Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

The total number of Japanese who surrendered to Chinese forces and were forced to work or fight for either side in the Chinese civil war is unknown. More than a year after surrender, it was reported that some sixty-eight thousand Japanese taken prisoner in Manchuria were still being employed by Chinese forces, mostly on the communist side.

By far the most extensive, protracted, and abusive treatment of surrendered forces came at the hands of the Soviets, who entered the war on August 8, one week before the emperor’s broadcast, and accepted the Japanese surrender in Manchuria and northern Korea. American and Japanese authorities estimated that between 1.6 and 1.7 million Japanese fell into Soviet hands, and it soon became clear that many were being used to help offset the great manpower losses the Soviet Union had experienced in the war as well as through the Stalinist purges.

By 1948, it had also become obvious that the Soviets were delaying repatriation in order to subject prisoners to intensive indoctrination, so that they might contribute to communist agitation on their return.27

The chaos of these numbers—hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and civilians simply disappearing overseas—suggests how essentially meaningless the formal dating of “war’s end” was for many Japanese.

It was accompanied by an unusual gift, laboriously made over an eight-month period: an embroidered portrait of MacArthur, to which all 120,000 petitioners had each contributed a stitch. The inspiration for this striking present lay in one of the more intimate symbolic acts of the war years—the practice of sending soldiers cloth stomach warmers sewn with a thousand stitches, each by a different person. Both making and wearing the sennin-bari haramaki (“thousand-stitch belly bands”) were affirmations of the closeness between men fighting abroad and their communities, especially their womenfolk, back home.

A total of 31,617 American POWs were freed and processed through Manila by October 31, 1945, of whom 187 remained hospitalized.32

By far the largest number of aliens in Japan were other Asians, the great majority Koreans who had been conscripted to perform heavy labor.

Despite a mild Buddhist tradition of care for the weak and infirm, despite Confucian homilies about reciprocal obligations between social superiors and inferiors, and despite imperial platitudes about all Japanese being “one family” under the emperor, Japan was a harsh, inhospitable place for anyone who did not fall into a “proper” social category. There existed no strong tradition of responsibility toward strangers, or of unrequited philanthropy, or of tolerance or even genuine sympathy (as opposed to occasional sentimentality) toward those who suffered misfortune.

One of the most fashionable slogans of the early postsurrender period envisioned Japan becoming a “nation of culture.” In October 1946, Hayashi Fumiko, a well-known fiction writer from an impoverished background herself, argued in a popular magazine that no country so indifferent to the plight of orphans and the homeless could claim to be cultured.48 Over two years later, Osaragi Jirō, a distinguished author respected for his humanism, wrestled frankly with the same issue. A British acquaintance, he wrote, had asked why the Japanese did nothing about their street children. His immediate response was that they lacked the financial resources, but on reflection he realized this was disingenuous. In fact, he concluded, as a people they simply lacked love toward strangers. He himself was no exception. In all honesty, he had to admit that he had no desire to take in these filthy urchins and try to straighten out their characters. Could it be, Osaragi mused, that Japanese were shallower than other peoples when it came to love?49

Then, plaintively, she asked what the use of talking about such things as woman suffrage was when she and others like her were starving.51 This was a question that arose in many quarters, as people confronting shattered lives in a shattered land were asked to contemplate seemingly abstract political ideals.

Like the hand of God reaching down from heaven, the United States, in another illustration, made a present to Japan of “the key to freedom” that unlocked restrictions on speech and expression. As if wielding giant scissors from the sky, America cut the chains that had bound ordinary Japanese and granted them civil liberties. With the arms of a great deity, MacArthur’s headquarters levered the crushing burden of the old zaibatsu—the gigantic financial and industrial oligopolies that dominated the presurrender economy—off the backs of the exploited people.

More subtle and cynical observers savored the mordant observation of Kawakami Tetsutarō, a detached man of letters, who in October 1945 described the U.S. policy as one of “rationed-out freedom.” His clever expression captured the inherent contradiction of democracy by fiat as well as the irony of promoting freedom in the context of unconditional surrender.

“Chains were cut—but we must not forget that we did not shed a drop of blood, or raise a sweat, to cut these chains.”

