Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

MacArthur was also showered with gifts—and, more often than not, accepted them. Although it was traditional practice to give gifts to superiors and benefactors, the number of offerings to the alien overlord exceeded anything the former military leaders had elicited. Some gestures were modest and charming. A fisherman wrote MacArthur in the midsummer heat of 1948 to say that he had been thinking deeply about how to express his heartfelt gratitude that the general, “with your outstanding ideas and capabilities,” was making it possible for the Japanese to achieve “what we could not have attained even in many years of bloody struggle.”

Most of the letters, cards, and petitions sent to the supreme commander and his headquarters addressed the specific concerns as well as hopes of the writers. Well over half dealt with the repatriation of family and acquaintances from overseas. Many focused on specific economic problems and policies. A small but striking percentage of the mail directed to GHQ involved fingering individuals whom the writers believed should be arrested, purged, or even brought to trial as war criminals. Local residents denounced officials who had been oppressive during the war. High-school and university students called attention to militaristic teachers. Former military men volunteered the names of individuals who had abused Allied POWs. Specific organizations, including religious sects, were identified as having promoted ultranationalism. Denouncing others extended to the contemporary scene as well. Complaints were submitted about the behavior of the local police; names were named in connection with hoarding, black-market activity, corruption, and gangsterism; people were reported for having hidden their heirloom swords instead of turning them in as ordered by SCAP; individuals were denounced for harboring “anti-American” or “anti-democratic” sentiments. Judging only by such relentless missives as these, one might be forgiven for concluding that yesterday’s nation of patriots had turned into a nation of informers. Another startling category of letters urged that the country be annexed or tu...

That the most principled resistance to the war had come from dedicated Communists gave these individuals considerable status. When Tokuda Kyūichi and several hundred other Communists were released from prison, they became celebrities and instant heroes in a society whose old heroes had all suddenly been toppled. Similarly, Nosaka Sanzō’s arrival in January 1946 after a long journey from China attracted a great crowd. He, too, received a hero’s welcome; even conservatives, it was said, joined in. Within a few months, Nosaka was elected to the Diet in the first general election held under occupation auspices. Defeat gave such Communist leaders charisma, imbuing them with an aura of integrity and political acuity. By the same token, defeat helped establish Marxism and the Communist Party itself as sources of clear, secular, universal principles that transcended the disastrous, particularistic values of the imperial state.

Psychologically, the more doctrinaire forms of leftism played to the notion that the Japanese people as a whole did indeed have to be guided by their superiors to achieve a democratic revolution. 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 this regard, left-wing elitism was not all that different from the conqueror’s, or from that of the conservatives who sought to retain power under the aegis and aura of the emperor. MacArthur’s GHQ, the old-guard Japanese who reluctantly went along with his reformist agenda, the “progressive men of letters,” and the Japan Communist Party were, each in their own way, practitioners of imperial democracy.

Other Japanese who accepted the occupation agenda were severe in criticizing the superficiality of their compatriots’ embrace of “democracy.” D. T. Suzuki, the well-known interpreter of Zen Buddhism, wrote the Asahi to warn readers to be wary of prominent Buddhist leaders who had supported the militarists and now suddenly presented themselves as apostles of democracy.23

Even in nuclear-bombed Nagasaki, residents welcomed the first Americans with gifts (a doll in a glass case, given to the head of a scientific team investigating radiation effects), and shortly afterward joined local U.S. military personnel in sponsoring a “Miss Atomic Bomb” beauty contest.

A comic strip embraced democracy (demokurashi in the direct Japanese rendering) by introducing characters named “Little Demo” and “Little Cra” (Demo-chan and Kura-chan; conservative wordplay, in contrast, spoke of “demo-kurushii,” kurushii meaning “painful” or “tormenting”).

