Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

"After the defeat we became distrustful of the grownups around us, and came to feel the true way of living existed in the opposite of whatever they said. We came to believe that revolution and love were the best and most delicious things in this life, and because they are such good things grownups perversely lied." - Dazai Osamu, 'The Setting Sun' 1947"We say defeated, defeated, but I don't think that's so. We've been ruined. Destroyed. [From one corner to the other the country of Japan is occupied, and every single one of us is a captive.] People who don't find this is shameful are fools." - Dazai Osamu (bracketed words censored by US military)************John W. Dower won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for this history of postwar Japan in an attempt to see the occupation, and reordering of society and polity, from the viewpoint of the vanquished. He begins with the Hirohito radio address declaring an end to the war without admitting responsibility or defeat. Japan had attacked and invaded for the survival and liberation of Asia, not for aggression or aggrandizement. He now sought peace for humanitarian reasons, to save the world from nuclear devastation, asking the nation to make sacrifices along with his own, as he remained on the throne.DespairDower describes the vast destruction in Japan and millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians spread through Asia and the Pacific. General MacArthur and the American occupation were greeted by anger, joy, grief and relief as the displaced were repatriated to refugee camps. Veterans returned from futile and fanatic campaigns, embittered towards those who led them and shunned by others for losing. Atrocity reports followed them home. Widows, orphans and homeless were ostracized. Black markets, prostitutes and crime proliferated as imperialist politicians swiftly switched to liberal parties.PurgesAn American revolution came from above, and communists released from Japanese prisons and endoctrinated POW's from Soviet camps briefly praised defeat of the old guard, but democracy by fiat and freedom under martial law were inherent contradictions. During the occupation of 1945-52 war crime trials were held for military leaders and ministers. A constitution drafted by US lawyers guaranteed freedom of speech, religion and human rights, renouncing prerogatives to wage war. Purges evolved from military officers initially banned from public office to communists as cold war began.ReformsAgrarian land reform and labor laws became a part of the Supreme Command's purview. The large banking-industrial monopolies known as zaibatsu were broken up by antitrust actions. It was a sweeping program to uproot the oligarchy who supported the war as mass disarmament campaigns destroyed weapons and planes. Universal suffrage and equal protection for women shattered social conventions. Nation building, on a scale not seen before or after, was a source of anguish for conservative elites and hope in former subjects. It was seen as a boon granted by a new emperor, MacArthur.SurvivalStarvation was alleviated by aid shipments but hobbled by profiteers, as people ate rodents and insects. Industrialists, politicians and military officers got rich while inflation and unemployment went off the scale. Diseases were rampant, multiple families crowded into shacks. Alcoholism and drug abuse were widespread, robbery and murder commonplace. In time criminals and prostitutes were organized into yakuza gangs. People endured in misery, perhaps as a retribution for the misery caused by their war. Wartime myths of a unique racial and cultural harmony crashed into the postwar reality.CorruptionThe day before surrender military funds and supplies were diverted to private hands, more than the annual budget. The Bank of Japan made massive loans to military contractors, emptying its coffers before the allies arrived, as documents went up in smoke. Echoing Korean comfort women, state sponsored brothels were set up to service the arriving army and protect others chastity. It was ended in six months by occupation authorities as a violation of human rights, but prostitution persisted. Open air black markets sold all things from foodstuffs to industrial materials, looted by the army.SynthesisSexual commercialization took on western pop forms of pulp magazines, hollywood movies, strip shows and chorus lines. Along with the counterculture English loan words accrued. Writers repudiated tradition, espousing decadence. War was an illusion and defeat the human condition; a national body was superseded by the individual body. Marital relationships became more egalitarian, compared to the roles women had played prior to war. Factories retooled from machine guns to sewing machines, business arose catering to G.I.'s. People looked foward to a bright future, a new start from the past.VictorsThe top down approach of American reformers succeeded in dramatically transforming the status quo. MacArthur became a popular figure although he rarely left headquarters and met only a handful of Japanese leaders. Engineering all facets of society