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extra=February 18, 1911 – January 17, 1984 was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist and a prominent figure in the rise of organized crime in Japan. The most famous kuromaku, or behind-the-scenes power broker, of the 20th century, he was active in Japan's political arena and criminal underworld from the 1930s to the 1970s, and became enormously wealthy through his involvement in smuggling operations.
In 1933, Kodama formed his own ultranationalist group called the Independent Youth Society (独立青年社, Dokuritsu Seinensha), which planned to assassinate various Japanese politicians. Its main activity was opium export from Japan to Korea and Manchuria to break the resistance of the local population against the Japanese rule. His group, in collaboration with the group Tenkōkai (天行会, "Society for Heavenly Action") was responsible for the murder of three Japanese politicians who advocated the peaceful coexistence of Japan, Korea and China. In 1934, Kodama was involved in the planning of an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Saitō Makoto. Kodama's plot was uncovered, the attack was prevented by the Japanese police and Kodama was arrested. He served a prison term of three and half years. He was released from Fuchū prison at the instigation of Doihara, by this time promoted to major general, just prior to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in April 1937.
From 1939 to 1941 he traveled through China as a Japanese Espionage and built up a network that included various triads collaborating with the Japanese. Like other Japanese secret service agents, he founded his own "Kodama Organization" ( Kodama Kikan), which, thanks to his relationship with Admiral Ōnishi, had an exclusive contract as a purchasing agent in China for the aviation forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
With these resources, Kodama was able to use what he described as "self-sacrificing youth"Herold: Die Macht der Yakuza, p. 155 to engage in large-scale plunder in Manchuria and China and sell the stolen goods at a high profit in Japan. He is also said to have distributed opium and narcotics. Kodama publicly regarded this activity as purely idealistic and patriotic.Kodama, I Was Defeated By 1945, Kodama had become one of the richest men in Asia with assets equivalent to $175 million US dollars.
In March 1946, Kodama was arrested by the United States as a suspected Class A war criminal. He was held in Sugamo Prison with Ryoichi Sasakawa, where the two formed a long friendship. Kodama also formed a close relationship with fellow suspected Class-A war criminal (and future prime minister) Nobusuke Kishi. Since he had a lot of time, Kodama was able to keep himself up to date on current events and far-reaching political changes in East Asia in all available daily newspapers. He realized that the new democratic forces in Japan were weak, observing that "in the midst of all this rapid change, there is one thing which is lagging behind. This is parliamentary power." While imprisoned, Kodama wrote Sugamo Diary (a chronicle of his experience in prison) and I Was Defeated (an autobiographical work).
Like many other alleged Japanese war criminals, Kodama was recruited by the US G-2 (Intelligence) under Charles A. Willoughby while in custody. In 1948, the US intelligence community was able to drop all charges against him on the condition that he would support all Anticommunism activities of the G-2 CIC division in Asia. On December 24, 1948, he left Sugamo Prison as a free man and was never imprisoned again for the rest of his life. Kodama spent a total of six and a half years of his life in prisons. Kodama, being a right-wing ultranationalist, eagerly fulfilled his end of the bargain, using his fortune and network of contacts to quell labor disputes, root out Communist sympathizers and otherwise fight socialist activities in Japan. In 1949, the CIA paid him to smuggle a shipment of tungsten out of China. The shipment never arrived but Kodama kept his money.
In 1955, Kodama's Sugamo Prison acquaintance Nobusuke Kishi, with the covert backing of the CIA, engineered the formation of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) via the merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party. In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA spent millions to support the LDP, for intelligence gathering and to make Japan a bulwark against communism in Asia. Using his preexisting connections to the CIA, Kodama served as a political fixer ( kuromaku) who secretly funneled funds to conservatives.
