The Japanese and the War: Expectation, Perception, and the Shaping of Memory

THE JAPANESE AND THE WAR

ASIA PERSPECTIVES

WEATHERHEAD EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

ASIA PERSPECTIVES: HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE

A series of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Carol Gluck, Editor

Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, by Yoshimi Yoshiaki, trans. Suzanne O’Brien

The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society, by Pierre François Souyri, trans. Käthe Roth

Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion: The Creation of the Soul of Japan, by Donald Keene

Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: The Story of a Woman, Sex, and Moral Values in Modern Japan, by William Johnston

Lhasa: Streets with Memories, by Robert Barnett

Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793–1841, by Donald Keene

The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan, ed. and trans. Rebecca L. Copeland and Melek Ortabasi

So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, by Donald Keene

Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop, by Michael K. Bourdaghs

The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki, by Donald Keene

Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army, by Phyllis Birnbaum

Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao, by Michael Lucken, trans. Francesca Simkin

The First Modern Japanese: The Life of Ishikawa Takuboku, by Donald Keene

THE JAPANESE AND THE WAR

From Expectation to Memory

MICHAEL LUCKEN

TRANSLATED BY KAREN GRIMWADE

Columbia University Press

New York

Cet ouvrage a bénéficié du soutien des Programmes d'aide à la publication de l’Institut Français.

This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the Institut Français.

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-54398-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lucken, Michael, author. | Grimwade, Karen, translator.

Title: The Japanese and the war: from expectation to memory / Michael Lucken; translated by Karen Grimwade.

Other titles: Japonais et la guerre. English | Japanese and World War 2 | Japanese and World War Two

Description: New York: Columbia University Press, [2017] | Series: Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016024793 (print) | LCCN 2016029722 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231177023 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231543989 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945—Japan—Historiography. | Collective memory—Japan—History—20th century. | Memory—Social aspects—Japan—History—20th century. | World War, 1939-1945—Influence. | War and society—Japan—History—20th century. | Japan—Social conditions—20th century. | Japan—Intellectual life—20th century.

Classification: LCC D743.42 .L8313 2017 (print) | LCC D743.42 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/52—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024793

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.

Cover design: Rebecca Lown

Cover image: Sadamasa Motonaga, Unititled, 1959. Oil on panel, 35-7/8 × 28-3/4 inches (91 × 73 cm). [© The Estate of Sadamasa Motonaga; Courtesy of Fergus McCaffrey, New York/St. Barth]

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

A Note on Names

Introduction

1. THE NATION OUT TO CONQUER

2. A TOTALITARIAN DYNAMIC, 1940–1945

3. THE MEANING OF THE WAR

4. HEROES AND THE DEAD

5. FEAR AND DESTRUCTION

6. POSTWAR COMPLEXITIES

7. THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION, OR THE PRESENT VERSUS THE PAST

8. THE PLURALITY OF HISTORY

9. INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE AND COLLECTIVE INERTIA

10. MEMORY AND RELIGION

11. FROM MONUMENT TO MUSEUM: THE DIFFICULT PATH TO HEALING

CONCLUSION

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to express his sincere thanks to Fabrice d’Almeida and Pascal Griolet for their careful editing of this book, and to Michel Vié for his encouragement, comments, and corrections.

A NOTE ON NAMES

Japanese, Korean, and Chinese names are given in the order family name followed by given name—for example, Kurosawa Akira.

INTRODUCTION

The year 1945 marked a watershed in Japan that saw unprecedented change in its history and geography. Its cities had been laid to waste by bombs, its armies, defeated on all fronts; its national territory was occupied by a foreign power for the first time, the economy, in tatters, and the empire, deprived of its recently acquired colonies. Millions of families had been plunged into mourning and rare were those who had escaped some kind of physical or material loss. Yet despite these historic changes the imperial institution managed to survive. Against all expectations, Emperor Shōwa—or Hirohito as he is generally known outside Japan—managed to preserve the existence of the throne.¹ This explains why there was no need to abolish the constitution entirely, although in practice it was completely rewritten. An aura of mystery surrounds Japan’s millennia-old imperial institution, and its preservation after the trauma of the Last Great War, as it is known in Japanese, has merely heightened this. The figure of the emperor is a key to understanding Japan at war.

