Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II Read Free

established by the Meiji constitution was to give even more power and control to the armed forces.The army and navy ministers who were members of the cabinet could only be appointed from the ranks of retired or serving generals or admirals.This meant that if they resigned and no suitable general or admiral was willing to replace them, the government would fall.It was as if the system had been designed to create a military that could not be controlled by the elected representatives of the people.)
    As the nineteenth century came to a close the Japanese had adopted a new constitution, had introduced heavy industry to their country and were building a modern army.Now they looked at the powerful Western nations and learnt there was one more attribute they needed in order to be considered a powerful, sophisticated nation — colonies.Virtually all of Southeast Asia was under foreign domination — the British ruled Burma and Malaya, the Dutch the East Indies and the French today’s Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.The lesson the Japanese took from this was clear; strong nations had the right — almost the obligation — to dominate weaker ones.As soon as they felt powerful enough the Japanese moved on their neighbours Korea and Taiwan (then called Formosa).In the hope of halting Japanese aggression on the Asian mainland, in 1894 the Chinese signed a treaty that gave Taiwan to Japan — an act that demonstrated to the Japanese how weak the once mighty empire of China, now torn apart by internal conflict, had become.Similarly, the Russian Empire discovered the power of the imperial armed forces when, in 1904, Japanese ships sank the Tsar’s fleet in a surprise attack at Port Arthur.Korea was also brought under Japanese control and formally made part of the Japanese ‘Empire’ in 1910.During the First World War the Japanese, obliged to fight on the British side as the result of another treaty, gained further colonies, this time at the expense of Germany — Kiaochao in China and the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall islands in the Pacific.Then, in 1915, with the West distracted by the war in Europe, the Japanese moved their army deeper into Manchuria, occupying key positions in order to ‘protect their interests’.The First World War ended with Japan’s position as the most modern, powerful, industrialized nation in Asia confirmed.It is hardly surprising, therefore, that during this period the Japanese treated European prisoners humanely — was Japan not effectively a European nation itself?
    While their army triumphed over Japan’s neighbours abroad, at home in 192S the vote was given to every Japanese adult.On the surface, democracy seemed entrenched.Political parties argued with each other as Japanese women shopped for Western-style clothes and goods in the Ginza in Tokyo.In the early 1920s Crown Prince Hirohito went on a much-publicized visit to Britain and played golf with the Prince of Wales.It was as if all Japan had heeded the words of the popular slogan, first coined by an academic in 1885, ‘Abandon Asia — go for the West!’But all this was only on the surface.The most significant legacy of the Meiji constitution remained etched into this new Japanese society — the most decidedly non-Western power of the monarch.And, most crucially of all, the emperor of Japan was, as a direct result of the Meiji restoration, now considered by his subjects to be more than a mere human being.A few Japanese had always acted as if their emperor was divine, but to the majority of Japanese pre-Meiji the emperor had been a remote figure, with no control over their lives.In the late nineteenth century all that had changed.In a conscious attempt by the monarchists to make the position of the emperor inviolable, Shinto (the ancient animistic religion of Japan) was made the state religion and it was decreed that the emperor, as a descendant of the sun-goddess, should be worshipped as a god.The importance of this conscious, political act cannot