The 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, commemorating the victims, will be celebrated on August 6th and 9th , and the 815 anniversary of the end of the war will be the climax. The media has reported on the devastation of war, including the battles of Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Imphal, Saipan, and Okinawa, as well as the Tokyo air raids. However, they are unable to face the negative past head-on. They turn a blind eye to September 2nd, the anniversary of the Japanese government's surrender, which ended the war against the United States. The same is true of China's Victory over Japan Day, which celebrates the Sino-Japanese War, which lasted from 1937 to 1945, as a victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. Japanese media reports the end of the Pacific War and the Second Sino-Japanese War. In essence, they are unwilling to acknowledge Japan's defeat. Ultra-nationalists who proclaim that the war was not an aggressive one but a struggle for self-preservation and self-defense still thrive at the heart of Japanese power. Japan's modern history has been falsified and distorted.
It can be asserted that the ultimate goal of Japan's modernization following the Meiji Restoration was to "develop the Japanese Empire into a military nation on a par with the Western powers, drive the United States, Britain, and Russia out of East Asia, and make Japan the leader of Asia." Therefore, it can be said that the decision to go to war with the United States and Japan's entry into World War II was a historical inevitability. One has to say that there is no awareness of this issue in Japan's public discourse today . People simply ask , "Why did we go to war with the United States?" and "Was there no way to avoid it?"
The man who played a central role in the formation of the Meiji military state was Genro Yamagata Aritomo, considered the father of the Japanese Army. Yamagata's teacher, Yoshida Shoin, studied under Sakuma Shozan in Edo . Shoin likely shared Shozan's teachings of "conquering the barbarians with the barbarian's methods" with Yamagata and Ito Hirobumi , who would later become leaders of the Meiji regime . Shozan encouraged Japan to "master and develop Western technology and industrial power (the barbarian's methods) and, once Japan has become an unrivaled military nation , attack the West (the barbarians)." On December 8, 1941, less than 20 years after Yamagata's death , he declared, "The time has come to attack the United States, which has demanded a complete withdrawal of its troops from China and, when Japan refused, imposed an economic blockade." Although the Japanese Empire was far from being an "unrivaled military nation," it was cornered and desperate, and decided that it had no choice but to carry out the "Great Expel of the Barbarians."
The report of the Army Akimaru Institute (War Economy Research Group, Ministry of the Army), issued approximately eight months before the start of the war against the United States, concluded that Japan was certain to lose, citing a "20-to-1 national power ratio" and "there was no chance of victory in a war with Britain and the United States . " This common - sense conclusion was shared by all Japanese who had lived in the United States at the time, without the need for further research by experts. Nevertheless, Hideki Tojo, who led the war, said, "Material resources are limited, but the only thing that is infinite and inexhaustible is mental strength." And so, a hollow mentality that "even if we are outnumbered, we can win if we unleash our infinite mental strength" permeated the country. Ren'ya Mutaguchi, who led the Imphal Campaign, said, "A lack of weapons is no excuse for defeat. We must reflect deeply."
As war broke out, the Tojo Cabinet had the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRA) spread propaganda slogans such as, "We will see this battle through no matter what! See our results? We know our strength! Advance, 100 million people, fireballs!" , fueling a bottom-up surge of fascism among the masses. In Japanese society, where this cry of "100 million people, one heart, fireballs" originated, any forces capable of resisting fascism had been eradicated by the Peace Preservation Law. The elimination of anti-government forces and anti-war activists was the crucial reason war could not be avoided. If the plunge into war with the United States was insane, so too was the unwavering loyalty to the state and the sovereignty of the Emperor. There were countless examples of anti-establishment movements in Germany during the war, including anti-Nazi activities within the Wehrmacht, an attempted assassination of Hitler, and resistance through exiled organizations of the German Social Democratic Party and Communist Party. On the surface, the reason the Japanese people were "single-minded" and "united" in carrying out the war, even if it was out of necessity, was because they had been deprived of a choice in political system and had no choice but to accept Imperial Japan.
The wartime Japanese Empire can be considered the culmination of the Meiji system. This Meiji system was a military state based on an absolutist emperor system that lasted from the Meiji Restoration until September 2, 1945. It inherently contained fascism, which became fully apparent during the war against the United States, which became known as the Great Expel of Foreigners. It is said that the military ran wild during the 15-year war beginning with the Manchurian Incident in 1930, but this was by no means out of control. A reading of the Meiji Constitution makes it clear that the emperor's supreme command was outside the jurisdiction of the cabinet. While the Imperial Constitution contained provisions for ministers of state, it made no provision for the cabinet or prime minister. Therefore, it was inevitable that politicians would be excluded from supreme command by the military. The Satsuma-Choshu dictatorial government, which held the emperor's rule to be absolute, advocated a principle of transcendentalism that rejected not only political parties but even parliament, and a party cabinet represented the destruction of the national polity. Militarist fascism, which was embedded in the Meiji system itself, for which civilian control was a dream or illusion, matured and collapsed during the war against the United States and the Pacific War.
The Meiji regime continued to be falsified and disguised. A small Asian nation established a hollow constitution in order to be recognized as a "modern nation" by the great powers. The very appearance of an imperial constitution made it unrecognizable as a proper constitution. In fact, it was not even something that could be called a constitution. After the war, this appearance of constitutionalism was used to present the emperor as a constitutional monarch. The reality was that the Imperial Diet was hastily established to suppress the Freedom and People's Rights Movement and facilitate the financing and foreign bond issuance necessary to build a military power. Taisho democracy, Taisho romanticism, and people-centeredism were unavoidable but subtle influences of major ideological trends and movements that emerged on a global scale, such as freedom and human rights, individual liberation, socialism, and the Comintern . We must not overestimate these and disguise them as the "emerging seeds of a democratic Japan."
