Japan: Tokuda Kyuichi (1894-1953), Japanese lawyer, politician and chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, 1952

Tokuda Kyuichi (September 12, 1894 - October 14, 1953) was a Japanese politician and served as first chairman of the Japanese Communist Party from 1945 until his death in 1953. He was born in Okinawa in 1894, and became a lawyer in 1920 before joining the Japanese Communist Party in 1922. Tokuda was arrested in 1928 on suspicion of violating the government's Peace Preservation Law, spending the next 18 years in prison, occupying a cell next to fellow Communist leader Yoshio Shiga. He was released with the end of World War II and the collapse of Imperial Japan in 1945, and was elected in 1946 to the House of Representatives. While giving a speech in 1948, Tokuda survived an assassination attempt when a dynamite-laden soda bottle was thrown at his feet. He became second-in-command of the Communist Party by 1950, but he was purged from politics under the Allied occupation. He was exiled to China, where he died in 1953.