The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  Kawashima replied that there must have been instigators from the outside and it was therefore necessary to take extraordinary measures to ensure the nation’s safety. Feeble as this retort was, it swayed the undecided members and at a meeting held at midnight in the presence of the Emperor it was agreed that martial law should be declared at once.

  By this time a kempei sergeant had been told of Okada’s whereabouts: one of his men, permitted to bring out the dead and wounded police officers, had chanced to open the closet where the Prime Minister was sitting resigned like a Buddha. The startling news about Okada was reported to their commander, who decided not to relay the information to his own superiors—if it was a mistake, he’d be ridiculed, and if true, some kempei sympathetic to the rebels would tell them and Okada would be killed. But to the sergeant, Keisuke Kosaka, this was dereliction of duty. On his own initiative he and two volunteers stole through the rebel lines late that night and just before dawn of February 27 boldly marched into the Prime Minister’s residence. Kosaka went directly to the maid’s room, opened the closet, assured Okada he would soon be rescued, and crossed the street to get help from a secretary of the Prime Minister’s named Ko Fukuda who lived next door to Sakomizu.

  The secretary and the sergeant cautiously sounded each other out as they sipped black tea until Kosaka finally revealed that Okada was alive. Only then did Fukuda admit that he and Sakomizu also knew and hoped to smuggle Okada out of the ministry in a crowd of mourners that would soon arrive to pay their respects.

  In the next half-hour the resourceful sergeant and his two men spirited a suit of Western clothes for Okada from the bedroom and commandeered a car in the courtyard. They were just in time. Two black sedans pulled up and a dozen condolence callers filed into the ministry. Fukuda led them to the bedroom, where one of the sergeant’s men was waiting to make sure they wouldn’t get close enough to the corpse to realize it wasn’t the Prime Minister.

  While the callers burned incense and honored the dead, Fukuda and Kosaka practically carried the cramped Okada, his face half hidden behind a germ mask, to the rear. A group of rebels stood at the door and Kosaka called out authoritatively, “Emergency patient! He shouldn’t have taken a look at the corpse.”

  The rebels stepped aside and the trio was in the courtyard. But there was no car waiting, and curious to see what was going on, the commander of the guard approached. Suddenly the commandeered car drew up. Fukuda opened the door, pushed the exhausted Okada into the 1935 Ford and climbed in after him. Kosaka watched with pounding heart as the car drove slowly through the gates and disappeared. Tears flowed down his face and he remained standing there as if in a trance.

  So Okada had escaped, but there was still the problem of getting rid of Matsuo’s body before someone discovered the deception. This was Sakomizu’s task but he felt it would be best to do nothing until Okada was in a secure hiding place. Hour after hour he sat in lonely vigil next to the corpse. At last the phone rang. His wife reported that her father was safe in a Buddhist temple. Now Sakomizu could act. First he phoned the Imperial Household Ministry to tell of Okada’s escape, then called the Okada home to ask that a coffin be sent to the official residence as soon as possible. The answer was that a ready-made coffin wasn’t proper for a Prime Minister, and it would take several hours to make one.

  The delay began to unnerve Sakomizu: he’d be found out and murdered. As his terror grew he recalled that in his father’s day boys used to hold a contest of courage called shibedate (standing a rice stalk on end). One boy would put some object on a grave; the next would retrieve it; a third would stick a rice stalk on the grave. This went on and on until someone lost his nerve. The boys believed that fear came only if their testicles shrank, so when they walked toward the grave they would pluck at them to stretch them out. Sakomizu discovered that, sure enough, his testicles had contracted to almost nothing. He managed to stretch them and to his amazement found his own fear disappearing. People in the old days were clever.

  It was dark by the time the coffin finally arrived. Sakomizu dismissed the pallbearers, wrapped Matsuo’s body completely in a blanket and got it in the coffin. As the cortege slowly left the ministry, the rebel in charge saluted and said a few courteous words of farewell. The funeral carriage moved quietly through the gate, and after a harrowing trip, safely reached the home of the Prime Minister. A crowd had already collected for services. A tombstone was placed on the coffin along with a large photograph of Okada, framed in black ribbon.

  Sakomizu gave strict orders not to open the coffin and was off for the Imperial Household Ministry, where Cabinet members had again gathered. Now he told them that Okada was still alive, and while they were recovering from the shock, proposed that the Prime Minister see the Emperor as soon as possible. To Sakomizu’s amazement, Acting Prime Minister Goto protested: Okada was responsible for the rebellion and should resign on the spot. Goto refused to listen to any explanations—apparently he liked being prime minister—and Sakomizu was compelled to phone influential men for support.

  He found none. The consensus was that if the rebel troops learned that Okada was on the Palace grounds they might fire toward the Palace. And that would be “too appalling.” In resignation Sakomizu phoned Fukuda not to bring Okada there and returned to the Okada home to see that the prefuneral ceremonies went off without discovery of the deception—otherwise the rebels would start a manhunt.

  Mrs. Matsuo sat silently in front of the coffin. As the hours passed and she asked no questions about her husband, Sakomizu felt such pity that he could no longer hold back the truth. He gathered the Prime Minister’s close relatives, including three of his four children and three of Matsuo’s four children, and controlling his emotions, told how Colonel Matsuo had sacrificed his life so that the Prime Minister could escape.

  “I am very pleased if my husband could be of service,” said the widow softly. She was the daughter of a samurai.

  5.

  By now the mutiny had a name, the 2/26 (February 26) Incident, and though the attitude of the military leaders was beginning to harden, it took the Emperor himself to get them into action. Exasperated by their dallying, he stepped out of his role for the first time since the murder of Marshal Chang and spoke out clearly: “If the Army cannot subdue the rebels, I will go out and dissuade them myself.”

  This forced the Army to issue an edict at 5:06 A.M., February 28. It ordered the rebels, in the Emperor’s name, to “speedily withdraw” from their present positions and return to their respective units. Inhabitants in the danger zones would be evacuated; if the rebels had not withdrawn by 8 A.M. the following day, they would be fired on.

  This order split the rebels into two camps: one wanted to obey the Emperor; the other insisted it was not truly the wish of the Emperor but the result of pressure from the Control clique.

  During the day Sakomizu met with more disappointment. Goto still opposed Okada’s visit to the Emperor, and in any case, the police refused to provide an escort for the Prime Minister to the Palace—it was “too grave a responsibility.” Fearing that Okada might commit hara-kiri, Sakomizu ignored Goto and the police and brought the Prime Minister to the Imperial Household Ministry.

  Shortly before seven o’clock in the evening the old man was escorted to the Emperor’s wing of the building. In the corridors they passed Household officials who stared in terror at the grim-faced Okada, imagining they were seeing a ghost. A few ran off as the rest crouched in fright.

  Once in the imperial presence, the Prime Minister humbly apologized for the mutiny, as if it had been his fault, and offered his resignation. “Carry on your duty for as long as you live,” the Emperor replied and added that he was very pleased.

  Okada was too awed to speak or stop the flow of tears but finally managed to say, “I am going to behave myself from now on.” This time the Emperor did not reply.

  Okada slept that night in the Household Ministry but Sakomizu returned to the Prime Minister’s home, which was still
crowded with mourners. A group of irate admirals hemmed him in. “As a samurai, how dared you surrender the castle?” one shouted. “Even with the Prime Minister dead, you should have stayed to protect his body and defend the official residence to the death. How can you be so irresponsible as to run off to the Imperial Household Ministry for what business I don’t know!”

  They were disgusted with the way Sakomizu was handling the funeral arrangements and said they were taking the body to the Navy Officers Club the next day for a proper service. Sakomizu begged them to be patient, but was immediately set upon by yet another admiral: “Your father was a fine military man. I arranged your marriage for you because, since you are his son, I thought you’d be a reliable man. But you’ve proven by this case to be a miserable fellow, a weak-kneed man unable even to manage a funeral. Okada must be weeping for having given his daughter to such a fellow. Your father is weeping too. Pull yourself together!”

