Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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The Japanese attack on December 7, 1941 caught British forces in Asia woefully

unprepared.

Several works underscore the paucity in Japan of effective advocates of cooperative

diplomacy after 1931. Ian Nish’s study of the Japanese response to the Manchurian

Incident and the subsequent inquiry by the League of Nations exposes the startling

weakness of civilian moderates and ‘‘internationalists’’ in the government. Although

the emperor himself and senior advisers apparently opposed the army’s aggression,

they proved powerless to stop it. The emperor even agreed to issue an imperial edict

explaining Japan’s withdrawal from the League after it voted to recommend the

return of Manchuria to Chinese sovereignty.

Barbara Brooks’s Japan’s Impe rial

Diplomacy acknowledges that some officials in the Foreign Ministry sincerely wanted

to coop erate with the Western powers and to negotiate a settlement with the Na-

tionalist government in China. Prominent leaders, such as Foreign Minister Shide-

hara Kijuro

, however, failed to offer a determined resistance to the army in 1931.

Moreover, many civilian diplomats shortsightedly undermined the authority of their

own ministry while attempting to further their careers by supporting the army’s

demand to create new agencies to handle Japan’s relations with Manchukuo and

China.

David Lu tackles the ambitious task of rehabilitating the image of the flamboyant

diplomat Matsuoka Yo

suke as a moderate. Matsuoka, after all, led the Japanese

delegation out of the League of Nations in 1932 and signed the Axis Pact in 1940.

Lu posits that Matsuoka, far from wanting to conquer China, really desired a

cooperative relationship with the Nationalist government, if it would recognize

Manchukuo. Calling Matsuoka a practitioner of realpolitik in the mold of Henry

Kissinger,

Lu contends that Matsuoka could have reached a pragmatic compromise

with the American government on the status of China if American officials had take n

a more flexible stance. Similarly, Matsuoka sought an alliance with Germany, not to

threaten the United States but to deter it from war with Japan. How, then, does one

explain Matsuoka’s bellicose statements toward the United States after 1936? Lu

speculates that Matsuoka talked tough, because he had learned from his experience of

attending high school in Oregon in the 1890s that Americans respected a confron-

tational style. Matsuoka’s unwavering support for the expansion of the Japanese

empire can lead one to doubt whether he would have made subs tantial concessions

to reach a compromise with the American gover nment.

The Role of the Emperor

Emperor Hirohito remains the most prominent enigmatic figure of this era. The

challenge of as sessing his motives and role have inspired several maj or studies, each

with a sharply different perspective. Stephen Large’s political biography of Hirohito

argues that the emperor opposed Japan’s policies of foreign aggression but failed to

exert much influence.

Large emphasizes Hirohito’s verbal reprimand to Prime

Minister Tanaka Gi’ichi in 1929 for the army’s assassination of the Chinese warlord

Zhang Zuolin as well as Hirohito’s immediate imposition of martial law to suppress

the military rebellion of February 1936, because these actions showed the emperor’s

resistance to the growing power of the military. The question then arises as to why

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 249

Hirohito could not stop the decision for war against the United States in 1941. Here,

Large accepts Hirohito’s own explanation that as a ‘‘constitutional monarch’’ he had

to accept the decision of the cabinet and that his veto of the decision for war might

have spurred a military coup by fanatic officers who would have pursued even more

aggressive policies.

In contrast, Herbert Bix lays the responsibility for Japan’s aggression squarely at

Hirohito’s feet. Bix views the emperor’s reprimand to Prime Minister Tanaka and his

quick crushing of the 1936 rebellion as demonstrations of Hirohito’s desire to

intervene in politics and his considerable power of supreme command over the

military. Yet, in 1941 he did little to attempt to derail the cabinet’s decision for war

with the United States.

