I had the fortuity to pick up this book at the local library in Taipei. It was a great read - truly eye-opening, so I want to share my thoughts on it. Having received a Pulitze Prize for this novel, John Dower did an excellent job, without a doubt, of chronicling the American takeover of Japan and the post-war condition of the Japanese. As an Asian American, there were some pictures and events that I found provocative, yet this history is beyond my time and largely irrelevant today. If anything, reading this has left a mildly bitter aftertaste. Rarely anything I read these days have piqued my interest and emotion as has this chronicle, so I believe it is worth sharing.
We start in the aftermath of World War II. The Potsdam Declaration of 1945 was drafted by the United States, United Kingdom, and China to call for the unconditional surrender of Japan. General MacArthur was tasked with so-called democratizing Japan, which was a dictatorship. It seemed the United States had large shoes to fill in order to follow in the footsteps of Western, imperialistic nations. And so, the democratization of Japan could be said as the USA's first dealings with imperialism. But, can a country with deep emperor worship be democratized? The Americans planned to accomplish this by changing the psychology of the Japanese and reforming their economy.
While Germany was a Western nation, Japan was not. Nazi ideology was treated as cancerous, and the rest of German society could stay. On the other hand, Japan must be reformed. The reformation of Japan after World War II was embodied by MacArthurism. As the author puts it, it was about "denaturing an Oriental adversary and turning it into at least an approximation of an acceptable, healthy, westernized nation."
Initial efforts were largely focused on placing blame. Blaming the imperial military, an institution, rather than the emperor was the narrative during wartime trials. Placing the blame on the imperial institution also served to weaken its influence on the Japanese and push them towards self-government. Yet, elitists like Yoshida Shigeru are still of the opinion that the Japanese cannot be capable of genuine self-government.
Page detailing "street childrens'" struggles and their successes
Meanwhile, the Japanese struggled to make a living in the peacetime economy. The spoils from the booming wartime economy were largely stolen from the people. The people succumbed to famine. Even though the MacArthur-propped government provided food rations, they were not enough. In one account by Judge Yamaguchi, he insisted on adhering to the ration diet, but after a year of strict adherence, he died. As a remark, he said, "Would it not have been wiser to die fighting for good laws instead of insisting on lethal ones?" When the government could not adequately provide for the people, the people turned to the black markets for food and goods.
The reformation of the Japanese consciousness was a humanistic movement, which emphasized individuality over all. Yet, it seemed to be taken a bit too literal, especially in the context of traditional values of the Japanese. These are filial piety and social harmony as opposed to the maximization of personal pleasure, which was embodied in the rise of hedonism among the Japanese. The book mentions an author called Sakaguchi, whose writings were widely read at the time. His piece de resistance was an essay, titled "On Decadence". Decadance is defined as a moral decline after reaching some peak in social measure. Decadence was the Yamato spirit wrote Sakaguchi, and post-war Japan was not; it was reality. He says, "Could we not say that the kamikaze hero was a mere illusion, and that human history begin from the point he takes to black marketeering?" "On Decadence" could be compared with the Nietzschean idea of the Ubermensch: "We must discover ourselves and save ourselves by falling to the best of our ability." With the Yamato spirit done away, could one argue that the post-war Japanese were stronger through reflection and survival of the fittest?
Sakaguchi's "On Decadence" was one of many works in the post-war publishing boom, which revealed a nation in reflection: "If the war experience had exposed `the powerlessness of culture, emptiness of morality, and laziness, cowardice, and irrespoonsibility of the cultured, intellectual, class in our country, the redemptive task that lay ahead was to develop a culture and morality that the whole world would applaud." The author, Soseki, put forth the issue of defining and asserting one's identity and individuality in an age of traumatic and irresistable 'modernization' and 'westernization'. The philosopher and writer, Nishida Kitaro, pulled inspiration from both Western philosophy and Zen buddhism. It is the path of harmonizing Western and Eastern philosophies that laid the foundation for the new culture of Japan, and one could arguably attribute modern-day Tokyo to this culture mashup.
