JAPAN: Safety Razor

Fortnight ago a bald little Japanese general nicknamed The Razor became Premier of Japan. Hideki Tojo’s* sparse mustache looks as if it might blow off in a stiff breeze and his tortoise-shell spectacles have a slightly cockeyed, precarious perch on his nose. Nevertheless the world press shuddered with apprehension that The Razor might be the raging snickersnee that the Japanese Army had been crying for, that Japan’s months of indecision would now be resolved by mad swipes at Siberia, at Singapore, or at both.

Last week significant news reached Tokyo from remote parts. The air waves were scarcely clear of Adolf Hitler’s wild hints that he was about to annihilate Russia when it began to appear that he was somewhat short of doing so.

Immediately Hideki Tojo’s Government began to sound less like the whipping of blades than the familiar syllable-scrambling of Japanese evasionists.

With the ritual mock modesty of all incoming Japanese Premiers, Hideki Tojo declared: “I am awed with trepidation at my limited ability.” But his subsequent actions made it sound as if he really meant it. His supposedly brash, testy Army Government proposed to continue conversations with Washington looking toward “peace with justice.” The Government-controlled Japan Times and Advertiser sent up a gaseous trial balloon offering all the warring nations a “last chance” to have Japan mediate World War II. Most startling of all, Premier Tojo’s ostensibly fire-eating Army Government called for an extraordinary session of the Diet in mid-November—its first such session since 1937. All this scarcely sounded as if fire-eating Premier Tojo were going to start right off chewing flames. Small wonder that Tokyo’s Hochi, supposedly Nazi-controlled, declared that Premier Tojo’s opening address “fell short of expectations and turned out rather commonplace.” Army & Diet. For ten years Japan’s military extremists, recently egged on by their Nazi friends, had agitated for totalitarianism. By September 1940 the political parties had been dissolved. An attempt had been made to form a single totalitarian party called the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. And there was talk of somehow circumventing the Diet—at its best little more than a sounding board for public opinion.

But the I.R.A.A., including many former political-party leaders, was impotent with dissension. The Diet was created by the Imperial Constitution, and could not be disposed of without offense to the Emperor’s sacrosanct person.

Last week it was announced that the Tojo Government would ask the Diet to approve tax increases of 600,000,000-700,000,000 yen for the fiscal year. The Government proposed “to have the nation understand and cooperate with it through the Imperial Diet.” By calling the Diet the Government assumed the responsibility of presenting the nation with a definite policy.

A clue to the Government’s worries was contained in Tokyo’s great daily Asahi: “By orders and pressure any apparent state of unanimity . . . can be concocted, a real living sort of unanimity . . . can be achieved only if the ideas of the Government are shared by the people. . . . Frankly speaking, even those who reposed the fullest confidence in the Tojo Cabinet found it somewhat difficult to conceive of it as on intimate terms with the people.” Fire-eater Tojo’s official spokesman, Ko Ishii, suggested that the Government’s bewildering peacefulness could be connected with a purported U.S. decision to send supplies to Russia via Archangel rather than Vladivostok. But it was certainly not that simple. Once the not-so-novel novelty of an Army Premier had worn off (there have been two retired generals since 1932), observers reflected that the Army had played the most powerful roles in and behind the Government for some years.

Now, to be sure, the Army also had Premier Tojo in the headline role at center stage. But this only meant that now it was the Army’s turn, with small chance of alibi, to take full responsibility for governing Japan. And this only increased the Army’s appreciation of what it had known for a long time: that it was up against one of history’s toughest governmental jobs, a job for whose toughness the Army itself was largely responsible.

Faced with such a job and such responsibility, The Razor Tojo could scarcely be blamed for guarding his blade against unwise damage, not only to others but also to himself, for becoming, in some degree, a safety razor.

The Profiteers. For ten years the Army has been crowding into the Japanese Government. After the boom period of World War I, the governors of Japan—the men who monopolized the Emperor’s ear, who controlled the big Minseito and Seiyukai Parties—were mainly Japan’s great capitalists. They had built Japan into a great industrial power, living mainly on foreign trade, by the processing and sale of other countries’ raw materials, though it was and is a medium-sized industrialism by world standards.* They were men of the world as well as of the Far East. Many-had been to Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Many spoke English with scarcely an accent. They liked whiskey as well as sake. They liked golf as well as go. They liked Beethoven as well as ballads accompanied on the stringed biwa.

