Chapter Ten

In Pursuit of Security--War, Peace, Boom, and Bust

A fundamental goal of the Meiji state was summed up in the slogan "Fukoku-kyōhei" 富国強兵, which means "a wealthy country and a strong military." At the root of this slogan and the resulting government attempts to build up Japan's industrial and military capabilities was a sense of insecurity. The late nineteenth century was the peak of west European imperialism. By the turn of the twentieth century, the coastal provinces and large cities of China had become quasi-colonies of Russia, Germany, Britain, and France. Almost from the start of the Meiji period, Japan's leaders consistently sought security in an unstable and dangerous world. This quest for security continued throughout the entire Meiji period, and for several decades thereafter. In the fifty years from 1895 to 1945, Japan fought two wars with China, one with Russia (plus one brief war with the Society Union in 1945), one with Germany, and, from late 1942-1945, Japan was at war with Britain and the United States. This final conflict was especially devastating to Japan, causing it to turn away from war as an instrument of foreign policy. In the postwar peace, Japan's economy recovered to prewar levels after about ten years, and then continued to grow, often at a rapid pace. By the 1980s, Japan had become an economic superpower, and its economy enjoyed what many now call a "bubble" of prosperity. The bubble burst in the early 1990s, and, at the time of this writing (fall, 2002), Japan's economy is still sluggish. This chapter examines the some of the major events and trends in Japanese history during the twentieth century, with an emphasis on foreign relations. (Japanese-American relations as seen in #postcards of the late 19th and early 20th centuries#)

The Struggle Over Korea

By the 1880s, the Korean kingdom had become weak economically, militarily, and politically. Its government was ridden with factionalism, which, combined with Korea's strategic location within East Asia (#map#), made the kingdom ripe for meddling by its neighbors. Japan, Russia, and China faced off with each other over who would control Korea (*cartoon from the time*). The first round of fighting was between Japan and China. The two countries nearly went to war in 1885, but a diplomatic agreement patched together an uneasy peace that lasted almost a decade. In 1894, however, Japan and China clashed in full-scale war over Korea, which Japan winning fast and decisively.This war between Japan and China, 1894-1895, is generally known as the First Sino-Japanese War.

The world took notice of Japan's accomplishment, and many of her citizens basked in the glorious glow of victory. In practical terms, the Meiji government extracted a highly favorable peace treaty from China. Known as the *Treaty of Shimonoseki,* (#full text of the treaty#), its  major provisions were:

Most European pundits assumed that China would easily defeat Japan, and many of them were stunned by Japan's show of strength. Several days after the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, France, Germany, and Russia demanded that Japan give the Liaodong Peninsula back to China or face war with all three countries. Stunned and angered, by this *Triple Intervention,* Japan's leaders turned to Britain and the United States for support, but received none. Japan's leaders were reminded that in the arena of "international law," it is might that makes right. They saw no choice but to swallow the bitter pill of capitulation, but they also vowed that such a thing would never happen again. To compensate for the loss of Liaodong, Japan received an even larger indemnity from China. The money from this indemnity went to fund heavy industry, and Japan embarked on a massive military buildup. Japan also sought to bolster its position in the world by seeking a strong ally, which led to a formal alliance with Britain in 1902 (the #Anglo-Japanese Alliance# main points). The Triple Intervention and resulting Japanese military buildup, the alliance with Britain, and continuing competition with Russia over Korea eventually led to war with Russia in 1904.

Although it often gets lost among the details of battles and treaties, it is hard to underestimate the psychological impact of the Triple Intervention on Japan's adult population of the time. The acquisition of Liaodong was, for Japan, a key element in its quest for geo-political security, and, according to the generally accepted rules of the day, Japan had won Liaodong fair and square on the battlefield. From  Japan's standpoint, a list of "lessons" from this incident might include:

During the first several decades of the twentieth century, various events would reinforce these messages in the minds of Japan's leaders and general population. By the early 1930s, Japan formally abandoned cooperation with the world's major powers in favor of a strategy of relying for security on its own regional empire. This strategy would eventually embroil Japan in world war.

Almost as soon as the guns stopped firing in China, commentators on the world situation began to speculate that Japan and Russia would soon be drawn into conflict. After *Russia's 1898 leasing of the Laiodong Peninsula,* conflict seemed inevitable. All the while, Japan was putting every available resource into a massive military buildup. Diplomatically, as we have seen, Japan forged an #alliance with Britain.# The terms of this alliance specified that if either country were attacked by or went to war with a single other country, neither side would have any obligation to assist the other. But if a second country joined the conflict against either Japan or Britain, then Japan and Britain would come to each other's aid. This alliance left Japan sufficiently protected that it would be willing to fight Russia over #dominance of Korea# and NE China (Manchuria). Perhaps sensing the impending threat from Japan, Korea's royal family began to #look to Russia# for protection, and Russia was happy to oblige. Read this *brief summary* of the start of the war and its outcome. For a more detailed account, #click here.#

Although it ended with Japan having gained the upper hand, this war was not as one-sided as the previous one with China. Japan had the advantage of fighting near its home base, whereas Russian supplies and reinforcements depended on a single-track trans-Siberian railroad. As events unfolded, it became clear that Japan had another advantage. Japanese military commanders proved competent and well disciplined. The Russian general and admirals, however, were much less competent and were often at odds with each other about how best to proceed. For example, the Russian commander of Port Arthur (in the Laiodong Peninsula) surrendered to the Japanese army that had been besieging it for months. He did so, however, without consulting any other Russian commanders and with supplies and ammunition adequate for several more months of fighting. Up until that time, the Russian defenders had repulsed every Japanese assault.

Losses in the three major land battles of the war were heavy on both sides, although Japanese armies won these battles in the sense of causing the Russian armies to pull back. But there were no decisive land victories except for the fortuitous capture of Port Arthur. On sea, however, the situation was different. There, Japanese naval forces inflicted huge losses on the Russian Baltic fleet destroying nearly all of it with minimal damage to Japanese ships. Other elements of #Russia's navy suffered heavy losses# as well. (#technical significance of these naval battles#)  These Japanese victories, however, came at the price of financial exhaustion. By the time of the great naval victory in late May of 1905, Japan's financial, human, and material reserves had been stretched to maximum capacity. Russia had the material ability to continue the war, but it lacked the political will to do so, for the war was unpopular at home and the czar's regime was facing popular unrest on many fronts.

The U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, was delighted with the outcome of the war to that point. Indeed, at the time war broke out, he said that "Japan is fighting our war." Roosevelt and U.S. business interests *disliked Russian power in Manchuria,* and they were glad to see it reduced by Japan. But he preferred that Japan not get too powerful as well. So, at the point when both sides were at their weakest, Roosevelt offered his good offices for brokering a peace treaty. The two sides met at Portsmouth, NH, and by September, 1905 had worked out what came to be called the #Treaty of Portsmouth# (#full text of treaty#). The major provisions were:

Japan's ideal demands were to get all of Sakhalin and a cash indemnity, but the above provisions were the best that Japan's government realistically expected to get. The lack of an indemnity, however proved to be a significant problem for the Meiji government owing to popular anger. Unlike the First Sino-Japanese War, the war against Russia demanded much from the Japanese public, not only in terms of the human suffering connected directly with battle casualties, but also in terms of increased taxes and other war-related austerity measures. The general expectation of the public was that Japan would receive a large cash indemnity, which would at least partially compensate for the sacrifices they had made. They did not realize that Japan's capacity to wage war could not be stretched any further and that Russia could have resumed the fighting had Japanese demands at the treaty talks been too unyielding. Newspaper editorials and similar forms of public commentary criticized the treaty, often in strong, emotional terms.

On September 5, 1905, an angry crowd gathered in Tokyo's Hibiya Park to denounce the peace treaty. They were angry at Roosevelt and even more angry at Japan's leaders, whom they accused of selling out the nation's best interests. The gathering soon became a riot, during which mobs attacked public buildings, police stations, Christian churches, and a pro-government newspaper. The riot, now usually called the Hibiya Incendiary Incident, lasted all night and into the following day. At that point, the government called in police and soldiers to put down the riot by force. The result was 17 deaths, approximately 500 wounded, 2,000 arrested, 308 charged with a crime, and 87 convicted. Japan's public had become a force that could become politically active, and it demanded much from the government in the realm of foreign affairs. The riot marks a significant milestone in the process of making Japanese.  National consciousness, and the patriotism associated with it, had come to the point where at least some citizens vigorously denounced the government (i.e., the state) for acting contrary to the best interests of the nation. During the 1920s and 30s, some of these angry citizens turned to assassination and terrorism to make their point and to influence government policy.

Japan was now in a position to dominate Korea, and the only country that might be in a position to prevent a complete takeover was the United States. In July 1905, U.S. and Japanese officials reached a diplomatic agreement, the #Taft-Katsura Agreement,# in which the United States recognized Japan's dominance over Korea in return for Japan's recognition of U.S. dominance over the Philippines and U.S. annexation of Hawai'i. The main principle of Roosevelt's foreign policy in the pacific was to cooperate with Japan as the premier power in the region. This policy was firmly grounded in political and military realities. From the point of view of Korea, however, then and now, the Taft-Katsura Agreement was a case of the United States selling Korea down the river (#example#). The agreement is well known in today's Korea and still arouses anti-U.S. sentiment. With this agreement in place, Japan declared Korea a "protectorate" and installed its own government there, which was headed by leading statesman *Itō Hirobumi.* In November 1908, the  #Root-Takahira Agreement# further strengthened the understanding of the earlier Taft-Katsura Agreement (as well as dealing with other diplomatic tensions). In 1910, Japan's government decided to drop any pretense of Korean autonomy. It annexed Korea and abolished the monarchy. Korea was now part of Japan in terms of international law. Along with Taiwan, Korea remained a Japanese colony until 1945.

With both Korea and Taiwan firmly under Japan's control, it might seem that Japan could safely turn its attention away from expanding its colonial empire and focus on economic development. But the process of colonial expansion took on a life of its own. Since the 1870s, Japan's leaders had spoke often of the security threat posed by Korea. But now that Korea was in Japanese hands, north-eastern China (Manchuria) became the focus of Japanese security concerns. After all, the logic went, instability or a hostile government in that region could threaten Korea, which is now an integral part of the homeland. So, after 1910, the locus of Japanese foreign policy attention shifted to the region of China known as Manchuria (#map#).

The First World War and its Aftermath

Compared with the previous two wars, the First World War (WWI) was not a major military conflict for Japan. Citing the obligations of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, Japan declared war on Germany in August, 1914. Although stated in these terms, the main reason for Japan's entry into the war was the assumption that the allies would win and that Japan would be in a position to profit from the war as a whole, both of which turned out to be accurate. After declaring war, Japan immediately seized German territories in China (in and around the Shandong Peninsula) and in the Pacific (various island groups). These seizures took place with little or no fighting. For the rest of the war, Japan concentrated on providing munitions, uniforms, and other goods to the allies, all at a nice profit. Beyond sea patrols, there was no further military involvement on Japan's part. Taking advantage of the European powers' preoccupation in Europe, Japan pressed China hard for a long list of concessions called the *Twenty-One Demands.* Had China agreed to them, their full implementation would have made China virtually a protectorate of Japan. China at the time was in a state of political weakness and lacked the power to resist these Japanese demands. By a combination of stalling and press leaks to generate bad publicity for Japan, China's president was able to soften the worst of the demands, but he ultimately signed a treaty with Japan based on them. China's legislature did not ratify the treaty, however, and, in any case, China's political situation became so fragmented after 1916, that most of the demands were rendered moot. The Twenty-One Demands foreshadowed later Japanese encroachment on China, which would eventually lead to the Second Sino-Japanese War and to the Pacific War.

Thanks to the war, Japan went from being a debtor country to being a creditor country. Its reserves of gold increased, and the industrial sector of the economy enjoyed major growth. The average person in Japan, however, benefited little from these changes. Indeed, by the end of the war, inflation had gotten out of hand, and #high prices# led to urban unrest in the form of "rice riots" in large urban areas (the price of rice in 1918 was about four times what it had been when the war started). The government's response to the rice riots and similar unrest was to crack down hard on the one hand, but also to work to bring food prices down by, for example, importing more cheap rice from Korea. For the most part, Japan's leaders squandered the wartime windfall, and by about 1920, Japan's economy was in a state of severe recession.

