by Ian Buruma
3.
Perhaps it helps to be a Nagasaki Catholic to take a more complex view of sin. Loyalty to their own deity must have given some Japanese Christians a skeptical view of Japanese politics when the kokutai was at the height of its divine imperial pretensions. One of the most controversial and interesting Nagasaki Catholics is the ex-mayor Motoshima Hitoshi. I first interviewed him seven years ago, in Nagasaki, when Emperor Hirohito was dying. Motoshima had just said in public that the Emperor bore some responsibility for the war and, by not ending it soon enough, for the fates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A conservative politician, he was disowned by the Liberal Democratic Party and blackballed by various patriotic organizations of which he was a member. He also received threats from right-wing extremists. One year later, he was shot in the back by one of them, and barely survived. This is the “Japanese culture” that remains from the war. It is no longer the main political tendency, but it is still intimidating enough to silence critics of the imperial system and other remnants of the old kokutai, which General MacArthur helped to protect.
This summer, Motoshima looked less robust than I remembered him, perhaps because of the assassination attempt, perhaps because of his recent loss of the mayoral election. He began by reading the late Emperor’s statement of August 15, 1945, about the “new and most cruel bomb.” He tapped the text with his finger and said the bomb did bring the war to an end. But then he made another point. The atomic bombs, he said, had done away with the idea of a good war. He himself had believed in a Japanese victory. Although he had been tormented as a Christian child by teachers who forced him to declare who was holier, Jesus or the Emperor, Motoshima was a patriot. He served in an army propaganda unit. But the atomic bombs had turned war into an absolute evil, like the Holocaust in Europe. He illustrated this view at a recent press conference in Tokyo, by comparing the innocent victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Jews killed at Auschwitz. The Japanese press made nothing of this. But the Western correspondents were full of indignation: yet another Japanese whitewash, they thought, another sob story of the Japanese as victims.
I asked him about this. Was there really no difference between the citizens of a nation that started a war and people who were killed for purely ideological reasons? Had he himself not said that the Japanese people bore responsibility for the war, as well as their emperor? He answered my question by asking me whether I thought Jewish soldiers in Hitler’s army had been responsible for the war in Europe. Clearly, the precise nature of the European Holocaust had rather escaped him. But when pressed by others he has acknowledged that there was a difference between the atomic bombings and the Holocaust. The United States was not planning to exterminate the entire Japanese people. The question remains, however, whether there is a fundamental moral difference between dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many thousands of incendiary bombs on, say, Tokyo.
Miyazaki Kentaro, the son of bomb survivors, and a historian specializing in the “hidden Christian” communities in Japan, saw no moral difference. All forms of carpet bombing were a sin. But like the former mayor, he blamed the Japanese government for starting the war, and saw no reason to criticize the United States. I also asked the opinion of Father Sebastian Kawazoe, the priest at Urakami Cathedral. Like Motoshima, with whom he went to school, Kawazoe was born on one of the Goto Islands, in a family of hidden Christians. He had the same straight, almost rough, manner of speaking as the ex-mayor. He told me most Catholics had not been keen supporters of the war. But they had to be careful, for they were always being treated as spies. He, too, saw no moral distinction between A-bombs and other forms of terror bombing.
I dwell on this point because I think it clarifies our thinking about the past. If we see the atomic bombs as morally unique, as something fundamentally different, in ethical terms, from large numbers of incendiary bombs or napalm bombs dropped on civilians, it is difficult to analyze the actions of men, such as Truman, who saw the A-bomb attacks as a logical extension of strategic bombing.* McGeorge Bundy wrote about this in his book Danger and Survival, in a chapter entitled “The Decision to Drop the Bombs on Japan.”
Both military and political leaders came to think of urban destruction not as wicked, not even as a necessary evil, but as a result with its own military value. Distinctions that had seemed clear when the Germans bombed Rotterdam were gradually rubbed out in the growing ferocity of the war.*
This, rather than theological jargon about original sin or “nuclearism,” is the nub of the matter. Truman, in response to an American advocate of “the Christian tradition of civilized war,” said there was no such thing, that war “has always been a matter of slaughter of innocents and never civilized.” This sounds good, a moral cri de coeur from a tough-minded, peace-loving leader, but it is disingenuous. For there is a difference between killing innocents in the heat of battle and killing them deliberately, in huge numbers, as a form of terror. Tens of thousands died horribly in Dresden without any apparent military or political justification. The possibility that the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have brought the war to a speedier end made these mass killings expedient, perhaps, but no less morally disturbing. This does not mean, however, that it would have been any more ethical to go on fire-bombing Japanese cities, as Curtis LeMay, an opponent of the A-bomb strategy, wanted. More than 100,000 civilians had already died in one night in May, when LeMay’s B-29s torched Tokyo with incendiary bombs. Truman’s decision to drop the bombs was the climax of a horrible strategy, started by Germany and Japan, that had left much of Europe, parts of China and most of Japan in ruins.
It would make sense for the Nagasaki Catholics, who suffered disproportionately from the A-bomb, to be active in the antinuclear peace movement. Actually they are not. Motoshima, who is a campaigner for world peace, is an exception. Father Kawazoe, himself a survivor, said: “I don’t take part in the peace movement. It is used by people to expand their own sect. They talk about peace, but you don’t know what’s behind it.” While acknowledging the checkered record of the Christian Church—“60 percent bad, 40 percent good”—he also said: “We Christians have a history of oppression, but we don’t make a living out of our suffering. Emphasizing one’s own suffering is just a way to win sympathy.”
This is a bit harsh on the survivors in Peace Park, who devote their time to telling schoolchildren about the bomb. But as I watched those same schoolchildren, lined up in straight rows in front of the “Peace Statue” and solemnly shouting lines they had memorized about loving peace, I was reminded of demonstrations in the former East Berlin, where the masses marched past their leaders, raising their fists and bellowing slogans about “people’s friendship.” These peace ceremonies have become ritual gestures to ward off nuclear evil: “People who love peace, please sign your name here.”
There is nothing in Nagasaki to tell those schoolchildren why the bomb was dropped, or what led up to it. It is indeed hard to explain why the bomb had to be dropped on Nagasaki. There is no evidence that it hastened the end of the war. Carl Spaatz, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, is quoted by Alperovitz as saying (to Averill Harriman) that he had no idea why a bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki. We will never know to what extent the fate of Nagasaki influenced the Emperor’s decision to tell his soldiers to lay down their arms. But some historical context, some indication of what those Japanese soldiers had done to others, would not have been amiss. Instead, all one really hears in Nagasaki is the sound of prayer. And one only needs to walk past the Peace Park monuments, from China, the USSR, Bulgaria, Cuba, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic, to see how peace has been exploited.
On my last day in Nagasaki, I visited Urakami Cathedral, where Father Kawazoe was celebrating Mass. The cathedral was full, with more women than men. The women wore old-fashioned veils, a custom that has virtually died out in Europe. Almost all these people were descended from families who had clung to their faith through centuries of persecut
ion. It was a moving spectacle, even if one had no special feeling for the Catholic Church. Father Kawazoe was preaching that God’s will could not be known, and it was useless to expect favors from Him. God was not like some local deity, whom one could ask for a good catch or an abundant crop. I was puzzled by this. Here was a Japanese priest, in the cathedral of a modern, sophisticated city, talking to people as though they were villagers on Goto Island who had to be weaned from their native gods.
I left the cathedral feeling touched, but also with a sense of sadness and futility. Outside were some of the remains of the old cathedral: a blackened statue of Christ, with a chipped nose and dark stumps where there had once been fingers; and there a damaged Saint Agnes; and there, in the grass, the charred heads of decapitated angels. People used to believe that Armageddon was a prerogative of God, or of the gods. Now we know it is in the hands of man. Hardly a consolation.
1995
*These quotes are all from Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb, by Frank Chinnock. The effects of the Nagasaki bomb are horrifically illustrated by the photographer Yosuke Yamahata in Nagasaki Journey.
*I have used the translation of William Johnston, an Irish Jesuit who believes that Dr. Nagai “takes an honoured place among the great prophets of Asia and of the world.”
*Chinnock, Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb, p. 299.
*These views were expressed to Fred Barnes in The New Republic, March 13, 1995, p. 23.
*Hiroshima in America.
*Gar Alperovitz first set out his ideas in Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (revised edition, Pluto Press, 1994). His new book, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, goes over the same ground in more detail, as well as dealing with postwar myths about the bomb.
*“Japan’s Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation,” by Herbert P. Bix, Diplomatic History (Spring 1995), p. 206.
*The Emperor gave this self-serving account before the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was convened. The text was circulated among General MacArthur’s staff but then disappeared, until it turned up in America after Hirohito’s death. The full text was published in Tokyo in Showa Tenno Dokuhakuroku (Bungei Shunju, 1991).
*Showa Tenno Dokuhakuroku, p. 121.
*Quoted in the fascinating article by Herbert P. Bix in the Spring 1995 issue of Diplomatic History, p. 218.
*Diplomatic History, p. 223.
*Japanese historians have paid attention to this, most recently in a discussion in the September 1995 issue of the monthly magazine Gendai.
*The Genocidal Mentality, by Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Markusen (Basic Books, 1990).
*In his article, “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory,” in Diplomatic History (Spring 1995), Barton Bernstein emphasizes that “in 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them” (p. 235).
*Quoted by Barton Bernstein in Judgment at the Smithsonian, p. 194.
WE JAPANESE
Two books published in 1987, one by an American scholar and former ambassador to Japan, the other by a Japanese industrialist, complement each other to a remarkable degree. The ambassador tells us how America gave Japan a break; the industrialist describes how he took advantage of it. Neither puts it in quite those terms, of course. While in My Life Between Japan and America, Edwin Reischauer speaks vaguely of “shared ideals” and “world peace,” in Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony, Morita explains the Japanese Economic Miracle as an expression of unique Japanese cultural qualities: devotion to work, loyalty to company, love of learning and so forth. Both men (one hesitates to call Morita an author—his book bears the marks of having been dictated to his collaborators in a hurry, between appointments) plead for understanding for Japanese culture.