Both interpretations have vulnerabilities. Large’s generous

view of the emperor’s actions relies on an eight-hour mon ologue dictated to trusted

aides in 1946 in preparation for mounting his defense in a possible trial by the Allies

as a war criminal. Bix’s analysis leaves little room for ambiguity. Every action taken by

Hirohito, even those overtly aimed at constraining the military, become evidence of

the emperor’s increasing power and hence his responsibility for Japan’s aggression.

Peter Wetzler presents an alternative view that accepts and explains contradictory

aspects of Hirohito’s behavior. The emperor could at times take decisive action, as in

1936, and at others let events drift, as in the three years leading up to the attack on

Pearl Harbor.

He defied the army’s wishes in 1938 by opposing an alliance with

Nazi Germany but allowed the Axis Pact in 1940. In 1941 he approved the decision

for war against the United States in September, demanded one more attempt to reach

a diplomatic compromise in October, and finally approved the start of the war on

December 1. Because Hirohito participated actively in discussions of policy behind

the scenes, he did not play the role of a passive constitutional monarch, as he claimed

after the war; nor did he wield dict atorial power, as Bix argues. Wetzler contends that

Hirohito’s primary concern centered not on expanding the Japanese empire, preserv-

ing peace in the Pacific, or maintaining a constitutional government but on his deeply

felt traditional responsibility for preserving the imperial house. Uncertain about the

correct course of action, he approved the decision for war with the Anglo-American

powers in 1941, because he feared a veto would prompt a rebellion, like the one in

1936, which would thre aten the existence of the throne itself. Wetzler’s approach

suggests that a focus on analyzing the legacy of the imperial institution, Hirohito’s

education, and his goals as he defined them will help in understanding the motivation

for his actions more than imposing external criteria of guilt or innocence for the

Pacific War.

The Japanese Military

The fierce determination of the Japanese soldier to fight to the death continues to

fascinate observers. Blaming the traditional samurai ethic of bushido

(the way of the

warrior) and emphasizing the indoctrination of all Japanese in the ideology of

absolute loyalty to the emperor are common but incomplete explanations. Specific

strategic decisions made by top officers shaped this attitude of self-sacrifice. Alvin

Coox’s magisterial study of the clash between Japanese and Soviet troops at Nomon-

han in 1939 remains an unparalleled gold mine of insights about the strategy, tactics,

250 W. MILES FLETCHER III

command structure, and operations of the imperial Japanese army. Particularly salient

was of ficers’ stress on compensating for a lack of modern equipment and technology

by emphasizing superior fighting spirit.

Leonard Humphreys finds that the strategy

of stressing ‘‘spirit’’ emerged officially in the 1920s, when the army’s leadership

realized that it could not afford to equip its troops with the new weapons and

equipment introduced in World War I – trench mortars, light machine guns, and

tanks – at the same level as the Western powe rs. In 1928 General Araki Sadao rewrote

the army’s strategic manual to eliminate the ter ms ‘‘surrender,’’ ‘‘retreat,’’ and

‘‘defense’’ and to recognize spirit (seishin) as superior to materiel in combat.

At the level of the common soldier, Edward Drea analyzes the various ways in

which the army cultivated group loyalty among recruits. The practice of forming

regiments out of draftees from a particular region reinforced local ties, while new

soldiers came to regard their squad and the barracks as a new family.

Emiko

Ohnuki-Tierney’s study of the kamikaze suicide pilots, whose missions began in

late 1944, reveals that they were thoughtful and anguished young men motivated

mainly by youthful idealism.

Drafted from the student ranks at elite universities,

they read widely in Western and Japanese philosophy and literature. Repelled by

capitalism and materialistic greed, they sought refuge in the Western doctrines of

Marxism, liberalism, and Christianity as they agonized about fundamental issues of

human rights, social responsibility, and their commitment to the nation. Significantly,

they did not refer to loyalty to the emperor in their diaries and letters but stressed

instead the need to defend their homeland and to inspire the building of a new Japan.

Scholarly interest has also concentrated on the strategic and tactical mistakes made

by the Japanese military. Kaigun, by Mark Peattie and David Evans, and Sunburst,by

Peattie, provide a wealth of information about the Japanese imperial navy and naval

aviation.