The post-war Japanese also sought to get on the good side of MacArthur's government. The people sent the best gifts to him: "... the most formal and elaborate of the gifts to MacArthur was surely a brocade kimono and sash. The embroider had secluded himself in Kyoto's Shimo Kamo Shrine in November 1946 and spent three years on his task, praying each day and ultimately working some 70 million stitches into his masterpiece." Intellectuals mostly jumped on the bandwagon as "progressive men of letters."
Progressivism was subject to a lot of analysis and questioning. "The very notion of a left-wing or communist vanguard rested on the premise that the masses were backward and in need of such leadership." In other words, the left-wing party existed because of the need for reformation from a dictatorship to a democracy. Besides, what would this democracy look like? Japan is a long-lived nation that has only just discovered capitalism: "... If you interpret democracy as an idealistic liberation of humanity, then nobody would oppose this. The problem, however, is what form Japanese democracy hould have -- a Japan that has 3000 years of tradition and was a late-developing country in capitalism." Tradition was emphasized upon, too, for traditions are complex and strictly defined: "A housewife's letter expressed concern that woman suffrage was being imposed too quickly, before women could fully grasp its meaning." One instance of traditional gender structures being desecrated by woman suffrage was the case of an old woman marching in on men's day at a bathhouse and resisted expulsion, claiming that the country now had gender equality. Another instance was at a neighborhood festival in Yokohama in the summer of 1946 where women begun to participate in carrying the mikoshi or shrine.
While the Japanese pondered the form of their new culture, the MacArthur regime focused its sights on remaking the image of Emperor Hirohito. This became known as America's wedge tactic. It was based on earlier analysis of the Japanese and their society. Bonner F. Fellers, chief of psychological warfare operations, came up with the idea of using the Emperor to convert the people. The Emperor would be one liberal figure amongst many to influence the people. MacArthur's government was persuaded to act behind the so-called Chrysanthemum curtain, a reference to the hidden workings of the Japanese Imperial system, because of the significant differences between Japanese and American ideologies. This was decided upon at the Manila Conference: "'Western logic is not in accordance with Japanese psychology' and that the Japanese were incapable of comprehending American-style democracy." Moreover, it was explicitly determined that "[the] war in Europe was both political and social whereas the war in the Pacific was racial." Such a statement strongly supports the distinctness between the Americans and the Japanese. This is further supported by the traditional values of the Japanese, which are summed up in Shinmin no MIchi or The Way of the Subject, an account of Japanese virtues: "Filial piety and loyalty were the supreme virtues of the imperial state, and [it] was at pains to denounce the 'individualism, liberalism, utilitarianism, and materialism' that imperiled those virtues." Yet, it is precisely such distinctness that motivates the Americans' and MacArthur's interest in Japan: "MacArthur had no personal ties [to the Japanese] ... persuaded him that Asia would be of central importance in the future global balance of power, and it was thus essential for Westerners to move toward rectifying the inequalities of the past." Converting Japan to the West meant one more card to play in the game for global power.
When MacArthur and company first encountered Emperor Hirohito, they formed a meager impression of him, describing him as awkward and unpredictable: "[he] rarely conveyed self-doubt, but neither did he display overweening arrogance...". One could say that they got along fine because both shared the same interest: to protect imperial subjects. The primary sentiment among imperial subjects was still pro-Japanese with Akihito writing, "... Japan had lost the war for two fundamental reasons: material backwardness, particularly in science, and individual selfishness. One on one, Japanese were superior to Americans, ... but the Americans were superior when it came to working as a group."
This photograph of MacArthur towering over Hirohito was often said "to mark the moment when it really came home to most Japanese that they had been vanquished and the Americans were in charge." Yet, was Hirohito as an absolute of an authority as was initially thought? After this photograph emerged, "Hirohito even emerged as the butt of the most salacious riddle of the occupation period. This rested on a hitherto unmentionable pun: the fact that the imperial 'We' - pronounced chin - was a homonym to a slang word for penis (or 'prick'). Why was General MacArthur the belly button (heso) of Japan?" It is worth mentioning that the metaphor of "cutting smoke with scissors" is used in the text, perhaps indicating the untargetable nature of the imperial divinity. In other words, the imperial structure could only be made sense of by only the Japanese.
