Tamogami, Palin, and populist conservatisms

It has been just over a year since General Tamogami Toshio (ASDF-ret.), then the chief of staff of Japan's Air Self-Defense Forces, was drummed out of the service after he was awarded the top prize in an essay contest sponsored by the APA Group for his essay "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?"

In the year since he became a household name, Tamogami has become a leading figure of the Japanese right, as I expected following his appearance before the House of Councillors foreign and defense affairs committee. According to his website, by year's end he will have given more than seventy lectures across Japan. He has made at least seven TV appearances, and has his name on twelve books (aside from a number of them being transcripts of conversations with other right-wing figures, it is unlikely that Tamogami has written much of what his name is attached to). And he has been the subject of a fawning special issue of WiLL, which features his writings, including autobiographical writings, conversations between Tamogami and Ishihara Shintaro and Kobayashi Yoshinori, and contributions from right-wingers like Sakurai Yoshiko (whose "work" Tamogami cited in his essay), Watanabe Shoichi (the Sophia University emeritus professor who chaired the selection committee for the APA contest), Nishimura Shingo, an outspoken Diet member, and Kyoto University's Nakanichi Terumasa, among other regular contributors to WiLL and similar publications.

Tamogami Toshio: Japan's Sarah Palin.

The comparison is not without merit. Like Palin, Tamogami claims to be speaking the truth to power, in both cases left-wing elites who they claim have stifled the expression of the country's true identity. (The WiLL issue is full of complaints about double standards aimed at the Asahi Shimbun especially, complaints about free speech only for those who speak ill of Japan.) While Tamogami and other revisionist conservatives claim to care only about revealing the noble truth of Japan's wartime past and its beautiful history and seek to promote policies that will enable the Japanese people to be proud of their country again, the revisionist right's program is less a program than an aesthetic appeal, a collection of slogans about pride and greatness, about reclaiming Japan's past from the anti-Japan Japanese left and escaping the postwar regime.

And so with Mrs. Palin. As far as I can tell from the reviews, her book is long on right-wing platitudes, extremely short on policy substance. And like her Japanese counterpart, Mrs. Palin sees the "lamestream" media as the enemy within. Like Tamogami, Palin is the voice of a defensive, populist conservatism mobilized to defend traditions seen as under siege by left-wing elites who want to weaken the resolve of their respective countries in the face of threats at home and abroad.

Both have found considerable success as private citizens, finding it easier to speak truth to power when not in a position of authority. Not surprisingly Tamogami has, according to Asahi, rejected LDP overtures to run as a candidate on the LDP's proportional representation list in next summer's House of Councillors election. Why would Tamogami want to trade the lecture circuit for a seat in the upper house, in which he would have to wait his turn to speak, obey certain rules of decorum, and be only one of 242? He has far more freedom to attack the DPJ government now than he would as a representative from a marginalized LDP.

Meanwhile, the similarities between Japan's revisionist right and America's populist right will be in full view next year when Tamogami visits New York City to give a speech and appear at a dinner cruise. Sharing the stage with him will be Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who posed a surprisingly formidable challenger for John McCain in the race for the 2008 Republican Party presidential nomination. While Huckabee has crafted a kinder, gentler image than the moose-hunting, media-scorning Palin (he has been a regular on Comedy Central, after all), he occupies a similar space in the post-2008 conservative movement, a populist evangelical Christian who has railed against the powers that be not just on cultural grounds but on economic grounds (alienating some Republicans in the process). Some polls show him as a front runner for the Republican nomination in 2012.

I hope someone will ask Huckabee why he has agreed to share the stage with Tamogami, who you may recall believes that the US went to war against Japan because Franklin Roosevelt was manipulated by Stalin (through the influence of Harry Dexter White). Perhaps some journalist will ask Huckabee what he thinks about Tamogami's thoughts on the humanitarianism of the Japanese empire or Japan's war of self-defense against China or his opposition to the corrupting influence of America upon Japanese culture or his calls for a Japanese nuclear arsenal.

I have a hard time seeing how someone viewed as a serious contender for the nomination of a major party could associate himself with Tamogami and still be taken seriously.

After the launch

In the wake of North Korea's Unha-2 launch Sunday, the Japanese establishment and public have uniformly reacted with a sense of outrage and a desire for an vigorous Japanese and international response to the test.

With substantial public support — 78% of respondents in a Yomiuri poll — the government is investigating tightening sanctions and plans to secure a cabinet decision authorizing further sanctions on 10 April. The Aso government is also working with the US and South Korean governments to secure a new UN Security Council resolution condemning North Korea's actions over Chinese and Russian doubts. Sankei reports that in its work to assemble a coalition in support of the resolution, the foreign ministry is not looking for new sanctions to be included in the UN resolution, as a means of making the resolution more attractive to China and Russia.

