The was a Japanese political organization formed on 11 March 1945, and dissolved on 15 August 1945. Although its chairman was Hiroya Ino, the group was actually conceived and led by Nobusuke Kishi.
Background
Nobusuke Kishi had risen through the 1930s as one of the reform bureaucrats who directed the state-led industrialization of Manchukuo. There, he cooperated with there with proponents of Total National Mobilization within the army's Tōseiha (control faction), including Akinaga Tsukizo, Suzuki Teiichi, and Ikeda Sumihisa.: "cooperation with the proponents of total war within the army control faction (tōseiha), including Akinaga Tsukizo, Suzuki Teiichi, and Ikeda Sumihisa, who preferred to reconcile national mobilization with the existing structure of civilian government." In 1940–41, after right-wing critics of Prince Konoe's New Order economic reforms accused Kishi's Cabinet Planning Board proposals of being a Marxist "red revolution," Kishi was forced to resign as Minister of Commerce and Industry and went into temporary exile in Manchuria, returning to Tōjō's cabinet in 1941.: "In the face of accusations that he was part of a Marxist-inspired 'red revolution,' Kishi was forced to resign from the MCI and to go into temporary exile in the cities of northern China in mid-1941." As Japan's outlook in World War II became increasingly bleak in 1944, Kishi, at that time a cabinet minister without portfolio in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō, came to be convinced that the war against the United States was unwinnable under Tōjō's policies. In July 1944, during the political crisis caused by the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Saipan, Tōjō attempted to save his government from collapse by reorganizing his cabinet. However, Kishi refused a request to resign, telling Tōjō he would only resign if the prime minister also resigned along with the entire cabinet, saying a partial reorganization was unacceptable. Kishi's actions succeeded in bringing down the Tōjō cabinet and led directly to Tōjō's replacement as prime minister with General Kuniaki Koiso, but also plunged Japanese politics into chaos.
Formation
Following Tōjō's fall from power, Kishi moved quickly to reinvent himself as a key figure in the civilian "Continue the War" (Kōsenha) faction of the Diet. As part of this, Kishi ingratiated himself within prominent rightist communities such as the League of Patriotic Diet Members (Yūkoku Giin Dōshikai) and the ex-members of Seigō Nakano's Eastern Society (Tōhōkai). Kishi forged additional ties with extra-parliamentary sympathizers such as Rear Admiral Sōkichi Takagi, who prominently argued both for replacing the existing government, and a Decisive Battle (Kessen) against the Allies that would enable a settled, "honourable" peace. Most fruitful of these new connections however, was a close collaboration with the radical Pan-Asianist Takeyo Nakatani. As Kishi was now under continued surveillance by agents of the Special Higher Police (Tokkō), Nakatani functioned as Kishi's special emissary to other rightists both in the leadup to Tōjō's ouster and afterwards.
Kishi differed from Takagi's Kessen doctrine in that he rejected an expedient end to the war - believing instead that a prolonged war would allow for the formation of a National Salvation Party (kyōryoku na kyūkoku seitō), that would articulate the "political power of the masses." Working behind the scenes with ex-Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, Kishi worked towards this goal by advocating a military-led cabinet led under Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi. Kishi planned to reclaim his seat in the Diet by arranging the resignation of Yamaguchi representative Yoshimichi Kuboi and forcing a by-election, but these plans were frustrated by a targeted retribution campaign from remaining Tōjō allies in the army and government. Tokyo Military Police chief and close Tōjō ally Ryōji Shikata articulated this hostility at a drunken high society dinner by threatening to kill Kishi:
Kishi responded by temporarily withdrawing from frontline politics, resolving to work in the background towards creating a new political movement. In this atmosphere, Kishi held nightly meetings between January and March 1945 with several close associates at Tokyo's Imperial Hotel. These meetings included figures such as Ryōichi Sasakawa, a preeminent fascist political fixer, Yoshio Kodama, a prominent rightist deeply involved in Japan's criminal underworld, Mamoru Shigemitsu, the then-foreign minister, and Ichirō Hatoyama, the future prime minister. From these meetings came a plan to form a new renovationist political movement aimed at mobilising the general public for a final confrontation with the Allies.
Rather than proposing a political party or any informal Diet faction, Kishi's vision resembled that of the early plans for the Imperial Rule Assistance Association put forward by Count Yoriyasu Arima and Fumio Gotō in the late 1930s. The aspect Kishi sought to revitalize was the creation of a nationwide network of vocational guilds, which would supersede the power of the National Diet and rally millions of potential civilians around military-directed national defense organizations.