Having supported the victorious side in WWI, Japan became one of the so-called "Big Five" at the Versailles Peace Conference (along with Italy, France, Britain, and the U.S.). In this capacity, Japan's delegates had one major goal in shaping the treaty: the inclusion a statement of the equality of peoples (often called the *"racial equality proposal"*). Japan's effort to win acceptance of the proposal was motivated by several political concerns. One was a clarification of its status as a "great power." Another was the desire to address increasing tensions between the U.S. and Japan over *Japanese immigration to the United States.* It should be stressed, that neither Japan nor any of the other countries whose representatives debated and struggled over the racial equality proposal were motivated by unselfish idealism. All parties sought to gain certain political outcomes.

The fate of the racial equality proposal and issues closely related to it is of considerable importance in understanding how Japan and the United States ended up at war in 1941. The proposal did not lead directly to war, but it did begin a process of increasing suspicion and mutual ill will, which, when left to run its course throughout the 1920s and 30s, greatly increased the likelihood of war. So let us examine the racial equality proposal in some detail. We look first at the specific events at the Paris peace conference and then at the larger picture of Japan's foreign relations from ca. 1905-1925.

One important point to clear up at the outset is that, despite the name "racial equality proposal" (or variations on this name) Japan's leaders did not in fact regard the proposal as a recognition of universal racial equality. Nor did the leaders of the United States and Britain. In today's world, it is more common to speak and think of racial equality as a universal principle, but such was not the case in 1919. For one thing, educated "common sense" at the time regarded human races as real biological entities, whose differences were simply matters of fact--not social conditioning. Also, despite the general view at the time of race as a biological given, in social and political discourse, the term "race" was (and is) used in a wide variety of different meanings. It was, in other words, a terribly slippery term, difficult to pin down with a precise meaning.

In Japan especially, the notion of "race" was quite complex, and the term usually carried with it several different meanings depending on context. We cannot possibly go into this subject here, but let us settle for a look at two major differences in the meaning of the term "race" when used in Japan (and, for that matter, in many other parts of the world). Naoko Shimazu concisely explains the major parameters as follows:

The domestic debate on racial equality in 1919 revealed that the Japanese had a complex view of race and racial equality. Although there were left-wing intellectuals who espoused universal racial equality, it can be said that the majority--both internationalists and pan-Asians--tended to ascribe to the view that the Japanese remained different and special from the rest of the Asian peoples. This social Darwinistic view of the Japanese race implied that the Japanese were not equal to the other coloured races, but superior. Elsewhere, I have described this categorical distinction of Japan's world view based on race as 'two-tiered', and I have argued that this 'two-tiered' conception of race allowed the Japanese, especially those of pan-Asian persuasion, to reconcile the seemingly contradictory position of, one the one hand, appealing to  the pan-Asian racial alliance with the Chinese and Koreans against the West, while on the other, placing Japan clearly in the position of leadership in Asia (Ajia no meishu). In other words, 'race' meant two things: the more *Gobineaurian* conceptualisation of the world according to three races of white, yellow, and black, which the Japanese utilised to pitch themselves together with China and Korea against the white race; and the more 'nation' based concept of differentiating the Japanese from the Chinese and Koreans within the yellow race, in order to stake out their special position of leadership. (Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 [London & New York: Routledge, 1998]. pp. 183-184.)

The term "pan-Asian" here refers to the views of Japanese like Okakura Tenshin, who advocated Japanese solidarity with the other peoples of Asia. Notice here that a Japanese might speak of both "the Asian race" and "the Japanese race" without any sense of dissonance or contradiction. "The Asian race" (= the "yellow" race--a term that many Japanese employed at the time) referred to the broad division of the human world into somewhere between three and five biological categories. "The Japanese race" referred more specifically to members of the Japanese nation, and was often used to contrast "we Japanese" and other peoples of Asia. Was "the Japanese race" a biological category in the minds of Japanese or others? It was definitely a social, cultural, and political category, but the extent to which people then (or now) regarded it has having biological reality would vary widely. It is precisely in this area where things become very complicated, though we need not worry about it here. As Shimazu points out:

It is possible to suggest, then, that the three principal powers locked into the racial equality debated at Paris [Britain, the U.S., and Japan] did not recognise the importance of racial equality as a universal principle. The Western world was still imbued with the nineteenth-century notion of race as a 'respectable scientific category', which regarded racial differences as biological, a 'matter of fact not of prejudice'. Not until the early 1930s did the scientists--mostly anthropologists and biologists--in Britain and the United States begin to discredit racialism as untenable scientifically, though as a social category it remains potent even today. (Shimazu, Race, p. 184.)

The racial equality proposal went through many changes in wording and some drafts did not even mention the word "race" once. The process of trying to get the proposal accepted was highly complex, owing in large part to ongoing political disputes within and between Japan, Britain (and the British Empire as a whole), and the United States. Let us start analyzing it first by surveying the major steps.

The racial equality proposal was to be part of the covenant of the League of Nations. The League was largely Woodrow Wilson's idea, and its creation was his highest priority at the peace conference. Japan was cool to the idea owing to suspicion that such an organization would simply perpetuate the current world order in which Japan's status as a "great power" was unclear or suspect. The racial equality proposal originated from the following instructions by Japan's government to its delegates:

Nevertheless, if a League of Nations is to be established, the Japanese Government cannot remain isolated outside the League and should there appear any tendency towards the establishment of a definite scheme [the League], the Delegates will so far as the circumstances allow make efforts to secure suitable guarantees against the disadvantages to Japan which would arise as aforesaid out of racial prejudice. (Quoted in Shimazu, Race, pp. 16-17.)

The initial drafts of the proposal were the result of translating these instructions into a specific position with respect to the League and Japan's willingness to support it. In plain English, Japan's proposal was: We support the League of Nations only if its founders are willing specifically to state that Japan will not be regarded as a lesser or inferior member owing to its being a non-white country. In the course of consulting with American and British delegates, the proposal underwent numerous changes in wording in an effort to find language acceptable to Japan, Britain, and the U.S. It was these three countries that participated actively in the debates over the proposal. Italy and France, for example, while supporting Japan's proposal, also had no great interest in it. Therefore, the fate of the proposal was largely in the hands of Japan, Britain, and the U.S.

The Japanese delegates assumed that Britain would react favorably to the proposal owing to its alliance with Japan and that the United States would need to be persuaded. The initial results, however, were the opposite. Wilson and his advisor, Colonel House, were generally sympathetic, but the British reaction was strongly opposed. Both the American and British delegates incorrectly assumed that Japan's proposal was primarily about immigration. One reason for the British opposition was that Australia and other Dominions were strongly opposed to Japanese immigration in their territories. Because the Japanese delegation was unable to find language agreeable to itself, the Americans, and the British, it decided to put forth its own proposal. Offered as an amendment to Article 21 on religious freedom, it reads:

The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality. (Quoted in Shimazu, Race, p. 20.)

Notice that the concern on the Japanese delegation's part, both in the actual proposed amendment here and in the instructions from the home government was that Japan would not be a second-class citizen in the League of Nations. Japan's delegates did see the acceptance of this principle as a step in the right direction in terms of allowing Japanese immigration, but immigration per se was not the main concern of the Japanese side.

This initial proposal was rejected by nearly all the other members of the commission drawing up the League's covenant. The strongest opposition came from Britain. Wilson himself seems to have cared little or nothing about the Japanese proposal personally. But he urgently wanted the League to be created and for the United States to be a member. So when Britain rejected Japan's proposal, Wilson was willing to add his voice to the opponents, for strong British support for the League was more important.

There were immense difficulties in communications, not only between the delegates themselves, but also between the various delegations and their home governments (especially important in Japan's case because the home government gave the delegates relatively little freedom to make decisions on the spot) and between delegates, home governments, and the general public in each country. In the United States, for example, word of Japan's racial equality proposal resulted in instant and severe criticism of the very idea of the League. In Japan, Wilson's opposition received much attention in the press, even though it was mainly British opposition that caused the proposal's initial rejection. Public opinion in both Japan and the United States was swayed by emotional sentiments and an inaccurate view of what was actually going on in Paris, but the bottom-line result was that the public in each place tended to take the most negative possible interpretation of the other's actions and motives.

In the meantime, Japan's government instructed its delegates to keep trying to get some version of the proposal approved, even though at least some of its delegation members were aware that the proposal was causing a wide variety of unintended problems. The Japanese delegation watered the new version down greatly. First, instead of proposing it as a specific article or part of an article, they proposed it as part of the Preamble. Second, its wording was greatly simplified and generalized to the following: "By the endorsement of the principle of equality of all nationals of States members of the League." Notice, among other things, the absence of the word "racial" or anything resembling it. By watering the statement down to almost nothing and then launching a vigorous promotional campaign, Japan's delegates were able to convince a majority of the commission members to support the proposal. Australia, however, would not agree to it even though the majority of the British Dominions did. This staunch Australian opposition resulted in opposition to Japan's proposal by the British Empire delegation as a whole.

During the final meeting of the League of Nations Commission, Japan's delegations proposed that the Preamble be amended to include " . . . by the endorsement of the principle of equality of nations and just treatment of their nationals . . . " As expected, the British Empire spokesman voiced opposition. By contrast,  nearly all the other committee members, including Italy, France, China, Greece, and Czechoslovakia, expressed agreement with such an obviously just and innocuously general principle. When the vote came, eleven of the seventeen member countries voted in favor of the Japanese proposal, and the others abstained. But it did not go through. Although all other matters at the conference had been decided by a majority vote, Wilson, as chair of the commission, had the authority to require a unanimous vote, and he invoked it here. He did not personally say that he opposed Japan's proposal, but, alluding to British Empire objections, Wilson said that such a trivial change in wording should not be allowed to interfere with the larger purpose of establishing the League. In other words, Wilson was worried about antagonizing diplomatic and public opinion in the British Empire, which might result in withdrawal of British support for the League. Ironically, of course, it was Wilson's own country that ultimately refused to join the League. 

Wilson had no desire to antagonize Japanese opinion, but when faced with the choice of antagonizing Britain or Japan over this matter, Japan was the more expendable of the two. In fact, Wilson ended up irritating the British delegation as well by his refusal to take a definitive stand on the issue of Japan's proposal and instead placing the onus for its rejection on the British Empire delegation. Within that delegation, its head, Lord Robert Cecil essentially had to choose between Britain's ally Japan and British Empire member Australia over this issue. Although Cecil tried to persuade Australia's premier to drop his opposition, he would not. The Australian position was that no matter how innocuous the new wording might be, Japan's proposal had the potential to exert pressure on Australia to abandon its "white Australia" policy and allow Japanese immigration. How such a vaguely-worded, general statement could possibly have caused even the slightest pressure on Australia's immigration policy is hard to see. In essence, the Australian position was that Japan's seemingly innocuous proposal was really something quite different than it appeared to be. 

In the end, Japan's proposed wording was never incorporated into the Preamble of the covenant. Japan still signed the treaty, however, in large part because it received major territorial concessions in China (much to China's dismay, and without any input from, China--so much for national "self determination," one of the lofty buzzwords in Wilson's rhetoric). Japan's defeat over the so-called racial equality clause nevertheless had major consequences, including:

At this point, let us examine two of the major Japanese viewpoints on Japan's proper role in the world as of about 1920. Although rarely stated bluntly in the 1920s, there was the notion that Japan should abandon Asia and embrace the West.  This view of Japan as part of "the West," not Asia, was part of an older way of thinking (sometimes called "universalism") that was prominent in Japan during the 1880s. By the 1920s, this view typically expressed itself in assertions about the need for Japan to "cooperate" with the Western imperialist powers, especially Britain and the United States in pursuing foreign affairs. In opposition to the stand-with-the-West position was pan-Asianism. The pan-Asianist view saw Japan as standing up for Asia against the "White Peril" of Western imperialism. Not always stated, but always implied, was that Japan would serve as the leader of Asia (as opposed to being an equal partner).