from media to banks, schools, hospitals, libraries and government required an army of experts and a million G.I.'s. Mid level officers lived in upper class homes spared from the Tokyo fire bombing with staffs of servants. Relationships developed between conqueror and conquered, democracy and freedom learned to be loved on command.VanquishedWhile Americans lived in their colonial enclaves criticism was forbidden to the press and extraterritorial laws applied. The occupation resembled old forms of racial supremacy, visited on the east by the west. MacArthur's command was a military bureaucracy not unlike that of Hirohito. Rule was made through existing state organs requiring support of the throne. A pivot from monkey-man war propaganda and the detention of a 100,000 Japanese-Americans seemed to be needed. Democracy deemed impossible in Japan, the best that could be hoped for was a constitutional monarchy.RevolutionCulture viewed conformist by the west was a traditional mix of manners and morals in the east, and yet the resistance to reforms by average Japanese was much less than expected. Catastrophic defeat made many question the system that had brought it. Intellectuals went further calling for socialism or communism, left of where the Americans had desired to go. After the Chinese revolution and the Korean war it would be time to fetter freedom, but before then the militarists were forced to resign from newsrooms and universities. Women won national elections and labor unions organized strikes.PropagandaInternational opinion grew in Allied and Asian countries to stage a war crimes trial of the emperor. The decision not to hold Hirohito accountable made it difficult for others to feel responsible, and his retention complicated ideas of popular sovereignty. Wartime analysts had determined he would be useful later and propagandists created fictions he had been tricked and betrayed by gangster militarists. In order to save lives and maintain their control Allies planned to depend on blind obedience to the emperor. Royalist cronies argued all of Japan bore guilt for the defeat with the exception of Hirohito.TrialsThe Allies and the Imperial House collaborated on a rescript, renouncing divinity of the emperor and racial superiority, as Shinto religion was separated from the state. Hirohito was hailed in the US, a hero and leader of democratic reform, seen as a bulwark against communism. Both the court and cabinet discussed his abdication, but MacArthur would have none of it. Princes who had been politicians and generals in the war were absolved, including those involved in atrocities. Trials were held through 1948 for crimes against peace and humanity. The emperor resolved to remain on the throne.DemocracyAfter months of proposals from the government and political parties for a revised constitution MacArthur issued a memo outlining three principles and ordered the army to write up it in a week. His tenets were to preserve the emperor, proscribe the military and end feudalism. With Hirohito's endorsement it was adopted into law although conservatives were aghast. He toured each prefect and endeared himself to the nation. Prior to surrender he never spoke in public and was rarely seen. Preservation of the emperor, no longer a sovereign, made the constitution acceptable to both polity and people.GuiltWith values of freedom came a strict censorship. Criticism of MacArthur and the Americans was excised from newspapers radio and theater. As Tokyo trials proceeded highly ranked officials were imprisoned or executed, eventually thousands across Asia and the Pacific. Charges of judicial idealism and victor's justice contributed to a later neo-nationalism. Many imagined drumhead court martials and firing squads rather than lengthy legal battles. Allies were enraged over abuse of prisoners, the most common conviction. In Manchuria lethal medical experiments had killed three thousand captives. The director was co-opted by the CIA and his research resumed.ReconstructionIn the cold war charges against high profile capitalists and bureaucrats were dropped. Communists now a concern, occupation forces aligned with the right wing. Politicians who were purged returned to public office. The radical left became censored and removed from their positions of power. European victors attempted to re-establish rule in SE Asia, nuclear arms races ensued while war erupted again in Korea. MacArthur bowed out as Americans re-armed their former enemy. Japan's disasterous downfall would be rivaled by a miraculous recovery as Hirohito visited presidents and kings.This book was meticulously researched by Dower, a Harvard Ph.D in Japanese history and language. Since then he was a professor in California State and an emeritus historian at MIT. It is not weighed down by ponderous academic style. Dower enlivens the text with photos and stories from the news and popular culture of the period, balanced by the political and economic facts. Arranged by topic, individual sections follow a timeline. Dower may be better read after 'Hirohito' by Herbert Bix, his fellow alumni and Pulitzer winner, a biography and political history of WWII Japan.

