Peace Preservation Law (1925, Japan)

The Peace Preservation Law is a Japanese statute, promulgated on 22 April 1925 and taking effect the following month, that criminalized forming or joining any organization advocating a change to Japan's kokutai, its national polity centered on the emperor, or the abolition of the private property system. It was enacted the same year that Japan extended near-universal male suffrage, a pairing generally understood as an effort to guard against the political radicalization that an expanded electorate might otherwise enable. Enforcement was carried out chiefly by the Special Higher Police, and the law became the legal backbone of a broad system of surveillance and thought control used to suppress communists, socialists and other perceived dissidents in Japan and, especially after later amendments, throughout its colonial territories including Korea; tens of thousands of people were arrested under it over the two decades it remained in force. The law was repealed in October 1945, in the immediate aftermath of Japan's surrender in the Second World War, by order of the Allied occupation authorities as part of their broader dismantling of the wartime security state.