Buruma - Inventing Japan, 1853-1964

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2003 Modern Library Edition

Copyright 2003 by Ian Buruma

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Published in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a division of Orion Publishing Group Ltd.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Buruma, Ian.
Inventing Japan, 18531964 / Ian Buruma.
p. cm. (Modern Library chronicles; 11)
A Modern Library chronicles book.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-282-7
1. JapanHistory1868 2. JapanHistoryRestoration,
18531870. I. Title. II. Series.
DS881.9.B87 2003
952.03dc21
2002026346

Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

In 1964, Japan rejoined the world. The postwar period of poverty, humiliation, and, until 1952, Allied occupation was finally over, and the boom years of the economic miracle had begun. In a formal, political sense, Japan had already rejoined the world as a sovereign nation in September 1951, when Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with his countrys former enemies, though not yet with China or the Soviet Union. But the autumn of 1964, when the Olympics came to Tokyo, was to be the great ceremonial celebration of Japans peaceful, postwar democratic revival. No longer a defeated nation in disgrace, Japan was respectable now. After years of feverish construction, of highways and stadiums, hotels, sewers, overhead railways, and subway lines, Tokyo was ready to receive the world with a grand display of love, peace, and sports.

To anyone sitting in Tange Kenzos grand new stadium on the afternoon of October 10, seeing the athletes from ninety-four nations marching by, Americans in cowboy hats and Japanese in red blazers, with Emperor Hirohito offering a friendly wave to the world from his royal box and eight thousand white doves of peace fluttering toward the bright blue sky, it must have seemed an awfully long time ago that Japan walked out of the League of Nations in 1933 and joined the Axis powers in 1940, hoping to divide the world with Hitler and Mussolini. Manchuria, Nanking, Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Okinawa, and Manilaall that appeared to be forgotten now, as millions of Japanese expressed their joyful feelings in little poems published in the papers every day. One good citizen expressed his emotions like this:

One and then another, ninety-four flags.
Some, perhaps, have met on battlefields.

The poem is less notable for its literary quality than for the odd use of the word perhaps. But as Edward Seidensticker, from whose book I quote, put it, this might be taken as a mark of the Japanese tendency to soften things a bit.

By 1964, the chief Japanese symbol of wartime suffering, and subsequently of Japanese pacifism, was the bombing of Hiroshima. As a reminder of Japans peaceful intentions, and perhaps also, in a fit of self-pity, of Japans own suffering in the past, the young man chosen to light the Olympic flame was born in Hiroshima on the day it was obliterated by the A-bomb. As the flame was lit, fighter jets of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces scrambled over Tokyo with the entirely pacific intent of drawing the five Olympic rings in the sky.

The Japanese impressed the world with their friendly manners and efficient organization. Nothing was allowed to go wrong. And they managed to win plenty of medals, too: sixteen gold, a tally bettered only by the United States and the Soviet Union. Japanese took their sporting records seriously, perhaps more so than was entirely necessary. Two Japanese athletes who failed to come up to popular expectations, a marathon runner named Tsubuya Kokichi and a woman hurdler named Yoda Ikuko, later committed suicide. Poor Tsubuya had the peculiarly humiliating experience of entering the stadium in second place, only to be passed in sight of a horrified home crowd by an Englishman just before the finish. His bronze medal was no consolation.

To the Japanese, always acutely conscious of their ranking among nations, sporting victories were one way to soothe memories of wartime defeat. Through the 1950s, the successes in the wrestling ring of a bruiser named Riki Dozan had served as a balm for injured Japanese pride. His fights tended to follow a well-rehearsed pattern. Faced by larger opponents, often of Western origin, who fought dirty, Riki would falter in the early rounds. But then, gradually, inspired by visions of Mount Fuji, the Japanese hero would work himself into a righteous rage and finally, despite his inferior size, overcome the big, blond villain.

There were, however, a few problems with Riki Dozan. For one thing, he was of Korean origin, an official secret that deceived many but not all. And professional wrestling, though entertaining, lacked the cachet of more traditional forms of combat, such as sumo, kendo, or judo. Besides, Riki Dozan was no longer around in the Olympic year. He had been stabbed to death the year before, by a gangster in a Tokyo nightclub. It was time for Japanese to show their prowess in a more traditional manner. So the Japanese Olympic Committee exercised its privilege to choose judo as a new Olympic sport.

Besides the fact that Japanese were likely to win medals in their native sport, judo had another advantage: It would demonstrate the power of skill over brawn. Judo was not about size or muscle power, it was about something infinitely more subtle than that, something almost spiritual. To beat an opponent you needed patience, quickness of mind, and great discipline. A small man could beat a much larger one by using his opponents bulk against him. Unlike wrestling or boxing, judo demanded mental skills that might well be beyond the power of Westerners, who were used to cruder forms of combat. Put another way, judo would show off the superiority of Japanese culture, of the Japanese spirit.