Other Japanese are thinking beyond sanctions and resolutions. Nakagawa Shoichi, the disgraced former finance minister and leading conservative in the LDP, responded to the launch on Sunday by once again calling for a debate on acquiring nuclear weapons. (He most recently did so after the October 2006 nuclear test, when he was head of the LDP's policy research council — at which time Aso Taro, then foreign minister, joined him in calling for a debate on acquiring a nuclear arsenal.) To my knowledge, Jiji is the only news outlet that reported on Nakagawa's comments. The Tokyo Shimbun reports that he spoke only of a debate about how Japan can defend itself, and suggesting that it should consider acquiring the ability to strike at "enemy bases." I'm inclined to believe that Jiji's report is correct: why would Nakagawa be any more discreet now than he was when he had an official position? No longer a leader of the LDP's conservatives, his words carry less weight, but he still provides insight into how Japan's conservatives think about the region. After all, Nakagawa's remarks echo what Tamogami Toshio, former ASDF chief of staff and the new darling of the right, has said about nuclear weapons. In an interview with Sankei last November, Tamogami spoke of the deterrent effect of even publicly considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons — and suggested that ruling out the acquisition of nuclear weapons from the start weakens deterrence. More recently, in a conversation with defense affairs commentator Ushio Masato (a former ASDF airman, trustee of Sakurai Yoshiko's think tank the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, and regular in the pages of Sapio, Seiron, and Shokun!) published as the book「自衛隊はどこまで強いのか」(To what extent is the JSDF strong?), Tamogami calls for the acquisition of ballistic missiles as the best way to negotiate with North Korea and says that "the most effective way for Japan to become an independent country is to be nuclear-armed."

The conservative argument has little to do with North Korea's test, which was once again a failure, albeit less of a failure than July 2006, when its Taepodong-2 dropped into the Sea of Japan within a minute of launch. This time it managed to drop the first stage before the second and third fell into the Pacific. (Geoffrey Forden considers North Korea's progress in missile development here.) Despite no tangible change in US deterrent capabilities or the US commitment to Japan's defense — by all accounts US-Japan cooperation went smoothly in anticipation of the launch — the conservatives are agitating about Japan's vulnerabilties. For example, Sankei, in a news article that reads more like an article in a conservative opinion magazine, writes of the "possibility that data collected by the US military will not be adequately transferred" to Japan. As Tamogami's remarks above suggest, the acquisition of nuclear weapons is not about — or not only about — their deterrent value. Nor it is about the nature of the North Korean threat, which has gotten no worse as a result of the latest launch. (And, MTC suggests, the missile threat may be less worrisome than the ability of North Korean agents to cause havoc on Japanese soil.)

It is be about Japan's being able to defend itself without having to worry about the reliability of the US-Japan alliance. Conservatives like Nakagawa and Tamogami would be calling for more robust military capabilities even if the rocket launch had failed immediately after liftoff as in 2006. (We should be thankful that Tamogami is so open with his thoughts.)

All that has changed is that for the moment the eyes of the news media and the Japanese people are on North Korea.

Nevertheless, the conservative position has little public support. A new Shin-Hodo 2001 poll found 19.4% of respondents in favor of Japan's going nuclear and 72.8% opposed. (By comparison, a Hodo 2001 poll released on 15 October 2006, after the nuclear test, found 82.6% opposed to Japan's going nuclear and only 13.8% in favor: A slight shift, but for now probably not a significant shift.)

But will the legal and economic measures favored by the government and the public make any difference? What can Japan and the other participants in the six-party talks realistically do in response to North Korea's launch, other than protest?

As Mainichi reports, further sanctions will have little effect due to earlier sanctions on trade between Japan and North Korea. Economic sanctions on North Korea strikes me as the economic equivalent of "making the rubble bounce." The same holds true, even more so, for further US sanctions or even a reversion to a hardline on North Korea. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, has insisted that if the UN does nothing in response to a clear violation of UNSC Resolution 1718 it will weaken the six-party talks, which may or may not be true but shows that the Obama administration will likely press on with talks, although Yomiuri claims to see evidence of a US shift to a harder line.

