Postwar Japanese Nationalism
Shoichi Koseki
Dokkyo University
Japan
Ⅰ
In discussing Japanese nationalism with a western audience there are several premises
that should be examined. The first of those is the problem of language. Japanese use the
three words nation, nationality and people without drawing much distinction between
them. If we take an example that is easily understood, such as the Japanese Constitution,
and look at the phrase “All of the people before the law” the word used the Japanese
version is “kokumin” and in the phrase “The conditions necessary for being a Japanese
national shall be determined by law,” the word national is translated into Japanese as
“kokumin.” However, it is not much of a problem between scholars. Several years ago I
made an examination of this as a problem (S. Koseki 1988), but there was little interest in it,
so I dropped the consideration of it as a problem. There are those who translated the
word “nation” in “nation-state” to “kokumin” and there are those who translate it as
“minzoku” the Japanese meaning of which is closer to “ethnic” or “ethnicity.” Here, too,
people do not seem to recognize it as a problem.
As Ernest Renan says in “What is a Nation,” the confusion in meaning between nation
and race occurs everywhere, not just in Japan.
But, in the case of Japan, several western
scholars including E.J. Hobsbawm (1992), R.J. Holton (1998) and W. Connor (1994) have
pointed out that Japan is one of a set of extremely rare examples of historical states with a
population that is entirely or almost entirely, ethnically homogeneous.
When we examine nationalism in Japan, we next have to look at the way in which
modernization took place. Modernization is said to have begun in 1869 with the inception
of the “Meiji Restoration.”
Prior to that time, the policy of Japan’s shogunate government
was to shut the country off from the rest of the world, but Britain’s Opium War against
China and the United States’ placing of pressure on Japan moved the country to abandon
its isolation policy and begin the formation of a modern state.
That was when they began
to adopt the more advanced systems from Europe and the United States. Among those
systems was the concept of sovereignty and form of government from the Prussian Empire
that required the establishment of a highly centralized state. Before then, Japan was a sort
of federal state with its basic unit being the feudal clan. From then on more and more
Japanese began to be aware of themselves as Japanese, and they started to call themselves
Japanese. That means that they no longer regarded themselves as people belonging to a
clan, but as members of a Japanese nation, which stood in juxtaposition to people and
things that were not Japanese.
The desirable political ideal, not just for political leaders, but for influential intellectuals
as well, then became one of “extricate Japan from Asia and make it part of Europe.”
However, this did not mean that Japanese intended to make thoroughly westernize
themselves. It means that they would study western political systems and technology.
There was a latent awareness among Japanese that they were not white but that as an issue
of identity they saw themselves both culturally and spiritually superior to all other
countries. Japanese culture from early on was strongly influenced by that of Korea and
China but with the Meiji Restoration, Japan began to think that China and Korea were its
cultural inferiors. The “extricating ourselves from Asia” was a way in which the Japanese
asserted their cultural superiority over the Asian nations. This is when the thinking of
“Japanese spirit with Western learning” or Western Technique; Japanese Spirit” as it is
usually translated in the English language resources, arises.
In the 1930’s, Japan adopted imperialism wholeheartedly and invaded East and
Southeast Asian countries under one of its slogans at that time, “Liberate the Asian People
from the Western Powers.” John Dower has called the second world war in the Pacific
between the United States and Japan, a “racial war without mercy (Dower, 1986), and
Saburo Ienaga say that aggression against Asia at the same time racial war called the
liberation of inferior Asian peoples. (Ienaga, 1978).
Pre-1945 Japanese nationalism was extremely unstable and ambivalent and formed in an
exceedingly short period of time between the “threat from western nations” and the notion
of superiority toward Asian nations. The central focus of my report today is to examine
whether defeat in the Second World War really changed these pre-1945 national
sentiments.
Ⅱ
The conservative political leadership and most Japanese of that time believed that their
defeat in August 1945 was attributable to insufficiencies of power, or more importantly of
military power. One of Japan’s leading political thinkers, Masao Maruyama, saw the cause
for defeat in a political system that was based on the “emperor system” and although this
theory was highly influential with many intellectuals of the time, it did not become a
majority opinion. One of Japan’s leading political scientists Masao Maruyama, searched for
the cause of the defeat in the political system based on the emperor system and that had a
large effect on many intellectuals of the time （Maruyama, 1969）it did not become a
majority view.
