Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999.

Peattie, Mark. Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West. Princeton: Princeton

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Hawai i Press, 1988.

Reinhardt, Anne. ‘‘Navigating Imperialism in China: Steamship, Semicolony, and Nation,

1860–1937.’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2002.

Robinson, Michael. Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1921–1925. Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1988.

Rubenstein, Murray, ed. Taiwan: A New History. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999.

Shin, Gi-Wook, and Robinson, Michael, eds. Colonial Modernity in Korea. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Asia Center, 1999.

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Insatsu Kyoku, 1962.

Suny, Ronald, and Martin, Terry, eds. A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the

Age of Lenin and Stalin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little,

Brown, 1998.

Tsurumi, E. Patricia. Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 1895–1945. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1977.

Weiner, Michael. Race and Migration in Imperial Japan. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Weiner, Michael, ed. Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. London: Routledge,

1997.

Westney, D. Eleanor. Imitation and Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organizational

Patterns to Meiji Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Wigen, Ka

ren. The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920. Berkeley: University of Cali-

fornia Press, 1995.

Wilson, Sandra. The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931–1933. London: Routledge,

2002.

Yang, Daqing. Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Imperialism, 1930–

1945. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Young, Louise. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism .

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

FURTHER READING

An understanding of the Japanese empire in its larger historical context requires an

appreciation of a variety of issues tangential to the construction and management of

the imperium, such as the framework of Japan’s external relations, postcolonial

history, and related developments in the modern histo ries of Korea, China, and

Japan. A few examples of relevant, recent works are offered below.

On Japan’s external relations, see Akira Iriye, China and Japan in the Global

Setting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992) and Ian Nish, Japanese

Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002). Useful

sources on postcolonial history include Bruce Cummings, The Origins of the Korean

War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), and by the same author, Parallax

Visions (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), and Harald Fuess, ed., The

Japanese Empire in East Asia and Its Postwar Legacy (Muni ch: Iudic ium, 1998). On

modern Korean history, see Andre Schmid, Korea between Empires (New York:

THE JAPANESE EMPIRE 239

Columbia University Press, 2002); on modern Chinese history, Parks Coble, Facing

Japan: Chinese Domestic Polit ics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937 (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). Comparative perspectives are offered in

Robert Bickers and Christi an Henriot, eds., New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Com-

munities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000),

and Caroline Elkins and Susan Pederson, eds., Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth

Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies (New York: Routledge, 2005). For additional

insights into Japanese history, see Stewart Lone, Japan’s First Modern War (New

York: St. Martins Press, 1994), Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), and Leonard Hum-

phreys, The Way of the Heavenly Sword (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

1995).

240 Y. TAK MATSUSAKA

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Fifteen-Year War

W. Miles Fletcher III

During the past two decades, Western scholarship on the per iod of the ‘‘Fifteen-Year

War,’’ from 1931 to 1945, has emphasized the complexity of the dynamics of

Japanese politics and society during this tumultuous era. This period, in fact, encom-

passes three wars – the Manchurian Incident of 1931–2, the China War (1937–45),

and the Pacific War between Japan and the Anglo-Am erican powe rs, from 1941 to

1945. The passage of time and at least a partial tempering of emotions have enabled

scholars to examine the roles of a wider range of sectors of Japanese society in the

nation’s military expansion abroad and oppression at home. If the debate over blame

for the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 has become more muted, interest in

Japan’s strategic er rors and atrocities committed by its forces remains high. Also, the

perspective of more than half a century has encouraged scholars to place this period in

a broader comparative and historical context.

A Fifteen-Year or an Eight-Year War or Neither?

One crucial issue centers on the accuracy of the term, the ‘‘Fifteen-Year War.’’ The

concept of one extended conflict over a decade and a half takes its cue from the

International Military Tribunal of the Far East (1946–8), which accused Japanese

leaders of a conspiracy to wage aggressive war from 1928, when the Kwantung Army

assassinated Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin, through Japan’s surrender in 1945.