Joshua Stanton suggests that there are a number of tools at the Obama administration's disposal, including a number of financial measures that could choke off the regime's access to hard currency from abroad. Maybe so, but at what cost? As Fred Kaplan argues at Slate, the US has no good options for dealing with the DPRK. The six-party talks will not result in denuclearization, not any time soon at least. Ignoring North Korea raises the prospect that North Korea will up the ante in its bid for attention. Boxing in the regime, as recommended by Stanton, presumably raises the risk of the regime lashing out in desperation — or, worse yet, that the regime will collapse for the US and its neighbors are prepared to deal with the consequences of regime collapse (a contingency that the US and North Korea's neighbors, China especially, should be devoting considerable energy to preparing for). There is no good option available to the US, Japan, and South Korea in the absence of more Chinese pressure, which may not be as viable an option as Kaplan suggests it is.

The only course of action may be getting a token resolution out of the Security Council and delaying a bit before resuming the six-party talks, and preparing for the possibility of regime collapse, in the meantime doing whatever possible to coax North Korea open in the hope of making collapse marginally less dangerous for North Korea's neighbors and less jarring for the downtrodden people of the DPRK.

And as for Japan, it ought to be less worried about its deterrent capabilities than about fixing the defense ministry, which over the weekend once again revealed its problems with handling information.

General Tamogami refuses to fade away

Is Tamogami Toshio a millstone around Aso Taro's neck?

The now former chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Forces (ASDF) appeared before the House of Councillors foreign and defense affairs committee and continued his determined campaign to dispel the postwar consensus on Japan's wartime past.

In his remarks, General Tamogami appeared to play dumb. Asked about the Murayama statement, in which then-Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi made a sincere apology for Japan's wartime behavior (and argued that "Japan must eliminate self-righteous nationalism"), the general hid behind his and his fellow airmen's right to freedom of speech. He noted that his essay said nothing about the Murayama statement and asserted that even JSDF members have the right to freedom of speech.

The essence of civilian control is that the prime minister is the commander-in-chief of the JSDF and the Diet is responsible for "basic administration." While it is true that General Tamogami did not use the phrase "Murayama statement" in his essay, only a fool would be satisfied with that answer; General Tamogami's essay was all about the Murayama statement and the worldview that produced it and has sustained it in the thirteen years since it was promulgated. The general certainly knew what he was doing. Say what you will about Japan's revisionists, but they are not fools (as in the case of the Nanjing massacre: most don't deny that something happened in Nanjing, but many turn it into a matter of numbers, shifting the discussion from the enormity of what the Imperial Army did in Nanjing to China's purported manipulation of the figures to make Japan look bad).

Of course, now that he is out of the service General Tamogami did not hesitate to criticize the Murayama statement, describing it as "an instrument for the supression of one's opinions." But questioning the fact that ninety-seven members of the JSDF submitted essays to a revisionist essay contest is not the suppression of the freedom of speech — it is the reassertion of civilian control. The SDF ethos encourages SDF personnel to "refrain from taking part in political activities." While the APA essay contest may not have technically been a "political activity," the submission of essays by JSDF personnel was effectively political. By questioning the civilian government's official position on Japan's wartime history (Mr. Aso reaffirmed the Murayama statement in Diet interpellations in early October, although there are now questions as to whether Mr. Aso has accepted the Murayama statement), General Tamogami was deliberately insubordinate to his commander-in-chief, and given that his essay had the potential to undermine the government's efforts to build closer relations with China and South Korea, it is hard to see this affair as anything but interference by a senior JSDF officer in political matters. Merely asking the general to surrender his pension is mild, considering that he had been openly calling for historical revisionism for years before this incident.

On balance, I'm not sure whether this hearing was a good thing. I certainly think that it's better that these views are out in the open, but it seems that all the hearing accomplished was assisting General Tamogami in his transition from ASDF general to right-wing pundit. It won't be long now before he is a regular contributor to Voice and Will. He is already being treated as a matyr for the cause by his fellow revisionists; for example, Hiranuma Takeo, former LDP member and adviser to Nakagawa Shoichi's "True Conservative Policy Research Group," has criticized the defense minister's request that the general gave up his pension. It may have been better off to let General Tamogami fade away, as another loudmouth general disrespectful of his civilian masters once said of old soldiers. (The general played up his matyrdom, saying, "I think the world is full of examples of dismissal for saying that one's own country is a bad country, but I don't think there's a single example of dismal for saying that one's own country is a good country.")

Meanwhile General Tamogami has probably hurt Mr. Aso. In the short term Mr. Aso has won a small victory, for as a quid-pro-quo for the general's appearance the opposition parties have agreed to bring the bill extending the MSDF refueling mission to a vote in the upper house foreign and defense affairs committee on Tuesday and the whole house on Wednesday, freeing the lower house to pass the bill again on next Thursday. But in the meantime General Tamogami has reinserted history onto the public agenda, which will undoubtedly lead to new questions regarding just what Mr. Aso thinks of these matters. Mr. Aso has categorically rejected the general's putting his freedom of speech before civilian control, but I suspect for better or worse that Mr. Aso's comments will not be the last of this issue.