Saving the imperial institution was the overriding objective of the Japanese government during the closing months of the war. In military terms, the war had been lost since 1943; however, the government hoped for a compromise that would allow the country to retain its independence and political structures. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians died to keep this hope alive. Of course, this is not what was said to the Japanese people, who were constantly told that the decisive battle, the one that would bring victory to the country, was yet to come. Not everyone was fooled.

In the spring of 1945, Kurosawa Akira was not yet a world-renowned filmmaker. Having launched his career in 1943, he had already completed three films and was one of the national propaganda machine’s most promising directors. Indeed, only filmmakers in whom the authorities had full confidence were still allowed to work at a time when the entire nation’s resources were being channeled into the war effort. During the final weeks of the war, Kurosawa wrote a screenplay that took a sixteenth-century battle as its backdrop.² However, the film required substantial resources—notably horses for the battle scenes—and their unavailability forced Kurosawa to abandon his project. He then turned his attention to the theater repertoire and a famous play known in English as The Subscription List. The film’s modest scale meant that Kurosawa received authorization to begin shooting. He completed his film in September, after the Americans had arrived, making this one of the rare productions to have straddled both the war and the occupation.

The film’s story follows the fugitive and great warrior Yoshitsune as he flees his brother, the shogun. Yoshitsune is accompanied on his journey by a clutch of loyal retainers, including the trusty Benkei. In order to evade capture they disguise themselves as Buddhist monks, with Yoshitsune dressed as a servant. Despite their efforts, the group arouses suspicion and is subjected to an interrogation. During a scene that provides the film’s dramatic climax, Benkei manages to trick his adversaries by answering their questions perfectly. However, no sooner are the bogus monks set free than suspicions over the servant’s true identity see them recaptured. In order to prove that the servant is not the great Yoshitsune himself, Benkei gives him a public beating, a ruse that enables the group to escape. The film closes with a pitifully comical scene in which Benkei tearfully begs his master’s forgiveness for having humiliated him to save his life.³

The replacement of Japanese censorship with American censors meant that Kurosawa’s film was refused release.⁴ It made it onto cinema screens only some seven years later, after the occupation had ended. Consequently, nothing was written about it in 1945, and since by 1952 the context had changed completely, it was perceived at its release as a simple adaptation of the Kabuki play. Yet the film’s original aim had been a political one, since it exalted the notion of sacrifice for one’s master while underlining the importance of doing what it takes to outwit the enemy, even if that flies in the face of social convention. And this is precisely what the Japanese government did upon defeat in order to save the imperial institution. Whereas Hirohito’s public appearances prior to 1945 had consistently been orchestrated to exalt his sacred status, he was suddenly portrayed in the media as a frail and inoffensive man. Showing great lucidity and foresight, Kurosawa’s film was a call to the Japanese people to protect their emperor. Nonetheless, the comical treatment of certain scenes and the film’s humorous title (The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail) reveal the director’s free spirit and his ability to make a film that transcends its era.⁵

Whether in the context of all-out war or defeat, the Japanese have always had a literature and performing arts tradition that has shaped their behavior, as well as enabling them to give meaning to the experiences they endured. In return, the violence of the events only heightened the complex nature of this culture, which since 1945 has continued to reflect on the meaning of World War II and Japan’s place in history. It is these fruitful interactions between history and culture that this book seeks to highlight.