Although Japanese scholars have more frequently used the term,

Western scholars

have commonly viewed the Manchurian Incident as a turning point in Japanese

policies. The Kwantung Army ’s seizure of Manchuria seemed to signal the rising

influence of the military within the Japanese government, an increased emphasis on

stifling domestic dissent, and a shift away from the previous priority on cooperative

diplomacy with the Western powers to military expansion in Asia.

Recent Wester n scholarship, though, suggests increasing dissension on the signifi-

cance of the Manchurian Incident. The essays in Society and the State in Interwar

Japan, edited by Elise Tipton, question the degree to which basic characteristi cs of

Japanese society changed in the early 1930s. The authors examine a range of topics,

such as women primary schoolteachers, policies toward birth control, rural youth

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

associations, the Korean minority, trends in art, coalminers, and a controversy over

the preservation of the Okinawan dialect. Tip ton concludes that the 1930s ‘‘appear as

years of social ferment, tension, and conflict . . . rather than the beginning of the

‘Fifteen Year War’ or the ‘Road to Pearl Harbor’.’’ The Manchurian Incident did not

bring a ‘‘sharp discont inuity either in state policies or the concerns and activities of

various social groups.’’ It did not, for example, ‘‘result in a clear pronatalist policy, in

forced assimilation measures for minorities, or in involuntary conscription of la-

bour.’’

Richard Mitchell’s analysis of the Teijin Incident – a major trial in the mid-

1930s of sixteen business leaders, government officials, and politicians accused of

corruption – emphasizes that the verdict of not guilty for all defendants demonstrated

the continuing independence of the courts by defying the Ministry of Justice and

right-wing opinion that inveighed against greedy and selfish capitalists an d party

politicians. The criticism that afterwards swirled around the trial suggests that even

as censorship expanded during the 1930s, leeway remained for debate on some

issues.

Louise Young’s major study of the creation of Manchukuo in the 1930s, on the

other hand, takes 1931 as a turning point in the development of Japanese imperial-

ism. Confronting the strengthening force of Chinese nationalism, which challenged

the Japanes e position in Manchuria, the government pursued a new policy of

‘‘autonomous imperialism,’’ which claimed the goa l of nationalist liberation for the

colonized population by creating the nominally independent state of Manchukuo.

Sandra Wilson’s comprehensive study of the Japanese response to the Manchurian

Incident counters by concluding that the crisis in the early 1930s just temporarily

boosted Japanese nationalism and militarism. Important sectors of the society ex-

pressed ambivalence about Japan’s actions in Manchuria, or, after an initial burst of

enthusiasm, expressed an indifferent attitude. ‘‘For no group in Japanese so ciety

or within the establishment, with the exception of some Kwantung Army plotters, did

the year 1931 constitute the beginni ng of a ‘fifteen-year war’.’’

Other scholars have viewed the start of Japan’s full-scale war in China in 1937 as a

more significant divi ding line. Almost immediately the government implemented

unprecedented controls on foreign trade and investment, followed by the sweeping

National Mobilization Law of 1938. While describing the Manchurian Incident as a

‘‘central trigger mechanism’’ in creating an ‘‘atmosphere of war,’’ Gregory Kasza

defines the period from 1937 through 1945 as an ‘‘administrative revolution’’ that

greatly extende d state control into the media an d other sectors of the society while

reshaping them.

Although Andrew Gordon does not stress 1937 as a pre cise

dividing line, he argues that ‘‘by the mid-1930s the bureaucratic-military state’’

had assumed an ‘‘unprecedented political role’’ in mobilizing popular support for

military expans ion in Asia.