To this end, Kishi enlisted the agrarian activist and political strongman Kōtarō Sengoku, and Dietman Naka Funada to help prod guild leaders towards enlisting some six million members into his new mass movement. When these outreach efforts stalled, Kishi extended an olive branch to the pro-army Association of Imperial Rule Assistance Diet Members (Yokusō Giin Dōshikai). Kishi imagined riding on the popular support of the Agrarian Guilds and the Yokusō all the way towards a serious bid for the Premiership. Kishi's plans coincided with the dissolution of the IRAPA in March 1945. Out of the IRAPA's disbandment emerged two political associations: the mainstream Greater Japan Political Association (Dai Nippon Seijikai) led by General Jirō Minami, and Kishi's anti-mainstream National Defense Brotherhood (Gokoku Dōshikai). Some 32 Diet members jumped ship to join Kishi's new association by the end of March. A number of this founding cohort included ultranationalists, such as Reserve General Hashimoto Kingoro, a leader of the Cherry Blossom Society.: "Many of the key figures of the Kishi faction, such as Nakatani Takeyo and Nakahara Kinji, had been prominent participants in right-wing agitation for national reconstruction in the 1920s and 1930s, while Reserve General Hashimoto Kingoro was one of the ringleaders of the Cherry Blossom Society (Sakurakai) within the army headquarters, which had planned the abortive coup d'états of March and October 1931.": "Others were ultranationalists who had planned the ill-fated coups d'état in 1931."
Ideology and Activities
The Dōshikai established their central office in Tokyo's Marunouchi business district. Their location, alongside rumours that Kishi received vast sums of donations from industrialist Yoshisuke Aikawa, led to allegations that Kishi was soliciting kickbacks from Aikawa as a reward for Kishi's role in transferring the Nissan group to Manchukuo and establishing the half-Nissan owned Manchurian Industrial Development Company (Mangyō) in 1937. As the US stepped up its incendiary bombing campaign in 1945, the Dōshikai underwent several major structural and ideological changes in correspondence with the deteriorating situation of the war.
The structural changes were its administrative and policy shift from urban Tokyo to politics on the local village and hamlet level in Japan's rural hinterlands, and the founding in May 1945 of the Bōchō Association to Revere the Emperor and Expel the Foreigner (Bōchō Sonjō Dōshikai).
The shift from urban to local organization was prompted both by Kishi's shift towards active preparation for a National Defense Movement, as well as the diplacment of roughly 8.5 million civilians from Japan's major cities into the countryside throughout 1945. Kishi proposed extending the Dōshikai's reach into the countryside in order to create a new pro-army, militaristic coalition of agrarian youth groups, regional business guilds, and military reserve associations (zaigō gunjinkai). These calculations were almost entirely political. Kishi believed that whomever controlled the bulk of national mobilization associations officially linked to the imperial army would hold a decisive advantage over the power of the Japanese Home Ministry, an institution long-despised by Kishi for its political stranglehold over the politics and functions of the National Diet.
The Bōchō Association was founded by Kishi during his activities while in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Named after the Bōchō region of Yamaguchi, Kishi declared that the new movement would become a "clean and bright" mass movement, aimed at preparing the defense of the entire region, and for its individual citizens to "discard both wealth and fame" in order to lead a resistance to Anglo-American invasion in the so-called "Birthplace of the Meiji Restoration." While making great efforts to avoid characterization of the Bōchō Association as a political club, Kishi enlisted the partnership of local elites, prefectural assemblymen, members of the House of Peers, and businessmen such as Kan Abe, paternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe. At a May 10 rally in Yamaguchi to "Repulse the Demon" (Kichiku Gekijō Kenmin Taikai), Kishi elaborated on his view of a decisive battle as the self-sacrifice of Japan's entire population in a 100-million strong do-to-die corps (ichioku kotogotoku tokkōtai).
Ideologically, the Dōshikai became evidently more radical, jingoistic, and grandiose in both its rhetoric and visions for the coming showdown with the Allied powers. To overcome the issues of Absenteeism and the aerial attacks on urban infrastructure which were crippling military production, members of the Dōshikai argued that a nation-wide mass conscription of civilians would create a martial class of "productive soldiers", who could be mobilized for work in factories, arsenals, and mines across Japan. Advocating a general evacuation of the populace and of industry from Japan's cities to the countryside, the Dōshikai couched their visions of the future in apocalyptic terms:
The hypothesized decisive battle (kessen) evolved from a purely military term to that of a foundational ideological tenant of the new "War for Constructing Asia" (Kōa-no-sen). As the war continued to deteriorate, Dōshikai members only increased their commitment to an imagined vision of Japan as a global Anti-Imperialist force. While lacking in details, the Dōshikai envisaged a united military front against the Allied powers, made up of anti-colonial nationalists and pro-collaborationist paramilitaries across the globe - all of whom would allow for new fronts for the decisive battle to be fought on and won:
Confrontation with the Government
The arrival of the Kantarō Suzuki cabinet in April 1945 was initially received warmly by Kishi and members of the Dōshikai, owing to the prominence of military and civilian renovationists in the cabinet. Quickly however, Kishi's mood towards Suzuki turned from approval to loathing, as Suzuki quickly expelled hardline renovationists from the government, heeding the retired Konoe's fears of a "revolution of the left under the guise of the right". Dōshikai members such as Nakatani viewed the Suzuki debacle as another missed opportunity, positing that had Kishi been dealt a fairer hand, the Dōshikai could have played a kingmaker role in the formation and structure of the Suzuki government. Figures on the political right, such as those in the Dōshikai, began referring to Suzuki's government as the "Badoglio cabinet", after the Italian General Pietro Badoglio, who in 1943 had arrested and toppled the government of Benito Mussolini, turning Italy away from the Axis alliance in the wake of Allied invasions.