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- Convenor:
-
G. Clinton Godart
(Tohoku University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Hans Martin Krämer
(Heidelberg University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- History
- Location:
- Lokaal 1.10
- Sessions:
- Friday 18 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel examines cross-fertilizations between the military and civilian spheres in the production of ideology in interwar and wartime Japan. Particular attention is paid to the role of religion and the media.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores connections between the military and civilian spheres in the production of ideology in interwar and wartime Japan. In recent years, scholars have reexamined the interwar Japanese military and its relationship with politics. They moved away from simplistic models of the military bent on eroding democracy and waging aggressive war, and began mapping the complicated ways the military engaged and negotiated with the political sphere, Japanese society, and ideological production and dissemination. It has also become clear that many sectors of Japanese society, instead of following the military and the state, took the initiative in promoting militarism and expansionism. In the history of modern Japanese religions, attention has shifted to how Buddhist, Christian, and Shintō movements have formed grassroots support for the military and the empire.
Many aspects in this dynamic relation between the military and the cultural, religious, and ideological spheres, however, are still not well understood. How should we understand such key terms as "militarism," "total war," and "mobilization," all concepts that signal a relation and tension between the military and civilian spheres? How did these terms function at the time? What were the Meiji antecedents of early Shōwa-era militarism and total war thought, and what roles did civilian actors play? How did the military engage with the media, and how did the media portray the military? What were the differences between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Navy in their engagement with politics, culture, and religion? Why did so many high-profile military figures write about religion? How did religion shape military thinking, and in turn, how did military officers employ religion in Japan and in the expanding Japanese empire? How should we situate individual religious beliefs of military officers? Three of the papers seek to answer these questions by exploring the role of religions and religious thought, including Buddhism and Islam in the context of Pan-Asianism and the Japanese Empire. A final paper focuses on storytelling in the media's reception and promotion of militarism in the early 1940s. Together, they show how religion and storytelling are critical to understanding the Japanese Empire's military ideological complex.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 18 August, 2023, -Jeremy Yellen (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Paper short abstract:
This paper spotlights focuses on the politics of storytelling during wartime Japan through stories told in the media about wartime general and prime minister, Tōjō Hideki. It shows stories of Tōjō’s past as presenting a vehicle of hope for Japan’s future during its time of crisis.
Paper long abstract:
Tyrant. Dictator. Authoritarian. Fascist. War criminal. Buffoon. The very name Tōjō Hideki, like Hitler and Mussolini, has inspired many such epithets. Tōjō, after all, was the Imperial Japanese Army general who became prime minister in October 1941, on the eve of the Pacific War. He presided over the height of army influence in Japanese politics and oversaw Japan’s fateful decision to launch a ruinous war in December 1941. He is remembered alongside the Shōwa Emperor as one of the two most notorious figures of Japan’s twentieth century history.
But early in his premiership, from late October 1941 through early 1943, Tōjō was also a media darling—pundits and authors told stories about his life while heaping praise upon his person. This paper explores the hagiographies and triumphal, propagandistic narratives of Tōjō’s life through the lens of storytelling in wartime Japan. The stories pundits told reveal less about Tōjō’s life than they do about the concerns of the writers themselves. The stories were no doubt taken from events in Tōjō’s life. But the storytellers then took clear liberties in telling their tales, changing details or emphases to fit their messages. The stories of Tōjō’s past became vehicles for a central message of hope. The glorification of Tōjō’s past through stories of his youth was thus part of the emotional politics of the present. Lionizing Tōjō represented a cry of hope for Japan’s future—hope that a strong, compassionate, responsible, and dutiful leader could navigate the rough East Asian waters and help Japan escape its time of crisis unscathed.
G. Clinton Godart (Tohoku University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates a Nichiren Buddhist network among officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. It focuses in particular on Vice Admiral Satō Tetsutarō (1866-1942), the father of modern Japanese naval strategy, his Buddhist faith, and his engagement with Japanese interwar society.
Paper long abstract:
This paper brings to light the roles of military officers in the religious and ideological spheres in modern Japan. In the field of the history of religion in Japan, the support of official Buddhist churches for the military, expansionist, and ideological efforts of the Japanese state is now well known. However, comparatively little is known about the role of religion among the higher echelons of the armed forces in pre-1945 Japan, and how they actively intervened in and shaped the religious and ideological world of pre-war Japan. In comparison to the Army, the Imperial Japanese Navy has enjoyed an image of “non-political” professionals, and has thus been relatively free of scrutiny into its ideological and religious aspects. In recent years, Japanese scholars have begun to rethink this image of the “apolitical” navy. This paper aims to bring to light another overlooked dimension in the interplay between the military and the civilian sphere in pre-war Japan: religion.
