A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (59 page)

Kita’s beliefs were just part of a set of ideologies of the day that were used to justify Japanese expansionism. Particularly widespread were the concept of an absolute and divine emperor, and the idea of Japan occupying and controlling Asia in order to liberate it – a peculiarly Japanese idea of anti-imperialist imperialism.
²¹

The concept of the absolute and divine emperor owed much to the ideology behind the
Imperial Rescript on Education
of 1890. This was greatly intensified during the 1930s. Its culmination was the
Kokutai no Hongi
(Cardinal Principles of the Nation), the bible of the ‘emperor system’ (
tenn
sei
). This book-length document was published by the Ministry of Education in March 1937. It used very similar terminology to the
Rescript
, and was similarly intended to be used by schoolteachers and other persons in authority to instil the correct attitudes in their charges. In 1937 no fewer than 36 per cent of the population were within the age-range for compulsory education and therefore a very worthwhile target for indoctrination.

It was a document that appealed to the emotions and not the intellect. Full of inconsistencies, its deliberately stilted language put detailed analysis of it beyond the ability of most readers. At the same time, such language gave it an aura of antiquity and authority. Its main thrust was to stress the divine origin of the emperor and the importance of total self-sacrificial obedience to his will, to such an extent that loyal service to the emperor and his nation became not so much a duty but the object of life itself.
²²

The text defines the Japanese nation as follows:
²³

The unbroken line of Emperors, receiving the Oracle of the Founder of the Nation, reign eternally over the Japanese Empire. This is our eternal and immutable national entity. Thus, founded on this great principle, all the people, united as one great family nation in heart and obeying the Imperial Will, enhance the beautiful virtues of loyalty and filial piety. This is the glory of our national entity.

The emperor is a ‘deity incarnate’, a ‘direct descendant of Amaterasu’, and serving him is ‘not a duty as such, nor a submission to authority’, but a ‘natural manifestation of the heart’. Unlike western nations, whose citizens are ‘conglomerations of separate individuals’ with ‘no deep foundation between ruler and citizen to unite them’, the emperor and his subjects ‘arise from the same fountainhead’. The relationship between the emperor and his subjects is ‘in its sympathies, that of father and child. This relationship is a natural relationship’, not a merely contracted one such as that between ruler and citizen in the west. Indeed, Japan follows the way of nature, with ‘nature and man united as one’. It is also
characterised by harmony, for ‘harmony is a product of the great achievements of the founding of our nation’. The ultimate harmony is that between emperor and subject, more exactly in ‘
the climax of harmony in the sacrifice of the life of a subject for the Emperor
’ [my italics]. In recent times there had been corruption by ‘western individualism and rationalism’, and ‘we must sweep aside the corruption of the spirit and the clouding of knowledge that arises from … being taken up with one’s “self”, and return to a pure and clear state of mind’. This is not only for the sake of Japan, or even Asia, but the whole world: ‘This should be done not only for the sake of our nation but for the sake of the entire human race, which is struggling to find a way out of the deadlock with which individualism is faced.’
²⁴

Many westerners who encountered Japanese during the decade or so following
Kokutai no Hongi
were surprised that not only the masses but also many high-ranking and highly intelligent Japanese appeared to believe this propaganda – even some of those who had helped create it.
²⁵
It is true that by the late 1930s all Japanese younger than 50 or so had been educated in a controlled environment of emperor-centred world-view following the 1890
Rescript
. This included many in quite senior positions. Some of them may genuinely have become confused between myth and reality. And no doubt many if not most of the ‘masses’ were quite genuinely indoctrinated. But at the same time, to question the emperor system was to risk one’s life. Fear also played its part.

The important role of the emperor in Japan’s prewar ideology has sometimes led to other aspects of the
Kokutai no Hongi
being overlooked. One of these was promotion of the idea that the Japanese were ‘united with nature’ and enjoyed a purer and more natural existence than western nations corrupted by individualism. The idea of a special Japanese harmony with nature was almost certainly given such an important place in the document by one of the members of the drafting committee, Watsuji Tetsur
(1889–1960), a well-known philosopher with a particular interest in environmental determinism. Though it may not have been his exact intention, it was used as one more justification for Japan’s expansion on the Asian continent. Japanese were able to claim that their expansion on the Asian mainland was intended not just to throw off the shackles of western political and economic systems, but at a deeper level to restore harmony between humans and nature.

