JAPAN: Imitation of Naziism?

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American insult to the Imperial Japanese Army! . . . A new American atrocity! . . . The entire nation enraged! . . . The American gentleman with a human face but the skin of an animal reveals his hypocrisy!

These words, which appeared in a Shanghai Japanese newspaper last week, illustrated a familiar truth: the Japanese flair for exact imitation wanders occasionally into the realms of caricature. Last week Japanese leaders were busy as bits of carbon paper trying to copy European totalitarian techniques, and this vituperation was supposed to sound like a last gruff word before a crushing blow, a Hitlerish warning before total obliteration.

This imitative hysteria was something of a comic-strip episode because of the innocent brush which occasioned it. Contrary to a long-standing agreement, 16 armed plain-clothes Japanese gendarmes had sauntered into the U. S. defense sector of Shanghai’s International Settlement. U. S. Marines arrested them, disarmed them, interned them. One was permitted to telephone his headquarters. Their commander called on Marine Commander Colonel DeWitt Peck and apologized for their mistake. The men were released. The incident was apparently closed.

But the Japanese, tardily deciding to reopen the wounds to their feelings, asserted next day that the gendarmes had been mauled by the devil dogs—beaten about the hips and legs with rifle butts, struck in the face, so that they were cut inside their mouths. Colonel Peck, a leatherneck in the classic tradition, stood his ground and flatly said: “It’s a lie.”

It was not a lie, insisted the Japanese. Furthermore, the marines had pointed loaded rifles at the gendarmes. “It’s a lie,” repeated Colonel Peck.

What is more, said the Japanese, the gendarmes were slapped when they talked or spat from their bleeding mouths. And they were “forced to squat.” “They got,” said Colonel Peck drily, “the same consideration and treatment as any man we arrest—including a medical examination.”

The Japanese were furious. They pasted anti-U. S. handbills in the streets, hired coolies to demonstrate. Both the Army and Navy spokesmen declared Japan grievously insulted. Newspapers screamed. But Colonel Peck wisely held his position, realizing that the conflict would soon degenerate into a petty hunt for lost face. It soon did.

Squeeze Play. By itself, the incident of the Shanghai Marines was not serious. But it was so as a weather vane. Nor was it the only indication last week of the new direction taken by Japan’s “divine gale”—that Heaven-sent wind, part good luck and part opportunism, which the Japanese say is wafting the New Order over East Asia.

One day Japanese bombing planes ranged along the Chinese-Indo-Chinese border. On the Chinese side they saw and destroyed 1,500 drums of oil, 50 trucks. Domei, the official news agency, declared that this showed France had broken her agreement to close Indo-Chinese roads to Chinese war traffic. Two days later sensational reports appeared in the Japanese press that the French would soon “invite” Japan to “protect Indo-China against any possible attempts by the United States, Britain or the Chungking Government to interfere with the status quo”

Pressure on Britain increased. Britain had weaseled its reply to Japanese demands that the Burma road, China’s last channel of supply (except a dribble from Russia), be closed. Japan indicated “deep dissatisfaction,” and with a rattle of rifles near Hong Kong asked for reconsideration. After some vacillation, Britain took the easy way out: Ambassador Sir Robert Leslie Craigie signed an agreement almost exactly like the one signed by beaten France last month. It closed the road to “military supplies, arms, munitions, trucks and gasoline,” and permitted Japanese inspection of traffic.

In London there was a pathetic rationalization. For the next two or three months, ran the apology, Burma’s rainy season will virtually cut off the road anyhow, and perhaps after that time the situation will be changed and Britain can revise the agreement. But in a less sanguine vein News Chronicle’s, Vernon Bartlett wrote: “The British Government is now about to give some help to Japan to defeat China in order that Japan may then be free to play an active part on the side of Germany and Italy.”

The Japanese squeeze play was definitely on. For the first time it embraced the U. S. as well as Britain and France. For a complex of reasons, Japan had been treating the U. S. with gingerly respect. The Japanese went on the theory that their No. 1 customer was always right; that the U. S. fleet, though comparatively impotent west of Hawaii, could nevertheless do severe damage to the Imperial Fleet; that a country which prevented Japanese from immigrating must somehow be superior. Last week’s abandonment of reverence for the U. S., and the intensification of the pressure on Britain and France, were direct results not only of Axis successes in Europe, but also of a trend in Japan. The country was hellbent, with a flag in one hand and a rifle in the other, for total government, total economics, total war, total politics, total everything.

