In the Faraway Mountains and Rivers: More Voices From A Lost Generation of Japanese Students
In the Faraway Mountains and Rivers: More Voices From A Lost Generation of Japanese Students
Translated by. Joseph L. Quinn, S.J., and Midori Yamanouchi
University of Scranton Press 2005
ISBN-13 9781589661080
Second book: The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda
By Barak Kushner
The University of Hawai'i Press, 2006
Third book: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese
By Samuel Hideo Yamashita
The University of Hawai'i Press, 2005
Reviews by Ben-Ami Shillony
The Pacific War was the most traumatic event in the modern histories of Japan, China, the United States, and many other nations. No wonder that more than sixty years after it ended it still attracts attention and stirs debate. In the various writings about the war, the former black and white stereotypes have given way to more shaded presentations, in which heroes and villains are not always distinguishable. The three interesting books under review here open a window through which we can see how the war was presented and perceived in Japan. Reading them together helps us understand the atmosphere in which the Japanese lived in those turbulent years.
The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda, by Barak Kushner,
Barak Kushner's illuminating book examines Japan's wartime propaganda, as it was formed and manipulated by the government and other agencies working with it. He finds that despite the absence of a single, central organ of information and public guidance, as it existed in Germany, the wartime propaganda of Japan was very successful. Kushner rejects the image of the Japanese people blindly obeying their leaders. As he shows, pronouncements from above met a willingness from below to listen and comply. The people identified with the war aims and were ready to endure hardships. "To westerners the wartime Japanese behaved like docile sheep, blindly worshipping the emperor, soldiers shouting his name on the battlefield with their dying gasp. In contrast to this image held by the west, the Japanese… discriminated. They listened to some propaganda messages, ignored others" (p. 32). Government controls and restrictions existed, but they were effective because they encountered public support. "Censorship and terror alone did not characterize the war years. In actuality the people were not duped, nor were they passive. The masses understood the situation not only because the government explained it, but also because the population itself helped create the propaganda environment" (p. 24).
Wartime propaganda reached the people in many ways, from high-brow culture to low-brow amusements. Advertisement, in the form of posters, pamphlets, glossy magazines, travel brochures, and slogans, played a significant role in bolstering public morale. Commercial advertisers discovered the business opportunities in working for the government and for the war effort. "Consumer appetites supported the nation's imperial quest by making commerce and war a significant part of popular culture" (p. 68). A special chapter of the book, titled A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Front, describes the important role of entertainment in mobilizing the population for war. Comedians, rakugo story tellers, and drama troups performed all the time, not stopping even when the bombs were falling.
Kushner discovers that, contrary to what is usually believed, Japan's wartime propaganda was rational, depicting Japan as a modern state. It was effective because it appealed to reason rather than to mystical nationalism or to the cult of the emperor. It presented Japan as a progressive, scientific and hygienic country, "the harbinger of civilization that Asia should strive to emulate" (p. 11). As such, Japan shouldered the obligation to liberate and lead its less fortunate neighbors. This message had a great appeal to intellectuals, who supported the war as a campaign to liberate Asia. "Members of Japan's cosmopolitan elite did not distance themselves from wartime propaganda; they embraced it and involved themselves in its creation. Intellectuals were not misled; they actively helped convince others because they believed in Japan's war in Asia" (p. 38).
As Kushner points out, Japan's wartime propaganda was part of a long tradition of didactic exhortations from above. This practice was already evident in the Confucian injunctions in the Edo period which called for diligence and filial piety, and in the public admonitions in the Meiji period which advocated modernity and enlightenment. Wartime propaganda employed similar moralistic arguments in its calls for unity and sacrifice. Yet, as Kushner reveals, that practice did not end with Japan's surrender. It continued in the postwar era, when the authorities used similar arguments to persuade the people to accept defeat, to collaborate with the allied occupation, and to embrace monumental reforms. He asks: "How were the Americans able to occupy the country so quickly and with a minimum amount of civic disturbance?" (p. 156); and he answers: "The same Japanese agencies that only weeks earlier had touted their spiritual fortitude to repel the barbarians quickly switched over to mandating new public behavior and ordering Japanese imperial subjects to accept the occupation so that Japan could rise again" (p. 157). Kushner claims that "postwar Japanese reappraisal of western democracy was not spontaneous but emanated from an official policy to reorient society so that the occupation would proceed smoothly and Japan could rebuild" (pp. 172-73). The book's conclusion is that propaganda "helped unite Japan in its bid to modernize in the prewar era, and the importance of such activity did not fade after the surrender. Japan lost the war, but through determination and careful application of propaganda it did not lose the nation" (p. 190).