Book Review: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. By John W. Dower. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd, 1999. Pp 676. ISBN 0-393-04686-9) Embracing Defeat begins where the Pacific War ends. It is a detailed examination of Japan in the aftermath of the war. John W. Dower adroitly leads the reader through the arc of this history as Japan literally rises from ashes at war’s end on August 15, 1945, and then guides us through the US Occupation period and beyond. Rather than a simple chronology, Dower organized his book into sections and topics that focus on the Japanese people, their sufferings, the rationalization of their defeat, and their adjustment to a “New Japan.” Dower’s organization provides the reader insight and sensitivity to the range of difficulties faced by a country devastated by war and left with unimaginable challenges to reconstruct a livable country. Clearly, Dower mastered his subject. The depth of the Japanese plight is borne out in sections with titles like “Shattered Lives,” “Displaced Persons,” “Stigmatized Victims,” and “Mocking Defeat.” Japan, a country that was an industrial power in the 1920s, had become a “fourth-rate nation” by war’s end. (44) And while the allies’ story may be explained in the word victory, Dower digs deep in his account of the diverse opinions, emotions, actions, and motivations held by the Japanese people, brought about by the word defeat. A further example of Dower’s organization is that, although General MacArthur’s name is frequently cited, he is almost never the central figure in the narrative. The view is clearly from and about the Japanese. Perhaps the most enlightening sections of Dower’s work are the first few chapters which focus on the conflicted Japanese people. Japanese culture worshipped the Emperor as Deity, in a way comparable to the worship of Jesus Christ to the Christians. To die for the Emperor was deemed an honor to many. The abrupt end to the war and the devastating defeat was literally and figuratively a bombshell which was universally felt by the Japanese people. When Emperor Hirohito broadcast via radio that the war was over, that the war had been in vain, that Japan had been defeated, it was the first time nearly anyone in Japan had heard his voice. Dower tells us that at the time of Emperor Hirohito’s radio broadcast on August 15, approximately 9.0 million people in Japan were homeless and that “approximately 6.5 million Japanese were stranded in Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific Ocean area.” (47, 48) Although Dower tells us that repatriation was “an impressive accomplishment,” many Japanese returned to a country they hardly recognized. “Many adults who returned after years abroad found that their families had been shattered. Urban neighborhoods had been obliterated.” (57) Many never returned. Returning soldiers were often stigmatized victims, according to the author. Many who had been sent off to war with victory parties and chants of “100 million hearts beating as one,” were frequently viewed as pathetic outcasts. In some respects they had let the Emperor down. Onlookers dubbed their military uniforms as “defeat suits,” their shoes as “defeat shoes.” (170) Outcasts represented a large part of the population and included not only veterans, but the homeless, the hungry. Daily living was as hard as imaginable for the impoverished postwar survivors who received little sympathy. Dower characterizes Japanese culture as a harsh environment for outcasts. He states: “There existed no strong tradition of responsibility toward strangers, or of unrequited philanthropy, or of tolerance or even genuine sympathy…toward those who suffered misfortune.” (61) The US Occupation began in late August and the formal surrender took place aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces (“SCAP”) was given unprecedented authority to bring order to chaos. “SCAP’s mission was nothing less than to carry out the demilitarization and democratization of Japan.” (77) While millions of Japanese were homeless and starving, initial SCAP orders seemed insensitive. They were “not [to] assume any responsibility for the economic rehabilitation of Japan or the strengthening of the Japanese economy….The plight of Japan is the direct outcome of its own behavior.” (529) Almost from the beginning though, this order began to soften; it would change dramatically over time. Dower shows us that over the six-year and eight-month US Occupation, the world changed; thus as new conflicts emerged, the relationship between the United States and her allies changed. These unforeseen changes altered the US-Japanese relationship during the occupation well beyond what could have been imagined in 1945. Amidst the human misery that was so visible in Japan in 1945 and 1946, SCAP proceeded with what must be considered a radical agenda for a victorious occupying power—the implementation of democracy and the development of a new Japanese constitution. “The Americans had long looked askance at the Meiji charter, deeming it incompatible with the healthy development of responsible democratic government.” This made the existing charter incompatible with the primary goals of the United States, its allies, and SCAP. (346) Initially, SCAP endeavored to work through an array of influential Japanese to revise the existing charter or encourage development of a constitution that would be consistent with liberal and democratic ideals required by SCAP and the Potsdam Proclamation. Dower discusses in great detail several unsuccessful Japanese attempts toward this end. The author cites that SCAP’s authority to impose a new constitution on Japan could be rationalized by its authority under Section 6 of the Potsdam Declaration, which stated, “There must be elimination for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.” Dower intimates that this was interpreted as requiring the establishment of constitutional protections against future abuses of authority. (347) Dower also cites Sections 10 and 12 as other sections of the Potsdam Declaration that supported SCAP’s involvement in the establishment of a new constitution. After several months and seemingly frustrated, MacArthur and his top aides in Government Section [of SCAP] concluded that “the [Japanese] government was incapable of proposing revisions that would meet the Potsdam requirements.” (360) In February 1946 MacArthur ordered that Government Section draft a new constitution for Japan. This bold act, characteristically MacArthur, was an unprecedented act by an occupying power. Produced in secret in order to devise a way to give it Japanese authorship, this draft, with relatively minor changes, ultimately became the new Japanese constitution in May 1947. It was by all accounts an exceptionally liberal constitution which included reforms such as female suffrage, agrarian reform, and a highly controversial “Article 9” which denunciated war. Dower demonstrates in many ways how the relationship between the vanquished Japanese and the allies represented by SCAP began to shift over time. The most notable of several examples was caused by the emerging Cold War. Initially, SCAP sought to foster reconstruction of Japan on a lesser economic scale and Section 9 forced demilitarization. But as Dower explains, “Driven by Cold War considerations, the Americans began to jettison many of the original ideals of ‘demilitarization and democratization’ that had seemed so unexpected and inspiring to a defeated populace in 1945.” (525) Instead of breaking up big business and prosecuting prominent capitalists and bureaucrats, as Cold War fever mounted, Americans sought to reinvigorate the economy with Japan ultimately viewed as a first line “bulwark against communism.” In the vernacular of the times, this dramatic change was referred to as the “reverse course.” When the Korean War erupted on June 25, 1950, Japan and its US Occupation forces were nothing less than an asset against communist aggression. Moreover, the period leading up to the war saw the revitalization of key heavy industrial expansion in Japan which proved a boon to her economy. Dower tells us that during the Korean War period, American “special procurements” from Japan amounted to billions of US dollars in Japanese exports. These purchases continued for years after the end to the Korean War. Dower states: “This prolonged windfall enabled Japan to increase its imports greatly and virtually double its scale of production in key industries.” (542) Embracing Defeat is a most important contribution to modern Japanese history. On one hand it can be viewed as a capstone to Pacific War history for it does provide an insightful epilogue to the war. In another sense this work provides a genesis to the Japanese Miracle because it ends just as Japan, Inc. is acquiring its economic footing. Dower’s ability to aptly organize his abundant scholarship into very readable prose is also noteworthy. The book belongs on the shelf of any serious student of Japan, or for that matter, any serious student of twentieth-century history.

