Tenkō

is a Japanese term referring to the coerced ideological conversions of Japanese socialists and communists who, between 1925 and 1945, were induced to renounce leftist ideologies and enthusiastically embrace the Emperor-centric, capitalist, and imperialist ideology favored by the state. Tenkō was typically performed under duress, most often in police custody, and was a condition for release (although surveillance and harassment would often continue thereafter). But it was also a broader phenomenon, a kind of cultural reorientation in the face of national crisis, that did not always involve direct repression.

The prewar Japanese state considered Marxism to be a grave threat to Japan's "national essence" (国体, kokutai). The Peace Preservation Law, passed in 1925, empowered the Special Higher Police (Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu, abbreviated Tokkō) to persecute communists, socialists, and other leftists by explicitly criminalizing criticism of the system of private property. Thus the year 1925 marked a new phase in which the Tokkō targeted not only incorrect action (actual crimes) but also incorrect thought or ideology (thought crime), earning them the nickname, the .