To be sure, Japanese accomplishments receive their due. At the start of the

war against the Anglo-Am erican powers the imperial navy had superior technology in

night optics, the I-93 torpedo, and the Mitsubishi ‘‘Zero’’ fighter. In battles in which

the opposing naval fo rces were roughly equivalent, such as the Solomons campaign of

1942–3, the Japanese did well. However, the inability to develop new technologies,

such as radar, proved a major problem, as did the decision not to use submarines

against civilian shipping. Japan’s gravest error, though, was not to plan for a long war.

The belief that a ‘‘thunderbolt’’ attack at the start would stun the Americans into

seeking peace or that a ‘‘decisiv e’’ battle would lead to victory meant that Japanese

admirals did not prepare for a war of attrition. Aware that the imperial navy faced a

materially superior foe, naval leaders placed a priority on quality over quantity. For

example, the decision to produce relatively few pilots but to train them rigorously

provided an advantage early in the war but made replacing pilots lost in combat

difficult as the war dragged on. Even the famous ‘‘Zero’’ fighter seemed best suited

to a short conflict. The plane’s light weight gave it a long range and an advantage in

maneuverability, but its lack of armor made it vulnerable as the fighting continued.

Edward Drea finds the imperial army equal ly ill prepared for a lengthy struggle. Army

strategists planned only a five-month operation in the Southwest Pacific, after which

they planned to withdraw fully one-half of their troops for redeployment in Man-

churia against the Soviets. The American landing on Guadalcanal in August 1942

caught Japanese generals by surprise, because they thought that a United States

counterattack would not occur until late 1943.

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 251

At the tactical level and in specific battles, the Japanese made crucial mistakes as

well.

Lacking construction equipment, they built too few air bases in the Southwest

Pacific, which quickly became a major theater of fighting. Although American pilots

learned to minimize the advantage of the ‘‘Zero’’ in maneuverability by avoiding

individual dogfights and diving at it from a higher altitude, Japanese pilots did not

adjust their tactics of attacking in an unstructured ‘‘beehive’’ formation. Poor sea

rescue operations caused the needless deaths of many Japanese pilots. Perhaps most

seriously, even though the Japanese commanders perceived the defense of Guadalca-

nal in the Solomon Islands as a decisive battle in 1942, they did not commit sufficient

forces to prevail, because they wante d to ‘‘win Guadalcanal on the cheap.’’ Moreover,

the large Japanese losses of troops and supplies in the Southwest Pacific in 1942 and

early 1943 substantially weakened Japan’s defenses against the later Allied drive across

the Central Pacific.

Atrocities committed by the Japanese military have also received increased atten-

tion. While John Dower’s War without Mercy probes the reasons for the bitterness of

the fighting between American and Japanese troops by examining the ways in which

the two sides dehumanized each other, subsequent works have focused on the

behavior of the Japanese. Using Western and Chinese sources, Iris Chang wrote a

widely read account of the Rape of Nanking (Nanjing) in December 1937. The

horror of the atrocities that she vividly describes, her contention that Japanese

soldiers had slaughtered as many as 300,000 Chinese, her comparison of the event

to the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, and her charge of a cover-up, especially by the

Japanese, has sparked much debate. Some question the charge of a cover-up, because

Japanese scholars have critically examined the Rape of Nanking for several decades.

Yamamot o Masahiro’s recent study examines Japanese as well as Chinese and Western

sources in estimating that in six weeks Japanese forces killed between 45,000 and

65,000 Chinese in Nanking, mostly adult males, ‘‘of which 15,000 to 52,000 were

killed in unlawful ways.’’ While readily describing what happened at Nanking as a

massacre and acknowledging the rape of thousands of Chinese women by Japanese

soldiers, Yamamoto ins ists that there was no set policy to commit a massacre, because

the behavior of individual units varied. To Yamamoto, Japanese actions cannot be

compared to the ‘‘systematic mass pattern of mass killing’’ that marked the Nazi

Holocaust.