Both views tended to agree that Japan had a special relationship with the other countries of East Asia. They differed in their methods, with one side stating the practical need for cooperation with the Western countries and for playing by the rules those countries had established. The other side called for a rejection of those rules and for Japan to stop cooperating with countries whose interests were fundamentally opposed to those of Japan. Here is how Peter Duus describes the former view, which he calls multi-lateralism:

While there was a consensus that Japan should occupy a dominant position in East Asia, the Japanese political elite was divided by disagreements on the question of how to achieve and maintain Japanese leadership. On one side were the "multi-lateralists" who thought Japan ought to cooperate with the other imperialist powers rather than go it alone. Ready to accept the rules of the imperialist game already laid down by Westerners, they supported the "Open Door" principles that no single power should upset the status quo in China by grabbing territory or establishing exclusive spheres of economic influence. In dealing with China, the multi-lateralists were willing to cooperate with the Western powers, presenting a united front in defense of common interests, such as the maintenance of the "unequal treaty" system. Confident of Japan's ability to hold its own in international politics, but aware of the country's financial and technological dependence on the West, multi-lateralists favored the diplomatic caution that had characterized early Meiji foreign policy. (Peter Duus, Modern Japan, Second Edition [New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,1998], p. 203.)

Let us use Duus' term, "multi-lateralists," to describe this cooperative approach to attaining and maintaining a dominant position for Japan in East Asia. In contrast to the multi-lateralist approach:

Others called for a more independent policy in Asia. Instead of constantly following the Westerners' diplomatic lead in China and elsewhere, they argued, Japan should pursue its own special interests even at the risk of upsetting the other powers. Patriotic societies like the Genyōsha and the Amur River Society (Kokuryūkai) expressed this view most stridently in public, but in private so did army leaders who wanted to expand their territorial and military advantage on the continent, especially in Korea and Manchuria. The army high command, for example, urged the annexation of Korea in 1910 most strongly, and it backed negotiations to expand Japanese economic rights in Manchuria. The tug of war between this approach to East Asia and the multi-lateralist approach was to bedevil foreign policy decision-making until 1931. (Duus, Modern Japan, p. 204.)

Although Duus does not provide a particular name for this approach, Shimazu's "pan-Asianists" works well, because advocates of an independent foreign policy for Japan typically saw Japan first and foremost as a part of Asia and, at least rhetorically, advocated the unity of Asia against the "White Peril" (a term they used) of Western imperialism.

Rejection of the racial equality proposal at the Paris conference was a severe, but not fatal, blow to the multi-lateralist approach to foreign relations. The rejection led to a disillusionment with the West on the part of nearly all Japanese, even those who still insisted that the multi-lateralist approach would better serve Japan's interests in the world arena. Indeed, Japan's mainstream government officials continued to hold to a multi-laterialist approach after 1919, but in so doing, they generated increasing criticism and opposition from a pan-Asianist leaning public and advocates of pan-Asianism in the armed forces and in civilian pressure groups. As Shimazu explains:

It was no coincidence that the end of the First World War saw a resurgence of pan-Asianism, and in particular the rise of the radical nationalist wing of pan-Asian thinking. For instance, it was in the immediate aftermath of the war that the two iconoclastic pan-Asian thinkers Kita Ikki (1883-1937) and Okawa Shūmei (1886-1957), came into national prominence. Okawa saw the racial significance of the war as a struggle between the white and yellow races; in fact, he was a committee member of a minor pressure group, Zen ajia kai (All Asia Society), which fought for the adoption of the racial equality proposal in 1919. For Okawa, the advocation of ajia fukkō [revival of Asia] from white domination became one of the most important objectives of his brand of pan-Asianism. He became especially anti-West after the 1924 Immigration Act, and in 1925 preached in his book Asia, Europe, and Japan that Japan, as leader of Asia, and the United States, as leader of the West, were bound to clash in the future. Indeed, one of the objectives of his pan-Asian organisation, Gyōchisha, was the liberation of coloured peoples in order for them to belong to a new, morally based international system. (Shimazu, Race.)

Okawa, although an important figure, was never in the mainstream of Japanese politics. Konoe Fumimaro, by contrast, was the ultimate insider. He was a high-ranking aristocrat who twice served as prime minister at crucial periods (6/1937-1/1939 and 7/1940-10/1941). Among other things, he presided over the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the creation of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the signing of a formal alliance between Japan and Germany. Konoe was a young man in 1919, and he attended the Paris conference as the private secretary of the leader of the Japanese delegation. According to Shimazu:

One interesting barometer of pan-Asian thinking on the question of racial equality can be traced through Konoe Fumimaro, who attended the Paris Peace Conference as Saionji's private secretary and who became a key figure in Japanese politics in the 1930s. It must be remembered that Konoe was disgruntled by the treatment meted out to Japan by the West even before attending the peace conference as witnessed in his article 'Eibei hon'i no heiwashugi o haisu' (Abolish the Anglo-Saxon Based Peace). After the peace conference, Konoe continued to feel that the international order in the post-1919 world, which was largely an Anglo-Saxon invention, was not based on fairness and justice. Konoe saw the world in terms of 'haves' and 'have-nots', the former representing powers which favored the status quo, namely Britain and the United States, and the latter including Japan, wanting to break with the status quo. In fact, it seems that the failure of the peace conference to establish the basis for a true peace plagued Konoe for the rest of his life. He tended to see the West's rejection of the racial equality proposal as symptomatic of the Western dictated definition of status quo which perpetuated unfairness in the world. (Shimazu, Race.)

Many survey histories of Japan tend to rush through the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference with only brief mention. But it should be obvious from the paragraphs above that these events were of the utmost importance as a turning point. Specifically, after 1919 we find a strong, and growing distrust of "the West" in Japan, accompanied by the belief that the world order hitherto created by the powerful Western countries was fundamentally unjust and flawed. To understand the unfolding of subsequent events in the 1930s and 40s, it is essential to understand this viewpoint and to keep in mind that many Japanese believed it whole-heartedly and with good reason.

Before ending this section, there are two other important events that need brief discussion: the Washington Conference of 1921-1922 and the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924.

The early 1920s was a time or relative optimism and idealism among many world leaders who thought, or at least hoped, that the horrors of the recently past Great War (WWI) would lead to arms reduction and sincere efforts to resolve international conflicts through means other than warfare. The #Washington Conference,# which lasted from November 1921 to February 1922 was one manifestation of this optimism. The main purpose of the conference was to discuss and agree upon naval arms limitations and to come to a broad mutual understanding regarding affairs in East Asia.

The conference resulted in three formal agreements. The Four Power Pact was an agreement between the U.S., Britain, Japan, and France to respect each other's "rights" in East Asia and for mutual consultations in the event of a crisis. This pact replaced the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Five additional European countries joined these four in the signing of a Nine Power Pact, which, among other things called for the support of Chinese territorial integrity and an "open door" policy in China. The major result of the conference was the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty of 1922. It called for various restrictions in naval forces, the most important of which was the maintenance of a 5:5:3 ratio of capital ships for the U.S., Britain, and Japan. The general idea here was that this ratio would give Japan naval superiority in the East Asian region, but the Japanese delegation had instead pushed for a 10:10:7 ratio. Although it ended up accepting the 5:5:3 ratio, the delegation was bitterly divided and the treaty remained controversial in Japan.

The results of this conference tended to confirm the fears of Japan's pan-Asianists. The rejection of the racial equality proposal felt to many Japanese like a betrayal by their ally Britain, and the replacement of the Anglo-Japanese alliance with the much weaker Four Power Pact confirmed the view that Britain had rejected Japan as an equal partner and had joined with the other Western nations to prevent Japan from playing a major role in world affairs. The capital ships ratio angered many of Japan's military leaders, who, among other things, blamed the allegedly "weak-kneed" civilian negotiators for giving in to the 5:5:3 ratio.

In looking at the deteriorating relations between Japan and the United States, the Immigration Act of 1924 was arguably the single most important blow to the multi-nationalists. This act essentially cut off all #Japanese immigration to the United States# (strictly speaking, it established a quota of 100 for Japan each year, which was so small a number as to be insignificant). This bill was the result of a vigorous campaign by politicians from the west coast states to convince the U.S. congress that Japanese immigration was a major threat to the social and moral fabric of the United States. The rhetoric used in this campaign was as extreme as one could imagine in its vilification of "the Japanese race." Already, a decade earlier, California passed legislation preventing Japanese immigrants from owning land in the state (the Alien Land Laws of 1913, strengthened by later legislation). All of these things were widely reported in Japan, with the ban of 1924 serving as the culmination of over a decade of strong anti-Japanese activities ands rhetoric in the U.S.

The Japanese who immigrated to the United States were almost always the poorest of the poor, and many of them did quite well in their new homes even despite the various official and unofficial hindrances they encountered. A major reason for the growing anger of many Californians toward these immigrants was the very fact that they were often highly successful at farming or in operating small businesses. In any case, Japan's government derived no major benefit from these immigrants. Indeed, they rarely returned to Japan and their children born in the United States became U.S. citizens. The anger in Japan was not about the loss of any concrete benefits. Instead, Japan's government and general population regarded the U.S. action as an insult to Japan of the worst sort. It essentially said "your people are not worthy to live in our country owing to their corrupting influence." From the time of this Immigration Act onward, whenever a Japanese politician or official advocated a multi-lateralist position, he could be fairly certain that one or more opponents would mention up the U.S. ban on immigration as evidence of the futility of such an approach.

So, in 1924, the multi-lateralist position suffered such a major blow to its credibility that it was probably doomed. It continued, however, as the official approach to foreign relations throughout the remainder of the 1920s, mainly owing to institutional momentum. The Foreign Ministry in particular was a stronghold of multi-lateralism, as were the major civilian politicians. These multi-lateralists did not suddenly fade from the scene. But as they tried to continue pursuing cooperative policies, public anger and the anger of many in the armed services resulted in assassinations, terrorism, and, as we will see in the next chapter, a sharp rise in the influence of the military in Japan's government throughout the 1930s.

Slide show: *Military Glory Manifested in Children's Board Games:*

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Slide Show: #The Modern Japanese Medicine Show:#

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Domestic Culture Wars: High Collars Versus Primitive Manliness

The multi-lateralist versus pan-Asianist dichotomy in foreign relations had an approximate counterpart in the realm of domestic culture: "high-collar" men (haikara: ハイカラ or, more pejoratively, 灰殻) versus "primitive" men (bankara: 蛮カラ or 蛮殻, literally, "primitive collar"). Although this dichotomy was primarily about proper forms of Japanese manliness, it also intersected debates about proper womanly behavior (to be discussed at greater length in the next chapter) in early twentieth-century Japan. Ultimately, the high-collar versus primitive dichotomy was rooted in differing notions of what it meant to be Japanese, in other words, in difference conceptions of the nation. The majority of the material in this section, as well as the idea for it, come from an excellent article by Jason G. Karlin, "The Gender of Nationalism: Competing Masculinities in Meiji Japan" (Journal of Japanese Studies, 28:1 [Winter, 2002]: 41-77). Our concern here will be mainly with the situation during the late Meiji period and the Taishō period, roughly, the three decades from 1895-1925.

In the early part of the Meiji period, there was a great deal of social commentary and debate regarding modes of dress and other aspects of material culture. This debate over culture was inextricably tied to ideas about Japan's proper place in the world and the extend to which Japan and its people should adopt foreign culture. The dispute over high-collar men versus primitive manliness a generation later was a continuation of much the same kind of cultural debate, albeit in the midst of different circumstances. Such debates often became emotionally intense, and, for that reason, might accurately be called "culture wars."

Ishikawa Yasujirō, a journalist, coined the term "high collar" in 1898. Karlin describes this coinage and Ishikawa's conception of the term as follows:

In an article appearing in the Mainichi shinbun, Ishikawa wrote, "those pretentious fellows who go overseas return having learned more about the ways to wear neckties and high collars than they have about their area of study. They are creatures of neckties and high collars." Thereafter, Ishikawa settled on the term high-collar as an appropriate sobriquet for mocking the excessive Westernized tastes of government leaders. . . . Ishikawa's use of the term high-collar encapsulated the sense that civilization had been dragged down to the level of materiality. Those who returned from the West had been remade by the objects of consumer society. ("Gender of Nationalism," pp. 61-62.)