In his role as fixer, conservative politicians turned to Kodama if they had problems. An example of his role as fixer was the planned state visit by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960, in connection with the revision of U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (known as Anpo in Japanese), intended to cement the U.S.-Japan alliance. In an effort to prevent the ratification of the treaty and prevent Eisenhower's visit, a coalition of left-leaning opposition groups and civic organizations carried out the massive Anpo Protests. As the protests dramatically escalated in June 1960, now-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi asked his old friend Kodama to organize right-wing thugs and yakuza gangsters as a private police force to secure the streets for Eisenhower's visit. Kodama obliged, using his right-wing connections to prepare a "Welcoming Ike to Japan Mobilization Plan" which he claimed would be able to put nearly 150,000 young rightists on the streets in order to "protect" President Eisenhower from left-wing protesters. Kodama's detailed plan promised to mobilize exactly 146,879 men, whereas Japan's National Police Agency later estimated that he could realistically mobilize at most 120,506. As a result, around 28,000 yakuza from different gangs organized a Security guard on their own and in cooperation with the police.Kawamura: Yakuza, pp. 32, 119 Right-wing groups also staged counter-protests in favor of the Treaty. However, due to the violent June 15th Incident, in which female university student Michiko Kanba was killed, Kishi was forced to cancel Eisenhower's visit and Kodama's force was not needed.
In response to the Anpo protests, Kodama and other right-wing leaders established the extra=abbreviated "Zen'ai Kaigi", an umbrella organization of 80 right-wing groups and yakuza groups. Zen'ai Kaigi carried out a variety of counter-protest activities in support of the conservative Kishi government, and by the end of the protests had grown to include more than 100 organizations. In this way, the 1960 Anpo protests helped cement the interlocking relationships between right-wing nationalists, yakuza gangsters, and conservative political interests, with Kodama playing a starring role.
In April 1961, Kodama formed his own sub-faction within the Zen'ai Kaigi called Seinen Shiso Kenkyukai (Society for the Study of Youth Ideology), which represented a hard core within the umbrella organization, mainly yakuza. At the end of the 1960s, the Shiso Kenkyukai split from Zen'ai Kaigi . Its members received military training and were used to intimidate unpopular journalists and book authors. One of the victims of this organization was the journalist 久友竹森, whose book entitled Black Money was not published after multiple threats.
In 1963, Kodama attempted to form a coalition of Japan's organized crime groups. However, Kazuo Taoka withdrew the Yamaguchi-gumi early on in talks, leaving Kodama with a Tokyo-centered group that would become known as the Kanto-kai. The organization was formed of seven yakuza groups (including the Sumiyoshi-kai and Matsuba-kai), with the purpose of fostering relations between the groups and promoting rightist goals. With Kodama unable to smooth over its internal conflicts, the Kanto-kai dissolved in January 1965.
Kodama was able to grow his fortune until the mid-1970s. He owned shares in Hisayuki Machii's Ginza nightclub empire, a shipping company, a baseball team, a film studio, and several sports magazines.
Kodama maintained close relations with LDP politicians, such as the yakuza-connected LDP Vice President Banboku Ōno,Karl Hale Dixon: The Extreme Right Wing in Contemporary Japan, Dissertation, Florida State University, 1975, pp. 78-9) and his influence did not suffer until he was identified as the key kuromaku in the Lockheed Corporation bribery scandal. Kodama had been a paid agent of Lockheed since 1958 and received $U.S.7 million for his help in arranging the TriStar aircraft deal.G. Cameron Hurst: The Tanaka Decision: Tanaka Kakuei and the Lockheed Scandal, in USFI Reports: Asia 19 (1983), page 5David Boulton: The Grease Machine (Lockheed papers), New York, Harper and Row, 1978
After the Lockheed scandal, disillusioned ultranationalist Roman Porno film actor Mitsuyasu Maeno attempted to assassinate Kodama by flying a Piper PA-28 Cherokee plane kamikaze-style into his mansion in Setagaya Ward's Todoroki. The attempt failed. Maeno hit the second floor of Kodama's mansion and died in the plane crash, but Kodama was unharmed in a different room. He was recovering from a stroke at the time.
In June 1977, charges were brought against Kodama for tax evasion related to the scandal, but the trial was never completed before he died. Kodama died in his sleep of a stroke in Tokyo on January 17, 1984.
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