Sheldon Harris was among the first Western scholars to report the biological

warfare experiments carried out on humans by Unit 731 and Unit 100 of

the Japanese army in various locations in Manchuria and China. He also exposes

the cynical bargain after Japan’s surrender, in which American officials agreed not

to place Japanese officers and doctors on trial for war crimes in return for the data

from the experiments that they had conducted. Most recently, James Bradley’s

Flyboys presents a gruesome account of Japanese executions of captured American

pilots at Chichi Jima in 1945. George Hicks’s The Comfort Women describes the

Japanese military’s system of sexual enslavement that began in the late 1930s. The

subsequent English translation of Yoshimi Yoshiaki’s careful study of relevant gov-

ernment documents demonstrates convincingly the active role of the military in

creating and strictly supervising the brothels in which the ‘‘comfort women’’

worked as well as the awareness of Japanese officials that they were violating inter-

national law.

252 W. MILES FLETCHER III

The Japanese Empire

The Japanese War time Empire, edited by Peter Duus, Ramon Myers, and Mark Peattie,

has presented the most comprehensive analysis to date in English of the Greater East Asia

Co-Prosperity Sphere. As a whole, the essays emphasize the discrepancy between the

ideals of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and its wartime reality, the variety of policies imple-

mented in different regions, and the overreach of Japanese power.

In terms of individ-

ual case studies, Manchukuo and China have received the most attention. Louise Young’s

Japan’s Total Empire explains that from the Japanese perspective the new state of

Manchukuo became a ‘‘brave new empire’’ by serving as a laboratory for experimenting

with technology, such as high-speed trains, and new ideas of urban planning. Moreover,

vast plains promised a better life for poor Japanese farmers, whose emigration would

hopefully solve the nation’s agrarian crisis.

Prasenjit Duara contends that in creating an

effective ‘‘developmental state’’ in Manchukuo the Japanese found substantial support

there among traditional redemptive and sectarian societies because of their beliefs in pan-

Asian ideals and established a useful alliance with local landlords. He perceives an

important difference between the state of Manchukuo and Japan’s older colonies of

Korea and Taiwan, since Manchukuo had at least nominal independence. In this sense,

Duara finds Japanese policies in Manchukuo similar to ‘‘global imperialism in the

interwar years, when direct rule by aliens and sheer exploitation gave way to alternatives,

such as indirect rule, collaborative arrangements with local elites, self-government, and

quasi-independence, and other means to secure imperialist interests,’’ and views Man-

chukuo as a precursor to the ‘‘client states’’ of the superpowers after 1945.

To what extent, one might ask, did the Japanese succeed in appealing to the

populace in other regions of China? Parks Coble’s analysis of Chinese businesses in

occupied Shanghai after 1937 reveals a pragmatic attitude by Chinese entrepreneurs.

Demonstrating neither heroic resistance nor supine collaboration, they simply wanted

to maintain their family enterprises. They avoided collaboration with the Japanese

unless it was necessary, because the Japanese offered few material incentives to

cooperate until late in the war.

Timothy Brook’s recent study also presents a strong

case for complicating the dominant approach of categorizing Chinese during this

period in terms of either heroic resistance or evil collaboration by exploring five case

studies of ‘‘collaboration’’ at the local level in Japanese-occupied China. Taking a

broad comparative perspective that defines collaboration in terms of responses to an

‘‘occupation state,’’ Brook aims to understand the behavior of ‘‘collaborators’’ rather

than judge them. He finds that Chinese who offered to help the occupiers tended to

be marginal members of local elites who had bee n denied opportunities to exercise

power before, many of whom exhibited ambiguous behavior. ‘‘There was collabor-

ation, there was resistance, but there was much else besides. Even what looks like

collaboration ends up being far more than resistance’s simple opposite.’’

