Page 1 of 2 At odds with Japanese political sense
By Herbert Bix
On October 31, General Tamogami Toshio, Japan's Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF)
chief of staff, was abruptly dismissed from his post in the Defense Ministry,
but allowed to retire with his full pension rather than be summarily fired.
At a press conference several months earlier, Tamogami, who had also been the
superintendent of the SDF Joint Staff College, publicly expressed contempt for
a ruling by the Nagoya High Court that the Japanese military mission in Iraq
was unconstitutional. [1] On this occasion, the outspoken general, widely known
among his peers for provocatively hawkish views, crossed several more lines.
He entered and won the top prize of 3 million yen (US$30,000) in
an essay contest sponsored by a large scandal-marred construction and real
estate conglomerate, the APA Group, which required contestants to write on "The
True Outlook for Modern and Contemporary History". APA's president is Motoya
Toshio, the author of historical works and a key figure in political
organizations supporting the Komatsu air base in Ishikawa prefecture (fronting
the Sea of Japan). He has strong ties to former prime minister Abe Shinzo and
other rightist politicians, including Tamogami. [2]
As far as is known, superiors in the Defense Ministry's chain of command did
not carefully scrutinize Tamogami's essay or any of the 94 essays submitted by
ASDF soldiers. A notorious Nanjing atrocity denier, Professor Watanabe Shoichi
headed the panel of judges that awarded the prize. And the essays were
apparently "solicited for the purpose of 'steering Japan toward a correct
understanding of history as an independent nation'." [3]
The views the general expressed did more than simply contravene the official
positions of his civilian supervisors. By arguing that Japanese colonial rule
was humane and legal, and that Japan was not an aggressor in World War II,
Tamogami contradicted the constitution and the official government stance of
apology to the nations that Japan had invaded before and during World War II.
At the same time, he placed himself at odds with the political sense of most
educated Japanese people. (A translation of Tamogami's essay (English) is
here.
The governments of China and South Korea immediately condemned Tamogami's
views, as did Japan's leading parliamentary opposition parties, who hoped to
use the affair to topple the country's new LDP prime minister, Aso Taro. Aso's
own controversial nationalist ideas on history and the constitution are similar
to Tamogami's, but as prime minister he fired the general and refrained from
discussing his ideas. An unrepentant Tamogami, however, held his ground and
reiterated that the Japanese "people had been misled by erroneous education"
into thinking that their country once had a dark past. [3]
In his desire to free the Japanese military from constitutional restraints,
Tamogami might have encouraged many senior and junior active-duty ASDF officers
to join him in entering essays (of unknown content) in the same competition:
the number varies from over 50 to as many as 95. [4] The impression conveyed is
that these ASDF officers are heir to the “young officers” of an earlier era who
exploited ideas of a "Showa Restoration" in an effort to accelerate Japanese
rearmament and expansion in the 1930s. The difference is that the uniformed
officers of today are supposed to be under "civilian (bureaucratic and
parliamentary) control", not in spiritual rebellion against the nation's peace
constitution. It is notable, however, that the civilian bureaucrats in the
Defense Ministry, six of whom have also had their knuckles lightly rapped,
initially hesitated to discipline Tamogami and his followers.
Writing on the theme, “Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?”, Tamogami argued the
following:
Japanese colonial and semi-colonial rule, based on legal treaties, was "very
moderate" in nature and beneficial to Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese alike. To
defend these legally-recognized positions Japan waged justifiable wars.
It was the Comintern, according to Soviet intelligence sources, and not the
Kwantung Army that might have engineered the assassination of the Chinese
warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928, which set the stage for Japan to take over all of
Manchuria.
Japan never waged an illegal war of aggression in China starting in 1931, or
elsewhere in the European and American colonies in Southeast Asia and the
Pacific a decade later.
Manchukuo, unlike the Western colonies where racism was the basis of rule,
really was a bastion of racial tolerance; so too was imperial Japan.
The Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party played an evil role in the
Japan-China War, manipulating Chiang Kai-shek to attack Japan.
President Franklin D Roosevelt "very carefully" entrapped Japan into attacking
Pearl Harbor after Comintern spies, such as Harry Dexter White in the Treasury
Department, wrote the "Hull Note" that helped "manipulate president Roosevelt
and draw [Japan] into a war with the United States."
"Had Japan not fought the Greater East Asia War at that time," it could not
"have experienced the world of racial equality that we have today." Indeed,
without the War of Greater East Asia, Japan might have become "a white nation's
colony."
In sum, Tamogami concluded, "what this
country has done is wonderful". Toward the end of his essay, citing many
limitations on Japan's Self-Defense Forces, he stresses that it should be
allowed to exercise the right of collective self-defense - the implication
being that it could then assist allies under attack, something that would
obviously necessitate constitutional revision.
Clearly, true and false are not issues for Tamogami; belief in a "normal"
(war-waging) state and more voice for the professional officer class are. The
General tampers with facts; he uses evidence selectively; he cherry-picks
international law when it suits his purpose; and he omits any mention of
figures on Asian or Japanese civilian and military deaths from the wars of the
1930s and early 1940s. His aim is to forge a body of activist officers who will
participate in political combat, promoting the "true" perspective on history,
even if it is not factually true for the particular historical period he cares
about.
But none of his assertions are in any way new. For more than half a century,
high ranking civilian and military officials have repeatedly made statements
that provoked domestic and international controversy - either for speaking with
a forked tongue on issues of war responsibility, or for reiterating, often
unconsciously, crudely nationalistic sentiments of the type that Tamogami
expressed. Such incidents reflect badly on the intellectual quality of the
officials involved.
They touch off storms of political debate within Japan and breed distrust of
Japan in China, Korea, and other nations that experienced Japanese occupation.
But they also serve to heighten popular vigilance against the danger of
domestic militarism. Regrettably, comparable effects are seldom produced by
policies initiated by Japan's security alliance partner, the United States,
whose endless war crusades and entrenched militarism have distorted national
life and undermined international order.
What then are we to make of Tamogami's views? Put aside his ignorance of
history, international law, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, and his
misinterpretation of sources and documents such as secretary of state Cordell
Hull's memorandum of November 26, 1941. Is Tamogami motivated by a sense of
wounded self-esteem and wrong inflicted by the US and its allies on Japan after
its military and ideological defeat in 1945? Is this the reason why he is
unable to recognize the many unjust acts and countless crimes committed by
Japan in the course of its colonialism and invasion of neighboring states?
Consider, for a moment, questions of hypocrisy and double standards in
assessing the actions of Japan, the United States, and other nations that went
to war throughout the 20th century.
In 1945, the US and the Soviet Union took the lead in establishing the legal
nomenclature of war crimes and the principles for adjudicating them and
punishing offenders. At the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Tokyo
(1946-8), a small number of Japanese leaders were prosecuted and punished for
the crime of aggression and for war crimes in the narrow sense. But the problem
of European, American, and Japanese colonialism was ignored. And the war crimes
of the Allies, which culminated in the American terrorist bombing of sixty-four
Japanese cities and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were
also never adjudicated. During the IMT, attempts by American and Japanese
defense attorneys to raise these issues were rejected out of hand.
Moreover, the United States helped Britain, France, and The Netherlands to
restore their respective colonial empires by waging war to destroy the national
independence movements of their former colonial subjects. While these colonial
powers were
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