4 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

日本人在歐洲是孩子的形象，

台獨喜歡說台灣人是日本人

台灣人就是孫子或是拖油瓶？

🤩🤣🤣😉🥳

這章〈“孩子”：日本（1945–1974）〉以日本在戰後重建、國際地位與文化自我理解為主軸，探討日本如何在「被打敗、被佔領」的侮辱中重塑國家身份、擺脫污名化、重新獲得國際尊敬。以下是條列式章節概念、重點筆記與可延伸的思考問題：

🧭 一、章節主題與結構

主題核心：
日本如何在戰敗後（1945–1974）作出「屬於自己的選擇」，在國際體系與冷戰約束中，以「孩子」般的角色成長，從羞辱到重新贏得尊敬。

章節結構：

導言：日本的戰後局勢與自主選擇
文明與啟蒙（Bunmei Kaika）：明治維新與西化的根基
帝國日本的形成與正當化：由「學西方」到「自視為亞洲領導者」
戰後日本的選擇（續章未顯示，後半應論述戰敗後的國際定位與污名理論分析）

🏯 二、重點筆記與概念脈絡

（1）導言：戰敗後的日本作為「孩子」

日本被視為戰敗國、被美國占領7年，之後在冷戰體系下成為「可靠的西方盟友」。
普遍觀點：日本「別無選擇」。
作者觀點：日本仍有選擇，其「非再軍事化」與「經濟模式」是有意識地尋求國際尊敬的結果。
關鍵主題：尊嚴、承認、污名化與國家身份重建。

（2）文明與啟蒙：Bunmei Kaika（文明開化）

明治維新是日本對歐洲威脅的回應，為避免成為「下一個中國」。
「文明與啟蒙」最初是文化口號（服裝、禮儀、髮型等外在表象），但在日本文化中外觀象徵地位與文明程度。
明治領導人相信模仿歐洲禮儀可改善不平等條約。
日本的西化比奧斯曼更晚，但更徹底、更成功。

關鍵改革與其目的：

改革	內容	目的
廢封建、中央集權	政治現代化	對外談判力
憲法與議會	1889年依普魯士制	顯示「文明國家」形象
軍制改革	普遍徵兵制	對抗西方威脅
經濟私有化	工業、貿易興起	追求富國強兵

日本理解到：若要與西方平起平坐，需在物質、制度與象徵層面達到文明標準。
然而文化改革常被西方視為「表演式模仿」（如 Pierre Loti 的觀察）。

（3）日本與亞洲：從自卑到優越

西方的現代主義思維（科學、理性、進步）被日本精英內化為衡量文明的標準。
日本學者（如福澤諭吉）強調：
- 日本應與「落後的亞洲」（尤其是中國、朝鮮）劃清界線。
- 日本應成為「亞洲的領導者」，帶領東方邁向現代。

語彙變化反映思維轉折：

詞彙	意涵轉變
中國 → 支那 (shina)	貶抑化，象徵停滯、落後
東洋 (toyo)	理想化的「東方精神世界」，但由日本詮釋與代表
日本論 (Nihonjinron)	強調日本獨特性與民族性，為近代身份建構的一部分

矛盾：
日本企圖證明自己「不是東方人」卻使用西方的認知框架來證明，導致身份困境。
→ 接續到「污名理論」中的雙重壓力：
1. 追求外部世界的認可；
2. 說服自身認同的正當性。

（4）帝國日本：從文明到支配

日本的帝國主義出於「文明帶化」與「亞洲保護者」的自我想像。
對朝鮮與中國的干預被包裝為「現代化」使命。
明治後期以西方帝國主義為榜樣，逐步建立勢力範圍。

主要事件：

時間	事件	意義
1894–95	甲午戰爭（對清）	首次戰勝亞洲強國，獲台灣、遼東半島
1904–05	日俄戰爭	首次擊敗歐洲列強，日本成為「亞洲強權」
1914–18	第一次世界大戰	西方衰弱，日本擴張勢力、獲德屬領土
1919	凡爾賽會議	種族平等提案被拒，日本的國際羞辱與怨恨種下未來衝突根源

帝國意識以「家族隱喻」合理化支配（日本皇室＝人類之父母，超越種族）。

💡 三、章節主線與理論連結

與前章（奧斯曼、土耳其）對照：
- 兩者皆面臨「文明標準」壓力。
- 日本成功內化並運用現代性語言，土耳其則更政治化。
與污名理論（Ch.1–2）呼應：
- 日本的「去污名化」策略＝主動模仿 + 重新詮釋亞洲身份。
- 但模仿產生新污名：成為「偽歐洲國」。
- 戰後日本的和平主義與經濟成長，是再一次的去污名化過程。

❓ 四、延伸思考與研究問題

日本在「去污名化」過程中是否只是「他者的鏡像」？
為何日本的現代化最終導向帝國主義，而非民主化？
明治維新與戰後改革的「西方化」有何不同？前者為自我強化，後者為自我克制？
日本如何在冷戰體系下，以「孩子」的姿態重塑國際地位？
若以「文明標準」為分析框架，日本是否最終成功「成為文明」？還是「被文明化」？
與奧斯曼/土耳其相比，日本的地理與民族單一性如何影響其現代化成功？
日本的「亞洲領導」論是否與其對中國的輕蔑心態連續至今？

是否希望我接下去整理本章後半（戰後日本 1945–1974 的部分）？
那部分通常會涉及：

美國占領與憲法第九條；
經濟奇蹟與「吉田主義」；
國際污名的去除與和平形象塑造。

😭😍😍😍😘😘😍

非常好 ✅
以下是〈第4章：「孩子」——日本（1945–1974）〉**後半部分（戰後至1970年代）**的條列式章節概念、重點筆記與延伸問題，銜接前半（明治～帝國時期）分析，完整呈現本章的「去污名化」主線。

🇯🇵 第四章：「孩子」——日本（1945–1974）

主題焦點：
日本在戰敗後如何以「和平」、「勤勞」與「現代化」重建國家形象，從被污名化的侵略者轉變為受尊敬的文明國。

🧭 一、整體架構回顧

段落	主題	關鍵詞
前半	明治到帝國日本	文明開化、西化、亞洲領導、自我優越
後半	1945–1974 戰後日本	佔領改革、去軍事化、經濟奇蹟、國際再承認

🕊️ 二、戰敗後的斷裂與重生

1️⃣ 「沈默之後」：戰敗的心理與尊嚴危機

廣島、長崎、投降、佔領 → 日本社會陷入震撼與恥辱。
男性與國家尊嚴受創（開頭引用柔道比賽象徵：荷蘭選手Geesink的禮貌成為日本人永記的「尊重」時刻）。
核心情緒： 失敗、屈辱、學習重新做人（如「孩子」）。
日本的自我理解從「帝國的父親」變成「被教育的孩子」。

🧩 象徵意義：「孩子」＝需要導師（美國），但也象徵潛力與再生。

2️⃣ 美國佔領與「去軍事化」

1945–1952 美國佔領（GHQ / SCAP）：麥克阿瑟主導徹底重構社會。
三大改革：
1. 政治民主化（新憲法、女性投票權、議會制）
2. 土地改革（削弱地主階級）
3. 教育改革（去皇國史觀、強調個人主義與自由）
憲法第九條（放棄戰爭）成為日本「新身份」的核心象徵。
軍國主義被污名化 → 和平主義成為去污名化策略。
美國的雙重角色：
- 教師／父親 → 施教者
- 監督者／霸權 → 限制日本自主性

3️⃣ 冷戰格局與「吉田主義」

吉田茂（Yoshida Doctrine）：
- 專注經濟建設，國防交由美國負責。
- 以「經濟成就」代替「軍事榮耀」重建尊嚴。
- 日本成為美國的戰略夥伴與「亞洲反共基地」。
關鍵轉折：
- 1951 舊金山和約：日本恢復主權。
- 1956 日本加入聯合國 → 象徵國際再承認。
- 1960 美日安保條約：確定依附性，但也帶來國內抗議（學生運動、安保鬥爭）。

💴 三、經濟奇蹟與「和平國家」形象塑造

1️⃣ 「經濟民族主義」取代軍國主義

國家發展方向由「軍事強國」→「經濟強國」。
政府、財閥與官僚（通產省MITI）協作。
1950年代：重工業化
1960年代：出口導向成長
1970年代：GDP世界第二，東京奧運（1964）象徵「回歸國際社會」。

→ 經濟成功成為新的「文明指標」。

2️⃣ 「和平」作為文化自我標籤

戰後世代以「和平憲法」為日本身份的核心。
文學、電影（黑澤明、小津安二郎）表現「普通人」、「勞動」、「日常」的美德。
國家形象：勤勞、節制、科技、群體協作。
污名翻轉： 從「侵略的亞洲人」→「模範的現代人」。

🔄 「和平國家」= 一種新的道德優越，替代昔日的帝國榮耀。

🧩 四、污名理論分析：日本的「去污名化」策略

根據作者在第1–2章建立的「污名化理論」框架：

面向	污名表現	日本的回應／策略
外部污名	被視為侵略者、野蠻亞洲人	接受盟軍教育，改造制度，和平主義
內部污名	戰敗創傷、自卑與羞恥	轉向經濟、科技、文化自信
認可渴望	渴求西方承認	成為「模範盟友」、「經濟奇蹟」
自我認同	從帝國父親 → 受教孩子	將「孩子」角色轉為「成熟學生」

💬 結論：
日本「去污名化」的成功，來自於將外部規範（和平、民主）內化為自我驕傲的象徵。

🧠 五、章節關鍵對照與延伸思考

對照	奧斯曼（土耳其）	日本
西化策略	政治、宗教改革（凱末爾主義）	經濟、文化轉型（吉田主義）
外部威脅	歐洲列強分割	美國主導與冷戰結構
去污名焦點	世俗化、民族化	和平化、技術化
結果	部分自主但邊緣化	完全整合入西方秩序（但附屬）

❓ 六、延伸問題與討論方向

「和平憲法」是真誠的自我轉化，還是戰敗的永久懲罰？
日本的「經濟奇蹟」是否延續了明治以來「以表現取認可」的文化？
在冷戰秩序中，日本真的有「自主選擇」嗎？
「孩子」的隱喻是否也暗示日本在西方眼中永遠無法長大？
若以污名理論分析，日本的「去污名化」是否創造了新的自我壓力（和平主義的道德負擔）？
日本與德國的戰後身份重建有何異同？
戰後日本的「文化力量」（soft power）是否也是一種延續的「文明競爭」？

📘 小結：從帝國到「模範生」

日本的近代歷程是一場長達百年的去污名化實驗。
從「野蠻的東方」→「文明的帝國」→「侵略的惡童」→「和平的孩子」，
日本每一次身份轉化，都以「外部標準的內化」為代價。
到1970年代，日本終於以「不戰、富裕、勤勞」贏得了遲來的尊敬——
但同時，也被永久定位為一個「永遠的學生國家」。

是否希望我接著幫你做「第4章全文」的總整理版筆記圖表（結合前後兩部分）？
我可以用一張結構圖＋關鍵詞對照表來呈現「從明治→帝國→戰敗→和平」的完整變化。

😍😍😘😭😭

太好了 ✅
以下是〈第4章：「孩子」——日本（1945–1974）〉的總整理版條列筆記＋概念架構圖表，把整章從明治維新到戰後經濟奇蹟的主線整合起來。

🇯🇵 第四章總整理：「孩子」——日本（1945–1974）

主題核心：

日本在兩次戰敗與羞辱之間，藉由「模仿—內化—再創造」的循環，從帝國主義者轉變為和平經濟國，藉此追求國際尊敬與自我救贖。

🧭 一、整體結構概覽

時期	身份角色	主題核心	關鍵策略	理論意涵
明治維新 (1868–1912)	學徒	文明開化、學習西方	西化、中央集權、工業化	「文明標準」內化的起點
帝國時期 (1894–1945)	模仿者→支配者	亞洲領導／帝國使命	對中韓戰爭、殖民、軍國主義	將污名轉化為優越感（反向模仿）
戰敗與佔領 (1945–1952)	被懲罰的孩子	去軍事化、民主化	接受美國改革、憲法第九條	「被教育的孩子」身份確立
冷戰與經濟奇蹟 (1952–1974)	模範生	經濟民族主義、和平主義	吉田主義、科技現代化	去污名化成功的象徵性階段