The reformers were also proconsuls. They were, as has been said of other Americans in other situations, sentimental imperialists. As administrators whose careers were altered and accelerated by the victorious war, they possessed what John Kenneth Galbraith, in a related context, characterized as “an arrogant certainty of high purpose.”

Accordingly, it was policy makers in Washington who drafted the three basic documents that established the initial objectives of the occupation: the Potsdam Proclamation in which the United States, Great Britain, and China announced the terms of surrender; the “United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy Relating to Japan” that was sent to MacArthur in late August and made public on September 22; and a comprehensive military directive elaborating postsurrender policy that the Joint Chiefs of Staff also sent to the supreme commander in draft form in late August. Although the first two quickly became public documents, the third—which many occupation authorities regarded as their basic guide—remained secret until November 1948.12

To these stern but general terms, the other policy documents added several objectives that transformed the occupation from a moderate exercise in demilitarization and political reform into an unprecedented experiment in induced democratization. These documents made clear that disarmament and demilitarization were not merely to be “complete” but also “permanent.”

Beyond this, the guiding directives incorporated a potent emerging notion among policy bureaucrats, namely, that the occupation authorities should become actively engaged in attempting to change the psychology of the Japanese people. Underlying this immodest objective was a growing sense of urgency that the country should not only be “democratized” to prevent the reemergence of militarism, but simultaneously immunized against a rising tide of communist influence. Such a policy of reeducation, it was stipulated, would require not only the active promotion of American objectives throughout the media, but also “minimum control and censorship” of the press, radio, film, and private communications.

Apart from preventing economic crises that could lead to chaos (averting starvation, for example), U.S. policy called for letting the Japanese stew in their own juices. At the same time, the post-Potsdam formulations explicitly mandated the promotion of policies “which permit a wide distribution of income and of the ownership of the means of production and trade.” To this end, planners in Washington called for “dissolution of the large industrial and banking combinations which have exercised control of a great part of Japan’s trade and industry.”

the supreme commander was directed to promote labor unions and carry out a sweeping land-reform program.

Shortly after the occupation began, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson formulated this vision in blunt terms. The goal of the occupation, he stated, was to ensure that “the present economic and social system in Japan which makes for a will to war will be changed so that the will to war will not continue.”15 This bumpy, redundantly will-full prose succinctly conveyed the Americans’ crusading sense of purpose, as did the plain metaphors with which the reformers routinely described their mission. It became commonplace to speak of rooting out the sources of aggression.

To a certain degree, comparable occupation policies were followed in Germany. Indeed, the “Europe-first” policy the United States pursued from the beginning of its involvement in World War II made Germany’s prior surrender inevitable and meant that policies adopted for that defeated nation would be used as guidelines in drafting postsurrender policy for Japan. Nonetheless, differences were notable. Most obviously, of course, all of Japan was placed under American control, whereas occupied Germany had been divided into U.S., British, French, and Soviet zones.

MacArthur and the cadre of reformers who initially gathered under his command conveyed a messianic fervor that had no real counterpart in Germany, and American Eurocentrism in the immediate postwar period left MacArthur’s GHQ with an unusually free hand.

the imperious MacArthur until 1948 reigned as a minor potentate in his Far Eastern domain. In 1951, explaining the authority he had wielded in Japan to a U.S. Senate committee, MacArthur pointed out that “I had not only the normal executive authorities such as our own President has in this country, but I had legislative authority. I could by fiat issue directives.”17

Race and culture also set Japan apart. Unlike Germany, this vanquished enemy represented an exotic, alien society to its conquerors: nonwhite, non-Western, non-Christian. Yellow, Asian, pagan Japan, supine and vulnerable, provoked an ethnocentric missionary zeal inconceivable vis-à-vis Germany. Where Nazism was perceived as a cancer in a fundamentally mature “Western” society, Japanese militarism and ultranationalism were construed as reflecting the essence of a feudalistic, Oriental culture that was cancerous in and of itself.

Following the rules established for the Nuremberg trials, accused “Class A” war criminals were held accountable for committing “crimes against peace” and “crimes against humanity” that had no precedent in international law. B. V. A. Röling, the Dutch judge at the Tokyo trials, later acknowledged the many “unfair features” and “grave errors” of these proceedings, but still expressed faith that the trials contributed “to a legal development that mankind urgently needed.”

