For the sake of saving its people not pride

Memory of uncomfortable feelings

     I remember that I felt uncomfortable when I heard my father saying something about Chinese and Korean people. Because I sometimes found a kind of contempt toward the people, their culture or behaviors in his words and attitudes.
     I also understood it wasn’t his fault because he was born in 1929 and he was educated in the 1930s-1940s: In those days, Imperial Japan ruled the Korean peninsula and its people (as a colony since 1910), and began the war against China, south-eastern Asian countries, even Australia and the US. Children in Japan were taught in school that Japan was the most sacred country in the world because Emperor Hirohito was God, its people were also the best and other countries and peoples were inferior to Japan.

Forcible modernization for appearance sake as a nation-state

     In the Edo Era(1603-1867), under the central Shōgunate government, the feudal lords had ruled their own land and people. The lords had to collect annual tributes from their people and pay it to the government, at the same time run their feudal government and work as an official of the central government if they were ordered.
     There were classes by birth and family rank. Most of the people were born in a place, raised there, worked there as part of a primary industry, and died there. Only a few people who were born into powerful and wealthy families of a high rank were well educated and became an official or a warrior for the lord. The lords were also strictly ranked: from the highest, the relatives of the Tokugawas, the Shōgun’s family, the families that showed strong loyalty to the Tokugawas, the families that seemed to be challenging the Shōgun and so on.
     The Meiji Restoration occurred as a series of regime shifts, civil wars and societies’ changes followed by the serious earthquakes, poor harvest led by a cold weather, outbreaks of the infectious disease and a famine that began in the 1830s.
     Furthermore, in 1853 the US ships commanded by Commodore Perry came into Edo Bay (Tokyo Bay now) to end the isolation policy that the Edo Shōgunate government had been practicing for 250 years.
     Even though the isolation policy was kept, the information of the world political situation came into and was secretly shared with many officials in both the central and feudal governments. Especially the Opium War in 1840-42 and as a consequence of that, Qing Dynasty China’s devastation by Britain and other European countries was so shocking to them. They started questioning whether the Shōgunate government could deal with such a national crisis. They thought that Japan had to become a nation-state as soon as possible, or they would invade Japan.
     That’s why some radical lords and their vassals drew a bow against the Shōgun. However, the rebellion side had to show their legitimacy because the Tokugawas were too powerful. Then they took Mikado (now Emperor) as their leader. Mikado had been only the symbol of the highest noble and the Mikado’s family had existed as authority without a political power and financial background since the 13th century.
     Each feudal lord was urged to decide which side they were on. Anyway, all those changes were only for the sake of becoming a nation-state. The ruling class needed that the most.
     As tension between the promising new government led by the Emperor and the old government led by Shōgun were mounting, the military conflicts sporadically occurred in some places. They both adopted support and advice about armaments and strategies from the foreign advisories. At that time people in the ruling class were deeply impressed by the importance of military power to keep their pride.

The military preparedness was the first

     Under the slogan ‘Make our nation wealthy and strong’, the Meiji government had to establish and organize various new systems in every field, and had to develop personnel working there. They hired many advisors and technocrats from other countries. They sent the young and talented abroad to learn language, skills, system structure and operation, and so on that was needed for the new government.
     They also had to earn exchanging currency in order to develop domestic industrialization and capital accumulation. What the government did first was to increase the production of the raw silk and export it. The large-scaled factories for reeling raw silk were built and the leading-edge and brand new machines were adopted with the government’s investment. Many young women were employed in the factories and demanded intense labor in a bad working environment.
     The most important purpose was to make Japan an independent nation-state, and to make Imperial Japan great to the eyes of the world. In order to do that, having a strong military came on the top of the list. Military preparedness is more crucial than enhancing public hygiene, prevention of diseases, production and provision of food, welfare infrastructure, and so on.

Face your mistakes you have done, or you could do it again

     At the beginning of the Shōwa Era, about 60 years had passed since Meiji, Japan’s population doubled. However, the economy was terribly affected by the Great Depression, the unemployment spiked and the social situation was unstable. The parliamentary democracy gradually malfunctioned.
     Many politicians, military officers, bureaucrats and even journalists accepted and supported expansionism backed by the military forces: invaded Manchu in 1931 and built a puppet nation there with an Emperor who used to be the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty of China. They also expanded wars: a war against China in 1937, French Indochina in 1940, and even the USA in 1941.
     Almost in each operation of both Army and Navy, the upper ranks of the military never cared for the soldiers’ lives, logistics, and rational decision making. They only cared for the pride of Imperial Japan and the Emperor.
     During those wars, to make up for the domestic shortage of labor, the government practiced a policy of taking many people from the Korean peninsula, which had been colonized by Japan then, and forcing them to work in Japan. I have heard that the Korean workers were treated unfairly and suffered discrimination. After the war, the government didn’t give them Japanese citizenship and has been treating them as foreigners.
     Imperial Japan was completely beaten up with the two tragic events in August of 1945.

     After briefly viewing Japanese modern history, I would make some comments about the Japanese government and society because I think that those tendencies are unchanged nowadays and hinder their rational decisions.

1. They treat human beings as if they are objects. Their discrimination against Asian people is especially terrible.

2. They mostly care about Japan’s image to the world. They are always eager to be honorary whites.

3. Japan has almost no natural resources in its territory and human beings are only a resource. However, they rather waste them and would not invest in them.

4. They are completely and blindly obedient to and dependent on strong power.

5. They sometimes forget that Japan was a perpetrator of some Asian countries and emphasize being a victim of the war against the US too much.

     From my point of view, the recent decline in every field of Japan, so-called ‘the lost three decades’, is also due to those tendencies.
     Though I blamed my father’s discriminatory remarks about Chinese and Korean people for education at the beginning of this essay, I might be wrong. That was historically inevitable and its seeds were also sown in modern Japanese people’s minds including me.