An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan (1931-1945)
AN
INTELLECTUAL
HISTORY
OF
WARTIME JAPAN
1931-1945
Japanese Studies
General Editor: Yoshio Sugimoto
Images of Japanese Society Ross E. Mouer and Yoshio Sugimoto
An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan. Sbunsuke Tsurumi
AN
INTELLECTUAL
HISTORY
OF
WARTIME JAPAN
1931-1945
Shunsuke Tsurumi
First published in 1986 by
Kegan Paul International
This edition first published in 2010 by
Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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©This translation KPI Limited, 1986
Transferred to Digital Printing 2010
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 10: 0-7103-0072-7 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0072-0 (hbk)
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
Contents
Preface
1 An Approach to Japan, 1931-1945
2 Concerning Tenkō
3 Insularity and National Isolation
4 National Structure
5 Greater Asia
6 Patterns of Immobility
7 The Korea Within Japan
8 Germs of Anti-Stalinism
9 The Philosophy of Glorious Self-destruction
10 Everyday Life during the War
11 As Victims of Atomic Bombs
12 The End of the War
13 Looking Back
References
Index
To Mrs Mariane Young and the family
Preface
By the middle of the nineteenth century Japan had been a closed country for more than two hundred years. Then a period of constant communication between Japan and the outside world suddenly began.
The Fifteen Years’ War was in effect the intensification of relations between already warring nations. During the struggle of 1931 to 1945, Japan was engaged in incessant international activity. At the same time, these years were marked by intellectual isolation from the outside world. Just as much that is characteristic of Japanese culture developed in the earlier isolation, there were also significant developments in the later isolation. This period should not be ignored as a period of aberration from the main course of Japanese culture.
This book is based on lectures given at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, from 1979 to 1980. I wish to thank the East Asia Centre, McGill University, and the Japan Foundation for providing me with the opportunity of giving these lectures. I am also grateful to Professors Paul Lin, Sam Neumoff, Ward Geddes, and Yuzo Ohta.
The lectures were given in English and were later published in Japan in Japanese by Iwanami Shoten in 1982. I have avoided the use of Japanese words in preparing the English edition. The help of Dr Douglas Lummis of Tsuda College and Ms Tamara Lewit of the University of Melbourne has been invaluable. I am also grateful to Mesdames Bronwyn Bardsley, Jill Gooch, and Barbara Matthews of La Trobe University for typing several versions of the manuscript.
This book is dedicated to Mrs Mariane H. Young and her family, who gave me shelter from 1939 to 1941 while I was a student in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
S.T.
18 February 1984
Chronological Table
A.D.
600-794
Nara Period
794-1392
Heian Period and Kamakura Shogunate
1392-1615
Muromachi and Azuchi-Monoyama Periods
1615-1868
Edo Period
1868-1912
Meiji Period
1912-
Taishō and Shōwa Periods
(Source: Japan: the Official Guide, 1961)
1 An Approach to Japan, 1931-1945
I will begin with a few words on my subject matter, the intellectual history of Japan between 1931 and 1945.
Firstly, the problem of language: most of the events I shall discuss took place in Japan, and most of the thoughts I shall analyse first found expression in the Japanese language. Thus my use here of the English language creates a methodological difficulty. I have a hypothesis that in the majority of cases English-speaking Japanese are unreliable. This hypothesis tends to discredit whatever I might say in English about Japan. In the years since Japan's defeat in 1945, the English language has so infiltrated Japanese that words of English origin now flood everyday life, so that, for example, in a newspaper advertisement we might come across an expression like ‘Chic na Dress no Fashion Show’, which contains only two words - ‘na’ and ‘no’ - of Japanese origin. To quote another instance, an American scholar, who had studied the Japanese language for years, came to Japan and found in a scholarly journal a phrase which he could not decipher even with the help of a dictionary. He appealed to a Japanese colleague of the same discipline, sociology, and the phrase turned out to be ‘hitto ando ran’ (hit and run). But it seems to me that my old hypothesis still preserves its validity, for the borrowing of European words does not necessarily mean the Europeanization of thought processes. By borrowing so many words in such a short time, the Japanese are in fact becoming incomprehensible even to themselves, because they have lost the means to grasp their own thought processes.
I shall begin with an account of what happened in Japan during the war years, and follow it by an attempt to understand what happened elsewhere and at other times.
Tenkō* is a term which was coined in Japan in 1920, and which came into general use in the 1930s. It is not a translation of a European word, but expressed a concept born and developed in the political milieu of the war years in Japan; thus the formation of this word is as ‘Japanese’ a phenomenon as one could find. Nevertheless, we may find in it clues to understand trends and events in other countries, and it may even help us understand what is happening in the world today.1 In this fashion, the description of a particular event in Japan may, I hope, lead to a broader perspective upon the world.