Sampling the turn-of-the-century social discourse in Japan, Karlin notes the following typical attributes of the high-collar man. In this description, the image of Heian-period aristocrats may come to mind:

As he was depicted in magazines and newspapers, the high-collar gentleman (haikara shinshi) was distinguished by the wearing of high-collared shirts, neatly parted hair, and gold-framed spectacles. He was noted for his fastidious concern with proper appearance, affected manner, and worship of Western culture. Some even wore facial powder and carried handkerchiefs scented with perfume, prompting one critic to complain that  "some men toil over their makeup more than women." One critic humorously noted the following as some of the qualifications necessary to be judged "high-collar":

Caricatures lampooned high-collar gentlemen by depicting them with *exaggerated high collars* that prevented them from turning their heads or even looking down. Miyake Setsurei likened high-collar gentlemen to actors, geisha, and prostitutes for their superficial concern with fashion and appearance. ("Gender of Nationalism," p. 63.)

Such caricatures reflect serious social anxieties of the time. On the one hand is the worry that modern life has become materialistic and therefore empty in the sense of lacking genuine meaning or substance. More specifically, the caricatures of the high-collar gentlemen reflect unease over Japanese cultural identity. Was Japan simply a second-rate imitator of the countries of the Western world? Notice items such as " . . . citing the case in foreign countries" or "forget how to speak Japanese" in the list above. Critics of high-collar tendencies often worried about the loss of distinctive Japanese cultural identity. Notice also the references to wives, geisha, and makeup. The critics of high-collar gentlemen were also uneasy about masculinity, possibly theirs, and/or possibly that of Japan as a whole. In their eyes, high-collar gentlemen were excessively feminine in behavior and attitude. Furthermore, too many such people in society might cause the nation to decline. Recall from the previous sections that by the early twentieth century there was a strong tendency for Japanese to identify the glories of their country with successful military conquest.

To what extent did these high-collar gentlemen even exist? Certainly there were only a small number who completely fit the absurd caricatures of the popular media. On the other hand, the early twentieth century was a time when, in the cities at least, a middle socio-economic class began to emerge. Many of these middle class Japanese did tend to dress and act fashionably, though rarely to the extreme degree suggested by social critics. But the exact number of high-collar gentlemen is of little importance compared with the idea of the high-collar gentleman and the notion that such people were increasing in number and influence and thus posed at least some degree of a threat to Japan's continued success and progress.

At the core of the idea of the high-collar man was the assumption that he was selfish and lacking in discipline. High-collar men were imagined to indulge themselves in all manner of ways, perhaps most notably in the realm of sex. Interestingly, these men, while often depicted as effeminate, were always portrayed as heterosexual. Here, for example, is Karlin's description of the cartoon character Hai-kara Kidorō (Mr. Pretentious High-Collar):

Kidorō was a caricature of the high-collar gentleman who fancied fine clothes, carried a walking stick, and affected Western manners and sophistication. . . . In numerous episodes, Kidorō finds himself in all sorts of trouble as a result of his clumsy, pretentious manner. Often the cause of his trouble stems from his amorous pursuit of young women. For example, Kidorō gets caught in compromising trysts, meets with unfortunate accidents while leering at women, and mistakes the father of his sweetheart for a competing suitor. [Kidorō was] a philanderer whose loose morals and vanity beget all manner of hardship. Though the high-collar gentleman is represented as and overcivilized and effeminate man whose primping and preening suggest gender ambiguity, his sexuality is decidedly heterosexual. ("Gender of Nationalism," p. 66.)

As the term high-collar became common in popular discourse during the first decade of the twentieth century, it sometimes came to be applied to women as well as men. There were "high-collar schoolgirls," for example, characterized by fashionable dress and lifestyles and foreign tastes in reading material and fashion. These "high-collar" women closely resembled a type of women called "moga" (derived from the English "modern gal" or "modern girl" and whose counterpart was the "moba" or "modern boy"). Like "high-collar" men and women, *moga* were often depicted as trendy, superficial, obsessed with amorous pursuits, and addicted to foreign culture.

During the 1920s, an emotional issue in Japanese politics was the terrible plight of farmers in certain regions of the country. Politicians used rural distress to garner votes and to attack opponents, though the central government never got around actually to doing anything to help impoverished farmers. When politicians made an issue of the suffering farmers, they typically contrasted these "real" Japanese with their urban counterparts. As you might expect, the rhetorical image of the well-to-do urbanites was unflattering. According to this rhetoric, unlike the farmers, upscale city folk were addicted to luxury, selfish, decadent, superficial, corrupt, and so forth. Why? Western-style foreign influence was the major reason, and, indeed, these same characteristics (selfishness, etc.) were typically applied to Western foreigners as well. Upscale, urban life, in other words, posed a severe danger of ruining the Japanese spirit. Most commonly cited for criticism were the stylish mobo ("modern boy") and #moga# ("modern gal/girl").

The terms mobo and moga referred to fashion-conscious, trend-setting urbanites of the mid 1920s to the early 1930s and were not necessarily derogatory. Because the "modernity" of these people was inevitably associated with foreign influence, however, their very presence was, to some extent, fraught with political tension. Furthermore, by the end of the 1920s, it had become common to #associate mobo and moga with Marxism,# an ideology to which the state had become increasingly hostile. Owing to gender-related biases, the image of the fun-loving, westernized, (potentially) sexually-powerful, *moga* was particularly *threatening* to social conservatives--much more so than the mobo, who was more likely to be under control of the institutions of the military and the workplace. Mobo were frequently the object of ridicule in *cartoons,* but these relatively humorous portrayals belie a serious social and political reaction against perceived excesses of modernity that was building throughout the 1920s. The discourse on high-collar men dovetailed with that of the moga and mobo. In general, the term "high-collar" was more common during the period from 1900 to about 1920, and, during the twenties, moga and mobo began to replace "high collar." But the rhetorical functions of these two terms (moga/mobo versus high-collar) were nearly identical.

In its normal usage, applied to men, the term high-collar gradually lost its close association with a style of shirt collar and "migrated to become a marker of novelty, fashion, and consumption in late Meiji discourse. In short, it came to exemplify the ephemeral and transitory qualities of modern culture." ("Gender of Nationalism," p. 67.) The late Meiji high-collar appearance was in large part the result of an expanding consumer culture. Conversely, the cultivation of such an appearance was an outward sign to the world of economic success and social status. This phenomenon bothered many Japanese at the time.

The critics of high-collar lifestyles developed an oppositional notion: primitiveness (bankara). Karlin describes the origins and idea of primitive masculinity as follows:

The idea of bankara which suggested roughness and vulgarity contrasted with the cultivation and refinement of high-collar tastes. The bankara man was an anticonsumer who rejected materiality and the lures of Western culture. The term bankara carried associations with stoic sincerity and a conservative resistance to novelty expressed through an unadorned and rugged appearance. The ban in bankara was the result of substituting the "high" in high-collar with the character that means "savage" or "barbarous" [蛮]. Where high-collar suggested civilization, bankara expressed a return to barbarism and a celebration of male primitivism. Just as the high-collared shirt was the defining emblem of the high-collar gentleman, the bankara man was identified by his tucked up sleeves, exposed forearms, and dark complexion. In 1911 [the Tōkyō Puck] dedicated an entire issue to extolling the virtue of bankara masculinity while rejecting the effeminate high-collar gentleman . . . . [The Tōkyō Puck's] image of the muscular, *bare-armed fist striking the high-collar gentleman* expressed this masculinist rejection of the feminized Japanese male. ("Gender of Nationalism," p. 68.)

The turn of the twentieth century was a time when there was much discussion throughout the world of social decay. In western Europe, the United States, China, and Japan, various theories circulated in academic and popular discourse regarding "national decay," "social decay," "racial degeneration," "feeble mindedness," and so forth. Much of this discussion had a quasi-biological slant to it. In Japan, at the end of the Meiji period, there was a growing sense among young people (here meaning late teens and early 20s in age) that politicians and other social elites were hopelessly corrupt. Conversely, many of these elites tended to blame social ills on lazy and indulgent youth. That different generations would tend to view each other critically is hardly new or surprising. What is significant in the generational gap in this time and place is that it helped generate strong support for primitivism (a rejection of modern civilization or at least certain aspects of it) among both older Japanese and younger Japanese. Youth tended to extol primitivism in the name of rejecting the corruption of the older generation, and the rhetoric of social elites began increasingly to see primitivism as a way to re-make the allegedly weak and ineffective youth of the day into useful Japanese, "real men," and so forth. In the words of the publisher of an adventure magazine for boys, the purpose of his publication was "to tell exciting stories from throughout the world that would not only inspire a spirit of daring, courage and sincerity, but eliminate all those runts who are weak, corrupt, and decadent." Calling Western material culture a "false civilization," he argued that "we must resist the ills of this false civilization that is rotting Japan." (Quoted in "Gender of Nationalism," pp. 72, 73.)

Bear in mind that during the time of the discourse on high-collar lifestyles versus primitivism Japan's overseas empire was expanding. The major acquisitions were Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1905 or 1910 (one can make a case for either date as the time when Korea came under Japanese control). After 1910, Japanese interest and activity in Manchuria (NE China) increased greatly, and it would eventually lead, in 1931, to a military takeover of this region. In this context, foreign adventurism became a major outlet through which Japanese men imagined themselves to participate in primitive manliness. Karlin explains as follows:

[M]any Japanese youths came to admire and worship a new idealized image of the adventurous Japanese male represented by military officers and continental adventurers (tairiku rōnin) who promoted Japanese expansion on the Asian continent. Others became devotees to the cause of Asian revolution who traveled to China to overthrow the Manchu dynasty and to avert Western domination. A revival of romanticism toward Asia centered on tales of horseback bandits (bazoku) of the late [Qing] who protected the peasants living among the great plains of northeast China also appealed to Japanese youths enamored of the vestiges of archaic freedom. . . . Encouraged by these stories, would-be Japanese adventurers . . . journeyed to the continent to define their manhood through imperialistic labors and idealistic dreams. ("Gender of Nationalism," pp. 70-71.)

Adventure magazines aimed at boys were a major source of such tales and images of primitive manliness. The publisher of one of the major adventure magazines, Oshikawa Shunrō, was also a writer of adventure novels. In one of them, Shin Nihon-tō (The new Japanese archipelago, 1906):

Oshikawa builds from survival theories (seizon-setsu) that Saigō Takamori had not died on the battlefield in Kagoshima during the Satsuma Rebellion but had fled to the Philippines where he secretly commanded a liberation army struggling against American colonization. In many of Oshikawa's novels, the characters fight against Western imperialism by supporting nationalist independence movements seeking to free Asia from colonial oppression. As Oshikawa writes in the preface to his serialized novel Tessha Ōkoku (Iron car kingdom), "sooner or later, we the peoples of the East [tōyō minzoku] will have to fight it out with the Western nations. . . . We are an eastern nation, and we the Japanese are the champions of the East. . . . When the time comes, we will rouse ourselves in fierceness and advance in anger as we smash the false civilization of the West." In this way, Oshikawa's adventure novels served to justify Japanese imperialism in contrast to Western Colonial rule. ("Gender of Nationalism," p. 75.)

Herein lies the link that I suggested at the start of this section. Recall the description of the typical multi-lateralist: a career bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry with education and experience abroad. Multi-lateralists advocated cooperation with the Western powers and regarded Japan as, essentially, a Western power. They were, in short, the high-collar official and politicians in the government. The pan-Asianists, on the other hand, usually had a military background and rarely received any education abroad. Their views were similar to those of Oshikawa above: Japan is a part of Asia and should stand up against the imperialist Western powers who are oppressing our Asian neighbors. As Karlin points out, "in [The Tōkyō Puck], the bankara man is portrayed as a vigilante who protects the weak and defenseless . . . " ("Gender of Nationalism," p. 68.) In the international realm, this role of protector was precisely what the pan-Asianists advocated from Japan. Japan's official reason for Waging war in China from 1937 onward was to protect Asia. This war in China lead directly to war against the United States and Britain in late 1941.