To what extent were these achievements the result of calculated propaganda and to what extent were they due to mere rational behavior on the part of the Japanese? Kushner admits that the word propaganda has acquired a negative connotation in the west, because of its abuse by the Nazis and the Soviets. But he claims that in Japan, where propaganda possessed deep historical roots, it had a positive significance. But, as he himself admits, definitions are murky, and the Japanese word senden can mean both propaganda and advertisement. So why call it propaganda? Wouldn't it be better to call it education? The title of the book, The Thought War, suggests that Japan was waging an ideological war, in which propaganda was the weapon. But if the Japanese at that time, as Kushner himself has shown, shared the vision of modernity with the west, and even wished to introduce modernity into other parts of Asia, then why regard it as an ideological war? The term thought war, which the government used, might have been just a propaganda catchword. Another question is how to call the period 1931-1945, which is the focus of this book. Kushner, like some Japanese historians, calls it "Japan's Fifteen Year War" (p. 4), but the period from the Manchurian Incident until Japan's surrender lasted less than fourteen years. In another place he refers to those years as "World War Two" (p. 2), but beginning that war in 1931 stretches its name beyond its normal usage.
Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese.
To find out how successful the wartime propaganda was, one may look at what the people of that time confided to their diaries. Samuel Hideo Yamashita, in his moving book, collected eight wartime diaries, which he translated. To present a wide view, he chose diaries of men and women of different ages and occupations, and from different localities. The diarists are: a seventy-five-year-old proprietor of a billiard parlor in Kyoto, a middle-aged doctor's wife from Tokyo, a young woman secretary, a naval pilot who joined the kamikaze corps, a straggling soldier on Okinawa, a teenage girl mobilized for work on an air base in Kyushu, an eleven-year-old boy evacuated to Fukushima Prefecture, and a nine-year-old girl evacuated to Toyama Prefecture. Writing diaries was an old Japanese tradition. During the war, diaries of soldiers and pupils were inspected by their officers and teachers. Nevertheless, as Yamashita points out, the writers of these diaries were not afraid to reveal their feelings even when these clashed with the official line. Does that prove the bravery of the diarists? More probably, the wartime regime in Japan was less totalitarian than we assume, and people felt safe to divulge their thoughts in their diaries. A similar frankness in diaries in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia would have put their writers in front of a firing squad.
As the writers had been subjected for some years to government propaganda, it is interesting to see how they related to the wartime circumstances. The pilot Itabashi Yasuo espoused the official line. As late as January 1945, he wrote, perhaps with an eye to his superiors who would inspect his diary: "…we are not defeated. We're winning. We are definitely winning the war" (p. 66). But the other diarists were more pessimistic. As early as June 1943, Takahashi Aiko, the doctor's wife from Tokyo, wrote: "Our clothes are in tatters, and it's almost as though we've been defeated… what is going on? It is an unimaginable psychological situation for Japanese to be in" (p. 170). A year later, in July 1944, she wrote: "Having heard about our troops' gyokusai on Saipan makes us angry. We should have the courage, come hell or high water, to give up the fight" (p. 174). That month, Tamura Tsunejiro, the old businessman from Kyoto, wrote in his diary: "The world has become too repulsive. Enemy aircraft, come quickly and attack! Please end this awful situation" (p. 86). In January 1945, Yoshizawa Hisako, the young secretary from Tokyo, wrote in her diary: "Most people no longer believe in victory… Even rural folk believe that if we are as deadlocked as this and still fall short of our goals, there's no reason to think we can win" (p.195). Yamashita points out that as the bombing raids intensified, "anxiety and fatigue gave way to depression, outrage, and real terror" (p. 30). He observes: "As the Japanese lost faith in their leaders and their morale sagged, social conflict and tension… surfaced in their diaries" (p.32). This was not exactly the mood that the authorities wished to foster.
There is little jingoism in these diaries and little reverence for the leaders. Tamura wrote in July 1944 that Tojo "has acted like a coward and betrayed our hopes. We believed in him but were misled. With a small fry like him, there won't be military victories or a solution" (p. 86). The emperor is not criticized, but does he evoke veneration either. The soldier Nomura Seiki, stranded on Okinawa, wrote on 10 August 1945: "I have fought not for the emperor but for the homeland… Even now my thoughts about the emperor haven't changed. Nor was this view mine alone" (p. 135). The teenage girl mobilized for work and the two evacuated children show interest in everything that is happening around them. They try their best to fulfill their duties, but they do not sound more militaristic than children in other countries. The nine-year-old Nakane Mihoko wrote in her diary on 8 May 1945: "Today was Imperial Rescript Observance Day. When I went to school in the morning, the beautiful rising-sun flags on each house were fluttering in the morning breeze. There was a ceremony at school… After we returned to our classroom, we wrote letters to sailors… I tried as hard as I could to write letters that would make them happy" (p. 278).
Is there anything uniquely Japanese in these diaries? Perhaps it is the aesthetic approach, reminiscent of the old war ballads, to gruesome war circumstances. Tamura Tsunejiro laments the "autumn of emergencies, when the life or death of the state is at issue" (p. 101). This phrase, which also appears in the diary of the pilot Itabashi Yasuo (p. 66), has provided the poetic title of the book (where it meshes with the beautiful cover design by April Leidig-Higgins of maple leaves in autumn). Can air raids look beautiful to their victims? The secretary Yoshizawa Hisako admires the "glittering, white, and beautiful bodies" of the American bombers, "which seemed to be pulling the moving patterns of flying clouds" (p. 193). She reveals that "when there's an air-raid warning, I feel like singing a song. I thought it was just me, but when I inquired at the company and elsewhere, it seems everyone has these feelings" (p. 196). Maeda Shoko, who saw the kamikaze pilots leaving for their missions, recounts how one of them, before takeoff, got upset when he noticed that his suicide plane was dirty. The sortie had to wait until the plane was cleaned (p. 226).
