Tetsuzo Fuwa

Tetsuzo Fuwa (不破 哲三) is the pen name of Kenjiro Ueda (上田 建二郎), a member and the former chair of the Japanese Communist Party. He is a graduate of Tokyo University. He joined the Communist Party in 1947, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1969.

Career
By around 1972, Fuwa was being placed in positions of higher authority over some other senior party members as part of the JCP's attempts at changing its image and courting younger voters, with the Asahi Shimbun remarking on Fuwa's "eloquency, gentle manner and good looks" in connection to the JCP's electoral strategy. Fuwa was one of the figures in the party who were instrumental in leading the charge to shift the JCP's public image from that of a violent revolutionary group to a reformist and democratic one.

Fuwa eventually become chairman of the JCP from 1982 to 1987; he held the position again from 1989 to 2000. He was president of the Central Committee from 2000 to 2006. Fuwa declined to seek reelection in the 2003 Japanese general election, ending a career in the Diet that lasted over 30 years. he remains a member of the party standing committee and presidium. He stepped down from the party's executive committee upon the resignation of his successor, Kazuo Shii, in 2024.

He advocates scientific socialism and believes that socialism should be achieved through stages.