As the nineteenth century came to a close the Japanese had adopted a new constitution, had introduced heavy industry to their country and were building a modern army. Now they looked at the powerful Western nations and learnt there was one more attribute they needed in order to be considered a powerful, sophisticated nation — colonies. Virtually all of Southeast Asia was under foreign domination — the British ruled Burma and Malaya, the Dutch the East Indies and the French today’s Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The lesson the Japanese took from this was clear; strong nations had the right — almost the obligation — to dominate weaker ones. As soon as they felt powerful enough the Japanese moved on their neighbours Korea and Taiwan (then called Formosa). In the hope of halting Japanese aggression on the Asian mainland, in 1894 the Chinese signed a treaty that gave Taiwan to Japan — an act that demonstrated to the Japanese how weak the once mighty empire of China, now torn apart by internal conflict, had become. Similarly, the Russian Empire discovered the power of the imperial armed forces when, in 1904, Japanese ships sank the Tsar’s fleet in a surprise attack at Port Arthur. Korea was also brought under Japanese control and formally made part of the Japanese ‘Empire’ in 1910. During the First World War the Japanese, obliged to fight on the British side as the result of another treaty, gained further colonies, this time at the expense of Germany — Kiaochao in China and the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall islands in the Pacific. Then, in 1915, with the West distracted by the war in Europe, the Japanese moved their army deeper into Manchuria, occupying key positions in order to ‘protect their interests’.The First World War ended with Japan’s position as the most modern, powerful, industrialized nation in Asia confirmed. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that during this period the Japanese treated European prisoners humanely — was Japan not effectively a European nation itself?
While their army triumphed over Japan’s neighbours abroad, at home in 192S the vote was given to every Japanese adult. On the surface, democracy seemed entrenched. Political parties argued with each other as Japanese women shopped for Western-style clothes and goods in the Ginza in Tokyo. In the early 1920s Crown Prince Hirohito went on a much-publicized visit to Britain and played golf with the Prince of Wales. It was as if all Japan had heeded the words of the popular slogan, first coined by an academic in 1885, ‘Abandon Asia — go for the West!’ But all this was only on the surface. The most significant legacy of the Meiji constitution remained etched into this new Japanese society — the most decidedly non-Western power of the monarch. And, most crucially of all, the emperor of Japan was, as a direct result of the Meiji restoration, now considered by his subjects to be more than a mere human being. A few Japanese had always acted as if their emperor was divine, but to the majority of Japanese pre-Meiji the emperor had been a remote figure, with no control over their lives. In the late nineteenth century all that had changed. In a conscious attempt by the monarchists to make the position of the emperor inviolable, Shinto (the ancient animistic religion of Japan) was made the state religion and it was decreed that the emperor, as a descendant of the sun-goddess, should be worshipped as a god. The importance of this conscious, political act cannot be over-estimated. The subsequent Japanese perception of their emperor was to condition virtually all their actions. ‘The emperor at that time was called a “living god”,’ says Kenichiro Oonuki, a Japanese schoolboy during the 1920s. ‘We were taught that the emperor was a god in the form of a human being. That was the education we received. When you think about it realistically, it is strange, and it’s not possible, but that’s what we were taught.’ For Shigeaki Kinjou, growing up on the remote island of Tokashiki nearly 300 miles southeast of Tokyo, the pervasive belief that the emperor was a living god led to one simple conclusion: ‘The Japanese people belonged to the emperor. We were his children.’
On Christmas Day 1926 the Emperor Meiji’s grandson, a new ‘living god’, ascended the Japanese throne. He was a shy, bespectacled twenty-five-year-old, who would become known to the world as Emperor Hirohito. His education had reflected the prevailing Japanese dichotomy. On the one hand he had received the traditional schooling, at the hands of senior military officers and other retainers, that befitted a future emperor; on the other he had developed a taste for modern science, particularly marine biology. He came to power in an era that had proved disastrous for monarchies around the world. Seven years earlier, as the First World War ended, the Kaiser had been forced from Germany, and only a few years before that the Tsar had been toppled in Russia. And now, throughout Europe in the aftermath of these revolutions, both intellectuals and labourers were becoming increasingly interested in the anti-religious, anti-monarchistic creed of communism.
In Japan, the years of strong leadership represented by the reign of the Emperor Meiji were far behind. The country had recently endured the rule of the Emperor Taisho, an ineffectual monarch who had been so incapable that Hirohito, his son, had acted as his regent since 1921. And in the wider world it appeared that the ruthless Darwinian ideals of the decades before the First World War, when all that mattered in the great land-grab race for colonies was who was stronger, were now out of fashion. Japanese delegates travelled to the Versailles and Washington conferences convened after the war and committed their country to a raft of treaties based on ‘modern’ principles aimed at the elimination of aggressive war and the peaceful solution of international problems through discussion and compromise in new institutions like the League of Nations.
