Book Review - A History of Modern Japan by Richard Storry

 A History of Modern Japan by Richard Storry

London: Penguin Books, 1990 (revised edition published 1982)  ISBN 014013512X

This is a good, if somewhat dated, political history of Japan focussing on the Meiji period and beyond. At 300 paperback pages covering 150 years of history, it is necessarily brief, but no less informative for that. Storry begins his history with a brief overview of Japanese history prior to Perry's mission to Japan, writing about the rise and fall of the Emperors, Shoguns and Tokugawa, explaining that while Perry's visit and ultimatum to the government was a major factor in the cataclysmic changes that overtook Japan, there were other internal pressures that were also released by the Black Ships arrival.

One thing that is conveyed well by this book is the fact that in a generation and a half Japan changed from a feudal aristocracy into a modern industrialised country, more along the lines of Germany than Britain, but perhaps with a British sense of empire and mission.

Before the war Japan was not a democracy in the modern sense - with limited suffrage, the state was ruled by a small group of aristocrats, business men and the military. The military successes against Russia in 1904-5 gave the Army and Navy greater prestige, enough to enable them to destroy any government by withholding their ministers. This power, in combination with a resurgent sense of nationalism, led the Army in particular to dream dreams of expansion in Asia. Dreams that the Army acted on without the approval of the government. 

The weakness of the various cabinets that were formed in the 1920s and 30s meant that inexorably Japan was drawn deeper and deeper into their Manchurian adventure, their Korean annexation, and eventual invasion of China. The World looked on askance, but had it's own problems to deal with, and didn't focus on Japan's aggression until it was very much too late. Meanwhile in Japan itself, those political actors who understood that Japan could not conquer China, defeat Russia and take over the Pacific at the same time were sidelined or assassinated.

The Pacific War came to Japan even though most in the Navy and the government didn't want it. Their feeling was that the West, with its sanctions, forced them into action. Japan didn't have the infrastructure, industry or manpower to win all the battles it picked, and their defeat was total.

The rebuilding of Japan, and its ability to put the past behind it and turn into a modern democracy, is testament to the spirit of the Japanese people - in eighty years they went from feudalism to an empire, and after the war they went from abject surrender to the second biggest economy in the World. Storry tells us that Japanese inquisitiveness and willingness to learn from others are key attributes that enabled them to build and build again.

For a quick update on modern Japanese history, that deals well with the confusion of the 1930s in particular, this is worth a read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Tokyo Trial by Higurashi Yoshinobu

 The Tokyo Trial: War Criminals and Japan's Postwar International Relations by Higurashi Yoshinobu

Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2022   (First Japanese edition 2008)

                                                                                                                   ISBN 9784866582306 

Those of us with an interest in World War Two history, it would be fair to say, have some sort of understanding of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi Leaders that took place after the War - who was tried, what the charges were, and the sentences handed out. Knowledge of the Tokyo Trial of "Class A" war criminals is much less common - people might know that it happened, and that Tojo was executed, but that might be the limit of what people know.

Higurashi has written a comprehensive history of not only the Tokyo Trial, but the strategic and political factors that weighed on its staging, who was charged, and what happened to the prisoners after the Trial finished. A Professor in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo University; Higurashi cannot himself be charged with being a great stylist (the translation by the Japan Institute of International Affairs may not have helped his cause here), with the text being quite dry and legalistic, and the book sometimes back-tracking on itself. These issues can lead the reader to get lost occasionally, but are minor impediments to working through the text.

The book is comprehensive: in eight chapters, Higurashi covers viewpoints on the Trial, the framework of the Trial, what charges were brought, the Japanese response, how the Judgement was written, why there were no further trials, and how and why the surviving Class A prisoners were released. He describes how the Trial became problematic almost from the start. The Allies had already begun the process of developing charges in Nuremberg, and tried to translate that process to the Japanese sphere, which didn't really work. There was no all-governing party such as the Nazis, and no SS, so the charges for the "Class A" criminals were confined more to waging aggressive war and conspiracy (war crimes such as atrocities and murder of prisoners etc. were "Class B" and "Class C" trials, and so are not covered by Higurashi).

Conspiracy was not a concept in Japanese law, and there was much discussion about ex-post-facto law. However, the trial moved forward, with general approval of the Japanese populace, who were looking for someone to blame for their predicament. How the Emperor escaped getting any of the blame for the War is well-explained in this book - a combination of politics and loyalty meant that he was never brought to trial, despite many of the nations participating in the proceedings wishing to do so. In this case, as in many others, the wishes of the United States were granted, as they felt that lenient treatment of the Emperor was key to controlling Japan during the Occupation.

Higurashi describes in great detail the progress of the Trial, the conflicts between the various Allied powers, how the verdicts were reached, and the dissenting judgement of Judge Pal from India. He notes that by the time the Trial was nearing its end, not only the Japanese population, but also the peoples of the Allied nations were less interested in the outcome (the full transcript of the Trial has never been published, according to Higurashi). The Allied populations were more interested in the trial and conviction of the "Class B" and "Class C" criminals.

At the end of the Occupation, Japan began lobbying for the surviving "Class A" criminals to be released. The onset of the Cold War meant that Japan was a vital strategic asset to the Western Powers, and so quickly and quietly, about ten years after conviction, the surviving prisoners were paroled - many went on to careers in politics in the New Japan.

Higurashi briefly describes the development of the idea in Japan that the trial was merely "Victor's Justice", and how it came to be that war criminals were inducted at the Yakasuni Shrine, but that is not the focus of this work.

This is not really a book for sitting down and reading in front of the fire: it is however a highly detailed and solid reference work on the Trials. While the translation may be workmanlike, the apparatus is very good - a good index, and useful bibliography.

If you are at all interested in the Tokyo Trial, this is worth hunting out.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower

Embracing Defeat : Japan in the wake of World War II by John W. Dower

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