While recognizing an intensification of governmental regulation after 1937, studies

of Japan’s economic mobilization tend to emphasize the continuity of trends in the

1930s. Chalmers Johnson’s influential analysis of the development of Japanese

industrial policy, for example, marks the end of the ‘‘first phase’’ of industrial self-

control with the passage of the Im portant Industries Control Law of 1931. Permit-

ting cartels in designated major industries, this act embodied the epitome of

self-regulation by enterprises. Concerned about the dominance of the cartels by

large firms (zaibatsu), officials then worked to extend their control over the private

242 W. MILES FLETCHER III

sector.

Okazaki Tetsuji and Okuno-Fujiwara Masahiro posit in their edited volume

that a new ‘‘Japanese economic system’’ took form in the 1930s and early 1940s. Not

only did the government’s control and planning increase, but crucial changes also

occurred among corporations. The main source of their financing switched from the

stock market to large banks, and long-term employment within large firms became

more common. The authors’ argument, however, remains ambiguous about the

relative significance of changes in the economy after 1931 compared to those

after 1937.

In general, contributors to the volume acknowledge that important

changes began before the C hina War and accelerated after it had begun.

Taking a

more abstract approach, Bai Gao emph asizes the rise of the general concept of a

‘‘managed economy’’ and an overall ideology of ‘‘developmentalism’’ between

1931 and 1945.

In a case study of a Japanese village in the 1930s, Kerry Smith

underlines the similarities between the policies of rural economic revitalization after

the Great Depression of 1930 and the mobilization of farmers after 1937. Both

campaigns promoted ratio nal planning by families and villages with the goal of

enhancing productivity. According to Smith, ‘‘the transition from economic recovery

to economic mobilization in villages like Sekishiba was, at least initially, more one of

degree than an abrupt change in direction.’’

Overall, it seems that the growth of

state cont rols progressed gradually for various reasons in the 1930s. If a single

year did not mark an abrupt change, 1937 ushered in an intensification of war

mobilization.

Society and the State

Studies of the relationship of various sectors of Japanese society to the wartime state

have revamped the general interpretation of the era. The argument that an increas-

ingly powerful military forced its aggressive designs on a resistant, or at least reluc-

tant, civilian populace has lost much of its credibility. Examining the views of a wide

spectrum of the society toward the creation of Manchukuo, Louise Young concludes

that a ‘‘motley crew’’ built the Japanese empire.

The media eagerly competed to

glorify the heroic exploits of Japanese forces during the Manchurian Incident in order

to increase sales. Although Kwantung Army officers spewed anti-capitalist rhetoric,

companies invested in Manchukuo bonds and took advantage of a new market for

exports.

Convinced with a ‘‘remarkable capacity for self-deception’’ that they were

helping to liberate and reform Chinese society, intellectuals carried out research

projects for the South Manchurian Railway.

Sheldon Garon’s broadly gauged

study of ‘‘moral suasion’’ in Japan from the prewar to the postwar period illustrates

how various interest groups, far from opposing the expanded intervention of the state

in society, actively sought the help of government controls to accomplish specific

goals. For example, as the government increasingly emphasized an emperor-centered

orthodoxy of beliefs, well-established Shinto

and Buddhist orders sought official

recognition and the suppression of rivals, such as Christian groups and indigenous

‘‘new religions.’’ During the 1930s champions of women’s rights, such as Ichikawa

Fusae, cooperated with the government’s mobilization plans in hopes of demonstrat-

ing the valuable contribution that women could make to national goals and thus

gaining more influence.

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 243

A number of case studies of liberal and left-wing intellectuals highlight their

support for the government’s policies. W. Miles Fletcher’s study of intellectuals in

the Sho

wa Research Association (Sho

wa Kenk yu

kai), a ‘‘brain trust’’ for Prime

Minister Konoe Fumimaro, argues that their plans for a domestic new order and an

East Asian C ooperative Body undermined the established constitutional order at

home and justified Japanese military expansion abroad. These intellectuals came to

see war mobilization as an opportunity to use the power of the state to effect radical

political, social, and economic reforms in Japan and to liberate China from Western

imperialism.

