2024-02-26
The military did not ignore public opinion. Rather, it responded to public expectations and skillfully gained popular support as it pressed ahead toward war.
February 25, 2018
Since August four years ago, I had changed my habits so completely that it would be no exaggeration to say I hardly read the book review section of the Asahi Shimbun at all.
Recently, deciding that monitoring the Asahi Shimbun was the job of professional commentators, I stopped subscribing to the paper after many years and switched to the Sankei Shimbun.
Then, this morning, the book review section of the Yomiuri Shimbun, which I had begun subscribing to before the Sankei, caught my eye.
These are facts that the people of Japan and the world should know.
Populism in Prewar Japan, by Kiyotada Tsutsui
Reviewed by Satoshi Naraoka, professor of political history at Kyoto University
The emphasis within the text, apart from the headings, and the passages between asterisks are mine.
The Causes That Opened the Road to War
The view that prewar Japan was an oppressive society remains widespread.
Many people believe that militarism arose from that society and that the military ran out of control, dragging Japan into war.
There certainly was an element of truth to this.
At the same time, however, Japan had introduced universal suffrage by the end of the Taishō era, and democratization had advanced to a considerable degree.
I previously wrote that Kappa Senoo’s masterpiece “Boy A” was the finest work of war literature for conveying the reality of the Second World War.
Mr. Senoo lived through the prewar and wartime years when he was a student at a prestigious old-system middle school in Kobe.
His school life and friendships seemed just like my own high school life.
In other words, by writing with remarkable naturalness about what he actually saw and experienced as an old-system middle school student, he exposed the falsehoods of the notions that Japan was evil and its people were ignorant—ideas that, in my view, GHQ had instilled and the Asahi Shimbun and others had spread. That is why I consider it a true masterpiece.
Moreover, the military did not ignore public opinion. Rather, there was also an aspect in which it responded to public expectations and skillfully gained popular support as it pressed ahead toward war.
Why, then, did party politics collapse in the early Shōwa era and ultimately lead to the catastrophe of war?
To be continued.