History of Global Arms Transfer, 6 (2018), pp. 61-72

Total War and Japan: Reality and
Limitations of the Establishment of theJapanese Total War System†
By ATSUSHI KOKETSU*
Interest in the First World War among the Japanese people was relatively mild
during that conflict. In contrast, the Japanese ruling classes perceived the war
with shock and a deepening sense of crisis. Thus, party politicians, military
officers and bureaucrats had to adjust their interests to prepare for Japan to
conduct the sort of “total war” that they observed in WWI. However, they failed
to reach a consensus about the total war system, and this conflict continued until
the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Even afterward, they were never able toconstruct a Japanese model of the total war system. The primary reason for thisfailure was the existence of multiple layers of authority in the Japanese state andthe inability of the nation’s elite groups to mutually adjust their own vested
interests. In doing so, they put their own particular interests above the needs ofthe state and the people. In other words, it was the state structure of Japan, withits multiple powerful stakeholders, that comprised the main obstacle to theconstruction of a total war system. In this article, I will outline the conflicts that
accompanied discussions of the creation of a total war system, arguing that theseconflicts were at the very core of Japan’s essence as a state. I will conclude that
the Japanese model of a total war system was highly deficient, particularly incomparison with those of Europe and the United States.

Ⅰ Introduction: The Emergence of Total War and Japan’s Response(1) The First World War as a total war
The First World War (1914–1918) brought significant changes to the traditional form ofwars. Traditional wars, i.e. cabinet wars, were waged between regular military forces, andthere was a certain separation between the battlefront and the home front. However, during
the First World War, that border became ambiguous due to the appearance of an array of
new military technology. Thus, World War I is often considered a total war.
While traditional war had been limited to the ground and the surface of the sea, the* Author Affiliation: A specially appointed professor of Meiji University. Former Executive Director & Vice
President of National Yamaguchi University.
† A previous version of this paper was presented at a workshop at the NIDS International Forum on War
History at Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies Ministry of Defense in September 14,2011, Japaneseversion of this paper was International Forum on War History at Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies
Ministry of Defense in September 14,2011, Japanese version of this paper was published as an editorial in Miyke,
Kenshou: Taiheiyosenso to Senryaku. This paper is a modified version of a Japanese paper.

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appearance of modern weapons such as aircraft, tanks and submarines extended warfare
into the air and under the sea. While the appearance of modern weapons is a result of thedevelopment of modern technologies, wars fought using these technologies have caused
enormous human and physical damage that is not comparable to that caused by traditional
wars. Already, during World War I, the expansion of battlefields and an increase in war
damage was predicted to accelerate in future wars.
A total war is characterized by mass mobilization, mass consumption and mass
destruction, requiring mobilization not only of the military sector but also of the economy,
education, thought, mentality and culture of a people. It is possible, therefore, to call a statethat establishes a mobilization system with which it may enact total wars a “total war
state.” It was Leon Daudet (1869–1942) of the Action Française, a French royalist, who
proposed a theory of the “total war state” for the first time. He argued that World War I wasa total war and released a book entitled La Guerre Totale (The Total War) in 1918, when
the war ended.
Daudet argued in the book that World War I was different from traditional wars and thatits impact would spread to various fields, such as politics, the economy, industry, intellect,commerce and finance and would reach all states and their people. It was German General
Erich Ludendorff (Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff, 1864–1937) who, based on
Daudet’s argument, did the most to familiarize the public with the theory of total war.
Ludendorff wrote Der Totale Krieg (Total War Theory) in 1935 and advocated the necessityof mass mobilization of military forces by universal conscription.
(2) Characteristics of the total war theory
The characteristics of total wars can be summarized as follows: a) a change in the way ofwars, b) the increased importance of economic and industrial mobilization, and c) thenecessity of mental and ideological mobilization. Generally, either one of the following
strategies are chosen in a war: the annihilation strategy, the purpose of which is to utterly
destroy the enemy, or the exhaustion strategy, the purpose of which is to force the enemy toexhaust its national strength, including its military power. In the former case, the aim
would be to achieve results in a short, decisive battle, deploying active operations from thevery beginning of the war by intensively mobilizing forces and supplies in large quantities
in order to achieve that aim. This strategy requires the maintenance of military forces andstockpiles of strategic goods and resources during peacetime, an extension of the period a
person service in the military and an increase in the military budget. Concerning weapons,
the focus is on offensive and frontal equipment. This is a strategy chosen by countries withlimited natural resources, such as Japan and Germany.
On the other hand, in the case of the exhaustion strategy, the draining of the enemy’s
military resources is the main goal, and thus, mobilization of forces can be kept to aminimum initially, in order to save military capabilities until the time of a decisive battle.
This strategy expects a long conflict. Strategic goods are stockpiled moderately, andpressure on private demand is avoided. This strategy is adopted by countries that haveadvantages in terms of capital and technology, such as the U.S., the U.K. and France.
The increased importance of economic and industrial mobilization imposed a substantial
burden on the Japanese industrial structure because of its inferiority to advanced Westerncountries in terms of technology and capital accumulation. Limited capital, technology andhuman resources in Japan were used for economic and industrial mobilization. This helped
the military sector to be reinforced, but the private sector fell behind. In addition,62

