ฅResolving Issues of War and Japan’s Future Role
Japan was the world’s first nuclear victim country. The Japan that was both aggressor and victim has for 61 years through the postwar era worked for world peace and environmental problems and through all subsequent wars has clung to its peace constitution. Japan therefore came to be esteemed as a country of peace and culture and an economic power. But did it really resolve the question of the war in which countless people were sacrificed? War victim countries watch developments in Japan with deep concern as the Abe administration calls for Japanese rearmament, patriotic education and revision of the peace constitution. In this paper, I look at trends in Japan concerning these matters and make some general remarks about postwar Japan. I also want to reflect on the phenomenon of spreading “North Korea threat”-ism and on the problem of the future of Japan.
Has Japan settled the war?
Having itself become an imperialist country while still subject to the 1858 unequal treaty with the US, Japan tried to overcome its humiliation by attacking Korea. In September 1875, taking advantage of the Kanghwa Island incident, it imposed a treaty with Korea which contained the same unequal clauses as the US-Japan treaty. Thereafter, the Japan that bit its teeth on the business of war by victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, proceeded through successive wars ? the Russo-Japanese War, World War One, the Manchurian Incident, World War Two, imposing extreme dominance and bringing prosperity to modern Asia in word and in reality, till it met eventually with miserable defeat.
On the pretext of blocking Japan’s war ambitions that had caused so much suffering, the US attacked Japan with overwhelming force and in turn became a new threat to Asia. Tokyo, Okinawa, Nagoya, Kobe were attacked one after the other and countless innocent victims suffered horrific death, followed by the atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, when “Little Boy” and “Fatman” exploded in balls of fire with a surface temperature of between 9,000 and 10,000 degrees centigrade.
Although the shooting down of a B-29 in January, and the “victories” of Kamikaze against the American fleet were reported early in 1945, from March all teaching in schools except primary schools was suspended and all-out war, in which even students were mobilized, began. In their madness, the military authorities even called for collective glorious suicide of one hundred million people.
Joseph Grew, who was US ambassador in Tokyo from 1932 till the attack on Pearl Harbour, wrote in his Report from Tokyo, “How could the Japanese leaders ? who although they were fanatics possessed the power of rational thinking ? dream that they could defeat the combined force of Great Britain, the US, China, and the other allies?”
Grew suggested that the strong sense of superiority to English speakers had become a pillar of war. The expression “fanatic” that he used referred to the phenomenon then sweeping throughout the army. However, although the attacks on the enemy by human bombs, men who burrowed into the ground as mines or special attack forces using their own bodies to direct attack, were used to try to arm the people spiritually, there was no escaping the crisis of “extermination of the Japanese people.”
When their prestige as rulers of Asia was thus trampled on by the so-called Anglo-American “beasts,” the military saw the writing on the wall, knowing, despite nursing bitter anti-American grievance, that they were utterly inferior in military terms. They accepted defeat on the sole condition of maintaining the emperor system and submission to the judgment of the International military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) under the US and its allies. After the war, the military analyst, Ito Masanori, criticized the blunder of the military in overthrowing the confusions of wartime opinion and leading to situation of calm.
“That is the kind of military it was. In other words, it was a time when the Japan-US war could only have been stopped if the leaders of the Army Ministry and the General Staff had united, reflecting on the danger of catastrophe to the nation from war with the United States, and taking to heart the emperor’s concerns, with true courage and irrespective of their reputation, ruled out war and called for peace.” He stressed that had the Meiji era militarists, such as Oyama and Kodama been in their position, there is no doubt that they would have supported the peaceful diplomacy of the politicians, held the military in check, and made their decision “based on the best interests of the state and the happiness of the people, irrespective of the reputation of the military.”