This paper investigates Nichiren Buddhist thought and ideology in the writings of key officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. It focuses in particular on Vice Admiral Satō Tetsutarō (1866-1942), the father of modern Japanese naval strategic thought, his Buddhist faith and his political and religious writings. Satō Tetsutarō was part of a larger Nichiren Buddhist network comprising of high echelon officers who envisioned a maritime and naval Japan, and who employed the status of the navy to promote Buddhism, and used Buddhist tropes and symbols to promote militarism. This network connected high-ranking naval officers with important Buddhist clergy such as Honda Nisshō (1867-1931), as well as civilian intellectuals and politicians. Satō and other navy officers made a particular religious and naval intervention in the ideological landscape of modern Japan. A close scrutiny of military officers and their engagement with Nichiren Buddhist thought and ideologies reveals vast differences. Satō Tetsutarō promoted navalist ideology with Buddhism and the emperor-system, but in contrast to Pan-Asianist expansionists, he was more closely aligned with the “small-Japan” faction opposing continental expansion. This opens up larger questions for categories such as “militarism” in prewar Japan.
Bruce Grover (University of Heidelberg)
Paper short abstract:
Interwar period Total War thought has been interpreted as a utilitarian method of social control. This paper seeks to highlight conceptual roots of national mobilization in pre-total war era civilian reformist ideals of solidarism and popular inclusion in the politics of national empowerment.
Paper long abstract:
Recent research on interwar period nationalism and wartime mobilization policies, such as that of leading scholar Fuke Takahiro, has pinpointed the shock of total war in Europe in WWI as triggering the historical inception of a complex of new social concepts: the emergence of 'minponshugi', or mass political participation under the Emperor, and its correlation with socio-economic mobilization, economic efficiency, and pan-Asianism. Conventional narratives of the development of total war planning and its impact have often focused on elite managerial technocrats such as the ‘reform bureaucrats,’ contrasted with an opposition painted as ‘backward, irrational’ Japanists. This stark binary, however, risks obscuring a complex spectrum of ideals for mass politics which cannot be entirely reduced to utilitarian concerns of social control.
This presentation will highlight a prominent strand of military, bureaucratic and civilian nationalists who were instrumental in prioritizing effective mobilization for long-term war, yet also supported a concept of ‘control,’ or tо̄sei, which sought to maintain a central role for the constitutional political representation of the people out of fear of the rise of a technocratic elite unaccountable to the people and the national public good.
This strand of Japanism grounded its understanding of mass politics and its relevance for national mobilization in a worldview which idealized power through communal solidarity and the full development of a morally autonomous self actively devoted to the public good of the ethnic nation, a worldview with deep pre-WWI roots in civilian thought and direct global parallels in reformist social movements in Europe. This understanding of mass politics of development through self and society will be shown primarily through the thought and action of army minister general Hayashi Senjūrо̄, patron of ‘control faction’ leader Nagata Tetsuzan, whose political thought and ideals for mass mobilization were impacted by a Meiji-era religious nationalist organization the Nihon Kokkyо̄ Daidо̄-sha, and the pan-Asian group the Ajia Gikai.
Noriko Kanahara (Waseda University)
Paper short abstract:
While religion is often discussed in terms of state restrictions of religious freedom and state mobilization of various groups for its wartime policies, this paper argues that Japanese state officials’ personal beliefs and practices affected their worldviews and decisions during the wartime period.
Paper long abstract:
While religion is often discussed in terms of state restrictions of religious freedom and state mobilization of various groups for its wartime policies, this paper argues that Japanese state officials’ personal beliefs and practices affected their worldviews and decisions during the wartime period. In particular, this paper focuses on how Hiranuma Kiichiro (1867-1952), a former Prime Minister and an influential figure at the Department of Justice, and Araki Sadao (1877-1966), a former army general and Education Minister, viewed Islam and Shinto. Through analyzing these officials’ views on Islam and Shinto, we learn that these two played significant roles in how they perceived the world at large and Japan’s relationship to it, and how international affairs affected how they conceived “Japan,” “Shinto,” and “religion” more generally. The paper begins by highlighting the global context of transnational ideological and religious networks in the contemporary period, including how various states used these networks toward various ends, then turns to address how Japanese officials viewed Shinto and Islam in light of world events. I argue that transnational ideological and religious movements had a significant impact on Japanese national consciousness, which, according to the officials discussed in this paper, centered on Shrine Shinto.