  Despite the Emperor’s edict, all but a few of the rebels refused to withdraw. As more Army reinforcements invested Tokyo from outlying cities, the Combined Fleet steamed into Tokyo Bay and landing forces took positions outside the Navy Ministry and other naval installations. The younger men were itching for action and revenge: three of their senior officers—Admirals Saito, Suzuki and Okada—had been assassinated or gravely wounded by the Army. One young officer, whose ship’s main guns were trained on the Diet Building, was “tempted by an impulse” to blow off the tower but controlled himself.

  At six o’clock in the morning on February 29—it was leap year—the Army announced: “We are positively going to suppress the rebels who caused disturbances in the neighborhood of Kojimachi in the imperial capital.” For the first time the word “rebels” was officially used. It was a cloudy day with a threat of more snow. Except for soldiers, it was a dead city. Schools were closed; there were no streetcars or trains. It was impossible to make a phone call or send a telegram. Tokyo was isolated. All civilian traffic in the city was suspended while the Army marshaled its forces for the attack, but even as tanks were brought to assault positions, other tanks clanked up to rebel barricades, their sides placarded with messages invoking the insurgents to “respectfully follow the Emperor’s order” and withdraw at once. Fully loaded bombers droned overhead while other planes dropped leaflets addressed to noncommissioned officers:

  1. Return to your units. It is not yet too late.

  2. All those who resist are rebels; therefore, we will shoot them.

  3. Your parents and brothers are weeping to see you become traitors.

  An advertising balloon was raised above the Aviation Building, its long trailer in large characters reading: IMPERIAL ORDER ISSUED. DON’T RESIST THE ARMY FLAG. Loudspeakers were brought up to strategic places, and Chokugen Wada, the noted announcer of radio station NHK, began reading a plea to the rebel enlisted men in a choked voice: “You faithfully and sincerely obeyed your officers, trusting their orders to be just. But the Emperor now orders you to return to your units. If you continue to resist, you will be traitors for disobeying the Emperor’s order. You believed you were doing the right thing but now that you realize you were wrong, you must not continue to revolt against His Majesty and inflict upon yourselves eternal disgrace as traitors. It is not too late. Your past crime will be forgiven. Your fathers and brothers, as well as the entire nation, sincerely pray that you do this. Immediately leave your present positions and come back.”

  The rebellious soldiers began to look at one another questioningly. Still each waited for the other to act first. By midmorning the solidarity of the ranks began to crack. Thirty noncoms and soldiers walked away from their positions with rifles and machine guns. By noon almost all enlisted men had returned to their units except for small detachments at the Prime Minister’s official residence and the Sanno Hotel. At two o’clock the banner flying over the Prime Minister’s residence came down and an hour later Army headquarters announced by radio that the rebels had surrendered without a shot being fired.

  The leaders of the insurrection were still at the War Ministry and the Sanno Hotel, but the loyal troops made no attempt to capture them; they were giving the rebels a chance to act like samurai. General Araki, who admired their spirit and sympathized with their motives, asked them to commit hara-kiri, since they had performed an outrageous, reckless act that grieved the Emperor. The young officers considered mass suicide, but finally decided to submit to a court-martial where, like Aizawa, they could alert the nation to the corruption besetting Japan.

  One officer, however, refused to surrender. Captain Shiro Nonaka went off by himself and wrote a final statement regretting that his division hadn’t seen action for over thirty years while other units were shedding their blood in glory. “In recent years the sins of the traitors at home have been redeemed by the blood of our comrades in Manchuria and Shanghai. What answer can I give to the souls of these men if I spend the rest of my days in vain here in the capital? Am I insane or am I a fool? There is but one road for me to take.” He signed the declaration, then took the road: hara-kiri.

  At four-thirty that afternoon the weary Sakomizu assembled the mourners at Okada’s home to read a prepared statement revealing the details of Matsuo’s death and Okada’s escape. The listeners were stunned to silence. Finally someone shouted “Banzai!” All the others joined and the news was spread throughout the neighborhood.