In the Faraway Mountains and Rivers: More Voices From A Lost Generation of Japanese Students,
It is widely assumed that when a young person chooses to sacrifice his life for a national cause he must have been brainwashed. This assumption was wrong in the case of wartime Japan, as it may be wrong in the case of other countries today. That becomes clear when we read the letters, poems, and diary entries of fallen students and graduates of Tokyo University, carrying the elegiac name In the Faraway Mountains and Rivers. It was published in Japan in 1947 under the name Harukanaru sanga-ni. Two years later it was followed by the larger anthology Kike wadatsumi no koe, which contained poems, letters and diary entries of fallen students from several universities and which became a bestseller. Joseph L. Quinn and Midori Yamanouchi have translated both books into English, but in the opposite order. The latter one was published in 2000 under the name Listen to the Voices of the Sea, while the former came out in 2005. Both books were published by the University of Scranton Press.
The student soldiers who speak to us from the pages of this little book do not reiterate the wartime propaganda. They admire European literature and philosophy, are skeptical of the authorities, express criticism of military life, and show concern for their families. They know that their country is in danger and believe that by sacrificing themselves they may save it. Having made that decision they proceed cheerfully with their military tasks. Oi Hidemitsu, who died in China, wrote to his mother in 1940: "It must seem truly astonishing that a person such as myself, who in the past so truly hated and feared anything connected with war, can now concentrate so fully… on learning anything there is to learn about preparing for war" (p. 7). Gaikaku Yasuhiko, who died in Okinawa, wrote in the will which he addressed to his mother: "I had always had the utmost disdain and contempt for the so-called military spirit… with a peaceful heart, I am simply going to disappear from this world" (p. 127). Iwata Yuzuru, who died in Burma, noted in his diary in April 1943: "…it is quite impossible to find words to describe the corruption, under General Tojo, of the military officialdom responsible for pointing out the correct course of action" (p.20). However, Japan was in danger and his duty was to save it: "I shall simply go to war and face death for the sake of my country" (p. 21).
Was the death of the student soldiers nobler than the death of ordinary soldiers? Their university teachers, the compilers of the anthology, and the translators thought that it was. In his memorial address to the fallen students in 1946, which appears at the beginning of the book, Tokyo University President Nanbara Shigeru said: "I know for certain that you are quite different from the ordinary soldiers of limited vision and experience. You were warriors and students at the same time. You did not fight with a dogmatic and fanatic 'unfailing belief in victory.' I know that you hoped for the victory of justice and truth above all… Unfortunately, however, justice and truth were not for us to enjoy" (p. xii). The translator Midori Yamanouchi, in her acknowledgments, recalls how deeply she was moved when she first read the book: "it deepened my sorrow over how those fine, able men from the University of Tokyo had to die in the war that they could not control and did not want" (p. ix). The other translator, Joseph L. Quinn, in his preface admits that although we cannot avoid judging the fallen students as ignorant or misled, "neither can we avoid recognizing a certain magnificence about such willingness to throw away their still very young lives. - However grudgingly, the recognition might just breed some admiration not only for the young men themselves, but also for the culture that produced them" (p. viii).
Is such elitism justified? It is evident that the drafted students and the university graduates were better educated and were more eloquent than ordinary soldiers, but were they also less militaristic and more moral, as the praises for them imply? They served on all fronts and participated in a variety of military and naval operations. Their diaries and letters express idealism and anguish, but (probably because of the censorship) they do not mention the horrors that they were inflicting on others. Did some of them participate in the "rape of Nanking," or in other atrocities? Did they enjoy the services of the "comfort women"? A poem by Fukazawa Tsuneo, who was killed in the Philippines, discloses something. It says: "The comfort ladies, who are playing around and blowing water on the factory workers, are also a thousand ri away from home" (p. 115). If one wonders to whom he was referring, the original Japanese says clearly ianfu ("comfort women", i.e. military prostitutes. Showa senso bungaku zenshu, vol. 15: Shisha no koe. Tokyo: Shueisha, 1965, p. 180).
The genre of letters of fallen students did not originate in Japan. After World War I, an anthology of "war letters" of students who had died in the Great War appeared in Germany (Philipp Witkop, ed., Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten. Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1918). The book was translated into Japanese by Takahashi Kenji and published by Iwanami. Nakamura Tokoro, a Tokyo University student killed in the Philippines, was reading it shortly before his death in 1944. He was very moved, as he recorded in his diary: "Once again I read Doitsu senbotsu gakusei no tegami. The book continues to be rewarding no matter how many times you read it, and it is especially impressive to read here. These writers are sincerity itself, and happy were they who, in a trench and under the light of a candle, read the Bible, read Goethe, cited Hoelderlin's poetry, and longed to listen to Wagner's music" (p. 102). Little did he know that what he was writing at that moment would be included in an anthology of letters and diaries by fallen Japanese students.