During that war, Japanese propaganda consistently portrayed the people of the United States, Britain, and much of "the West" in general as being selfish, spoiled, weak, and individualistic. Of course, these same qualities would come out in such terms as freedom-loving, independent, and confident in U.S. self-congratulatory rhetoric. In the high-collar versus bankara rhetoric in Japan, the ideal bankara image of a "true Japanese" was a person whose life was animated by the nation. In other words, a true Japanese lived his life for the nation and gladly made whatever sacrifice the nation might require. He subordinated his personal desires to needs of the group. With this point in mind, study *this image* from one of Oshikawa's adventure magazines. During the 1930s, primitivism became the dominant mode of manliness in Japan as that country became increasingly embroiled in warfare.

As you might have noticed in the above excerpts, a hostility to modernity (whatever it might mean) was a distinct tendency in the public discourse of early-twentieth century Japan. Not all Japanese shared this view, but many did, and the cultural and political influence of the anti-modernists increased markedly during the 1930s. It was especially the crass materialism and eroticism of certain forms of urban culture against which many Japanese reacted critically. Consider urban cafés. According to Elise K. Tipton:

Changes in cafés during the 1920s and early 1930s exemplify the emergence of a mass consumer society  and reveal Japanese conceptions of a 'modern lifestyle'. Cafés represented 'mass' culture in two senses: first, as products of advanced technology and beneficiaries of mass media and advertising; second as producing and responding to desires and tastes of the masses, i.e., large numbers of ordinary Japanese. In contrast to earlier cafés, the cafés of the late 1920s and early 1930s attracted new middle-class salaried workers rather than mainly intellectuals, artists, and writers. In sheer numbers they expanded to mass levels--37,065 cafés and bars throughout the country in 1934. In addition, many large-scale cafés appeared on the main street of Ginza in Tokyo and in the Dōtonbori district of Osaka, employing over a hundred waitresses each. These competed fiercely with each other, trying to outdo others with lavishly decorated interiors sparkling with light-reflective materials and exteriors emblazoned with red and blue neon lights. They devised new advertising gimmicks to attract publicity, such as the Bijinza Café's flying in thirty waitresses from Osaka by plane, a rarity in 1930. Owners encouraged or pressured their waitresses to treat patrons in a more friendly and seductive manner, and when the depression reduced patronage, they tried to attract more customers by hiring more waitresses. Smaller cafés relied more and more on selling erotic services, such as the 'organ service' where a waitress lay across the laps of her male customers and sang different notes depending on which part of her body they touched. ( Elise K. Tipton, Modern Japan: A Social and Political History [New York: Routledge,  2002], pp. 109-110.)

Similar phenomena could be seen in other realms of mass entertainment at this time (*for example*). It was to this sort of decadence (or perceived decadence)--whether in the form of quasi-erotic cafés, modernistic movies, high-collar men, moga, or its many other manifestations--that increasing numbers of Japanese objected during the 1930s. And this tendency to reject modernism in certain of its materialistic forms was not only a popular phenomenon. It had a counterpart in academic discourse, which culminated in a pan-Asian conference on "Overcoming the Modern" in 1942. During the war years from the late 1930s onward, certain forms of anti-modernism became mainstays of government-sponsored public rhetoric and propaganda.

Japan's "Emperor System" in the Twentieth Century

As you know, the Meiji Restoration was carried out in the name of the emperor, supposedly restoring him to his proper and ancient roles as political ruler of Japan. In fact, however, leading officials in the Meiji era ended up creating a new monarchy. This new monarchy included some carryover from former times, mostly in the form of court ceremonies and numerous elements derived from European monarchies. The emperor was the living symbol of Japan as a nation, and to function as such, he had to wear many hats. He was the symbol of Japan's modernity as well as the alleged ancient origins of the Japanese nation and its traditions. He was head of state, but "above" the sordid world of politics (in typical Japanese political theory of the time). He was human and yet divine, for, not only did his pre-historical ancestors allegedly descend from the heavens, but the current emperor was but one man in a long, allegedly unbroken line of sovereigns. In these ways and others, modern Japan's emperor embodied, often awkwardly, the contradictions inherent in the very idea of nations.

This brief discussion focuses on the 1930s. For an excellent history of Japan's modern imperial institution, see Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan.

The Meiji Emperor died in 1912. Succeeding him on the throne was his son Yoshihito, whose comparatively brief reign from 1912-1926 bore the official name "Taishō," which means something like "Great Rectification." He is this known as the *Taishō Emperor.* In practice, however, from about 1921 onward, the Taishō Emperor's son *Hirohito* performed most of the ritual tasks of state in the capacity of Imperial Regent. The reason for Hirohito's standing in is that the Taishō Emperor was mentally incompetent and physically impaired owing to brain damage inflicted by a childhood illness. Because of this illness, the Taishō Emperor was incapable of exerting any influence on politics.

In 1926, Hirohito formally ascended the throne as the *Shōwa Emperor* (Shōwa being the official name for his reign and meaning roughly "shining harmony"). Unlike his father, Hirohito was mentally astute. Unlike his grandfather, the Meiji Emperor, Hirohito did not have a powerful public persona. He appeared in public for formal ceremonies and similar occasions, and he performed his public duties flawlessly. But he was ill at ease in the public gaze and tended to be retiring and taciturn. This is not to say, however, that he was weak-willed or passive. He was willing to intervene politically in what he saw as grave or emergency situations. Furthermore, contrary to the image of Hirohito as a passive pawn of evil militarists--an image carefully created by U.S. occupation officials and a cooperative Japanese government starting as soon as WWII ended--he was actively involved in the conduct and planning of Japan's wars of the 1930s and 40s.

Although Hirohito performed his ceremonial, military, and political duties to the best of his ability, his real passion was scholarship. More specifically, he was a #marine biologist.# His research expertise was corals, and he ended up writing four academic books on the subject. But marine biology was his private passion. In public, he typically appeared as the head of state. In the 1930s, this role typically emphasized the Shōwa Emperor as *commander-in-chief* of the military. On such occasions, he often appeared in his military uniform riding his white horse. Despite the usual portrayal of him in U.S. wartime images as being clad in *strange-looking court robes,* Hirohito typically wore ordinary western-style clothing.

The specifics of the Shōwa Emperor's life are only part of the picture of Japan's emperor system of the 1930s. Of greater importance was the function of the emperor as an institution and symbol in the realm of politics.

Japan's 1889 constitution, often called the "Meiji Constitution," created the basic framework for formal politics from the time of its promulgation until 1946, when it was replaced by Japan's current constitution. The Meiji Constitution states that the locus of the nation's sovereignty is the emperor. What is sovereignty? The problem is that sovereignty is a highly abstract concept. Here is a long but *more useful* description. In the context of Japan's Meiji constitution, sovereignty is, approximately, a combination of two things: 1) legitimate political authority; and 2) the intangible essence of Japan as a nation. Obviously, the first component is connected with the state, and the second with the nation. And so, at least according to the constitution, the emperor was the source of both the state and the nation.

Did this status confer on the emperor any formal, institutional power? Yes, it did, but both the emperor and most of the people around him (court officials, government officials, etc.) knew that direct imperial exercise of political power for ordinary matters of state would be dangerous. It was necessary to keep the source of sovereignty free from possible contamination by the realm of politics, or at least "politics" in the ordinary sense of competition for power and resources or for the power to allocate them. There was an unofficial but very strong division of labor. The emperor served as the abstract source of sovereignty, and the politicians, bureaucrats, police, military officers, etc. exercised specific powers derived from that sovereignty. In theory and often in rhetoric, nearly all of the order-enforcing functions of the state were carried out in the name of the emperor but almost never under the direct supervision or direction of the emperor.

The emperor was rarely seen in public (and when he was, it was under carefully orchestrated conditions), but his name was everywhere. Teachers, for example, were the emperor's servants, and they instilled in successive generations the awesome importance of the monarch (recall from an earlier chapter the daily school routine from about 1890 onward). Even to speak of the emperor was difficult because special honorific terms and grammatical constructions were required when doing so. Radio announcers who made an error in using such imperial respect language risked being fired (and some were). During the 1920s and 30s, the emperor seeped into nearly every aspect of Japanese life, and yet in many respects was quite remote from Japanese life. He was both awesome and mysterious, and it is not an exaggeration to say that by the 1930s he had become a fetish object. It was not so much that Hirohito the individual person had become such an object, but rather that the emperor had become such an object.

I do not mean to suggest that monarch-as-national-fetish was exclusively a Japanese phenomenon. Indeed, most of the world's monarchies have this quality. Consider, for example, the attention that the British monarchy draws both in Britain and in various other countries including the United States. Lacking an official sovereign and royal family, but not the desire for one, the public media in the U.S. has, in effect, crowned the Kennedy family as quasi-monarchy. And it has done so with vast popular approval. Modern nation-states or aspiring nation-states seem to need a living symbol of nationhood, and such symbols inevitably take on the qualities of public fetish objects. The case of Japan was not unique except, perhaps, in its intensity. But even in terms of intensity, numerous examples of modern rulers making public cults to themselves (one form of fetishism) come readily to mind (e.g., Kim Il-sung in North Korea, Mao Zedong in China, Saddam Hussein in Iraq). Japan's case was slightly different, however, in that the personality of any specific emperor was less important than was the institution of emperorship as an object of public fetishism. In other words, the specific individual named Hirohito was much less important than was the Shōwa Emperor, the official role that Hirohito happened to perform.

Let us consider some concrete examples of emperor-as-national-fetish in the Japan of the 1930s. In the early 1930s, it was still acceptable for ordinary citizens to look at the emperor, for example, when he walked or rode down the street in a *public procession.* But such ordinary people would normally view the emperor on their knees (while seated formally in seiza, "correct sitting"). And all along the route of an imperial procession, officials would make sure that windows or other openings of buildings from the second floor up were all covered. Why? Because it would be outrageous for anyone to look down upon the emperor.

Although certain government officials could walk or sit with the emperor, when in his presence, a high degree of formality was required. When top military officials would meet with the emperor, for example, they would typically sit so as not to face him directly, and they sat at *rigid attention* throughout the meeting. When talking, of course, they used a special formal language while in the imperial presence. When the emperor spoke, he did so in highly formal language full of words and phrases only the emperor was permitted to utter. Just after the Pacific War, when the #famous photo#  of the tall MacArthur next to the short Hirohito appeared in newspapers, it gave rise to the following Joke: Why is MacArthur the navel of Japan? Because he is above the chin. "Chin" 朕 was a first person pronoun (i.e., "I") that the emperor used in referring to himself. But chin (written with a different character: 珍) was also a vulgar word for penis. (Today, there is "chin-chin," a word small children would typically use to indicate that part of the body and chinpō, literally "exotic treasure," which is a vulgar, adult reference, typically used among men in bars, locker rooms, etc.) To utter a joke playing on the two meanings of the sound chin during the war years would have been terribly dangerous. Today, joking about the emperor, while not common, would generally be safe if done relatively privately. To criticize him in the public eye, however, would put the criticizer at high risk of bodily harm or, in the case of elected officials and other public figures, at high risk of assassination (#for example#). The emperor, in other words, still retains some qualities of being a national fetish object, even though his constitutionally-defined role has been greatly diminished.

Take a look at *this photograph* from the 1930s. It shows the mayor of Osaka and the emperor chatting about military affairs while looking at a map. Something is terribly wrong here--what? The emperor is standing in a relatively relaxed manner. What about the mayor? He is not lounging, but neither is he standing at attention. And his top hat is in his hands, not on his head. To stand in an ordinary manner while in the august imperial presence? Such an outrage! And indeed, when this photo got into the newspapers, the public outcry was so great that the mayor resigned in disgrace. By comparison, when, in 1988, in response to a specific question, the mayor of Nagasaki said that he thought the Shōwa Emperor bore some responsibility for the disastrous Pacific War, the mayor instantly became a marked man. The inevitable assassin's bullet found its mark, but not with fatal results, and  the mayor recovered from his wounds. Living under constant police guard, he ran for re-election and won by a very slim majority. Note that there are a wide variety of views concerning the emperor among "the Japanese" today (the mayor was also deluged by letters expressing a wide range of opinion from all over Japan, many of which became a book). In the 1930s and 40s, however, the state expected all citizens to conform to a single official view of the emperor.