Be that as it may, many people supported the policies of demilitarization and
democratization set forth by the General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the
Allied Powers: GHQ/SCAP. This was caused, more than anything else by a people
exhausted from 15 years of war that had begun with the aggression on Manchuria in 1931
and who were eager to be freed from militarism and authoritarianism. (Dower, 1999)。
GHQ/SCAP conducted its occupation through the emperor and the Japanese
government. Emperor Hirohito and the conservative government did not oppose
GHQ/SCAP’s policies for demilitarization and democratization. This does not mean,
however, that they gave those policies wholehearted support. One example is that of
MacArthur’s closest partner in the Japanese government, prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru.
Yoshida is considered by many to be postwar Japan’s greatest politician.
He cooperated
actively with the occupation policy, but one of his favorite jokes was to tell people that
GHQ stood for “Go home quickly,” an indication of how much he really cared for
GHQ/SCAP democratization. (E.Takemae, 2002)。
In this report, I would like to examine the feelings of the Japanese people toward the
United States in regard to the Constitution that was promulgated at the beginning of the
occupation and the peace and security treaties that were agreed to at the end of the
occupation.
In the early months of the occupation, SCAP suggested to the Japanese government that
it write a new constitution.
The government came back with a draft that was merely a
general revision of the Meiji Constitution.
SCAP refused to accept it, and in their
determination it was simply too conservative, The government’s revision said that the
sovereignty of the state lies in the emperor and it also differed little with the Meiji
Constitution in that guarantees of human rights would be within the scope of the law. This
clearly shows that the Japanese government had no idea that the causes of Japan’s defeat in
war were in its political system.
That is why General MacArthur decided that the Japanese government was incapable of
drafting a modern constitution and why he ordered the SCAP Government Section to
secretly draft a constitution. Their draft proposal was not simply an outline, it was a
finalized text of a constitution.
That is what was handed over to the Japanese government.
What the GHQ proposal showed to the Japanese government were things they could never
have expected, it was a shocking event.
For the conservative government of that time, the fact that the nation’s constitution was
to be created by foreigners, even though Japan was a country under occupation, was an
extreme insult. GHQ/SCAP was also forbidden from making the document public. Thus,
the fact that GHQ/SCAP had drawn up the drafts of the Japanese Constitution remained a
secret in Japan until after the end of the occupation.
The specifics were made public after the occupation ended by those involved in the
negotiations with GHQ. So that these facts would be widely known, the conservative
government determined that the constitution had been forced on them by GHQ/SCAP.
They have continue to argue up to this day that since the constitution was forced upon
Japan that it must be revised. However, there has been no such revision because the
conservative advocacy of revision is one of maintaining military self-defense power,
strengthening the authority of the emperor and limiting human rights,
It is generally thought, what they advocate is anti-GHQ/, or that it is anti-American but
they continue to be Japan’s most pro-American forces. This is the key to the riddle of
nationalism in relation to the United States on the part of the Japanese conservative
powers.
The House of Peers and the House of Representatives were the bicameral legislative
bodies established in the Meiji Constitution and it was they who deliberated on the
postwar Japanese constitution. When the Representatives adopted the constitution not one
conservative opposed it. The opposition came from eight members of the Communist
Party.
This idea that the constitution was “forced on us” defeated the ideal of the constitution.
This was a second defeat in war (Koseki, 1997). However, the conservative regime was
humiliated by the power of the United States. Thus, even thought they say that the
constitution was forced on us when they are talking to Japanese, they will definitely not
say that when they are talking to Americans.
Since 1960, or since the high-rate of growth economy that started in the 1960s, the reason
that Japanese political leaders have been extremely pro-American lies within the Japan-US
Security treaty that has been the foundation of relations between the United States and
Japan since the end of World War II. The security treaty is considered to be a military
treaty. Of course that is true, but the background against which this treaty was drawn up
and the meaning that the treaty has for Japan in the postwar period is something greater
than just a military treaty.
The security treaty was created in 1951 with the US as the central entity and as a
combined package with the peace treaty.
A revolutionary government had been created
in China, the Cold War was well underway, the Korean War had started, and to prevent
the expansion of the Soviet Union into Asia, the United States placed its priorities in policy
toward Japan on economic recovery, reconstruction and remilitarization. The peace treaty
with Japan makes absolutely no mention of Japan’s responsibilities in causing the second
world war, but it also determines that the Allied Powers will make no request for
indemnification for damages incurred during the war with Japan.