The history issue will not make or break Mr. Aso's government at home, but it does little to help the prime minister and does serve to distract his government from the gathering economic gloom. (Will the foreign press ask Mr. Aso about this while he visits Washington?) I have yet to see any public opinion polls pertaining to General Tamogami's remarks, but I expect that the public is generally not sympathetic to this perspective.

I want to conclude with a word about the general's perspective. In his remarks on Tuesday, General Tamogami raised an argument that has been made in comments on this blog and elsewhere, namely, that Japan has been unfairly singled out for wrongdoing during the war. He further suggested that talk of Japan as a bad country damages JSDF morale.

I have no idea how General Tamogami can prove the latter argument, but I am not totally unsympathetic to his former argument. However, as I argued here, simple moral equivalency between Japan and the European empires does not work. It is a lazy assertion, and when making a legal argument, as the general attempted to do in his essay, it is a baseless assertion. I understand and sympathize with the desire to see one's country as good, but whitewashing the past, pretending that the sorry moments of history were either not sorry or did not happen is no way to glorify one's nation. As noted previously, many American suffer from a similar problem, failing to see history through the eyes of other and failing to appreciate the harm caused by Americans in the name of high ideals. I can understand General Tamogami's frustration. But the answer is not reinventing a glorious past that better serves what the general sees as the needs of the present.

Revisionist America?

At 空, Ken Tanaka responds to yesterday's post about Japanese revisionism by citing Stephen Walt regarding American "historical amnesia."

I definitely take his (and Walt's) point about America's historical amnesia, particularly in regard to Japan. Few Americans appreciate the extent of the damage inflicted upon the Japanese people, or if they do, their appreciation stops at the atomic bombings; in some way the indiscriminate bombing of cities with "conventional" weaponry was far worse. Czeslaw Milosz captured the failure of Americans to understand just how complicated, just how relative reality is in the second chapter of The Captive Mind.

"The man of the east [referring to the eastern bloc]," he wrote, "cannot take Americans seriously because they have never undergone the experiences that teach men how relative their judgments and thinking habits are.

"Their resultant lack of imagination is appalling. Because they were born and raised in a given social order and in a given system of values, they believe that any other order must be 'unnatural,' and that it cannot last because it is incompatible with human nature. But even they may one day know fire, hunger, and the sword. In all probability this is what will occur; for it is hard to believe that when one half of the world is living through terrible disasters, the other half can continue a nineteenth-century mode of life, learning about the distress of its distant fellow-men only from movies and newspapers." (29)

I hardly need to point out that Milosz's observation remains relevant to the present day, 9/11 notwithstanding. (If anything 9/11 reinforced the tendency described by Milosz.)

But historical amnesia is not the same as historical revisionism.

Historical revisionism is, as I have argued, an ideology that is as much about the present and the future as it is about the past. It is an active process. And it involves the conscious and willful denial of generally accepted facts of history. Indeed, in the process of claiming to only be presenting "the facts," the revisionists deny the very existence of facts as commonly understood. For them, the measure of whether something is truthful or not is that it serves political ends. They reject the idea of falsifiability or alternative explanations for events: look at the confidence with which General Tamogami asserted, with merely a whiff of evidence, that the Comintern was behind both the Second Sino-Japanese war and the Pacific war. Revisionists seem to care little about the credibility of the messenger or the method by which the message is produced — only the message matters. Stephen Colbert could have been describing the revisionists when he coined the term "truthiness."



This differs greatly from "historical amnesia," or the natural difference in historical interpretations between history's winners and losers. Granted, Americans have a problem seeing history through the eyes of its "losers." But that is considerably different from the revisionist project, which is a wide-reaching program that seeks to determine how Japanese citizens learn history (by infiltrating the national curriculum, which, unlike in the US, is determined by the central government), how Japanese citizens think about their own country, how Japan conducts its security policy, and how Japan conducts its foreign relations. The analogy to the US fails. Conservative hawks may downplay some of the uglier moments in American history and emphasize the triumphs, particularly international victories, but they are hard pressed to deny those moments and periods outright.

Again, Japanese revisionism is not only or even mainly about the past. By revising how Japanese looks at the war, they also want to revise how Japanese look at the postwar period. If the former was a period marked by glorious sacrifices for emperor and nation, the latter has been marked by selfishness, wanton prosperity, decadence, decay, and "Americanization." The revisionists hope to reclaim the wartime and prewar periods as sources of value for contemporary Japan.

