New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 ISBN 0393046869
Has any country in modern times ever been as comprehensively defeated in was as Japan in 1945? How does a country cope with such a crisis? How do the victors treat such an enemy? John Dower, in this comprehensive and well-written book, looks at these questions: how Japan coped with defeat, occupation, and the beginnings of reconstruction. This is obviously a book about the Japanese, but in many respects it is also about the Americans, and their behaviour as occupiers. Japan's initial reaction to defeat was shock and despair. The country had been ravaged by the War and millions of men killed, only to be laid prostrate before the victors. Starvation was a very real possibility in the early days of the occupation, and while black-marketeers and other fat-cats did well, many Japanese were financially, physically, and spiritually ruined by defeat and what came after.
The Occupation, headed by General MacArthur and the bureaucracy of SCAP (Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers), had total control over the country. The Americans excluded the other Allies from any real input to the decision-making process, and controlled the Japanese Government through a mix of carrot-and-stick. The decisions of SCAP were final, and neither politician or press could criticize the Occupation forces in any way. SCAP also engaged in censorship of published and broadcast material, with a strict prohibition on publicising that such censorship was even occurring.
This was not the only circumstance that jarred with MacArthur's lofty declamations promising freedom and justice for all. Japan's freedom to vote for a Government of their choice was circumscribed by harassment of left-wing parties, and the insistence of the US on the retention of the Emperor. The Japanese people saw the hypocrisy of much of what occurred, which only added to their cynicism about the occupation, after a hopeful beginning. Allied hypocrisy and Japanese cynicism reached a height during the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Initially the Japanese public were shocked to hear of the horrible acts committed by their troops, but the way the trial of the Class A War Criminals was conducted - excluding the Emperor from all blame, not allowing the defendants a proper defence, excluding the Japanese from playing a part in the prosecution, not ensuring all evidence was translated into Japanese - led to a widespread feeling of the trials being merely victor's justice.
Much of the grand rhetoric MacArthur espoused at the beginning of the occupation about freedom and peace had dissolved by the time the occupation was over. While elections were held and suffrage extended, the power of the bureaucracy was not diminished vis-a-vis the elected representatives of the people. Dower points out that this ironically was the outcome of SCAP's total domination of government affairs during the occupation: when the American bureaucrats left, the Japanese bureaucrats took over. Similarly, after SCAP broke up the large Zaibatsu, they left the door open for them to morph from industrial enterprises to financial enterprises, and thus continue in a slightly different form.
The biggest change in Japan during the occupation years was in thinking about military power, and war-making ability. MacArthur enforced the carriage in the Constitution of Article Nine, rejecting war as a solution to diplomatic problems and forbidding the country from having armed forces. There was some "wriggle room" in the wording of the final document (Dower writes well on the problems of translation from English to Japanese, and how the Japanese at times managed to twist meaning in the translation process) but most Japanese understandably supported such an initiative. When the Korean War broke out however, the US were not only keen for the Japanese to produce munitions, but also wanted them to re-arm: perhaps the ultimate irony. Article Nine has been a problem for Japan ever since.
Dower has immersed himself not only in the machinations of politics, but also in the day-to-day lives of the Japanese during this time - how they survived, what they thought of their rulers both foreign and domestic, and how they came to terms with defeat, loss and grieving. He also shows us the explosion of culture that sprung out of defeat, and the new-found freedoms (despite the censorship), that defeat and occupation gave everyday citizens.
Embracing Defeat is well-worth reading for anyone interested in the history of Japan, and of World War II. Highly recommended.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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