Tomoko Akami’s examination of the multinational Institute for Pacific

Relations finds that both Western and Japanese ‘‘liberals’’ in that organization were

vulnerable to ‘‘cooptation’’ by the state. Even the most idealistic Japanese members

who strived in the 1920s to build a peaceful and cooperative Pacific community

through mutual international dialogue accepted the nation as their primary locus of

loyalty. Accordingly, in the early 1930s they stoutly defended Japan’s seizure of

Manchuria. Later in the decade, many of these men rationalized Japan’s aggression

in China as members of the Sho

wa Research Association.

Peter High explains the collaboration of Japanese filmmakers with the goals of

wartime mobilization by stressing their susceptibility to clever psychological manipu-

lation by ‘‘reform bureaucrats,’’ their accommodation of authority, their sincere

patriotism, and, as artists, their ‘‘desire to kee p working and thereby to redeem

one’s worth from the relentless flood of time.’’

Andrew Barshay’s analysis of

Nanbara Shigeru, an official and a university professor, and Hasegawa Nyozekan, a

prominent journalist, relates how two intellectuals who initially advocated moderate

reforms accommodated the nationalistic pressures of the 1930s.

Offering only

indirect criticism of ir rational nationalism centered on the emperor, Nanbara attacked

the principle of individual rights. Hasegawa concentrated on studies of Japan’s

unique national character and mission in Asia. Both men hesitated to offer direct

opposition to Japan’s policies, because they wanted to remain engaged as ‘‘public

men’’ serving the nation.

After 1931, the topic of Japan’s cultural distinctiveness became a dominant

theme that fit and helped shap e the increasing force of nationalism . Leslie Pincus

shows how the attempts of philosopher Kuki Shu

in 1930 to define a distinctive

Japanese aesthetic based on the spirit of iki (style) from the Tokugawa era (1600–

1868) quickly transfor med into an avid promotion of the nationalistic ideology

of Japan’s cultural uniqueness and its mission to protect Asia from the West.

H. D. Harootunian examines how prominent intellectuals, such as Kuki, Watsuji

Tetsujiro

, Yanagita Kunio, and Miki Kiyoshi, increasingly appealed to a ‘‘national

organic community and its timeless folk’’ in order to ‘‘displace the threat of

social dispersion and the agency of historical classes.’’ As the ‘‘folkic group’’ encom-

passed the ‘‘East Asian folk,’’ it ‘‘supplied ideological support to a variety of

imperial and colonial policies that were demanding regional integration and incorp-

oration.’’

The role of leaders of Zen Buddhism in Japan and of the prominent Zen-influenced

Kyoto School of philosophers has engendered much controversy during the past

decade. In 1994, Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Na-

tionalism, edited by James Heisig and John Maraldo, probed the extent to which Zen

leaders and some of the most famous philosophers of early twentieth-century

244 W. MILES FLETCHER III

Japan supported the rise of militarism and Japan’s wars in China and the Pacific. The

essays present a variety of perspectives. Kirita Kiyohide, for example, mai ntains that the

well-known propagator of Zen Buddhism overseas, D. T. Suzuki, resisted ‘‘move-

ments trying to associate Zen with war and death,’’ while Hirata Seiko

admits

that ‘‘not a few Zen priests joined hands with State Shinto

and its imperialist view of

history in order to promote the war.’’ In regard to Nishida Kitaro

, the famous founder

of the Kyoto School, Christopher Ives argues that although Nishida did not intend

to promote Japan’s aggression, his writings may have ‘‘at least validated the main

ideological building blocks of militarists’’ by emphasizing an intense identification

with the emperor, loyalty to the state, and the need to liberate Asia from Western

domination. Yusa Michiko contends, though, that Nishida consistently criticized

growing censorship within Japan, complained about attacks on his writings by right-

wing groups, and tried to create an alternative to narrow nationalism.