🧩 二、主線脈絡圖（文字圖式）

[歐洲文明標準]
        ↓
 明治維新：「文明開化」= 向上模仿
        ↓
 帝國日本：「亞洲領導」= 模仿西方帝國
        ↓
 1945 戰敗：「羞辱」= 身份崩潰、污名極化
        ↓
 美國佔領：「再教育」= 去軍事化與民主化
        ↓
 吉田主義：「經濟奇蹟」= 以經濟取代武力
        ↓
 1970年代：「和平國家」= 新的文明形象與自我驕傲

🧠 三、核心概念與理論關聯

概念	含義	日本的體現	與污名理論的關係
文明標準 (Standard of Civilization)	西方設定的「現代性」與「文明」尺度	明治維新以制度、禮儀、外觀模仿西方	內化外部評價體系
現代化的雙面性	模仿帶來能力，也帶來依附	日本現代化成功但仍需西方承認	「被接受的他者」困境
亞洲領導論 (Toyo discourse)	日本自視為「啟蒙亞洲」的模範	對中國、韓國的帝國化正當化	將自身污名投射給他者
戰後和平主義	以「和平」取代「力量」的尊嚴來源	憲法第九條、非軍事外交	去污名化策略成功範例
吉田主義	經濟至上、依賴美國防衛	專注GDP、科技、出口	將國際尊敬與經濟掛勾
孩子隱喻 (Child Metaphor)	日本作為「被教育、被指導」的角色	美國父權下的模範學生形象	「內化父權」的自我馴化過程

🏯 四、四階段身份演化圖

階段	國家角色	外部關係	自我認知	污名化狀態
I. 明治維新	模仿者	受歐洲啟發	渴望文明	被視為「半開化」
II. 帝國日本	挑戰者	與西方競爭、征服亞洲	「亞洲領袖」	西方不信任、亞洲仇恨
III. 戰敗佔領	孩子	被美國教育	羞恥、學習	戰犯污名
IV. 戰後經濟國	模範生	美國盟友	勤勞、和平	去污名化成功（但依附）

💴 五、文化與象徵層面

領域	戰前	戰後
軍事	榮耀、帝國象徵	放棄軍隊、和平憲法
經濟	國力工具	自我認同核心
文學藝術	國族敘事、神話化	人性、日常、反戰主題
國際形象	侵略者、威脅	勤勞、技術、和平大使
性別隱喻	男性化的帝國	去陽剛化的「孩子國家」

🔍 六、作者的理論貢獻

日本並非被動「受害者」，而是主動選擇了被教育的姿態。
「和平主義」不是單純道德選擇，而是外交策略與身份修復手段。
日本的成功代表一種**「污名逆用」（stigma reversal）**：
- 將戰敗羞恥轉化為道德優勢。
然而，日本的自我認同仍被外部規範綁定——

即使變成「模範孩子」，仍是他者的標準之下的好學生。

❓ 七、延伸問題與討論建議

身份與權力：
日本在去污名過程中是否失去了「自我主體性」？
模範與依附：
成為「模範學生」是否等於永遠無法成為「教師」？
文明標準的遺產：
今日亞洲（韓國、中國、東南亞）的現代化想像是否仍延續日本式模仿邏輯？
戰後文化的政治性：
「和平」、「勤勞」、「節制」這些文化符號是否成為新的國族意識形態？
當代反思：
當前日本安全政策的「再軍事化傾向」是否意味著又一輪身份轉換？

🧭 八、整章一句話總結

日本從「文明的學徒」→「帝國的教師」→「被懲罰的孩子」→「和平的模範生」，
其歷程揭示：被污名化的國家如何透過模仿與內化外部標準，轉化恥辱為尊嚴。

是否希望我接下來幫你做成一張「日本身份轉變心智圖」或「時間線圖表」（可視覺化）？
我可以幫你畫出從1868～1974的身份演變路線，標示每個轉折點與對應概念（文明、污名、和平等）。

😍😘😭🥳

First there was silence, then sobs of grief.1 The humiliation was almost too much to bear. Once again Japanese manhood had been put to the test against superior Western force, and once again it had been found wanting. But then an extraordinary thing happened. Moments after his victory, Dutch fans tried to rush to the mat to congratulate their hero. Immediately, however, Geesink raised his hand to stop them and turned to Kaminaga to make his bow. The Japanese audience rose to applaud this traditional gesture of respect. And they never forgot it. Geesink, the big Dutch victor in Tokyo who had shown the Japanese what skill as well as bulk could achieve, would be treated as a hero in Japan for- ever after.

Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan

Introduction

Japan has been a pacifist country and a reliable ally of the West for more than half a century. Today, most casual observers take this situation for granted, and generally assume that Japan’s defeat and subsequent occupation by the United States left the country with virtually no other option.2 It is true that Japan had limited options – the country was officially occupied for seven years and, later, Cold War dynamics narrowed Japan’s room for maneuver. However, a careful look at Japan in the decades after the crushing defeat of 1945 reveals a country that not only made some unex- pected choices and stuck to them, but also a state that was as pre- occupied with its international stature as it had been before the war. The unexpected choices that Japan has made, from its resistance

1 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Judo Championship match.

2 Ikenberry and Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” 305; Owen, “Transnational Liberalism,” 131.

160

to remilitarization to its economic model, are intimately connected with Japan’s desire to (re)gain the respect and recognition of the international community.

In this chapter, I explore Japan’s choices and follow the same organization as Chapter 3. First, I provide a brief historical account of Japan, starting with the Meiji Restoration, and continuing on to the motivations of Imperial Japan. Second, I make the case that Japan made her own choices after 1945 despite the constraints of the post- World War II international system. In the third section of the chapter, I analyze those choices within the context of the stigmatization the- ory outlined in Chapters 1 and 2.

The European civilization standard and Japan: Bunmei Kaika3

“Civilization and Enlightenment” always was more a cultural than a pol- itical slogan, a matter of style and appearances. But appearances count for a lot in Japan. There was a satirical Meiji saying that went: “Knock a head without a top-knot, and you hear the sound of Bunmei Kaika.” As if wear- ing one’s hair in the European style were a sign of superior breeding. Some Meiji leaders seriously believed that a display of European manners would persuade Western powers to give up the unequal treaties. (Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 31)

Japan Westernized much later than Russia, but more comprehensively than Ottoman Turkey.4 Despite the emergence of a backlash toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Meiji Restoration allowed Japan to retain its independence and made her a rising power in Asia in the early twentieth century.5

The Meiji Restoration takes its name from the claim that it restored the ancient form of Japanese rule.6 The impetus was the encroach- ing European threat, just as in the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire. Unlike the Ottomans, however, the Japanese had the “advan- tage” of dealing with an ethnically homogeneous society, relatively speaking, and also the benefit of geography.

3 Civilization and Enlightenment.

4 Bull and Watson, Expansion of International Society, p. 74.

5 Watson, “Introduction,” pp. 29–30.

6 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 22.

As an island state, Japan had entered the nineteenth century in isolation. Over the nineteenth century, several outside events forced Japan to confront the reality of expanding European power. One of these factors was the increasing number of Russian probes south to the Kuril Islands.7 Another was the realization of the developments occurring in China. The Opium War of 1839 and the subsequent 1842 Treaty of Nanking had forced China into capitulatory arrange- ments, which in effect signaled the loss of Chinese sovereignty.8 This served as a wake-up call for the Japanese, who feared they might be next: “Bravery alone is not sufficient, the art of war demands some- thing more. No outlandish power can compete with a European one, as can be seen by the great realm of China which has been conquered by only four thousand men.”9 Then came the Perry expedition in 1853.

The American commander, who arrived with four heavily armed black ships, demanded to deal only with the highest officials10 of Japan.11 After formal ceremonies, he departed, only to return six months later. Americans demanded trade privileges, arguing that the Chinese had found extending similar privileges very profitable; finally a compromise was reached whereby the Americans could use two Japanese ports for supplies.12 Japan was unprepared for a coastal defense, but had nevertheless escaped the fate of China for the moment.

Soon other countries started pressing for what was granted to the United States. By 1855, the British and the Russians had their own privileged treaties. The Americans, for their turn, came back ask- ing for more. American negotiations were helped by the fact that the British, with the aid of France, were inflicting even more humiliations on China at the time.13 As the Japanese chief negotiator was backed into a corner, he signed the treaty. However, this act signaled the beginning of a period of unrest, as the weak Edo government was

7 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 260.

8 Ibid., p. 270.

9 Boxer, Jan Compagnie in Japan, p. 186.

10 Until this point, the Japanese were sending foreign emissaries to a tiny island off the shore of Nagasaki.

11 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 278; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 1; also see Totman, History of Japan.

12 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 278; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 2.

13 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 283.

blamed for foreign intrusions. The negotiator was assassinated two years later by a group of samurai14 and a decade after the treaty, the Tokugawa dynasty fell. The Meiji Restoration War, which began as a coup organized by officials, was over in 1869.15

What did the Meiji Restoration bring? To begin with: the end of feudalism and a very centralized state.16 In a document called “The Charter Oath,” the emperor promised the establishment of delibera- tive councils, the freedom for each individual to pursue their own calling, abandonment of evil past traditions, and the search for knowl- edge throughout the world.17 The military was completely reformed. Economic readjustment was also a top priority for the Meiji state. For instance, government expenditure was reduced and state indus- tries were privatized.18 A new constitution, modeled on Prussia’s, was introduced in 1889, and the first national elections were held in 1890.19 It should be noted that many of these reforms were under- taken with the West very much in mind; it was necessary for the West to look upon Japan favorably in order to get the trade and port treat- ies revised. It was also believed that these reforms were necessary for Japan to compete in the modern world. Despite the existence of a parliament, the political reforms did not go very far.20 The constitu- tion had placed sovereignty in imperial hands. Yet, it was the cultural reforms, from the fashionable consumption of meat to the wearing of frocks, that attracted the most attention from the West, but per- haps not in the way the Japanese had hoped. Pierre Loti21 observed of Japan: “They danced quite properly, my Japanese in Parisian gowns.

14 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 16.

15 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 336.

16 Ibid., p. 335. This was something Turkey could not/would not accomplish until the Kemalist “revolution” in 1923.

17 Tsunoda, Sources of the Japanese Tradition, p. 644. Note the similarities to the Tanzimat Declaration.

18 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 376. This was one of the several ways the Meiji reforms were superior to the Ottoman Tanzimat. The Ottoman observers seem to have missed the importance of the economy in competing with the West; even in their observations about Japan, their attention is on military and cultural matters. See Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’.”

19 Again, note the similarities with the Tanzimat reforms.

20 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 29.

21 Pierre Loti, coincidentally, was an Orientalist who spent considerable time in Constantinople, romanticizing the “backward” ways of the East.