Other accounts of individuals asserting themselves were eminently serious. Shortly after surrender, students at a high school in Mito city attracted nationwide attention by boycotting classes and forcing their militaristic principal to resign. In Tokyo, female students at an upper-level secondary school caused a sensation by denouncing their male principal as corrupt and demanding classroom reforms. Their actions—doubly defiant in involving not only students but women—were followed by spontaneous protests at a number of higher schools and universities calling for the resignations of militaristic administrators and teachers and the granting of greater student rights. In November 1945, university students in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Kyushu began establishing autonomous student federations that laid the basis for the postwar student movement.29

Like other occupation officials, Oppler found that the shock of defeat had stimulated “the revaluation of all values,” even to the point of prompting a thoroughgoing iconoclastic feeling of “damn what you have adored and adore what you have damned.” In the opening stage of the occupation, the reformist ardor of the Americans thus was complemented by a striking “open-mindedness to innovations” on the other side. In these circumstances, Oppler and his colleagues claimed that they “made the greatest effort not to order our Japanese counterparts around, but to work with them on an equal level. Free discussion, persuasion, and compromise rather than fiat brought about agreements.”38

Until new texts could be introduced, students were required to go through their schoolbooks with the guidance of their teachers and systematically excise with brush and ink all passages deemed to be militaristic, nationalistic, or in some manner undemocratic. This practice of “blackening over” (suminuru) actually was initiated by the government before the Americans even set foot in Japan. For pupils and teachers alike, this was a visceral undertaking—simultaneously a ritual exorcism of teachings that had only yesterday been deemed sacrosanct and a practical exercise in encouraging criticism of received wisdom.

Modernization since the Meiji period, the guide continued, had consisted primarily of borrowing material aspects of Western civilization while ignoring the basic spirit behind them. The Japanese had “learned how to use trains, ships, and electricity, but did not sufficiently develop the scientific spirit that produced them.” At the same time, war and defeat had come about because the people did not have proper respect for “human nature, personality, and individuality.” Failure to develop a rational, critical spirit had allowed militarism and ultranationalism to arise and, “in this sense, responsibility for the war must be borne by the entire populace, and the people must deeply apologize to the world for their crime.”

The guide then offered a detailed discussion of the “Fundamental Problems in Constructing a New Japan.” Six successive chapters dealt with (1) self-reflection concerning Japan’s present state; (2) eliminating militarism and ultranationalism; (3) promoting respect for human nature, personality, and individuality; (4) raising scientific standards and philosophical and religious refinement; (5) carrying out thoroughgoing democracy; and (6) constructing a peaceful nation of culture.

Filled with grief over the deaths of their young charges, often overwhelmed with guilt for having encouraged them on a pathway to destruction, many teachers embraced the ideals of peace and democracy with fervor. Their new-found radicalism was reinforced by the miserable living conditions they faced.

The Americanization of the education system was revealed in the emergence of a new lexicon of borrowed terms. Karikyuramu, gaidansu, homūrūmu, hōmu purojekuto, cōsu obu sutadei, kurabu akutibiti—that is, “curriculum,” “guidance,” “home room,” “home project,” “course of study,” and “club activity”—all these bastardized, imported terms and concepts became part of everyday pedagogical vocabulary.47

whodunit

Odd made-in-Japan English neologisms sometimes leaped from the page. Mane-moon, or “money-moon,” was one such creation, defined as “a honeymoon for those who married for money.” The borrowed English term “bestseller” was accompanied by sekkusu serā or “sex seller,” referring to an erotic book. Caustic new idioms jostled against foreign imports, among them the wonderful go-seru or “five lets” by which to appease government officials: let them eat, drink, grab money, sleep with women, and put on airs. This catchy term, so irreverent and open, flew in the face of the traditional homily about “revering officials” (kanson) and conveyed a pungent taste of the iconoclasm of these years.

In the chaos of the war’s end, early reforms such as the release of political prisoners, legalization of the Communist Party, and introduction of strong prolabor legislation such as the Trade Union Law of December 1945 had virtually guaranteed the emergence of movements more radical than the victors anticipated or desired. Free to organize, Socialists and Communists moved rapidly onto the political stage. Free to unionize, bargain collectively, and strike, workers did so with astonishing speed and vigor. Both radical and moderate Socialists attracted substantial support among voters and in the labor movement; the newly reconstituted Communist Party commanded immense media attention and made even stronger initial inroads into the ranks of organized labor.

At the palace a small nonviolent confrontation with security guards occurred, following which 113 men, housewives, and children carrying a smattering of red flags were permitted to enter the palace grounds and deliver their demands to a representative of the Imperial Household Ministry. Times had changed indeed! In the course of this unprecedented intrusion, they actually succeeded in inspecting the imperial kitchen, where they naturally found foods not seen on ordinary people’s tables. Their act inspired local “food demonstrations” in front of rationing stations in other parts of Tokyo, and became the spark that culminated in Food May Day one week later.