In reply to

criticisms of the Kyoto School, David Williams has defended members, such as Nishida

and Tanabe Hajime, by arguing that ‘‘they concurred with the broad strategy of the

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere but they dissented forcefully from the military

strategy and, even more sharply, from the brutal means by which this strategy was

pursued by the To

government.’’

In other words, truly believing in the ideals of

the Co-Prosperity Sphere, these men did their best to oppose General and Prime

Minister To

Hideki in the early 1940s and to protest military policie s in veiled

language to the extent possible under tight censorship. Two studies by Brian Victoria,

however, severely criticize the ways in which emine nt leaders of Zen Buddhism in

Japan, including such well-known post-1945 interpreters of Zen to the West as D. T.

Suzuki and Yasutani Haku un, enthusiastically supported Japanese militarism and

aggression from 1931 to 1945. According to Victoria, by promoting a total and

selfless devotion to the emperor and to the nation, Zen masters ‘‘wholeheartedly

embraced the role of ‘ideological shock troops’ for Japanese aggression abroad and

thought suppression at home.’’

Some studies have shown that dissent was possible in the 1930s. Even though

Professor Yanaihara Tadao of Tokyo Imperial University defended the creation of

Manchukuo as an ‘‘economic lifeline’’ for a stagnating Japanese economy, he con-

sistently cautioned against further challenging the force of Chinese nationalism

through territorial expansion. In 1937 he argued that Japanese, who in the late

nineteenth century had to mobilize to defend themselves against Western imperial-

ism, should now sympathize with and aid China’s attempts to achieve national unity.

Reflecting his Christian faith, he posited that nations should aim at ‘‘social justice’’ in

protecting the weak instead of seeking material gain. Not long after wards, the

authorities pressed him to resign from his universit y post and banned his works.

The prominent economic journalist Ishibashi Tanzan also accepted Japanese control

over Manchuria, but he questioned increased bureaucratic economic controls and

argued for more government spending on r ural welfare instead of the military. He

advocated an accommodation with the Nationalist government of China to promote

trade and investment by Japan and the Western powers as the most effective path to

prosperity for all sides.

The crusty Minseito politician Saito

Takao fearlessly rose in

the Diet in 1936 to criticize the military and in 1940 to denounce the China War as

costly and pointless.

After Saito

’s fellow Diet members voted to banish him, he ran

for election in 1942 and won.

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 245

Clearly, many prominent Japanese intellectuals supported or accepted the govern-

ment’s policies of expansion in Asia and domestic repression. Their main motivations

stemmed from a desire to remain engaged as public intellectuals and to maintain

influence in guiding reform. The cases of Yanaihara, Ishibashi, and Saito

demonstrate,

though, that the government tolerated so me dissent. Intellectuals’ behavior could

also vary between the poles of cooperat ion and opposition. After studying the lives of

six prominent economists active from the prewar era well into the postwar period –

including Arisawa Hiromi, Minobe Ryo

kichi, and O

uchi Hyo

e – Laura Hein con-

cludes that ‘‘neither the concept of collaboration nor of resistance fully captures’’ the

activities and motivations of these men.

The experience of being arrested and tried

for their criticism of the government’s policies did not prevent some of the six from

working for the wartime government.

Opportunistic pragmatism prevailed in the business community. Executives wanted

both to take advant age of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria and to preserve harmo-

nious trade relations with the Wester n powers and their colonies. At home, they saw

possible benefits from the enactment of national economic controls, as long as

businessmen retained influence over them.

The industrialist Ayukawa Gisuke

evinced a similar type of opportunism.

After founding the Nissan Company in

1928, he moved the firm’s headq uarters to Manchukuo in 1937 and changed its

name to the Manchurian Industrial Development Corporation. At the invitation of

the Kwantung Army, the company promoted comprehensive industrial development

in this latest addition to the Japanese empire. Ayukawa also eagerly sought American

trade with Manchukuo and American investment. Within Japan, he tried several times

to effect mergers between his firm and the Japanese operations of Ford and General

Motors. The failure of both projects resulted from his unwillingness to recognize that

by the late 1930s good relations with the United States depended upon Japan

slowing the expansion of its Asian empire.

