More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
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.
the “depurge”—a reference to the return to public activity of individuals previously purged “for all time” for having actively abetted militarism and ultranationalism.
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.
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.
They embrace it in the US, too, but only to protect wealth.
establishing job security and eliminating gross economic disparities became widely accepted.
business executives and management collaborated with labor leaders to promote corporatist structures of “enterprise unionism” that were genuinel...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
if the nation’s supreme secular and spiritual authority bore no responsibility for recent events, why should his ordinary subjects be expected to engage in self-reflection?
Although empresses had reigned in earlier times, the victors allowed the monarchy to retain its modern tradition of permitting only males to succeed to the throne.
the new symbol-emperor still embodied the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century invention of a “Yamato” identity that excluded Koreans, Formosans, Chinese, Caucasians—aliens of whatever ethnic origin—from becoming “Japanese.” Despite the formal separation of church and state, the emperor also remained high priest of the indigenous Shinto religion, conducting esoteric rites in the palace and reporting to his divine ancestors at the great Ise shrine. All of this left him as the supreme icon of genetic separateness and blood nationalism, the embodiment of an imagined timeless essence that set
...more
Brigadier General Bonner F. Fellers, MacArthur’s military secretary and the chief of his psychological-warfare operations.
“The Psychology of the Japanese Soldier”
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.
The Japanese, he noted in passing, looked on Western democracy as being of a “temporary character.”
Japan—An Attempt at Interpretation.
By sheer repetition, tentative early observations soon assumed the aura of gospel.
MacArthur’s policies regarding the throne clearly had their genesis not in any serious investigation after defeat of the actual situation in Japan, but rather in these wartime analyses that he received from the amateur psychologists and anthropologists in his own command.
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.”
The task, as Fellers and his men put it, was to “drive a wedge” between the military leadership and the emperor (with his subjects) by persuading the Japanese that “gangster militarists” had not only duped them but betrayed their sacred leader. The Western propagandists, in a word, were ready to take a hand in reimagining an emperor divorced from the policies imperial Japan had pursued in his name, under his authority, and with his active cooperation for almost two decades.
Fellers and his staff had compressed “Japanese behavior patterns” that could be exploited by the Allies into a fifteen-point mantra: “inferiority complex, credulousness, regimented thought, tendency to misrepresent, self-dramatization, strong sense of responsibility, super-aggressiveness, brutality, inflexibility, tradition of self-destruction, superstition, face-saving tendency, intense emotionality, attachment to home and family, and Emperor worship.”12
“closely-knit, Western logic is not in accordance with Japanese psychology”
Where the U.S. saturation bombing of Japanese cities was concerned, however, his condemnation was unqualified. In an internal memorandum dated June 17, 1945, Fellers described this as “one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.”
“the white man as overlord of the Orient is finished.” “The American position in the Orient cannot be founded upon the theory of white supremacy,”
the eighty-eighth Imperial Diet
The mistakes of the recent past had occurred because the identity between the emperor’s heart and the people’s heart had been lost after the Meiji period, when the military succeeded in inserting itself between the sovereign and his subjects.
He was intelligent, but gave no hint of engaging in self-reflection.
métier.
the idea for the photograph was MacArthur’s, and his decision to make it public revealed the deft touch of a man who had spent much of his career practicing public relations.
This reading of the situation was correct, but also unimaginative. The photograph is 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.
the exuberant Kabuki lover Faubion Bowers.
stentorian
the “regrettable” cacophony of public opinion in the American, British, and Chinese media.
if this meeting had not occurred, it would have been exceedingly difficult to defend the emperor against charges of war crimes.
our bloodless invasion,
Wow
American long range interests require friendly relations with the Orient based on mutual respect, faith and understanding.
For many Allied officers and high civilian officials, the imperial duck hunt was the most memorable moment of their fleeting interlude as nobility in a foreign land.
Subsequent polls continued to indicate strong support for retaining the throne, but this was misleading if interpreted—pace Fellers—as revealing widespread enthusiasm or deep awe and veneration comparable to that of the war years. In a curious way, the emperor’s surrender broadcast punctured emperor worship.
in Japanese terms, the emperor worship that so mesmerized Fellers and other Western analysts appeared to have been in large part tatemae, a facade.
true sentiment of ordinary Japanese revealed itself to be closer to mild attachment, resignation, even indifference where the imperial system and the vaunted national polity were concerned.
Kempeitai (the military police)
informed opinion was skeptical of this.
There was no indication that ordinary people were giving him much thought.
“With regard to the Emperor system, it is the opinion of observers especially as far as the middle classes are concerned that the Allies are unduly apprehensive of the effect on the Japanese if the Emperor were removed.
Why was General MacArthur the belly button (heso) of Japan? Because, the rude joke went, he was above the prick/emperor.7
the impending showcase war-crimes trials in Tokyo.
Both men were Japan specialists with a scholarly interest in literature and culture.
a well-regarded introduction to haiku poetry (The Bamboo Broom),
(Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics),
Blyth had referred to Henderson’s haiku anthology as “a little masterpiece.”
CI&E, which dealt with the democratization of ideology and ideas, was a major focus of the court’s intelligence gathering and lobbying.