Therefore as Hirohito came to the throne the paradox of his education and interests — half ancient tradition, half modern technology — was replicated in the country he ruled — half headlong search to embrace the values of the West, half the institutionalization of archaic beliefs. In such a situation the desire of the monarchists publicly to entrench the young emperor even more deeply in the minds of his subjects as a god is understandable. Now was not the time to show weakness and allow any discussion about the role of the monarchy, now was the time to embrace the values of the Meiji constitution — still less than forty years old — and confirm Hirohito as an ancient-style ruler of an ultra-modern society. This was the thinking behind the lengthy and elaborate series of ceremonies that marked Hirohito’s accession to the throne, beginning with a glittering procession from the modern capital, Tokyo, to the traditional home of the emperor and sacred ancient capital, Kyoto, in November 1928. And it was no accident that only days after the elaborate religious (and often secret) ceremonies to confirm his divine right to rule, the young emperor attended a huge military review in Tokyo — the largest in the history of Japan. As 35,000 troops saluted him, it must have been clear to Hirohito which Japanese institution kept him securely in power. And, simultaneously, he must have taken comfort in the knowledge that the Meiji constitution allowed the commanders of the armed forces to report directly to him.
The immediate years after Hirohito’s enthronement were unsettled in Japan. Just as in Germany, where the optimism of the Weimar Republic of the mid-1920s was crushed by the depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, so in Japan the ‘Western years’ following the end of the First World War were not to endure. Many of the reasons for the subsequent unrest were shared by both countries. First, both Germany and Japan suffered sudden economic depression. Japan had already entered an agricultural slump before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the USA into financial catastrophe. With their own problems at home the Americans were now less keen on purchasing imported luxuries like silk, and many Japanese farmers went bankrupt. ‘Here you couldn’t find work — unemployment was high,’ says Yoshio Tshuchiya who grew up in the north of Japan during the late 1920s. He remembers ‘seven or eight’ girls from his school being sold into prostitution by their parents. ‘If they had money they didn’t have to go,’ he says. ‘But because that family was poor, well, they went. I felt very sorry. Yes, I sympathized.’
Simultaneously with economic depression, Japan faced another problem that the Germans — especially the fledgling Nazi par
ty — would have understood: the search for Lebensraum (living space). Many prominent Japanese felt there was simply not enough room in their country — the majority of which is mountainous and scarcely habitable — for the growing number of people. ‘At the time the problem was our population was increasing,’ says Masatake Okumiya, who held a senior position in the Imperial Navy during the Second World War, ‘and our natural resources couldn’t sustain the increase. Ideally we hoped to receive cooperation from other countries to solve the problem, but back then the world was under the control of the West and a peaceful solution seemed impossible.’ Even more than in Germany, the perceived lack of living space dominated Japanese political discourse. The population density in Japan was one of the highest in the world. (Lack of space had for thousands of years conditioned Japanese culture. A society so crammed together is less likely to tolerate the disruptive individualist, and more emphasis has, out of geographical necessity, to be placed on the need for consensus and ‘harmony’ within the group.)
As Hirohito and the Japanese government wrestled with the problems of the depression and lack of living space, they acted to crush another threat that would have seemed familiar to the Nazi leadership — communism. In February 1928 left-wing parties in Japan gained eight seats in the national elections. Just over two weeks later the government sanctioned mass arrests of communists and Marxist sympathizers.
During the following year, there was more political instability when Hirohito demonstrated that he would be an aggressive player in the political arena by obtaining the resignation of prime minister Tanaka, a politician frequently criticized by the emperor. Here was further proof that Japan was demonstrably not a stable state ruled by a British-style constitutional monarch.
The extent of the growing fracture in the Japanese democratic process was emphasized still further when, in 1930, after Japan had signed the London Naval Treaty (which agreed comparative limits amongst the world’s major navies), the new prime minister, Hamaguchi, was shot by an opponent of the agreement at Tokyo railway station. The message could not have been clearer — stand out against the growing nationalist spirit, personified by obsequious allegiance to the emperor and an increasing distrust of all things Western, only at great personal peril.
A growing faction within the Imperial Army wanted to dissociate Japan from the ‘non-aggressive’ values of the post-First World War treaties and return to the pursuit of the kind of colonial expansion that had so characterized Japanese behaviour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The question these military figures (and many politicians on the right) posed was this: what had embracing the West’s new-found love of peaceful compromise brought Japan in the 1920s? The answer seemed clear: economic depression, the unsolved problem of shortage of living space, and the ‘infection’ of Japanese society with dangerous Western values like the emancipation of women, universal suffrage and communism. Japan’s difficulties, so the right-wing argument went, could only be solved by a combination of turning against the West and expansion through military action.
Throughout the summer of 1931 the belief had been growing within the Imperial Army that Japan’s problems could best be alleviated by taking complete control of Manchuria, a land rich in everything Japan was not — chiefly space and natural resources — just 700 miles northwest of Tokyo across the Sea of Japan. General Jiro Minami, minister of war, made a speech in August that all but demanded the army should act of its own volition and attack. But senior officers like Minami knew that formal authorization for such an action was impossible — it would be against all the treaties Japan had recently signed. An excuse for Japanese aggression would have to be manufactured — and it duly was. On 18 September Japanese army units blew up a section of the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway but claimed that the Chinese had done it. Acting on their own initiative units of the Japanese Kwantung army moved forward to engage nearby Chinese forces. Within days the invaders had captured Kirin, the local capital and made their ally, a local Chinese warlord, declare independence. By February 1932 the Japanese had conquered Manchuria and established a puppet state under Emperor Henry Puyi. He announced the establishment of the state of Manchukuo — new ‘living space’ for the Japanese.