But one senses that it is something drilled into them that they perform like automatons, without any personal initiative.”22

Nevertheless, the economic reforms were quite successful. As a consequence, from the 1880s onwards, “foreign trade established itself as a serious objective of the Meiji state.”23 If cultural equality with the West remained elusive, attaining the Western model of eco- nomic dominance seemed more within Japan’s grasp. The example of the West convinced the Meiji period thinkers that trade and expan- sion were aspects of a healthy state.24 Meiji writers such as Fukuzawa Yukichi were convinced that it was important for Japan to signal to the West that it was not a “backward” state like Korea. Moreover, Foreign Minister Inoue recommended that Japan set up a Western- style empire in Asia, before Western encroachment was complete.25

It is important to note this feature of Imperial Japan: later it would legitimize its actions as the defender of Asia against Western imperial- ism, but Japan’s own behavior was very much modeled after Western imperialism.26 During the Meiji period, Japanese attitudes to Asia underwent a significant shift, which in itself was a consequence of Japan’s efforts to redefine itself in the new world which seemed to have Europe at both its center and its pinnacle. This shift was reflected in the introduction of new terms and concepts to define Japan’s relations with its neighbors. For instance, shina replaced chugoku (Middle Kingdom) as the most commonly used appellation for China.27 This term (along with the usage of the term Nippon) reflected the new- found need in Japan to define both itself and its neighborhood in terms of territorial, nation-state entities; and quickly shina became “a word that signified China as a troubled place mired in its past, in contrast to Japan, a modern Asian nation.”28 Another term which acquired a new meaning and currency in the Meiji era was toyo, which came to

22 From Madame Chrysanthème, as quoted by Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 33.

23 Iriye, Japan and the New Asia, p. 758.

24 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 426.

25 Ibid., p. 427.

26 See also Suzuki, “Japan’s Socialisation,” as well as Civilization and Empire,

pp. 3–4

27 Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, p. 3.

28 Ibid., p. 4. See also Suganami, “Japan’s Entry into International Society,”

pp. 196–8, for a comparison of Japan’s and China’s relationship with the European society of states in the nineteenth century.

mean “that which was not the Occident,”29 and was used to indicate a distinct culture of the East, an Oriental civilization.

The East as toyo was idealized: it was characterized by “its gentle- ness, moral ethics, harmony and communalism.”30 Japan was seen as the one Asian country which not only embodied the best aspects of toyo but had adapted to the modern world. It is important to note that the nihonjinron discourse about Japan’s uniqueness also dates back to this same period. The term was used in Ariga Chonan’s 1888 book Kokka Tetsuron (Philosophical Discourses of the State),31 which tried to explain Japanese uniqueness vis-à-vis the West scien- tifically by attributing it to the 300 years of Tokugawa rule.32 This is a perfect example of the elite-level internalization of the modernist ontology discussed in Chapter 1. The Japanese elite had not bought into the European theory of racial inferiority, but did accept the fact of comparative backwardness, and went about disputing it through scientific means. In other words, they accepted the validity of the sci- entific method and they internalized a worldview where everything and everyone could be compared “objectively” with everything else. Stefan Tanaka remarks that in the early twentieth century, Japanese scholars, “having accepted a progressive and scientific conception of knowledge … increasingly faced the problematic of ‘de-objectifying’ Japan – and Asia – from a unilinear concept of progress that con- firmed Japan’s place as … Europe’s past and without history.”33 The “sweeping views of world development introduced from Europe” were accepted; it was Japan’s place in that view that produced problems.34 To put it in another way, the scientific method had produced the desired material results through the Meiji Restoration: Japan had been able to industrialize, to renegotiate unequal treaties, and even defeat a major “European” power in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). Yet Japan still did not have actual equality with the European society of states, because of Japan’s placement in Asia, which was cast as Europe’s past in this new modernist ontology. In order for Japan to gain equal respect, this conclusion would have to be challenged.35 However, as

29 Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, p. 4. 30 Ibid., p. 13.

31 Leheny, Rules of Play, p. 38.

32 Ibid. Leheny’s reference here is Hiroshi, Nihonjinron, pp. 15–43.

33 Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, p. 17.

34 Ibid. See also Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 25–30.

35 Vincent, “Racial Equality,” p. 244.

Tanaka notes, there was an inherent paradox in these efforts: “For in the process of adaptation and regeneration, these historians were seeking to prove that they were not ‘Oriental,’ as defined by the West, by using the same epistemology of the West.”36

I had noted in Chapter 2 that the stigmatized actor – assuming that by this point he has already internalized the standards of stigma framework – faces two kinds of problems: he requires acceptance from wider society and also from himself. Japanese historian and elite efforts to cast Japan as something other than “Oriental,” as defined by the West, by rethinking Japan’s relationship with Asia should be understood in this light. In other words, these efforts were not undertaken only with an eye on getting equal respect from the West, but so that Japanese could come to accept their iden- tity as viewed through the lens of this new worldview. Japan could no longer be left alone in its own “world”; but neither could she accept her new position among the stigmatized East – so she had to rethink her standing in comparison to toyo.

Thus, having accepted the modernist epistemology, the Japanese went on to apply it to their relations with Asia.37 The success of the Meiji Restoration, especially in the economic realm, meant that Japan “objectively” ranked higher on the historical development plane than the rest of Asia, which remained trapped in history. Therefore, it was Japan’s destiny and duty to revive Asia and lead it into the new age. Shina as part of the civilizational space of toyo naturally fell under Japan’s manifest destiny.38

Imperial Japan

The Imperial Family of Japan is the parent, not only of her sixty millions, but of all mankind on earth. In the eyes of the Imperial Family all races are one and the same. It is above all racial considerations … The League of Nations, proposed to save mankind from the horrors of war, can attain its real object only by placing the Imperial Family of Japan at its head; for to attain its object the League must have a strong punitive force and a super- national and superracial character; and this force can only be found in the

36 Ibid., p. 244. 37 See ibid., pp. 45–9.

38 For an excellent discussion of the link between Japanese modernization and imperialism, see also Suzuki, Civilisation and Empire.

Imperial Family of Japan. (Translated Niroku editorial, as printed in the

Japan Advertiser (May 9, 1919)39)

The first step toward Japanese imperialism was the manifestation of the tension with China over Korea. In 1884, Japan and China had come to an agreement about the mutual backing-off of Korea. In the meantime, Japanese efforts toward Westernization had borne some fruit in relations with the West: in 1894, a new treaty with Great Britain dissolved consular courts, and tariff autonomy soon followed thereafter.40 Once this was accomplished, Japan returned its gaze to Korea, and decided that China was gaining too much influence there. In a strategic move, Japan asked China to join in demanding that Korea undergo reforms very similar to those enacted by the Meiji state: a specialized bureaucracy, a new judiciary, a reformed tax sys- tem, and a modernized military.41 China declined the offer. Tokyo declared war against China in 1894, and completely destroyed the Chinese navy, delivering a humiliating defeat. China had to sign a treaty that forced her to hand over territory (e.g. the island of Taiwan and the Liaotung Peninsula), economic privileges, and a degree of her sovereignty (the Treaty of Shimonoseki). Europe was impressed – it had been predicted that China would prevail – but despite, or perhaps because of, this favorable impression, Germany, Russia, and France asked Japan to withdraw from some of the newly acquired territory. The withdrawal was quite humiliating for Japan, especially consider- ing the ever-growing presence of Russia and the United States in what Japan saw as her own turf.42

The high point of Japanese militarism came a little later, in the war against Russia. Japan struck the Russian fleet in 1904; the Russians were completely unprepared as they thought the Japanese would never dare to attack a major Western power. It was a rela- tively even match, with casualties on both sides numbering tens of

39 And surprisingly enough, as quoted in Syngman Rhee’s 1941 volume: Japan Inside Out, p. 14.

40 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 426.

41 Ibid., p. 431; Totman, History of Japan, p. 442. Even at this early stage, Japan was acting as a vassal carrying international society norms to peripheral areas.

42 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 44. Japan had struck an alliance with Great Britain in 1902.

thousands.43 At the end, however, Japan emerged victorious, regain- ing the Liaotung Peninsula and the Manchurian railways.44 Korea came under Protectorate status in 1905, relinquishing control over her foreign relations. Japan was emerging as an Asian great power.

Japan’s rise to power was aided by the outbreak of World War I in Europe, which weakened European states. Japan was even able to grab some German territories in Asia. It is therefore not surprising that Japanese leaders did not really grasp the significance of changes in Europe: empires tumbling down, self-determination and inter- national cooperation on the rise.45 Yet, Japan was a rising power; it was succeeding at a time where everybody else seemed to be flailing (or merely isolated, as in the case of the United States).

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Japan continued to be preoccupied with China. This was not purely materialistic aggres- sion; as discussed above, many sincerely bought into the theory that the Meiji state could provide a template for success in China. Others were more interested in gaining parity with the West through the “European way.” In the end, the second group prevailed, and Japan’s special status in China was reaffirmed through a series of treaties in 1907 and 1908 with Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United States. Japan was playing great power politics – the timing was off, but for the moment, Japan, among all Westernizing Asian nations, seemed to be the one who broke the barrier most successfully.46

As noted above, views of China in Japan had undergone a signifi- cant revision during the Meiji period. By the time of the Republican

43 For a point of comparison, please refer to the Turko-Russian War of 1877–8. It is remarkable that the advancement of these outsider powers was always at the expense of one another, and never a European power.

44 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 45.

45 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 512. The obvious point of comparison is the position Russia’s Tsar Nicholas found himself in after the Napoleonic Wars.

46 “Throughout Asia the fact that Japan had defeated a major imperialist power attracted the admiration of nationalists of many stripes. Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the Chinese Republic, later recalled how, in going through the Suez Canal, he had encountered an Arab who asked him if he was Japanese. The Arab had ‘observed vast armies of Russian soldiers being shipped back to Russia from the Far East,’ which seemed to him a sure sign of Russia’s defeat. ‘The joy of this Arab,’ wrote Sun, ‘as a member of the great Asiatic race, seemed to know no bounds.’” See Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan,

p. 441.

Revolution of 1911, which signaled the end of Chinese imperial dyn- asty, the view that China was not “a state but merely a civilization” was well established. Japan was not pleased with these developments and in 1915 issued a list of demands to China (“The Twenty-One Demands”47), to which China reluctantly agreed.48 The irony here should be underlined: it was China’s lack of “development” – in a way, her lack of shame over being Europe’s past – which had led the Japanese to conclude that China was still mired in history. Yet, China’s efforts to dust off the remnants of said history were condemned by Japan, and only led to the deepening of the conclusion that China was merely a civilization.49

Japan’s demands were humiliating to the new government of China, which had the backing of the Americans. World War I ended before the issue could be fully resolved, but the Japanese kept pressing. The Japanese leaders were in no mood to be dissuaded by Western powers, having been denied racial equality in the League of Nations Charter. In the meantime, the Koreans, encouraged by Wilson’s principles, staged a demonstration, which was swiftly and brutally crushed by Japan.

Japan participated in the League of Nations, but many Japanese had doubts about the new international order. The new order seemed to favor the status quo, at the expense of latecomers such as Japan. Japan soon found an excuse to act: rising Chinese nationalism of the 1920s.

The sparks first flew in Manchuria, where the Japanese army was already stationed. The army generals had the idea that another war was coming,50 and they wanted to take full control of Manchuria. The

“The Japanese had attained great power status in a very short time. This was because their first move was to get rid of Chinese schools and Westernization.” Turkish writer Atay, Çankaya, p. 392.

47 E.g. Group 1, Article 1: “The Chinese Government engage to give full assent to all matters that the Japanese Government may hereafter agree with the German Government respecting the disposition of all the rights, interests and concessions, which, in virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses vis-à-vis China in relation to the province of Shantung.”