Entire sections of Japanese civilization have never been taken seriously. The West’s lack of interest in Japan’s middle class, its popular and comic culture, or even its intellectual sphere, reveals a kind of ideological occultation, to borrow the words of Roland Barthes.⁶ Many of the stereotypes that appeared during the nineteenth century, when colonialism was at its peak, continue to have currency today: the Japanese are said to lack an individual conscience, to be reluctant to take the initiative, to have a tendency to imitate, to be deeply fatalistic, and to have a propensity for violence. And while they are also deemed to have certain qualities—such as self-control, a sense of propriety, an ability to bounce back from adversity—this kind of characterization is hardly meaningful. A detailed look at the way in which history functions makes it clear that classifying the qualities of peoples is futile, that everything is constantly changing, that what exists at any given moment represents only a temporary configuration, and that the certitudes of today may crumble tomorrow. This will become clear throughout these pages through the spectacular evolution in funerary practices and, more generally, through the relationship of the Japanese with death and how this was affected by the war. The history of peoples may reveal certain dynamics, but at the same time it opposes any kind of essentialist reduction. Cultures and civilizations can be clearly defined only if we first acknowledge that these concepts are merely approximations, truncations, crude divisions of human space.

Through its scale, barbarity, and the unprecedented violence of the weapons it deployed, World War II was a momentous event for the contemporary world—a kind of monster, a founding yet malevolent divinity that is constantly referred to, whether consciously or not. In American mass culture the recurrent theme of a radical opposition between good and evil has its roots in Christianity but also finds an extremely effective vehicle in World War II imagery: the shape of a helmet, a haircut, or a Nordic physique—all evocative of the silhouette of German soldiers—are readily used to distinguish the bad guy. Similarly, the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in 2001 immediately gave rise in the United States to images and expressions reminiscent of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although such associations of ideas function spontaneously, we are nonetheless capable of taking a step back and analyzing them.

Over the past thirty years Japan has become the second largest producer of mass cultural products after the United States. Manga, for example, have made Japanese the second-most-translated language into French after English, based on the number of titles published each year. Through video games, manga, anime, and their spin-offs, or even pop music, Japanese culture is helping to shape the imagination of young people in countries as different as France and Korea. The theme of war is recurrent in Japanese works, perhaps even more so than in American productions. In certain cases the reference to history is explicit. This is the case with the manga series Barefoot Gen or the animated film Grave of the Fireflies, which tells the story of two orphans after the bombing of Kobe. Most of the time, however, the battles involve mutants or robots and have no basis in historical fact. Nonetheless, the past is constantly alluded to, particularly in terms of the values invoked, such as determination, solidarity, or pacifism, in stark contrast to the Manichean nature of American productions. Miyazaki Hayao, the director of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, was born in 1941. His earliest childhood memories thus coincide with Japan’s defeat. As he explains, the experience of living through war was decisive in shaping his view of life:

All around me there were adults who were proud of having killed Chinese. During the war my father’s family got by quite comfortably thanks to military demand, which no doubt explains how they even managed to escape the draft. Only an older cousin died during the bombings. My mother, who was scornful of progressive intellectuals due to their about-face during defeat, instilled me with distrust and resignation by constantly telling me that people will never change! On the surface I was a bright and sensible child, but on the inside I was fragile and reserved. I loved the war stories I devoured one after the other. But after a while I became sick of their clichéd adjectives; it was with deep despair that I discovered, hidden beneath the enthusiastic and victorious rhetoric, the widespread stupidity of the Japanese army.⁷

Behind his films’ environmental message and their search for a harmonious coexistence between humans lie an awakening and a rejection of fatalism, both of which are directly linked to the memory of World War II. Knowing how Japan experienced and perceives the period from the late 1930s to the late 1940s provides a clearer understanding of certain ideals and thought patterns seen in Japanese manga and animated films. The same can be said of the news media. The disasters of March 2011 elicited reactions and images in Japan that can be fully understood only in the framework of a local history of representing disasters, in which 1945 has a preeminent place.

Despite its importance for understanding the country’s contemporary culture, there is a relative lack of knowledge in France surrounding Japan’s wartime history. Only a limited number of publications have attempted to explain the Japanese experience of these dark years. The fact that France was involved neither in the Pacific War nor in the occupation of Japan partly explains this situation. Nevertheless, several recent studies have focused on the memory of the war; yet while some of these studies are of a high quality, the reality of the events on which the memory is based can at times seem somewhat distant and forgotten. Of course, it is entirely possible to explore the question of memory in isolation from the events being remembered; however, the state of the historiography has led me to deal with them in a single volume in order to provide readers with a clearer measure of the links and discrepancies between the views expressed during the war and those expressed after. Moreover, a systematic articulation of the discourses that structure and predetermine the event’s genesis and those that analyze it and recast its meaning afterward is a fruitful approach challenging clear-cut oppositions between history and memory.