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concerning mental and ideological mobilization, increased military education was
introduced to the classroom, and this resulted in rigid indoctrination. Free speech andactivities were limited. As the wartime system was put in place, Japanese society wasstagnated and blinkered.
As mentioned above, wide gaps emerged in discussions of total war theory and debates
about how to establish a total war system and its content. These exchanges were often
influenced by each country’s conditions and the respective stage of total war the country
was in. World War II, which assumed the character of total war to an even greater extent
than the First World War, led to the emergence of further differences. Japan and Germany
had tried to develop an active all-out system with the aim of establishing a total war statefrom the late 1920s to the early 1930s, and they ultimately set out on the path to a total war
state involving short-term, decisive battles with a view to establishing the national
mobilization system by the initiative of the military.
(3) Impact of total war debates on Japan and preparations for a total war system
Interest in WWI among the Japanese people was relatively low. On the other hand, the war
had a strong impact on major leaders in the government, and quite a few started to wonder
how their country might handle a future crisis.
For example, Aritomo Yamagata (1838–1922), one of the most powerful political leaders
at that time, on October 15,1917, stated that “we have no choice but resorting to the fullstrength of the whole nation from top to bottom”1 to prepare for a future war. Tsuyoshi
Inukai, a famous proponent of party politics who was respected as an advocate of universal
suffrage and was also called the “God of Constitutionalism,” asserted in the National Party
convention in January 1918 that “all men in the country are soldiers and all industries in
the country are military factories for producing weapons.”2 Kazushige Ugaki, who had
sketched out a response to total wars from an early stage together with Giichi Tanaka,accurately grasped the nature of such wars: “victory or defeat [in] a future war will depend
not only on military battles and military tactics but also on [the] huge crash of all energies
that compose states and deployment and operation of all energies.”3
A group of progressive officers in the army, whom were later called the Control Faction,
advocated preparation for a total war in an organized manner and involved various
authorities in Japan. In particular, the Control Faction established a special military
investigation board in the Ministry of the Army on December 27, 1915 and invested lots offinancial and human resources into the investigation and analysis of wartime mobilization
systems and the state of affairs in those countries that were involved in the war.
Their results were recorded in booklets such as Overseas Missions Report and Monthly
Report of the Special Military Investigation Board. Based on their research, they also
published the Agenda on Necessity of a Nationwide Mobilization Plan (September 1917,
Chief of Staff), the document Imperial State National Defence Resources (August 1917,
Chief of Staff) and Opinions on National General Mobilization (May 1920, Special
Military Investigation Board). The preparation for establishing a total war system had
progressed steadily.4
After WWI, the world started to move towards democracy and national selfdetermination, and party politics began to rise in Japan. Under these circumstances, it
1 Comment by Tokutomi, I., Koshaku Yamagata.
2 Washio, p.406.
3 Tsunoda, Kazushige, p.327.
4 The above-mentioned principal reports are contained at the end Koketsu, Soryokusen.

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became inevitable that Japan would reconcile advocacy of a total war system withdemocratic ideas and institutions. In other words, although ideas of total war might besuperficially considered mutually contradictory with democracy, both were adjusted so thata total war system on a grand scale could be prescribed as the response of Japan to global
developments.
Against this background, a drastic review of civil-military relations became an urgent
issue. The Munitions Industries Mobilization Act was enacted in 1918 as a starting point of
the development of legislation that eventually led to the enactment of the National
Mobilization Law in April 1938. During this process, confrontation and compromise
occurred repeatedly between military and politics.
In the process of preparing for total war, civil-military relations were complicated, andcontradictions frequently emerged which could not be resolved until a Japanese defeat in
World War Ⅱ. Therefore, I believe that the establishment of a total war system was nevercompleted in Japan. The principal reason for this is that Japan had a structure in which
different powers existed separately so that coordination among them did not progresssmoothly or sufficiently though the country and the people saw the need to establish a total
war system. This is to say, the national structure of Japan itself as a pluralistic polity was adecisive factor inhibiting the establishment of a functioning total war system.
I want to point out that it is possible to analyse the nature of modern war in the Japanesestate by summarizing the process of preparation for total war and by discovering thecontradictions that this process revealed, while, at the same time, drawing the conclusionthat the Japanese total war system was insufficient compared to that of Western states.

Ⅱ Japan’s Total War System:
Development, Legislation and Establishment of the Total War State(1) Preparation for total war
After the end of WWI, the Japanese government came to think that future wars would be
total wars, based on the results of investigations by the army and the navy. Therefore, it
started to develop laws for the establishment of a total war system. The Munitions
Industries Mobilization Act (Act No. 38), put into place in March 1918, the year in which
WWI ended, was a starting point in this process.
The act was to provide various munitions industries with protection and promotion,clarifying the resources required in wartime, and to establish an administrative system thatwas suited to respond to an outbreak of war immediately by enhancing those industries
during peacetime. This was different from a requisition order, the purpose of which is toforce industries to donate resources, in that its purpose was to encourage industries tovoluntarily donate resources that were expected to be necessary in wartime. This kind of
mobilization was different from traditional mobilization, which occurs after the outbreak ofwar.
A course toward the establishment of a total war system was pioneered by the Munitions
Industries Mobilization Act and was further concretized by the establishment, in May 1918,
of the Munitions Bureau, an institution that supervised matters related to the enforcementof the Munitions Industries Mobilization Act under the control of the cabinet. The presidentof the Munitions Bureau was the Prime Minister, and the vice ministers of the army and thenavy also served as vice ministers of munitions. In addition, representatives from all64

Total War and Japan
ministries and agencies were allocated to the Munitions Bureau. Although the bureau was acomprehensive organization in which representatives of all concerned ministries andagencies were present, its membership initially consisted of ten military officers, and the
preparation for full-scale mobilization of munitions industries, in reality, was led by the
military.
The total war system is a political system for dealing with total wars, but it is establishedin peacetime. The changes in warfare and the emergence of total war thinking in the earlytwentieth century left no choice but to align a state system with a total war approach,particularly in the case of countries with relatively low national endurance, especially whensuch states, like Japan and Germany, are involved in a long, drawn-out war.
Based on such views, the preparation for mobilization was sketched out starting in the
1920s, and organizations dealing with national mobilization were established in quick
succession. Mobilizing human resources was the most important aspect of establishing thetotal war system, and various approaches were suggested. The Resources Bureau,
established under the cabinet in May 1927, considered humans as “resources,” and the“mobilization of human resources” began to spread as a slogan among advocates of total
war thinking.
These developments accelerated in the 1930s and the 1940s. In my work, Soryokusen,5 I
have identified the most important steps in this development. For example, Opinions on
National Mobilization, drafted by the Special Military Investigation Board in May 1920, isa document of extreme importance. It is the first official document to use the term “public
mobilization,” defining it as industrial mobilization, transportation mobilization, financial
mobilization and mobilization in other areas. In this document, which was a foundational
document for the later total war system, “public mobilization” was understood as themobilization of human resources. The public is specified as a target of the concept ofmobilization.
In other words, goods and humans are classified as “resources,” and it is this kind ofsociety in which a total war system can be implemented at the national level, opening theway for the process of establishing a national mobilization system. The recognition ofhuman beings as a state resource is the fundamental thought that underlies the total war
system. Total war theories based on a variety of approaches were presented during the1920s and the 1930s. Resultingly, the controversy over how to turn humans into resources
was a common issue in those theories.
(2) Toward the enactment of the National Mobilization Act
As a central organization in charge of national mobilization was established under theleadership of the military, the army, decided to establish the Munitions Division in the
Army Ministry’s Ordinance Bureau. This division was in charge of formulating an annual
plan for munitions industry mobilization. In a related move, in May 1920, the National
Statistics Bureau was established as a central control organization for munitions industry
mobilization by the cabinet of Hara Takashi, the president of the political party Seiyukai.
The Munitions Bureau and the Statistics Bureau were later integrated into the National
Statistics Bureau for the purpose of coordinating the cooperation of governmentalorganizations related to industrial mobilization.
However, the government decided to dismantle the National Statistics Bureau in October
5 See pp. 213–244 of the first edition (Sanichishobo, 1981) or pp. 224–255 of the new edition (Shakaihyoronsha
Co., Ltd., 2010).

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1922 because international opinion strongly favoured disarmament after World War I andparticularly during the Washington Conference (1921/22). As a result of this conference
and the post-war recession that followed, administrative and financial streamlining became
necessary for the Japanese military.
Under such circumstances, the government had to postpone policies premised on theestablishment of the total war system. In addition, as the influence of the Great Depression
in the late 1920s started to reach Japan, it became even more difficult to pursue theestablishment of the total war system. Nevertheless, the army enhanced the Engineering
Division under the Munitions Bureau as its industrial mobilization organization, andstarting in 1920, it steadily implemented “industrial mobilization plans.” In May 1927, theResources Bureau, which was under the direct jurisdiction of the Prime Minister, wasestablished as an organization for handling central managing duties and consultations inorder to prepare for the control and operation of resources supplied under the generalmobilization system. Duties related to national mobilization were brought back on track.
Just as in the case of the National Statistics Bureau, nearly half of the Resources Bureau
consisted of military officers on active duty, and it was basically a military-dominatedorganization in charge of general mobilization.
Organizations for national mobilization were repeatedly established and abolished, but inMarch 1930, the commissioner of the Resources Bureau issued a notification on generalmobilization upon an initiative of the army at the time before and after the Manchurian
Incident on September 18, 1931. At the time of the Manchurian Incident, a generalmobilization planning meeting was convened to initiate specific works for designing ageneral mobilization plan. Twenty army officers, including Hajime Sugiyama, Chief of theMilitary Affairs Bureau, participated in drafting these plans.
Such developments became more prevalent as a result of the Manchurian Incident and led
to the establishment of the Planning Agency in May 1937 and the Planning Bureau in
October 1937. The drafting of the general mobilization plan continued steadily. Then, theNational Mobilization Act was enacted in April 1938, and a legal basis for military
mobilization and national mobilization was established.
The repeated establishment of organizations in charge of general mobilization and thedevelopment of relevant laws had advanced, and the establishment of a Japanese total war
system was pushed forward. Of course, it is not possible to assert that such developments
directly led to the formation of a total war state. However, there was no doubt that, withkeen awareness regarding the possibility of future wars becoming total wars, the creationof a Japanese total war system began to make rapid progress.

Ⅲ Preparation for Total Wars under Taisho Democracy:
Background of its Limitations(1) Preparation for total war in the age of Taisho democracy (1910s–1920s)
Submarines, aircraft, tanks and toxic gas weapons appeared during WWI as a result of therapid development of modern military technology. In addition, while battlefields used to belimited to the ground and the surface of the sea, fighting now also extended into the air andunderseas. The border between the battlefront and the home front was graduallydisappearing because of the expansion of war areas and spaces. A war was not far fromdaily reality anymore for many people, and they were now exposed to the risk that their66

Total War and Japanliving space might turn into a battlefield any time.
The appearance of modern weapons with levels of killing power that did not exist in thepast was a major characteristic of World War I and led to immense damage. At the sametime, because the war turned into a total war, a social structure emerged in which a great
number of people were forced to participate in the conflict. This structure was the biggest
factor in causing unprecedented, disastrous harm. In order not to experience further suchdisasters, democracy became a major trend in the world after WWI.
The origins of democracy may be traced back to the age of the French Revolution, but
WWI was a moment when the importance of democracy was recognized on a worldwide
level. The idea spread that it was impossible to prevent a battle for supremacy by a groupof nations seeking supremacy unless people (demos) and power (kratia), which are theroots of democracy, were connected and activated worldwide.
On the other hand, democracy was reaffirmed as an essential factor for establishing thetotal war system. That is to say, after WWI, the capability of corresponding with total war
became essential for any political thought or system adopted.
Taking the concept of modernization, for example. As it became necessary to establish
and expand a system related to the development, production and deployment of the newweapons systems that appeared during WWI, the weight of a concept that regarded
technological modernization and the capability of producing large quantities of weapons
and ammunition increased. Therefore, a technology-centred system, i.e. a technocracy,
emerged which would become all-powerful. Furthermore, as total war resulted in enormous
human cost, this necessitated an increase in human mobilization to satisfy the demands ofthe battlefields and the home front.
The two issues of scienticism and human mobilization became the key issues in the
response to the emergence of total wars. The state’s role expanded to ensure technocracy.
In addition, the promotion of human mobilization relied to a high degree on bottom-up
public initiative rather than forced mobilization by the state. To that end, the raising ofinterest in technological innovation and the democratization of human mobilization had tobecome a goal. In a total war, Japan was originally inferior to Western countries both interms of capital and technology, so the mobilization of human resources was expected to beurgently required to reinforce national strength. For that reason, the framework of the total
war system was established as a system for human mobilization.
The motivation for driving (particularly) the mobilization of human resources for a total
war must be considered. That awareness of both internal and external factors must be able
to be shared by the public, and it is easy to achieve with the public’s interest in and support
for a response to total war. However, the thing is not that simple, so it is necessary tostrongly appeal to equality in the appearance of total war society in the process ofestablishing the total war system. In any case, the change of a state regime to a total war
system as an internal issue became urgent after WWI.
An important external factor was the necessity for Japan to gain supremacy in mainland
China and Southeast Asia as supply centres for resources, with the ultimate aim of reachingautarky, because a large quantity of resources would be consumed in a total war. The
orientation toward self-sufficiency—the desire to secure a physical base for the total war
system—would eventually lead to the wars against the other parts of Asia in the 1920s andthe 1930s.
(2) Total war systems and democracy
Did the power of democracy that became a global trend after WWI influence the67

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establishment of a total war state or a total war society? This issue has attracted particularattention among researchers, including myself, and is now prominent in academic
discussions. As mentioned earlier, democracy is premised on the expression of the public
will in discussions about the realization of national, social or individual growth andhappiness.
The public collectively collaborates with the state by forming organizations such aspolitical parties and labour unions and strives to realize its goals. In fact, the participationof social organizations increased worldwide after WWI. In Japan, the party cabinet underTakashi Hara appeared in 1918. The Universal Manhood Suffrage Act enacted in 1925 wasbased on the same type of desire of the people to participate in political discussions. On theother hand, in Korea, which was under Japanese colonial rule, the March 1 Independence
Movement occurred in March 1919. Under such circumstances, democracy played an
important role in establishing the total war system.
A total war system cannot be realized by a small number of military leaders, bureaucrats
and politicians. Rather, it depends on the active involvement of the public and theemergence of an understanding among the people regarding the importance of a total war
system. The development of organizations such as political parties and labour unions which
acknowledge the importance of democracy for the establishment of a total war system, wasextremely important in nurturing the same understanding among the public. In brief, ideas
about democracy and ideas of total war emerged at almost the same moment.
At a glance, it may sound strange that thought regarding both democracy and total war
were related phenomena; they have contradictory aspects. We need to understand that apolitical system that is capable of responding to a war at any given time can avoid national
crisis in the age of total war. At the same time, a total war system is implemented andestablished in various forms as a national strategy for stabilizing the domestic politicalorder under the excuse of national crisis prevention and crisis management.
In other words, large numbers of troops should be kept ready at all times, including
peacetime. Even in peacetime, the dissemination of the consciousness of national defence
and of nationalism were necessary to create a state which is always ready to go to war. The
distinction between wartime and peacetime disappears by converting peacetime into
wartime and vice versa.

Ⅳ Conclusion: Total War Systems and Pluralistic Federation of Japan(1) Fascism and total war systems
Before concluding this article, I would like to touch on the correlation between fascist
systems and total war systems.
According to textbooks, the reasons for the emergence of fascism in Europe after WWI
were the impasse of the capitalist system and the appearance of questions andcontradictions regarding the capitalist system revealed by the emergence of a socialist
country, the Soviet Union. Those problems, coupled with internal contradictions, caused
domestic conflicts in many countries. This is why fascist movements and parties, which
advocated the necessity of overcoming the contradictions and uniting nations across thelines of races and social classes, appeared one after another.
In 1922, the emergence of a fascist regime in Italy after the March on Rome by Benito
Mussolini (1883–1945) became a turning point. Francisco Franco y Bahamonde (1892–

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Total War and Japan1975) of Spain, Antonio Salazar (1889–1970) of Portugal and Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
then succeeded in establishing fascist systems in their countries. In addition, fascist parties
and fascists, such as the Action Française (French Royalists) in France and Oswald Mosley(1896–1980) in the United Kingdom, were influential in Western countries, although theyfailed to take the reins of power.
The concept of fascism is summarized in a famous speech given by Mussolini on October
28, 1925. He said, “Everything shall be under the control of the state. No one shall beoutside the state nor oppose the state.” (Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato,
nulla contro lo Stato.) “Everything shall be under the control of the state” meant that thestate came ahead of the importance of social classes and races and that a state in which all
people were homogenized under state power was the ultimate objective.
Such ideology gradually started to appear in Asia, particularly in Japan. Japanese fascism
was formed, through the absolutism of the emperor system, as a vehicle to integrate all thepeople on a mental and a constitutional level.6
Fascism in Germany and Italy, however, was defined as “bottom-up fascism” (in thewords of Masao Maruyama). This was because, particularly in the case of Germany, thefascist (Nazi) party was the fruit of a subjective movement of the people that grasped
power through legal procedures, based on an election. With regards to Japan, the theory
that denies the establishment of fascism in that country has emerged because Japanesefascism was not established through legal procedures as in the case of Germany. The
controversy over Japanese fascism has been discussed from various angles based on thecontradictory opinions of Marxists and anti-Marxists.
To solve the seeming contradictions with regards to Japan, the theory of total war has tobe taken into consideration. The above-mentioned speech by Mussolini may be understoodas a suggestion of a total war system, not just a fascist system, in that he appealed to theestablishment of a stable and robust political community across different social classes andraces. In that context, socialist and communist systems can also be understood as types of
total war systems because they are dictatorial systems in which there is only one class.7
After all, where a political system focuses on the mobilization and unity of the people,
regardless of whether it is a top-down iron hand or a bottom-up approach, it may be
categorized as a “total war system.” It would be important to point out the risks andproblems of such systems by actively questioning their significance.
It is widely-known that Mussolini was an activist from the Italian Socialist Party andstrongly influenced by Marxism and that he was committed to the ideas of Georges Sorel(1874–1922), philosopher of revolutionary Syndicalism. In addition, the political style of
Nazism owed much to the propaganda practices of Soviet socialism and the Communist
party; Hanna Arendt (1906–1975) pointed out the similarity between Nazism and Stalinismand maintained that Italian Fascism, German Nazism and Soviet Stalinism were “twin6 Eguchi, Nippon Fascism.
7 Concerning the connection between the total war system and the fascism system, in a recent study by

Arakawa, Senjikeizaitaisei and Koketsu, Soryokusen is discussed, and Arakawa points out that “the purport ofAtsushi Kouketsu is that the establishment of the total war system is a factor of changing the prewar social
system into fascism and that the entire process of establishing the total war system is thus called Japanesefascism” (a nationalism movement with an irrational system of thought) (p. 16, note 4). He offers the critique that
“Kouketsu moves his discussion forward on the premise that fascism is irrational” (p. 16, note 8). It is true that I
discussed the premise that the Japanese total war system was basically Japanese fascism in my book published 30
years ago. Although I emphasized the unity of relation between the two systems in my book, I did not explore
their interrelation sufficiently. I would now argue that the course toward the establishment of the total war system
was a background that promoted the formation of Japanese fascism from a point of view of coordination andintegration of democracy and fascism.

