It is important to stress that the author was there when it happened, he was a thirteen year old boy who was too young to be enlisted when the war was going on, and so he was instead made to work in an ordnance factory. Being old enough to experience the life after Japan's defeat, his story has the element of realism to it, not to mention that the author is also a persuasive one. Although what he said represented his own feelings, it gives the reader a sense of how others might have felt as well. The immediate end of the war brought tears (pg 12), which came from a mix of relief, regret, and just uncertainty. After years of war, some, especially the those in the army, would not accept that this was the end (pg 16). Civilians, on the other hand, had wanted it to be over for a long time. Yet when it came, the uncertainty that surrounds the cessation of the war threw many of them into despair.
But there were also those who were quick to switch their tone. Shortly before the war, the army was still encouraging everyone to sacrifice for the Emperor. Immediately after the surrender, the establishment was dissolved almost without incident (pg 19), it makes one wonder what was really in the mind of Japanese Army brass and the common soldiers near the end. The biggest irony was how, in order to protect the women from the American occupying force, the police actually persuaded some to become prostitutes (pg 20). They expected the worst from the occupying force, that, can be taken as a reflection of themselves as an occupying force in other countries. But the general condition of the people was tough, and after many years of oppression, even the weather forecast on the radio was greeted with welcome, it was a small step towards normality (pg 22).
With that described, the author then moved on to a few important themes that were important to the aftermath of the war. The first of these is the meeting between General MacAurthur and the Emperor Hirohito.
From the Japanese perspective the Emperor certainly admitted his guilt to MacAurthur, and small actions, prevalent in a society as nuanced as Japan, can reflect this position. For example, Hirohito did not drink the coffee offered to him, that's a show of accepting his submissive position as a loser of the war (pg 41). Beyond this meeting, there were many occasions when the author tried to show that the Emperor was ready to face the consequences of surrender but many other Japanese were terrified of what the occupying force would do to him. They were almost obsessive about trying to ensure that he would not be tried by the allies. In fact, it appears that MacAurthur never intended to put the Emperor on trial, and the earlier worries were all unfounded.
The second theme was on the drafting of a new Japanese Constitution. In the first place, the Japanese were not even able to interpret the word as the Americans meant. To them, Constitution meant the make-up, or an organisation (pg 110), not as understood by the Americans. This confusion would extend to even the tone used in the recording of minutes (pg 170) and how seemingly unrelated events were interpreted by the Japanese. There were times when in the middle of discussions, B25s would fly overhead, the Japanese would take it to be a warning (pg 173) to relent to the Americans' position or be bombed again. And then there would be times when the Americans' would joke about using atomic energy to get some warmth and this, obviously insensitive even to me, was naturally taken to refer to the atomic bombs, a reminder again to the Japanese that the Americans held absolute power over them.
The exercise to redraft a new constitution was fraught with difficulties. Two groups of people were trying to draft the new constitution, one was appointed, one was self-appointed (pg 115). There were also people who thought that they should just do what the Americans wanted them to and then after the Americans leave, they could re-draft the whole constitution (pg 119). There were other difficulties, no one wanted to touch the issue of the position of the Emperor and so they procrastinated and delayed (pg 128). MacAurthur eventually lost patience and thought that the Americans should do the job (pg 160) but they did not tell the Japanese, leading to huge consternation among the Japanese.
While the constitution was being drafted, there was already a huge re-education exercise going on. The belief then was that Japanese education has indoctrinated everyone with militarism, leading them to fanatically fight a devastating war and so the whole curriculum must be revamped. Unfortunately with all wholesale obliteration exercises, the good are removed with the bad. There were actually good things about the original curriculum in moral education, but since the idea was to remove all the vestiges of the old, those that had thought good values were also removed (pg 135, 138).
This also extends to the position of the Emperor who hitherto had been like a God to the populace. After the Emperor abdicated from this position, people were wondering what to do, how to position their Emperor. Could they now just write to him and ask him to solve the problem of their hunger? Where would they write to, the palace? There are also social impacts. The democratisation of gender and age, giving all the same rights fundamentally changed the Japanese society. The older ones who would have been given more rights suddenly found themselves left with nothing much (pg 199). When it came to the removal of people linked to the war from their jobs, most of the head of organisations were removed. Although many were to later re-emerge as important people in the cabinet or in business, for a while most organisations were left with second-tier people and many, in order to escape persecution, turned other people in (pg 141).
One more humourous incident related by the author was on the textbooks used by the students. While all curriculum was to be revised, in the meantime the government was not able to pay for the printing of new textbooks, so the students had to continue using the old textbooks. But it is the policy that certain words relating to militarism must not appear. So these were painted over in black. But since there were so many of them in the textbooks, after the exercise, the whole textbook has become black (pg 62).
The part of the book that was most informative was on the Tokyo Tribunal. I have not read another book on this topic but have always assumed it to be a very serious affair and while the author did not try to trivialised it, one could not help noticing somehow that there were some rather dumbfounding moments. Most people would know that there were 28 accused in the tribunal, but few knew that the Russians wanted to add another 2, and since there were only 28 chairs, two of the 28 in the original list were removed (pg 28).
The author gave his views of the purpose of the tribunal, first by stating his understanding of the its purpose. 1. To judge Japan's modern history, 2. As a ceremony for revenge, 3. As a part of re-education of the Japanese. The irony was the prosecution wanted to pronounce the defendants guilty, but the defendants themselves wanted to protect the emperor and were not averse to admitting guilt and so the motivations were aligned. Notwithstanding that, the author was particularly unhappy about the first charge - "As leaders, organisers, instigators, or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to wage wars of aggression, and war or wars in violation of international law". To him, unlike Germany, Japan's cabinet changed numerous times during the war, it was therefore difficult to accept that there was a conspiracy. This charge was fine for the Nuremburg Trial, but it was used forcefully in the Tokyo Tribunal because it was a precedence and a convenient one to sentence the accused to death. Since the Japanese did not agree to this charge, they honour the 8 convicted defendants in the Yakusuni Shrine (靖国神社).
Two other interesting points were raised by the author. Firstly, he speculated about what would happen if the cases were judged by the Japanese. Given the general aversion to war and the military then, more could have been sentenced to death. Secondly, and more tragically, the north-south divide in Korea and Vietnam all came about because of the need to let the Japanese surrender to the allies. In both cases, it was decided that the Japanese on the north of a certain latitude would surrender to the Russians, and those on the south would surrender to either the Americans or the British. None would be able to foresee the tragic consequences.
How did the Japanese view their guilt? The concept of 一億总忏悔, one hundred million people feeling guilty together, lulled the rest of the world into thinking that the Japanese really took a serious view of their war guilt. But since 'one hundred million' shared the collective guilt, everyone felt less guilty (pg 27). In addition, while the re-education of the Japanese made many wonder - did we really do this? (pg 93), it also gave them a chance to think, like the Germans, that they themselves were not so bad, It was the army that was bad (pg 94). And really, to wonder about one's war guilt when he is hungry to the point of starvation is just unthinkable, most are more interested in filling their stomachs (pg 96).
This is an educational book written by an author who is not afraid to call to task his own people for perpetrating much suffering to victims of their atrocities. Yet where he felt that history has misunderstood the Japanese people, he would not hold back from correcting these views. His most valuable contribution comes from explaining the views of the Japanese people, their feelings, and bring to light their subtlety in everyday interactions and how this shaped how Japan became in the aftermath of the war.
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