Japan’s Surrender

Skepticism about President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use atomic bombs against

the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed to peak in 1995, the fiftieth

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 253

anniversary of Japan’s surrender. Afterwards, supporters of the decision gained

ground. By the early 1990s, critics of Truman’s decisi on had punctured his

claim that use of the atomic bombs had saved between 200,000 and 500,000

American lives that would have been lost in an invasion of Japan, which was scheduled

for November. Instead, researchers discovered that American military leaders in

June 1945 made predictions of deaths that varied between 25,000 and 46,000

Allied troops.

One analysis of American planning for the invasion conclud es that

Allied casualties would have been high but tolerable, because the Japanese ‘‘home-

land army was largely untrained, ill-equipped, and pitifully supplied.’’

Since

the alternative of invad ing Japan seemed to be much less costly than previously

thought, the question of Truman’s motives for using the atomic bomb re-emerged

with new intensity. Criticism centered on Truman’s reliance on certain advisers,

such as Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the newly appointed Secretary

of State James Byrnes, the President’s failure to consider other options, his initial

denial that many civi lian deaths would result, and his fascination with the weapon’s

power.

Several more recent studies, on the other hand, have tended either to support

Truman’s decision or, at least, to shift some blame to the Japanese fo r not making

greater efforts to end the war earlier. Herbert Bix has emphasized, for example, the

major responsibility borne by Emp eror Hirohito, because in February 1945 he

rejected the recommendation of former Prime Minister Prince Konoe Fumimaro

and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru to open negotiations for peace.

Needless

to say, a settlement then would have saved many lives all over Asia and would have

obviated the need for the American government even to consider using the atomic

bomb, which was not tested until July. The Japanese diplomatic historian Asada

Sadao has argued that the use of the atomic bombs served a crucial purpose, because

the immense power of the weapons gave the Japanese military an excuse to sur render

without admitting defeat on the battlefield.

Richard Frank points out that Ameri-

can intelligence officers learned by July 1945 that Japanese generals had moved many

more troops than expected near the projected Allied landing zones on Kyu

shu

. Thus,

American leaders must have known then that Allied deaths in an invasion would far

exceed the estimates made in June.

Frank dismisses the likelihood for the success of

options other than using the atomic bomb, such as offering a conditional surrender

with a guarantee for the maintenance of the imperial throne, by noting that the

Japanese government had not clarified its terms for surrende r.

In seeking a new perspective, other scholars have emphasized the complexity of

developments regarding Japan’s surrender. Accepting the probability that the use of

the atomic bombs saved thousands rather than hundreds of thousands of American

lives, J. Samuel Walker nonetheless asserts that Truman acted primarily to end the war

as quickly as possible to minimize those losses. He describes as a ‘‘myth,’’ however,

the belief that Truman faced a stark choice between dropping the atomic bombs and

an invasi on of Japan. Other options – an offer of a conditional surrender, a demon-

stration of the atomic bomb, and a strategy of continuing the naval blockade and

conventional bombing – existed and could have induced Japan’s surrender in a timely

manner, especially if they were used in combination. Walker defines the main chal-

lenge facing scholars as ‘‘fully considering the situation facing American and Japanese

leaders in the summer of 1945.’’

254 W. MILES FLETCHER III

A recent study by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa uncovers a sobering story that evenhandedly

discredits Truman, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and the Japane se government.

Taking a multilateral approach that examines Soviet, Japanese, and American archives,

Hasegawa analyzes simultaneous diplomatic developments in 1945 between

the United States and Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union, and the Soviet

Union and Japan. He argues, in brief, that Truman insisted on issuing the Potsdam

Declaration in late July with a demand for unconditional surrender after

he had already made the decision to use the atomic bomb, because he believed that

the highly probable Japanese rejection of the declaration would help justify his

decision. Also, after the test of the atomic bomb in July, Truman desperately wanted

to end the war to prevent the Soviet Union from entering the conflict and gaining

more territory in Asia. This part of his analysis seems to reassert the argument

introduced by Gar Alperovitz in the 1960s that cold war politics dominated Truman’s

decision to use the atomic bombs against Japan.

