Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th

by Newt Gingrich

  They shared their drink and cigars, catching up on family news for Winston, with a respectful avoidance of the subject regarding Cecil’s own.

  “Guess you know why I asked you here,” Winston finally said, cutting to the chase, “delighted to see you, Cecil, but I need to get your insights now.”

  “You want to talk about the coup attempt by the army in Tokyo last week?”

  Winston nodded vigorously.

  “Not just that, but things there in general. I’ll confess I’ve been preoccupied with that crew of thugs in Germany of late, but there are far broader issues confronting England in the days to come. I could wander over to the appropriate office along Whitehall for a briefing, but as you know, I’m not all that welcome in some quarters.”

  Cecil smiled knowingly.

  Winston leaned forward, picking up a couple of small logs and tossing them onto the fire, the wood crackling, sparks floating up the chimney.

  “I want to understand just what the hell is going on over there. Fifteen years back we counted the Japanese as firm allies. With Stalin in power, I had hoped the Japanese could be a counterforce to any adventures he might consider in China. But there are rumblings, Cecil, rumblings that something over there is going wrong, terribly wrong.”

  Winston finished his drink and poured a few more ounces, looking over at Cecil, brows furrowed, that look of deep concentration and intensity he was famed for.

  “Remember Lawrence?” Winston asked.

  “You mean Thomas?” Cecil asked.

  Winston nodded.

  “Yes, heard about his death while still in Japan. Motorcycle, wasn’t it?”

  “Sad loss. A good friend,” he gazed at the fire. “We all should have listened to him a bit more closely, he had a feel for the Middle East. But too high-strung, eccentric, and, of course, those detestable false rumors that followed him.”

  Cecil said nothing.

  “Don’t believe them for a moment, mind you, but still a brilliant man.”

  He looked over again at Cecil.

  “When I read in the Times about this coup attempt in Japan, well, I thought of Lawrence for some reason. And that led me to you.”

  “Me, sir?”

  Winston smiled. “You’re no swashbuckler in white robes”–Winston laughed softly–“but you have a feel for the place. You’re not with the Foreign Office, those bloody fools, and you’re no longer in the service so you can speak your mind. And I thought, by God, if there’s anyone that can explain it all to me, it’s you, Cecil.”

  “Well, comparing me to Lawrence and all his exploits in Arabia, that is a stretch, sir.”

  “Find me someone else then who can explain the Japanese and what is going on over there. Find him right now and you’re off the hook. Otherwise, for the moment you are now officially my Lawrence of Japan, or should I say Cecil of Japan.”

  Cecil could not help but smile. When Winston wanted to pour on the charm he could do so in spades. He sat back in his chair, sipping the scotch, trying to collect his thoughts. He suspected, of course, that this was why Winston had summoned him to his private retreat. The army coup plot had made the papers for a day or two, but then was submerged by news from Germany, the crisis in Spain, and the usual foolery about sports, fashion, and film stars.

  “Fine then, sir, but let me warn you, I can give it to you two ways: I can tell you who the players are, what happened, and why; but I fear you’ll be lost in a sea of names and secret societies, and side-switching that will leave you dizzy. Or another way, what I see as the reasons behind the coup, and what it actually means.”

  Winston smiled and Cecil relaxed slightly. Though charming, Winston had little time for fools, even those fools whom he considered loyal subordinates or even friends. He could indeed summon a report as a PM but he wanted something different.

  “You know what I want.”

  “Right then, and remember my information is the same as yours in one respect, I had to glean the information from the Times and fill in the blanks with what I already knew.

  “The hard fact news item is that a small group of army dissidents attempted a coup: several key government officials were killed, and then the coup was speedily suppressed with only a handful of casualties.

  “Based on several previous incidents, quite similar to this one, but which did not draw such international attention, the dissidents will go on trial, and a year from now will be quietly released.”

  “Which means they have support within the government?”

  “No, sir, and I think here is where you want some answers.”

  “The government now, as I understand it,” Winston said, “is Western leaning, wants to rein in the army after its romp into Manchuria, and keep good relations with us and America. So if there’s hidden support, does that mean the government is about to switch policies?”

  “Not quite yet,” Cecil interjected. “We define a coup as an actual attempt to overthrow the government, a dissident group trying to seize power and take over. In Japan, that is not necessarily the case. The Emperor, of course, is sacred and immovable; there is absolutely no Western comparison to his position.”

  Cecil shook his head.

  “No sir, it is not about actually overthrowing the whole lot. What happened last week in Japan, their word for it is gekokujo.”

  Winston mouthed the word silently.

  “It means insubordination, but not insubordination as we define it. That sir, is always the problem when dealing with Japan. So many subtleties of thought and words fail to translate. We say insubordination and we think of a young corporal gone cheeky to his sergeant, or a government minister telling the PM to go to hell.”

  Winston chuckled softly.

  “And sometimes deservedly so.”

  “Gekokujo is insubordination with a higher purpose. It is actually an act of loyalty, at least to those who perform it, loyalty to a higher ideal, to the Emperor and beyond him to the concept of nation. Even there, the word ‘nation’ does not translate effectively. It can even be construed, at times, as an act of loyalty to the very man they are attempting to kill, to try and awaken him and have him return to a righteous course.”

  “Killing him awakens him?” Winston grumbled. “That is one hell of a stretch.”

  “Not in their culture. Don’t get all confused by how some Westerners view Buddhism and reincarnation. The Japanese blend, at least for the warrior class, is strongly mixed with Shintoism, the worship of ancestors and, by extension, the greater concept of national identity. If at the moment of death, the man who is slain faces it with stoic honor and a realization of atonement, then the killers have actually done him a favor. After they kill him, they’ll salute the body, even clean up the mess, and apologize to the family for the inconvenience they have created before leaving.”

  “Bloody insane if you ask me,” Winston replied. “Some damn hothead who is pro-Nazi or Communist puts a bullet in me, and I thank him for it? Like hell!”

  Cecil chuckled and shook his head.

  “I think a story might explain it best. Have you ever heard of the forty-seven ronin?”

  Winston shook his head.

  “It is, to the Japanese, an epic as powerful to their national psyche as Henry V or the legends of Arthur are to us, or for that madman over in Germany, the Ring cycle of Wagner.”

  “Too many fat ladies shrieking for my taste.” Winston chuckled.

  “The story is a favorite kabuki play, told in schools, performed in puppet theaters, held up as a national ideal, and gekokujo is at the core of it.”

  “Go on, you have my attention with this.”

  “It was several generations after the ending of the civil wars that unified Japan, when the Tokugawa clan controlled the Shogunate. The atmosphere at the court had become highly rarified, filled with intricate rituals, the most subtle gestures conveying great meaning, the slightest stumbling in proper etiquette a source of amusement and disdain. One could perhaps compare it to Versailles on th
e eve of the revolution. The slightest breach of protocol triggered ridicule.

  “A daimyo from an outback region…”

  “Daimyo?” Winston asked.

  “Say our equivalent of a baron from the hinterlands.”

  “Ireland,” Winston said, with a bit of a sardonic grin.

  “Exactly.… arrives at the court, summoned to do his turn of duty, as were all vassals of the Shogun. It was considered an honor of course, but also a way of keeping an eye on the underlings.

  “This daimyo arrives at the court, accompanied by his knights, forty-seven samurai. He makes a shambles of things with his behavior from the first day. He understands nothing of what the Japanese court considers to be the higher arts of a cultured man. It might seem strange to us, but here you have these tough samurai warriors, and I do mean tough. Good lord, man to man, they’d have cut any of our medieval knights to ribbons. Yet they place great stock in being cultured, being able to arrange flowers, to come up with an appropriate poem while watching cherry blossoms fall, to properly serve tea.