As a result, Japan came to face the International Military Tribunal, and its war crimes including those of A-Class war criminals, to be judged as crimes against peace, without the slightest trace of reflection on its own part. Koreans and Taiwanese killed in the war came to be enshrined alongside the Japanese war dead at Yasukuni (which earlier was known as Shokonsha or the Shrine dedicated to the spirits of the war dead) because they died during the war as Japanese, and the A-class war criminals who were tried by the Tribunal as responsible for the war were also enshrined with the support of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
Yasukuni therefore functioned a symbol of militarism and aggression, where those responsible for the war against Korea and China were worshipped. Various considerations blended together in such a way as to make the Shrine a matter of considerable international interest: the different views of the bereaved families of the enshrined who were angry over being exploited and Yasukuni Shrine itself that insisted separate enshrining was not an option, political propaganda by certain politicians making use of mourning the spirits of the heroic dead, concerns over the vote-gathering role of the National Association of Bereaved Families, and the economic motive on the part of the Shrine itself in wanting to concentrate public interest. On 20 July 2006, the “Tomita Tomohiko Memo” was published, revealing the feelings of concern on the part of the Showa emperor, Hirohito, at the enshrining of A-class war criminals in Yasukuni Shrine, which led him to cease visiting the Shrine. However, despite the revelation of the Memo by the Showa emperor, who during the war was the absolute essence of the Japanese armed forces, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro went ahead with his formal Shrine visitation on the day commemorating the end of war, 15 August. Neighbor countries strongly criticized this insensitive behavior for its lack of concern for the countries that had been caught up willy-nilly in Japan’s unjust war and suffered enormously as a result. The French newspaper, Liberation, carried an editorial in its 16 August issue, comparing Koizumi to the Austrian ultra-rightist, Joerg Haider: “Imagine if Haider had come to power and then ridiculed the victims of the Nazi empire. What Koizumi did was close to that.”
In particular, the media of China and South Korea paid great attention to reporting the shrine visit, fearful that the determined insistence of politicians on making such a controversial shrine visit, despite a court judgment that it was in breach of Article 20 (3) of the Japanese Constitution (on the separation of church and state) was a step in the direction of renewed Japanese rearmament. The various media in China, South Korea and Japan produced special programs analyzing it from various angles. They showed the difference between the position of the war’s aggressor and victim sides, and included, for example, comments from someone in Japan, ignoring or belittling the history of the victims and their background, “Cannot they forget about things that happened so long ago? 61 years have passed. I like “Korean Wave” movies but when I see Koreans demonstrating over Yasukuni I feel betrayed.”
Many problems remain to be settled in relation to that war, started by Japan, not only in the related foreign countries but also in Japan itself. Although it is 61 years since the war ended, the complaints of sufferers have forced the Japanese government recently to begin to take steps to deal with the problem of “left behind” Japanese orphans in China, the victims of Hansen’s disease, isolated and subjected to cruel treatment during the war, and the disposal of chemical weapons left behind by the Japanese army in China. Had they been even slightly aware of the background to these matters, the media would surely not have broadcast comments so uncritically comments such as that above. It took sixty years before moves could be made towards compensation of foreign residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were atom bombed, and by then many of the victims had already passed on. Nobody with any knowledge of the painful struggle of these victims should ever be able to say that the war is over and should be forgotten. When people ignore the pain of victims, saying it has nothing to do with them, does that not constitute the infliction of new pain?
On 7 August 2006, a joint Japan-South Korean collaborative investigation with a view to repatriating the remains of wartime forced laborers from Korea began at Tagawa City in Fukuoka prefecture. It was the 61st year since the war ended. On 17 August of the same year, a collaborative Korea-Chinese-Japanese project began at Soya tunnel in Hokkaido to dig up buried remains of wartime forced laborers. Azuma Haruko and Hashimoto Kazushi, who at the time were students mobilized to work at the mine site, gave testimony to the harshness and cruelty of the time by their eyewitness accounts of the abuse and burial alive of wartime Korean laborers. The excavation of these remains involved first the collection of many testimonies and materials at the site. This author also participated in gathering evidence into the deaths of Koreans in the excavation of the Kamikochi “Kama” tunnel in Nagano prefecture, a matter that had been almost completely unknown. Materials recording the existence of these Korean laborers are yet to be found, due to the administration of the surface land, which is now part of a national park visited by two million people annually.
