Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

624 Pages·2000·46.53 MB·English

by  John W. Dower

Japan in the Wake of World War II
OF THE
PULITZER;
I
- 'PRIZE 1
,J
John W. Dower
EMBRACING
DEFEAT
Japan in the Wal<e of World War II
W. w. Norton & Company / The New Press
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 13
INTRODUCTION 19
Part 1. VICTOR and VANQUISHED
I. SHATTERED LIVES 33
Euphemistic Surrender 34
Unconditional Surrender 39
Quantifying Defeat
4S
Coming Home . . . Perhaps 48
Displaced Persons
S4
Despised Veterans S8
Stigmatized Victims 61
2. GIFTS FROM HEAVEN 6S
"Revolution from Above" 69
Demilitarization and Democratization 73
Imposing Reform 80
8 Contents
Part II. TRANSCENDING DESPAIR
3. KYODATSU: EXHAUSTION AND DESPAIR 87
Hunger and the Bamboo-Shoot Existence 89
Enduring the Unendurable 97
Sociologies of Despair 104
Child's Play I/O
Inflation and Economic Sabotage 112
4. CULTURES OF DEFEAT 121
Servicing the Conquerors 123
"Butterflies," "Onlys," and Subversive Women 132
Black-Market Entrepreneurship 139
"Kasutori Culture" 148
Decadence and Authenticity 154
"Married Life" 162
5. BRIDGES OF LANGUAGE 168
Mocking Defeat 170
Brightness, Apples, and English 172
The Familiarity of the New 177
Rushing into Print 180
Bestsellers and Posthumous Heroes 187
Heroines and Victims 195
Part III. REVOLUTIONS
6. NEOCOLONIAL REVOLUTION 203
Victors as Viceroys 204
Reevaluating the Monkey-Men 213
The Experts and the Obedient Herd 217
7. EMBRACING REVOLUTION 225
Embracing the Commander 226
Intellectuals and the Community of Remorse 233
Grass-Roots Engagements 239
Contents 9
Institutionalizing Reform 244
Democratizing Everyday Language 251
8. MAKING REVOLUTION 254
Lovable Communists and Radicalized Workers 255
"A Sea of Red Flags" 259
Unmaking the Revolution from Below 267
Part IV. DEMOCRACIES
9. IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY:
DRIVING THE WEDGE 277
Psychological Warfare and the Son of Heaven 280
Purifying the Sovereign 287
The Letter, the Photograph, and the Memorandum 289
10. IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY:
DESCENDING PARTWAY FROM HEAVEN 302
Becoming Bystanders 302
Becoming Human 308
Cutting Smoke with Scissors 314
IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY:
II.
EVADING RESPONSIBILITY JI9
Confronting Abdication 320
Imperial Tours and the Manifest Human 330
One Man's Shattered God 339
12. CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY:
GHQ WRITES A NEW NATIONAL CHARTER 346
Regendering a Hermaphroditic Creature 347
Conundrums for the Men of Meiji 351
Popular Initiatives for a New National Charter 355
SCAP Takes Over 360
GHQ) "Constitutional Convention" 364
Thinking about Idealism and Cultural Imperialism 370
10 Contents
13· CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY:
JAPANIZING THE AMERICAN DRAFT 374
"The Last Opportunity for the Conservative
Group" 376
The Translation Marathon 379
Unveiling the Draft Constitution 383
Water Flows, the River Stays 387
"Japanizing" Democracy 391
Renouncing War ... Perhaps 394
Responding to a Fait Accompli 399
14· CENSORED DEMOCRACY:
POLICING THE NEW TABOOS 405
The Phantom Bureaucracy 406
Impermissible Discourse 410
Purifying the Victors 419
Policing the Cinema 426
Curbing the Political Left 432
Part V. GUILTS
15 VICTOR'S JUSTICE, LOSER'S JUSTICE 443
Stern Justice 444
Showcase Justice: The Tokyo Tribunal 449
Tokyo and Nuremberg 454
Victor's Justice and Its Critics 461
Race, Power, and Powerlessness 469
Loser's Justice: Naming Names 474
16. WHAT DO YOU TELL THE DEAD WHEN YOU
LOSE? 485
A Requiem for Departed Heroes 486
Irrationality, Science, and "Responsibility for
Defeat" 490
Buddhism as Repentance and Repentance as
Nationalism 496
Responding to Atrocity 504
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has taken a long time to prepare, and would have taken forever
without great contributions from two people. My wife, Yasuko, helped to
survey a broad range of materials; and our conversations, woven into the
fabric of everyday life, became an important way of mulling over themes
and probing nuances. We covered a great deal of ground together-not
only figuratively, exploring the past, but also literally, in various places in
Japan and the United States. This is a heavy debt, as well as a rewarding
way to do history.
At a certain point these labors came together in an exceedingly long
manuscript, and I called on an old friend to help me get untangled. Tom
Engelhardt responded with patience and an exceedingly sharp pen. His
critical scrutiny extended beyond language to structure, and beyond struc
ture to themes and concepts. The manuscript reads differently (and faster)
