Japan Revolutionary Communist League, National Committee (革命的共産主義者同盟全国委員会 Kakumeiteki Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei, Zenkoku Iinkai?) is a Japanese far-left revolutionary group, often referred to as Chūkaku-ha (中核派 "Central Core Faction") in Japanese. Their main goal is to have Japan, and the entire world, adopt communist policies. Chūkaku-ha reject imperialism and Stalinism. The group is led by Takeo Shimizu, who became the chairman in 1997. The Japanese National Police Agency reports that as of 2020, 4,700 members are active in Chukaku-ha. History Prehistory of Chūkaku-ha In 1957 a number of dissidents dissatisfied with the direction of the Japan Communist Party (JCP), along with a number of student activists from the Nationwide Zengakuren student federation, formed the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), usually abbreviated as Kakukyōdō in Japanese. This group was fervently anti-Stalinist, and soon fell under the sway of the charismatic half-blind Trotskyist philosopher Kan'ichi Kuroda. The RCL believed the Stalinist form of communism, which they saw as predominant in Eastern Europe, China, the USSR, and North Korea, did not elevate the working class as true as Marxist communism intended. Their goals at this time were to overthrow the Japanese government, end U.S. occupation of Okinawa, and abolish the U.S.-Japan Alliance. The group evolved into its current form (Chūkaku-ha) after a series of schisms. In 1959, Kuroda Kan'ichi was expelled from the RCL in the wake of a scandal in which he tried to sell compromising information about the JCP to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Therefore, Kuroda, along with his right-hand man Nobuyoshi Honda, founded their own version of the RCL, with the appellation "National Committee" added to the name, and took many of their followers with them to create the RCL-NC. In 1960, a youth branch of the RCL-NC was established for Zengakuren student activists as the Marxist Student League (MSL), abbreviated Marugakudō in Japanese. This was followed in 1961 by the creation of another youth branch for young labor unionists, the Marxist Workers' Youth League (MWYL). Finally in 1963, the parent organization RCL-NC split in two as the result of a disagreement between Kuroda and Honda over whether to pursue socialist revolution in alliance with others, or to focus on strengthening and expanding a single revolutionary organization, with the resultant split of Marugakudō into the "Central Core Faction" (Chūkaku-ha), which was led by Honda and favored allying with others, and the "Revolutionary Marxist Faction" (abbreviated Kakumaru-ha) Zengakuren, which staunchly adhered to