Of course, by working so hard to correct the historical consensus on Japan's wartime behavior, the revisionists merely serve to call attention to the enormity of Japan's behavior — and alarm Japan's neighbors, who remember only too well what Japan did during the war. Revisionism amounts to calling those who suffered at Japan's hands as prisoners of war, slave laborers, comfort women, or unwilling imperial subjects liars.

Revisionism is a problem for the region. It is a mistake to pretend otherwise. Sincere advocates of a more active Japanese security role should doing everything in their power not only to distance themselves from the revisionists, but categorically denounce their brazen denial of history.

Japan's revisionist problem

In my critique of Tamogami Toshio's essay, I asked, "Just how widespread are these views in the JSDF?"

Jun Okumura quickly provided some sort of answer: more than fifty SDF members submitted essays in the contest won by General Tamogami. Sankei reports that the number of ASDF members who submitted essays is actually seventy-eight by the ministry of defense's reckoning. Asahi notes that this constitutes nearly one-third of the contest's 235 entries. Asahi also breaks down the submissions by rank and finds that of those seventy-eight, none except General Tamogami were flag officers, ten were field officers, sixty-four were company-level officers, and four were cadets. Asahi also found that sixty-two had served under General Tamogami when he served as commander of Komatsu base, which Roy Berman of Mutantfrog found plays a central role in the story of the APA essay contest. (Berman did yeoman's work teasing out the various links between the actors of this saga; it's a must-read.) The contents of the Asahi article suggest that it's possible that the ASDF officers who submitted did so after having been "encouraged" by their commander rather than out of conviction.

But that said, it's possible that despite its efforts to project a warm and fuzzy image (cf. Prince Pickles), the JSDF attracts a disportionate number of people who look longingly to Japan's past as a military power and subscribe to the conservative nationalist interpretation of Japan's wartime past.

Does it matter what the members of Japan's armed forces think about Japan's wartime past? Does historical revisionism conflict with the SDF's ethos of ensuring "the continued existence and security of a Japan that stands on the premise of democracy by protecting its peace and independence?" And if so, what can the government do about it?

I would argue that historical revisionism — as it exists in Japan — is incompatible with the SDF's current mission and Japan's security policy. Revisionism is not merely a matter of "historical understanding;" it is an ideology concerning Japan as it is today and how it should be. Go back and read General Tamogami's essay. The problem for him isn't just that the Japanese people don't know the facts (revisionists love that word) of the war. They've been brainwashed for sixty years into believing that Japan's wartime behavior was dishonorable, and this belief in turn has handcuffed the SDF and made Japan dependent on the US for its security. In short, General Tamogami and other revisionists are openly contempuous of Japanese democracy, because they view Japanese citizens as little better than sheep who have been systematically manipulated by Nikkyoso-dominated schools and the Japanese media. Does General Tamogami actually believe that he was serving Japanese democracy, whose institutions and officials have decided, with the support of the public, to constrain the SDF? Why does he think that the path to a more active security policy leads through greater appreciation of World War II? Arguably a stronger case for an active Japanese international security role would be premised on an appreciation of the folly of Japan's war, of the criminality of Japan's war, of a recognition that the acts committed during the war should never be allowed to happen again? This argument, grounded in the preamble of the constitution, has animated Ozawa Ichiro's case for a "normal" Japanese security policy.

The key point here is, as William Faulkner wrote, "the past is never dead. It's not even past." It is not accidental that the historical revisionists are also the most enthusiastic supporters of various schemes for a more active Japanese security policy, why they are the most vocal defenders of the US-Japan alliance (even as they curse the US for abandoning Japan in favor of China) and the most vocal advocates for Japanese participation in all possible foreign deployments. Reclaiming the past is their means of reclaiming the present and future — and perhaps reclaiming the present by "normalizing" the SDF is their way of making the public more sympathetic to their view of the wartime past.

The problem is that their view of the world is not of the twenty-first century. The conservative-revisionist view of international politics derives much from nineteenth-century Social Darwinism, viewing the world as a brutal, relentless struggle among nations, for which nations must steel their spirits if they are to survive. It's not enough for nations to be prosperous materially. They must be spiritually, morally, and culturally sound. Part of this spiritual soundness is appreciating the struggles of the nation's heroes. While the revisionists claim to be striving for objective truth, the value of history for them is that it's instructive, strengthening Japan for international competition. This view also leaves little room for meaningful cooperation with one's rivals.

As I've argued before, this ideology is actually abnormal in the twenty-first century and no less dangerous than Social Darwinism was in the late nineteenth, as it risks leading Japan and Asia down a path of confrontation, strife, and war. I am not suggesting that revisionists are prepared to go down the path of imperial conquest again. But I am suggesting that the mindset that produced that Japanese empire is alive and well. And don't think that China or South Korea won't mention the general's essay the next time the Japanese government talks tough on a regional dispute (a fight over a disputed island, for example).