because of his friendship and skill.
I am indebted to others as well. Sodei Rinjiro, General MacArthur's
Japanese biographer and a master of knowledge about occupied Japan, has
directed me to many Japanese materials. My reliance on some of his writ
ings, especially his analysis of letters written by ordinary Japanese to
MacArthur, is obvious here. Ever since a long sojourn in Kamakura early
on in this project, I have turned to Aketagawa Tohru to track down
14 Acknowledgments
Japanese sources. I also shared materials with Herbert Bix and had nu
merous helpful conversations with him about the role of Emperor Hiro
hito.
Takao Toshikazu directed me to one of the most remarkable texts I have
introduced here, the diary-memoir of Watanabe Kiyoshi. Alex Gibney
shared transcripts of some of the excellent interviews he conducted con
cerning the American drafting of a new Japanese constitution. Murakami
Hisayo called attention to interesting materials in the Gordon Prange col
lection of Japanese publications submitted for vetting by the occupation's
censors and now housed in the McKeldin Library at the University of
Maryland; it was she who showed me what I regard as a little gem, the
1946 cartoon history of the occupation by KatO Etsuro. James Heisig
made me aware of Tanabe Hajime, the formidable nationalistic philosopher
of "repentance." James Zobel at the MacArthur Memorial identified a
number of important archival documents. Years ago, when I began ex
ploring Japan's transition from war to peace, I had the good fortune of
being associated for a year with the "postwar financial history project" of
the Japanese Ministry of Finance, headed by Hata Ikuhiko; and I still ride
on some of the materials collected then.
One summer Yasuko and I secluded ourselves at Farm Island Lake in
Minnesota and did economic policy in a cabin generously made available
to us by Jerry and Aiko Fisher. I also received advice, materials, or assis
tance from Takemae Eiji, Matsuo Takayoshi, Sumiya Mikio, Igarashi
Takeshi, Yui Daizaburo, Koseki Shoichi, KatO (Yasuhara) Yoko, Miura
Yoichi, Eiji Yutani, Yuki Tanaka, Kozy Amemiya, Laura Hein, Marlene
Mayo, David Swain, Frank Schulman, Andy Coopersmith, Peter Grilli,
Edward Friedman, Glen Fukushima, and Steve Rabson. At the Massa
chusetts Institute of Technology, student projects by Abigail Vargus, Jen
nifer Mosier, and Ann Torres helped illuminate aspects of the Japanese
scene immediately after the war; Leslie Torrance typed several chapters;
Dianne Brooks and Mabel Chin were of unfailing help in navigating the
practical world; and in various ways the university administration gener
ously supported my research. At one point early on, our daughter Kana
turned some handwritten chapters into computerized ones. Ed Barber
and Andre Schiffrin have been my patient mentors at W. W. Norton and
The New Press, respectively, and Georges Borchardt has been my liter
ary agent. Barbara Gerr copyedited the manuscript. Sarah Holt and Alan
Tolliver at Boston's WGBH television station shared photographs collected
for a documentary on General MacArthur. Funding that has supported the
project has come from the Japan Foundation as well as MIT. On several
INTRODUCTION
Japan's emergence as a modern nation was stunning to behold: swifter,
more audacious, more successful, and ultimately more crazed, murderous,
and self-destructive than anyone had imagined possible. In retrospect, it
seemed almost an illusion-a ninety-three-year dream become nightmare
that began and ended with American warships. In 1853, a modest fleet
of four vessels, two of them coal-burning "black ships," had arrived to
force the country open. In 1945, a huge, glistening armada came back to
close it.
When all this began with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry,
Japan was a small country with few obvious resources. For over two cen
turies, intercourse with foreigners had been largely prohibited by its feu
dal shoguns Although the economy had become commercialized in those
long years of seclusion, no industrial revolution had taken place, nor had
there been any striking advances in science. If Americans and Europeans
found these island people capable and clever as well as exotic, no one
thought to say of them, as Napoleon had of neighboring China with its
vast territories, its awesome population, and its millennia of high civi
lization, that here was a sleeping giant.
In 1868, dissident samurai drove out the shogun and established a gov
ernment in the name of the emperor, hitherto a remote, powerless figure.
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