36 pages • 1 hour read
John W. DowerWar Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The War in Japanese Eyes”
Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Pure Self”
Much like their white adversaries, the Japanese touted their superiority, routinely referring to themselves as the leading race. While there are many similarities between the West and Japan in this regard, there are some very distinct differences as well. One major difference lies simply in the fact that the Japanese faced the blatant and judicial racism of the dominant Western powers. For example, though numbered among the victors of the First World War, when Japan asked for racial equality to be a stipulation in the League of Nations, it was rejected. Also, while the focus of racism in the West was on denigration of other, the Japanese focus was preoccupied almost exclusively on elevating themselves.
On the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese government issued a document that stated to the Japanese people:
[T]he enemy’s ‘selfish desire for world conquest’ made war unavoidable, and Japan’s cause was a moral one. The country’s goal was to create a ‘new world order’ which would ‘enable all nations and races to assume their proper place in the world, and all peoples to be at peace in their own sphere (205).
The idea of proper place was a key concept, which was the Japanese keyword for their proper place being at the top. In its propaganda, the Japanese government avoided describing the conflict in terms of white vs. color on account of the country’s alliance with Germany and Italy.
The issue of color symbolism played another role in why the Japanese avoided such terminology. White was also a color associated with purity and cleanliness to the Japanese, two virtues held highly in their culture, so trying to associate the white man as something evil had contradictions in and of itself. The Japanese focused not on the color but the virtues and how the Japanese best personified the virtues of purity and cleanliness. The basis of this purity was found in the belief of the divine nature of the Yamato race, traced back to the Emperor Jimmu. However, this purity was not something unassailable, it could be lost, and therefore, the Japanese concerned themselves in developing rituals of purification. The ultimate purification became linked with war.
Similar to the West, the Japanese also possessed scholars who argued against the idea of biological racial purity. Professor Adachi Buntarō was the most prominent of these. However, much like his colleagues in the West, while he refuted biology, he was able to use examples of culture and morality as well as erudite language to prove the superiority of the Japanese over other races. A document produced by the Thought Bureau of the Ministry of Education in 1937, Cardinal Principles of the National Polity, went on to affirm that “what set the Japanese apart from all other peoples was an ‘original condition’ that was comprised of a spirit of loyalty and filial piety inseparably wedded to veneration of the divinely descended sovereigns of Japan” (221). Individuality and self-aggrandizement, for example, characteristics of the West, were viewed as corruptions of the spirit and clouded knowledge. It was morality and purity of spirit and culture, plus their divine descent, that made the Japanese the superior race in the world.
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary: “The Demonic Other”
The development of Japanese society over the centuries, with a consciousness of purity and pollution, created specific attitudes and behaviors concerning outsiders. Outsiders were seen ambiguously as possessing both positive and negative traits, pure and unclean. In ancient times, outsiders were often viewed as demonic beings –associated with pollution and danger, even though demons could also have positive qualities or bring useful things for the Japanese. It was this demonic personification that was most used by the Japanese to depict the Anglo-Americans during the war.
The first European outsiders to access Japan were Portuguese traders and clergy, and Japanese perception of these outsiders summarized their beliefs in the demonic: “These early Western intruders were indeed welcomed by many Japanese as men bearing material and spiritual gifts, but like the ambiguous stranger of folk tradition they were at the same time rumored to practice witchcraft and black magic” (237). In the 1630s, all Europeans except a small enclave of Dutch on an artificial island were expelled from Japan. The nation became completely isolated until Commodore Mathew Perry forced open Japanese ports for trade a little more than two centuries later.
During the war, the depictions of the Anglo-Americans found denigration in word play where three ideographs could be read “’Merican” and could be translated as “misguided dog” (241). There was a similar pun for the British.
The tell-tale sign of the demon was two horns, and many cartoonist depictions of President Roosevelt simply showed him with two little horns jutting from his head, all that was needed to represent his true nature. Other characteristics were also used; another cartoon showed both Roosevelt and Churchill in catholic robes where underneath Roosevelt possessed the hindquarters of a horse and Churchill the behind of a badger.
