Shunsuke Tsurumi [Tsurumi - An Intellectual History of Wartime Japan 1931-1945

I will begin with a few words on my subject matter, the intellectual history of Japan between 1931 and 1945.

Firstly, the problem of language: most of the events I shall discuss took place in Japan, and most of the thoughts I shall analyse first found expression in the Japanese language. Thus my use here of the English language creates a methodological difficulty. I have a hypothesis that in the majority of cases English-speaking Japanese are unreliable. This hypothesis tends to discredit whatever I might say in English about Japan. In the years since Japan's defeat in 1945, the English language has so infiltrated Japanese that words of English origin now flood everyday life, so that, for example, in a newspaper advertisement we might come across an expression like Chic na Dress no Fashion Show, which contains only two words - na and no - of Japanese origin. To quote another instance, an American scholar, who had studied the Japanese language for years, came to Japan and found in a scholarly journal a phrase which he could not decipher even with the help of a dictionary. He appealed to a Japanese colleague of the same discipline, sociology, and the phrase turned out to be hitto ando ran (hit and run). But it seems to me that my old hypothesis still preserves its validity, for the borrowing of European words does not necessarily mean the Europeanization of thought processes. By borrowing so many words in such a short time, the Japanese are in fact becoming incomprehensible even to themselves, because they have lost the means to grasp their own thought processes.

I shall begin with an account of what happened in Japan during the war years, and follow it by an attempt to understand what happened elsewhere and at other times.

Tenk In this fashion, the description of a particular event in Japan may, I hope, lead to a broader perspective upon the world.

One method of approach to cultural and intellectual history is to examine a deviation in order to reveal the essential characteristics of a national culture. What took place in Japan from 1931 to 1945 should not merely be dismissed as the product of a whim or thoughtlessness. With careful study, the period reveals much of both positive and negative value. What is true of a personal history is also true of a nation's history; we grow only by examining our errors, and this requires not only that we learn not to repeat them, but also that we grasp the element of truth and value contained in them.

We may date the beginning of World War II from the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1931, the Fifteen Years War. When Japanese Army leaders began the fighting in Manchuria in 1931 and on this pretext established a puppet government in north-east China, they introduced to the world a new tactic, which was later to be used by Mussolini and Hitler. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War was the beginning of a new trend that influenced the whole world, and in this instance the local history of Japan had an unusual influence.

After the opening of Japan in the nineteenth century, a taste for things Japanese developed in the West. But among such noted commentators as Basil Hall Chamberlain, Lafcadio Hearn, and Bernard Leach, who were known primarily for their works about Japan, Leach - the potter - is the only one, to my knowledge, who did not later express disillusionment with his youthful affection for the country. When seen from the perspective of Korea, Japan reveals its horrible features. From the perspective of China, Japan reveals its shallowness. When a student from another land first studies Japan without either perspective, and then turns his eyes to Korea and China, he is bound to be disillusioned. Leach, however, from the first fostered an appreciation of Chinese and Korean culture along with that of Japan. He began with this perspective and therefore had no illusions to be destroyed. Of course, if one takes interest in Japan only as a form of exoticism, then one preserves the taste and viewpoint with which one was born and bred, unaltered by the contact with the exotic foreign culture. One's view of Japanese culture will remain static and will undergo no disillusionment or modification. Exoticism preserves one's distance from another culture, but genuine cultural contact is a process of weaving the other culture into the fabric of one's own. If one wishes to make this kind of acquaintance with Japan, it is important to place Japanese culture from the very first within the perspective of the cultures of other Asian countries, especially Korea and China. It is also important to see the Japan of today within the perspective of the Japan of the war years. It is these perspectives which I will attempt to provide.