In 1936, it became illegal for ordinary citizens to look at the emperor in person. Gazing at #official photographs# was perfectly fine, and often required in the context of schools, military training, and other official situations. And many private citizens kept pictures of the emperor and empress in their homes--a few still do. There were some Japanese who would have favored eliminating the imperial institution in the 1930s, but not many. The emperor enjoyed broad popularity, and his *power as a national fetish object* only increased as a result of the relative rarity of his appearance in the flesh.

In the context of ever-increasing imperial awe during the 1930s, the emperor's public activities were surrounded by an aura of seriousness and formality. Take a look at *this very interesting photograph* of the emperor from the 1930s. You might wonder what is so interesting about it. It simply shows the emperor joking with another member of the imperial family prior to the start of an official ceremony. The public never saw this photo because it was banned by official censors. Why? Because it depicts the emperor as being all too human--hardly the appropriate image for a national fetish object. (Remember: the term "fetish object" is my usage--it is intended as a helpful and accurate description of a key aspect of the emperor's role in society. It is not a characterization of the emperor that Japanese citizens themselves would have used at the time.)

So, as of the 1930s, we see two closely related trends connected with the imperial institution. First, public political rhetoric frequently called on Japanese citizens to do their duty. Second, that duty was allegedly owed the emperor. It was actually duty owed the nation, but "nation" as an abstraction, whereas the emperor, while somewhat mysterious and rarely seen in person, was a specific manifestation of the nation to which school children bowed every day. Indeed, for those who fully bought into the rhetoric of duty toward the emperor, the discharge of such duty could and did become the main purpose in life. One very important point to bear in mind is that insofar as the call to do one's duty for the emperor came from official sources such as teachers, textbooks, government proclamations, imperial rescripts, etc., such exhortations were coming from the state. In other words, the state urged its citizens to do their duty to the nation (via the emperor), but this duty was for the benefit of the state. This rhetorical sleight of hand was, and is, a common phenomenon. If the prime minister says to the general public something like "pay your taxes so that my government can have enough money to do all the things on my long wish list of projects!" such an utterance would hardly endear listeners to their duty as followers of tax laws. If instead, however, he were to say something like "pay your taxes to further the glory of the emperor's reign," more people might be more enthusiastic about paying. But it would be the same money going to the same place either way.

One final matter of importance about the emperor concerns the term kokutai 国体. Kokutai means something like "national essence," and it translates literally as "national body" (*scroll down to last definition*). This term became a highly-charged rhetorical weapon in the political discourse of the 1930s, and we now explore some of its meanings and rhetorical effects.

Consider *this passage,* which is part of the introduction to a 1937 textbook on kokutai. Based on what it says, how would you define kokutai in a single sentence? If that does not seem possible, what about listing the specific elements of kokutai? Here is the list I would make:

Kokutai is (in whole or in part): a) the (allegedly) unbroken line of emperors from ancient antiquity to the present;  b) an eternal and unchangeable national entity;  c) that which unites all Japanese as one family;  d) that which obliges Japanese to obey the Imperial Will; e) that which is manifest in personal behavior by loyalty and filial piety; f) something that is glorious;  g) the basis of Japan as a nation;  h) something that might be found shining in shrines in Japan;  i) something that we should seek to know.

This list is quite broad, and it comes from the first few sentences of an entire textbook. Kokutai was a hard term to define with precision. Nevertheless, how about distilling this list into a meaningful but short definition? Here is my attempt: "Kokutai is a vague but emotionally powerful term for the mysterious national essence of Japan, which finds more concrete expression in such things as an unbroken line of sovereigns, loyalty and filial piety, obedience to the emperor, and a variety of Japanese cultural habits or characteristics." Simple enough, isn't it? How might kokutai appear as a visual definition? Here is *one possibility.*

Of course, trying to understand kokutai only by means of a quick and easy definition is impossible. In 1937, the Ministry of Education published a textbook called Kokutai no hongi 国体の本義 (Basic principles of the national essence) for use in all schools. Written by a panel of experts, this single volume of modest size was, apparently, inadequate for explaining kokutai fully. Why? Because soon after its appearance, several multi-volume (typical size: 10-15 substantial volumes) sets of commentaries on the Kokutai no hongi were published by various commercial presses. In other words, it took a book to explain the term kokutai, and several sets of 10-15 more books to explain that book. Whenever you find such an ever-expanding cloud of verbiage to explain a concept, you can usually be sure that __________ (fill in the blank with one word starting with "n" but not ending with it) is at the core of this concept. The answer? Nothing, of course. In other words, people assume there must be something to kokutai, that is, to our national essence, but finding that "something" turns out to be terribly hard because it is not there--at least not in the sense of anything concrete. So more and more words are needed to talk about and around it, building up, in effect, a vast cloud or fog of verbiage that obscures the emptiness of the concept itself.

Does this process sound familiar (Hint: Chapter Two, last section)? It should, because it is not unique to kokutai or to Japan. It is part of the nearly universal process of imagining the communities we call nations. Kokutai was the specific term for Japan's national essence, and, as such, it would have made no sense to say, for example, "the kokutai of France." Only Japan has kokutai, the thinking went, because only Japan has an unbroken line of sovereigns since ancient times, citizens who naturally incline toward loyalty and filial piety, a society that resembles one large family, and so forth. But, despite the allegedly unique quality of nations according to their members, the general process of imagining nations is similar (though not identical) the world over.

Now, would not it be a pity for the kokutai to be destroyed? In a sense, it cannot be destroyed, because it is unchangeable. Suppose, however, that every Japanese in the world were to die. Such a calamity would surely do it. Or, what if the emperor and his family were to vanish? For true believers in the religion of nationalism, such events should be unthinkably horrible. Nevertheless, official rhetoric urging sacrifice in wartime sometimes hinted at such scenarios--horrible not simply in the sense of massive loss of life, but more so in destruction of the glorious kokutai, the very reason for living. After all, full-scale modern wars have been fought between entire societies, not just opposing military forces. Certainly Japan's enemies would liked to have seen the kokutai destroyed. Indeed, according to wartime rhetoric, the demonic Americans (or British, Soviets--fill in the blank) were such barbarians that they would delight in killing all of the Japanese people and/or doing away with the emperor! Take a look at the *this typical example* of such rhetoric from late in the Pacific War (ca. 1944). "Eliminate all Japanese from the earth!" says a demonic Roosevelt in a poster to encourage aircraft production. Did the typical viewer of such a poster (mainly factory workers) really believe such rhetoric? It is hard to say, but postwar recollections by a wide variety of Japanese indicate a that many did believe the worst about the enemy. Here is *another example* from late in the war (and thus reflecting increasing desperation). In this image, Roosevelt and Churchill are depicted as depraved ogres, carousing within sight of sacred geography of the home islands (notice Mt. Fuji in the background--the geological symbol of Japan's kokutai) while their soldiers run amok on a murderous rampage.

During the war years, the message about the meaning and significance of the kokutai was consistent if not always clear. After 1936, the state tolerated no challenge to its official interpretation (and before then, it tolerated only a few indirect ones) of what it meant to be Japanese. The state's enemies, or imagined enemies, often faced formal legal penalties for actions "contrary to the kokutai" (an expression that always reminds me of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s and 60s). With such a vaguely-defined concept as the official standard, nearly anything could be construed as being contrary to the kokutai.

One high-level victim of what we might call a kokutai-attack was the highly esteemed legal scholar and member of the upper house of the diet Minobe Tatsukichi. Minobe was famous for his theory that the emperor was an "organ" of the state, albeit the most important one. For decades, his theories of politics enjoyed wide acclaim, and were even required knowledge for Japan's civil service exam. Nevertheless, Minobe fell hard and fast in the atmosphere of the 1930s. Politicians--who, in many cases, had little knowledge of what Minobe actually meant by characterizing the emperor as an "organ" of the state--attacked Minobe and his writings as being contrary to the kokutai. To be thus labeled, even wrongly, carried such a strong negative stigma that Minobe had little chance of successfully defending himself. (To get a rough sense of the emotional intensity of the situation, imagine somebody in the United States today accused loudly and publicly of child molestation--or perhaps child molestation while practicing Satanic rites. Or, perhaps even better, imagine someone accused of being a Communist in the 1950s. The accusation alone would be ruinous.) Indeed, Minobe was lucky to avoid prison. As it was, all of his books were banned, he was stripped of all his peerage titles and honors (Japan had a peerage system modeled roughly on that of Britain), and he was removed from his seat in the House of Peers. Naturally, cases like that of Minobe had the effect of chilling any serious discussion of politics or policies with respect to certain topics. #Comprehensive history of kokutai#

The War Years: 1931-1945

If asked when the Second World War started, many Americans would say December 7, 1941, even though the war had already been raging in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres for several years. Obsession with this date often limits the perspective of American students of history in trying to understand this complex event. Many historians in Japan would answer this question with September, 1931, the start of the Manchurian Incident. The military part of the *Manchurian Incident* took place over the course of a few days in September 1931. There was little fighting and few casualties. It was not the sort of armed conflict that today would excite armchair strategists and warfare enthusiasts, but it was terribly important in Japanese and world history. For one thing, the Manchurian incident led to a sequence of events during the course of which Japan marched ever deeper toward warfare on a vast scale. Some historians place the start of the Pacific War at 1931 for this reason. The Manchurian Incident, in turn, was the result of a complex web of domestic and international conflict that took place throughout the 1920s--most of which are beyond the scope of this course.

After Japan took over Manchuria in 1931, the situation in Northeast China simmered for several years. Diplomatically, Japan became isolated over Manchuria. At the end of 1931, it established a puppet state of Manzhouguo (often spelled "Manchukuo" or something like it--there is little consistency). Japan's official claim was that Manzhouguo was an independent state--albeit vigorously pro-Japanese--and that its creation reflected the popular will of that region's inhabitants. In 1932 the League of Nations established a commission to investigate the situation of Manzhouguo. When, in 1933, the commission issue a report critical of Japan, the Japanese delegation to the League of Nations dramatically walked out, never to return. It was from this point on that Japan's official policy shifted firmly in the direction of pan-Asianism. No longer would Japan attempt to cooperate with the Western imperialist powers. Instead, it would forge its own Asiatic empire. This policy propelled Japan toward full-scale war in China.

The Second Sino-Japanese War was a long time in the making. Ever since the late 1920s, there had been frequent skirmishes between Japanese and Chinese military forces in various locations in and around China. From the time of its seizure of Manchuria in 1931 until the start of full-scale war in the summer of 1937, Japanese land forces had slowly but steadily grabbed ever more Chinese territory from Manchuria southward in the direction of Beijing (the present-day capital of China, but not the capital during the 1930s). China's leader at the time, Jiang Jieshi (better known in the United States as #Chiang Kai-shek#) had come under increasing pressure to resist this Japanese expansion vigorously, but he chose instead to direct his main efforts at eradicating members and soldiers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), one-time allies of Jiang's Guomindang (GMD; also spelled Kuomintang [KMT]; often awkwardly rendered into English as "Nationalist Party"). Using a medical analogy, Jiang likened the CCP to a cancer and Japanese pressure to a skin rash. Eventually, however, the rash became so widespread that Jiang could ignore it no longer.

In early July, 1937, Japanese soldiers conducted night maneuvers near the Marco Polo Bridge in the northern suburbs of Beijing. They came into conflict with Chinese soldiers stationed nearby. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but both sides exchanged gunfire. Initially, nobody expected this small incident to grow into a full-scale war, but Jiang had come under such strong *pressure to resist Japan,* that he decided to make a stand by refusing to give any concessions to Japan when negotiating a settlement. For a variety of reasons, the incident of fighting at the Marco Polo Bridge remained unsettled as of late July, and fighting between Chinese and Japanese forces began to take place elsewhere in China. By August, both sides were engaged in full-scale warfare. This July encounter and its immediate aftermath is known as the #Marco Polo Bridge# Incident.