Japan is not unique in having elites prone to this view of the world. What sets them apart is that historical revisionism is part and parcel of their case for a new Japan.

Which makes it difficult to imagine what the government can do to correct for the politically incorrect (in the sense that the Murayama statement defines what is correct) views of JSDF officers. The government can prohibit publication, of course, or implement a system of vetting the public statements of officers. Defense Minister Hamada Yasukazu suggested that more education is needed for officers. But are education — or bottling up politically unacceptable opinions — satisfactory answers? Not for me. Revisionism exists because the history problem has effectively been swept under the rug since the war ended, left to metatastize into a worldview that seeks to redefine Japanese identity by dismissing the postwar period as aberrant and harkening back to an earlier, purer time.

The government can impose all the safeguards it wants, but there is no safeguard or sanction that can change an individual's ideas. With luck General Tamogami will get the debate he wants. But in the end it will just be another battle in the culture war that has raged since the end of the war.

The Tamogami affair

The Times (of London) reports that Aso Taro may face an upper house censure motion over now-retired General Tamogami Toshio's revisionist essay on Japan's activities on mainland Asia in the 1930s.

I think this would be a mistake — as Jun Okumura noted, Mr. Aso did the right thing. General Tamogami was sacked immediately. Unless it comes out that Mr. Aso somehow vetted the essay in advance, General Tamogami's firing should be the end of Mr. Aso's role in this sordid affair.

But it is worth looking at the general's essay.

Here is my summary of the general's theses.

(1) Japan did not fight a war of aggression: it was a legitimate act of self-defense because Japan's position in Korea and Manchuria was legally recognized.

(2) The Pacific war was effectively the product of Communist manipulation: The Comintern manipulated the Guomindong into provoking Japan so that the two would fight each other. The Comintern also manipulated Franklin Roosevelt into waging war on Japan, because Roosevelt "was not aware of the terrible nature of communism" and was thus easily duped by the Communists into supporting Chiang Kai-shek.

(3) Imperial Japan as humanitarian: Japan was kind to its colonies Korea and Taiwan, and even tried to incorporate them into metropolitan Japan, unlike the European powers. Japan was also the great friend of the peoples of Asia, fighting on their behalf at Versailles and hastening the end of the European empires.

(4) "The US-Japan alliance is great, but...": The alliance is great, but if the alliance continues Japan as we know it will be destroyed. And by the way, if we hadn't fought the war we might even have become "a white nation's colony." Oh, and our Self-Defense Forces, a branch of which I command? They cannot even defend Japan.

Let me start with the obvious contradiction in his argument in thesis (1).

At the start of the essay, General Tamogami dismisses claims that Japan was an aggressor by suggesting that critics simply don't realize that Japan was in Manchuria and Korea on the basis of treaties. Later he suggests that other great powers were aggressors too. Without providing any examples, I will be charitable and assume that he is referring to the presence of the European empires in Asia as opposed to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, which don't help his case.

How is the legality of the European empires any different than the legality of Japan's colonies in Northeast Asia? If anything, the European empires were more secure in their rights in their colonies than Japan was in its colonies, seeing as how it acquired both by coercing the governments of China and Korea. The Dutch had ruled the Dutch East Indies directly for more than two centuries. India had been directly ruled by the British empire for nearly a century at the time of the war. The French had ruled Indochina directly for nearly as long as the British ruled India. In short, international law didn't apply; a Japanese attack on these colonies was legally indistinguishible from an attack on the French or British homelands. And one may recall that Japan did in fact attack these colonies, a fact unmentioned in connection with this argument, meaning ipso facto Japan was an aggressor in the war.

Meanwhile, it is worth recalling that Japan had a reason for using international law to take control of Korea, Taiwan, and portions of mainland China. Japan made a point of conducting its imperial affairs according to international law, as part of a project of showing its neighbors, especially China, that Japan was the most civilized nation in the neighborhood. The peace "negotiations" at Shimonoseki in 1895, when Japan humiliated the Chinese envoys for being unversed in Western international law, was the signature moment in Japan's project to unseat China as the center of Asian civilization; Japan demonstrated to China that Asian affairs would now be conducted by a new standard of civilization, imported into Asia from Europe by Japan. Japan did the same with Korea, when it forced an unequal treaty on Korea in 1876. Finally, to assert that the Japanese annexation of Korea was a legal transfer of authority from the Korean kingdom to Japan — that the Korean government was signing its own death warrant of its own volition — makes a mockery of history. It may be unfair to Japan to make this comparison, seeing as how the European empires were able to acquire their Asian colonies by virtue of their denying Asian nations civilized status and with it the protection of international law, but if General Tamogami wants to make an argument based on international law, he must accept the body of international law, not just the laws that support his argument.