The conquest of Manchuria was the crucial moment at which Japan’s real estrangement from the Western democracies began. It was a source of conflict that was not resolved until the end of the Second World War. As Japanese troops moved to create the new puppet state, Hirohito faced a moment of decision — should he accept or reject the army’s actions? After due consideration he did what, throughout his rule, he would do so often at moments of crisis — nothing. From the moment he first heard of the unilateral action of the Kwantung army in Manchuria to the eventual subjugation of the Manchurian people, Hirohito took no effective steps to bring his troops to account. On the one hand he was the supreme commander of the Imperial Army and could have demanded the aggression be halted, on the other he was conscious that the chief reason he remained in power was the support of the armed forces. After all, it had not been so long ago that a powerful military figure, the Shogun, had sidelined the emperor into effective impotence. It was a moment in history that called for courage and leadership from a Japanese emperor bolstered by the powers granted him by the Meiji constitution. But Hirohito failed the test and in the process failed his nation’s fledgling democracy.
Of course, there is another explanation besides weakness for Hirohito’s inaction during this period. It is very possible that he approved of what his army was doing. It was clear they were winning the war in Manchuria, and Japanese newspapers were full of jingoistic sentiment — an emotional reaction that caught the mood of the majority of the Japanese. Manchuria was for the Japanese what California had been to the Americans ninety years before — a land of potential riches, full of exploitable natural resources. ‘I wanted to go to Manchuria and earn money,’ says Yoshio Tsuchiya who enlisted in the Imperial Army in 1931. ‘I wanted to earn money and be able to build a house for my family. If I stayed on in Manchuria I thought I could send money back home.’
In October 1931 the political instability worsened when a group of army officers led by Colonel Hashimoto and Major Cho of the ultra-right-wing ’Cherry Blossom’ society attempted to overthrow the civilian government. They were arrested but, as Hirohito must have observed, punished as the army thought appropriate — the toughest sentence being imposed on Colonel Hashimoto, who was locked up for less than two weeks.2
In 1932 fighting erupted in Shanghai, China’s biggest trading city (a section of which was policed by the Japanese). Tensions caused by a Chinese boycott of Japanese products led to clashes in the streets. The Imperial High Command authorized two divisions to be sent to Shanghai, Chinese forces retreated from the Japanese-controlled section of the city and a treaty ending the aggressive action was signed in May that year. While the fighting had raged in Shanghai two leading Japanese businessmen, known to be sympathetic to the notion of compromise with the West were assassinated in Japan. Shortly afterwards, prime minister Inukai, thought by many not to have supported the army sufficiently, was murdered as well. The effect of the military aggression on the mainland of Asia had been further to polarize political life in Japan and to leave the nationalists firmly in control.
The League of Nations condemned Japan’s actions — and, predictably, the Japanese formally withdrew from the League in March 1933. Nothing illustrates better the contempt the Japanese leadership now had for the League than the fact that at the same moment the League was debating Japanese aggression in Manchukuo, the Imperial Army was advancing into the Chinese province of Jehol. The love affair between the Western democracies and Japan was over.
A propaganda film produced by the Imperial Army, Japan in the National Emergency, and shown in Japanese cinemas just months after the country withdrew from the League of Nations, demonstrates the prevailing nationalistic mood. ‘In the past we have just followed the Western trend without think
ing about it,’ runs the commentary. ‘As a result Japanese pride has faded away....Today we are lucky to see the revival of the Japanese spirit throughout the nation.’ In the film, corrupt Western values are personified by a young Japanese man who smokes a pipe and plays a mandolin, and by a Westernized young Japanese woman who smokes, dances and, in one of the film’s most provocative tableaux, demands that a middle-aged Japanese man apologise when he inadvertently steps on her toe in the street. (The middle-aged man wears a beard in the style of the Emperor Meiji and is clearly intended to personify the strong authoritarian values that the late emperor possessed.) The mandolin-playing youth who accompanies the woman tries to demonstrate how the apology should be made — Western-style — by dropping to his knees and using his scarf to wipe her shoes clean. This is too much for the middle-aged man who pushes the youth aside to announce dramatically: ‘Stupid! Listen to me! This is Japan!’ The propaganda may be clumsy, but the message is clear. Women should return to their traditional subservient role and in the process reject smoking in public, Western-style clothes and standing up for themselves, whilst the Japanese as a whole should glory in their own uniqueness as a people. Japan should take technological knowledge from the Western democracies but reject the social and political values that the makers of the technology espouse. (Significantly, this film is regarded as still sufficiently sensitive in content that the Japanese archive house to which we traced a copy wished to censor its use and would not give the BBC permission to show contentious sections — fortunately, another copy of the film was traced in the National Archives in Washington.)
Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II Page 2