One method of approach to cultural and intellectual history is to examine a deviation in order to reveal the essential characteristics of a national culture. What took place in Japan from 1931 to 1945 should not merely be dismissed as the product of a whim or thoughtlessness.2 With careful study, the period reveals much of both positive and negative value. What is true of a personal history is also true of a nation's history; we grow only by examining our errors, and this requires not only that we learn not to repeat them, but also that we grasp the element of truth and value contained in them.
We may date the beginning of World War II from the start of the Sino-Japanese War
in 1931, the Fifteen Years’ War.3 When Japanese Army leaders began the fighting in Manchuria in 1931 and on this pretext established a puppet government in north-east China, they introduced to the world a new tactic, which was later to be used by Mussolini and Hitler. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War was the beginning of a new trend that influenced the whole world, and in this instance the local history of Japan had an unusual influence.
After the opening of Japan in the nineteenth century, a taste for things Japanese developed in the West. But among such noted commentators as Basil Hall Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn, and Bernard Leach, who were known primarily for their works about Japan, Leach - the potter - is the only one, to my knowledge, who did not later express disillusionment with his youthful affection for the country. When seen from the perspective of Korea, Japan reveals its horrible features. From the perspective of China, Japan reveals its shallowness. When a student from another land first studies Japan without either perspective, and then turns his eyes to Korea and China, he is bound to be disillusioned. Leach, however, from the first fostered an appreciation of Chinese and Korean culture along with that of Japan. He began with this perspective and therefore had no illusions to be destroyed. Of course, if one takes interest in Japan only as a form of exoticism, then one preserves the taste and viewpoint with which one was born and bred, unaltered by the contact with the ‘exotic’ foreign culture. One's view of Japanese culture will remain static and will undergo no disillusionment or modification. Exoticism preserves one's distance from another culture, but genuine cultural contact is a process of weaving the other culture into the fabric of one's own. If one wishes to make this kind of acquaintance with Japan, it is important to place Japanese culture from the very first within the perspective of the cultures of other Asian countries, especially Korea and China. It is also important to see the Japan of today within the perspective of the Japan of the war years. It is these perspectives which I will attempt to provide.
I wish to note at the outset the deficiencies of my approach. Problems exist with regard to both the data and their interpretation.
With regard to data, research into contemporary history seldom satisfies the requirement of exhaustive exploration of the materials concerned. On the other hand, the reason research into earlier periods of history meets the same requirement is that much of the materials that must have existed at the time have perished. The apparent completeness of medieval history is as dubious as contemporary history.
With regard to the interpretation of materials, some of my conclusions may be controversial. Interpretations of contemporary events vary according to prejudices arising from the interpreter's own life. We must simply accept diversity of opinion as inevitable. I will try to set out a broad and, for the moment, tentative outline of the facts considered relevant, noting where various interpretations are possible. All the possible information has not yet been collected, and some facts will never come to light. I will respect divergences with regard to both facts and interpretation and try to draw a picture of contemporary history, although my interpretations will sometimes be incomplete or based upon unavoidably uncertain, unproved, and insufficient data. I hope at least to raise questions to ponder.
____________
* The Japanese expression tenkō has no adequate English equivalent. The Kenkyūsha Japanese-English dictionary gives ‘a turn; a conversion; an about-face’. However, the standard Japanese dictionary, Kōjien, defines it as ‘(1) a change of standpoint or direction; (2) the abandonment, by a communist, socialist, etc., of his doctrine’. It is related, but not identical, to such expressions as conversion, apostasy, sell-out, turncoat, thought-reform, etc. In this book it will simply be left untranslated.
2 Concerning Tenkō
I will begin with a brief outline of the background to the phenomenon of tenkō.
The end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 marks the beginning of a new era. For a period of almost forty years after the new government was established in 1867, the Japanese people felt compelled to rise on a fictional ‘ladder of civilization’. The belief in this imaginary entity strongly influenced the thinking of the entire nation.
When the state policy of national isolation and the feudal rule of the Tokugawa Shogun were first brought to an end, there was forged a new spirit foreign to the value system according to which men were judged by their feudal status. Among those samurai who participated in the anti-Tokugawa movement, there developed the tacit agreement that once they had crossed the border of the fief to which they belonged they would treat one another as equals. These men, who cut themselves free of the bond of the fief, regarded one another as comrades. This comradeship spread from the independent samurai to those of their sympathizers still within the bounds of the fief.