Shanghai, China's largest city, was the scene of the first major round of fighting, which started with a Chinese air attack on the Japanese fleet in Shanghai harbor. The attack was a miserable failure. Japanese commanders found out about it well in advance and had their ships out of the harbor and zigzagging through the open ocean by the time the attack started. Such defensive precautions may not even have been necessary, for the Chinese pilots and crews were generally so inept that a few planes even managed to drop bombs on Shanghai itself, killing numerous civilians--an accident apparently resulting from fear of getting too close to the Japanese ships and not taking wind direction into account. No Japanese ships were damaged or sunk. Spurred on in part by this Chinese air attack, the Japanese response was to amass soldiers for an invasion. During the fall and winter, one major Chinese city after another fell to the invaders. Japanese soldiers were victorious everywhere they fought. (See a *map of this early phase* of the war.) Why were Jiang's armies so ineffective? This question leads us beyond the scope of this course, but if you are curious, #click here.#

Soon after the fighting began, Japan's government declared publicly that it would accept nothing less than complete surrender and removal of Jiang's government. This declaration committed both sides to a, long, miserable war in which neither China nor Japan could prevail decisively. Why such a declaration? The main problem here was poor information from the commanders in the field. The first six months of the war was a period of one major victory after another for the Japanese invaders. In general, Japanese soldiers and officers had a contemptuous view of Chinese capabilities, both on the battlefield and in the broader realm of politics. The main reason for resorting to all-out war against a country that Japan deemed essential for its pan-Asian empire was to achieve a quick and decisive victory. The fall of the GMD would then allow Japan to set up a government in China favorable to Japan's interests. With China then on Japan's side, consolidation of the rest of the empire would could proceed rapidly. That was the general idea.

And all indications in late 1937 were that the plan was succeeding. Japanese victories were indeed real. The inaccurate part, however, was to attribute too much importance to those victories. Commanders in the field typically predicted the entire collapse of the GMD in the very near future because they could not imagine Jiang holding out after losing so much prime real estate. The typical refrain would be something like "just one more victory like the one we have achieved today and . . ." Complete victory, in other words always seemed just around the corner. As a result, Japan's government publicly committed itself to the complete removal of the GMD and the creation of what it called a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." Jiang's reaction was to keep moving further inland as he lost territory, stretching Japanese supply lines ever thinner. In such a strategy, ineffective armies are less problematic, for it was on sheer distance that Jiang most relied for defense. His armies in the field were, in effect, scarecrows, and he kept his best and most loyal troops close to wherever his capital was (Chongqing for most of the war).

So both Japan and the GMD had gotten themselves into a conflict that neither side appeared able to win, but from which neither side would try to back down. The war was a constant and substantial drain on Japanese resources. In this context Japan's leaders became ever more desperate to find a successful way out of the China quagmire. As we will see next, this desperation led to the Pacific War, that is, to an expansion of the war to include the United States and Britain.

As a preview for the next section, study this PDF: *The Pacific War as Seen by Japan's General Public:*

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The Pacific War and Aftermath

What caused Japan's escalation of its war with China to that of a war with the United States, Britain, and Holland (known collectively in Japanese wartime discourse as the "ABCD" countries)? Interestingly, many Americans would simply state the #attack on Pearl Harbor# as the cause with little or no sense that much had been happening prior to that time--as if Japan's attack came unexpectedly out of the blue. Of course the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, but why the attack? The key to answering this question adequately is to bear in mind that Japan's war against the United States was an extension of its war with China, which was ultimately part of a broad plan to create a Japanese-led empire in East Asia.

If Japan was bogged down in China, how could its leaders possibly have come to the conclusion that broadening the war was the way to make progress? At first glance it seems crazy, and, in hindsight, it was obviously a bad decision. But it made sense at the time based on a set of prevailing assumptions. Prior to the formal outbreak of war in December 1941 the United States did not actively assist China. But by the late 1930s, the United States was in a position of opposing Japan's role in the war and begin to put economic pressure on Japan in the form of various sanctions and embargoes starting in 1939. At first these measures were mainly token expressions of U.S. discontent. By 1941, however, the sanctions had become severe and potentially debilitating for Japan. One reason for this increasing severity was that Japans formally joined Germany and Italy in a military alliance. Then, with Vichy French approval, Japan occupied the northern part of Vietnam to put further pressure on China.

This move alarmed the United States government, which convinced Holland and Britain to join with it in putting the squeeze on Japan's resources to wage war. Most serious was a complete cutoff of crude oil and other petroleum sales to Japan (in those days the U.S. was a petroleum exporter) as well as the sale of metals needed for war-related industries. Because this embargo cut off all of Japan's oil supply (and Japan produced no crude oil of its own), foreign affairs planners in the United States were *confident* that Japan would simply have no choice but to pull out of China in a year or two when its reserves ran completely dry. This thinking made sense and, indeed, Japan's own military planners estimated that at current levels of use, Japan would run out of petroleum products in two years or less. In other words, by doing nothing under current conditions, Japan was sure to lose its war with China because its military machine literally would become immobile within two years.

British Prime Minster Churchill had also convinced Franklin Roosevelt that the rich resources of Malaysia (a British territory) were vulnerable to Japanese seizure, and Roosevelt began dropping hints to Japan's ambassador that any further Japanese expansion in SE Asia would likely be met by active U.S. military intervention. While Roosevelt undoubtedly wanted the United States to enter the Second World War, distaste with the aftermath of World War One (the "war to end all wars") fueled a strong domestic sentiment to avoid getting dragged into another European war. because of this anti-war sentiment, it is doubtful that Roosevelt would have been able to muster the political backing to support military intervention against Japan even if it had continued to expand in Asia.

But Japan's leaders took Roosevelt at his word. They did indeed have their eyes on the vast oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, the mineral wealth of Malaysia, and other such resources. The basic scenario that emerged was for Japan to invade and conquer these areas quickly and then use their resources to supercharge the war effort in China and bring it to a definite and favorable conclusion. Then, with the rich natural resources of SE Asia, Japan would work with a sympathetic government in China to develop its vast human and industrial potential. In other words, it would attempt to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which would be so powerful that none of the war-weary western countries would dare challenge it.

The only problem--or so it seemed to Japanese strategic planers--was that the United States would probably intervene to try and stop such a plan, and the only military force capable of doing so was the U.S. Pacific fleet based in Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in Hawai'i. Pearl Harbor was within reach of Japan's aircraft carriers, and it had a major structural flaw: the harbor mouth was so narrow that only one ship at a time could get through it. Thus, with careful planning and execution, it seemed possible that an attack might well catch most or all of the fleet bottled up in the relatively narrow space of the harbor. After extensive planning and training, Japan's high command, at a meeting with the emperor, decided to proceed with the attack.

But what was the long-term strategy? Did Japan's leaders think that they could prevail in a sustained war with the United States over the course of several years? No, they did not. The success of the overall plan depended on several additional assumptions, one of which was entirely incorrect. The thinking here was that the United States is a rich country whose people had grown lazy and soft from a life of luxury. The United States, therefore, would not have the psychological will to fight Japan in a long, costly war, especially if Japan were successful in destroying the Pacific Fleet and in bring the resources of the Indies and elsewhere quickly into useful production. Seeing Japan's great strength (magnified by the Prosperity Sphere), the U.S. government would seek a negotiated end to the war. Of course, such thinking was utterly off the mark. Notice here, the crucial role of cultural assumptions and stereotypes. In this situation, Japan's leaders would become victims of their own prejudices.

So the logic of the plan was reasonably solid, but two key premises were questionable. The assumption that the United States would intervene to stop a Japanese seizure of the Dutch East Indies (etc.), while reasonable, was by no means a certainty. And the assumption that the soft, lazy Americans would lose their will to fight Japan after seeing their fleet destroyed, was not only inaccurate, it was #the precise opposite# of the actual effect. Japan's attack *galvanized U.S. resolve* like nothing else could have done. Intensifying the psychological effect of Japan's attack was the widespread ethnocentric arrogance that these "little yellow men with #buck teeth and thick glasses# who make toys and trinkets" could not possibly be capable of sophisticated military action against the United States. Indeed, an eye witness reported that Roosevelt's first audible reaction upon hearing of the attack was to mutter that German pilots must have been flying the Japanese planes. That the attack appeared to be such an overwhelming success for Japan made a *desire for revenge* all the stronger.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a serious blow. But it proved to be less of a disaster for the the U.S. and less of  a victory for Japan than it seemed in the days immediately following December seventh. First, the most important weapon of the naval part of the Pacific War turned out to be the aircraft carrier, not the battleship. While all of the U.S. battleships were destroyed or badly damaged, the carriers all happened to be away on a training exercise at the time of the attack--pure luck. Also, Japanese pilots went after the big, prestigious targets such as battleships and heavy cruisers, but completely neglected to attack important points of infrastructure such as power stations. Therefore, #salvage# and #repair operations# started immediately, and it was not uncommon for ships Japanese intelligence sources listed as out of action to appear in the early sea battles of the war. Of course, Japan's aim was to disable the fleet to prevent its interference with the major land grabs in SE Asia, and this it accomplished. In the moderate and long-run, however, the attack caused no major degradation of U.S. war capabilities. Insofar as U.S. pressure on Japan was light early in the war the main reason was the overall tactical decision to concentrate on the war in Europe first.

And speaking of the war in Europe, how did the U.S. get involved in that? In an an uncharacteristic display of living up to his agreements, Hitler invoked the terms of Germany's alliance with Japan and declared war on the United States the day after Japan did. Italy followed suit as well.

At the end of Chapter Eight we briefly examined portrayals of the Anglo-American enemy in Japanese wartime imagery. For a more detailed study of portrayals of the enemy--in both directions--#click here.# Also see the following web sites:  Site 1   Site 2.

The purely military aspects of the war are well known and we will not examine them here. Those interested in the military history of the Pacific War might be interested in these web sites (all optional; many present the war as glorious):

Late in 1943, the U.S. made a specific decision to begin bombing non-military, residential areas in Japanese cities (#official policy statement and assessment#). When Japan had done the same thing in China in the late 1930s, the U.S. denounced the practice as barbaric, and indeed, several high-ranking U.S. air force generals resigned rather than carry out the new policy. In remote areas of Utah, engineers constructed typical Japanese urban houses and experimented to find the most efficient ways to destroy them. The general bombing procedure that resulted was first to drop bombs filled with a highly flammable oil, which would quickly spread after hitting the ground. Following the oil were incendiary cluster bombs, which would set the oil on fire in many different places. The result was a rapidly spreading inferno, which devoured everything in its path. In many cases people tried to escape the flames by jumping into nearby rivers, which was not a good idea. The heat from the bombs was so intense that the river water was often literally boiling. Many more civilians lost their lives in these conventional bombing attacks than in the two uses of atomic bombs. It is probably inevitable to see the the atomic bombings as *more frightful* than conventional bomb attacks owing to the awesome power contained in a single bomb. When discussing issues of war morality, however, it seems to me that there is excessive attention paid to the atomic attacks. The more basic question is surely whether it is ethical and/or militarily useful to bomb civilian areas period, regardless of the type of explosives employed.

Because of the experiences mentioned in the above paragraphs and others, ever since the end of the war, there has been a strong tendency among Japanese to see themselves--the people of Japan--*as victims* in the Pacific War. The obsessive invocation of the attack on Pearl Harbor by U.S. presidents and other spokespeople over the years has had no rhetorical effect in changing this view. A typical reaction in Japan is that it is grotesque to equate the incineration of whole cities with a focused attack on a military installation. Regardless of what position you might take on these matters, the key point to bear in mind is that most Japanese tend to regard the war as having been fought for a righteous cause and having resulted in their country and its people becoming victims of military aggression. During the U.S. occupation of Japan from 1945-1952, various censorship rules effectively prevented any sustained public exploration or examination of the war. It should hardly be surprising, therefore, that general views of the Pacific War in the U.S. and Japan remain vastly different (#for example#) as we start the twenty-first century.

