Recently I have read the following book. The main points in Chapters 7 to 10 are as follows:
Book
title: John W.
Dower. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in
the wake of World War II. W.W. Norton.
Main
points:
-
Ch. 7. To many ordinary Japanese, the sudden post
surrender appearance of intellectuals, politicians and other public figures
spouting paeans (praise) to democracy were reflection of hypocrisy and
opportunism. (p.234)
-to most of the progressive men of letters Marxism
offered a theoretical framework to explain the recent disaster in terms of
feudal remnants and capitalist contradiction. (p.235)
-
Ch. 8 – in retrospect, it seemed obvious that the victors
contributed unwittingly to the circumstance in which radical activities
flourished by promoting political freedom without taking an active role in
rehabilitating the economy. In practice, production stagnation and inflation
raged under this hands-off policy. (p.255)
- there were signs that the victors had now drawn a
clear line between permissible and impermissible ways of bring about their
democratic revolutions. The impression of a conservative crackdown was
reinforced by a celebrated episode known as the ‘placard incident’. The placard
held by Matsushima Shotaro read: ‘why are we starving no matter how much we
work? Answer, Emperor Hirohito”. He was arrested for violating the dignity of the
sovereign. (p.267)
- when negotiations between labor leaders and the government
broken down completely on January 30, the momentum towards a general strike
seemed irreversible. Late in the following day, General MacArthur intervened to
announce that he would not permit the use so deadly social weapon. Ii the labor
leader was summoned by General Marquat and was ordered to sign a statement
canceling the strike. (p.269)
- the suppression of the general strike marked the
beginning of the end of the possibility that labor might be an equal partner in
sharing of ‘democratic’ power.(p.270)
- as the economy continued to founder, the organized
labor became more militant, in the summer of 1948 MacArthur reversed occupation
labor policy by withdrawing the right to strike from public employees. (p.271)
By 1949 ‘Red purge’ had become one of the fashionable new terms of the
occupation. (p.272)
- although the ‘reverse course’ helped establish a
democratic conservative hegemony of politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen
that remained dominant to the end of the century, Communists and Socialists
continued to be elected to the Diet. They became the critics of the US Cold war
policy. (p.273)
-Ch. 9.-
Hirohito as it turned out, resilient and malleable, blessed by the heaven and
by general MacArthur more particularly to survive and prosper while his subject
were denounced, purged, charged with war crimes.(p.278)
- in his memoirs, Yoshida Shigeru praised MacArthur
as the ‘great benefactor’ of his country, referring not to the gift of democracy,
but the preservation of the throne and protection in a time of peril. SCAP’s
influence in these matters was decisive. (p.279)
- one of the psychological-warfare specialists in
MacArthur’s wartime command was Bonner. F. Fellers. As an analyst of the
Japanese psyche, he prepared a research study. The intensity of Japanese
loyalty and military discipline fascinated him. (p.280)
- as a basic rule, MacArthur’s propaganda specialists
observed a wartime policy of not provoking the enemy by attacking the Emperor.
As an internal report by OSS noted in July 1944, ‘the desirability of
eliminating the present emperor is questionable, probably that the inclines
towards the more moderate faction might prove to be a useful influence later. (p.281)
- MacArthur’s commanders believed that the Emperor
held the key not only to surrender but also to postwar changes. The task of
Fellers and his men during the war was to drive a wedge between the Japanese leadership
and the emperor (and his subject). The wedge was: the military had not only
duped the Japanese people but also betrayed their sacred leader. (p.281)
- a respectful appraisal of the emperor’s benign
potential and virtually totalitarian American ‘spiritual’ control over the
Japanese psyche would become the bedrock of postwar policy of the US. (p.283)
Colonel Sidney Mashbir, one of Fellers’ trusted associate said that you could not
remove the emperor worship from the Japanese by killing the emperor. (p.284)
- Roger Egeberg, the personal physician of MacArthur,
recalled in May 1945 that the General thought that the Emperor was a captive of
Tojo and the warlords. And that Hirohito would be instrumental in permanent changes
in the structure of the postwar Japanese government. (p.286)
- while the Emperor was portrayed as a peacemaker,
his subjects as a whole were to assume responsibility for failing to win the
holy war. The Japanese race was now divided into the emperor, and everyone
else. Public figures re-interred these terms ceaselessly during the two weeks before
MacArthur’s arrival. The notion of collective guilt was given its consummate
expression at a press conference in which prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, who
succeeded Suzuki as PM, declared that ‘the repentance of the hundred million is
an essential first step toward national reconstruction’. (p.287)
- Higashikuni praised the emperor for having paved
the way for peace in order to save the people form hardship in 1945. The
impression was that Hirohito just ascended to the throne in August 1945, just
in time to end a terrible war. (p.287)
-foreign minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, who signed the
surrender document, gave devoted service to the emperor in the days that
followed the victor’s arrival. (p.288)
- on September 3 1945, Shigemitsu renewed his vow to
shield the throne by conveying the thesis of imperial innocence and militarist
conspiracy to General MacArthur in a private meeting. The purpose was to
persuade the SCAP to abandon plans on a direct military government, suggesting
that it was better to enforce the Potsdam stipulations indirectly ‘through the
Japanese government instructed by the emperor’. (p.289)
- in another rare private document of the time, the
crown prince’s diary, we had an even more amusing indication of how defeat was
explained in court circle. Akihito recorded that Japan had lost the war for two
reasons: material backwardness, particularly in science, and individual
selfishness. (p.291)
- as the matter transpired, part of the bureaucracy
was no yet in on the strategy for saving the emperor, notably the Home ministry
which was controlling the police and practicing censorship. It was the time
when the country was confront with a photograph. The photo depicted MacArthur
and the emperor. The former towered over the later. (p.292)
- the idea for the photo was MacArthur’s. The photo
established MacArthur’s author for all to see, while simultaneously
demonstrating his receptivity to the emperor. (p.293)
- the secrecy of the discussion content between the
emperor and the General enabled both sides to leak selected version of what was
said. (p.295)
-
Ch. 10. - when ordinary Japanese were asked whether they wished
to retain the emperor and the imperial institution, an overwhelming majority
answered affirmatively. The emperor’s surrender broadcast punctured emperor
worship. When the holy war ended, so did the worship and the “manifest deity”.
(p.302)
- field-level American analyst offered appraisals in
mid-December 1945 was that regarding opinion of the middle class about the
emperor system, the allies were unduly apprehensive of the effect on the
Japanese if the emperor was removed. People were more concerned with food and
housing problems than with the fate of the emperor. (p.305)
- the fact that three Kumazawa Hiromichi’s relatives
each soon claimed that he was the true family head seemed to reveal one more
way in which Hirohito’s authority was eroding. (p.306)
- the campaign to dress Emperor Hirohito in new
clothes and turn him into a symbol of peace and democracy was conducted on
several fronts. (p.308)
沒有留言:
張貼留言