This natural harmony was known as
musubi
, a complex term. It combined meanings of ‘bonding’, ‘harmony’, and ‘coupling’ in the biblical sense. It had connotations of ‘procreation’ and ‘generation’ and by extension ‘vitality’ and ‘life force’, as well as the ‘pristine purity’ associated with new life.

One of the clearest English-language descriptions of
musubi
is found in Kawai Tatsuo’s work
The Goal of Japanese Expansion
, of 1938:
²⁶

In the course of their evolution as a distinct race, the Japanese, under the influence of their natural environment and their varying and exhilarating climate, acquired a love of beauty and purity. They lived close to nature. … As children of the gods, our ancients lived in harmony with nature, acquiring a free and liberal social outlook which has developed into the ideal of universal brotherhood. At the same time, perceiving in the forces of nature the operation of a mysterious power, they formulated the philosophy of
Musubi
. … By observing the unbroken rotation of the seasons and the happy multiplication of living creatures, our ancestors perceived the existence of a power or principle which operates in nature, creating, nourishing, and multiplying all manner of things. They called this power
Musubi
. … The history of the Japanese nation is nothing but a record of the development of their faith in nature – the harmonization and self-identification of the race with its natural environment. … Preserve nature and rediscover oneself! – so teaches the philosophy of
Musubi
.

Kawai goes on to explain how the Japanese are aiming to restore the spirit of
musubi
to a degenerate China, in the interests of China itself and Asia as a whole:
²⁷

Following the dictate of
Musubi
, Japan, together with a resurrected China, will identify herself with the cosmic force that creates and fosters life and will help to promote its endless process in the beautification and sublimification of Asiatic life. Herein lies the foundation of Japan’s China policy.

Not all Japanese went to such flowery philosophical lengths to justify Japan’s China policy. Many simply referred Nazi-style to the need for
lebensraum
, ‘room to live’, ignoring the still under-utilised spaces of Hokkaid
. The ‘room to live’ view was often linked to a clearly selective argument that there were only three ways to ease the pressure of surplus population: emigration, advance into world markets, and territorial expansion. Japan was supposedly left with no alternative but the third since the west, with its anti-Japanese immigration laws and its trade tariffs, had effectively barred the first two options.
²⁸
No-one seemed prepared to consider options such as population control, which had been so effective in the Tokugawa period.

Another simpler justification was that of Ishiwara Kanji, of Manchurian Incident fame. He wanted a Japanese military occupation and reorganisation of Asia to enable its resources to be used by Japan in preparation for a final war to gain world domination.
²⁹
This war was to be between Japan and the United States. Ishiwara was influenced in this by the medieval Buddhist monk Nichiren’s belief in a great final war to end all wars. He also took a philosophical position to the effect that war, with its destruction, paved the way for reconstruction and was hence part of the march of civilisation. However, despite the veneer of philosophy, in his view of life all things were subordinated to military considerations – a simple militarism.
³⁰

Ishiwara himself was not particularly liked as a person and was never greatly trusted by his colleagues.
³¹
These factors tended to limit his personal influence. Neverthless there was growing sympathy for his views on the importance to Japan of acquiring Asian resources for a future show-down with the United States. And as the 1930s progressed, his idea of using military action to take control of Asia came to prevail over less aggressive Pan-Asianist views.

One such ‘softer’ view was that of the Sinologist Tachibana Shiraki (1881–1945). Tachibana believed that Japan, as the most suitably qualified nation, should establish not military but cultural and political leadership in Asia. This would create a cultural-political Asian entity that could counter-balance the dominance of the already-established western cultural-political entity. Unfortunately, other than suggesting Confucianism and the Imperial Way as universal guiding principles for this Asian entity, Tachibana did not propose any specific means of organising this. His silence on these matters made it easier for the militarists to prevail.

5.4   Preparations for War

It was true that Japan could benefit greatly from the resources of the mainland, especially natural resources in which Japan itself was poorly endowed. However, as the desire for mainland resources took on an increasingly aggressive military tone, rather ironically Japan’s economy was entering a recovery phase. In the early 1930s Japan had taken the bold and unprecedented ‘Keynesian’ step of using government deficit spending to trigger reflation and stop the recession.
³²
It had also taken the yen off the international gold standard, which led to a depreciation of around 50 per cent and a consequent increase in Japan’s now much cheaper exports. By 1936 Japan had become the world’s largest exporter of cotton piece goods. It was one of the first major nations to emerge from the world depression. In fact, for the rest of the 1930s Japan’s average annual economic growth was 5 per cent,
³³
and between 1929 and 1937 its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by more than 50 per cent.
³⁴