Breaking the Seal on the GHQ Burned Booksby

Nishio Kanji

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact

Copyright ©2010 by Nishio Kanji
Originally published as GHQ ensho tosho kaifū
by Tokuma Shoten, Tokyo, Japan 2008.
English language copyright ©2010 by Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
All rights reserved, including the rights ofreproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Japanese personal names have been rendered surname first, in accordancewith Japanese custom.

Contents
Chapter One: What Were the “GHQ’s Burned Books”? ...................................... 1• “Banning books” and “censorship” are different things ....................................................................... 1• Participation by the Tokyo University Faculty of Letters .................................................................... 3• The crafty “confiscations” conducted in secrecy ................................................................................. 4• Secret meetings in the office of the director of the Imperial
Library and the official residence of the Prime Minister .................................... 6• Odaka Kunio, Kaneko Takezō, and Makino Eiichi .............................................................................. 8• Separating the good from the bad by those who drew up theoccupation forces’ list of books for confiscation .............................................. 10• Nation-wide expansion of confiscation with the deputy minister of education’s directive ................ 12• The occupation forces had a sense of having blundered .................................................................... 13• The whereabouts of the large number of works sent to America ....................................................... 14• The possibility of a connection with the Tokyo Trials ....................................................................... 17• A sampling of the confiscated books ................................................................................................. 19

Chapter Two: Disobedience at the Heart of Japan’s Serenity
as the Occupation Began ........................................................... 23• “The post-war war” of words and schemes ........................................................................................ 23• The dreadful system where private messages were censored ............................................................. 25• The Japanese society’s eerie silence .................................................................................................. 28• Several reasons Japan became instantly docile after the war ............................................................. 29• The fighting was over but the war went on ........................................................................................ 31• Japan’s quiet determination during the war against the ABCD Line ................................................. 33• What was it that was the strength of Japanese back then? ................................................................. 35

Appended Supplementary Materials ..................................................................... 37
Supplement One:
Supplement Two:
Supplement Three:Supplement Four:
Supplement Five:
Supplement Six:
Supplement Seven:Supplement Eight:

Memorandum from the SCAP GHQ (copy of original) .................................... 39
Memorandum from the SCAP GHQ ................................................................. 41
Textual materials drawn up for selecting publications to be
seized by the GHQ civilian censorship task force department .......................... 45
Directive from the Vice-Minister of Education
concerning the confiscation of publications ...................................................... 47
Summary of the number of books confiscated by theJapanese government on GHQ orders ............................................................... 51
Publications targeted for seizure during the occupation andstored in the United States Library of Congress ............................................... 53
Ranking of GHQ-confiscated works by author ................................................. 55
History of the occupation and government of the South Sea Islands ................ 63

Chapter One:
What Were the “GHQ’s Burned Books”?
“Banning books” and “censorship” are different things
I suspect there are many people who would say that this is the first timethey have heard the phrase “GHQ burned books.” It goes without saying that
the GHQ (General Headquarters) refers to the occupation army that was
stationed in Japan after the close of the Second World War. The GHQ bannedbooks. Book-banning 1 is stopping books in circulation, and recalling them.
There was a famous incident in the third century BC when the Chineseemperor Qin Shihuangdi burned Confucian texts and buried Confucian
scholars alive. This was the origin of the term “book burning.” Today it is therecall of books so people will not be able to read them.
Surprisingly, it is not widely known that the American army perpetrated
just such a barbaric act in post-war Japan. From the start, America, treading
roughshod over international law against an occupying army writing theconstitution of the country they occupy, should not have conducted censorshipof newspapers, magazines, the content of broadcasts, or opened private
correspondence. Likewise, it is only right that they should not have erased thehistory of the country they occupied, proscribing books and “burning books.”The post-war constitution expressed “freedom of thought” and “freedom of
the press,” but it was America who violated this in occupied Japan on a grandscale.
That being the case, when and how was it done? Did the occupation army
actually achieve what they wanted politically? And was “book burning” theterm used by the American army?
Of course, the American army used the word “confiscation” rather than“burning” and referred to it as “the confiscation of propaganda publications.”
Works that in Japan had only the day before been called “history books” or“thought books” were now coolly being called “propaganda publications.”
This was the year after the war ended. There’s nothing to be done about anenemy calling them that, but that my own country and my own countrymen
may have been able to just drop in an instant the ideas and sentiments andconvictions that had been brought up in that war, and that the Japanese
government should knuckle under so readily to meet the old enemy’s demands
that we they should now call it all propaganda — it was too much. Such a
1

