Political dissidence in the Empire of Japan covers individual Japanese dissidents against the policies of the Empire of Japan.
Dissidence in the Meiji and Taishō eras
High Treason Incident
Shūsui Kōtoku, a Japanese anarchist, was critical of imperialism. He would write Imperialism: The Specter of the Twentieth Century in 1901. In 1911, twelve people, including Kōtoku, were executed for their involvement in the High Treason Incident, a failed plot to assassinate Emperor Meiji. Also executed for involvement with the plot was Kanno Suga, an anarcho-feminist and former common-law wife of Kōtoku.
Fumiko Kaneko and Park Yeol
Fumiko Kaneko was a Japanese anarchist who lived in Japanese occupied Korea. She, along with a Korean anarchist, Park Yeol, were accused of attempting to procure bombs from a Korean independence group in Shanghai. Both of them were charged with plotting to assassinate members of the Japanese imperial family.
The Commoners' Newspaper
The (Commoners' Newspaper) was a socialist newspaper which served as the leading anti-war vehicle during the Russo-Japanese War. It was a weekly mouthpiece of the socialist (Society of Commoners). The chief writers were Kotoku Shusui and Sakai Toshihiko. When the decried the high taxes caused by the war, Sakai was sentenced to two months in jail. When the paper published The Communist Manifesto, Kotoku was given five months in prison, and the paper was shut down.
Buddhist resistance
Although the state of Japanese Buddhism during this time was generally one of servility to the Japanese authoritarian system, there were some exceptional individuals who resisted. Uchiyama Gudō was a Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest and anarcho-socialist. He was one of a few Buddhist leaders who spoke out against Japanese Imperialism. Gudō was an outspoken advocate for redistributive land reform, overturning the Meiji emperor system, encouraging conscripts to desert en masse, and advancing democratic rights for all. He criticized Zen leaders who claimed that low social position was justified by karma and who sold abbotships to the highest bidder.
After government persecution pushed the socialist and anti-war movements in Japan underground, Gudō visited Kōtoku Shūsui in Tokyo in 1908. He purchased equipment that would be used to set up a secret press in his temple. Gudō used the printing equipment to turn out popular socialist tracts and pamphlets, some of which were his own works. Uchiyama was executed, along with Kotoku, for their involvement with the attempted assassination of Emperor Meiji. Uchiyama's priesthood was revoked when he was convicted, but it was restored in 1993 by the Soto Zen sect.
Another Soto Zen critic of Japanese imperialism and militarism was Inoue Shūten. He is known for advocating Buddhist pacifism and for criticizing D.T. Suzuki's stance of Buddhism and war.
Among other notable individuals were the Zen masters Kōdō Sawaki, who expressed sentiments critical of war and its futility, and Sawaki's student Taisen Deshimaru, who was jailed for aiding the resistance efforts of Bangka Islanders against Japanese colonialsts.
Attempted assassination of Hirohito
Daisuke Nanba, a Japanese student and communist, attempted to assassinate the Prince Regent Hirohito in 1924. Daisuke was outraged by the Kantō Massacre, a slaughter of Koreans and anarchists in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. The dead included his partner, anarchist Sakae Ōsugi, feminist Noe Itō, and Ōsugi's six-year-old nephew, who were murdered by Masahiko Amakasu, the future head of the Manchukuo Film Association, a film production company based in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. This event was known as the Amakasu incident. Nanba was found guilty by the Supreme Court of Japan and hanged in November 1924.
Osaka Incident
Hideko Fukuda was considered the "Joan of Arc" of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in Japan during the 1880s. She was also an editor of (Women of the World), a socialist women's paper that Shūsui Kōtoku contributed articles to. In 1885, Fukuda was arrested for her involvement in the Osaka incident, a failed plan to supply explosives to Korean independence movements.