In Japan, two main—opposing—schools of thought exist regarding the meaning that should be attached to the war. The first is held by conservatives, who defend the idea that Japan did not so much seek to conquer Asia as to protect itself from colonialism and the hegemonic ambitions of the great Western powers. The second, whose defenders range from liberals to communists, emphasizes the blindness of Japan’s elites and the responsibility of the fascist-militarist groups that took control of the state. In addition to these two perspectives there is the widely held feeling that the nation suffered enormously from the bombings and that the Allied occupation did not merely release the country from the clutches of the military but that it was also accompanied by a new form of dictatorship. The brutality and crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army are denied or played down by nationalists, who see the focus on such events as evidence of a desire to blacken Japan’s name and place responsibility for the conflict solely at its doorstep. These aspects of the war are recognized by the other groups, but in perceptions of the past they generally take second place to the suffering endured.

In the People’s Republic of China and South Korea, differences in interpretation focus on the role of local collaborators but rarely on Japan itself, which is invariably portrayed as a belligerent and colonialist power whose government attempted to destroy Korean identity and whose armies planned and systematically carried out appalling crimes across Asia. However, other Asian countries, notably India, Burma, and the Republic of China (Taiwan), hold more nuanced views that underline Japan’s help in liberating local populations from Western domination.

English-language scholarship on the issue is dominant. There is a great wealth of studies available, since the sources gathered during the war and the occupation can be accessed directly, but these represent the victors’ point of view. When historians in France deal with the Vichy regime, they position themselves within an essentially national intellectual field, and only marginal reference is made to English-language authors. In contrast, contemporary history in Japan is subordinate to the quasi-official narrative imposed by the Americans via the postwar tribunals and the preservation of the imperial institution.

Nevertheless, such an influence is not without its contradictions:

In the English-speaking Allied nations there are dominant narratives of a good war against the evils of fascism. Japanese memories incompatible with these Allied memories must be resisted. For example, Japanese memories of victimhood, particularly of the A-bombs, are uncomfortable for the Allies because the standard rationales for indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets were to end the war, stop Japanese aggression and save lives. Validating Japanese narratives of victimhood undermines these justifications, casts the Allies as perpetrators and subverts the good war narrative. Japanese victim mentality, therefore, must be criticized for not being contrition, even though it is unrealistic to expect hibakusha (A-bomb victims) to prioritize collective memories of Japanese atrocities (that they may have had no personal involvement in) over their personal experiences of the A-bombs. And the nationalistic narrative that Japan helped liberate Asian nations from Western imperialism has to be resisted at all costs: it subverts the good war narrative by making Western colonialism, not Japanese militarism, the primary evil of the 1930s and 1940s.

Consequently, the only Japanese narrative compatible with the Allied good war narrative is contrition for Japanese war guilt. All other narratives have to be criticized as inadequate. Given the strength of the good war narratives in Allied nations, it is hardly surprising that criticism of Japanese narratives that threaten to subvert the good war narrative have become orthodox.⁸

Every culture tends to develop rationales that are consistent with its own representations and interests. Being aware of this phenomenon encourages us to step back from the Manichean preconception of the Japanese with an erroneous view of their past and Westerners within their rights to demand they be held accountable.

What characterizes perceptions of World War II in Japan is not a rejection of national responsibility or victimization but rather a structural opposition between several memories—a situation that stems from ideological stances, political acts, and personal experiences that predate 1945. Just as in France, in 1940, Gaullism and communism began to develop different yet complementary narratives that determined how history was perceived after 1945, so in Japan, the dividing lines separating the various memories must be traced back to the war period. While the decisions taken during the American occupation certainly played a vital role, they are connected to the different representations of the national bond prior to defeat. The question of the emperor’s role in particular is one of the points that best illustrate the close ties linking the two periods.

