Books: Down with Grew & Hirohito

DILEMMA IN JAPAN—Andrew Roth—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Now that Japan has been conquered by scientific, mechanical and military skill, has the U.S. the political skill to make the victory stick? Andrew Roth, an expert on Japan, doubts it.

A onetime Naval intelligence lieutenant —now under federal indictment for a suspected part in departmental leaks (TIME, June 18)—26-year-old Author Roth is a passionate, informed, biased and frequently angry witness. A large chunk of his book is given over to a savage recapitulation of the “naive” prewar Tokyo policies of ex-U.S. Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew: a “handsome . . . distinguished elderly gentleman” who is, to Author Roth, “the personification of the predominant school of American policy toward Japan.”

Sitting pretty well left of center, Roth does not worry about a burgeoning U.S.S.R. He has nothing but contempt for the power politics which would use a strong and militaristic Japan as a bulwark against communism. In the same category, he places the Grew-inspired policy of catering to Hirohito “because he might turn out to be the sole stabilizing force” in a Nippon ruptured by defeat. Except, he says, for speeding the surrender (now accomplished), the U.S. cannot do business with the Emperor.

Roth’s reasons for his conclusions are impressive because they are well documented. Roth has dug into the “folklore” that has falsely painted Japan as a nation of fanatics. He also examines the history of the Emperor’s “holy” position.

Non-Holy Emperors. Until 1868, the Emperor meant little or nothing to the Japanese. Under the 675-year dictatorship of the shoguns (Japan’s military overlords), emperors were empty figureheads often cast aside, banished or assassinated at the shoguns’ whim. “From the remote island to which he had been relegated, one managed to escape, hidden under a load of fish. Others had to sell autographs for a livelihood. The Emperor Tsuchi II lay unburied for six weeks until his son borrowed the money from Buddhist priests to pay for the funeral expenses.”

The emergence, less than 80 years ago, of Hirohito’s grandfather as a qualified son of heaven was largely the result of political engineering. Japan’s real rulers (a combination of militarists and industrialists) simply dusted off some ancient fables about the dynasty, rescued Emperor Meiji from obscurity and backed their traditions with iron-clad law and a state-enforced religion.

To preserve the Emperor, says Roth, means inevitably to preserve the ruling clique which protects him. The most dangerous of the shifting ruling groups in Japan, says he, is that “which will try most eagerly to please us.” More potent than the now discredited Gumbatsu (military class) — the self-proclaimed “angels of peace” — are the Zaibatsu, the plutocracy, which controls some 62% of Japan’s financial, industrial and commercial wealth.

Emperor Hirohito, with a half-billion yen of his own invested in stocks and bonds and 140,000 of 300,000 available shares of the Bank of Japan, is an interested member of this tribe.

Because the Zaibatsu exercise such control over Japan’s economy and would cheerfully jettison the militarists, the dangerous tendency, Roth believes, is for the U.S. to leave Japan’s private affairs largely to them. By doing so the U.S. would certainly “maintain unchanged the internal conditions that were basically responsible for launching Japan on her campaign of conquest.”

Forgotten Men. Like many a leftist (but with sounder reasoning than most), Roth pleads for faith in Japan’s forgotten men: the exiled Communists, liberals, and long-oppressed masses.

Contrary to most U.S. opinion, Japan’s struggle against oppression, oligarchy and dictatorship has a long and virile history.

“No better than cattle or horses” under shogun rule, Japan’s peasants rose up in more than 1,100 revolts. Similarly, Japanese labor, exploited for ages by the Zaibatsu and worked literally to death by the military, would welcome an enlightened, Allied-encouraged government. “In addition, there are countless numbers of small shopkeepers and peasants who have been squeezed dry for a victory which never came.”

Hirohito and his Zaibatsu have repeatedly styled themselves “moderates” yet promoted the course of militarism from the beginning. Japan, says Author Roth, is bristling with genuine anti-militarists, many of whom have died or found sanctuary in Communist China rather than follow the path of conquest. He pleads that the U.S. put its confidence in these, rather than in the silkily persuasive aristocrats.

“Many people,” he concludes, “have described Japanese militarism as a cancer. Too few have emphasized the danger of removing it without destroying the roots.”