In regard to the labor movement, Andrew Gordon depicts a major change in the

1930s. In the 1920s, new labor unions had created a ‘‘dispute culture’’ while fighting

for ‘‘improved treatment’’ of workers; all of the proletarian parties, which had just

formed, criticized Japanese expansionism. After 1930, ‘‘Japanist’’ unions began to

advocate the ‘‘fusion of capital and labor’’ in service to the nation. Meanwhile,

socialist politicians rejected the strategy of class conflict and advocated an alliance

‘‘between the proletarian forces and the ‘anti-capitalist’ and ‘reformist’ military,’’

because state controls imposed by war mobilization would curb the excesses of

capitalism. In essence, like many intellectuals, business leaders, feminists, and reli-

gious leaders, the labor movement and left-wing parties adapted to the shift in

governmental policies toward authorita rianism and aggression by ‘‘riding the

tiger.’’

Needless to say, the strategy entailed great risks.

What attitudes did ordinary, non-elite Japanese have toward war mobilization?

Two collections of brief oral histories, compiled by Theodore and Haruko Cook

and Frank Gibney respectively, provide valuable glimpses of the experiences of people

in all walks of life as remembered decades afterwards.

The accounts reflect genuine

enthusiasm for the war at the time as well as the power of peer pressure and of the

authorities; some people explain how they tried to resist. By the end of the war, the

privations that it had caused brought a change in popular mood. The first few

chapters of John Dower’s Embracing Defeat depict a general attitude of ‘‘exhaustion

246 W. MILES FLETCHER III

and despair’’ and ‘‘war-weariness’’ by 1944 that contradicts the typical image of

the Japanese people as fanatically loyal to the bitter end. After the surrender,

the rapid appearance of signs of social disintegration – price gouging on the black

market, the loot ing of military supplies, and the quick rejection of militarism – raises

doubts about the depth of dedication to nationalistic self-sacrifice among many

Japanese.

What Was Wartime Japan?

While the complexity of the interaction between the state and various sectors of the

society has become clearer, no consensus has emerged on categorizing Japan from

1931 to 1945. If using the term ‘‘militarism’’ is too narrow and hence misleading,

what term is appropriate? The applicability of the concept of ‘‘fascism’’ has sparked

the most debate. Some have argued against the use of the concept, because scholars

have not been able to agree on a clear defini tion.

Others reject the term for wartime

Japan, since it lacked some major institutional features of fascist Italy and Nazi

Germany. These include a charismatic leader, a dominant mass party, and the abrupt

dismantling of parliamentary institutions.

In fact, the Meiji constitution remained

intact until 1945.

Scholars have found evidence of specific instances of European fascist influence in

Japan. Fletcher argues that members of the Sho

wa Research Association based their

plans for an East Asian Cooperative Body and a domestic New Order in 1940, whi ch

advocated a mass political ‘‘national organization’’ and a state-controlled ‘‘new

economic order,’’ on the policies of fascist Italy and especially Nazi Germany.

The ultimate failure of the fascist New Order Movement, however, meant that the

established order remained in place. The plan of officials in the late 1930s to replace

labor unions with a ‘‘new order’’ of labor relations took the Nazi ‘‘labor front’’ as its

model.

While emphasizing the differences in ‘‘in structure and ideology between

the Japanese regime and the Italian and German regimes,’’ Gregory Kasza argues that

fascist ideas and policies strongly influenced various figures, including some promin-

ent government officials, and movements of the ‘‘kakushin right’’ (the ‘‘renovationist

authoritarian right’’).

Using philosopher Kuki Shu

as an example, Pincus has

discerned an ideological similarity between a ‘‘fascist turn’’ in the ‘‘discourse on

culture’’ in 1930s Japan and ‘‘European fascism,’’ because both expressed a ‘‘quest

for authenticity’’ and a ‘‘retreat from universal values into the ‘community of the

nation’.’’

