In OTL, the Japanese left had been a target of repression since before the 20th century. In particular, the Peace Preservation Law of 1925 was gradually expanded over time, widening the scope of political repression year by year.

Assuming the current KR setting, no Soviet Union and the Peace Preservation Law abolished early, is maintained, I tried compiling a list of left-wing figures who might plausibly survive or avoid political downfall in the reworked KR timeline.

Which of them do you think could have had a major impact if they survived?

① Death by extralegal violence, terrorism, or state violence

・Ōsugi Sakae / 大杉栄 (1885–1923)
One of the leading figures of Japanese syndicalism and anarchism. He was assassinated by the military police in the chaos immediately after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake.

・Itō Noe / 伊藤野枝 (1895–1923)
A major figure in the women’s liberation and anarchist movements. She was assassinated alongside Ōsugi Sakae.

・Yamamoto Senji / 山本宣治 (1889–1929)
A Labour-Farmer Party Diet member and symbolic figure of the legal left. He was assassinated by a right-winger in 1929 while opposing the expansion of the Peace Preservation Law.

・Kobayashi Takiji / 小林多喜二 (1903–1933)
A leading figure in Japanese proletarian literature who was also connected to the Japanese Communist Party. He died in 1933 after being tortured by the Special Higher Police.

② Execution following a death sentence

・Nanba Daisuke / 難波大助 (1899–1924)
A radical anti-establishment activist. He attempted to assassinate the crown prince in the 1923 Toranomon Incident and was executed the following year. In the current KR lore, the occurrence of the Toranomon Incident is already mentioned in the backstory.

・Wada Kyūtarō / 和田久太郎 (1893–1928)
An anarchist activist involved in a revenge attack for the assassination of Ōsugi Sakae. He was sentenced to death and executed in 1928.

③ Death or purge in exile

・Katayama Sen / 片山潜 (1859–1933)
A pioneer of the Japanese socialist movement who later worked with the Comintern. He died in exile in the Soviet Union in 1933. In the current KR lore, he appears as a leader of the Japanese syndicalist movement, but is assassinated about six months after game start.

・Yamamoto Kenzō / 山本懸蔵 (1895–1939)
A Japanese Communist Party activist who moved his base of activity abroad. He was executed during Stalin’s purges while staying in the Soviet Union.

・Kunizaki Teidō / 国崎定洞 (1894–1937)
A physician and socialist intellectual who moved to the Soviet Union. He was executed during Stalin’s purges in 1937.

④ Exile or overseas activity

・Nosaka Sanzō / 野坂参三 (1892–1993)
One of the leaders of the Japanese Communist Party. He was involved in the purge of Yamamoto Kenzō and others, and later based himself in Yan’an, where he conducted anti-war activities. In the current KR lore, he joins the Chinese Kuomintang and, depending on the route, can become the leader of a Japanese puppet government.

・Ōyama Ikuo / 大山郁夫 (1880–1955)
A Labour-Farmer Party politician and scholar, and one of the leading figures of the legal proletarian party movement. Under repression, he went into exile in the United States during the 1930s.

⑤ Recantation or withdrawal from front-line politics

・Kagawa Toyohiko / 賀川豊彦 (1888–1960)
A Christian socialist and major figure in the labour and cooperative movements. He later shifted his focus toward social work and the cooperative movement.

・Fukumoto Kazuo / 福本和夫 (1894–1983) An early theorist of the Japanese Communist Party and the central figure of “Fukumotoism.” After being criticised by the Comintern and losing influence within the party, he withdrew from the front line of political activism.

・Sano Manabu / 佐野学 (1892–1953) A leading member of the Japanese Communist Party and a symbolic figure of tenkō, or ideological conversion under imprisonment. In 1933, he issued a joint tenkō statement.