In turn, according to Hasegawa,

the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, deliberately delayed in responding to Japanese

overtures for him to mediate a peace with the Western Allies, because he

wanted time to prepare to enter the Pacific War in order to move troops into China

and Korea and seize Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and even Hokkaido

, if possible.

Japanese leaders, meanwhile, failed to for m a strong consensus on terminating the

war and to define an effective strategy for doing so. Moreover, Hasegawa contends

that the Soviet declaration of war on Japan on August 8 had a greater impact on the

Japanese decision to surrender than the use of the atomic bombs on August 6 and

August 9.

A Broader Context for Interpretation

The perspective of almost six decades has enabled historians to place the significance

of the Pacific War in a larg er comparative or chronological context. Gregory Kasza’s

The Conscription Society, for instance, cites the organizations creat ed by the Japanese

state for wartime mobilization as examples of Administered Mass Organizations

(AMOs), which, he argues, have been common and important institutions in many

‘‘nondemocratic’’ regimes in the twentieth century. Other scholars have focused on

analyzing the economic links between wartime and postwar Japan. Among Western

scholars, Chalmers Johnson was perhaps the first to do so by highlighting continuities

in the authority over economic policy gained by the Ministry of Commerce and

Industry in wartime and the auth ority granted to the Ministry of International

Trade and Industry after 1949. As noted above, Okazaki Tetsuji has argued that

the ‘‘Japanese economic system,’’ which achieved a remarkable growth rate from the

1950s to the 1980s, originated in the economic changes of the wartime period. Bai

Gao discerns the rise of a general economic ideology of ‘‘developmentalism,’’ whi ch

promoted state intervention in the economy, as starting in the 1930s and carrying

through to the postwar era.

At the level of popular culture, John Dower notes how easily rallying cries for war

mobilization transformed into slogans urging the new postwar goals of peace and

democracy. ‘‘Construct a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’’ became ‘‘Con-

struct a Nation of Peace.’’ As Dower shows with great irony, Emperor Hirohito

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 255

became the most obvious continuity of all, fully supported by the American occupiers

touting the goa l of the total reform of Japanese politics and society. Sheldon Garon’s

Molding Japanese Minds explores the continuing preoccupation of the Japanese state

with ‘‘moral suasion’’ and ‘‘social management’’ and the continuing willingness of

private interest groups to cooperate in this project. Laura Hein’s study of six econo-

mists shows the consistency of their ideal of improving the lives of the people through

a social welfare state but makes clear the vastly increa sed freedom of action and

opportunities for influence that postwar democracy afforded these intellectuals. She

remarks in her conclusion that ‘‘the link between wartime and postwar Japan cannot

be characterized either as a sharp break or a straight line.’’

Overall, the scholarship of the past two decades or so has raised serious doubts

about any particular year as a turning point of complete radical change in Japanese

policies – 1931, 1937, or 1945. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December

1941, of course, marked a momentous expansion of Japan’s war in Asia, but this

decision built on previous ones. If the passage of time has brought a more dispas-

sionate analysis of the diplomatic tensions leading to the Japa nese attack on Pearl

Harbor and of the reasons for the fanatic loyalty of Japanese soldiers and of kamikaze

pilots, the criticism o f strategic and tactical errors by the Japanese military after 1941

has become more pronounced. The mai n strategic question is: why did Japanese

generals and admirals not plan for a long war against the Anglo-American powers?

Or, if they were not ready for such a conflict, why did they go to war? Similarly,

attention has focused on atrocities committed by Japanese forces. Case studies of the

role of various sectors of society in the 1930s have helped to dismantle the view of a

dominant military duping or coercing the civilian populace into a reckless war.

