The Enigma of Japanese Power (6 page)

Japan’s biggest missed opportunity before recent times for the establishment of a state followed the decisive battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which ended some three centuries of intermittent civil war and set the stage for a new political arrangement. Securing the allegiance of all surviving warrior lords, Tokugawa leyasu took over the shogunate, and the long period of relative peace named after his family began – peace, but not political unity. No truly centralised government was ever attempted, since both shoguns and daimyo were preoccupied with safeguarding what they possessed for their heirs. Any unifying national ideal encroaching on the power of subordinate or rival lords would have been too risky.

The Tokugawa
bakufu
– as the shogunate was commonly known – controlled roughly only a quarter of Japanese territory. It did so directly as well as through five thousand or so
hatamoto
(retainer) families who, in return for annual stipends, served it as officers and clerks. Beyond this it could count on the loyalty of a small number of blood-related (
shimpan
) daimyo and 170 (on the average)
fudai
daimyo, who retained discretionary powers within their domains, and whose ranks supplied the
bakufu
ruling élite after the second Tokugawa generation. This left an average of 80
tozama
or ‘outside vassals’ whom the shogun had to keep off-balance.

Some of the larger
tozama
domains were practically independent states, autonomous except for their relations with other domains. By means of check-points on the roads, an espionage network and strategically positioned fiefs of loyal daimyo, the shogunate made sure that these potentially troublesome domains remained isolated from each other. It was a coalition of several of these large ‘outside’ domains that was finally to overthrow Tokugawa rule. When this happened, Japan had already evolved into a highly complex political entity, but not into one with unambiguous central leadership, and not into a state.

The intense sense of the inviolability of all things Japanese that is characteristic of the nation includes a strong sense of the inviolability of its territory. But as we have seen, for centuries the preservation of this territory required no sense of belonging to a state. This was probably related to the unusual circumstance that nobody bothered Japan, save for two attempts at invasion by the Mongols under Kublai Khan (in 1274 and 1281). As long as they were left alone, the Japanese, in stark contrast to the Chinese, seemed not to need the concept of the state.

They were not to be left alone for ever. In 1853 United States Commodore Matthew Perry arrived and, backed up by four ominously black warships, demanded provisions and refuelling facilities for US ships passing Japan as well as humane treatment for castaway sailors and the opening of ports tor trade. The treaty he managed to conclude eight months later did not give the USA substantial concessions, and allowed Japanese officials to wriggle out of what the Americans thought they had promised. But it became the precedent for treaties with Britain, Russia and the Netherlands, and it spelled an end to Japan’s official seclusion policy. At last Japan was forcibly confronted with the turbulent community of world powers, and thus the need for a foreign policy.

The Meiji oligarchy that took control in 1868, largely as a result of this foreign intervention, was obsessed with creating a strong state. Within three years of the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate it had abolished the feudal domains, explaining that ‘to maintain equality with foreign nations, words must be made to mean in reality what they claim to signify, and the government of the country must center in a single authority’.
¹²
The warning was hardly superfluous, considering that some of the more powerful domains had been dealing with the foreign powers on their own and even initiating acts of war.

The first attempts at building a state appeared surprisingly successful, earning the admiration of the Western powers, especially when victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 appeared to demonstrate Japan’s naval prowess. But the system of central rule proved to be not sturdy enough to outlast its creators. Whereas the original oligarchy had been able to iron out differences of opinion and formulate unified policies, the next generation of leaders, with no such sense of fellowship, tailed to form an effective oligarchy. The Naimusho,
¹³
the Army, the Navy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Privy Council and other vital institutions of the state were all led by men who identified with these institutions rather than with the centre of power they were expected to represent. They were often not even on speaking terms with each other.

Today, with the advantage of hindsight, one can see that the Meiji reformers, for all their achievements, were also responsible for the leadership problem Japan still faces. On close scrutiny, the state they established seems almost to have been designed not to outlast them. They personally were needed to keep it tied together, since the rules they made never clearly specified who should be in charge. Oligarchic rule was initially meant to be a temporary arrangement only, to be replaced by a well-co-ordinated system blending Japanese and Western institutions. But the understandable fear of diminishing their own power made modern Japan’s political architects ignore the question of political accountability, which is essential for such co-ordination.

As time went on, the different organs of the state, mistaking parochial interests for that of the nation, began to develop a sense of autonomy resembling that of the abolished fiefs of the Tokugawa period. After the turn of the century there was much jockeying for power among the Privy Council, military chiefs, bureaucrats, politicians, influential businessmen and palace advisers. For the first two decades or so of the twentieth century the original oligarchs continued to be a cohesive force in the capacity of
genro
, ‘elder statesmen’ with enough clout to prevent serious ruptures. But by the time they had passed from the scene, Japan’s leaders, each claiming a mandate from the emperor, were vigorously pulling the country in different directions.

The emperor had formal sovereignty but was not supposed to rule. The legislature was not designed to have genuine power but, through a mistake in its design, came to live an oppositional life of its own.
¹⁴
The cabinet outgrew its role as a kind of advisory body, but the constitution was silent on what it ought to do instead. After the First World War, the formal government was furnished by the political parties, which were paid for by big business. But these parties never gained much actual power in their competition with the other centres of power endorsed by the Meiji constitution.

The extent of potential dissension among these ‘servants of the emperor’ was illustrated by the ‘Go-Stop Incident’ involving the powerful Naimusho and the Army. In 1933 a private 2nd class twice crossed a road against the red of a ‘go-stop’ (traffic) sign in Osaka. The policeman in charge of the crossing took him in, but the soldier disclaimed any duty to obey police instructions, and a fight ensued. The dispute percolated up to ever higher levels. The chief of staff of the Fourth Division saw an opportunity to reprimand the police and uphold the Army’s dignity. Army Minister Araki concurred and had the chief of the élite Kempeitai (military police) bring charges against the policeman for insulting, assaulting and bringing disgrace on a professional soldier.