Their big business brought Japan a prestige that Japanese arms, even at their most ferocious, had never commanded. But they did one thing that few Japanese except themselves approved. They hogged the profits. They either belonged to or served the great family monopolies, whose top eight, beginning with the Mitsui and Mitsubishi, controlled more than 50% of all Japanese trade and industry. They were the world’s champion private-monopoly capitalists.

The world depression struck Japan much less forcibly than it hit the great Western powers. Japan’s peasant masses, with feu dal living standards and carefully pre served social ignorance, are almost as resilient as the Chinese. But such dis content as existed, plus private-monopoly profits, plus the theory that Japan needed Lebensraum, was very useful to a large group of determined, extremely vocal malcontents — the military extremists.

The Peeved. Their complaint was only partly economic. Many officers were sons or grandsons of Japan’s feudal soldiery who, with the nobility, had once been the Empire’s aristocracy. They were irked by the decline of military power and prestige.

The triumphs of the Russo-Japanese War were long past. Japan in World War I had been noted for industrial rather than mili tary conquests. The military had become civil servants rather than fiery bearers of a proud privilege.

So the extremists set out to restore the military aristocracy, to dominate the Gov ernment, to make the sacrosanct Emperor what the brilliant former editor of the Kobe Japan Chronicle, A. Morgan Young, has called — since he left Japan in 1937 —the “Grand Mascot” of warriors rather than of monopoly capitalists.

It was no easy task. It all had to be done without loss of face, without dis respect to the Imperial Person. There were many conflicting opinions and directions — the Japanese Government has been properly described as less a direct clashing of sharply defined interests than a slithery, tentative rubbing and bumping of amoeboid bodies. About all the military agreed on was that the military must prevail.

But the military had certain advantages.

The Ministers of War and the Navy could go over the Prime Minister’s head, directly to the Emperor. The Services could prevent the forming of any Cabinet simply by refusing to appoint military ministers.

Furthermore, if amoeboid bumping did not work their will, the military could sometimes resort to bumping off.

Warriors Forward. Gradually the military, and especially the Army extremists, made headway. In 1931 the Kwantung Army fomented the Manchurian Incident which led to the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1936 the military got credit for the anti-Comintern Pact with Ger many. In 1937 the Army saved the Navy’s disastrous Shanghai landing party. And for a while the Army’s prestige skyrocketed with the China war, which later led to the longest stalemate in modern history.

The Soviet-German Pact nearly cost the warriors their face. They recovered after the fall of France; Hitler’s western conquests spurred Japanese hotheads to even louder talk about a “Greater East Asia.” The Axis Pact of a year ago brought the militarists still more kudos. As if to symbolize the militarists’ ten-year rise to power, their greatest single opponent, the Emperor’s most respected personal adviser, Elder Statesman Prince Kimmochi Saionji, died at 91. The Army topped off its glorious decade with its Indo-China grab.

Japan in Stress. In the decade of military upsurge, Japan’s character among world states had radically changed. From a great world-trading power, it had become a heavily embargoed, declining economy. Its foreign trade had dropped at least a quarter in value since 1937. Its national debt had risen from 11,018,700,000 yen in 1937 to 30,895,000,000 yen. (Against estimated Government expenditures for the current fiscal year of more than 20,000,000.000 yen, revenues are estimated at 5,220,000,000.) And Japan’s best friend, Adolf Hitler, was not only far away, but kept urging Japan to stick its neck within reach of the Allied sword.

In this development military purposes and astronomical military budgets had played the major part. Premier Prince Konoye, good friend of the extremists, had engineered many steps toward the totalitarianism they desired. But the monopoly capitalists and other anti-militarists were fighting desperately, offstage, as was shown by the petering out of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

Front Man Available. Sitting as Premier Konoye’s War Minister was a little General who, to some at least, seemed the personification of military decisiveness. If anything, he appeared to err on the violent side.

Hideki Tojo was born in Iwate Prefecture 56 years ago, the son of Lieut. General Hidenori Tojo,* a leading strategist of the Russo-Japanese War. In 1905, when that war ended, Tojo the Younger was graduated from Tokyo’s Imperial Military Academy. For 29 years his military career was unremarkable, but in 1934 Major General Tojo, as Chief of the Military Inquiry Department, achieved his first international press by committing a colossal gaff. He declared with strange clairvoyance: “The United States, Russia and China, knowing that Japan is likely to be confronted with various international difficulties in November, 1935, are steadily preparing for war.” Apparently the Kwantung Army had cooked up an “incident” for November 1935. General Tojo was obliged to state that he had really meant “the general period of 1935-36.” Shortly he was sent to Manchukuo with the Kwantung Army, where he redeemed himself by becoming the Man Friday of that Army’s blustering leaders, Generals Juzo Nishio and Seishiro Itagaki. For them he ran a Gestapo, checking up on the Army’s loyalties. He was said to have agents scattered from the remote frontiers to Mukden’s hotels. His red brick headquarters bulged with dossiers on every Kwantung officer and he was known as Manchukuo’s “bogey man.” In 1937, when General Itagaki was recalled to Japan, General Tojo became Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army.