Defining the special character of wartime Japan, however, remains elusive. Rather

than search for a single term that will embody this complicated era, more productive

approaches might follow two tracks. One would seek to place developments in Japan

from 1931 to 1945 in a global context that would include but go beyond the other

Axis Powers. Kasza’s The Conscription Society is one example. The other would

examine Japan in this era as a case study for discerning the complex proc esses through

which modern societies prepare, wittingly or not, for waging war.

NOTES

1 For example, see Ienaga, The Pacific War, p. xiii. Ienaga notes the use of the term by

Japanese scholars. He prefers not to use it, but defines the Pacific War as lasting from 1931

to 1945.

2 Tipton, ed., Society and the State in Interwar Japan, pp. 5–6.

3 Mitchell, Justice in Japan.

4 Young, Japan’s Total Empire, pp. 47–52.

5 Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis, p. 219.

6 Kasza, The State and the Mass Media, p. 282.

7 Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, p. 316.

8 Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, pp. 108–15.

9 Okazaki and Okuno-Fujiwara, eds., The Japanese Economic System, pp. 2, 14.

10 For example, see Ueda, ‘‘The Financial System and Its Regulations,’’ ibid., pp. 38–43.

11 For example, see Gao, Economic Ideology, pp. 22, 67.

12 Smith, A Time of Crisis, p. 330.

256 W. MILES FLETCHER III

13 Young, Japan’s Total Empire, p. 426.

14 Ibid., chs. 3 and 5.

15 Ibid., p. 294.

16 Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, chs. 2 and 4.

17 Fletcher, The Search for a New Order.

18 Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, pp. 165, 190, 280.

19 High, The Imperial Screen, esp. chs. 9 and 14.

20 Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan.

21 Pincus, Authenticating Culture, epilogue.

22 Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, pp. 327–8, 398–9.

23 Heisig and Maraldo, Rude Awakenings. The specific essays referred to are Hirata Seito

‘‘Zen Buddhist Attitudes to War,’’ pp. 3–15 (quotation on p. 11); Kirita Kiyohide, ‘‘D. T.

Suzuki on Society and the State,’’ pp. 52–76 (p. 61); Christopher Ives, ‘‘Ethical Pitfalls in

Imperial Zen and Nishida Philosophy: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique,’’ pp. 16–39 (p. 38);

and Yusa Michiko, ‘‘Nishida and Totalitarianism: A Philosopher’s Resistance,’’ pp. 107–

31.

24 Williams, Defending Japan’s Pacific War, p. 63.

25 Victoria, Zen at War, and Zen War Stories, chs. 5 and 7 (quotation on p. 83).

26 Townsend, Yanaihara Tadao, chs. 6, 8, and 9.

27 Nolte, Liberalism in Modern Japan, ch. 7.

28 Kinmonth, ‘‘The Mouse that Roared.’’

29 Hein, Reasonable Men, p. 215.

30 Fletcher, The Japanese Business Community and National Trade Policy.

31 Iguchi, Unfinished Business.

32 Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, chs. 8–10, pp. 285, 286–7.

33 Cook and Cook, Japan at War; Gibney, Senso.

34 Dower, Embracing Defeat, chs. 3 and 4.

35 Duus and Okimoto, ‘‘Fascism and the History of Prewar Japan,’’ pp. 65–76.

36 For example, see Wilson, ‘‘A New Look at the Problem of Japanese Fascism,’’ pp. 401–12.

37 Fletcher, The Search for a New Order, pp. 155–8.

38 Garon, The State and Labor, pp. 208–18.

39 Kasza, ‘‘Fascism from Above?’’ pp. 224, 232.

40 Pincus, Authenticating Culture, epilogue.

41 Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy, pp. 333–8.

42 Ibid., pp. 338–9; Maruyama, Thought and Behavior, pp. 25–83.

43 Reynolds, ed., Japan in the Fascist Era. Joseph P. Sotille proposes an emphasis on ‘‘Axis

Studies’’ in his essay, ‘‘The Fascist Era: Imperial Japan and the Axis Alliance in Historical

Perspective,’’ pp. 1–48. Sotille defines a ‘‘fascist minimum’’ on pp. 16–17. Reynolds

presents a carefully reasoned case for applying the concept of fascism to Japan, as well as

a careful review of the relevant historiography, in his concluding essay, ‘‘Peculiar Charac-

teristics: The Japanese Political System in the Fascist Era,’’ pp. 155–97.