48 China was saved from implementing them for a brief while by the intervention of the Washington Conference of 1921–2.

49 Miwa, “Japanese Policies.”

50 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan.

military was also critical of the government in Tokyo, and the general mood was not helped at all by the worldwide economic slump. The officers planted a bomb on the railways, and used that as an excuse to take over Manchuria. The government’s hands were tied, and subse- quently the prime minister was assassinated in 1932. Imperial Japan had entered its last stage. Generals, bureaucrats, and the court now drove Japanese decisions and the Parliament turned into a “rubber stamp” endeavor. Full-scale invasion of China followed in 1937, a year made infamous by the Nanking massacre.51

These aggressive moves were underpinned by the “New Order in East Asia” policy, openly enunciated in 1938. By that year, Japan had found itself increasingly isolated in the world, especially since its departure from the League of Nations over the League’s condemnation of the Manchurian incident. Yet Pan-Asianism (Dai Ajiashugi) was not an innovation of late-1930s Japan. It was a policy which had developed in direct response to Japan’s stigmatization by Europe. I noted above that by the end of the Meiji period, there was a great frustration among Japanese intellectuals about both Japan’s temporal placement vis-à-vis Europe and the fact that Japan’s mater- ial prosperity had not translated into equal social capital. While some historians, as described above, had tried to overcome this problem by challenging the conclusion of the analysis which defined Japan as an “Oriental” nation only, others rejected the premise of relations with Europe altogether. For instance, in 1916, Odera Kenkichi wrote:

Is it not strange that in the [sic] Europe which has come to control or over- whelm Asia the talk of the Yellow Peril is boisterously heard, whereas from among the colored peoples who have been conquered or intimidated by the white nations little has been spoken out loud about the White Peril? This, when the Yellow Peril is no more than an illusion while the White Peril is real … Some people denounce Greater Asianism as being based on a narrow racist frame of mind. But racial prejudices are what the white nations have taught us. This trait is more especially pronounced among them. The fact that their arguments about the Yellow Peril are provocative and disdainful is proof enough, and the fact that in the New World dis- criminatory treatment is being dealt out steadfastly [to non-white ethnic groups] is substantial evidence. To speak of the White Peril and to advocate Greater Asianism cannot touch the malicious propagation by Europeans

51 It is unclear whether the massacre was ordered by Tokyo.

and Americans of the Yellow Peril and their calls for a white alliance. While the former is defensive, passive, and pacifist, the latter is offensive, aggressive, and imperialistic.52

As Japan’s isolation grew, such views became more popular. I had noted in Chapter 2 that there are only a few recourses of strategic action open to the stigmatized actor. What Kenkichi was advocat- ing here is a variation on the “sour-grapes” strategy: embracing Western approaches to international relations – including racial prejudice – but refusing to play ball with the West. As discussed above, there was always this strain in the Japanese reconceptuali- zation of state identity: the stigmatized position Japan found itself in as a result of its encounter with modernity made it impossible to embrace the Western worldview as a whole because that would mean conceding Japan’s inferior standing vis-à-vis the West. Nor could it be rejected in its entirety, so each reaction had to fall along a spectrum which has using Western methods to ingratiate oneself to the West at the one end, and denouncing Western methods to fight the West at the other (whereas true rejection would be aloof- ness). This is the same dilemma that the stigmatized individual faces in domestic society.

The attempts during the Meiji period to recast Japan first as a vari- ant of Europe which happened to be in Asia and second as a country which was both modern and Oriental (in other words, as a country which had successfully overcome its justifiably stigmatized past) resem- ble strategies of passing and correction (which is the preferred method of the upwardly mobile arriviste). The more these strategies failed to achieve the desired result of obliterating Japan’s stigma, the more attractive the strategies of rejection became. Both the “sour-grapes” and ressentiment approaches fall under that heading. In fact, in the decades following the publication of Kenkichi’s book, the trajectory of the Japanese worldview gradually became even more reactionary. For instance, in 1919, Yanagida Kunio criticized the Japanese govern- ment for trying to place Japan at the same level as the white race and “charged his countrymen with having little interest in establishing soli- darity with other Asians who had experienced racial discrimination

52 From the introduction to his 1916 book Dai Ajiashugi ron (On Greater Asianism), as quoted by Miwa, “Japanese Policies,” pp. 138–9.

similar to that faced by the Japanese.”53 Such a ressentiment attitude was also exemplified by the writings of Nakayama Masaru, the man who drafted “The New Order in East Asia Proclamation.”54 Masaru idealized the Japanese peasants and the traditional way of life. He wrote that agrarian villages had to be preserved at all costs because they contained the best of the Japanese race.55 Miwa notes that, by the end of the 1930s, such calls for the restoration of agrarian life had become the prototype for the new order Japan was supposed to establish in Asia:

It was a call to return to a classical East Asia, a new-found antithesis to the modern industrial society of the West. And it could be accomplished by first destroying that order of international law of the European system of nation-states which had been forced upon East Asian countries since the mid-nineteenth century, and then by replacing it with an “international new order” in accordance with the “real force of history.”56

Japan was supposed to be a “third civilization,”57 standing for new values, capable of rescuing both the East and the West from them- selves. It was very much assumed that the peoples of Asia, especially the Chinese, were on board with this plan.58 This was the context in which the concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was articulated and announced in 1940. Of course, just as in European imperialism, there was a strong economic motive accompanying the civilization rhetoric. Sanctions from the West forced a deeper real- ization in Japan over its dependence on imported resources.59 Also in the same year, political parties were dissolved and replaced by the Imperial Rule Association, partly because the Japanese thought an alliance with Germany could help them break out of this isolation.60

The factors that pushed Japan into World War II have been explored in detail elsewhere.61 In retrospect, it seems clear that various Japanese

53 Matsuda, Soft Power, p. 55.

54 Miwa, “Japanese Policies,” p. 140.

55 As quoted by Miwa, “Japanese Policies,” pp. 141–2.

56 Ibid., p. 142. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., p. 139.

59 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 627.

60 Furthermore, Japan’s actions in China had brought Japan face to face with the United States.

61 See e.g. Van der Vat, Pacific Campaign; Churchill, Memoirs; Ludwig, World at Arms.

actions during World War II, which seemed so shocking to the Western world at the time, had their basis in the Japanese mindset which had developed gradually during the prewar years. For instance, there was the historical precedent of Japan successfully taking on a bigger Western power in the form of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.62 Some observers have also noted that the war against the West gave the Japanese people the sense of purpose that the war in China had been lacking: “there was a sense of euphoria that we’d done it at last; we’d landed a punch on those arrogant great powers Britain and America, on those white fellows … Never in our history had we Japanese felt such pride in ourselves as a race as we did then.”63 The initial victories were greeted with great enthusiasm.

Japan termed the conflict the “Great Asian War” and claimed that she was freeing Asia from Western oppression: “The Japanese way of life was ineffably superior to that of the West, based on individualism, and that of China, based on familialism. Other Asian races looked upon the Europeans and Americans as somehow superior, but it was now up to Nippon to show how wrong they were.”64 This propaganda was carried into the war years, as the Japanese needed something besides brute force to solidify their grasp on Asia.65

By 1942, the situation was deteriorating and by 1944, after colos- sal loss of Japanese territories, the Japanese leaders had realized that the war could not be won.66 Nevertheless, the official propaganda encouraged fighting until death and emphasized that there would be no surrender. Mass suicide became widespread.67 The emperor made some overtures to Stalin for peace, but the military preparations to fight to the end continued.

62 Hosoya, “Characteristics of the Foreign Policy,” 354. Obviously, an argument could be made that at the time it was defeated by Japan, Russia was neither Western nor a major power, but that is not how the lesson was perceived in Japan.

63 Okuna Takao, as quoted in Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 90; see also Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 642, for various eyewitness accounts of reactions to the war.

64 Tokotomi Soho in 1934 from Tsunoda, Sources of the Japanese Tradition,

pp. 798–801.

65 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 99. Obviously, even eyewitness recollections of wartime memories can be and are contested, and at least some are, in part, post hoc rationalizations of events. However, even if that is the case, the particular normative framework chosen for such rationalizations is telling.

66 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 100. 67 Ibid., p. 101.

How the war ended is well known. The United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and, two days later, on Nagasaki. The emperor read his surrender speech on August 15. Japan would never be the same again.

Comparisons with Turkey

Ironically, it was the Japanese delegate who most vehemently opposed Turkish demands for the lifting of capitulations. The Japanese delegate, Hayachi, told İsmet Pasha that Japan, too, had suffered from capitula- tions, and so he sympathized with Turkish demands. However, not even in Japan had the capitulations been lifted before the implementation of necessary administrative and legal reforms! (Notes from 1923 Lausanne Proceedings68)

Before continuing with the postwar chapter of Japanese history, a few comparisons with Turkey should be underlined, considering that the events covered so far were coterminous with the events described in Chapter 3.

First, one cannot but be struck by similarities that stem from the fact that, in the nineteenth century, Ottoman Turkey and Japan occupied the same social space vis-à-vis the European society of states, despite their geographical distance. They were both outsiders in the emerging international society. Therefore, they had very similar reactions to European intrusion;69 going through the same motions of superficial emulation and constitutional reforms and the same pleas for equal treatment in trade treaties, and roughly around the same time. The Tanzimat reforms were issued in 1856 – only a decade before the fall of the Tokugawa dynasty. The Ottoman Empire adopted a con- stitutional regime in 1876 and Japan’s Restoration began in 1870. Furthermore, while the economic treaties with Western powers were a great threat to sovereignty, the main source of territorial aggression against both countries was Russia, which, as we shall see in Chapter 5, was itself a liminal power.

Nonetheless, several differences explain the temporary success of Japan in its quest for status and power during the Meiji Restoration,

68 Karacan, Lozan, as translated and discussed in Chapter 3.

69 Aydın’s Anti-Westernism in Asia marshals evidence for this argument in great detail.

whereas the comparable reform efforts in the Ottoman Empire foundered. First, as a multiethnic empire, the Ottomans spent a con- siderable amount of time and resources unsuccessfully fighting the nationalist separatist movements, which were also encouraged by the European powers. Geography was also a factor; there were no natural barriers between the Ottoman Empire and European infil- tration. Furthermore, the Ottomans had an early history of deal- ing with Europe successfully, which blinded them to the urgency of the situation, at least initially. The Japanese would not achieve the Ottoman level of arrogance until the 1930s. For all these reasons, Japan was able to embark on a more successful and comprehensive Westernization program, and sustain the new state with military advances until World War II. The Ottomans never finished the pro- ject they began, until they were defeated.

Finally, attention needs to be paid to the fact that the Russian advancement between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries had come at the expense of the Ottomans, while the Japanese proved their rising power status at the expense of the Russians at the turn of the twentieth century.70 One cannot but be struck by this fact – it is almost as if there was only one spot open for outsider states at the great powers’ table. While there are of course perfectly reasonable geographical explanations for this development, we should also note that this pattern is well observed in the established-outsider stigma- tization dynamics in domestic society: for instance, the advances of younger women or people of color in business settings often come at the expense of people from their own sub-group.