The word used in the original is 焚書 (ensho), which literally means “book-burning” and is
the normal Japanese term for confiscating, banning, and/or destroying books. For this reason,some translated sources may refer to the GHQ’s “burned books” or “book burning” by theGHQ. While not an exact indicator of what actually took place, given that most confiscatedbooks, newspapers, and magazines were pulped, it is not far from the truth.

6waste. It was wrongful thinking jumping in and saying all of it was evil
propaganda “so therefore we should seize it all.” The occupation forces
confiscated what they could get their hands on — over 7,000 different books— from all over Japan, including those bookstores, second-hand book sellers,
government offices, warehouses, and in the distribution centers. Those
responsible for the confiscation were selected by the governors of all theprefectures. The authority of the police was used against those who opposed
the seizures of these books.
That such things took place belongs to a secret part of postwar history thathas been totally unknown until now. It is now clear just how far thegovernment went in changing Japan’s direction to stay in line with the wishesof the occupation forces. It is my belief that in reading this book, one will
come to understand the extent of those results.
This is unlike the GHQ’s censorship starting in September of 1945 of allmanner of publications — newspapers, magazines, films, broadcasts —that
took place throughout the occupation, which is well known. Everyone
working in the media made two copies of everything they did and had to send
them to the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) of the GHQ. I have read that
before Kawada Masako’s children’s song “Mikan no hana saku oka” (“Thehill of blooming mandarin oranges”) was broadcast on the radio, the lyrics
were censored.
What I am bringing up here, however, is the “book burning” (that is, theconfiscation of prewar and wartime books), which clearly a different matterthan the postwar censorship. From 1 January 1928, to 2 September 1945,
approximately 220,000 titles were published in Japan. Of those, 9,288 wereselected for examination, and 7,769 of those were taken and designated as“confiscated propaganda publications.” This is what I am talking about when I
refer to “book-burning.”
The occupation army created the master list of 7,769 titles, but it was theJapanese government who actually carried out the confiscations throughout
the whole country based on that list.
This was the expression of a great amount of the intellect of the time thatwas decisively useful in forming Japan’s fighting spirit in the Greater East
Asian War, so I suppose it was only natural that the occupation forces should
set their sights on it. If one were to eliminate something just “because it wasfrom Japan,” one would no longer be able to see history’s true picture. I
imagine it could be said that this included enthusiastic works that exalted thefighting spirit, but was this enthusiasm not a part of history?
The seizure of books was not just a separate incident from the censorship,as I have said. Surely it would not be an exaggeration to say that, as a questionof the continuation of a nation’s history, it is comparatively speaking a much
more significant topic.
Why is it that this has still not yet been taken up in earnest? This, itself, isa question that should be addressed. I feel that the impetus to investigate thematter has been lost because the actual books themselves have disappeared
from the awareness of Japanese readers. This is the principal reason for thelack of desire to examine the issue. The “book burning” was successful. The
whole country was thoroughly taken in by the policies that the occupation
authorities saw through — the policy of erasing the history of opposition to
the country then occupying Japan, led by the occupation forces — and it
7