Nothing is what it seems in Japanese government. The Emperor is a Divinity, and yet Japan is not an absolute monarchy. The Constitution is democratic, but the people are ruled, not rulers. Every general is responsible to the Emperor—yet the Army can do anything it wants—yet Japan is not a military dictatorship. There are five political parties, but there is no such thing as politics in the real sense of the word: the science of government. In the last three years Japan’s Government has seemed totalitarian, but it has actually been unmitigated chaos. Japanese realize this, and have wistfully desired to do something about it. Since the Emperor, the Army and the Constitution are in varying degrees inviolable, it was concluded that the first chaotic element to unify should be the political parties. Japan’s two major, three minor parties rate as follows:

Minseito, “Democratic,” had the largest representation (175 seats) in the Diet. It is traditionally “liberal,” but liberality is relative, and Minseito is about as progressive as the Ku Klux Klan. It is supported by big industrialists and represents urban interests generally. Domestically it theoretically stands for planned economy and yen-pinching; but has regularly stood behind Japan’s fantastic military budgets (the last of which was one-third of the national income). In foreign affairs it trims its jib to the prevailing wind. Its leader is 77-year-old Chuji Machida, son of a samurai (honorable retainer of a feudal war lord) and a distinguished banker before he went into politics. He has held five Cabinet posts. His chief manipulator and undercover man is Japan’s Minister of Finance Yukio Sakurauchi, who began life as a bean-curd peddler.

Seiyukai, “Friends of Government,” has alternated in predominance with Minseito, now has three fewer seats than its rival in Parliament. It represents landowners, especially big ones, and advocates such rural blessings as railroads, roads, public works. In both domestic and foreign matters, Seiyukai has always been more conservative than Minseito. Actually there is less difference between the two than between the U. S. Republicans and Democrats. For more than a year, Seiyukai has been weakened by a schism, arising from rivalry for its presidency. The “Orthodox” faction is dominated by an extreme nationalist named Fusanosuke Kuhara, a somewhat shady onetime millionaire whose life since the earthquake of 1923 has been darkened by debts, suits for breach of contract, charges of harboring traitors. The “Reform” faction is led by a more savory character. Chikuhei Nakajima. He is a triple-threat man: served in the Army, studied naval engineering, investigated aviation abroad. He was the first Japanese to hold a U. S. pilot’s license. For his honesty he was once made Minister of Railways (in 1937, when there were three ex-Ministers of Railways in jail for extortion).

The Minor Parties are all violently jingoistic. Shakai Taishuto, “Social Mass Party,” 34 seats, was originally Left Wing, and stood for affiliation with the League of Nations, peace, a non-aggression pact with Russia, tax reform, labor unions. But the Party represented not only farmers and laborers, but also white-collar workers, tradesmen, businessmen, industrialists; was run not only by sincere progressives but also by political sharks who could not distinguish between the social programs of extreme Left and Right. Last year it metamorphosed into a butterfly of a different wing—bitterly nationalist, pro-fascist, prowar. Kokumin Domei, “People’s League,” eleven seats, is a Nazi-like outfit, complete with black jackets, a brown flag, a separate youth group, and is headed by a 75-year-old mystic who was once indicted for helping murder the Queen of Korea. Tohokai, “Society of the East,” twelve seats, is the most avowedly fascist of all. It was organized by a journalist shortly after he interviewed Hitler and Mussolini.

For nine years the creation of a strong single party has been feebly urged. In the past three, when the examples of Naziism and Fascism shone so brightly in Japanese eyes, the idea grew in favor. But when Nazi legions rolled into the Lowlands and France, the Japanese could no longer resist their penchant for imitating a good thing. Late in May, Seiyukai’s Kuhara urged a totalitarian party first upon his Seiyukai rival, then on the Minseito leader. Both took to the idea—providing the right leader (not Kuhara) could be found. By June 6 Kuhara had plenty of courage and supporters. On that day he presented Premier Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai with an “ultimatum” proposing a, Nazi-like party with a razor-edge program: 1) break relations with Britain and the U. S.; 2) declare war on China, so as openly to oust all rival interests; 3) produce thousands of new airplanes, tanks, submarines. Kuhara chose for his slogan, a peculiarly un-Nazi cry which originated in a cutthroat political campaign in Milwaukee in 1867, but which has since been immortalized as a typewriter-testing sentence: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”

When the Japanese copy, they copy what they can see, and no more. Distinctly visible to them at the top of Europearu totalitarian parties were spectacular strongmen. From the very first it was obvious; that there was only one man to give Japan one party—Prince Fumimaro Konoye. From the outside he looks strong, at least to Japanese.