The next year General Itagaki was salvaged from a “glorious” defeat in China and became War Minister. He called the faithful Tojo to be Vice Minister. In this office The Razor stropped himself so viciously on munitions capitalists whom his chiefs wanted given subtle handling that he was kicked upstairs to be Director General of Army Aviation Instruction. In 1939 he became Chief of the Air Force.

After France’s fall, General Itagaki, then in China far from the political scene, got his man Tojo appointed War Minister in the Konoye Cabinet.

Two weeks ago when Premier Konoye solved his Governmental quandary by leaving office, it was improbable that anyone but an Army man would succeed him.

It was high time for the Army to put up or shut up. Hideki Tojo was handy and willing. And so he stepped in among problems that had been baffling the Army for a long time.

Persistent Problems. Japan has a Navy only slightly below parity with the combined U.S. Pacific and Asiatic Fleets, an Air Force of perhaps 4,000 combat planes. Japan is said to have 2,000,000 men in arms, 4,500,000 in reserve, for whom weapons may not be available.

Japan’s oil reserve is not large but is said to be good for two to three years at present consumption, or for one and a half years of all-out mechanized warfare—but Japan has by Western standards little mechanized equipment.

At present Japan may have 700,000 men in Manchukuo, facing Siberia. The most logical attack on the U.S.S.R. would probably avoid both heavily fortified Outer Mongolia and Vladivostok, would attempt to cut the, Trans-Siberian Railway at several points in the wide, industrial region east of Lake Baikal. If successful, this move would isolate Russian troop segments, cut their only effective intercommunication. For such purposes, five Japanese strategic railways already fan out from Harbin to points on the long Soviet front. If the Nazis should smash western Russia this winter, the cold weather would encourage rather than discourage Japanese attacks on Siberia, turning marshy, soggy country into a hard, smooth terrain for mechanized advances.

But in Siberia Japan would probably meet a Soviet force of at least 680,000, better mechanized than the Japanese and —unless too much equipment has been sent to the Western Front—far better equipped with planes. The past months have shown Japan as well as Adolf Hitler how Soviet armies fight. Moreover, a Manchukuoan guerrilla force of 100,000 would probably harass Japanese communications. Japan has learned about guerrillas in China. The U.S.S.R. claims sufficient Siberian industry to support its Far Eastern armies for two years even if the Trans-Siberian line to the West is broken.

Russia may still have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of long-range bombers in Vladivostok, within 600 miles of inflammable Tokyo. And Japan must consider possible U.S. interference.

Japan’s best military bet would probably be an all-out attempt to finish the Chinese War. Japan has never risked more than 1,000,000 men against Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. A force of 2,000,000 hurled at China, first cutting off the Burma Road, might end the war. But Japan would then have to forget about Siberia.

Possibly The Razor and his backers may cut through Japan’s Gordian dilemma with the hot impulsiveness that Japanese military men are popularly supposed to possess. But they are as likely to wait for highly favorable news from Adolf Hitler.

Even Japan’s extremists are probably not too extreme to realize, at this date, that in any broad-scale action threatening the Allies they will risk the very vitals of Japan.

Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and Yokohama are all within convenient range of the steel birds of modern war based on Russia or China.

Clouds Over Mountains. Last week Emperor Hirohito announced the theme for Japan’s annual New Year’s Day poetry competition. Like thousands of his subjects, he will compose a rhymeless, accentless, 31-syllable tanka entitled Clouds Over Mountains. Over one mountain at least —sacred Fuji, whose serene snowy cone would be an ideal marker for bombers approaching Tokyo—the Japanese may have reason to hope for heavy clouds in the future. Were he the wisest of Emperors, and much more authoritative than legend has him, Hirohito might be able to write: Viewing the white-crested mountain, I care not if clouds drift or fade, For, following my edicts, My weary people are at peace.

* Who last week announced he preferred Hideki rather than Eiki as a firstname. * Japan’s foreign trade, even at its height in 1937, was only one-third of the U.S.’s byvalue, only one-quarter of Great Britain’s.* Not to be confused with Admiral Togo who beat the Russian fleet in the battle of Tsushima.