But there is a larger problem with the general's first thesis. Namely he completely ignores Japan's invasion of China proper (i.e., the parts of China where it did not have treaty rights), the Philippines (a commonwealth of the US), French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Burma, and other territories that were legally part of the American, French, Dutch, and British empires as well as the Republic of China. How is it possible to claim that Japan was not an aggressor when it invaded and occupied these territories? General Tamogami attempts a defense of Japan's actions in China by claiming Chinese Communist and Nationalist provocation; he even uses the "T" word, claiming that Japanese forces were subject to acts of terrorism, comparing these acts as equivalent to acts of violence against US forces and civilians based in Japan. (Does he really want to make that comparison?)

But General Tamogami apparently doesn't even believe his own argument, because after explaining why Japan wasn't an aggressor, he concludes, "If you say that Japan was the aggressor nation, then I would like to ask what country among the great powers of that time was not an aggressor. That is not to say that because other countries were doing so it was all right for Japan to do so well, but rather that there is no reason to single out Japan as an aggressor nation." As I've made clear above, there is a reason for singling Japan out as an aggressor, namely because Japan had made a point of conducting its affairs according to international law only to ignore international law when it interfered with Japan's imperial designs.

Turning to thesis (2) about the communist conspiracy that produced the war, General Tamogami's argument is that the US "ensnared" Japan. But not only that, the US — specifically President Roosevelt — had in turn been ensnared by the Soviet Union. The basis for this claim is the US National Security Agency's release of the Venona decryptions, which according to General Tamogami reveal that Roosevelt was under the thumb of Moscow due to the influence of Harry Dexter White at Treasury.

The Venona decryptions reveal no such thing. (They're available online here.)

The Soviet Union had agents in the US, true. Harry Dexter White was one, also true. But to leap from there to "Roosevelt went to war with Japan because he was manipulated by communists" is ludicrous. The US decision to support China and risk war with Japan was, if anything, overdetermined. It cannot be reduced to a simple communist conspiracy. Roosevelt's reasons for war could include a sentimental attachment to China, a growing recognition of the need to halt aggression in Europe and Asia, alarm at humanitarian situation in China, and so on.

This is simply groundless revisionist history that rests more on the perfervid imagination of Japanese conservatives than on empirical fact.

The same applies to General Tamogami's account of the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese war, which, as noted above, blames the war on "terrorist" acts by KMT and Communist forces. He claims that the "Comintern theory" of the war's beginning is gaining credence, citing as evidence the controversial Chang-Halliday biography of Mao and a book by conservative hack (i.e., not a historian) Sakurai Yoshiko. He dismisses out of hand the idea that the Kwantung army and the Imperial Army bear any responsibility for actions taken in the lead up to the war.

Moving on to thesis (3), General Tamogami praises Japan for its "very moderate" colonial rule in comparison to other empires. He also singles out Imperial Japan for praise because "among the major powers at that time, Japan was the only nation that tried to incorporate its colonies within the nation itself." It is beyond me why this should be considered a good thing. Is General Tamogami really so ignorant as to believe that Japan's subject peoples — starting with the Koreans and the Chinese — were eager to be incorporated into Japan proper, eager to be made into Japanese, bearing Japanese names, speaking the Japanese language? The general suggests that Japanese rule in Korea and Manchuria were quite peaceful, that Japan brought order and civilization to its colonies. It would be a lie to deny that Japanese imperialism brought some benefits to the colonies, just as it would be a lie to deny that British or French or Dutch empires had any positive impact on their respective colonies. The only appropriate response to all of these empires is, "Yes, but at what cost?" That General Tamogami does not even consider that subject peoples might view the Japanese empire with something other than feelings of gratitude may be the most offensive piece of this essay. The general cites a number of trivial examples illustrating how Chinese and Korean "citizens" displayed their loyalty to the empire. He shows that the Japanese imperial family permitted the last crown prince of Korea's Yi dynasty to marry a Japanese noble woman. What he doesn't mention is that Japanese settlers in Asian colonies were instruct not to mingle with native peoples. As John Dower writes, "Concerning overseas Japanese, admonitions against racial intermarriage were a standard part of policy documents, and the 1943 report spelled out the rationale for this: intermarriage would destroy the 'national spirit' of the Yamato race" (War Without Mercy, 277). Dower goes on to demonstrate just how farcical General Tamogami's claims about "harmony between the five tribes, laying out a vision for the tribes – the Yamato (Japanese), Koreans, Chinese, Manchurians, and Mongols;" Japan's plan for its Asian empire envisioned the economic, cultural, and social domination of subject peoples by Japan. As Dower writes, "The record of the Japanese as colonial or neocolonial administrators in Formosa, Korea, Manchukuo, and occupied China varied depending on the place and circumstances but the basic assumption of Japanese superiority was invariable" (285).