This was an undertaking plagued from the start by contradictions, among them the very notion of “revolution from above.” Enduring political and social revolutions generally emanate from below.

On October 4, the supreme commander ordered the dissolution of restraints on political expression. The Peace Preservation Law of 1925, under which thousands of (usually left-wing) critics of the government had been arrested, was abrogated. Governmental restrictions on assembly and speech were lifted. The Special Higher Police, or “thought police,” of the Home Ministry were abolished. The heads of the Home Ministry and the national police force were purged. Political prisoners were ordered released from jail,

In addition to the “liberalization of the constitution,” the government was commanded to extend the franchise to women, promote labor unionization, open schools to more liberal education, democratize the economy by revising “monopolistic industrial controls,” and in general eliminate all despotic vestiges in society. Suddenly, abstract statements about promoting democracy had become exceedingly specific.

Beginning in early November, GHQ initiated a frontal attack on the giant zaibatsu conglomerates, starting with the forced dissolution of the “holding companies” through which zaibatsu families controlled their vast empires. Eventually both “antimonopoly” and “deconcentration” legislation was passed, and hundreds of large enterprises were earmarked as targets for breakup. At roughly the same time, an agrarian land reform was initiated that within a few years would virtually dispossess the rural landlord class, destroying a system in which exploitative tenancy had been widespread and creating in its place a huge constituency of small owner-farmers.

The government-sponsored cult of state Shinto, a bulwark of emperor-centered ultranationalism, was abolished on December 15. Under GHQ pressure, a Trade Union Law guaranteeing workers the right to organize, strike, and bargain collectively was approved by Japan’s parliament, the Diet, on December 22.

For the old guard, the new year of 1946 began with more inauspicious tidings, including the first of a series of purge directives that would eventually prohibit some two hundred thousand individuals—mostly but by no means exclusively former military officers—from holding public office.

And this was but the beginning of the revolution from above, which over the next two years would extend to the reform of civil and criminal law, elimination of the “feudalistic” family system that had legally rendered women inferior, extension of the right to vote to women, decentralization of the police, enactment of a progressive law governing working conditions, revision of both the structure and the curriculum of the education system, renovation of the electoral system, and promotion of greater local autonomy vis-á-vis the central government.

In the single most brazen and enduring act of the democratic revolution, a reluctant government was forced to introduce an entirely new constitution that retained the imperial system but simultaneously established the principle of popular sovereignty and guaranteed a broad range of human rights. I...

The new national charter—initiated by GHQ in February 1946 and promulgated nine months later, after extensive public and parliamentary discussion—was the crown jewel of the reformist agenda. It not only codified the basic ideals of “democratization,” but wedded them to “demilitarization” by explicitly prohibiting Japan from resorting to war as a means of resolving international disputes. The imperial army and navy had already been demobilized, the military establishment already abolished. Under the “renunciation of war” provisions in the new constitution’s preamble, as well as in its Article 9, the country formally committed itself to a pacifist course. This ...

Cabinet members wept openly when confronted with the most draconian reforms they were ordered to implement, distraught at their inability to prevent what they saw as the destruction of sacrosanct “traditional” ways.

Yoshida Shigeru, who served as prime minister in 1946–1947 and again from 1948 to 1954—belittled the very possibility of making Japan democratic. In Yoshida’s typically elitist argument, the Japanese people were not capable of genuine self-government, and anyone who argued otherwise was either blinded by ethnocentrism or hypnotized by left-wing propaganda.

This was an extraordinary, and extraordinarily fluid, moment—never seen before in history and, as it turned out, never to be repeated. Like Katō, many Japanese would indeed welcome the revolution from above. It kindled their hopes and sparked their imaginations.

An enormous abyss separated the experience and outlook of victor and vanquished. The Americans, brimming with pride and self-righteous confidence, bursting with plans for a golden future, confronted a populace that, in the apt phrase of the perceptive observer and scholar Tsurumi Kazuko, had undergone intense “socialization for death.”

For Americans, World War II began in December 1941 and ended three years and eight months later. Japan’s war, in contrast, began with the conquest of Manchuria in 1931 and expanded to all-out war against China in 1937. The Japanese had been geared for war for fifteen years; and as their situation became increasingly desperate, what had begun as the indoctrination of young men for death in battle became expanded into a frenetic and fanatical campaign to socialize the entire population for a final suicidal fight.

