing, probably under the control of OSS (from 1947, CIA). In 1950, one year after the Mao Zedong's socialist revolution, he suddenly arrested by Chinese secret police as a member of assassination group against Mao Zedong("The Time", Aug.27,1951), together with one Japanese (Ryuichi Yamaguchi), three Italians (Antonio Riva, Tarcisio Martina, Quirino Victor Lucy Gerli), one French (Henri Vetch) and one German (Walter Genthner). He was probably in Chinese jail 1950-1955, but could go back to Japan in 1955. Thereafter, he worked as a professor of economics at Takushoku University, Tokyo. As he could not speak about his life in Germany, Sweden and in China, even his family do not know his political actions during these years in detail . I am now looking for the documents of his anti-Hitler actions in Germany 1941-1945, Sweden 1943-44, and pro -American (anti-communist?) works in China 1945-55.

If someone know about him or the documents concerned, please let me know !

Oct. 15, 2006A New English File,

Sept. 15, 2006The new 15th additional version of Special Joke Lecture,"World Ideologies Explained by Cows" , "Two Cows and Earthrights Democracy" in Geo-Classical Economics from Paul Justus is now updated.

Nov.1,2004

," Manak, Delhi 2004, was published, to which I contributed

Aug.15,2004

s now updated.

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June 24,2004

June 1,2003The Evian G8 Summit Meeting will begin soon. But why the only about 10 persons can decide the destiny of 6 billion people in this small village of our Globe?

Who is Prof. KATO Tetsuro?

Special Joke Lecture,"World Ideologies Explained by Cows"

My former "What's New" monologues are in the

English Living Room ( A Brief History of This Homepage)"

Professor KATO's English, Spanish and German Papers

• 'Politicas de la pandemia en Mexico y Japan,' in "Bulletnin CEAA", Mayo 2009.
• Personal Contacts in German--Japanese Cultural Relations during the 1920s and Early 1930s , in, "Japanese-German Relations, 1895-1945 　War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion" (Edited by: Christian W. Spang, Rolf-Harald Wippich , Routledge 2006(Internet version)
• Japanese Regulation and Governance in Restructuring: Ten Years after the 'Post-fordist Japan' Debate, Paper presented to the International Conference "East Asian Modes of Development and Their Crises: Regulationist Approaches" (Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan, April 19-20, 2001)
• "The Age of "Japamerica"---Taking Japanese Development Seriously", Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies,Vol.21, No.1, 1989.
• "Japanese Perceptions of the 1989 Eastern European Revolution", in, Ian Neary ed.,War, Revolution Japan, Japan Library, Sandgate 1993
• "The Political Economy of Japanese KAROSHI(Death from Overwork)," Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, Vol.26, No.2, December 1994.
• "Workaholism-- -It's not in the Blood", in, Look Japan, February 1995.
• Biographische Anmerkungen zu den japanischen Opfern des stalinistischen Terrors in der UdSSR, in, Hermann Weber hrsg., Jahrbuch fuer Historische Kommunismusforschung 1998, Akademie Verlag, 1998 Berlin.
• "The Japanese Victims of Stalinist Terror in the USSR", in Hermann Weber hrsg., Jahrbuch fur Historische Kommunismus 1998, Akademie Verlag Berlin 1998 (English Draft).
• The Theory of Capital Accumulation by Rosa Luxumburg and The Contemporary Capitalist Globalization: Comment on Dr. Dae-Hwan Kim's Paper, at the International Rosa Luxemburg Conference, Chicago, May 2, 1998.
• Wanted! A Memorandum on the Life of Mr. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya : One Historical Episode of the Relationship between India and Japan in the 20th Century (Draft Only)
• "Japanische Kuenstler und Wissenschaftler in Berlin am Ende der Weimarer Republik" (Mori-Ogai -Memorial Lecture, Dec.3.1998, only the resume in German)
• "Japan in the 20th Century (My Guest Lecture at El Coregio de Mexico,1999)
• From a Class Party to a National Party : Japanese communist party survives through the worldwide decline of communist parties （ AMPO, Vol.29, No.2, March 2000, )
• Concentration Camps in the USSR--- Their Destructive Social Impact (Lecture on North Korea, 1997)

Dialogues with English Readers

• Sara N. Hines in the USA, "Comments on Kato's KAROSHI paper"
• Special Joke Lecture,"World Ideologies Explained by Cows"

Guest Room of Visiting Professor Dr. Bob Jessop

• Introduction
• "The Communist Manifesto as an Historical Document"
• "L'Econom ia Integrale, Fordism, and Post-Fordism"
• "Report on My Stay in Japan"
• Bob Jessop Homepage

★Guest Room of Visiting Professor Dr. Rob Steven★

• Introduction
• Competing Capitalisms and Contrasting Crises: Japanese and Anglo-Capitalism
• Critical Asian Studies, "In Memoriam: Rob Steven"★

TO OUR CLASSMATES OF THE OCTOBER 1972 GERMAN LANGUAGE CLASS OF THE HERDER INSTITUTE LEIPZIG !　　

E-mail to: katote@ff.iij4u.or.jp

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