Background
Manabu Sano was born on February 22, 1892 in Oita, Japan. His family had for generations been physicians to the local domain.
学 佐野
Manabu Sano was born on February 22, 1892 in Oita, Japan. His family had for generations been physicians to the local domain.
In 1917 he graduated from the Political Science Section of Tokyo University, where he studied politics, socialism and history.
After working for the East Asia Economic Research Bureau of the Manchuria Railway, he became a lecturer at Waseda University, specializing in economics and economic history.
In 1923 Manabu Sano fled to the Soviet Union just before the first wave of arrests of left-wing leaders. He returned to Japan in 1925 and turned himself over to the government officials for sentencing.
Later, he became chief editor of a newspaper called Musansha. Shimbun and began to lay plans for reconstituting the Communist Party.
In 1928 he fled to the Soviet Union once more to avoid the nationwide arrests of left-wing figures and, along with Ichikawa Shoichi, attended the Sixth Comintern, where he was chosen to be a member of the standing executive committee. In 1929 he was arrested in Shanghai while secretly directing the reestablishment of the Japan Communist Party. In 1932 he was sentenced by the Tokyo courts to penal servitude for life.
In 1934 Sano’s sentence was reduced to fifteen years and in 1943 he was released from prison. After the war, he returned to his teaching position at Waseda University.
While still a student, he joined the socialist movement and participated in the formation of an organization called Shinjinkai made up largely of Tokyo University students and designed to further the movement.
In 1922 he participated in the formation of the Japan Communist Party, becoming a member of the central committee.
While in prison, he and Nabeyama Sadachika in 1933 announced that they had given up their belief in international communism and instead advocated working for the realization of socialism in a single country, particularly in Japan. This announcement led a number of other communist followers to proclaim a similar "conversion.”
He later founded a political party called the Rodo Zcn’eito and the Nihon Seiji Keizai Kenkyujo (Japan Political and Economic Research Institute).