The home islands themselves were heavily dependent on Korea, Formosa, and China for basic foodstuffs. Before Pearl Harbor, imports from these areas accounted for 31 percent of Japan’s rice consumption, 92 percent of its sugar, 58 percent of its soy beans, and 45 percent of its salt. Defeat abruptly severed access to these resources.5

The most common household diet consisted of barley and potatoes, but even these had fallen into short supply. It was in such circumstances that authorities in Osaka recommended an emergency diet that suggested how precarious daily subsistence had become. Based on a research report by local army officials, the emperor’s loyal subjects were encouraged to supplement their starch intake by introducing such items as acorns, grain husks, peanut shells, and sawdust to their household larder. (Sawdust, it was explained, could be broken down with a fermenting agent, transformed into a powder, and mixed in a ratio of one to four with flour to make dumplings, pancakes, or bread). For minerals, people were encouraged to introduce used tea leaves and the seeds, blossoms, and leaves of roses to their diet. Protein deficiencies could be remedied by eating silkworm cocoons, worms, grasshoppers, mice, rats, moles, snails, snakes, or a powder made by drying the blood of cows, horses, and pigs.

A young schoolgirl’s first thought on hearing the emperor’s broadcast was that she would not have to look eyeball to eyeball at frogs anymore—a reference to the practice of sending children out to catch frogs to eat.

The first postsurrender issue of its housewife-oriented magazine Fujin Kurabu (Housewives Club) devoted many pages to family vegetable gardens and how to make nutritious meals in a time of scarcity. The August-September issue of Shōjo Kurabu (Girls Club) included such articles as “How to Eat Acorns” and “Let’s Catch Grasshoppers.” The grasshoppers, like the acorns, were not part of a nature-appreciation study for young readers, but a potential source of protein.14

Many farmers engaged in a gratifying barter trade with once-condescending city folk who flocked to rural areas in search of food. Kimonos as well as watches, jewelry, and other treasured possessions were traded for food, giving rise to one of the most famous phrases of the time: takenoko seikatsu, the “bamboo-shoot existence.” The edible bamboo shoot can be peeled off in layers, and the takenoko seikatsu phenomenon referred to city people stripping off their clothing, as well as other possessions, for food. Similarly, people spoke of an “onion existence,” with the clear implication of weeping as one peeled off layer upon layer of precious belongings.

In 1948, women still scavenged for firewood and waited hours to buy sweet potatoes. Housewives still spoke bitterly of the indignity and exhaustion of standing in long lines with “dusty, dry, messy hair,” as one wrote that February, “and torn monpe, and dirty, half-rotten blouses . . . like animal-people made of mud.” The

People who spent hours riding crowded trains to and from the countryside to barter for goods frequently had to refrain from eating or drinking en route because there was no way to get to the toilets. Extended families that had crowded into a single residence without plumbing or regular sanitation services had to devise strategies for relieving themselves elsewhere.

Tuberculosis carried off far more victims than all the other diseases combined. The annual tuberculosis death count had increased steadily from the mid-1930s. The disease claimed 130,763 lives in 1935, 160,398 in 1942. Impressionistic evidence suggests even greater numbers over the next four years. In 1947, when official statistics resumed, 146,241 persons were reported to have died of TB, and it was not until 1951 that total annual deaths dropped below 100,000.31 For every person who died of tuberculosis, several others contracted the disease. Following surrender, the total number of TB cases annually was probably well over a million.32 Like radiation sickness, like physical disability, like being a war orphan or a poor war widow or a “third-country person,” having tuberculosis was a social stigma.

For many, sudden confrontation with the hitherto unspeakable words maketa sensō—“lost war”—was almost stupefying. Since the early 1930s, the Japanese had been told they were fighting for the purest and most noble of objectives—that they were a “great country” and a “great empire,” a “leading race” destined to overthrow Western imperialism and bring about a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” a people possessed of a unique and indomitable “Yamato spirit.”

for exhaustion of a deep and complex sort had set in long before August 15, 1945 as a result of the government’s policy of wasting its people in pursuit of impossible war objectives.

the fact that exhaustion and despondency lasted for years did not so much reflect the lasting trauma of defeat as the manner in which wartime fatigue was compounded by incompetence and outright corruption on the part of the postsurrender leadership.