The Americans planned for the renouncement of Japanese tradition and for a new Japan to come from the emperor's mouth. Lt. Harold Henderson, special advisor to the Civil Intelligence & Education section, was tasked with drafting the renouncement speech. The content of the speech was intended to declare a "basis for disarding 'old abuses' and creating a new Japan devoted to the pursuit of peace and the attainment of an enriched culture." The script was revised many times, with the final version being more moderate and aligned with the "old liberals" as exemplified by Shidehara, Shigemitsu, and Yoshida. On New Years' Day on January 1, 1946, the emperor renounced his divinity, saying, "I stand by my people. I am ever ready to share in their joys and sorrows. The ties between me and my people have always been formed by mutual trust and affection. They do not depend upon mere legends or myths. Nor are they predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine, and that the Japanese are superior to other races and destined to rule the world." A conservative Japanese man named Watanabe, angered by such a display by the emperor no less, exclaimed, "'The emperor threw away his divinity and authority by himself and bowed his head like a dog[!]'". In his anger, he was even enamored to express it in prose:
What is the emperor?
What is Japan?
What is love of country?
What is democracy?
What is "country of culture"?
Al of this, all of this eats shit.
I spit on it.
- Watanabe
Meanwhile, the Japan version of the Nuremburg trials, the Tokyo trials, were beginning. To protect the imperial structure, defendants, those accused of war crimes, were encouraged, if not coerced, to adjust their testimonies. In contrast to tampering with defendants' testimonies, the simplest tactic that proved effective was nonaction, assumedly in enforcement. The imperial image served as another means to deflect blame and further scrutiny: "The emperor's very unpreparedness for mingling with ordinary people proved to be an immense public-relations advantage. His attempts at conversation were so stumbling and ill at ease that they provoked a wave of popular sympathy for so sheltered and vulnerable a soul. This almost disconcerting awkwardness also reinforced an impression of him as someone uniquely pure and innocent... His social ineptitude made him seem all too human, and simultaneously unworldly - an essentially 'spiritual' essence after all." Moreover, when the emperor toured Japan, "enormous sums were spent to ensure that the emperor did not really encounter reality, to the point of sometimes devastating the budgets of local governments." Consider this the opposite of Siddhartha's venture outside of his castle walls. Rather than seeing reality for what it is, the emperor was someone altogether removed from it. How could someone like this be making the right decisions?
In American fashion, a committee worked on writing a constitution for Japan's new government. The committee included a head committee and seven sub-committees, all of political backgrounds and none military. They sought to verbalize all that MacArthur had done, especially placing the emperor as the head of state and the symbol of unity. Additionally, they sought to abolish war as a right of the peoples, but it was not clear how Japan could protect itself then. This condition and its exact expression in the constitution mirrored that of the Kellogg-Briand pact, which declared that nations resort to conflict resolution by any other means than war. Since World War II had just ended, an emphasis on world peace was at its height of popularity. It was Article 9 or the Ashida amendment that confirmed Japan's renouncement of war. "War potential" being the key term here, but there still lay ambiguity on whether future rearmament is possible. As for Japan's "right of self-defense", it must be of a form where "the force of arms" is not used. It encouraged Japan to find security by "earning the confidence of other nations."
Besides pulling from inspiration, they also considered antithetical ideas, namely the traditional Meiji charter: "... the Government section team was interested in this existing charter only as a negative model, a reminder of what had gone wrong." The committee had its doubts, too. Were they being too idealistic? Were they putting first priority the best interests of the Japanese or merely imposing American culture, another instance of cultural imperialism? The imposition of a new constitution assumed that the "laws of political morality are universal" and that the Japanese fully understood their new obligations. Indeed, one critique against a new constitution was "... 'that the Japanese people are not ready for a democracy, and that we are caught in the uncomfortable position of writing a liberal Constitution for a people who still think mystically.'" Further, even more evidence that the Americans were overstepping their boundaries was the breaking of traditional practice of law in Japan. Law was written in an ancient, niche Japanese form of text called bungotai, which was largely inaccessible to commoners. An effective constitution that could be understood by the masses would have to be written in kogotai or colloquial Japanese.
