The Dai Nippon Kokusui-kai, or Great Japan National Essence Society, was a Japanese federation of ultranationalist societies, laborers, and yakuza gangsters which was founded in 1919 by far-right activist Mitsuru Toyama and Home Minister Takejiro Tokunami. The new federation fit neatly into the mold set nearly forty years earlier by the Dark Ocean Society, and its platform spoke vaguely of honoring the emperor, the "spirit of chivalry", and ancient Japanese values. PRactically, however, the Kokusui-kai served as a massive strikebreaking force and introduced an unprecedented level of violence into the ultranationalist movement. Headed by Tokunami himself, with Toyama as chief advisor, the organization functioned quite similarly to its fascist contemporaries in Italy, Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts. The Kokusui-kai operated with the strong support of the Home Ministry, the police, and certain high-ranking military officials. Its numbers were deployed not only against stirkers but also against any target deemed subversive by Toyama and his associates. Among the group's many actions was an attack on the 28,000 men who had walked out in the great 1920 Yawata Iron Works strike, working side-by-side with police, military gendarmes, firemen, veterans, and muscle men of other ultranationalist groups to break the strike. Tokunami's Kokusui-kai evolved into the paramilitary arm of the Seiyukai Party, one of the two dominant political parties of the day. By the end of the decade Seiyukai's principal opposition, the Minsei Party, had organized its own gangster force: the Yamato Minro-kai, filled with yakuza also largely drawn from construction gangs. So integrated into their respective political parties did these gangs become that more than a few bosses ran successfully for national office. Their presence in the Diet, Japan's parliament, was but another sign that all did not bode well for Japan's future. By the 1930s, rightist groups had proliferated tremendously. The country was destabilized as moderate politicians fell victim to assassination or withdrew completely from public life, and, from 1930 to 1945, Japanese police recorded a total of 29 rightist "incidents", including attempted coups by military officers and ultranationalists and the assassinations of two prime ministers and two finance ministers. By the late 1930s, Japan had slid into its "Dark Valley" (Kuroi Tanima) decade of authoritarian rule, and the outbreak of World War II led to the Japanese government, having itself become far-right, cutting its ties to far-right uyoku dantai groups and forcing gangsters and rightists to either join the army or be imprisoned. The Allied occupation of Japan in 1946 led to the banning of the extraparliamentary far-right organizations in the country.