Work has still to get under way on the recovery of the remains of the Korean workers whose lives were lost and who was simply abandoned when the mine shaft under sea level was flooded at Chosei Coal Mine (popularly known as “Korea Mine”) on the morning of 3 February 1942 at Nishi Kiwa in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture. It was nothing short of a crime by the Japanese state, having started the war and talking of national unity, to consign people from Korea, who knew nothing, to that dangerous environment, and to their death, as part of the wartime munitions industry. In an interview with this author, Inoue Masato (age 85), who was employed at that time as a supervisor, said repeatedly how pitiful it was for the men who died while being made to do heavy labor under discrimination, and how he mourned for their pitiful deaths in the appalling circumstances of the mine at that time. Their pathetic livelihood can be imagined from the fact that they would call on neighboring farmhouses to beg for some vegetables to go with their one daily bowl of rice. However insane those times were, there is no denying the past history of Japan making use of every political propaganda and exploiting fine words about patriotism, “same root, same clan,” and the “assimilation” policy in order to prosecute war involving unprecedented sacrifices and cruelties because of the desire to expand its territory by force. However, because of its attempts to conceal the circumstances of war by thorough-going cover-up and deliberate neglect, many problems remain in Japan’s Asia diplomacy, constituting a high wall.
In the public debates leading up to the Liberal Democratic Party’s election of new president in September 2006, then candidate Abe Shinzo said, referring to the problem of how Yasukuni was understood at the time of normalization of relations with China, that “no documents exist on this matter. I take the view that in relations between countries, documents that are exchanged between them are everything.” The Japanese government has always taken such a view, doing all it can to conceal anything disadvantageous to it. In the International Relations Committee of the Lower House of the US Congress on 13 September 2006, the fact that wartime Japan mobilized over 200,000 women as sex slaves for the Japanese forces (often called “comfort women”), exploited them horrendously and in many cases drove them to death at the end of the war, was unanimously condemned. Representative Leon Evans, who had long been steering this issue towards the resolution, mentioned that Japanese lobbyists had been actively trying to block it.
It should be clear from all these cases that, unfortunately, there is little sign of the pure-heartedness of the “samurai spirit” to be detected in the way post-war Japan has gone about settling the issues of history. To the contrary, in order to recover the confidence lost after the collapse of the bubble economy, the tendency of historical revisionism to glorify modern history as glorious deeds and to narrow nationalism has spread. Some countries even entertain doubts about the contradiction between Japan’s current desire for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and the fact that it no longer sets great value on the efforts in areas in which postwar Japan had once been so active: implementing the principle of non-war, engaging in economic and technical cooperation with developing countries, and working for the environment, peace, and human rights. The position is such that it is impossible to set aside doubts that history might be repeated by the group of privileged people who do not realize that “pure-heartedness” in addressing past wrongs is in the greatest national interest of Japan for the future.
Rather that the attachment to force, in which victims are written off as the inevitable accompaniment of war, what are needed are voices seriously reflecting on why Japan could not possess the wisdom to make greater use of the talents of victims for its national development. To the extent that such a mentality is not cultivated by society, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that we will again face the danger of war, conflict or terror.
Towards a Japan that would sow the attractions of peace throughout the world
The new Japanese Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo, is trying to change the constitution’s Article 9 that has contributed to the preservation of the post-war peace, and the Liberal Democratic Party is engaged on discussions about a standing law that would make it easier for the Self Defense Forces to be sent overseas, and in case of interference with their activities, to launch attack. How can we assert the control of intelligence over the battlefield that drives people mad?
