JAPAN: No Rats or Crows — Yet

From a two-story brown brick quake-proof building in Tokyo, a metallic voice addressed the people of Japan one night last week. The voice was Premier Hideki Tojo’s. The subject: total mobilization.

Tojo’s words could have surprised no one. For months, the official propagandists have been preparing the ground for his speech by emphasizing Japan’s difficulties. Yet Japan’s man-in-the-street must have been disturbed, for the address contained none of the reassurance for which all men, Japs included, hunger in time of war.

Tojo and his home propagandists had their own reasons for presenting to the Japanese a dark portrait of the war; what they said and did for a calculated effect may have been exaggerated. But the fiber of Japan was certainly strained by grave material shortages, by malnutrition and overwork, by both known and intangible fears, by the absence of new victories. Tojo promised no relief: > All males between 14 and 40 (including students) must either fight or work in war plants. In 25 less essential occupations women will replace men. > All Government agencies, factories and schools which can be moved will be shifted from the cities into the countryside. > The output of munitions, and especially aircraft, must be increased. > Self-sufficiency in food will be sought for Japan and the puppet state of Manchukuo. (Tokyo radio said earlier: “If shortage of rice gets to the point of famine, shipping space could be made available for the transportation of rice from the South “)

> Taxes and national savings will be “strengthened.” (Already a man pays 30% tax on his movie ticket, a 30-60% tax on his lunch, a 200% tax on his geisha fee.) > Business “control organs,” which, under a truce between Big Business and the Army, regulate production, wages and hours, will be drastically reformed. > Holidays will be curtailed. Tojo’s Fears. Of the 2,900 words in Tojo’s address, Italy was not one. But the Italian collapse, Tojo knew, did more than remove an ally. It Also foreshadowed stronger Anglo-U.S. pressure in the Pacific, and dented Japan’s morale. (“Just one severe bombing of Rome and the people . . . began to negotiate with the enemy This … was a weak thing to do,” Commented one announcer.

Japan’s psychopathic fear of air raids has been mounting steadily since Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo. Propagandists deliberately played on the dread throughout Japan’s annual “Aviation Day” last week. Speakers warned the man-in-the-street of raids to come, pleaded for more and better planes. An Army spokesman said—falsely—that Attu was reduced mainly by air action. Another spokesman confessed that an entire Japanese convoy was sunk in the Bismarck Sea last March by Allied bombers. Earlier, a Home Ministry official had told the people that Japan’s matchwood houses are “ideal for defense,” for “there is no danger of being buried under bricks during air raids.”

Uneasy Japan. Tojo’s decrees were but the latest step in a long campaign of regimentation. The Emperor himself has become a whip with which the Army urges the worker to still greater effort, the soldier to still greater sacrifice.

The Army informed Japan that the ghosts of the men killed on Attu had helped the Kiska garrison in its flight, and were now guarding Japan’s own shores. And just as gravely, many an official reported with awe the Emperor’s interest in food, coal or steel problems—”an honor beyond expression.”

Yet even these devices failed. Last fortnight, the Dai Nippon Press Association warned that “all antinational movements will be crushed.” As long ago as last summer Tojo instructed the prefectural governors: “People should not express anxiety and dissatisfaction. . . .” On orders from Tojo, the Government banned all meetings except those it sponsored. The Minister of Agriculture decreed: “Dissatisfaction in the villages must be wiped out. …” And the Tokyo radio, chiding those who grumbled about food hardships, declared:

“There are many complaints that the war should be stopped. [We] know it. However, we are fighting for the establishment of a true world peace. While we are fighting, we can’t say we are suffering. . . . No, the inconveniences will grow in the future. . . . We are not yet eating rats or crows as they do in Europe.”