In my previous post, I gave what I take to be some common Japanese views of their own Self Defense Forces. In this post I want to give some much less frequent, darker experiences I had that bear on the topic.
I mentioned that most Japanese seem to connect the terms army and navy with the 1930s & '40s militarism and are offended if you describe the current JSDF with those terms. I try (usually successfully) not to judge other people's linguistic associations, but it seemed a bit silly all these decades after the end of the war. However, on a couple of occasions I ran into Japanese ultranationalists who gave me pause.
In one case, I was touring a very small military museum that I ran across. It had a number of small displays about the Japanese Imperial Navy of the 1940s with photographs of young men in naval uniforms. I talked to the gentleman at the front desk about some of the exhibits and in answering he explained, as best as I can remember, that they highlighted the courage and sacrifice of the officers and sailors in particular engagements. He went on to tell me that, as an American, I should know that Japan's leadership did not order any atrocities during WWII, although there were small rogue units that unfortunately did commit war crimes. Also, he claimed, many of the stories about Japanese atrocities in China were just Chinese communist propaganda. He said he didn't hate Americans and was glad our nations were friends now, but we should learn the real history of the war. Although I think he's completely wrong, I was very interested in hearing his version of things and just asked questions and tried to look thoughtful. He did not strike me as the kind of man I could discuss this with openly, so I didn't try, although looking back maybe I should have. It's hard to say all these years later.
While I was in Japan, the government approved a number of new history textbooks that either didn't cover or downplayed Japanese war crimes during WWII. Schools (or prefectures? I'm not sure) can choose from a list of approved textbooks, so it just gave them these options, in addition to other textbooks that did cover the war crimes.
It is hard to know what to think of that. Japan's war crimes in WWII are in a way similar to the slavery issue here. One of the functions of national history is to have a shared story that forms a sense of being one people. How should we treat such evils as slavery and national war crimes while still maintaining a sense of national worth and national honor? How to remember the war is something that has remained very contentious there. Those who want a reduced emphasis on Japan's war crimes claim that too much time is spent on it and that such self-flagellation (as they see it) is unhealthy for a people.
On the other hand, many Japanese fear that, if schools don't teach about the evils of Japan's 1930s and '40s militarism, more and more Japanese will come to believe that Japan did nothing wrong in WWII. They fear that this would lead to a new rise of ultranationalism and a new militarism.
To be fair to them, there is a strain of Japanese history that points out that the US Navy forced Japan to open in 1853 and that European colonization of China and other parts of Asia forced Japan to industrialize and arm itself. So far, that's true. Where the narrative line gets pretty questionable is the further claim that European and American threats and aggression forced Japan to invade its neighbors and continually expand its empire in order to be strong enough to defend itself. It then becomes natural in this line of thought that Pearl Harbor was America's fault; our oil embargo prevented Japan from defending itself. Those that peddle this line bitterly resent the United States.
So, the supporting narrative is there for a new anti-American ultranationalism wherein Japan was the victim of WWII. There are also a number of ultranationalist groups in Japan that want to get rid of the constitution altogether and return to the Meiji constitution that gave significant political power to the Army and Navy. They oppose democracy and capitalism and the civil rights the Japanese enjoy under their current constitution. I have no real idea how big these groups are. They drive around in these big black buses painted with nationalist emblems, blaring out nationalist songs from what I think are the 1930s. They occasionally go out and parade around in Imperial Army uniforms, or outfits that look similar, and wave the old flags around. They always struck me as being a bit like the KKK here in that they wanted to demonstrate they're still around but they didn't have many adherents or much power. They seemed quite marginalized to me. Thankfully, they don't seem to be stabbing foreigners or pro-democracy political leaders or pro-capitalism business leaders to death on a regular basis as their predecessors in the 1920s did.
In this environment, for many Japanese, talk of amending the constitution, particularly Article 9, brings fears of a new rise of ultranationalism and militarism with a great loss of democracy and civil rights. Obviously, the ultranationalists are all in favor of ditching Article 9 and rearming, so anyone talking about ditching Article 9 and rearming seems a bit suspect.