Because not all Japanese were open to American influence and reforms, Americans took to censorship of the political left, or the communist party. The Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) employed over 6000 individuals nationwide to secretly identify and to translate questionable material. Four years worth of investigations yielded 330 million pieces of mail and 800,000 private phone conversations. However, the Japanese quickly learned to identify the new "taboos" and to censor themselves accordingly, for "one simply did not challenge ultimate authority and expect to win." It was not straightforward what could or could not be spoken either. Public communications users reliled on precedent and forethought or just guessing. The Japanese impression of the American's censorship activity was of hypocrisy: "From the outset, the censorship policy was set against a positive emphasis on freedom of speech and the dissolution of official government controls over the media."
Scrutinized material seemed to take the form of anything suggestive of the United States. Censorship in a film was a scene showing one of the principal characters being beaten up by the strikebreakers in a manner "'suggestive of American "gangster" methods'." Another censored scene suggested the moral decadence of the Americans in "a passing shot of a man with his back to the camera negotiating with a street-walker and in a cabaret scene in which the walls were decorated with posters of Hollywood actresses and pictures of Caucasian nudes."
Japan had its own run-in with McCarthyism or red scare. On June 6, 1950, MacArthur orders the entire Central Committee of the Communist Party to be purged. These purges involved posting the names of individuals to be expelled from their facilities. Such extreme measures were purported to be made possible by the outbreak of the Korean War in the 1950, as well. Once again, the impression of the behavior of the MacArthur regime was poor: "it was disheartening to discover the pleasure Americans took in exercising absolute authority - and dishearteningly familiar to observe the reflexive animosity they soon exhibited to those who disagreed with them." In the face of this outbreak of authoritarianism by the Americans, the Japanese turned to nonaction: "... the better part of political wisdom was silence and conformism. So well did they succeed in reinforcing this consciousness that after they left, and time passed, many non-Japanese including Americans came to regard such attitudes as peculiarly Japanese."
While the Americans did not attempt to hide their acts of justice within Japan, their display of it was much more nuanced when it came to the Tokyo trials. After all, the Tokyo trials were intended for foreign consumption. MacArthur appointed 11 judges to the tribunal, mostly from Western allied nations except for India, China, and the Phillipines. War crimes were judged and punished based on their classification: A, B, or C, from the most severe to the least. The format of the trials and its creation was somewhat inspired by that of the Nuremburg trials, which focused on crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes. American chief prosecutor, Joseph Keenan, emphasized that "civilization was the ultimate plaintiff, and [it] might well be destroyed if these judicial undertakings did not succeed in preventing future wars." For the Tokyo trials, crimes against peace and war crimes were the only concerns. Although no consensus was made among the judges, MacArthur went ahead to arrest the suspects. Ultimately, six defendans were sentenced to death, including General Hideki Tojo and, former prime minister, Koki Hirota.
Justice in the Tokyo trials was not clear-cut as demonstrated by the judges' inability to form a cohesive opinion. Among the dissenting judges, Rabhinod Pal of India, Henri Bernard of France, and Dr. Bert Roling of the Netherlands, their main concern was whether the defendants could be held lawfully responsible. Rabhinod Pal went so far as to submit a 12-page document dismissing the charge against the defendants, pointing out the hypocrisy of the American's justice. India had its own run-ins with colonialism by the British, and so his dissent held notable weight in the discussion of justice. Other dissidents among the Allies include General Elliott Thorpe, claiming that those persecuted were "not the brutes and the physical criminals and murderers, but the political war criminals, those who came under that very disagreeable heading of those who used war as an instrument of national policy." Another suggested, "... it was wrong to try a man for doing his duty for his country and government in time of war... I am against it one hundred percent." And, George Keenan from the US State Department claimed that one could say the trials had been "procedurally correct" but the trials were more characterized as politically motivated rather than lawfully motivated, of which, critically, there had been no precedent. This sentiment alone could be the bane of the entirety of the Tokyo trials, for "[international] law, unlike the national laws of many countries does not expressly include a crime of naked conspiracy... So too, the laws and customs of war do not make mere naked conspiracy a crime." Moreover, was Japan liable for its actions under international law or Anglo-American law? Whereas the truth of the universality of political morality cannot be proven, the principle of nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege - without a law there can be no crime, without a law there can be no punishment - is true, with no doubt. Lastly, the author is convinced that the defendants were aware that the deck was stacked against them, commenting, "None of the defendants accepted for a moment the accusation that they had been engaged in an eighteen-year long conspiracy to wage 'wars of aggression'. ... had been motivated by legitimate concern for Japan's essential rights and interests on the Asian continent."