  “Frankly, we aren’t all that different, sir, though, the way we greet each other, the expectations for an officer in combat to show total indifference to danger, the way a cultured man offers another a drink and a cigar, the old rituals of the regimental mess that you once knew. It is a way of marking a man and his social class.”

  Winston grunted and nodded in agreement, a crease of a smile lighting his features with old memories of long ago in Africa and India.

  “So the humiliation gets worse by the day,” Cecil continues, “and then enters the Court Chamberlain, the master of ceremonies we would call him.”

  “And he won’t help,” Winston interjects.

  Cecil nodded. He could see that Winston was getting involved in the story.

  “Won’t help unless a bribe is paid. The daimyo is from a poor province, but beyond the issue of money, his pride forbids him from lowering himself thus, to pay a bribe to a simpering court official.”

  “I think I can see where this is going,” Winston interjected, pausing then to prepare and light a cigar, thus giving time for Cecil to continue.

  “Matters reach a head when the daimyo is humiliated once too often in front of the Emperor, the entire court laughing behind their sleeves when he fumbles a ceremony. Drawing his blade, he turns on the Chamberlain, who flees; the Emperor’s guards jump upon the outraged Daisy and disarm him.

  “Well now, he has violated a sacred court law. It does not matter the provocation, he has drawn a blade in the presence of the Emperor and there is only one recourse left. Dishonored, he must commit seppuku.”

  “You mean hara-kiri? Is it true they actually cut their stomachs open?” Winston asked, and Cecil could sense an almost schoolboy curiosity about the details.

  “In the full ceremony, yes,” Cecil replied, “but usually there is just a ritual cut, or for the braver, a thrust of the blade into the stomach, and then a second beheads the poor devil. So thus it is done. The offending Daisy dies, and in the West that is where the story would die as well.”

  “Obviously this leads us back to the matter at hand, this coup attempt,” Winston said.

  And Cecil realized that though Winston did love a good story, he also wanted the point to be made as quickly as possible, so he nodded.

  “It makes a powerful point. The forty-seven samurai who had come with their now dead Daisy are disgraced as well. In their world, they had failed to protect their lord. No other house will take them in, even if they sought that, but they did not. They became ronin. A ronin is a samurai who has no lord to serve. Without a lord he has no colors to wear, he is something of a societal outcast, in fact he is seen as on the borderline of the law, for many ronin turn to robbery and murder.

  “The Emperor, upon the punishment death of the rather tragic Daisy, passes a decree that the matter is settled once and forever. Law had been broken in the court, penalty exacted, case is closed.

  “The forty-seven samurai, who were the daimyo’s retainers, are now completely disgraced by the Emperor’s decree. In their culture, it is they who are at fault.”

  “How so? The bloody fool should have paid the bribe and be done with it, or got someone of influence to put pressure on the Chamberlain. My God, if someone pulled a revolver out in front of the King or in Parliament, there’d be hell to pay.”

  “Now we are getting into the deeper issues with these Japanese,” Cecil said, with a smile. He nodded toward the decanter of scotch, and Winston, smiling, waved for him to refill, which he did. Wreathed in smoke, Winston then nodded for him to continue.

  “Disgraced in their world, the forty-seven ronin did not leave the capital. Instead they remained in the city, apparently casting aside their ceremonial robes and selling their swords. They took on the most menial of tasks, gardeners, night soil collectors, wood cutters, drifting to the edge of society, and over time they were all but forgotten.”

  Cecil smiled.

  “They waited for over a year. The Chamberlain was no fool; he knew they were out there, watching, waiting. He kept his guard up, extra samurai to keep watch day and night, so much so that he himself became something of a laughingstock, viewed as a coward afraid of his own shadow. But he had reason to be afraid.

  “For finally, he did let his guard down, and then, at last, the leader of the forty-seven ronin, his name was Oishi, summoned his comrades together. In secret, they met in the graveyard where their lord was buried, and from secret hiding places drew out their ceremonial robes of his house and their swords, which they had not sold.”

  Winston leaned forward, caught up in the tale.