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totalitarianism[s],”8 meaning that the three systems were the same nature.
Although we can point out a number of issues in comparative discussions, the point here
is a comparative discussion of fascism and the total war system. To deliberate on that issue,
we need to know: What is the support base of the total war system? There are two reasonsfor asking that question.
The first is that political systems that can be regarded as total war systems have beenborn since World War II (WWII). A number of military and authoritarian regimes can serveas examples, such as those of Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) in South Korea and Jiang Jieshi(1887–1975) in Taiwan in the 1950s; other instances include South American military
regimes, such as those of Juan Domingo Peron (1895–1974) and Augusto Pinochet (1915–
2006). While these regimes stood for domestic democratization through physical violence,
they aggressively pushed forward policies for modernization at the national level. This is apolitical system called developmental dictatorship.
These regimes may be called modern fascism. They advanced policies that gave national
development the first priority at high costs by hiding the demands for domestic democracy
and contradictions based on the excessive supremacy of nationalism and succeeded inachieving a certain degree of economic development and forming a large middle class, i.e.
a white-collar class. The middle class formed in that process became the support base of
the total war system.
Although there is no need to provide examples from those countries, the total war system
in pre-war Japan and the total war system in the post-war reform period and the economic
reconstruction period no doubt had in common their promotion of economic development.
As a result, the large middle class emerging in post-war Japan, not comparable to that of
pre-war times, was formed, and it was said that “all Japanese belong to the middle class.”
This has inevitably created a structure in which the people have a middle-class mentality
and are indifferent to their own social class or position. This is actually what the total war
system intends.
The second issue to be challenged is directly and indirectly related to the abovementioned point. Given the use of a kind of propaganda in which a total war system
functions to promote equalization and homogenization by neutralizing differences anddisparities, each individual who belongs to the society naturally sharply spurs the people’s
consciousness. A national crisis, such as a war, is tactfully termed a public crisis, and apolitical system is established in which the people are driven into the war for the purposeof WHAT? When the people are mobilized for a common national issue, such as a war, in
an integrated manner, the differences between social classes and positions are dissolved,
irrespective of whether the issue at stake is domestic or international.
For example, differences in origins and backgrounds are dissolved when persons aredrafted into the army and sent to the battlefield. This was certainly evident in the army life,
but the Japanese people who were put into the wartime regime were converted into
fictitious soldiers while the whole country was turned into a fictitious battlefield. In
summary, the total war system can be understood as a nationalism-oriented society that
disables the differences between individuals and converts them into objects that constitutethe state in the name of victory in war and economic development.
(2) Today’s research issues regarding total war systems
What are the important topics of research on total war systems today? I believe that at least
8 See Arendt(1951).

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Total War and Japanthe following two issues are relevant.
The first issue is that, if there is any possibility that the modern total war system will
become more dominant, it is necessary to consider abolishing modern democracy in orderto prevent this from happening. Although democracy is an important concept and systemthat relativizes existing power, it is often used as a tool for mobilizing the public. The
United States has employed a method of waging consecutive wars in the name of saving
democracy. This American pattern gives the impression that democracy has become
nothing but a tool for mobilizing the public.
The second issue is to overcome the false egalitarianism that is said to be created by the
total war system, although its merits and demerits have already been discussed with regard
to the study of total war systems. By way of this false sense of egalitarianism, the people’s
consciousness is unified. This tendency is spreading in our society, where a variety ofsocial contradictions are hidden under false egalitarianism and incorporated into the total
war system.
On the other hand, the reality of a society under the total war system is that the younger
generation in Japan, due to an underlying sense of stagnation in society and the existenceof many people who are effectively ousted from society. In that sense, we have to accept
subjectively that the total war society is a tool for hiding a variety of contradictions andsocial problems.
We should not secure our position by first taking a free ride on goals presented by thestate. Rather, each of us has to answer the question of how much space we can secure in the
future for being independent from the state, maintaining autonomy and acting freely.
Unless we keep asking this question, we have no choice but to be incorporated into thetotal war system or total war society, characterized by mobilization, control andmanagement.
Total war systems may be differentiated by establishing categories, such as the European
total war system or the Japanese/German total war system. However, what is important
here is to take measures for effectively utilizing democracy when, even in the case of ademocratic state, it is intended to establish a total war system. In the case of Japan, theslogan of all nations and partial revision of the power structure were enforced whenestablishing the total war system.
I insist on this point because I would like to call attention to the fact that the post-war
total war system in Japan has succeeded in mobilizing the people through the slogan“production first” with the aim of economic development based on democracy, and thishigh economic growth was achieved, a characteristic of recent total war systems.
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