At last, the transition from post-war to modern-day Japan was best characterized by a coming to terms to its predicament, most notably a fusion of the new Western ideas with its long-held beliefs stemming from tradition. Because the justice that had been served had been the Americans, the Japanese had erred in their ways and had to come to terms with that. Ichioku sozange or repentance brought closure to the Japanese and was defined by transformation through self-surrender. Tanabe Hajime, a leader in this movement, proposed Zange to enable self-surrender through otherness. Otherness was a means to "brotherhood [which would] synthesize the freedom of a capitalistic society and the equality of the socialist state" - a social democracy. Shinran, an ancient Japanese monk, served as inspiration to Tanabe. He was known for his "positive principles", which promoted the virtues of Buddhism to the layman, a concept that was radical at the time. Such egalitarianism could only be made possible if each and every individual held a sense of duty to invest in the wellbeing of others - what the Japanese termed as genso. Tanabe believed that positive principles and genso would allow for the optimal allocation of society's resources and of each person's satisfaction.
Since the right to bear arms was abolished by the new constitution, the Japanese turned to economic development as the means to secure their nation. Pre-war industry in Japan was dictated by zaibatsus or business conglomerates, such as Mitsui, Sumimoto, Yasuda, Asano, Furukawa, Nissan, Okura, Nomura, and Nakajima. Zaibatsus were typically family-owned and vertically contained the means to their production. During the war, zaibatsus produced for the military, particularly in the heavy metals and chemicals industries. In peacetime, they had to shift their production to common household goods. Because they were structures of pre-war Japan, they were disbanded or deconcentrated to be broken up into smaller business units. To help the new businesses shift their production, the government provided capital in the form of subsidies. Low-interest loans were also provided through the newly created Reconstruction Finance Bank. The main criteria for these loans were that the business must be in key industries. These key industries were highly specialized because only 97 firms in all of Japan receive 87% of the RFB-backed loans. Whether the criteria for key industries was sound was likely insufficient, and this was demonstrated by the Showa Denko scandal of 1948. The Bank of Japan was a primary purchaser of RFB bonds and increased the yen supply accordingly. As a result, production and inflation became strongly correlated so much so that it was likely that production was buoyed by printing money.
With such a strong influence of capital allocation, economic planning became a core aspect to Japan's prosperity. When the Americans established the incentives for key industries, they envisioned an industrial nation marked by higher living standards, higher wages, and more equitable distribution of wealth. Also, of great concern, they wanted to get rid of social dumping, which describes an economy characterized by cheap exports. In the burgeoning economy, inflation soon proved a significant problem. The "Dodge Line" of 1948 was enacted to reign in inflation by cutting public works, welfare, and educational budgets. While this was effective, the catalysts that enabled Japan's economy to flourish and to become robust was the production of durable goods and the Korean War, which brought in valuable US dollars. The investment made by the US "constituted the first postwar channel between the conservative Japanese big business elements and their bureaucratic and political allies in Japan and the top level of officials in the US government." Ultimately, Japan's newly democratic society also restructured its economy. This is most notably displayed in the transformation from the vertically integrated, family-run zaibatsus to the meritocratic and horizontally-oriented keiretsus or clusters of industry. The economic plan paid off well in the end, for Japan is a nation known for producing quality, durable goods and having an abundance of intellectual property.
Today, Japan is a modern economic superpower similar to what MacArthur had envisioned. Of course, this was made possible with the reforms made by the Americans. However, there were events along the way such as the Tokyo trials and censorship of the political left that makes one, particularly if you are an American, wonder whether the Americans acted correctly. The results seem to indicate that the ends have justified the means. Most important, I believe, is that Japan is a sovereign government today and its culture, while being more open, is distinct and in some ways remains unchanged.
Embracing Defeat has been a good read for me not just because of the series of events that transpired but the profundity of concepts that stems from it. I liked how John Dower presents history in as neutral of a way as possible, a feature that made possible my analyses of the text. It is a task that is unbelievably hard because he narrates the entire history. I appreciate that it does not read like a textbook but by no means is it a beach read either. I think the book is for you if you appreciate the history of places you visit. One travels to respect the nation they visit, after all.