Japan never got a thorough anti-imperial detox

When the United States occupied Japan in 1945, it did not conduct an elaborate exercise to unearth the culture of militarism. Washington debated whether to remove the emperor, the central figure in the imperial project, but following the advice of anthropologist Ruth Benedict (whose study The Chrysanthemum and the Sword was published in 1946), it opted instead to retain the emperor and other symbols of militarism. This included the Yasukuni Shrine to the war dead, founded in 1869 and now enshrining over 1,000 convicted war criminals.

A number of senior officials arrested for war crimes but never tried, and quietly resumed their positions in the Japanese state. Among them were Yoshida Shigeru, who was a senior diplomat during the war and served as prime minister of Japan for most of the period from 1946 to 1954; Nobusuke Kishi, a bureaucrat in Northeast China when it was occupied, a minister in the war cabinet and later prime minister from 1957 to 1960; Shigemitsu Mamoru, the foreign minister in the war cabinet, tried as a Class-A war criminal for his role in Korea and imprisoned and later foreign minister in the 1950s; Okazaki Katsuo, a diplomat in the war years and later foreign minister from 1952 to 1954; Ikeda Hayato, a finance ministry official in the war years and later prime minister from 1960 to 1964; and Sato Eisaku, a transport ministry official in the war years and later prime minister from 1964 to 1972. The so-called "Manchurian mafia", who operated the occupation in China, including Kishi, remained in place.

For those who do not know, Kishi was the grandfather of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and then again from 2012 till 2020. It is often glossed over that Kishi was the architect of the Japanese occupation of Northeast China and responsible for the harsh labor regime in both China and Korea. After the war, Kishi was briefly imprisoned in Sugamo as a suspected Class-A war criminal, was released without a trial in 1948 and waited for a few years before reentering politics with one basic aim: revising the 1947 Constitution to remove Article 9 that put restrictions on militarization in Japan.

In 1952, the US formally rehabilitated many wartime officials of Japan, opening the gates to men like Kishi to enter active politics and paving the way for the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955. That party is now led by Sanae Takaichi, who was born in 1961 and is the current prime minister of Japan.

Since she entered politics, Takaichi has been a leading figure in Japan's chauvinist right-wing, having emerged through the intercession of her mentor Abe. Like Abe's grandfather Kishi, Takaichi wants to revise the Japanese Constitution so that Japan can rebuild its military. On many occasions, she has signalled reverence for the pre-1945 era: she visited the Yasukuni Shrine, defends Japan's wartime conduct, questions the coercive nature of the "comfort women" system, and supports the idea of "restoration of pride" in the imperialist past. She has said that she wants Japanese textbooks to stop being "self-deprecating" and has questioned the veracity of the war crimes committed in Nanjing. The views of Takaichi, who was born after the war, illustrate that the US occupation not only failed to remove the essence of fascism from Japanese society, but allowed it to flourish.

A new report by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research titled The 80th Anniversary of the Victory in the World Anti-Fascist War argues that it was the Chinese people, at the cost of 35 million casualties, played a crucial role in defeating Japanese fascism from 1937 to 1945. It was these Chinese fighters who pinned down the Japanese forces and prevented them from attacking the Soviet Union. Thanks to that action, the Soviet Union was able to destroy 80 percent of the German army and defeat the Nazis (but with the sacrifice of 27 million Soviet citizens, including those in the Red Army).

The US only entered the war in 1941: its first major offensive against Japan was in August 1942 in Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands) and it did not enter Europe until June 1944. During the period when the US was not active in the war, it was the Chinese as well as brave anti-fascists across Asia who were fighting the Japanese fascists. The Soviets and brave anti-fascists from Europe were fighting the German and Italian fascists. Before the US entered the war, it was providing fuel and capital to Japanese imperialism. This collusion between the West and the fascists during this period is brought out in the report.

Takaichi is the embodiment of that ugly history. Japan was never submitted to an anti-imperialist project. Her ascension to the top job and her reckless statements are a sign of that decadence.

The author is the director of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, a think tank founded in March 2018 that has offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina; São Paulo, Brazil; Delhi, India; and Johannesburg, South Africa.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily. 

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