It is reductive to think solely in terms of pre- and post-1945. While such a division is indispensable, it does not accurately reflect the tone that emanates from many accounts of the war. A three-part division may occasionally be more pertinent for describing the experience of these years. The first period runs until approximately 1943 and was characterized by territorial expansion, anticipation of the future, and the increasing ideological indoctrination of Japanese society. The occupation of part of China in 1937, of Indochina in 1940, and the victories scored against Great Britain and the United States all provided a positive boost to the nation. They made the efforts demanded easier to swallow, and criticism, suspicious. If we set aside the soldiers who fought on the continent and in the Solomon Islands campaign, the words generally used by witnesses describing this period in retrospect are collective mobilization, a certain feverishness, enthusiasm, and a feeling of power.

The second period begins in 1943 with Japan’s losing control of the military situation on the Pacific front and finishes in 1952 with the end of the Allied occupation. To rephrase, it spans the Cairo Conference to the date the Treaty of San Francisco came into force. During this ten-year period Japan was no longer in control of its destiny and knew it. In late 1943 the civil population began to be evacuated from the cities, and a section of the student population was mobilized. Over the next two years the country endured relentless attacks from the Americans and finally surrendered unconditionally after all attempts at negotiation had failed. It was immediately occupied by a civil and military force that imposed its directives in all areas of life, something that did not fail to breed frustration. Those families that had fled the cities returned, but food and housing shortages made this a gradual process. The situation was similar for the millions of repatriates. Many were able to return home in late 1945, early 1946, but some were held in camps until the 1950s, particularly in Siberia. This period corresponds in the various memories to the height of the crisis, to a time of destruction and of the struggle to rebuild, despite the relief provided by the end of the war and the hopes raised by the American drive to democratize Japan.

The third period begins in 1952. Japan’s sovereignty has been restored but the painful memories remain. Successive generations of politicians have declared that the postwar period is over, that the page has finally been turned, but the political and psychological consequences of defeat continue to determine the present. At the heart of this chronology is not the period 1937–1945 but rather 1943–1952. What came before and what came after form two sets of lines of varying lengths, both of them connected to this central period. The memory of the past seen in Japan today stems more from the bombings, defeat, occupation, war crimes tribunals, and repatriations than from the invasion of China or the victories over the British.

The main texts that structured Japanese society between 1937 and 1945 date from the late nineteenth century. They include the Meiji Constitution, the Civil Code, and the Imperial Rescript on Education. Not only was there no break in continuity but there were no new political or cultural projects developed either. The war was conducted using preexisting ideological tools that were simply adapted to the crisis at hand. A good example of this is the repression of political opponents, which aimed, as reasserted during the 1920s, to protect the kokutai—the Japanese nation as it was defined during the Meiji period (1868–1912). In a context of international crisis, the mobilization of the population gradually intensified. The highly peculiar form of totalitarianism adopted by the Japanese government between 1940 and 1945 was a radicalization of the spirit of institutions created between 1870 and 1900 to counter Western colonialism.

In the 1930s a certain number of Japanese artists were known in France. This was the case with the novelist Kikou Yamata or the painter Léonard Foujita.⁹ Japan was an exotic land on which clichés abounded, but certain individuals emerged and contributed to the dynamism of literary and art circles in the French capital. Back home, Japan was experiencing an effervescence of cultural activity. The media were extremely active and represented a diverse range of political tendencies. Consequently, given the fact that Japan saw no radical systemic change during this period, there was never a single, unified point of view on the war. At all levels of society, and despite growing pressure from the authorities on the theme of a sacred union, individuals maintained their differences. This was not always particularly obvious in the news media (mainly the press, radio, and cinematic newsreels) due to the high level of censorship in this domain; however, in critical literature, and even more so in personal literature (private diaries and letters) or the fine arts, the singularity of the different approaches and political sympathies shines through.