44 See, for example, Christopher Szpilman, ‘‘Fascist and Quasi-Fascist Ideas in Interwar

Japan, 1918–1941,’’ in Reynolds, ed., Japan in the Fascist Era, pp. 73–106.

45 For example, Iguchi, Unfinished Business, ch. 7, and Lu,

Agony of Choice.

46 LaFeber, The Clash, pp. 214–15; Best, Britain, Japan, and Pearl Harbor, ch. 9.

47 Marshall, To Have and Have Not; Best, British Intelligence.

48 Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism, pp. 206–7, 228–9.

49 Brooks, Japan’s Imperial Diplomacy, pp. 149–50, 157–60, and ch. 5.

50 Lu, Agony of Choice, p. 193.

51 Large, Emperor Hirohito, chs. 2–4.

52 Ibid., p. 113.

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 257

53 Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, pp. 208–19, 302–5, and ch. 11.

54 Wetzler, Hirohito and War.

55 Coox, Nomonhan, pp. 1090–2.

56 Humphreys, The Way of the Heavenly Sword, ch. 4.

57 Drea, In the Service of the Emperor, ch. 6.

58 Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms.

59 Peattie and Evans, Kaigun, chs. 7–14; Peattie, Sunburst.

60 Peattie and Evans, Kaigun; Peattie, Sunburst; Bergerud, Fire in the Sky.

61 Drea, In the Service of the Emperor, ch. 3.

62 Peattie, Sunburst; Bergerud, Fire in the Sky.

63 Bergerud, Fire in the Sky, pp. 660, 663–4.

64 Dower, War without Mercy; Chang, The Rape of Nanking. For two informative review

essays on studies of the Rape of Nanking see Yang, ‘‘Convergence or Divergence?’’, and

Wakabayashi, ‘‘The Nanking Massacre.’’

65 Yamamoto, Nanking, pp. 115, 145.

66 Harris, Factories of Death; Bradley, Flyboys; Hicks, The Comfort Women; Yoshimi,

The Comfort Women.

67 Duus, Myers, and Peattie, eds., The Japanese Wartime Empire. See Peter Duus, ‘‘Intro-

duction: Japan’s Wartime Empire: Problems and Issues,’’ pp. xxvii–xxxix, for a summary

of these themes.

68 Young, Japan’s Total Empire, chs. 6–8.

69 Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, chs. 2 and 3, p. 247.

70 Coble, Chinese Capitalists, pp. 111–13, 205–11.

71 Brook, Collaboration, pp. 30–1, 233–6.

72 Bernstein, ‘‘Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender,’’ pp. 232,

263–4.

73 Skates, The Invasion of Japan, pp. 254–6.

74 For example, see Lifton, Hiroshima in America, pp. 117–42.

75 Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, pp. 488–94.

76 Asada, ‘‘The Shock of the Atomic Bomb,’’ pp. 505–12.

77 Frank, Downfall, pp. 339–43.

78 Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction, p. 110.

79 Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy.

80 Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy.

81 Kasza,

The Conscription Society; Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle; Okazaki, The

Japanese Economic System; Gao, Economic Ideology.

82 Dower, Embracing Defeat, ch. 5; Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, epilogue; Hein, Rea-

sonable Men, p. 216.

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Akami, Tomoko. Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan, and the Institute of

Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–45. London: Routledge, 2002.

Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New York: Simon and Schuster,

1965.

Asada Sadao. ‘‘The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender – A

Reconsideration.’’ Pacific Historical Review 67 (Nov. 1998): 477–512.

Barshay, Andrew. State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan: The Public Man in Crisis. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1988.

258 W. MILES FLETCHER III