JAPAN: Soldiers’ Proposal

The single-minded aristocrats who officer the Japanese Army made odd alliance three years ago with Japan’s Depression-ridden farmers, whose sons happen to fill the Army ranks. Farmers and officers, both poor and oldfashioned, unite in hating all that Westernization has brought Japan except the guns. They hate democracy, free capitalism, politics, graft, social unrest. Without claiming to know much about economics, they feel that Japan could have both low taxes for farmers and a huge defense budget. Let the Emperor bleed the capitalists! Last week with conspiratorial secrecy, the officers rushed through the Government presses 160,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled The Basic Principles of National Defense and Proposals for Strengthening It. Conceivable in no country save Japan, it was simply an attack on Japan’s present form of Government, timed after eight lulling months of Army quietude to coincide with the current preparation of the 1935-36 budget, which will be passed at the Diet’s winter session.

Its “basic principles” were fear of Soviet Russia and the U. S. (see above). Its chief “proposal” was an impassioned sales talk for the Army’s pet system of State Capitalism. “Japan’s economic system,” it harangued, “creates class differences, enables the few to hoard wealth, causes poverty and unemployment, and . . . seriously restricts the national budget so that even the most vital needs of national defense are not attainable. … It is desirable for the people to abandon the selfish, individualistic economic sense, to awaken to moral principles and to hasten to establish an economy embodying the Empire’s ideals [i. e., a military dictatorship]. The military . . . would cultivate the spirit of personal sacrifice in which the country’s welfare alone counts, while ruling out extreme internationalism and individualism.”

Industrial stocks immediately shared the spirit of sacrifice by slumping an average of two yen (60¢). The Cabinet hissed its rage at Minister of War General Senjuro Hayashi who, having taken the precaution to be 200 miles out of Tokyo at the moment, replied, “I had not even seen the pamphlet.”

Just as he was preparing to back down a little, news reached Japan that U. S. Brigadier General William Mitchell had said that a fleet of 50 U. S. dirigibles could destroy Japan in two days. Delighted, Japanese army men gravely agreed that it would not take the U. S. fleet even two days, given Japan’s present air force. But the Japanese Press played the story down. It was too bold, too frightening.