On Food May Day itself, some 250,000 people gathered in front of the imperial palace—christened “People’s Plaza” for the occasion. Although women always participated in such demonstrations, on this occasion the presence of housewives and children, as well as contingents of female students with their teachers, was especially striking.

Emperor Hirohito’s eventual response was predictable. On May 24, in his first broadcast since the epochal moment of capitulation, he essentially reiterated his appeal for national solidarity. As he had throughout the war, the emperor expressed deep personal concern for the people’s suffering. In these trying circumstances, he concluded, “I hope that everyone will carry out the beautiful tradition of our country, namely the family state, in coping with the situation, forgetting individual selfish desires and striving ahead on the path of reconstructing the country.” This was utterly formulaic, familiar from two decades of oppression and war. The broadcast was repeated three times that day.13

After initially heralding the victorious Allied forces as an “army of liberation,” the legalized Communist Party began to emerge as a major critic of the “reverse course” in occupation policy. The party’s considerable appeal is suggested in this photo of the turnout for a speech by its charismatic leader, Tokuda Kyūichi, in February 1949.

By 1949, “Red purge” had become one of the fashionable new terms of the occupation, appropriately expressed in Japanized English (reddo pāji). Initially referred to within GHQ simply as a “troublemaker purge,” the Red purge involved close collaboration among occupation officials, conservative politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate managers. A major objective was to break radical unions at the company and industry level, and to this end some eleven thousand activist union members in the public sector were fired between the end of 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950. After the war began, the purge was extended to the private sector (including the mass media), resulting in the dismissal of an additional ten to eleven thousand leftist employees by the end of 1950. Side by side with the “Red purge” came the “depurge”—a reference to the return to public activity of individuals previously purged “for all time” for having actively abetted militarism and ultranationalism.24

Despite its ultimate marginalization, the left contributed in major and enduring ways to defining the contours of democratization. As in much of Western Europe, Marxism in various versions became established as an integral part of political thought and activism, and radical or heterodox concepts became a familiar part of everyday life. Given their dynamic successes in mobilizing mass demonstrations, labor and the left established themselves as forces that, however weakened, still had to be accommodated. Economically, one result was the emergence of a style of capitalism that differed in significant ways from the American model. Influential economic policy makers (often taught by distinguished Marxist or neo-Marxist educators in elite universities) embraced the necessity and desirability of active state intervention in the economy. The goals of establishing job security and eliminating gross economic disparities became widely accepted. And, even as they undercut the emergence of a radical and autonomous labor movement, business executives and management collaborated with labor leaders to promote corporatist structures of “enterprise unionism” that were genuinely responsive to many of labor’s demands.

No one was more influential in this regard than Brigadier General Bonner F. Fellers, MacArthur’s military secretary and the chief of his psychological-warfare operations. Fellers cut his teeth as an analyst of the Japanese psyche while attending the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth as an army captain in 1934–1935. While there, he prepared a research study entitled “The Psychology of the Japanese Soldier” that was prescient and remained dear to his heart. In this study, Fellers anticipated war between Japan and the United States over four years before it broke out and even predicted the adoption of suicidal kamikaze tactics once the war situation deteriorated.

Indeed, “the very best book in existence on Japanese psychology,” he claimed, was a turn-of-the-century classic: Laf-cadio Hearn’s Japan—An Attempt at Interpretation.7

As a basic rule, MacArthur’s propaganda specialists observed a wartime policy of not provoking the enemy by attacking the emperor.8 This was consistent with general U.S. war policy, which opposed military attacks against imperial sites or even the verbal denigration of Emperor Hirohito. Although the stated rationale for such restraint was that the Japanese regarded their sovereign with religious awe and would be even more inclined to fight to the death if he were attacked, other considerations were at work. As an internal report by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) noted in July 1944, “the desirability of eliminating the present Emperor is questionable; it is probable that he inclines personally toward the more moderate faction and might prove a useful influence later.”9

An absolute and unconditional defeat of Japan is the essential ingredient for a lasting peace in the Orient. Only through complete military disaster and the resultant chaos can the Japanese people be disillusioned from their fanatical indoctrination that they are the superior people, destined to be the overlords of Asia. Only stinging defeat and colossal losses will prove to the people that the military machine is vincible and that their fanatical leadership has taken them the way of disaster.