Addendum
The following text is supplemented by a quotation from one of the related manuscripts below, "Japan , Asia's Lonely Orphan, Bound by the Japan-US Security Treaty [Replaced Edition] The End of 'Opening the Country to Expel Foreigners' . "
The Japan-US security system is a yoke of defeat. Economic decline since the 1990s, known as the "Lost 30 Years," has led to a downward trend in ODA spending since fiscal 2013 , and Asian countries have generally turned their attention to China. Developing countries are turning to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and an expanded BRICS, and are beginning to seek a new world order to replace the US and UK. The more this movement accelerates, the more the US and UK have intensified their attacks on China and Russia, labeling them as authoritarian regimes that must be eliminated. Meanwhile, Japan, which continues to follow the US and UK, is unable to find a path to independence and is becoming increasingly isolated. Freeing itself from this yoke is a pressing issue for Japan, which has endured 80 years of this.
In writing this series, "The End of 'Opening the Country to Expel the Barbarians,'" I have come to realize that the "Meiji Restoration" and "modernization" have been portrayed and passed down in legends with an unnecessary amount of glamour, and the purpose of this series is to correct this. The primary goal of opening the country, as Sakuma Shozan advised Yoshida Shoin, was to "conquer the barbarians ( the Western powers ) with the barbarian arts (technology of Western origin) in the near future ."
Saigo Takamori, who visited Fujita Toko in Mito, the base of the Sonno Joi movement, was asked in the early Meiji period, "Why open the country when you preached expulsion of foreigners?" and replied, "Opening the country for the sake of expelling foreigners." This was a common sentiment among the patriots who carried out the overthrow of the shogunate and the restoration. In order to expel foreigners, it was first and foremost necessary to promote policies to enrich the country and increase military power and logistics.
In his major work, "Kondo Hisaku," the late Edo period thinker Sato Nobuhiro (1769-1850) advocated that the divine nation of Japan should embark on the path of world domination. Sato was in contact with the Japanese classical scholar Hirata Atsutane and shared the late Mitogaku school of thought that formed the ideological foundation of the Meiji Restoration. " The Imperial Nation is the first nation to be established on earth and is the foundation of all nations. Therefore, if we can trace this foundation, we should make the entire world our own prefectures and counties, and the rulers of all nations should all be our subjects and servants." Based on a strong Japanese national supremacy, the book describes in great detail how to conquer the world, beginning with the invasion of China. It embodies the passionate desires of the patriots to overthrow the shogunate, restore Japan, and invade the continent . It was a beloved work by everyone from the Meiji Restoration's Three Great Leaders, Okubo Toshimichi, to wartime ultranationalists.
During the Meiji period, military expenditures accounted for 30% of government expenditures, even in peacetime . By the time the Sino-Japanese War began in the 1930s, this figure had exceeded 70%. Policies of civilization and Westernization, the introduction of a capitalist economy, the promotion of industry, and national wealth policies were merely means to that end. The establishment of the cabinet system, the enactment of the Imperial Constitution, and the opening of the Imperial Diet can be seen as fiction and camouflage for suppressing the civil rights movement and implementing a military-biased autocratic government.
Any history book or textbook will overemphasize the introduction of enlightenment ideas in the early Meiji period, from the Freedom and People's Rights Movement to "Taisho Democracy" and the "Constitutional Protection Movement." Next comes the section on "The Rise of the Military from Party Politics." The goal of the new Meiji regime that emerged after the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate was, as mentioned above, narrowed to the creation of a military powerhouse. The cabinet, which was led by the Satsuma-Choshu clans and which absolutized the Emperor's supreme command in the constitution , was itself dominated by the Army and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
With such a large amount of spending on the military, there was no consideration for welfare for the lower classes and the poor, whether in urban or rural areas. From the perspective of people's history, just as in the Edo period, tenant farmers were given freedom of movement, but they remained serfs, potential migrants to the cities, and merely targets for exploitation and oppression. The Meiji regime was a militaristic government that imposed military service on everyone in the name of civic duty from the beginning, and to describe the unrest following the Manchurian Incident as the "rise of the military and the rise of fascism" is likely an attempt to portray the country as having, at least in some way, "democratic in character that did not neglect civil rights" since the establishment of the National Diet. This is a whitewash of the truth.
Britain, which funded and guided the Satsuma-Choshu governments, blocked Russia's advance into Northeast Asia, aiming for the Korean Peninsula, and attempted to use Japan as a vanguard to prevent Russia, France, and Germany from carving up China . This led to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1923) after the First Sino-Japanese War, which supported the Russo-Japanese War. The United States, while late to the imperialist stage during the Civil War, established the Pacific as its new frontier at the end of the 19th century. It colonized the Philippines as a bridgehead to China and sought to join Britain, Russia, France, Germany, and Japan in carving up China. This led to the United States' intervention in the Russo-Japanese War, the dissolution of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and the Pacific War. The depiction of the Meiji era in works like "Clouds Above the Hill" is nothing more than a self-indulgent hallucination of Japan's ruling class.