In the course of the anti-Tokugawa movement many were caught and killed, and it was difficult to foresee who would survive to be the leaders of the new government. Those whom later historians have considered to be the founders of the movement, including* Yoshida Torajirō, Hashimoto Sanai, Sakamoto Ryōma, and Takasugi Shinsaku, had all been killed before the change in government took place. Of those who realized those founders’ vision in the establishment of a new government, the most important three, Saigō, Ōkubo, and Kido, died within ten years of the Restoration. Saigō committed suicide in a rebellion that failed; Ōkubo was assassinated; Kido died a manic depressive. Among the great leaders, Iwakura alone survived as a statesman of influence in the early years of Meiji, but, with this exception, we may say that all the great leaders had passed away by the end of the first decade of the Meiji Restoration. The comradeship that had been forged in the Restoration movement lingered on into the Meiji era, together with the acute realization that the best among them were dead.
This humble realization, coupled with the consciousness that they must work together to keep Japan from being colonized by the Western powers, kept the surviving leaders of Japan relatively industrious and austere. They were also set on learning the techniques of Western civilization. During the Russo-Japanese War these leaders accurately assessed the situation, and saw the need to bring about a quick end to the war, before Japan's resources and the sympathy of England and the United States were exhausted. They did not delude themselves that they had defeated Russia. It was for this reason that the leaders of the Army and the Navy allowed the cabinet to conclude peace quickly with only nominal gain to Japan, not because they were afraid of opposing the tide of public opinion roused by the war. The manner in which the Russo-Japanese War was conducted and brought to a close without a defeat was in fact a political and military feat unsurpassed by even Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolf Hitler. In all this we see a great contrast between the leadership of the Meiji era and the leadership of the succeeding era. All the traits which were characteristic of the political and military leadership during the Russo-Japanese War had vanished by the time of the Fifteen Years’ War.
After the Russo-Japanese War, the surviving leaders of Japan rewarded their own efforts by enjoying the belief that they were now abreast of the advanced powers of the West. They congratulated themselves by creating their own aristocracy of princes, marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons: a vice-minister of the Army was deemed fit to be a baron, a battalion leader a viscount. Although some of those who had worked very hard in the earlier years of the Meiji era lived on, yet, like Mr Hyde in the skin of Dr Jekyll, the inside did not match the exterior. Their efforts were mainly directed towards recounting stories of the Meiji Restoration so that their own roles increased as time went on, and towards raising their status within the aristocracy by this means.
After Japan's defeat in 1945, there followed a period of contrition. When this passed the public demanded the restoration of the old institutions, one by one. There were few institutions of the pre-war days which received no support from the public, but the post-Meiji aristocracy was one of that few, and I have not encountered a single editorial or letter to the editor printed in the last thirty-four years which demanded the re
storation of the aristocracy.
It is generally agreed that this status system, which was set up in the Meiji era, did not work. However, another status system, that based on the examination system, was set up in the Meiji era and persists to this day.4 Although so often challenged in recent student protests, it seems to receive the wide support of the people.
The examination system was originally introduced into Japan from China. In the Meiji era it was combined with the school system and for the first time became open to all classes of society. This is the basis for the widespread contemporary support for the examination and school systems.
Before the Meiji era primary education already existed on a very wide scale. At the beginning of the Meiji era about 40-45 per cent of the male population and 15 per cent of the female population are estimated to have been literate and to have had a practical knowledge of arithmetic. In the Tokugawa period education was linked to daily life and not based on selective examination.5
The Meiji Government did not build the new educational system upon the old one but devised a totally new system modelled on a European pattern. They placed Tokyo Imperial University at the top of an educational hierarchy, and this goal was accessible to all upon passing a series of selective examinations. This raised the aspirations of the general population and proved to be an efficient means of bringing Western civilization to Japan.
As Ronald Dore points out in The Diploma Disease (1976), from as early as the 1880s government officials in Japan were chosen on the basis of examination, although graduates of the Law Department of Tokyo Imperial University were exempted from this examination and were automatically guaranteed positions as higher officials. The system had an important influence on industry: by 1910, many private enterprises and newspapers had made it their practice to select new employees only from university graduates. In this respect Japan outstripped England. By 1955, 70 per cent of the businessmen of the top ranking enterprises listed in Who's Who in Japan were graduates of universities or technological institutes, whereas in England in 1958 only 21 per cent of private enterprise executives, and only 24 per cent of the 200 top-ranking executives of the major companies were tertiary graduates. Leadership in the bureaucracy, in industry, and in mass communications was in the hands of the university graduates, with the Tokyo Imperial University Law Department graduates as the elite of this elite, from the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The Fifteen Years’ War, the defeat, and the subsequent occupation of Japan brought about no change in this system.