My opinion is the ultranationalists have few people and little power, so the chance of a resurgence of ultranationalist militarism is quite remote, but I can't say it's non-existent. And in any case, what I think doesn't matter. It's what the Japanese think that matters.
16 comments:
To say that you have forgiven but not forgotten is in a sense to say that you haven’t forgiven.
A provocative statement!
What does that mean in historical terms? Should we forget slavery or Japan's war crimes? And who would we be forgiving? Those in the past, or ourselves?
You tell me, Christian. What are you supposed to forgive?
Louise Steinman wrote The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War/ She wrote about her visit to the Hiroshima museum.
An uncomfortable thought kept insinuating itself in my mind: part of the story was missing here. I tried to push it away but it bore down with some insistence. There was little introspection here on the larger context of why Hiroshima was incinerated, of what else was happening in the world on August 6, 1945. The wording on the Pearl Harbor display was a troubling example: “On December 7, 1941, a bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor and Japan was hurled into the war.” Was dropped. Was hurled. In this “victims’ history,” as one scholar called it, “the war appears as a natural catastrophe which ‘happened’ to Japan, as if without the intervention of human agency.”
True, there were some displays downstairs, added as recently as 1994, which showed that Hiroshima was a hub of military activity. But the possible reasons listed in large block type for why the United States dropped the bomb—(1) limiting U.S. casualties, (2) to force Japan to surrender before the Soviet Union could enter the war, and (3) to measure the effectiveness of the bomb—do not mention the responsibility of Japan’s own military government’s refusal to surrender as a cause......
Before we left the museum, I stopped to write in the guest book, waiting first while a woman and her young son made their entries. After they stepped away from the book, I read what the boy, a resident of Hong Kong, had written in a childish scrawl: “I mean, everything here is sad and all, but who started it first? Who attacked other countries first? Who killed first?”
It was not apparent in the museum that, up until the moment the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had been waging a war of aggression.
In a blazing flash, its sins in Korea, Nanking, Burma, and Bataan were dissolved in the greater sins of humankind. In that one instant on August 6, 1945, Japan the aggressor was transformed into Japan the victim. What had gotten lost in that horrific and instantaneous transformation?
Which suggests that Japan has not come to terms with what it did in WW2.
My family tree includes slaveowners, a Confederate Colonel, and an abolitionist who lost his life at Harper's Ferry, fighting on the side of John Brown. I hope that I will not make similar mistakes that my slaveowning ancestors made. Yes the "Lost Cause" narrative is nonsense.
I am reminded of Herta Daubler Gmelin, the German Attorney General who, back in 2002, saw similarities between GE Bush's war to depose Saddam and Hitler's beginning WW2. See-- you Amis are just as bad as Hitler. Turns out that she may have had some family reasons for doing so---but kept silent about those reasons. Her father spent WW2 as a higher-up in the German command in Slovakia, and signed off on some 50,000 Jews taking train rides out of Slovakia to the extermination camps. Her father spent 3 years in prison, and later spent some years as Mayor of his town.
Gringo
Some of mine burned Atlanta, the very place I was born. Radical forgiveness and radical honesty are both scary. Maybe they’re terrifying. Doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Your ancestors who helped burn Atlanta: were they Southern Unionists, or Northern Unionists? My Illinois grandfather's grandparents moved from the Shenandoah Valley to Illinois in the 1850s. My grandfather said that some of them had mixed feelings about the Civil War. At least by their moving to Illinois, Sheridan didn't burn down their farms.
My sister recently saw Gone with the Wind. The destruction left an impression on her. I told her that absent the destruction, the Union would not have won. Sherman most likely considered it a fair bargain that his destruction insured the South would not rise again, in exchange for the hatred many Southerners felt for him.
Gringo
What does that mean in historical terms? Should we forget slavery or Japan's war crimes? And who would we be forgiving? Those in the past, or ourselves?