Japan makes the best of defeat

Embracing the defeat: 1945–1952

“We all thought the emperor was going to ask us to fight to the death,” said Kumasaki. “We dreaded it, but we prepared ourselves for that. Of course, we would have obeyed.” (Russell Brines, MacArthur’s Japan)

MacArthur’s remark in 1951, that in terms of modern civilization the Japanese were like a twelve-year-old boy, was typical of his thinking …

70 China was another semi-power whose geographical proximity and state decline proved advantageous for Japan.

MacArthur, was comparing Japan to Germany. The Germans, he said, were a “mature race.” The Japanese were still in “a very tuitionary condition.” … The Germans did not have to be tutored in the ways of another civilization. (MacArthur did not mean this as a compliment; in his view the Germans were all the more despicable because they should have known better.) The Japanese, on the other hand, had behaved like the children they were. They had, in MacArthur’s version of events, “stumbled” into militarism because they did not know any better. (Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 108)

Japan’s choices in the postwar era are associated primarily with two men: General MacArthur and Yoshida Shigeru.71 General MacArthur was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) and headed its office in Japan from 1945 to 1951. Yoshida served five short terms72 as prime minister, most of them during the occupation years. He is credited with shaping the postwar direction of Japan under what is known as the “Yoshida Doctrine.” This doctrine held that Japan should concentrate on and prioritize economic reconstruction and development, and leave security matters to the United States.73

Americans had expected resistance to the occupation,74 but upon taking over the country with relative ease, MacArthur immediately set about the task of reforming the existing system, which in his mind had brought out the worst tendencies of a “childlike” people.75 The general ordered that certain reforms be undertaken immedi- ately: emancipating women through enfranchisement; encouraging the unionization of labor; liberalizing schools; abolishing “systems which through secret inquisition and abuse have people in constant fear”; and democratizing economic institutions.76 The original plan of SCAP was to treat Japan as a laboratory for Asian democracy, a plan that was also fed by the New Deal in the United States.77

However, after the war was over, it quickly became evident to MacArthur and SCAP that the Soviet Union factor needed to be taken seriously. He and his office believed that if traditional institutions

71 Although, arguably, Kishi played a more significant role than Yoshida in entrenching what came to be known as the Yoshida Doctrine.

72 May 22, 1946–May 24, 1947; October 15, 1948–February 16, 1949;

February 16, 1949–October 30, 1952; October 30, 1952–May 21, 1953;

May 21, 1953–December 10, 1954.

73 Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 69.

74 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 23.

75 Ibid., p. 107. 76 Ibid., p. 48. 77 Totman, History of Japan, p. 443.

were dismantled entirely, the Soviet Union would step in to fill the vacuum.78 As a result, the idea that Japan should be a bulwark against communism started to take precedence over the idea of Japan as an equitable democracy.79 Consequently, the goal of economic recon- struction was prioritized and by 1947, American policy had shifted its focus from punishment to development.80

Only two of the planned reforms were enacted in the way origi- nally envisioned: the new Japanese constitution and land reform. The results of reform in the sectors of labor, education, and local govern- ment were mixed and the plan to break up the zaibatsu monopolies was a failure.81

The new constitution enumerated the rights and liberties of citizens and strengthened the Parliament. Article 1 emphasized that sovereignty resided with the people and that the emperor derived his position from the will of the people. Article 9 declared that Japan was renouncing war as a sovereign right and that military forces to that end would not be maintained. Article 9 would become a source of future controversy and would go on to frustrate neorealist scholars for many years, but it was rather well received by the Japanese: “Most Japanese were quite content never to have to fight another war. Besides, Article 9 allowed them to bask in the glow of moral satisfaction: the first pacifist nation in history.”82 The Yoshida government, initially reluctant, accepted the constitution because it was partly believed that the fate of the emperor rested on its adoption.83 The chambers of the Diet passed the constitu- tion on October 6, 1946, and the emperor approved it on November 3 of the same year.

Also in 1946, a study group composed of Japan’s economic experts issued a report that declared Japan should proceed “from a broad global and developmental standpoint” in formulating its economic policies; that Japan “must discern the course of progress of human society, its present state and future trends, and second, understand the nature of the world environment in which Japan now stands, and

78 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 51.

79 Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 45; Pempel, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy,” 731.

80 Totman, A History of Japan, p. 445; Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 53.

81 Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 63.

82 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 118.

83 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 685.

in which it will stand in the future.”84 As Jansen notes, there was no defeatism in this new economic outlook.

In the meantime, labor leaders became restless, partly in response to the influence of communists within the unions, and they called for a general strike in the winter of 1946. It was assumed that this would be at least tolerated by SCAP. This turned out to be a mistake, as MacArthur banned the strike, declaring that he would not allow such “a deadly weapon” to be used in the context of impoverished Japan.85 MacArthur launched a campaign for an early peace treaty in 1947 and followed it with steps to end the economic blockade.86

Nevertheless, labor leaders kept the pressure up. They demanded and achieved the removal of the Yoshida Cabinet, calling Yoshida a representative of the industrialists87 and a “SCAP toady.”88 In the subsequent elections of 1947, leaders of all major labor organizations were elected to the Diet.89

As the 1940s drew to a close, SCAP became increasingly worried about communist infiltration of Japan, and the outbreak of the Korean War did not help matters.90 Initially, many American observers had been skeptical that the reforms would work91 and there was a general concern that Japanese society had an affinity toward authoritarian regimes.92 Since the Soviet Union had an outward policy of disinterest or even hostility toward Japan, it had been barred from participating in the occupation by the United States.93 When the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship with China in 1950, Japan was singled out as a potential aggressor.94 Nevertheless, the United States suspected the Soviets of covert propaganda in Japan: bookstores were filled with Soviet magazines and books.95 Not every leftist or union organizer was a communist, but there was enough sympathy for the viewpoint to cause SCAP and Washington headaches. The left demanded com- plete independence from the United States.96 They also looked up to

84 Ibid., p. 693. 85 Ibid., p. 698; Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 165.

86 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 79. 87 Ibid., p. 165.

88 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 129. 89 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 178.

90 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 699; Brines, MacArthur’s Japan,

pp. 206, 254.

91 Morley, “Between Two Eras,” p. 1.

92 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 258; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 107.

93 Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 30.

94 Ibid., p. 31. 95 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 261.

96 Ibid., p. 263.

the Soviet Union and felt “a kind of guilt-ridden solidarity with the Chinese communists.”97 The leftists argued that any security arrange- ments with the United States would compound the historic mistake Japan made by trying to be a Western-style imperialist power. They thought that Japan should stand in alliance with Asian neighbors who were fighting imperialism.98

At the same time, especially in Asia, there were fears that Japan was going to revert to its old imperialistic ways once it gathered its strength.99 The fact that many militarists went unpunished did little to quell these fears. In the 1940s, the people resented militarists but many remained unconvinced that Japan was wrong in wanting an empire.100 Given this attitude and this history, it was not surprising that many Asian nations protested American support for the Japanese economy.101 This support included bringing in a Detroit banker named Joseph Dodge who drew up a monetary stabilization program (“The Dodge Line”).102 Among his recommendations was one that suggested Japanese workers and consumers should make sacrifices for the national good.103 Subsequently, many layoffs followed. In addi- tion, in 1950, purge orders were issued by SCAP against alleged com- munists in media and labor organizations and nearly 20,000 people were forced from their jobs.104

It was in this context that the peace treaty was negotiated. After a brief interruption, Yoshida was prime minister again. However, MacArthur was out. The Korean War had erupted, supplying the Japanese economy with much needed demand, and MacArthur invoked Truman’s wrath by threatening to take the war into China.105 However, the Japanese were against becoming entangled in another conflict. MacArthur was replaced by Dulles, who wanted Japan to remilitarize106 so that it could be counted on for its own defense.107 He wanted a Japanese army of 350,000 troops108 and Japan to limit its

97 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130. 98 Ibid.

99 Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 140. 100 Ibid., p. 124.101 Ibid., p. 150.

102 Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 77.

103 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 124.

104 Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 55; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 24.

105 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 125.

106 A small force called the Japanese Defense Forces was created in 1950.

107 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701.

108 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 129.

commercial relations to dealing only with those in the “free world.”109 Yoshida was entirely against the remilitarization of Japan and did not want to bypass Article 9 or burden the Japanese economy.110

Yoshida negotiated skillfully111 and argued that establishing a for- mal military would antagonize the socialist opposition. There are reports that he secretly encouraged the socialists to demonstrate in front of his office in order to strengthen his hand.112 In the end, he prevailed. In the compromise that was reached, access to Okinawa was given to the United States to create a military base. It was prom- ised that in some distant day in the future Japan would assume responsibility for its own defense. Until then, the United States would be responsible for Japan’s security and Japan would be free to priori- tize economic development.113 On the negative side, Japan, by recog- nizing the Republic of China in Taiwan, had to forgo its trade with the People’s Republic of China,114 which was starting to redevelop.115 A peace treaty and a security treaty were signed simultaneously in San Francisco, in September 1951. Also as part of this arrangement, Japan recognized the independence of Korea and renounced all claims to

109 Holsti, “Politics in Command,” 649.

110 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701.

111 “Looking back over the origins and development of Japan’s postwar defense policy, it seems clear that this policy was not cooked up in Washington

and swallowed whole in Tokyo. On the contrary, Prime Minister Yoshida’s feelers and Foreign Minister Ashida’s memorandum on security policy in 1947 are strong evidence that the Japanese leaders had a well-thought-out defense policy, based on their strategic views, several years before the United States Government formulated its Far Eastern security policy.” Weinstein, Japan’s Postwar Defense Policy, p. 128.

112 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 129.

113 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130; Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701; Chai, “Entrenching the Yoshida Defense Doctrine,” 397.

114 1950 resolution passed by a large majority in the Upper House of the Diet:

Before the war about 65 percent of our trade was with Asia, and most of that with China. These facts are particularly significant in light of the steadily diminishing U.S. economic aid. Business and trading circles and the Japanese people urgently desire the renewal of direct trade relations with China in order to relieve the stagnation in trade and commerce … Japan absolutely cannot exist unless trade is promoted. The government

should leave aside ideological and political differences and look at the purely economic problems, exchange economic missions with the new China, restore trade with her immediately, and set forth a bold course of action. (As quoted in Holsti, “Politics in Command,” 651)

115 Ibid.

Taiwan and the other Pacific Islands it had invaded during World War

I.116 The treaty went into effect in 1952. Japan was sovereign again. Dulles’s part in these developments should not be entirely dis-

counted, especially because he seems to have had an intuitive under- standing of the effect of stigmatization on Japan’s national habitus, and used that understanding to his advantage. As Takeshi Matsuda notes, “Dulles recognized that historically the Japanese wanted to be counted among the members of the Western world, but if only they were received on terms of approximate equality.”117 Furthermore, Dulles was disposed “to capitalize on the Japanese feeling of racial and social superiority to the Chinese, Koreans, and Russians, and to convince them as part of the free world they would be in equal fellowship with a group which was superior to the members of the communist world.”118 Dulles had observed that “the Japanese were particularly sensitive to the assumption that they were ‘backward’ or ‘undeveloped’ because Japanese felt that their own advancement was beyond the general levels of civilization in Asia.”119 Dulles realized that a long-term Western alliance with Japan could only be sustained if the West realized Japan’s hunger for status and equal respect in the international system and played along.

Yoshida’s own memoirs corroborate Dulles’s impressions. In the following passage, Yoshida dismisses the argument that Japan’s plight bears any resemblance whatsoever to that of other Asian nations and argues instead that Japan’s destiny is to be a role model and norm mediator (I quote at length from this passage because of its pertinence to the argument of the book):

According to some people, Japan too gained – or rather, regained – her independence in 1952 after seven years of foreign occupation, and, our plight being therefore much the same as those of other countries of Asia and Africa, we should throw in our lot with them in opposition to such “colonial” powers as the United States, Great Britain, and France. Such a view seems to be completely at variance with actual facts. Apart from the few years of foreign occupation following the termination of the Pacific War, Japan has been an independent state throughout its long history and we cannot conceive of our country occupying any other status than that of a completely independent and sovereign nation. In the fields of government,

116 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701.

117 Matsuda, Soft Power, p. 55. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid.

economy, industry, and social development, also, Japan is more Western than Asian – at least insofar as the levels attained by us in those spheres are concerned – whereas many of the other countries of Asia and Africa are still undeveloped, or under-developed, industrially and economically, and their peoples have still to attain the standards of living to which modern civilization entitles them to aspire. In short, they are what we are forced to recognize as backward nations … We can both understand and sympa- thize with their present policies, but that is not to say that we should rate them as being more important – internationally – than they actually are, and still less that Japan should model its foreign policy on their largely negative philosophy. I have stated that we Japanese are in many respects more European than Asian; nevertheless, Japan is geographically an Asian nation and economically an integral part of the continent and, as such, bet- ter equipped than are most Western peoples to understand Asia. Racially speaking, also, other Asian and African nations tend to feel a greater sense of kinship towards Japan than towards the peoples of the West. This fact coupled with our superior economic development, should, it seems to me, leave us in little doubt as to the role which Japan must play in international affairs in the future … It is our duty to aid the peoples of Asia and Africa in their economic development and thus foster an awareness in the countries concerned that the political institutions and way of life of the free nations of the earth are best suited to bring prosperity to their nations and happi- ness to the peoples therein.120

The passage is striking in several ways. First, Yoshida seems intent on situating Japan apart from and above the rest of the “East” while acknowledging that geographically and racially Japan bears an affinity to the newly independent former colonies (which would soon be grouped under the category of the “Third World”). The reader will notice that, in spirit, this line of argument is not that different than the Meiji Era constructions of Japan as the leader of Asia and a country on equal footing with the West. Second, Yoshida explicitly makes the argument that Japan should take an active role in leading Asia and Africa by convincing them that “the political institutions and way of life of the free nations … are best suited to bring prosperity … and happiness.” If we compare this with the earlier rhetoric of the Greater Asian Prosperity Sphere, we see that the way Yoshida situates Japan and its mission vis-à-vis the

120 Shigeru, Last Meiji Man, pp. 10–12 (italics added).

other nations of Asia is not substantially different. What have been substituted, however, are Japan’s claims to have invented a better values system compared to the West. In Yoshida’s rephrasing, Japan is now a missionary for Western values, and one that is better at selling those values even than the West.

In other words, several responses of the stigmatized individual dis- cussed in Chapter 2 are clearly visible in this passage; especially on display are the strategies of stratifying against one’s own stigma group and seeing one’s affinity with the stigma group as a mixed blessing. Finally, what is remarkable about the passage is the ease with which Yoshida is using the norm rhetoric of the postwar years discussed in Chapter 2. He has no problem labeling the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa as “backward” and there are several references to economic development. This passage is evidence of the clear intent behind the policy Japan pursued during the Cold War years: fighting stigmatization through an emphasis on economic development and pursuing a strategy of playing up Third World connections in order to get respect from the West.

A new Japan

Because it has been constrained from becoming a political and military superpower … Japan’s business and foreign policy activities in East Asia are intensely market-centered … Japan’s foreign policy is thus built on for- eign trade … This market orientation is natural for Japan as long as its foreign policy uses economic affluence and manufacturing competitiveness as ways to influence other countries. (Takashi Inoguchi, “Japan’s Foreign Policy in Asia”, p. 409)

Within the incubator of the patron–client relationship, Japan slowly rede- fined its foreign policy orientation. Having failed internationally with militarism and domestically with totalitarianism, and having no real com- mitment to the larger strategic goals of the Cold War, Japan looked else- where for foreign policy direction. Consistent with its perennial desire to achieve international stature, Japan emphasized economic relations. (Louis D. Hayes, Japan and the Security of Asia, p. xv)

Yoshida had been more successful than his American counterparts in dictating the outcome of the San Francisco Treaty. The most import- ant achievement was that Japan could decide for itself when and how

(and if) it was going to re-arm.121 This would allow Japan to focus entirely on economic recovery and growth. Furthermore, its strong ties with the United States gave Japan access to the largest market. Yoshida refused his critics’ argument that the security arrangement had made Japan subservient to the United States, and commented that there was no reason to feel “a colonial sense of inferiority.”122 This worldview would later become entrenched in Japanese foreign policy as the “Yoshida Doctrine.” However, it would be a mistake to con- clude that it had unconditional support from the beginning.

Students and workers, supported by the Communist Party, labor unions, and leftist intelligentsia, staged massive demonstra- tions against the security treaty in May 1952.123 They were against “American imperialism” and did not want Japan to be part of it. On September 12, 1954, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov announced that “the Soviet Union was ready to normalize relations, provided that Japan showed a similar willingness.”124 With the help of the socialists, the Democrats brought down the Yoshida government.125 Going into the 1954 elections, it seemed that the socialists might have a chance of winning when various factions overcame their differences and merged. However, in response, the conservatives, formerly repre- sented by the Democrat and the Liberal parties, also merged, form- ing the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP).126 The LDP came to power, first under the leadership of Hatoyama Ichiro, who immediately announced that normalization of relations with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China was a priority.127 However, the plan to restore diplomatic relations with China was quickly abandoned.128

One of the major developments under Hatoyama’s leadership was Japan’s enthusiastic entry into the United Nations. In the admittance speech, the Japanese foreign minister declared that “possessing a cul- tural, political and economic system that fused both Western and

121 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 703.

122 Shigeru, Yoshida Memoirs, p. 4.

123 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130.

124 Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 2.

125 Ibid., p. 32. 126 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 133.

127 Yomiuri shimbun, December 10, 1954; Asahi shimbun, December 13, 1954, both quoted in Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 32.

128 Asahi shimbun, January 22, 1955, as quoted in Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 32.

Eastern civilizations, Japan could very well become a bridge between East and West.”129 Japan also achieved GATT membership the same year, but European countries, and even the United States, remained reluctant to lift restrictions on Japanese trade for almost a decade.130 In 1957, Kishi Nobusuke became prime minister and served until 1960. Kishi was a conservative, and had even spent three years in prison as a war criminal. On economic matters, he was in favor of state control and a planned economy. He, too, had problems with the security treaty. The right-wingers maintained that Japan’s war had been just: they wanted to revise Articles 1 and 9 of the constitution, to restore the emperor’s divinity, and for Japan to actively join the war against communism.131 Kishi wanted to change the security treaty as well: “The security treaty, which gave the United States a free hand on Japanese soil, reminded many Japanese, on the Right and the Left, of the unequal treaties in the 1860s.”132 Therefore, Kishi wanted Japan to

be more assertive.

To achieve that result, he went on a tour of Southeast Asia and apol- ogized for past atrocities. He also went to Washington, but secured only a minor promise that Japan would be consulted in future deploy- ments. On this visit, Kishi also recommended the establishment of a Southeast Asian development fund: “The biggest problem the Asian countries are being faced with for the time being is how to add eco- nomic independence to their political independence … Our country is willing to cooperate with these countries in various fields for their economic development.”133 Japan’s potential as a role model for devel- oping countries in Asia and Africa had already been observed at the 1955 Bandung Conference.134

However, on the home front, Kishi could not secure the support of the socialists for revisions in the security treaty. They were suspicious of him because of his nationalist past, and they thought the changes were merely cosmetic:

By the end of 1959, radical students were rushing toward the Diet and pissing on its doors. First tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands

129 Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 73.

130 Austin and Harris, Japan and Greater China, p. 33.

131 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130. 132 Ibid., p. 135.

133 As quoted in Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 73.

134 Ibid.

joined the demonstrations. Police barricades were crushed … Soon almost a million people were in the streets, screaming – in English – “Yankee go home!” … For a moment it looked as if revolution might be at hand. All the hatred and distrust of the old order, and the United States, which was blamed, not without reason, for supporting it, gathered like a storm in the streets of Tokyo.135

The Diet was divided over the controversial ratification of the treaty. For instance, the socialists locked up the Diet Speaker in his office, who called the riot police, and, while the LDP held the rati- fication vote without the socialists, Kishi had to resign.136 He was replaced by Ikeda Hayato, who oversaw Japan’s re-entry onto the world stage.

The period between the end of World War II and Kishi’s resignation in 1960 can be viewed as the period when Japan made its decisions about the kind of country it wanted to be.137 Within this period, des- pite the occupation, there was considerable debate within Japan about the US partnership.138 There were three sides to the debate: first, prag- matic conservatives, such as Yoshida, wanted to make the best of a constraining situation; second, nationalists like Kishi desired Japan to be more autonomous in its relations with the United States and remilitarize;139 third, the left and the socialists wanted the United States to leave and Japan to forge better relations with China and other oppressed peoples of Asia. Japan in this period could not be described as a monolithic society that had been cowed into submission. To the contrary, it was a very divided society until the radicalized left and the nationalist right took each other’s eyes out in 1960,140 leaving the ground open to the more moderate pragmatists represented by Ikeda. Ikeda cemented support for the Yoshida Doctrine by announcing and delivering on the income-doubling plan of 1960–70.141 Of course, the doctrine was successful with the people because it also delivered onto- logical security by raising Japan’s profile in the world.

135 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 136.

136 Ibid., p. 137; Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 708.

137 This also squares with Kissinger’s observation that Japan changed its foreign policy every 15 years. Inoguchi, Japanese Politics, p. 178.

138 Ibid., p. 179. 139 Ibid.

140 Totman, History of Japan, p. 450.

141 Inoguchi, Japanese Politics, p. 179.

It is possible to interpret the mass riots of 1960 as a symptom of the growing confidence of the Japanese people.142 That confidence reached a new high in 1964, the year Japan hosted the Olympics: “No longer a defeated nation in disgrace, Japan was respectable now … To the Japanese, always acutely conscious of their ranking among nations, sporting victories were one way to soothe memories of war- time defeat.”143 This was also the year Japan joined the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, clubs that marked “Japan’s rise from a developing country to a member of the industrialized world.”144 Thus, the 1960s were a good decade for Japan. Trade with South Korea and Taiwan increased substantially145 and the GNP kept rising, as did Japan’s influence, at least in the way Japanese now perceived the world.146 One of the catch-phrases of the decade was “US–Japan equal partner- ship”: Japan had reached a point where it envisioned itself as on a par with most industrialized countries in the West.

Nonetheless, Japan encountered some problems in the 1960s. For instance, there was still resistance from Europe to Japanese trade. On a trip to France, Ikeda was called “a transistor radio salesman” and was made fun of for his short stature by Charles de Gaulle.147 It took many years for Japan to receive respectable treatment in the inter- national organizations of which it was a member.

Every policy in this decade was subordinated to macro-level eco- nomic growth, a big part of which was achieved through foreign economic policies: “As such, Japanese foreign economic policy has been neither isolated from, nor contradictory to, domestic economic policies. Nor has it been directed more fundamentally to achieving security, military, or other external political and noneconomic aims

… International glory was domesticated and treated as measurable through increases in GNP.”148 Perhaps for this reason, despite a high degree of commitment to pacifism and peace, Japan pursued trade

142 Packard, “Living with the Real Japan,” p. 38.

143 Buruma, Inventing Japan, pp. vii–viii; see also Inoguchi, “Japan: Reassessing the Relationship,” p. 246.

144 Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 77.

145 Inoguchi, “Asia and the Pacific Since 1945,” p. 916.

146 See Inoguchi, Japanese Politics, p. 39.

147 Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 78.

148 Pempel, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy,” 741.

rather aggressively. China, for instance, viewed Japanese trade as a political weapon and attached difficult conditions to all trade agree- ments with Japan, in effect curtailing most exchange.149 Others also criticized Japan for practicing a new kind of imperialism through trade in Asia.150

As the 1960s drew to a close, Japan re-emerged as a major pres- ence in Asia, but observers were baffled by the question of what her future direction in foreign policy would be. Some thought that Japan would become more active in the economic and political affairs of Southeast Asia, or perhaps lead the nonaligned states.151 The role of mediator was also frequently offered.152 The Americans desired that Japan re-arm and more actively support American policies in Vietnam in particular and Asia in general.153 Writing in 1968, Badgley keenly observed that the Japanese government seemed “to be developing a new principle in foreign policy, one that might accommodate the free-world orientation, dominant for the past two decades, and the Asian orientation, held both by those with progressive ideological beliefs and by those with conservative cultural attachments.”154 This would be the principle of “regional development,” with Japan getting more involved in the political and economic affairs of Asian states. Japan could be a model of success by adopting Western technology while keeping her Asian identity.155 Badgley also suggested that this policy was a result of Japan’s histor- ical tendency to seek influence and status in Asia.156 He added that “although Japan’s ability to play a leading role in Southeast Asian affairs rests on its demonstration of successful modernization as an Asian state, the country’s influence over its neighbors will flow from the most dramatic outward manifestation of that success: its eco- nomic power and interests and the reciprocity these activities have created and will foster among its trading partners.”157 Japan had already taken concrete steps in this direction by joining the Asian Development Bank in 1966.