From another perspective, Andrew Gordon advocates applying the concept of

fascism to wartime Japan. Seeking to avoid the ‘‘radical nominalism’’ of those who

create a ‘‘shopping list’’ of characteristics of fascism to compare regimes, he contends

that Japan, Italy, and Germany in the 1930s had an ‘‘impressive realm of shared

historical experience.’’ ‘‘At some point in the interwar era, critical elements in each

nation responded by repudiating parliamentary r ule and turning to shrill nationalism,

anticommunism, and antidemocratic, yet capitalist, programs to restructure the

economy and polity and mobilize for war.’’

As Gordon points out, though, those

programs of reform occurred differently in Japan than in its European counterparts.

Whereas in the latter cases radical changes resulted from the triumph of mass political

THE FIFTEEN-YEAR WAR 247

parties, in Japan the central bureaucracy initiated reforms, what historian Maruyama

Masao decades ago called ‘‘fascism from above’’ as opposed to ‘‘fascism from

below.’’

Hence, the argument seems to be that Japan was fundamentally fascist,

but with significant differences from the European case. A recent collection of essays

edited by E. Bruce Reynolds makes a thoughtful case for labeling Japan as fascist,

because its policies and structure met a ‘‘fascist minimum,’’ and urges more com-

parative studies of the Axis powers (‘‘Axis Studies’’).

Whatever label one applies to

Japan between 1931 and 1945, Reynolds’s volume makes clear the prevalence of

totalitarian ideas in that era.

Still, rather than continuing the struggle to define fascism as a comparative concept

and to pinpoint the start of fasc ism in Japan, a fresher and more fruitful approach may

lie in analyzing developments in Japan in a broader global context. In the 1930s, the

Japanese elite had a sharp awareness of contemporary trends in other empires and

nations. Careful examination of Japanese perceptions of international trends, such as

the growing power of the state and of the force of nationalism, and comparative

analyses of Japanese policies and those of other nations, including Italy and Germany,

could make a significant contribution to the global history of this era and perhaps

suggest new ways of conceptualizing trends in Japan.

Diplomacy and the Road to Pearl Harbor

The general scholarly perspective on the ‘‘road to Pearl Harbor’’ reflects an equa-

nimity perhaps facilitated by the passage of six decades. In some studies, one can

detect an undercurrent of criticism of the rigidity of American hostility toward Japan

in contrast to the desires of some prominent Japanese for peaceful relations.

Many

historians, though, have c ome to emphasize an irreconcilable difference in the world-

views of the two nations as the source of tensions. Walter LaFeber’s recent overview

of American–Jap anese relations contends that ‘‘differences in outlooks and objectives

led to war,’’ because the goal of a new order in Asia dominated by Japan clashed with

the American vision of an open global marketplace. Anthony Best reaches a similar

conclusion in regard to Britain and Japan: their disagreements on policy toward

China and general trade issues made a war ‘‘inevitable’’ since neither side was ready

to make major concessions.

Two studies stress the assumptions that guided American and British policies.

Jonathan Marshall argues that from the late 1930s American officials worried most

about protecting strategic raw materials, such as rubber and tin, in Southeast Asia. In

his view, American support for China aimed not to protect that nati on but to prevent

the Japanese from moving south. Moreover, in anticipation of a Japanese attack in

Southeast Asia in late November 1941, early drafts of a declaration of war by

members of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet stressed the importance of strategic

resources there. Best reveals that British inte lligence on Japan in the late 1930s

seriously underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese army and navy while over-

estimating the debilitating effects of the China War on Japan’s economy and the

inherent caution of Japanese leaders. The mistaken belief – perhaps rooted in an

attitude of racial condescension – that Japanese leaders would not dare to challenge a

major Western power created a dangerous complacency in the British government.

248 W. MILES FLETCHER III