Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

A half-year before his death, a popular magazine featured a short article that concluded that if all black-market regulations were strictly enforced, everyone in the country would have had to go to prison.23 The young judge’s response to this moral dilemma was not to challenge the law, but rather to live by it personally—to perform his duties with a clear conscience, as he told his wife, and at the same time share the suffering of the people. Sometime in 1946, he asked his wife to feed him nothing beyond his rationed allotment, although it was understood that she might buy black-market food for their children and herself. Thereafter, most of the family’s legally obtained food, particularly the rice, went to the children. Yamaguchi’s widow later recalled days when she and her husband consumed nothing more than salted water. Judge Yamaguchi died on October 11, 1947.24