149 Holsti, “Politics in Command,” 653.

150 Steven, Japan’s New Imperialism, p. 244.

151 Osgood, “Japan and the United States in Asia,” p. 9.

152 Badgley, “Necessity and Choice,” p. 150.

153 Packard, “Living with the Real Japan,” p. 36.

154 Badgley, “Japan’s Nonmilitary Road,” p. 51.

155 Ibid., p. 56. 156 Ibid., p. 55. 157 Ibid., p. 57.

Following the United States’ lead, Japan normalized its relations with China in 1972. By this time, Japanese GNP had risen to be second only to the United States. Japan had maintained a peaceful profile for more than two decades. Nevertheless, Japan had not yet earned the full trust of the American public. Annual opinion polls conducted by the Japanese Foreign Ministry consistently showed trust for Japan in the United States hovering around 40 percent. Asian countries, espe- cially those that had been colonized by Japan in the past, remained even more skeptical.158 In 1973, Japan unsuccessfully sought a per- manent seat on the UN Security Council.159

Whatever outside observers might think, since the 1970s, Japan has not wavered substantively from the path Yoshida chose. The Japanese learned to take pleasure in their GNP. As Matsuyama com- ments: “Why is the Japanese GNP so highly publicized? I presume that one reason is that the Japanese, who had lost confidence and had been suffering from an inferiority complex since the end of the war, have finally found delight in the GNP as a means of competing with and surpassing other powers, this satisfying the national pride.”160 Or, as Maull has put it, Japan was on its way to becoming a civilian power.161

For the sake of comprehensiveness, however, let me note that the more things have changed, the more things have remained the same in Japanese foreign policy.

On the one hand, there is no doubt that the end of the Cold War has rejuvenated identity debates in Japan, and many have raised questions about what Japan’s responsibilities are to the East and the West.162 But the very fact that there are still identity debates to be had points to the continued impact of Japan’s prewar stigmatization in shaping Japanese responses. Despite all of Japan’s economic successes, the country still remains an outsider at some level. As noted in Chapter 2, pursuing a strategy intended to correct stigmatizing attributes can never succeed entirely in solving ontological security problems: the taint of once having had the discreditable attribute remains (hinting at the pos- sibility that one can easily fall back) and a sense of inauthenticity

158 Matsuyama, “Outlook for U.S. Japan Relations,” pp. 48, 57.

159 Soroos, “Global Interdependence,” 220.

160 Matsuyama, “Outlook for U.S. Japan Relations,” p. 51.

161 See Maull, “Germany and Japan.”

162 See Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity.

(externally imposed and internally felt) threatens ontological security. Japan has tried to complement its “corrective” strategy by positioning itself as a bridge between West and East. However, because Japan’s ultimate goal is to garner equal respect from the West, it has not been able to commit entirely to the Asian prong of this strategy, not only picking Western interests over the Eastern ones when the two seemed to conflict but also often undermining its own efforts in the region by questionable actions such as ex-Prime Minister Koizumi’s 2001 visit to the Yasukini War Shrine. By trying to play up both aspects of its identity, but not being able to guarantee one and commit to the other, at some level, Japan remains mired in its own history of outsiderness. I will have more to say about this in the concluding chapter.

On the other hand, Japan continues to devote a very small percent- age of its GDP to defense expenditure, despite the absence of evidence suggesting that “the Japanese public perceives that their country has unusual immunity from military threat”163 and opinion polls show- ing that only “49 percent believe that the United States would provide assistance if Japan were attacked.”164 Despite these beliefs, less than 10 percent of those polled support an increase in military spending. This reluctance has puzzled many IR experts, especially realists, who inevitably end up arguing that this unnatural state of affairs will end sooner or later.165 As Katzenstein and Sil note,166 most of the 1990s was characterized by this type of scholarship on East Asia, advanc- ing the argument that the continent, including Japan, was “ripe for rivalry” and violent conflict.167 Yet neither Asia in general nor Japan has reassumed an aggressive foreign policy posture. Liberal approaches168 may attribute Japanese unwillingness to re-arm to the

163 Chai, “Entrenching the Yoshida Defense Doctrine,” 392.

164 Nihon Keizai Shimbun poll as reported in Chai, “Entrenching the Yoshida Defense Doctrine,” 392.

165 For a review of this literature, see e.g. Katzenstein and Okawara, “Japan, Asian-Pacific Security,” 154–6, 167, 169, 178–80; Kang, “Getting Asia

Wrong,” 61–2.

166 “Rethinking Asian Security,” p. 1. This article also provides compelling critiques of both realist and liberal readings of Asian international relations.

167 E.g. Bracken, Fire in the East; Betts, “Wealth, Power and Instability”; Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry.”

168 Owen, “Transnational Liberalism,” 130. To be fair, Owen argues the same logic applies to Western Europe as well, but he never demonstrates why liberalism makes Japan particularly pacifist.

nature of the Japanese post-World War II system, but it is not clear why a liberal domestic system should have such a singular effect only on Japan, or why Japan should be so conflicted about foreign policy in the post-Cold War world.

Many observers are rightly skeptical that traditional theories can predict outcomes in Asia. For instance, Kang argues that traditional theories derived from the experience of European states fail to account for the Asian system and that Japan does not re-arm to the level it could because it has no intention of challenging the United States.169 Let us now see if introducing concern for status as a variable helps us make better sense of Japan’s behavior, especially in the decades imme- diately following the humiliating defeat of 1945.

From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen: changing status standards

Japan has been considered by outsiders and especially by Westerners to be an enigmatic country. (Takashi Inoguchi and Kinhide Mushakoji, “The Japanese Image of the Future,” p. 217)

Despite numerous differences in the details, the overarching narrative in Japan’s transformation post-World War II is strikingly similar to the case of Turkey as discussed in Chapter 3. Here, too, we are faced with a country that went from being perceived as a threat to the West to being a peaceful participant in the international system and its institutions. It is often assumed, mistakenly, that seven years of US occupation and the subsequent security alliance with Japan explains all that there is to know about Japan’s postwar policy choices. It is beyond a doubt that these were formative experiences for Japan; nevertheless, the Japan that has emerged from the postwar period is not necessarily one that the Americans imagined or desired. Japan has kept making her own choices, with Japanese leaders skillfully navigating the constraints imposed by both the occupation and the San Francisco system. It is not possible to explain this outcome with- out understanding how the concern for status in the international system significantly shaped the domestic and foreign policy strategies of Japan after World War II.

169 Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong,” 77.

We saw in the first section of this chapter how prewar Japan was motivated by the same desire to overcome the civilization standards that plagued Turkey’s behavior. By the time World War II broke out, these standards – at least in their explicit, quasi-legalized form (through the League of Nations) – were becoming obsolete, making way for a more teleological view of human development and progress centered on the concept of modernity. Old-fashioned justifications for imperialism focused on a civilizing mission had first been dis- carded for the tutelage justifications of the League of Nations, but even before the war, anti-colonialism movements had been causing the Western imperial powers headaches in Palestine, Algeria, India, and elsewhere.

Japan, however, seemed to have missed the memo about overseas imperial enterprises being on their last legs. Japan’s quest for inclusion in the civilization of Western powers, which had started as an attempt to save itself from the fate of colonization, reached a feverish national- ist-imperialist pitch in the interwar period. This was a Japan that was manifesting the worst aspects of Western civilization – i.e. imperial- ism and condescension – through a military regime duly propped up and legitimized at home by reference to how the West had been acting until then, on the one hand, and also by the emperor divinity cult, on the other. It should also be acknowledged, however, that part of the reason that Japan’s actions seemed so beyond the pale, with all due respect to the Asian countries’ suffering under Japan’s advances, had something to do with the fact that the civilization standards and the norms of the international system had shifted. Interwar Japan was an anachronism. There is something understandable about the joy the average Japanese felt about a declaration of war with the United States. Moreover, the juxtaposition of that irrational exuberance with the feelings of regret and skepticism about Japan’s advance in China, which were much more rational from a materialistic point of view, is telling. The particular evolution of the international system has often allowed the West to create monsters in its own image,170 and saddle them with all of the guilt. This is rather an ironic by-product of the

170 I am not claiming that Western civilization is the inventor of aggressive expansion. However, the particular kind of imperialism that Japan was manifesting was a European-style imperialism, with aggressiveness of colonization justified with a rhetoric of civilizing mission.

established-outsider dynamic in the international system. This is not to say that Japan does not deserve blame, but rather points to a lar- ger causal complexity that constantly favors early rule-makers of the system over latecomers in assigning blame.

The way Japan was defeated separates this case from the cases of Turkey and Russia. The utter and complete destruction wrought by the two atomic bombs humiliated and traumatized Japan in a way that we do not see in the other two cases. Some observers, including several in Japan, have concluded from this defeat and Japan’s early experience with Perry’s black ships that it requires foreign interven- tion to shake itself out of institutionalized impasses. There is some truth in this observation if it is interpreted not to mean that Japan is beholden to foreign powers, but rather to point to a pattern we see in other cases. The pattern is that because of the particular way Japan entered this international system, the judgment of the West has always been a motivating factor in domestic debates and for- eign policy decisions. Interestingly enough, in a 1973 article Johan Galtung also observed that Japan’s willingness to cooperate with the American occupation itself had something to do with status con- cerns (using a very questionable analogy to make an otherwise valid point): “she was occupied by somebody very high up. Occupation is not unlike rape: it becomes almost an honor if only the status gap is sufficient and positive … Had the situation been somewhat different, had Chiang-Kai-Shek been the occupier of Japan in 1945, we would have hypothesized a stream of incidents and rebellion.”171 I believe he is correct about speculation of a hypothetical Chinese invasion. What helped along Japanese cooperation with the West, as represented by the United States, was the worldview that Japanese had internalized long before US troops arrived in Japan. As Japanese scholar Harumi Befu has observed, Japan suffers from “auto-Orientalism” or “do-it- yourself Orientalism,” just like Turkey and Russia: “Said, of course, focused on the Middle East for the Orientalized people, but a similar Orientalizing process took place in other parts of the world, includ- ing Japan … where the Japanese accepted the Western-centric scheme of the universe and believed in Westerners’ value judgments about Japan’s backwardness.”172

171 Galtung, “Japan and Future World Politics,” 366.

172 Befu, “Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and the Japanese Identity,” as quoted in Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 7.

In any case, while the defeat itself was traumatic, it did not end Japan’s quest for status; it merely transformed its dominant mani- festation. Almost every scholar who writes about anything related to Japan mentions that the Japanese care deeply (and always have) about their ranking among nations.173 Other themes that constantly emerge from the postwar literature are, how disillusioned the Japanese were until their GNP carried them to a top rank; how the 1964 Tokyo Olympics marked a definite shift in the mood of the country; and how important international organization memberships were for Japan.174 The economy-first doctrine of Yoshida was chosen deliberately. Besides the obvious benefits of economic development, emphasiz- ing economic growth and trade was the only way a country could advance, status-wise, within an international system dominated by two powers. Furthermore, this choice was very much in line with the dominating normative discourse in the international system, which had shifted from civilization to development. It also allowed Japan to increase its stature by presenting itself as a model of successful Asian development. This course was sustainable and had legitimacy because it delivered the kind of power-prestige that the domestic audi- ence demanded. The new state identity delivered ontological secur- ity by allowing the Japanese people to hold onto their hierarchical worldview175 and their view of Japan’s right to a high stature without

utilizing military strategies.