One of the missions of the Japanese soldier was to destroy and purify the pollution of the enemy: “How could the Japanese respond to such a diabolical threat? By extermination. ‘Beat and kill these animals that have lost their human nature!’ the panel [from a Japanese magazine] exclaimed. ‘That is the great mission that Heaven has given the Yamato race, for the eternal peace of the world!’” (247).
One of the most influential depictions of this mission was portrayed in the story of Momotaro, the Peach Boy. The legend of Momotaro narrates that Momotaro, with the help of a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant, defeats a group of demons from a distant land that have been terrorizing the Japanese people in a great battle. The story of Momotaro was adapted in films and comics to specify the demons as the actual enemies of Japan; in one film, Momotaro—Divine Troops of the Ocean, the “Island of Demons was Hawaii” (253). After the Japanese defeated the demonic forces of the Anglo-Americans, “the Japanese were to take their places as the new and destined overlords” (261).
Part 3, Chapter 10 Summary: "Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus"
A large, 8-volume work produced by many Japanese scholars in the Population and Race section of the Research Bureau of the Ministry of Health and Welfare was known as An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, which laid out not only Japan’s global aspirations, but also its perception of other nations and peoples. While the rhetoric around the Co-Prosperity Sphere called for coexistence and co-prosperity for all East Asia nations, the aforementioned document spells out just how that was supposed to function, especially what the terms “proper place” and “proper sphere” meant. In essence, the Japanese were the leading race, and all other races were there to serve and maintain the Empire of Japan. The idea of proper place had its roots in Confucianism and is similar in nature to the Great Chain of Being. The greatest difference between the two was that the Japanese did not solely argue a biological superiority, rather a cultural one.
The document laid out a specific plan for maintaining this superiority through improved physical fitness and progeny, establishing a goal of reaching a Japanese population of 100 million by the year 1960. Furthermore, “qualitative improvement of the Japanese race was also to be promoted by marriage counseling and tighter coordination of the various organizations which were involved in arranging marriages” (271).
So much were the Japanese superior to other Asians that the document laid out a plan for Japanese colonization in other countries where the Japanese population, kept from any form of miscegenation, would act as a guiding, supervising force for that nation.
The economic aspect of the document indicated the true design of the Co-Prosperity Sphere as to create a system where the other nations of Asia supplied Japan with whatever it needed. Furthermore, it spelled out many of the “proper places” for peoples in Asia, and some were viewed very negatively. For example, the Koreans and Formosans were viewed being only suitable for heavy physical labor.
The document did attempt to express the hope that all would somehow benefit from the new paradigm, but in the end, it was always to be the Japanese who would most benefit therefrom, and “on this, the report did not mince words” (290).
Part 3, Chapters 8-10 Analysis
The importance of the idea of spiritual purity, with strong connotations from their indigenous religion of Shinto, coupled with modern societal complexities, became almost obsessive to the Japanese psyche before and during the Second World War, so much so that military and governmental leaders preached death as the ultimate form of purification. Furthermore, the belief in purity caused the Japanese to view themselves as the purest and most divine culture in the world, which caused them to look down not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbors whom they purportedly were there to liberate from the oppression of the imperialistic European-American nations.
The belief in their own purity and desire to maintain it affected the way in which the Japanese viewed their enemies, namely as demons with polluting and corrupting powers. The drive to maintain their own purity and the constant need for purification led them to view the destruction of the enemy as a noble cause. Whereas the Anglo-Americans viewed the Japanese as subhuman, the Japanese viewed the Anglo-Americans as anthropomorphized demonic beings. In the end, the result was the same: Viewing the enemy as something less or completely other than themselves made it easier to destroy and kill en masse.
The perception of proper place was crucial to the Japanese understanding of conquest. They argued that their conquest did not rely on oppression and force like the European imperialist did; their conquests would allow the “rational and legalistic premise of equality” (283), so all countries and peoples could find their proper place in the new world paradigm. It was sort of a belief in a divinely appointed international caste system, though hierarchy itself existed in Japanese society, too.