On the police side, the issue travelled up via the desks of the regional police chief, the mayor of Osaka and the director of the bureau of police in the Naimusho, till finally it reached that of the minister of the interior himself. All agreed that apologising was out of the question, and that the soldier should be brought to trial. Since similar cases had occurred in Tokyo, Nagoya, Akita and Fukuyama, the Naimusho was resolved to challenge the arrogance of the Army. But the Army bureaucrats persisted in obstructing attempts to prosecute, till the conflict finally reached the ears of the emperor, who asked the Army Minister Araki about it. The latter thereupon instructed his vice-minister for political affairs to work things out with the chief of the bureau of police in the Naimusho, and a prefectural governor was brought in to mediate a compromise.
¹⁵

In the 1930s, as hopes for the development of a democracy on Western lines were dashed, power progressively slid into the hands of the military. Yet even while this happened, no one knew who was in charge of them either. The Army and the Navy each had its chiefs directly answerable to the emperor, and did not even consult with each other. Formulation of defence policy was greatly hampered by conflicting aims, conflicting strategic priorities and conflicting views concerning the hypothetical enemy. The services procured separately. A cadet from the naval academy could not even have discussed weaponry with a soldier, since the two used entirely different terms. Meanwhile, both Army and Navy were torn by internal strife. In the Army, for instance, the Imperial Way Faction (Kodo-ha) engaged in a bitter struggle with the Control Group (Tosei-ha). They were divided by the differing backgrounds of officers and the differing degrees to which they valued practical planning above reliance on the power of the Japanese spirit. To these were later added the Purification Group (Seigun-ha), and the Kokutai genri-ha, radical young officers who were responsible for the crucial ‘February 26’ rebellion in 1936.
¹⁶

The dissipation of central political power that started at the beginning of this century and culminated in Japan’s drifting beyond anyone’s control in the 1930s gave fanatical middle-ranking Army officers the opportunity to ‘hijack’ the nation. In September 1931 elements of the Japanese Kwantung Army attacked the Chinese garrison in Mukden, thereby beginning the conquest of Manchuria. When this act of gross insubordination went uncensured by the government in Tokyo, the Army understood that it could have its way, and on its own initiative set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. The intimidating actions of fanatical officers that followed set Japan on the course that was to lead to Pearl Harbor and from there to Hiroshima.

Attacking a country with an industrial machine ten times the size of one’s own must be considered suicidal behaviour, and it is very unlikely that a consolidated leadership would have allowed it. It can be argued, indeed, that the Japanese surprise attack which brought the United States into the Second World War was a direct consequence of the rivalry between the Army and the Navy. The Army, in setting Japan on the path to war, took it for granted that the Navy would take care of defence against US might, while the Navy, wishing to hold on to its power and its credibility as a patriotic body, refrained from directly expressing the belief, widespread among its ranks, that victory was impossible.
¹⁷

The war itself did little to pull the political bodies of the country together. It undoubtedly strengthened the power of the bureaucrats, but this power was not concentrated in the hands of a single man or institution.

The cabinet remained a federation of ministries and agencies, each scrupulously guarding its privileges and autonomy. The Prime Minister was never the chief executive; he was the chief co-ordinator whose task was to ensure a united cabinet policy. He could neither dictate to the other ministers nor change them at will; replacing a minister was a complicated task which required both pressure and persuasion.
¹⁸

The Japanese at war never gave to any one person (or one government institution) powers remotely comparable to the power held by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill or Roosevelt. Even towards the end of the war the government never declared the martial law that would have given it the powers needed for an all-out defence of Japan. ‘One reason for that was that none of the leading elites wanted the others to gain more power.’
¹⁹

In the wake of the disastrous adventure of the Pacific War, no new attempt to establish genuine central control was made. General Douglas MacArthur and his political reformers arrived in 1945 to dismantle what they, along with practically everyone else, imagined to be the remnants of a solid dictatorship similar to those of Hitler and Mussolini. The idea that it could have been the absence of strong leadership which had brought Japan to attack the Western allies appears not to have occurred to anyone. As for the Japanese themselves, the domestic concerns that demanded their attention did not encourage them to repeat Meiji-style experiments with a centralised state.

Forced to make a priority of foreign policy, the men of Meiji had been preoccupied with the notion that a strong central ruling body was needed to deal with other states. But from 1945 until well into the 1970s Japan had little need to worry about whether or not it was a state, since it was hardly ever called upon to act as a political entity. Foreign-policy requirements were simply not felt. Japan’s first important post-war prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, made the notable political discovery that Japan need not exert itself for national security in the traditional sense, since the USA was ready to take care of it. It was subsequently realised that all other activities by which a state is externally known and recognised could similarly be carried out by US proxy.

Japan became totally dependent on the United States, not only for its defence but also, ultimately, for its diplomacy. In effect, the USA provided a diplomatic shield behind which Japan, with the help of neo-mercantilistic trade practices, built up its formidable post-war economic machine. The so-called omni-directional diplomacy, which, until Nakasone Yasuhiro became prime minister, Japan presented to the world as an idealistic innovation, was in fact an attempt to be all things to all men who bought Japan’s products and sold it raw materials. Tokyo could maintain such a stance only to the extent that Washington would tolerate it. Thus Japan’s extraordinary relationship with the USA entails significantly more than diplomatic help, mutual trade and promised military protection. It has allowed Japan to deal with countries on the basis of purely economic priorities, with scant regard to political consequences.