continues to this day.
Participation by the Tokyo University Faculty of Letters
There is one troubling point that must needs be made on this matter.
Investigation is only now getting started into by what procedures the “bookburning” was carried out, and by whom, and how their assessments were made.
Though it is something from more than sixty years ago, the whole story of theprocess for designating books for confiscation is even now difficult toascertain at this stage of writing this work.
The political intentions of the American army are clear. We are now
examining the army’s orders during the occupation and the Japanese
government’s responses to those orders. We have come to know to an extent
the locations where books were designated for confiscation (though we can
not yet verify that it was a single place), their quantity, the time period, andthe process. We know the method of disposing books after their seizure andthe approximate whereabouts of the remainder. The titles of the over seventhousand works has long been known. What we just can not fathom, however,is that it has not been really understood that this was not something that could
be undertaken only by civilians in the employ of the GHQ and administrative
officials of the Japanese government; rather, it was a type of feat that could
only have been accomplished with the cooperation of someone in theintelligentsia — academics and pundits.
The world was shocked soon after the war when it was learned that there
had been some level of systematic cooperation by some Jews themselves in
the Jewish persecution by the Nazi regime. In the same manner, cooperationon the part of the occupied (erstwhile enemy) population was necessary foroccupation policies. That is why there were diplomats like Herbert Norman.
The GHQ’s internal personnel affairs also was also likely mixed up in it. It
was a time when those in Japan who had been responsible for the war were
facing the Tokyo Trials and an ordered purge of public officials. The ideas ofPresident Truman and General MacArthur also had a great effect on the stateof affairs. It was a time when even the emperor’s position was endangered.
The authority that Japan had had to that point was gone, and everything now
operated under the new authority that was the occupation army; and Japan’s
intelligentsia, academics, and pundits quickly responded to its sensibilities.
At that time, it was not just America, either. An anti-Japanese “board of
directors” made up of representatives from America, Britain, the Soviet Union,
China, etc., met to give their input into the policies for the occupation of Japan.
They took notice of “the fact that there are publications that were militaristic
or anti–Allied Powers that are in general circulation and have been kept,” andadvised that all of them should be seized.
Given the situation, the Japanese government was totally unable to offer
any resistance. I imagine that to some extent there was probably nothing that
could have been done in that there were those among the intelligentsia andamong the scholars and pundits who accepted the government’s directions tocooperate, but even given this “cooperation” there is a difference between
doing something half-heartedly and doing it enthusiastically, and there is aconsiderable gap between sabotaging the process and toadying to it.
8Recently it has come to be known that at the center of this cooperation was
the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo University. This year we also learned thenames of two assistant professors who were involved. We have also been able
to ascertain that criminal law scholars who were famous at the time had asupporting role in the arranging everything. All of them later were recipientsof the Order of Cultural Merit and members of the Japanese Academy.
Japanese history was unmade by people representing Japanese intellectuals
and who cut off its continuity. This was the starting point of Japan's
degeneration in the postwar days down to the present. Were we just indulging
in sentimental tears to comfort ourselves in “reflecting” on the war
immediately following our defeat? One might say this was a weakness, aservility, a vagueness, typical of the Japanese. The most troubling thing,
however, is that we only know the names and their participation, and atpresent we are not absolutely clear on exactly how their participation was
arranged or what it was they were doing. After sixty years, there are hardly
any living witnesses left. Below, I will put in order an account to clarify thedetails in as much as I have come to know them. It goes without saying, but
the first chapter of this book is the first work that comprehensively
summarizes the history of the GHQ “book burning.”
The crafty “confiscations” conducted in secrecy
On 17 March, 1946, a typed memorandum was delivered to the JapaneseImperial Government. At the head was written the most powerful name of thetime: “General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers,”
and the recipient was given as “Imperial Japanese Government.” It was sent
via the Tokyo Central Liaison Office of the GHQ. The memorandum wastitled, “Confiscation of Propaganda Publications.” It’s identification tag
number was “AG 311.7 (17 Mar 46) CI (SCAPIN - 824).” It was the
document that was to be the start of the whole affair. (The appended“Supplement 1” at the end of this book is a photographic reproduction of theoriginal typed memorandum.) The memorandum read:
1. The Japanese Government is directed to collect from all publicchannels, including warehouse, book shops, book dealers, publishingcompanies, distributing agents and all commercial establishments, or
agencies of the Japanese government where these publications are held in
bulk, the following listed propaganda publications:a. War & Construction (Asahi Newspaper Company) December
1943.
b. Senji Shimbun Tokuhon (Manual of Newspaper Reading in
Wartime - Tokijiro Hirata) December 1940.
c. Kindai Kaisen (Modern Sea Battle - Mainichi Newspaper)
October 1941.
d. Bei Ei Chosen No Shinso (The True State of the AmericanBritish Challenge to Japan - Hachiro Arita) October 1943.
e. Shomem [sic.] Hikohei Tokuhom [sic.] (Reader for Junior Air
Corps - Army I-formation Department) November 1943.
f. Bei Ei No Toa Kokuran (American-British Disturbance of East
Asia - