Kodama, often escorted by Machii or Rikidozan in his capacity as the president of the JPWA. Kodama was a powerful wealthy ultranationalist and behind-the-scenes fixer (who was also the point of entry for America’s participation in this sphere).
Described by one historian as a master at channeling ‘unregistered’ funds from big business
and
the underworld to politicians, Kodama was one of the many larger-than-life right-wingers who appeared on the scene in Japan after the restoration of the Emperor to the throne – a devotee of the Black Dragon Society, a secret rightist organization that cut a wide assassination swath through Asia in support of Japanese military and industrial expansionism.
Dubbed ‘Little Napoleon’ by his enemies, Kodama originally made his mark in the 1930s as a government procurement agent in China, pillaging the countryside with a regiment of soldiers that included yakuza bosses he had personally recruited from Tokyo. (A favorite Kodama modus operandi in China, postwar testimony revealed, was to enter a village and have the mayor immediately shot to ensure everyone’s full cooperation in donating supplies.) Kodama’s success in providing the Japanese Army and Navy with the minerals, weapons, and other materials they needed eventually earned him a post in the wartime Tojo cabinet.
Kodama also made a considerable personal profit from the sale of opium in China. By war’s end, he had amassed a personal fortune of precious jewels, gold, silver, platinum and radium, which he secretly had smuggled back to Japan. One plane he had commissioned in Shanghai was so heavily laden with plunder that the wheels collapsed on the airport runway.
Upon his return to Tokyo, Kodama was arrested by the Allies on suspicion of committing atrocities. He spent three years in a Sugamo prison as a class A war criminal suspect but was released in 1949, along with Nobusuke Kishi, Tojo’s industrial minister and architect of Japan’s wartime economy, on the day that Tojo and six others convicted were hanged. Occupation authorities claimedthere was not enough evidence to try him, but there was widespread belief that Kodama had bought his freedom with a portion of his secret treasure and that he had supplied information about wartime government figures wanted by the GHQ, convincing the Americans in the process of his potential future value to them. In fact, despite bitter complaints in private about life under the ‘rule of the white man’, he soon went to work for G-2, where officials found his old network of agents, ex-military friends and underworld associates indeed useful in countering the growing leftist movement in Japan. While infiltrating domestic Communist groups, Kodama found time to become Ted Lewin’s partner in the infamous Latin Quarter and used his vast fortune to foster close relationships with postwar political leaders. He provided the funds that started the conservative Liberal Party and donated even more in 1955, when it merged with the Democratic Party to form the American-backed
Jiyu-Minshu-To
, the party of the
zaibatsu
, which went on to rule Japan for the next thirty-eight years and over which Kodama exerted great influence.
In 1958, Kodama went to work for the CIA, maintaining a professional relationship of considerable intensity that included helping to funnel agency money clandestinely to associates in the LDP and anti-Communist groups. One of Kodama’s assignments was to cozy up to Indonesian President Sukarno and assess for the agency the potential for the popular nationalist leader of turning Communist. (While Kodama was doing this, his business associates in a firm called Tonichi Trading Company were laying plans for business ventures in Djakarta, in part by supplying female companionship to the Indonesian president, a known womanizer, on his trips to Tokyo, continuing a tradition begun by previous Japanese business partners of Sukarno. Tonichi would eventually be rewarded with
Described by one historian as a master at channeling ‘unregistered’ funds from big business
and
the underworld to politicians, Kodama was one of the many larger-than-life right-wingers who appeared on the scene in Japan after the restoration of the Emperor to the throne – a devotee of the Black Dragon Society, a secret rightist organization that cut a wide assassination swath through Asia in support of Japanese military and industrial expansionism.
Dubbed ‘Little Napoleon’ by his enemies, Kodama originally made his mark in the 1930s as a government procurement agent in China, pillaging the countryside with a regiment of soldiers that included yakuza bosses he had personally recruited from Tokyo. (A favorite Kodama modus operandi in China, postwar testimony revealed, was to enter a village and have the mayor immediately shot to ensure everyone’s full cooperation in donating supplies.) Kodama’s success in providing the Japanese Army and Navy with the minerals, weapons, and other materials they needed eventually earned him a post in the wartime Tojo cabinet.
Kodama also made a considerable personal profit from the sale of opium in China. By war’s end, he had amassed a personal fortune of precious jewels, gold, silver, platinum and radium, which he secretly had smuggled back to Japan. One plane he had commissioned in Shanghai was so heavily laden with plunder that the wheels collapsed on the airport runway.
Upon his return to Tokyo, Kodama was arrested by the Allies on suspicion of committing atrocities. He spent three years in a Sugamo prison as a class A war criminal suspect but was released in 1949, along with Nobusuke Kishi, Tojo’s industrial minister and architect of Japan’s wartime economy, on the day that Tojo and six others convicted were hanged. Occupation authorities claimedthere was not enough evidence to try him, but there was widespread belief that Kodama had bought his freedom with a portion of his secret treasure and that he had supplied information about wartime government figures wanted by the GHQ, convincing the Americans in the process of his potential future value to them. In fact, despite bitter complaints in private about life under the ‘rule of the white man’, he soon went to work for G-2, where officials found his old network of agents, ex-military friends and underworld associates indeed useful in countering the growing leftist movement in Japan. While infiltrating domestic Communist groups, Kodama found time to become Ted Lewin’s partner in the infamous Latin Quarter and used his vast fortune to foster close relationships with postwar political leaders. He provided the funds that started the conservative Liberal Party and donated even more in 1955, when it merged with the Democratic Party to form the American-backed
Jiyu-Minshu-To
, the party of the
zaibatsu
, which went on to rule Japan for the next thirty-eight years and over which Kodama exerted great influence.
In 1958, Kodama went to work for the CIA, maintaining a professional relationship of considerable intensity that included helping to funnel agency money clandestinely to associates in the LDP and anti-Communist groups. One of Kodama’s assignments was to cozy up to Indonesian President Sukarno and assess for the agency the potential for the popular nationalist leader of turning Communist. (While Kodama was doing this, his business associates in a firm called Tonichi Trading Company were laying plans for business ventures in Djakarta, in part by supplying female companionship to the Indonesian president, a known womanizer, on his trips to Tokyo, continuing a tradition begun by previous Japanese business partners of Sukarno. Tonichi would eventually be rewarded with
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