You tell me, Christian. What are you supposed to forgive?
Speaking for myself, not Thomas: forgive the sinner, remember the sin, and remember the sinner's role in it. Both remembrances are necessary in order to increase the odds of not repeating the sin--by anyone else and by the sinner. Forgiving and remembering don't strike me as antithetical to each other. Also, forgive ourselves for our sins in having trouble forgiving and for having trouble distinguishing between forgiving and remembering.
How should we treat such evils as slavery and national war crimes while still maintaining a sense of national worth and national honor? How to remember the war is something that has remained very contentious there.
It seems to me that simply remembering--teaching the history of slavery and war crimes--merely as enumerations of the bare facts is wholly inadequate. Two additional things seem critically necessary. One is teaching the context (objectively, however that can be achieved--that's not easy) surrounding the events, cultural, economic, political, etc.
The other is even more critical: teaching what was done to correct those behaviors and what steps were taken to reduce the odds of their recurrence. Or teaching that what was done seems inadequate, or that nothing was done.
Eric Hines
It's not the forgiveness part I think is provocative. The aphorism "To forgive is to forget" is never something I've bought into, in the literal sense. Of course, it isn't literal, really, and requires interpretation. My most recent interpretation is that it actually means something like: "The more you brood about it the less you've forgiven it." And as the Lord's Prayer suggests, if we don't forgive completely we won't be forgiven completely.
But from a historian's perspective, we are the memory of our people, and we cannot literally forget the sins. The truth sets us free, not forgetfulness. Rather, it's our job to work out the salve for the people's past afflictions, to interpret them so they make sense for the culture, to end the felt need for brooding. A good historian heals; a sorcerous historian tears apart.
Or so I think this fine afternoon.
I don't think Americans as a people have really come to terms with the Civil War yet, so it's a bit premature to criticize the Japanese on this point.
At the same time, yes, the Japanese telling of the Pacific War (as they call it, and which started earlier than WWII proper) is full of passive tense as if there was no agency. There is, as Steinman says, very little contextualization of the whole thing.
The Japanese are an honor-conscious people, and there is no great tradition of forgiveness or redemption with them, which I think must make dealing with this history excruciating. There's no easy way. We have the Christian concepts of confession and forgiveness and working hard to do better; they don't. Historically, if you really messed it all up, you committed suicide to redeem yourself. That's not where we want this to go.
Yes, and I think allowing a certain messiness is important, too. None of us are perfect historians.
"Your ancestors who helped burn Atlanta: were they Southern Unionists, or Northern Unionists?"
Southern, of course. My family was in Tennessee before the Revolution, when not many were. So I'm told. Some of them went to Texas, as a lot of Tennessee boys did around the time of Davy Crockett. Some came back.
That means that like most of us from that area I have family who were on both sides of the war.
Indeed you're right. I met some people who were good and mad about it just on the Fourth of July.
Maybe it's just convenient for me, since I'm getting older and my memory isn't as good as it used to be, but I'm kind of warming up to the idea of just forgetting. Sooner or later I'll end up doing it anyway, I guess, so why not get some practice?
That’s definitely true even if historians.
If it is any consolation to you in your dotage, Ernst Renan agreed with you:
Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is always effected by means of brutality; the union of northern France with the Midi was the result of massacres and terror lasting for the best part of a century. Though the king of France was, if I may make so bold as to say, almost the perfect instance of an agent that crystallized (a nation) over a long period; though he established the most perfect national unity that there has ever been, too searching a scrutiny had destroyed his prestige. The nation which he had formed has cursed him, and, nowadays, it is only men of culture who know something of his former value and of his achievements.
That sounds like selective remembering rather than remembering all of it, with understanding of the totality of what happened, what resulted, why those results ensued, their benefits as well as downsides, and why the former outweighs the latter.
Selective remembering done deliberately by troublemakers solely to see how much trouble they could cause.
Eric Hines
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