  The 2/26 Incident was over. What violence there was had been incredibly bloody; yet only seven people had been killed and the mutineers had surrendered peacefully. The most outstanding feats of courage had been performed by women, and the vacillation by generals. To most foreigners the mutiny was no more than another Ultranationalist bloodbath, and few realized its significance. The Soviets did, largely because of Richard Sorge, who correctly guessed that this would lead to expansion into China.i

  It was over, but like a stone tossed in a millpond, its ripples were already spreading across the Pacific.

  * Kempei were soldiers acting as armed policemen, with some authority over civilians. (In Japanese, one form serves for both singular and plural; there is no suffix to indicate number.)

  † De facto ruler in feudal Japan; a sort of generalissimo. Until the reign of Meiji, the present ruler’s grandfather, the emperor had for centuries been little more than a figurehead, a puppet of the shogun.

  ‡ In Japan the family name comes first but is reversed in this book for easier reading.

  § The song of Nikkyo (the All-Japan Council for the Joint Struggle of Patriots) indicated the peculiarly Japanese spirit of such young rebels:

  Daily we submit to hypocrisy and lies,

  While national honor lingering dies.

  Arise ye! O patriots, arise!

  Onward we march, defying death!

  Come prison bars! Come gory death!

  ǁ Itagaki wrote: “Manchuria is, of course, important from the point of view of Japanese capitalism. From the standpoint of the proletariat, which finds it necessary to demand equalization of national wealth, no fundamental solution can be found within the boundaries of naturally poor Japan that will ensure a livelihood for the people at large.”

  a Poverty in Japan had increased in the wake of America’s depression. The price of raw silk, Japan’s main export, had dropped more than 50 percent.

  b The three most important posts in the Japanese Army were the Chief of the General Staff, the War Minister and the Inspector General of Military Education (referred to as “the Big Three”). This triangular system dating from 1878 had been recommended by a Prussian major, Jacob Meckel, on loan to Japan from the Kaiser.

  c His last charge referred to the naval disarmament conference held in Washington (1922), which adopted a 5–5–3 ratio as to capital ships belonging to America, Britain and Japan. The Japanese (particularly the young radicals) were still incensed at the big-power curtailment of their naval strength. The lower ratio for Japan implied a stigma of national inferiority.

  d The genro were important
statesmen who had helped Emperor Meiji draw up the Imperial Constitution in 1889 and afterward became advisers to the Emperor. In 1916 Saionji had been added to the group, and by 1936 he was the only surviving genro.

  e General Sadao Araki had long been the idol of the reformists and had figured prominently in the 1932 insurrection, when he was war minister. He was known throughout the world for his outspoken remarks and ferocious handlebar mustache.

  f Former prime ministers were referred to as jushin (senior statesmen); their main duty was to recommend prime ministers to His Majesty.

  g The present ruler, Hirohito, had named his reign Showa (Enlightened Peace). On Japanese calendars the current year, 1936, was Showa 11, the eleventh year of his reign. Only after his death, however, will he be referred to as Emperor Showa. His father, Yoshihito, took the name of Taisho (Great Righteousness). His grandfather, Mutsuhito, chose Meiji (Enlightened Rule); his era saw the greatest reforms and development in Japanese history and was known as the Meiji Restoration. The young reformers of the moment wanted to emulate the achievements of their fathers with the Showa Restoration.

  h Prince Mikasa, the Emperor’s youngest brother, was convinced that the assassination of Chang was the basic cause of war with America. It not only actuated the Manchurian Incident but was the turning point in his brother’s role as emperor. Prince Mikasa revealed this in an interview on December 27, 1966.

  i Dr. Sorge’s detailed report to Moscow included an analysis of the deep social unrest that had inspired the rebellion. Sorge also sent photographs of the cream of the material gathered by the German military attachés, including a secret pamphlet written the previous year by two of the rebel leaders, entitled “Views on the Housecleaning of the Army.” The Fourth Bureau was pleased with its new secret agent and requested additional information: Would it affect Japanese foreign policy? Would it make Japan more anti-Soviet or less?