  “They stormed the Chamberlain’s palace and slaughtered everyone. Cornered, the Chamberlain begged for his life, but they killed him and took his head.”

  Winston slapped his knee.

  “Figured it would be something like that.”

  Cecil nodded.

  “But there’s far more, sir. You see they had, in so doing, fulfilled their own sense of honor, and yet had directly violated the will of the Emperor. They were now hunted men.

  “The hue and cry went up. There are several versions of what happened next, but finally they are brought before the Emperor himself, who orders them to commit suicide.”

  Cecil nodded, and unable to contain his desire any longer he motioned to the box of cigars, which Winston happily offered. He had managed to drop the habit in Japan–good tobacco was all but impossible to find there–but the scent of the smoke, the warmth of the fire, the taste of good scotch, a cigar would make it complete; and Winston sat in silence as Cecil unwrapped the cigar, cut the end, and puffed it to life.

  “But, sir, there is far more. A Westerner hearing the story might say it’s a rousing good tale but not see the deeper meaning to it, a meaning that relates to what happened in Japan last week.”

  “And that is?”

  “Gekokujo. Their actions ultimately were gekokujo. Yes, they got the revenge they felt duty-bound to fulfill, but there is also their suicides. It was not just an apology to the Emperor for breaking the law, as some might read it. It was a message direct to the Emperor and the Shogun, an act of rebellion. The message was that they were right, and he had done wrong. The Emperor had failed their Daisy, allowing a corrupt official to stay in the court. He had failed in allowing a good man to be driven to the point of madness by this corrupt official. Killing the Chamberlain therefore was an act the Emperor or Shogun themselves should have done long ago. Their suicide would remain in the national psyche, be a lesson to all, and restore balance and purity.”

  “Connect the two,” Winston said, “this rebellion and the story.”

  “Easy enough, sir. The coup attempt on February 26 was carried out by a small cadre of disenchanted junior officers in the army and some revolutionary radicals. They are enamored with a mystical sense of a unique and special destiny for Japan. Their concept of nationhood is unlike ours. It is nationalism tied to religion, tied to, for lack
of a better term, a racial destiny.”

  “God save us, not another Hitler and his drivel,” Winston growled.

  “No sir, very different, and one that will make us feel a bit uncomfortable. The Japanese nation is a joined entity. Their religion a dual one, an aesthetic form of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, which truly fits the warrior code of the samurai. That life is a fleeting illusion, with a reality beyond that illusion. To let go of life is, in a way, to embrace life. Inculcate that into the hearts of warriors, and you have a fearsome opponent.

  “Combine that with Shintoism. On the surface it is ancestor worship, a bit like the Romans if you will: the family and its honor are everything. The individual is nothing when compared to the family.

  “Believe me, when I taught at their academy I saw it every day. The lads there would endure treatment and schedules that would set off a rebellion in our Sandhurst. And to wash out? Death is better. In fact, when a boy did wash out, a suicide watch had to be kept until he was escorted off the base, and not infrequently we’d hear that the poor boy had killed himself rather than endure the shame of facing his family as a failure.”

  Cecil fell silent for a moment. The memory of more than one of them was still troubling.

  “Potentially a tough adversary,” Winston interjected.

  “Exactly. But to the point you seek. The coup? A sham. No one in their right mind, at least a Western right mind, would ever see it as having the remotest chance of success.”

  “What was it they wanted? The reports in the Times are not clear at all, just saying some disgruntled soldiers.”

  Cecil shook his head.

  “Oh, there were some tenets spouted, sounded a bit communistic to some. Limits on amount of money a family can have, nationalization of industry, elimination of corruption, and, a key here, a return to a state of national purity.”

  Winston cocked his head.

  “How so? Sounds Fascist to me, this national purity thing.”

  “Sir, don’t confuse the two. They mean it as a true state of purity. Like a minister saying it’s time to get right with Jesus. It’s about this national sense that Japan is unique, exceptional, the Emperor godlike.