The Years of Postwar Recovery: 1946-1969

Photographs of the immediate postwar situation:

Japan had been at war since 1937 (or 1931, depending on your definition). When the fighting ended in August 1945, the country was economically and psychologically exhausted. Most parts of most major cities were in ruins from years of bombing, and Japan's industrial capacity was but a small fraction of its peak prewar level. Many urban residents had been forced to flee to the countryside for safety, and these people began moving back to the cities--or what was left of them. And a much greater human logistical problem loomed. Japan's far-flung empire collapsed with millions of military and civilian personnel stranded overseas in places like Korea, China, and parts of Southeast Asia. Among these people were large numbers of settlers, who, since the 1930s, had been encouraged to set up residence in Manchuria, Taiwan, and other parts of the empire. All of these millions had to be shipped back to a war-torn land that could ill afford to absorb them. This repatriation process took years to complete.

In the home islands, the social fabric generally held together, but only barely. Crime increased, and a vast black market soon sprung up to supply the things (at a much higher price, of course) that regular, controlled channels could not. For most Japanese surviving from day-to-day was the main goal, and just getting something to eat was a struggle. Compared with the 1930s, per capita calorie consumptions levels in the late 1940s were much lower. The majority of the population was hungry, though mass starvation was averted in part because of food shipments from the United States. Shelter was also in short supply, and most families lived in severely cramped conditions. Some went homeless for years sleeping wherever they could in the ruins of the cities. Jobs, too, especially good ones, were a rare commodity. There was no magic formula or program to bring about economic and social recovery. It was a slow, painful, gradual process.

In terms of overall governance, General Douglas MacArthur was the highest authority. Strictly speaking, he answered to a council consisting of representatives from all of the countries allied on the fight against Japan, but in fact the occupation was run by the United States alone. Under MacArthur was a military and civilian staff of American personnel (with a small number of British and Australians) who oversaw various aspects of the occupation and recovery of Japan. These foreigners, however, were relatively few in number, and they conducted their operations mainly in English. The actual day-to-day governing of Japan, therefore, was done by the same organs of government that existed before and during the war. In other words, MacArther governed Japan through Japanese proxies.

The most important such proxy was the emperor. Japan's surrender was unconditional, and there was grave concern among Japanese government leaders that the American occupiers would want to abolish the imperial institution. There was good reason for such concern. Japan's emperor had been savagely vilified in allied propaganda for years, and Japan's people were often portrayed as slavishly "worshipping" a "god-like" emperor (thus conjuring up various images of blasphemy, idolatry, and fetishism among western consumers of such portrayals).  But this same wartime imagery also tended to build up an aura of mystery around Hitohito, making him larger than life in many American eyes. And there was, and is, a strong yearning among many Americans for monarchy (e.g., obsession with British monarchy or, in more recent decades, with the Kennedy family). MacArthur seemed personally to be drawn to the aura of Japanese royalty, and, in any case, he had a more practical rationale for keeping the emperor on the throne: doing so would make the task of occupying Japan easier and less costly for the United States. The emperor, in other words, could be used like a puppet, as is suggested by this *famous photograph* of MacArthur towering over a stiff and awkward emperor at their first formal meeting. But, to continue the puppet metaphor, the manipulation went both ways, and the emperor and his advisors soon began to portray themselves as peace-loving victims of militarism. MacArthur vigorously endorsed this view of Japan's emperor as a peace-loving, passive monarch caught up in the grip of evil militarists and made sure that Hirohito would face no prosecution for his role in the war. As you might imagine, the actual situating was much more complex. For an excellent analysis of these and related matters, see the relevant chapters in John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (which, in my view, offers a more balanced analysis than does Herbert Bix's book on Hirohito). Study this *photo gallery* about Hirohito.

In terms of cold economic statistics, Japan recovered to prewar levels of productivity and general living standards around 1956. The U.S. Occupation ended in April 1952. Psychologically, the "postwar" era never completely ended. When Emperor Hirohito died in 1988, many commentators hastened to declare the "postwar" era as definitively over, but war-related issues, especially questions concerning war interpretation and memory continue to occupy a significant place in Japanese public discourse even in the twenty-first century.

During its first few years, the U.S. occupation of Japan encouraged a significant degree of political freedom. Political prisoners, for example, were released from custody, and labor unions were permitted to flourish. Marxism and socialism, which had been vigorously suppressed, reasserted themselves as political forces. Those identified as "militarists" were purged form public life (although nearly all returned after the occupation ended), and undemocratic messages in school textbooks were censored. Indeed, censorship was a major occupation activity, as MacArthur's experts attempted to "democratize" Japan from the top down. To what extent they may have sensed the irony in this venture at the time is hard to say. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, however, the occupation took what is often called a "reverse course." It clamped down on certain forms of political dissent (it was back to prison for some for some of the previously-released political prisoners) and on militant labor unionism. By the time the occupation ended two years later, Japan's government was more democratic than it had been before the war, but it was essentially conservative and authoritarian. And it was run by many of the same people who had been active during the war years. Assessing the legacy of the U.S. occupation is a complex task, and the best single source is John Dower's book mentioned above.

In the economic realm, despite widespread tensions between labor and management, Japan's economy grew vigorously from about 1950 onward. The Korean War initiated this process, pushing Japan's industry into high gear to supply goods for export. Economic growth proceeded at a rapid pace throughout most of the 1950s and 60s. In these years, it became common for Japanese men to put in long hours on the job, giving rise to a stereotypical image of Japan as a nation of fanatical workers--an image that lasted into the 1990s. The *1964 Tokyo Olympics* was also a major boost to Japan's roaring economy. Indeed, this event is often cited as a milestone marking the true point of recovery form the wartime trauma.

With respect to its foreign relations, Japan allied itself closely with the United States. As soon as the occupation officially ended, a U.S.-Japan security treaty came into force, within which Japan relies mainly on the United States for defense. Under U.S. pressure to re-arm during the 1950s, Japan created a "Self Defense Force." The main reason for this euphemistic name is that Japan's constitution (written by MacArthur's staff) renounces war and forbids the maintenance of military forces. Confused? In other words, MacArthur, dismayed at the slow pace and lack of zeal for constitutional revision on the part of Japanese officials, directed his staff to write a new constitution. With only minimal tweaking, it was this constitution that Japan formally adopted in 1947, and it has yet to be amended even once (#text of the constitution#). Article Nine of this constitution states:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

This article would seem to preclude military forces, but, following the rise of Mao's China in 1949 and the Korean War in 1950, the United States sought to make Japan into a major Cold War ally. Part of this process was repeated official U.S. urging that Japan re-arm in a substantial way. Citing Article Nine, Japan demurred, realizing that it could use U.S. power for its defense and would thus be free to devote all its resources to economic growth. Japan's government did, however, create a modest military force, claiming that the constitution did not prohibit self defense. In recent decades, this force has grown in size and sophistication. Japan is still formally allied with the United States and hosts several major U.S. military bases. Since the 1980s, however, it has increasingly pursued foreign policy independent of Washington. (#Japan Self Defense Agency#)

The Boom Years: 1970-1989

As Japan moved into the 1970s, the furious pace of economic growth slowed. Indeed, several "oil shocks" in the early 1970s caused considerable unease, as many commentators and ordinary people began to wonder about the long-term viability of Japan's economy. Although the sharp rise in oil prices of the early 1970s did temporarily put the brakes on Japan's economic growth, by the middle of the decade, the economy was back on a steady upward course. Growth in these years was not as dramatic as in the previous decade, but it was still substantial. Under guidance by quasi-governmental agencies, Japanese industries tended to move into high technology areas in which intellectual capital could be applied to add value to the manufacturing process. It was in the 1970s that Japan became the world leader in consumer electronics and also expanded its share of the worldwide automobile market. The 1970s was a time of relative economic stagnation in the United States, Japan's main trading partner. One result of these factors was an increasing degree of trade friction as the 1970s drew to a close.

Another development of the 1970s, difficult to quantify in precise terms, was a general increase in confidence. There was a surge of popular books in which various authors sought to explain the remarkable success of Japan's economy in cultural terms. Some of these books, such as Tsunoda Tadanobu's The Japanese Brain  (Nihonjin no nō 日本人の脳, originally published in 1978), became best sellers. As this literature on (allegedly) distinctive Japanese cultural characteristics accumulated, it gradually became recognized as a formal genre, with the name "nihonjinron 日本人論," meaning roughly "theories of Japanese distinctiveness." By the end of the 1970s, a booming market for such literature had developed. Most nihonjinron authors were Japanese, but there was no shortage of foreigners ready to proffer a variety of theories. Especially popular, as you might guess, were books extolling Japan's excellence. Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, which came out in 1979, is one example. Nihonjinron books, however, did not always laud Japan in the obvious manner of Japan as Number One. Instead, what they all had in common was: 1) a base assumption "the Japanese" were radically and fundamentally different from any other group of people; and 2) a relatively simple theory explaining the origins of this difference. Nihonjinron was (and is--see, for example, this recent revival of Tsunoda's dubious claim of a #distinctive Japanese brain#) an exercise in cultural nationalism, and it flourished in large part because of Orientalism. In other words foreigners looking at Japan badly wanted to see that which was strange, exotic, and different, and scholars were just as susceptible to such Orientalist desires as anyone else. (You might want to read #this critical essay# on nihonjinron by Gregory Shepherd.) Much of the nihonjinron literature follows a classically racist pattern of thinking in which it is assumed that distinctive cultural traits must originate or reside in some sort of distinctive physiological makeup. Although there is much less interest in Japanese distinctiveness now that the country has been in severe economic recession for over a decade, nihonjinron-influenced thinking is still common whenever Japan is discussed.

During the 1980s, Japan's economy seemed invincible. "Japan bashing" of one sort or another became quite fashionable. Auto workers in Detroit, for example dramatically smashed an old Toyota car with baseball bats and other objects. American officials began to whine that Japanese worked too hard and that doing so constituted an unfair trade practice. Americans everywhere began to talk about Japan's *economic "invasion"* of American, especially after Japanese companies began buying up famous American properties. The view from Japan looking at the United States tended to be that of a country past its prime, whose people had grown lazy and arrogant. Jokes and cartoons abounded in Japan whose punch lines depended on images of shoddy American workmanship or laziness. For example, two billboard painters are shown taking a nap on the scaffold, the billboard only half finished. But enough of it is finished that one can see the main message: "Buy American!" A prominent member of Japan's parliament publicly described American workers as lazy and illiterate, and a prime minister made remarks to the effect that the average intelligence level in Japan exceeded that of the United States owing to and influx undesirable immigrants. All the while Japan's stock market soared and Japanese businesses rushed to invest their new-found wealth in real estate and other ventures.

Looking back on this time, we can now see clearly that it was a classic bubble (which is the common term in Japan as well). The bubble burst around 1990, and the country is still struggling to recover.

The Recession Years: 1990-Present (2005)

Around the mid 1990s the reality began to sink in that Japan was no longer the economic superpower it had been (or had seemed to be) during the 1970s and 80s. It was still the world's second largest economy and thus a major force in the world, but its stock market had crashed, several major corporations had gone into bankruptcy or were facing such a prospect, multiple scandals rocked the political and economic realms, and companies were desperate to unload all that foreign real estate they had been buying up during the booming 80s. The job market had become increasingly tight as well, resulting in a generally heightened sense of anxiety about job security throughout society. Indeed, Japan's situation in the early and mid 90s much resembles that of  the post-boom United States of 2002.

The causes of this lengthy period of economic recession are numerous, and we need not try to enumerate them here. Clearly, however, what many people liked to call "Japan, Inc." in the 80s had stopped working, or at least it has stopped working well. The basic structure of Japan's economy had changed little between the late 1940s and the early 1990s. "Japan, Inc." was basically the postwar semi-capitalist, semi-centrally-controlled economy that had emerged from the U.S. occupation. Some of the characteristics of this system were de facto cartels consisting of major leaders in each industry, a terribly inefficient domestic distribution system, and a high degree of corporate indebtedness to banks. As time went on and the reality that something was wrong began to sink in, a rhetoric of fundamental reform began to be heard from the mouths of leaders of government and industry. Thus far, however, serious change has been slow to come, and many experts predict that the situation will have to get worse before it gets better.

But I do not mean to leave too negative an impression at the end. Today's Japan is a world leader in many technological and cultural areas, and most of its people enjoy a high standard of living. It will almost certainly pull out of its current economic difficulties and remain a major force in the world to come.