In November of 1943, the leaders of the subjugated nations (or ‘member states’) were invited to Tokyo to participate in the first and only Greater East Asia Conference, at which the delegates were invited to discuss how best to organize the co-prosperity sphere for the mutual benefit of all the members. Pan-Asianism, which had been bubbling through Japanese public opinion since the Meiji period, became the rhetoric of the Japanese empire. In reality, Tokyo was finding it increasingly difficult to sustain its
expansive empire, and it realized (too late) that it needed to cultivate the good will of its colonies. It also realized (again too late) that some of the other peoples of Asia were also fed up with Western
imperialism, and that they might voluntarily join a movement that genuinely sought to throw the West out of Asia: Asia for the Asians.
By this time, however, any pretence that Japan’s empire was in any way anti-imperialist was horribly and offensively ridiculous.
Within Japan itself, the rhetoric of the co-prosperity sphere was hotly debated. In 1933, Konoe had established a ‘brain trust’, the Showa kenkyukai, which was charged with drawing up plans for
a New Order in East Asia. The members included the Kyoto School philosopher Miki Kiyoshi, whose essay ‘Shin Nihon no shiso genri’ (‘The Intellectual Principles of the New Japan’, 1939) helped
to establish the parameters of a vision of Japan and East Asia that had passed through modernity and challenged the imperialism of the West. In an attempt to ‘clarify the national polity’ with regard to these questions, the Ministry of Education published the notorious Kokutai no hongi (Fundamental
Principles of our National Polity) in 1937. Between 1941 and 1942, four other members of the Kyoto School, including Nishitani Keiji, Kosaka Masaaki, Suzuki Shigetaka, and Koyama Iwao, held a series of public symposia themed on ‘The World-Historical Standpoint and Japan’, ‘The Ethics and Historicity of the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’, and finally ‘The Philosophy of All-Out War’. Intellectuals from other schools of thought also joined in the discussion in the famous ‘Overcoming Modernity’ symposium of July 1942. Even the father of modern Japanese philosophy, Nishida Kitaro, ˆ
joined the debate when he wrote a short essay (apparently designed to be read by Tojo himself )
entitled ‘Principles for a New World Order’.
The issues at stake in these debates were serious: how could Japan overcome the cultural hegemony of modernity qua Westernization and somehow pass through this borrowed modernity into an authentic modernity of its own; how could (and should) Japan help other nations in Asia to do the same thing; and finally how could Japan build a regional order that encompassed other nations in Asia without that order being an empire? The resolutions to these issues reached by the various voices remain contested to this day, and the debate about how/whether to overcome modernity itself has resurfaced in the
postwar period in terms of Japan’s desire to retain its identity in an increasingly Americanized world.
In fact, by the time that it organized the Great East Asia Conference, Japan was already losing the war. After defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, at which Japan lost vital aircraft carriers, the tide had turned against it. By July 1944, when US forces captured Saipan, Japan was finally in range of Allied
bombers and the war was basically lost. Tojo resigned from office in the same month, and in February 1945 Prince Konoe petitioned the emperor to surrender in order to alleviate the terrible suffering of his people: the conditions of ‘total war’ had reduced much of Japan to extreme poverty and even starvation; air-raids and fire-bombings made the major cities almost uninhabitable.
It is not clear whether Hirohito himself refused this petition, or whether it was refused for him by senior military officers who still believed in the possibility of a tennozan (a divine victory).
Whichever the case, the Japanese continued to fight with increasing ferocity and desperation: the so-called kamizake (divine wind) suicide squadrons (officially these were ‘special attack units’ or okubetsu kogeki tai) bombarded Allied shipping; during the terrible Battle of Okinawa, thousands of Japanese civilians fought the American invaders with sticks, rocks and bare fists, retreating back into the mountains until there was nowhere left to go, and then killed themselves to prevent capture. When
Okinawa finally fell, a quarter of a million Japanese had died, including 150,000 civilians.
It is in the context of this kind of fanaticism that historians attempt to judge the necessity of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, the dedication of the Japanese civilians and military led the US government to commission an anthropologist to attempt to explain why they were so devoted
and what it might take to achieve final victory. The result, Ruth Benedict’s famous monograph, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (which was published in the form of a book in 1946), represents the start of Modern Japan Studies and its relationship with the US government in particular.
After threatening Japan’s ‘prompt and utter destruction’ in the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July, the USA bombed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the USSR invaded Japan’s Northern Territories on
8 August, and then the USA bombed Nagasaki on 9 August.
Japan’s situation was hopeless. But even then the chiefs of staff and the army minister refused to surrender unless the Allies would guarantee the survival of the emperor. The USA would only reply
that they would leave the future of Japan in the hands of the Japanese people themselves, which did not reassure the Japanese elites who had always been so suspicious of the masses. Finally, Emperor Hirohito himself intervened on 14 August to break the deadlocked council, and he surrendered, making a radio broadcast to his shattered nation the next day. On 2 September, on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, the document of surrender was signed.
Given the terrible damage and suffering inflicted by them, the use of the atomic bombs against two Japanese cities, especially the second, are still the focus of controversy today.
A particular question has been whether they were actually necessary, or whether Japan had already lost the war. It had no resources and no allies, its navy had been destroyed, it was vulnerable to air attacks on its cities, against her were assembled the powers of the USA, Britain, the USSR, and an emerging
China. Could their use have been avoided? Various theories have been suggested, including that the USA dropped the bombs as part of a scientific experiment to see what effect they would have on a populated urban area, or that the bombs were designed primarily to intimidate the USSR, with a eye on
the postwar settlement and the Cold War. However, when asked about the decision to drop the bombs, US Secretary of War Henry Stimson answered simply: ‘it is seldom sound for the stronger combatant to moderate his blows whenever his opponent shows signs of weakening ’.
In his famous radio speech to the people of Japan, Emperor Hirohito singled out the A-bombs as part of the reason for his decision to surrender. He emphasized the moral and spiritual strength of the Japanese nation (and of the East Asian peoples), but stated bluntly that superior modern technology had tilted
the balance in the war: Japan was overcome by modernity after all. Hirohito’s words warned that the use of this kind of technology risked bringing about the end of civilization itself. His meaning is contested, but the spirit of his speech suggests that the Japanese should not allow the power of material technology to destroy their spirit or to eradicate their ‘Japaneseness’; if modern technology is allowed to rule over everything, what is to become of the spirit that makes us human?
Postwar Japan should return its spiritual wealth even in the face of saturation by modern technology.
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