The general also makes an absurdly ahistorical claim that were it not for Japan's conquests, it would have taken one or two centuries "before we could have experienced the world of racial equality that we have today." While it is impossible to say for certain, it is extremely unlikely that the European empires in Asia would have survived another century, let alone two. Japan's war may have shortened the empires by a decade or so, but as it happened the European powers struggled to resurrect their empires after the war thanks in large part to the havoc the European war wreaked on their economies. So again, the question regarding Japan's role in decolonization is, "Yes, but at what cost?"

Finally we come to thesis (4), which is the most confusing of them all, although the confusion itself is extremely revealing. The general concludes his essay by looking at the security policy of contemporary Japan. He claims that the Tokyo trials are to blame for "misleading the Japanese people sixty-three years after the war." Apparently the Japanese people have been duped into not trusting the JSDF to defend Japan or undertake missions abroad. To General Tamogami the restrictions on Japanese security policy are sustained only because of public pacifism (presumably the result of a program of brainwashing carried out by the left-wing Japanese media and the teachers' union). The decisions made by Yoshida Shigeru and his successors to restrict Japan's military activities, to use the constitution as a weapon against US requests for rearmament, have apparently played no role whatsoever in Japan's security policy. If only the Japanese people learn to have pride again, the JSDF can be released from its restraints.

Meanwhile, his attitude towards the US is frankly schizophrenic, which is typical of the Japanese right wing. He asserts that "good relations between Japan and the United States are essential to the stability of the Asian region" — standard alliance boilerplate. But he also says that as a result of the aforementioned restraints on the JSDF, Japan has no choice but to be defended by America. But at what cost to Japan? "Japan’s economy, its finances, its business practices, its employment system, its judicial system will all converge with the American system. Our country’s traditional culture will be destroyed by the parade of reforms. Japan is undergoing a cultural revolution, is it not? But are the citizens Japan living in greater ease now or twenty years ago? Is Japan becoming a better country?" Apparently the alliance is also a Trojan horse for the dreaded American way of life. In short, the alliance is a fine vehicle for helping Japan become normal again, but Japan must keep America at arm's length. (Interestingly, the forces within Japan arguing for economic and financial convergence with the US are often the same people who share General Tamogami's position on national defense.) This argument is hardly new, and shows that America is a convenient scapegoat for conservatives who do not want to believe that the forces reshaping Japanese society are largely endogenous, perhaps largely the product of the postwar miracle.

I don't disagree with General Tamogami's argument that Japan needs to be better able to defend itself and less reliant on the US. But he has made this argument in the worst possible way, by reminding readers of just how dreadful the war was — and how egregious the arguments of Japan's historical revisionists are (the same people who want to revise Japan's security policy).

General Tamogami concludes his essay with an appeal against revisionism:

There is absolutely no need for lies and fabrications. If you look at individual events, there were probably some that would be called misdeeds. That is the same as saying that there is violence and murder occurring today even in advanced nations.

We must take back the glorious history of Japan. A nation that denies its own history is destined to pursue a path of decline.

If only the general could appreciate the irony of the last line of his essay.

The point is that this essay is atrocious, both intellectually and aesthetically.

But that being said, better that General Tamogami decided to share his opinions with the world (although I imagine he probably didn't expect that the world would be paying attention to the APA essay contest). The world needs to know that these ideas are alive and well in elite Japanese circles. Having read this essay, I'm now especially curious about Mr. Aso's book purchase on Saturday. How can Mr. Aso fire a general for espousing these beliefs — which he continues to espouse now that he's been sacked — and then go into a bookstore and purchase a book that makes similar arguments about Japan's history?

I hope that a journalist will pose this inconvenient question to the prime minister.

I also hope that there is a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding General Tamogami's essay. Did anyone see it in advance? Who knew what when? More importantly, just how widespread are these views in the JSDF? And, as Ozawa Ichiro asked, why was there no outrage in response to a previously published essay by the general that made essentially the same argument? To reiterate, unless it somehow turns out that Mr. Aso was aware of this essay beforehand, this is not an incident worthy of censure. But it does merit an inquiry into the state of affairs in the JSDF. I would prefer full exposure over the swift punishment called for by the prime minister for those involved.