War is a regime of violence and death on a massive scale. But in order for people to accept this regime there has to be a reason. In the case of Nazi Germany, certain historians have emphasized a trivialization of violence born of the fighting of 1914–1918, as well as a feeling of revenge that enabled the Nazis to unite the nation in a desire to reject the Jews and conquer foreign lands.¹⁰ In Japan’s case, fear played a crucial role. The colonial ambitions of the great Western powers had ceased to pose a real threat to Japan by the end of the nineteenth century, but the image of the West as predator long persisted in the collective imagination, with memories of this reawakened by the Russian Revolution and the war in Siberia. A further factor was the fear of being bombed. In the late 1920s the Japanese developed a fear of aerial attack, which the destruction caused by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 enabled people to imagine in frighteningly real terms. These factors go some way to explaining both Japan’s policy of continental conquest and the tragic heroism of its armies.

There is a lack of knowledge in France about the occupation of Japan by the Allied forces: not a single French-language reference work exists on the period from September 1945 to July 1952, which in fact extended to 1972 in the case of the Ryukyu Islands. And yet this was a critical period. It is an error to reduce the occupation to the demilitarization, pacification, and democratization of Japan. Such an interpretation not only suggests that peace or democracy were unknown concepts to the Japanese, which is false, but also avoids confronting the fact that MacArthur and the other American officials implemented policies that above all served their own interests in the short, medium, and long term. The ambiguous nature of the measures adopted during the occupation is particularly striking regarding the trials of Japan’s political and military leaders, school textbooks, and monuments. The manner in which, immediately after the hostilities ended, the Americans imposed their own interpretations of history, their handling of memorial and religious issues, and the fact that they exonerated the emperor and mainly indicted military leaders all decisively shaped Japan’s relationship with its past.

The monuments and memorials dedicated to World War II, in the broad sense of the term, demonstrate the complex nature of the memory of the 1930s and 1940s in contemporary Japan. But there is a risk when visiting such sites of assuming a specific example to be a general rule. A visit to Hiroshima may indeed give the impression that Japan is traumatized by the atomic bombs, or that it sees itself more as a victim of the war than as a guilty party. Such an approach is misleading. Only a comprehensive and diachronic approach to the issue can reveal the complex dynamics at work—namely, that

•  the situation has evolved with time;

•  several regions have developed their own particular, competing discourses;

•  the state, local authorities, and religious groups all follow their own reasoning;

•  relations with South Korea and the People’s Republic of China play a decisive role; and

•  the way individuals view their history is liable to change according to the identity of the person they are speaking to.

In Japan, memories of the war are fragmented and historical controversies constant. For all this, such divisions have never truly threatened the country’s unity, for the national bond in postwar Japan is above all characterized by conflictual cohesion, or unity through the fruitful juxtaposition of opposites. Is this proof of the strength of Japan’s democracy? Or is there another way of understanding the balance between these clashing forces?

1

THE NATION OUT TO CONQUER

JAPAN GOES TO WAR

July 7, 1937, marked the beginning of a series of skirmishes between a detachment of the Imperial Japanese Army and a garrison of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army. Hostilities centered on a twelfth-century architectural structure known as the Marco Polo (or Lugou) Bridge. On one side lay one of the main railroads linking Beijing to the heart of the country. On the other was Wanping Fortress, which controlled access to the center of the capital a few kilometers away. Japan used this incident as a pretext to launch a major offensive. In retrospect, the taking of Marco Polo Bridge can be seen as marking Japan’s entry into a conflict that prefigured World War II. Yet this was not the impression that reigned at the time, when the problem was seen as serious but distant and its consequences not clearly understood.¹ During the entire first stage of the conflict the Japanese government spoke only of the China Incident, thereby downplaying its importance. Furthermore, the Japanese population was accustomed to hearing about military problems on the continent. Not only had there been serious clashes between late 1931 and early 1932 in Manchuria and Shanghai—events that were widely covered by the press and radio—but also the memory of these events was still fresh, stoked as it was by the government in a politically unstable context marked by assassinations and attempted coups, such as those that took place in May 1932 and February 1936.