But they do so in a way that reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine about fifteen years ago. A young Chinese homosexual, who was living in the house of a middle-aged French restaurateur, had the habit of coming home late and sleeping late in the mornings. The Frenchman got so annoyed by this that he woke his friend one day by dousing him with a bucketful of cold water. The Chinese was furious. The main reason for his rage appeared to be his wounded pride. “How could he have done such a thing?” he asked me. “I am Chinese!” He had lost face, as a Chinese. It is hard to imagine a Frenchman reacting in this way. He might be outraged by having cold water thrown in his face, but not because he is French.
Something a little like this can play a part in international relations. “Face” is a fragile thing in East Asia, and cultural sensitivities are easily affronted. It is interesting to see how often the Japanese, for example, plead understanding for their side in trade disputes on cultural grounds. Tariff barriers cannot come down just yet because of traditional social harmony, or the long history of isolation, or delicate domestic sensitivities or whatnot; but never because it would force local businesses into unwelcome competition with foreigners. Even more interesting is how many American experts, scholars and diplomats come to the fore on these occasions to argue the Japanese case. I have never heard of a Japanese expert on America explaining Washington’s point of view to his countrymen on the grounds of special American sensitivities. Face, delicate feelings, a long history, all are part of the East. The West is supposed to be as coldly neutral as the machine age it introduced to the unsuspecting world. (Hence, perhaps, the genuine astonishment of many Japanese when Americans yelp in pain when hit in a soft spot, as in 1986, when Prime Minister Nakasone made his remarks about blacks and Hispanics dragging American educational standards down.)
Morita, one of the founders of Sony and perhaps the most effective public-relations man for Japan Inc., appears to be in two minds about Americans. They clearly lack the warm family feelings of “We Japanese” (a favorite Morita expression), they see nothing wrong in hopping from one employer to another, or in firing workers when times are bad. But when they attack We Japanese for obstructing American trade, they are “too emotional” and show signs of a “victim complex.” At one point in his book Morita’s own emotions get the better of him:
In Japan we are still the inheritors of an agrarian cultural tradition and philosophy, which are influenced by nature and the change of the seasons.… We have thousands of years of history and tradition and that is why we are not pleased when we are treated as newcomers by such a young—even though great—country as the United States.
One might well ask what the four seasons have to do with international terms of trade, but this is one of the most often heard clichés of the great Japanese cultural tariff barrier, that cluster of myths commonly believed to be signs of Japanese uniqueness. These myths are worth examining, for they affect the way Japan wishes to be seen by the outside world, and thus they affect international affairs. Part of the mythology is Japan’s unique claim to the guardianship of peace, linked on the left to the unique suffering from American nuclear bombs, and on the right to a celebration of “our one-race nation” (Morita), with its uniquely harmonious industrial relations. As an example of Japan’s peaceful nature, Morita points out that there were no wars in Japan during the country’s period of virtual isolation from 1603 to 1868: “Japan may have been the only country in the world where complete peace reigned for such a long time.” And he goes on to write, “in our labour relations, we have a kind of equality that does not exist elsewhere.” This is complete nonsense, but more about that later. Suffice it to say at this point that many heads were cracked before the power of independent Japanese unions was broken. The implication of Morita’s claim is clear, however: foreign pressure threatens Japanese harmony.
In the Tokyo magazine Bungei Shunju, an associate professor of philosophy called Hasegawa Michiko wrote in 1984 that Japan unleashed its fifteen-year war in Asia because the Japanese “began to subscribe to the characteristically Western world view of dividing nations into friends and foes … and of behaving antagonistically tow
ards enemies.” After the war, however, “the Japanese determined never again to take up residence in the violent Western-style international community.” Hasegawa is regarded as a right-wing Japanese nationalist. The position of the Japanese left can be summed up best by quoting from Introduction to Peace Education, a booklet published by the Hiroshima Peace Education Research Center:
Japan suffered incalculable human, spiritual and material damage from the war. We repented our aggression. We are a new people who will never take part in or start another war.… In our constitution it is clearly expressed that we negate war and seek eternal peace.… However, after the war, Japan, under the U.S. Occupation forces, was dragged into the so-called cold war and forced to rearm against the Soviet Union.
The Japan–U.S. security treaty allowing the U.S. to keep its forces in Japan, the booklet goes on to explain, is “absolutely contrary to the spirit of the constitution.”
The security treaty was extended in 1960, when Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, a former minister in General Tojo’s wartime cabinet, pushed it through parliament. The extraordinary riots that followed cost President Eisenhower his planned trip to Japan and Kishi his job. It was under these or, more precisely, because of these circumstances that Edwin O. Reischauer was appointed by President Kennedy as U.S. ambassador to Tokyo. Reischauer, born in Japan and a noted Harvard scholar in East Asian affairs, was an expert in Japanese cultural sensitivities, and his brief was, in the parlance of the time, to “restore the broken dialogue”—the dialogue, that is, with the Japanese left.