The most impassioned commentary on the emperor came from Colonel Sidney Mashbir, head of the large Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) and one of Fellers’ trusted associates. In an oral presentation (including parenthetical asides) unimpeded by coherence, Mashbir was recorded as declaring that “It would be the height of folly to kill the Emperor who is merely the product of 2,500 years of biological ungodliness (inbreeding). You cannot remove their Emperor worship from these people by killing the Emperor (who is only a part of the family ancestor worship system) any more than you remove the godhead of Jesus and have any Christianity left.” Responding to a question, Mashbir emphasized the need to “really depend upon their blind obedience to the Emperor.”14

denouement,

Japan lost the war, Hirohito explained, because “our people” took the Americans and British too lightly. The military had overemphasized spirit and neglected science. Whereas the Meiji emperor had been blessed with great generals and admirals, Japanese officers of his own time had failed to grasp the big picture. They knew how to advance but not how to retreat. Had the war continued, the emperor concluded, he could not have protected the “three holy regalia” (the imperial mirror, sword, and jewel), and most of his subjects would have perished. Thus, holding back his tears, he accepted defeat “to preserve the seeds of our people.”25

Although the police reports expressed concern about widespread “grave distrust, frustration, and antipathy toward military and civilian leaders,” the emperor was in fact only rarely included in such denunciations. Even Socialists and Communists displayed restraint, not to mention respect, when it came to the sovereign.4 To royalists obsessed with preserving the “national polity,” the situation was thus simultaneously hopeful and ominous.

mollify

The emperor’s own poem, widely disseminated in the media on January 22, was as follows: Courageous pine— enduring the snow that is piling up, color unchanging. Let people be like this.30

What Fellers was disclosing to the emperor’s aide was the gist of a secret cable from MacArthur to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the army chief of staff. In this response to Washington’s call for an investigation of the emperor’s war responsibility, MacArthur pulled out all the stops in defending him. “Investigation has been conducted,” the supreme commander had informed Eisenhower on January 25, and no evidence had been found that connected Hirohito to political decisions during the past decade. MacArthur characterized the emperor as “a symbol which united all Japanese,” and warned that if he were indicted the nation would experience “a tremendous convulsion,” “disintegrate,” initiate a “vendetta for revenge . . . whose cycle may well not be complete for centuries if ever.”

This successful campaign to absolve the emperor of war responsibility knew no bounds. Hirohito was not merely presented as being innocent of any formal acts that might make him culpable to indictment as a war criminal. He was turned into an almost saintly figure who did not even bear moral responsibility for the war. For cynical practitioners of Realpolitik, this was an easy and natural undertaking.

While these intrigues were unfolding, the conservative elites collaborated with GHQ on a massive public relations campaign designed to transform the emperor into, to coin a phrase, a “manifest human.” The sovereign, it was agreed, should literally descend to the level of his subjects by touring the country and mingling with the poor, hungry, and wretched. These tours, known in plain Japanese as junkō, inevitably carried the special aura of being gyōkō or “august imperial visits.” They also marked the beginning of what became known as the “mass-communications emperor system”—the transformation of the monarch into a celebrity.

Jaundiced

In 1983, Shattered God (Kudakareta Kami), a unique and incisive critique of the emperor’s abrupt transformation from god to mortal, from supreme symbol of a holy war to ambiguous symbol of “democracy,” was published. Its author, Watanabe Kiyoshi, had been an ex-serviceman with little formal education when he wrote this journal-diary covering the period from September 1945 to April 1946. Watanabe turned twenty years old that November, but it would be erroneous to say that he celebrated his birthday. He was a man consumed by rage at having been betrayed by his sovereign.42

Bimbō Monogatari (A Tale of Poverty).