Despite the constraints, it should not be assumed that Japan had no other choice. As noted above, what came to be called the Yoshida Doctrine was very controversial from 1945 until 1960. Those on the left favored a greater distance from the United States, and desired to stand in solidarity with China and possibly even the Soviet Union. In terms of curbing the influence of the left, the socialists and the com- munists, the American occupation played a definite role, first through MacArthur’s ban on labor strikes, and second through the “Red Purge” of the early 1950s. Nevertheless, the popularity of these views, prior to 1960, which were demonstrated rather frequently through work stoppages and riots, should not be summarily dismissed. On

173 Buruma, Inventing Japan; Islam, Yen for Development.

174 Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan; Buruma, Inventing Japan; Klien,

Rethinking Japan’s Identity.

175 Galtung also observes this about the Japanese on p. 362.

the flip side, the conservative nationalists, who were pro-capitalism, but also supported more autonomy for Japan on security matters and re-armament, had considerably more breathing room. This kind of thinking was clearly more in line with US policies during the Cold War years, and it is hard to imagine that as long as it kept cooperating with the United States, a capitalist government made up of nation- alists who were unapologetic to a communist China for past deeds would have much to fear from the United States. The United States would have been happy to see a re-armed Japan that was unapolo- getically participating in American endeavors in Asia. But that is not what emerged.

The point is not that such a government might have ended up being a threat to US interests, but rather that the United States did not have the willpower to stop it from emerging. In fact, the obser- vations of scholars are that the 1945– 60 period is filled with fears and concerns that Japan would either turn too much to the right or to the left. Just as American soldiers expected a fight when they landed in Japan in 1945, for many years afterwards many outsiders did not stop fearing that Japan would revert to its authoritarian ways. That Japan did not take either of these paths is even more remarkable.

In the end, there are compelling reasons to think that what made the middle-ground Yoshida Doctrine – as well as pacifism – popular and worth sacrifice is what made Kemal’s Europeanization and secu- larization project compelling in Turkey three decades before. Both strategies tapped into the thirst for and obsession with international power-prestige, which is a constant for the populations of these semi-peripheral, insider-but-outsider countries with imperial pasts. Obviously, the economy-first doctrine delivered material benefits as well, but it is not for naught that the Japanese were more interested in the relative ranking of their GNP than in their absolute purchasing powers or objective living conditions.176 It was this rank that allowed Japan to re-enter the world stage with her head held high. And to extend the analysis into the present day, as long as the power-prestige needs are met at that level, support for re-armament in Japan will continue to fail to garner popular support.

176 Badgley, “Japan’s Nonmilitary Road”; Bailey, Postwar Japan; Clesse,

Vitality of Japan.

Furthermore, in the Japanese case, a side strategy for status enhance- ment has revolved around attempts to position the country in a medi- ator or bridging role between the East and the West. Here we see an even clearer example of the strategy whereby one inserts oneself between the haves and have-nots, as holding the definitive interpret- ation of the norms of inclusion. From the 1950s onward, Japan did start to formulate a clear strategy of influence in Asia through trade, but also presented itself to both the United States and Asian countries as the Asian model for economic success. All of Japan’s involvement in Asia bear this point out, from the Bandung Conference of 1955 to the Asian Development Bank. Such a strategy is often framed as pro- gressive and beneficent, but it in fact reinforces the status hierarchies in the international system, and assured for Japan a more privileged position vis-à-vis their Asian neighbors, at least during the Cold War. That Asian countries received this offer of assistance with some skep- ticism is further evidence of that fact.

Of the three cases under investigation, Japan is the most successful example of charting an alternative route to high stature by exempli- fying dominant norms of the international system, though how well Russia will do in the future remains to be seen. If Turkey’s commit- ment to its post-defeat identity has proven the most durable, Japan’s commitment has proven to be the most fruitful. Part of this has to do with the international context that Japan was operating in. Japan was certainly helped by the Cold War dynamics in this endeavor.

During the process of writing this book, I had the occasion to tell many Turkish acquaintances about my subject-matter and case selec- tion. Almost without fail, I would get one of two responses (I am paraphrasing): “Why Japan? Surely they do not have the same inse- curities we do!”177 and “The Japanese did it the right way: they devel- oped economically without compromising their identity. We should have followed their model!” I find these responses rather interest- ing, and I suspect that Japan specialists would find them amusing. Given the foreign origins of Japan’s constitution, let alone things such as the beef-eating fashions of the Meiji period, it is difficult to claim that Japan’s identity has never been “compromised.” Yet I believe that these casual comments are picking up a major difference between the Turkish and Japanese cases, and that difference is mostly traceable to

177 Nobody objected to the inclusion of Russia for some reason.

the fact that Japan was defeated at a later period than the Ottoman Empire.

Japan’s relative distance to the “established” core before defeat was not unlike the Ottoman Empire’s: grudgingly recognized by the inter- national society as a great power, but not treated equally because of differences in inherent characteristics such as race (and religion). The material conditions Japan faced after defeat were even worse than Turkey: a devastated economy, a country in ruins, and occupa- tion by US forces. Despite the heavy level of American interference, Japan was able to fashion a successful strategy out of these condi- tions. As discussed in Chapter 2, the normative criteria for respect in the international system had changed by the time World War II was over. The emphasis had shifted from displaying signs and markers of modern civilization to displaying markers of economic success and “development.” This allowed Japan to pursue a strategy of emulation that left more room for preserving surviving Japanese social traits. In other words, while the Turkish strategy of emulation (“correction”) hinged on wholesale reformulation of all sorts of cultural practices that fell under the rubric of state authority (in an attempt to convince the Western powers of Turkey’s “inherent” greatness and fitness for “civilization”), after World War II, Japan was able to focus status- enhancement efforts on economic practices.

Japan’s ascent on the status ladder was helped by the emergence of two distinct camps in the international system in the Cold War period. As far as general state behavior was concerned, the assimila- tory pull of the ideal-typical Westphalian state norm had remained intact from the previous period, but especially as far as the economic practices of this ideal state were concerned, there were two com- peting ideologies. This allowed, on the one hand, Japan to improve its status quickly, for it is easier to rise in a smaller group, and on the other hand, gave maneuvering room to Japan to parlay its new alliance into social capital by taking the role of a norm transmit- ter. Of the three cases, Japan used tactics for status advancement most successfully, quite deliberately attempting to position itself as a role model for Asian countries and/or newly independent colonies. Turkey’s similar efforts in the interwar period to position itself as an Asian/Muslim power that had succeeded in joining “civilization” could only be directed to the very limited number of sovereign states which could learn such lessons.

The end of the Cold War has hurt this balance, but has not destroyed it. The two problems that Japan has faced in the post-Cold War period are the emerging normative criteria which are moving away from pure traditional understanding of economic development to more postmod- ern values, and the convergence of the two Cold War camps, which has increased the number of countries with access to core privileges. However, I would argue that having succeeded in largely erasing its postwar stigmas, Japan is unlikely to experience any radical ruptures in foreign policy in the future. Despite the growing domestic demand for Japan to take a more prominent role in international affairs, the analysis here supports the predictions of constructivist scholarship on Japan that any such expansion in the future will not take a military turn.178

Nevertheless, the fact that Japan still does not have the stature com- mensurate with its material power is a demonstration of the reality that Japan still feels the effects of the historical established-outsider dynamic of the international system. Ironically, Japan’s insecurities are partly to blame for this prestige gap. One of the main current threats to Japan’s status in the international system stems from an issue not unlike those faced by contemporary Turkey: namely Japan’s trouble with facing its past crimes, especially the atrocities of World War II. Japan’s reluctance to take full responsibility for its wartime actions remains a source of tension in its relationships with both Asia and the West. In 2007, much to Japan’s consternation, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Japan for crimes of sexual exploitation committed by the Japanese military during World War II.

That crimes of World War II remain an issue for Japan should be surprising given the much greater lengths Japan has gone to, to face its past compared to Turkey. Japanese military leaders were brought to trial and punished after World War II, and Japan had formally apol- ogized for many of its actions, including the now controversial sex slaves issue. When controversies flare over “comfort women” or visits to the Yasukuni war shrine, Japanese leaders are actually retracting apologies for actions Japan has accepted guilt over previously. Given

178 See also Katzenstein and Okawara, “Japan, Asian-Pacific Security”; Katzenstein and Sil, “Rethinking Asian Security”; as well as Katzenstein, Cultural Norms.

Japanese postwar commitment to pacifism, these retractions are espe- cially puzzling.

Japanese nationalists who cling onto a whitewashed version of Japanese history might represent only a minority, but controversies over Japan’s wartime behavior would not be flaring up with such fre- quency if the construction demonstrated in the above resolution did not resonate with Japanese national identity. An interesting point of contrast is with Germany; oppositional groups in Japan who push for a more critical examination of the state’s past often draw upon the German example: “Japan, it was held, had not sufficiently ‘mas- tered the past’ and should look to [Germany] as a model … Even the term for ‘mastering the past’ (kako no kokufuku) was invented in 1992 to translate the German Vergangenheishewaltigung.”179 Despite arguably being the less malevolent of the pair during the war, a present-day comparison ends with the conclusion that Japan has not been able to deal with the stigmatization accompanying its wartime actions as well as Germany. Germany’s reconciliation efforts, how- ever, have to be contextualized against Germany’s reintegration into Europe.180 Whereas Japan’s exact placement between East and West still remains open to question, the postwar trajectory of Germany has been securely anchored in Europe. Whatever difficulties Germany has had reconstructing its national identity have been tempered by the affirmation provided by the European identity of Germany. There is an obvious irony here in the fact that even in such a context-specific historical matter, the established-outsider dynamic and the pattern of evaluating oneself (and coming up short) according to Western stan- dards is perpetuated.

Unlike Germany, Japan, despite its economic stature, is securely anchored neither in Asia nor among the great powers of the inter- national system.181 Japan stands apart from colonized Asia as a former colonizer. At the same time, Japan is not completely comfort- able among Western powers either. As Shogo Suzuki notes, Japan is a “frustrated great power.” Frustrated great powers believe that they are not given the social equality and the privileges they deserve.182 Japan remains a frustrated great power mainly because of its World

179 Konrad, “Entangled Memories,” 96. 180 Ibid., 98.

181 Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 6.

182 Suzuki, “Seeking ‘Legitimate’,” 49.

War II legacy and subsequent commitment to pacifism. Pacifism, which has gone a long way in obscuring the past stigma of Japanese military aggressiveness, has come at a price: it has kept Japan out of decision-making processes in matters of international security.183

The Japanese right consider the anti-militarism of Japanese society a consequence of the “brainwashing” of the occupation years.184 They believe that Japan was robbed of its sense of national pride and emas- culated by a hypocritical West which would not apologize for its own actions. This is why they want to revise Japan’s apologies and recon- struct a nation proud of its own history. In their view, only such a nation can once again create a strong military and reassert Japan’s significance on the world stage. However, just as in the Turkish case, it is precisely these efforts to recapture Japan’s pride which drive Japan away from a position of influence in Asia and, by extension, the inter- national system. Such is the irony of ontological insecurity created by stigmatization: it is a snake which feeds on its own tail. Just like Turkey, Japan has to learn to leave the patterns of the past behind, but if even Japan cannot overcome the effects of its stigmatized past, what does that imply for the prospects of others in the international system? I will revisit this question in the concluding chapter.

183 Ibid., 52.

184 Suzuki, “Strange Masochism.”

書單

置頂文章

4 「孩子」：日本（1945-1974）