But the security treaty
calls on Japan to recognize the stationing of American forces in Japan and the
remilitarization of Japan.
From the time the security treaty was adopted up to the early 1960s, an opposition
movement against it and US military and naval installations became strongly rooted. Up
until the beginning of the 1960s after the security treaty had been issued, United States
military and naval installations opposition movements continued to become more strongly
rooted.
The movement was organized around the socialist political parties, labor unions and
students but when the security treaty was revised in 1960 with the border as the large scale
opposition struggle the fires burned low from around the time that the economy got on the
track to high growth rates.
Based on the Japan-US security treaty, the Japan-US status of forces agreement was
concluded which determined that US armed forces could be stationed within Japan, and
there has been almost no change in this pact since 1951. Most of the present US installations
are concentrated in Okinawa quite a distance separate from the main Japanese islands.
There are continuing crimes here by the US armed forces. In 1995, a marine raped a
young girl, and large-scale opposition movements have arisen on Okinawa, while on the
main islands there is almost no opposition movement. The Status of Forces agreement says
that if a member of the United States armed forces commits a crime off the installation, that
the Japanese police can arrest that person, but he or she cannot be detained or interrogated
by the Japanese police. The Japanese police have to hand the suspect over to the US
military police. Okinawa prefecture has been working on the central government to have
these regulations revised but the central government has made no positive moves in that
regard(Oota, 2000).
Conversely, the many reparations treaties concluded with Asian countries in the latter
half of the 1950s contributed greatly to Japan’s economic recovery. Not just the Japanese
political leaders, but many Japanese people have thus come to support the political system
created by the security treaty. So much so that Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda said in the
1970s, “Japan has prospered because of the Japan-US Security Treaty."
Ⅲ
Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers does not touch on Japan’s
responsibilities for the Second World War and the fact that it did not recognize request for
reparations or indemnities has been the cause for a great deal of disappointment from the
Asian and Pacific nations.
The Philippines and Indonesia signed the treaty but their
legislatures did not ratify it. The Philippines did not ratify until a voluntary reparation
agreement was signed in 1956 and Indonesia did not ratify until 1959 when it signed the
same type of agreement with Japan.
Neither North nor South Korea signed the peace treaty; they were “liberated countries,”
not members of the Allied Powers. John Foster Dulles, the US’s “roving ambassador” and
the man who would become secretary of state two years later, proposed to Prime Minister
Yoshida that South Korea be named a concerned country,” but Yoshida turned the idea
down. The normalization of relations between South Korea and Japan did not take place
until 1964 when the two countries concluded the Japan-ROK Basic Treaty with the
Republic of Korea. The People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union were not invited
to the treaty conference. The United States was the country that devised the idea that Japan
would not be required to acknowledge its responsibility for the second world war and that
it would not have to pay reparations. The Philippines, as one example, requested that
Japan pay it eight billion dollars in reparations, but Dulles turned down President
Quirino’s demand and gave the reason that “ ‘Our efforts in bringing about the
rehabilitation of Japan were not caused by love of the Japanese but rather were due to our
belief that a stable and healthy Japan would be to the interest of all in this part of the
world.’ Dulles explained that in his opinion Japan is one of the key areas desired by the
Communists and that if the industrial potential and manpower resources of Japan were
added to the Soviet and Chinese Communists, the Philippines would be in grave danger.”
(FRUS, 1951)
This was Cold War theory. The US had selected Japan as a bridgehead in the war against
communism. The result was the Japan-Philippines Reparation Agreement of July 1956,
which gave reparations of 800 million dollars or one-tenth of, what the Philippines had first
requested.
Treaties of this same type were concluded between the mid-1950s to the
mid-1960s with other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Burma and South Vietnam as well
as the Philippine. When Peace Treaty denied other countries the right to get reparations
from Japan, Japan made an enormous profit.
At that time, Prime Minister Yoshida welcomed the treaty for its non-punitive nature but
because of it Japan lost any chance of friendly relations with the other countries of Asia.
However, what was even more serious is that the opposition parties and the intellectuals
had no interest in Japan’s responsibility for the Second World War and relations with Asia.
When the Diet was deliberating the reparations pact with the Philippines one of the
opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party put out an announcement that it was upset
because these reparations would increase the burden on the taxpayer, The concept of
“extricating Japan from Asia and make it part of Europe” was alive and well behind
postwar democratization.