On February 22, Watanabe read or heard an account of the emperor’s conversation with a soldier repatriated from Saipan. “Was the war severe?” asked the emperor. “Yes, it was severe,” the man replied. “You really worked hard. It was a lot of trouble,” the emperor added in response. “Keep on working hard. Advance along a fine path as a human being.” Once again, Watanabe was plunged into despair. Perhaps, he thought, the emperor simply lacked the normal sense of responsibility other people possessed. Could he not at least have said, “I am sorry to have caused you so much difficulty”?

In mid-March, Watanabe got into a brawl with a GI walking with a Japanese woman who was wearing bright lipstick and a red dress. Refusing to step aside, Watanabe bumped the woman’s arm, whereupon the GI kicked him and they traded punches. A crowd gathered and four Japanese policemen eventually broke up the fight. Watanabe was brought to the police station for a lecture. He had never been so close to the enemy before. The American smelled like an animal and he concluded that the term “hairy barbarian” was well chosen. The next day, still boiling with anger, he thought of Filipina women who had refused to go with Japanese men. Some even shot Japanese soldiers. He found them impressive. The vogue for English-language terms—thank you, hello, good-bye, okay, I love you—disgusted him.

On April 20, Watanabe left his village to take a job in Tokyo. He had heard that anyone could write a letter to the emperor now, and he did so before leaving. He used the familiar “you” (anata), unthinkable before the surrender, in addressing him. He had fought hard for the emperor in accordance with his orders, Watanabe wrote, but since the defeat he had lost all trust and hope in him. As a result, he wished to sever their relationship. He then offered an accounting of all the salary that he had been paid by the imperial navy and every article he could remember having received in his years of service—a long list indeed, itemizing food as well as clothing and other goods. The total, as he calculated it, came to 4,281 yen and 5 sen. With his letter, he enclosed a check for 4,282 yen. “Thus,” the letter concluded, “I owe you nothing.”

The Americans had long looked askance at the Meiji charter, deeming it incompatible with the healthy development of responsible democratic government. This critique was developed in a number of confidential internal studies and policy papers. It was also expressed unusually vividly in a Guide to Japan that was prepared for U.S. forces around the time of the surrender. Readers of the guide, after being informed that the early Meiji government was dominated by powerful former samurai associated with the former feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū, were told that these oligarchs had looked west for a constitutional model and emerged with an unholy hybrid. “The new Japanese Constitution, with Prussian tyranny as its father, and British representative government as its mother, and attended at its birth by Sat-Cho [Satsuma and Chōshū] midwives,” the guide declared, “was a hermaphroditic creature.”2

I The Emperor is at the head of the State. His succession is dynastic. His duties and powers will be exercised in accordance with the Constitution and responsible to the basic will of the people as provided therein. II War as a sovereign right of the nation is abolished. Japan renounces it as an instrumentality for settling its disputes and even for preserving its own security. It relies upon the higher ideals which are now stirring the world for its defense and its protection. No Japanese Army, Navy, or Air Force will ever be authorized and no rights of belligerency will ever be conferred upon any Japanese forces. III The feudal system of Japan will cease. No rights of peerage except those of the Imperial family will extend beyond the lives of those now existent. No patent of nobility will from this time forth embody within itself any National or Civic power of Government. Pattern budget after British system.38

smattering

The constitutional renunciation of war was a brilliant example of SCAP’s wedge tactic, for the sovereign linked only yesterday with war was now formally associated with a radical antimilitarism.

To the more specific question of whether it was wise and feasible to try to impose such liberal ideas upon Japan, the answer was that the government, not the people, was resisting such change. If the people did not like what the Americans were proposing, they could always change it later.62

“We have been enjoying your atomic sunshine”—a

Emperor Hirohito’s rescript read in full: Consequent upon our acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration [sic] the ultimate form of Japanese government is to be determined by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people. I am fully aware of our nation’s strong consciousness of justice, its aspirations to live a peaceful life and promote cultural enlightenment and its firm resolve to renounce war and to foster friendship with all the countries of the world. It is, therefore, my desire that the constitution of our empire be revised drastically upon the basis of the general will of the people and the principle of respect for the fundamental human rights. I command hereby the competent authorities of my government to put forth in conformity with my wish their best efforts toward the accomplishment of this end.

As submitted to the legislature, Article 9 read as follows: War, as a sovereign right of the nation, and the threat or use of force, is forever renounced as a means of settling disputes with other nations. The maintenance of land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be authorized. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.