The French novelist, Henri Barbusse, who at the age of 41 volunteered for the front lines to repel the German armies in the First World War, surrounded by the cries of youth dying in the trenches, irrespective of whether friend or foe, and by the stench of death, came to realize that “for two armies to fight against each other like this is the same as one large army committing suicide.” After leaving the army, he became passionately anti-war. The battlefield is the place that turns both victims and aggressors mad.
On 26 July 2006, the last of the 600-man Japanese SDF expeditionary force was withdrawn from Iraq and returned to Japan. They were withdrawn because no further reason could be found to keep them there. As of June 2006, more than five SDF returnees from Japan had committed suicide. Doubts were raised about the situation in Iraq that Prime Minister Koizumi had described as a safe battleground. In contemporary war, undoubtedly the one who issues the orders is the one in the safest position, while cheaper military workers are exploited in the glorious name of patriotism, sent to the battlefield, and sacrificed. This is not a thinking that values the ordinary people, but it amounts to life discrimination. The present-day social reality is that it becomes more and more difficult to raise a voice in protest against such injustice.
It would be no exaggeration to say that there has been extraordinary development in the techniques of information control, control of people’s minds, media control, and in the rise of commercial media manipulated by those in power. However, at least Asia society is such that no country could easily collapse. The East Asian market, with its astounding economic, communications, and cultural development has become a global model. The number of talented people from Asia working in European and American society rapidly increases. The countries once controlled by Japan now proudly advertise their own prosperity, and the tendency for each country to move rightwards in order to check Japan is on the rise. As if to counter this, in Japan too the tendency to beautify its past history and to abuse those countries that criticize Japan is on the increase. If such movements were to clash, there would be the possibility of dispute escalating uncontrollably. The situation is developing in which East Asia could easily lapse into a situation in which a China-Russia alliance confronted a Japan-US alliance over issues relating to North Korea, China-Taiwan, Japan-China gas fields, Tiaoyu/Senkaku Islands, Dokdo/Takeshima island. For that reason, the Japanese government needs to strive positively towards an “Organization of Northeast Asian Economic Cooperation” or a “North East Asian Community.” One expression of human wisdom is to realize that the path to the national interest of security lies through the painstaking search for ways to live together.
When lone looks at the military situation in various countries, there is no doubt that some are on the path to becoming military great powers. The total military budgets of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, are not to be ignored. However, what is to be noted on the following table is that in the Japanese case, the use of force is: zero. This is the kind of postwar accomplishment that a superpower could boast of. Is it not evidence pointing to a peace great power that strives for world order?
country |
Regular Army (in thousands) |
Mil.Budgetimillionj |
Use of Force i91`01j |
Arms Exports 2000 (millionj |
Arms Imports 2000imillionj |
Japan |
240 |
45,600 |
@ 0 |
|
190 |
China |
2260 |
42,000 |
2 |
@ @54@@ |
2,085 |
USA |
1550 |
291,200 |
25 |
@5,489 |
59 |
India |
1330 |
14,700 |
26 |
16 |
429 |
North Korea |
1100 |
2,100 |
9 |
NA |
2 |
Russia |
1030 |
60,000 |
15 |
4,443 |
NA |
S.Korea |
690 |
12,800 |
1 |
6 |
708 |
Taiwan |
370 |
17,600 |
| |
NA |
445 |
Israel |
170 |
9,500 |
19 |
212 |
270 |
The military researcher, Miyake Masaki says, “Armies, whatever their differences in degree, are special organizations with the tendency to be separate from ordinary civil society. In order for the civil government not to lapse into military government, the civil government must be able to control the armed forces c but the armed forces are a powerful body not easy to control, and it handled badly the opposite outcome ? armed forces controlling the government ? might easily happen. In this government-armed forces relationship that always has the latent tendency towards eat or be eaten c Japan needs to make careful judgments to ensure that its recently won democracy not degenerate. Rather than expanding its arms and trying to become a military great power, Japan should seize the initiative in striving for a common Asian currency like the European Union, lower its borders in the quest to become a peace great power for the sake of stability and order in East Asia, and convey the message to the world of the need for no war, no violence. The Asia that has always valued humaneness, sharing, and providing, now carries within it many problems: aging, education, welfare, youth, suicide, the environment. For this reason, it becomes imperative that Japan make every effort for the resolution of these problems, together with the countries of the world and on the basis of these common understandings. Japan’s future lies in reaching beyond its borders and striving for the resolution of the problems of preservation of the natural environment in East Asia including North Korea (and the world), disarmament, and collaborative resource development, and becoming a human rights great power, with an environment easy to live in. In short, through such efforts, I am confident that Japan can come to be admired by the world as a “Country of Beauty and Peace.”