That was not all. The policies of the Cold War forced Japanese view reality from either
the perspective of the US or that of the USSR. The peace treaty placed Japan in the US camp.
Therefore, the group that was opposed to this camp expressed great interest in the fact that
a peace treaty with the Soviet Union had not yet been signed; they had no interest in the
Asian countries. What is even more important is they had lost perspective on the human
rights of each and every individual who makes up a nation.
Let me cite an example from my own experience. When the Treaty on Basic Relations
between Japan and Korea was signed in 1964, many people in both countries were opposed
to it. I was an undergraduate at the time and was opposed to the treaty because of the
clause that says, “It is confirmed that the Government of the Republic of Korea is the only
lawful Government in Korea as specified in the Resolution 195 (III) of the United Nations
General Assembly.”
Even in the latter half of the 1960s, there was no critical view in
Japan that a treaty had yet to determine the responsibilities we have toward
those who were Japan’s victims in World War II.
Many of the Asian countries were, at that time, ruled by military dictatorships, and we
can understand why reform- and democracy-minded people in Japan were opposed to
better relations with those dictatorships, but more important than that is that these
Japanese did not look at the situation from the perspective of protecting human rights
beyond the framework of a nation.
During the 1980s and the democratization of the Asian nations, many victims of the
second world war in Asia appealed to Japan to redress the violation of human rights
perpetrated on them in the war. These people are the “comfort women” i.e., women who
were forced into prostitution by and for the Japanese army and navy, and the prisoners of
war who had been brutalized and forced into slave labor. However, the Japanese
government made no effort to solve this problem.
And the Japanese people had no
interest in the problem as they had had no opportunity to learn and to ponder their
responsibilities for the second world war.（Hein and Selden, 2000）。
If the Japanese people could have overcome their nationalistic feelings toward Asia,
which were cultivated in the process of modernization, they might have been able to have a
perspective on human rights that would allow them to solve the problem as human beings,
in a way that transcended nation.
In this meaning, it is a very important event for the Japanese modern history that the
Japanese citizen movement groups, even these are not so large groups, have been
continuing their activities for supporting or cooperating with the Asian victims since the
1980’s, though they have never seen in Japan before.
Ⅳ
Japan is now rapidly building a military legal system. Japanese nationalistic feeling is
rising, particularly toward the DPRK (North Korea) Even so this nationalism is quite
different from the pre-1945 version, which centered on force of arms. .
First, under the Japan-US security regime, there is no intention of exercising armed force
against Europe and the West, particularly the United States. One thing that Japan did learn
from the Second World War, if I may borrow the terminology used in government
documents, was that there must be “cooperation between Japan and the United States.”
However, rather than that being the feeling common to the Japanese people, it is an
expression of the lessons learned by those in authority, who consider that it was the might
of the United States that beat them in World War II.
Therefore, from around the time that
Japan is said to have become a major economic power in the 1980s, those authorities began
to arrogantly declare that “We have nothing more to learn from the West.” That means that
they believed Japan had reached its objective declared in the Meiji period (=1868-1912) that
of “Japanese spirit with Western learning” and it was the declaration that Japan had won
an economic war with the West.
However, on the one hand, Japan still has not fulfilled its responsibilities nor has it taken
any blame for its part in war on Asia. In that sense the concept since Meiji of “extricate
Japan from Asia and make it part of Europe,” may have undergone various
transformations since 1945, but today it remains basically the same as it always has.
References
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Press.
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Dower, J. W., 1999, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, W.W.Norton.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Vol.VI, Pt. 1, 1977.
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Japan, Germany, and the United States, M.E. Sharp.
Hobsbawm, E.J., 1992, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge University Press.
The author also uses China and Korea for his studies.
Holton, R.J.,1998, Globalization and the Nation-State, MacMillan Press
In addition to Japan, the author uses Iceland and Norway case studies.
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Press.
Although only partially translated into English, almost all of Maruyama’s works
written in Japanese have been compiled in the Maruyama Masao Shu (Collection of
Maruyama Masao’s Works), 16 volumes, Iwanami-Shoten Publishers (Tokyo) ,1996.
Oota, M.,2000, Essays on Okinawa Problems, Yui Shuppan Co(Okinawa).
The author is a professor emeritus at the University of the Ryukyus, and was governor
of Okinawa prefecture from 1990 to 1998. He is now a member of the Diet, in the
House of Councilors.
Takemae, Eiji, 2002, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy, Continuum.