An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan

1931-1945

Shunsuke Tsurumi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415588683
• eBook ISBN: 9781136917592
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: History

When this book was published in Japanese in 1982 it was awarded the prestigious Jiro Osaragi Prize. It is an important contribution to the understanding of the mental and spiritual world of Japan just over two generations ago. The author argues that just as the period of isolation up to the middle of the 19th century was crucial for Japan's development, so the Second World War represented another crucial period for the country. These years were a period of intellectual isolation during which significant development took place.

1
An Approach to Japan, 1931–1945

I will begin with a few words on my subject matter, the intellectual history of Japan between 1931 and 1945.

Firstly, the problem of language: most of the events I shall discuss took place in Japan, and most of the thoughts I shall analyse first found expression in the Japanese language. Thus my use here of the English language creates a methodological difficulty. I have a hypothesis that in the majority of cases English-speaking Japanese are unreliable. This hypothesis tends to discredit whatever I might say in English about Japan. In the years since Japan’s defeat in 1945, the English language has so infiltrated Japanese that words of English origin now flood everyday life, so that, for example, in a newspaper advertisement we might come across an expression like ‘Chic na Dress no Fashion Show’, which contains only two words—‘na’ and ‘no’—of Japanese origin. To quote another instance, an American scholar, who had studied the Japanese language for years, came to Japan and found in a scholarly journal a phrase which he could not decipher even with the help of a dictionary. He appealed to a Japanese colleague of the same discipline, sociology, and the phrase turned out to be ‘hitto ando ran’ (hit and run). But it seems to me that my old hypothesis still preserves its validity, for the borrowing of European words does not necessarily mean the Europeanization of thought processes. By borrowing so many words in such a short time, the Japanese are in fact becoming incomprehensible even to themselves, because they have lost the means to grasp their own thought processes.

I shall begin with an account of what happened in Japan during the war years, and follow it by an attempt to understand what happened elsewhere and at other times.

Tenk

^* is a term which was coined in Japan in 1920, and which came into general use in the 1930s. It is not a translation of a European word, but expressed a concept born and developed in the political milieu of the war years in Japan; thus the formation of this word is as ‘Japanese’ a phenomenon as one could find. Nevertheless, we may find in it clues to understand trends and events in other countries, and it may even help us understand what is happening in the world today.¹ In this fashion, the description of a particular event in Japan may, I hope, lead to a broader perspective upon the world.

One method of approach to cultural and intellectual history is to examine a deviation in order to reveal the essential characteristics of a national culture. What took place in Japan from 1931 to 1945 should not merely be dismissed as the product of a whim or thoughtlessness.² With careful study, the period reveals much of both positive and negative value. What is true of a personal history is also true of a nation’s history; we grow only by examining our errors, and this requires not only that we learn not to repeat them, but also that we grasp the element of truth and value contained in them.

We may date the beginning of World War II from the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1931, the Fifteen Years’ War.³ When Japanese Army leaders began the fighting in Manchuria in 1931 and on this pretext established a puppet government in north-east China, they introduced to the world a new tactic, which was later to be used by Mussolini and Hitler. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War was the beginning of a new trend that influenced the whole world, and in this instance the local history of Japan had an unusual influence.

After the opening of Japan in the nineteenth century, a taste for things Japanese developed in the West. But among such noted commentators as Basil Hall Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn, and

Bernard Leach, who were known primarily for their works about Japan, Leach—the potter—is the only one, to my knowledge, who did not later express disillusionment with his youthful affection for the country. When seen from the perspective of Korea, Japan reveals its horrible features. From the perspective of China, Japan reveals its shallowness. When a student from another land first studies Japan without either perspective, and then turns his eyes to Korea and China, he is bound to be disillusioned. Leach, however, from the first fostered an appreciation of Chinese and Korean culture along with that of Japan. He began with this perspective and therefore had no illusions to be destroyed. Of course, if one takes interest in Japan only as a form of exoticism, then one preserves the taste and viewpoint with which one was born and bred, unaltered by the contact with the ‘exotic’ foreign culture. One’s view of Japanese culture will remain static and will undergo no disillusionment or modification. Exoticism preserves one’s distance from another culture, but genuine cultural contact is a process of weaving the other culture into the fabric of one’s own. If one wishes to make this kind of acquaintance with Japan, it is important to place Japanese culture from the very first within the perspective of the cultures of other Asian countries, especially Korea and China. It is also important to see the Japan of today within the perspective of the Japan of the war years. It is these perspectives which I will attempt to provide.