On 20 September 1875, the Japanese warship, Unyu, advanced to Kanghwa in the vicinity of the Korean capital and there provoked the Korean forces, setting the scene for its later aggression against Korea.
Chugoku shimbun, published, Hiroshima no kioku, 1966, p. 7.
Asahi shimbun, 29 January 1945.
Joseph C. Grew, Report from Tokyo, Japanese translation by Hosoiri Fujitaro as Tokyo Hokoku, Nihonbashi shoten, 1946, p. 17.
Ito Masanori, Gunbatsu koboshi, Bungei shunjusha, 1963, pp. 388-389.
Publications glorifying the war as a sacred war were on sale at Yukyukan in Yasukuni as of 4 May 2006.
When you think of how many former Diet members there are (including the Prime Minister) who, once they leave office, repeat for the rest of their lives the “pledge of opposition to war” that they made the justification for visiting Yasukuni during their term of office, I point out that the words and actions of various members of the Diet, and the Prime Minister, are not necessarily consistent.
Yasukuni Shrine possesses property to the value of about 133 billion yen, but its annual income is declining and it undergoes economic “restructuring.” (“Yasukuni jinja kaikan,” Asahi shimbun, 12 August 2006.)
Hokkaido shimbun, 17 August 2006.
Korean television’s KBS broadcast a program entitled “The 15 August Plan,” in three parts from 12 August 2006, featuring major figures related to Yasukuni, arguing that Yasukuni is certainly an institution deeply connected with the last war and inter alia contrasting the Taiwanese leader of a group of plaintiffs in a Yasukuni court action pleading for the return of the spirits of his ancestors, on the one side, and Japanese rightists on the other.
“Shinso hodo Bankisha,” Nippon Television, 13 August 2006.
“Sengo 60 nen ? senka no kioku,” Hokkaido shimbun, 7 and 8 June 2005.
Yi Sookyung, “Kamikochi ni samayou Chosenjin rodosha no tamashi,” Wolgan Choson, January 2006, pp. 424-431.
This author interviewed Mr Inoue for about two hours at his home in Ube on 8 September 2006.
“Shasetsu, Rekishi ninshiki, seijika ga katarenu to wa,” Asahi shimbun, 14 September 2006.
http://news.media.daum.net/politics/others/200609/15/seoul/v14042435.html
Henri Barbusse, 1873-1935, recorded and published his wartime diaries in Le Feu and Clarte, and they were highly regarded in the interval between the two world wars.
Henri Barbusse, Hoka, (Le Feu) translated by Tanabe Teinosuke, Iwanami shoten, 1995, p. 226.
Inoue Yoshitake, “‘Iraku shuppei’ jieitai-in ‘senshi jisatsusha 5 nin’ to PTSD ni torawareta ‘kikanhei tachi’ Koizumi shusho to boeicho ga hitakakusu ‘pochi no daika’,” Shukan gendai, 15 July 2006, No. 2385, pp. 28-33.
Japanese data from Nihon no boei, boei hakusho, 2006, p. 332. Taiwan data from Ueda Yoshihiko, Fujimoto Masatsuchi, and Sugiyama Katsumi, eds, Gunji deta de yomu Nihon to sekai no anzen hosho, 2002, pp. 9-10.
Miyake Masaki, Sei-gun kankei kenkyu, Ashi shobo, 2001, p. 15.