Many books have been written about the allied occupation of Germany at the end of WW2 , I have got and read a few of of them , and life was undoubtedly harsh during those times. This is the fist book that I have come across that is purely to do with the American occupation of Japan at the end of the Pacific War. It is Brilliant in is detail if you like history , geography ,and a fair amount of facts and figures. Further , it has good deal of eye witness accounts that give it a human dimension. I won't give any details , if modern history is your thing , read for yourself. Enjoy.

As a resident of Japan over the past 12 years, I have been meaning to read this book for a long time and I am delighted I finally got around to it. Over the years there have been many aspects of Japanese ideas and opinions on this most sensitive of subjects which I didn`t understand. Many of these issues remain current to this day.All of my questions and many more are comprehensively answered by Mr Dower`s painstaking and thoroughly researched work. I knew the US influence on post-war Japan was strong, but quite how strong, pervasive and longlasting (for good and ill) is staggering. Mr Dower has written a gripping and human account of a tumultous period of history.

This is a very difficult book to read, as it goes into the psyche of the Japanese and their reason for entering the second world war. I was interested in the book, having been captive as a child, with my mother, for 4 years In a Japanese concentration camp on Java, Indonesia. I found it interesting to read about the US efforts to bring the Japanese to accept an 'honourable' defeat

Excellent account of the problems facing Japan and its citizens following the defeat of WWII. Well-written and a good read. One wonders how much of this history is known to the present generations of Japanese and, thus, of the background of many Japanese traits today.

Bought as a gift. My daughter loved it.