I wish to note at the outset the deficiencies of my approach. Problems exist with regard to both the data and their interpretation.

With regard to data, research into contemporary history seldom satisfies the requirement of exhaustive exploration of the materials concerned. On the other hand, the reason research into earlier periods of history meets the same requirement is that much of the materials that must have existed at the time have perished. The apparent completeness of medieval history is as dubious as contemporary history.

With regard to the interpretation of materials, some of my conclusions may be controversial. Interpretations of contemporary events vary according to prejudices arising from the interpreter’s own life. We must simply accept diversity of opinion as inevitable. I will try to set out a broad and, for the moment, tentative outline of the facts considered relevant, noting where various interpreta tions are possible. All the possible information has not yet been collected, and some facts will never come to light. I will respect divergences with regard to both facts and interpretation and try to draw a picture of contemporary history, although my interpretations will sometimes be incomplete or based upon unavoidably uncertain, unproved, and insufficient data. I hope at least to raise questions to ponder.

Footnotes

^*The Japanese expression tenk

has no adequate English equivalent. The Kenky

sha Japanese-English dictionary gives ‘a turn; a conversion; an about-face’. However, the standard Japanese dictionary, K

jien, defines it as ‘(1) a change of standpoint or direction; (2) the abandonment, by a communist, socialist, etc., of his doctrine’. It is related, but not identical, to such expressions as conversion, apostasy, sell-out, turncoat, thought-reform, etc. In this book it will simply be left untranslated.

2
Concerning Tenk

I will begin with a brief outline of the background to the phenomenon of tenk

.

The end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 marks the beginning of a new era. For a period of almost forty years after the new government was established in 1867, the Japanese people felt compelled to rise on a fictional ‘ladder of civilization’. The belief in this imaginary entity strongly influenced the thinking of the entire nation.

When the state policy of national isolation and the feudal rule of the Tokugawa Shogun were first brought to an end, there was forged a new spirit foreign to the value system according to which men were judged by their feudal status. Among those samurai who participated in the anti-Tokugawa movement, there developed the tacit agreement that once they had crossed the border of the fief to which they belonged they would treat one another as equals. These men, who cut themselves free of the bond of the fief, regarded one another as comrades. This comradeship spread from the independent samurai to those of their sympathizers still within the bounds of the fief.

In the course of the anti-Tokugawa movement many were caught and killed, and it was difficult to foresee who would survive to be the leaders of the new government. Those whom later historians have considered to be the founders of the movement, including^* Yoshida Torajir

, Hashimoto Sanai, Sakamoto Ry

ma, and Takasugi Shinsaku, had all been killed before the change in government took place. Of those who realized those founders’ vision in the establishment of a new government, the most important three, Saig

,

kubo, and Kido, died within ten years of the Restoration. Saig

committed suicide in a rebellion that failed;

kubo was assassinated; Kido died a manic depressive. Among the great leaders, Iwakura alone survived as a statesman of influence in the early years of Meiji, but, with this exception, we may say that all the great leaders had passed away by the end of the first decade of the Meiji Restoration. The comradeship that had been forged in the Restoration movement lingered on into the Meiji era, together with the acute realization that the best among them were dead.

This humble realization, coupled with the consciousness that they must work together to keep Japan from being colonized by the Western powers, kept the surviving leaders of Japan relatively industrious and austere. They were also set on learning the techniques of Western civilization. During the Russo-Japanese War these leaders accurately assessed the situation, and saw the need to bring about a quick end to the war, before Japan’s resources and the sympathy of England and the United States were exhausted. They did not delude themselves that they had defeated Russia. It was for this reason that the leaders of the Army and the Navy allowed the cabinet to conclude peace quickly with only nominal gain to Japan, not because...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• 1 An Approach to Japan, 1931–1945
• 2 Concerning Tenkō
• 3 Insularity and National Isolation
• 4 National Structure
• 5 Greater Asia
• 6 Patterns of Immobility
• 7 The Korea Within Japan
• 8 Germs of Anti-Stalinism
• 9 The Philosophy of Glorious Self-destruction*
• 10 Everyday Life during the War
• 11 As Victims of Atomic Bombs
• 12 The End of the War
• 13 Looking Back
• References
• Index