One particularly infamous feat of arms was at the forefront of people’s minds. On February 22, 1932, in the suburbs of Shanghai, three Japanese soldiers had been killed by the explosion of their Bangalore torpedo, a long tube designed to blow a hole in the enemies’ defenses. In the years that followed, the so-called three human bullets² received unprecedented media attention. Their sacrifice (whether it was intentional or not is unclear) was lauded in several songs, one of which was added to the elementary school curriculum, where singing was a compulsory subject. Four films re-created their act of bravery, and it was celebrated in countless poems, theater plays, and stories. The national newspapers seized the occasion to organize extensive fund-raising campaigns, making it possible, for example, to erect a bronze statue, which no sooner unveiled in 1934 than it became a popular place for displays of national fervor. In fact, the image of a crowd paying tribute to the statue was later used abundantly by the Americans as a symbol of Japanese fanaticism.³ The war gradually became a fact of life, insinuating itself into people’s minds, while a movement exalting the idea of sacrifice for the nation simultaneously took shape.⁴

FIGURE 1.1 Bronze Statue of the Three Human Bullets (Greater Tokyo). Postcard, 1934.

As with most of the great modern conflicts, conscripts were the first to be affected. This was particularly true for Japan, since the battlefronts were located exclusively overseas. The Military Service Law governing conscription during World War II was enacted in 1927. Conscripts were ordered to report for a medical exam in their twentieth year following a declaration from the household head, thereby instilling individuals with a sense of responsibility for their acts vis-à-vis their families. Barring exemption or special circumstances, military service began a few months later,⁵ although a large number of young men had already attended a military training course conducted locally by former soldiers.

Military service was intended to tie individuals to their place of origin. The Japanese system stipulated that men were posted to a regiment close to their place of civil registration, which, as in Switzerland, was not their place of birth but rather their place of family origin. For many city dwellers military service thus represented a kind of homecoming. The result of this organization was to bind the nation to its soldiers. Because each regiment recruited locally, the conscripts knew each other, but more important they were known to villagers, neighbors, and local authorities, increasing local peer pressure on conscripts to do well in the army,⁶ underlines Edward Drea. At the same time, military practices and habits were uniform throughout the country: the hierarchical rules and discipline, the general functioning of the barracks, the exercises, music, and songs, even the slang, were all powerful means of unifying the nation. Nonetheless, Japan was no different from other countries, and a certain number of its young men attempted to dodge the draft and military service. As of 1937, the number of requests to postpone active service in order to continue studying increased significantly, as did requests for deferment due to living overseas, particularly from areas like Okinawa with a strong tradition of migrating.⁷ Perceptions of the army varied within society, particularly since the violence and discrimination rife among its ranks were known to the population.

At the end of the 1930s the country had a population of around seventy million inhabitants; life expectancy was just under 50 years and the average age 26.5. In 1941, just before Japan went to war with the United States and Great Britain, there were 2.1 million soldiers in the army and 310,000 in the navy.⁸ Even taking into account all those exempt for medical or social reasons, the army was assured of having reserves: in fact, in one age category the conscription rate rose from 54 percent in 1941 to 90 percent in 1945.⁹ Until 1943 generous arrangements existed for the 120,000 or so students entering the country’s universities and normal schools each year, reflecting the government’s willingness to protect the elites. They could postpone joining the army until the age of twenty-five, enjoy a shortened military service, and, finally, be discharged directly into the territorial reserve. Students and, more generally, intellectuals thus participated little in the war effort against China between 1937 and 1941. This is an important point to make because it was first and foremost this group that wrote the history of the period.

THE NATIONAL IDEOLOGY

There were no national programmatic texts in Japan that, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf or the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, outlined the main features of the nation on its slippery slope toward mass violence. However, two texts were known to everyone—or almost everyone—and they were decisive in the process of unifying the nation. These were the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors (1882) and the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890). They were read and distributed to all soldiers in the case of the former, and to all schoolchildren for the latter, and the main points learned by heart. If there was a characteristic mentality in Japan during the first half of the twentieth century, whether on the battlefields or in everyday life, it is first and foremost in these texts that it must be sought. This mentality was devised by those in power to resist Western colonialism, drafted by people of letters familiar with the West, and disseminated to the masses via the new means of communication.

The Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors consisted of an initial section written in the first person¹⁰ and describing the nation as a living organism, with the emperor—the supreme military commander—its head, and the soldiers, its limbs. This was followed by five articles, often abbreviated to

•  soldiers should consider loyalty their essential duty;

•  soldiers should adhere to the codes of conduct—in other words, they should respect the hierarchy;

•  soldiers should esteem valor;

•  soldiers should attach the greatest importance to faithfulness and fulfilling their duty;

•  soldiers should make simplicity their aim.¹¹

These few lines were printed on a variety of media and even existed in song. They were memorized and recited by millions, over several generations, and their echo reached far beyond the barracks.¹²

The drafting of the Imperial Rescript on Education coincided with the promulgation of the 1889 Meiji Constitution and reflected a desire to nationalize the Confucian ethic.¹³ The text, written in the emperor’s name and in an archaic style, began with a reference to the myth of the unbroken imperial line and an affirmation of the nation’s historical unity, stating that our millions of subjects are united in loyalty and filial piety. A series of moral precepts followed, calling on the Japanese to pursue their studies, show concern for the common good, and serve the nation in times of crisis. Copies were carefully made and distributed to all schools, where they were housed in an alcove or small pavilion (hōanden) built especially for that purpose. The rescript would be displayed next to a portrait of the emperor in military dress with the empress beside him.

Prewar photographs clearly convey the solemn atmosphere that accompanied the reading of the rescript: students can be seen lined up in the school yard on the occasion of a public holiday, their heads bowed and bodies bent slightly forward; the school principal, along with one or two black-suited officials and sometimes a Shinto priest, is standing on the steps of the hōanden, its doors open for the occasion. The importance of the rescript continued to grow over the years, to such an extent that the fiftieth anniversary of its proclamation in 1940 was commemorated with a huge ceremony involving twelve thousand people lined up before the emperor. It thus became a national text capable of replacing what Christianity provided in strength and unity to the Western powers.¹⁴ What is more, it was distributed throughout the territories under Japanese rule very early on: in Taiwanese schools in 1897¹⁵ and Korean schools in 1912.

In the 1930s, teachers and students were required to bow when passing before the hōanden or alcove that held the rescript. Not only was this text read aloud on ceremonial occasions but it had to be memorized as well, if only in its abbreviated form of twelve commandments.¹⁶ Beginning in 1934, a school assembly was held one morning per week before classes began. In Toyama Prefecture the order of events was as follows:

1.  Bow

   2.  Sing the national anthem

   3.  Raise the flag

   4.  Bow to the flag

   5.  Bow in the direction of the Imperial Palace

   6.  Bow in the direction of Ise Shrine

   7.  Recite the main precepts of the Imperial Rescript on Education

   8.  Listen to a speech from the school principal

   9.  Sing the national anthem

10.  Bow¹⁷

The rescripts were a central element in the indoctrination of Japan’s youth. Because their contents were copied and recited millions of times, generation after generation, from the late nineteenth century through 1945, these two texts were the principal means by which the government bound the population to its national unification policies. Yet the image of the national bond presented in these texts was characterized by a complete disregard for—or even mention of—any institution other than the people and the imperial dynasty. There is not a single trace of the nobility, the government, or any other body constituting a separate category or an intermediary structure.¹⁸ In this arrangement the emperor was both the center and the perimeter of the nation. As the monarch, he represented its center, but as the incarnation of the mythical empire, he also represented its contour.

Contrary to what one might expect, these two texts were not laws, which would have required them to be countersigned by government ministers. They were presented as emanating directly from the sovereign. On the one hand there is the One, in other words the emperor, representing the country’s political center and mythical continuity while guaranteeing the infallibility of the rules of public morality; and on the other, there is the myriad of subjects, a complex, vast, and unstructured whole in which no groups or individuals can be distinguished. The nation (or national body, the kokutai) thus appears to be a joining of the emperor and his people, transformed by myth, history, and morality into an organic and interdependent whole, just as living beings and sometimes families are. And in fact, this is how the texts were explained to Hirohito during his adolescence. Having ascended to the throne, he liked to imagine his role as that of a brain controlling the rest of the body.¹⁹

The kokutai ideology was disseminated via countless civil and military celebrations. During the