Konoye’s strength is in his blood. He is a member of one of Japan’s five oldest families. He is in fact descended from a god who sat in on the Heavenly Conference summoned by the Sun Goddess before she sent messengers down to create the Japanese Islands. His first human progenitor was such an empire builder that today the ancestor’s face ennobles ten-yen notes, and his diary, which Prince Konoye owns, is valued at $12,500 a page. Konoye’s father was an intimate, and he has been a protégé, of Prince Kimmochi Saionji, last of the Genro (Elder Statesmen), who at 90 is almost a demigod. Prince Konoye is one of a handful who can come & go at the Imperial Household at will, and can sprawl in a chair before the Emperor. He is said to be the only man in Japan who has said no, pointblank, to Hirohito. He has been President of the House of Peers (1933-37) and Premier (1937-39). Imperial consorts and regents are picked from his family. Not even the Army dares question the authority of such a man. He has long been talked of as the only possible potential dictator in Japan.

When the single-party idea gathered momentum two months ago, this unanswerable man was approached. At first he was reluctant to undertake its leadership, but, as when Caesar turned down the crown, reluctance only teased and whetted those who offered it. They became insistent. He had reservations. He refused to build a party which would obey the Army. He refused to consider forming a party which would merely be a combination of the old corrupt parties; that, he said, would be as futile as “the taking away of the partitions and the paper doors between the rooms of a Japanese house.” Finally he reluctantly agreed to resign the Presidency of the Privy Council to form a new party providing the old ones dissolved. But he was not too confident of success. “It will,” he said, “be extremely difficult to overcome difficulties.”

The outstanding difficulties facing the single party were: 1) how to reconcile its absolute political authority with the irrevocable divine will of the Emperor; 2) how to discipline the Army, which in three years has developed practically unbreakable habits of willfullness. But not the least of the difficulties was within Prince Konoye himself.

Konoye’s weakness is in his nerves. He runs away from himself. As a boy he wanted to relinquish his title and go to the U. S. as an immigrant. He uses his frail health as a sort of storm cellar, into which he retires whenever he sees a political twister coming. Offered the Premiership after the bloody February 26 Revolt of 1936, he retired to his “sick” bed and did not get up until someone else had been appointed. When he finally did become Premier, he lost eight pounds in his first week in office. A prolonged “cold” seized him when the Army rammed through its embarrassing National Mobilization Law. He was taken with a “heat stroke” when the China Incident broke out.

He has spent one-half of the days since he was 25 in bed. In fact his bedroom is his headquarters. He not only retires there during crises—he reads, holds conferences, sees movies, listens to the radio, eats, sleeps and worries about not sleeping there. He wakes up ten times every night, and has by his pillow ten kinds of sleeping potions. Because of his insomnia he likes to nap during the day, and has frequently been caught snoozing through Diet speeches. He has the Japanese delicacy, raw fish, dipped in boiling water before he will eat it; and he sterilizes apples with a spray of alcohol. He scarcely uses alcohol for anything but a disinfectant, however, and smokes little.

Though he is tall for a Japanese (5 ft. 11 in.), he could never be a soldier. He was given a D in his conscript physical examination. Charm is not necessarily a prerequisite for dictatorship, but he is singularly unprepossessing: shy, chinless, unaggressive—”noble,” as the Japanese say. He has neither ambition nor self-assurance. “I have,” he says, “no confidence in myself to solve the political and economic problems of the nation.”

Furthermore, he lacks any consistent philosophy. Army men like him because he is malleable. They have a saying: “Konoye is not a man, but a mirror.” Politicians say he has a “chivalrous” mind, which merely means he is a polite straddler. He was once a melancholy Marxist, and amused himself by translating Oscar Wilde. Five years ago it was said that he was a Liberal because he sent his golf-playing son Fumitaka (“Butch”) to Princeton. But two years ago he talked fascist: said he wanted to see Chiang Kai-shek’s head roll in a basket.

Climax. This week—sooner than even Prince Konoye had expected—the single party idea became a matter of grave immediacy. General Shunroku Hata, who almost blocked the formation of the Yonai Cabinet single-handed six months ago, broke it by resigning from the War Ministry. His reason: “Japan must take a stronger attitude in East Asia.” Early dispatches guessed that either General Hata or Prince Konoye would form a new government, and that in either case, the single party would be jammed into being as quickly as possible. But the manner in which the climax came boded no good. For if the single party fails to measure up to its expectations, the crisis was sure to hasten that extremity from which all sensible Japanese have cringed—putting the whole bloodstained mess squarely in the Army’s hands. When that extremity comes, the chaos of the past three years may seem nothing compared to the New Disorder in East Asia.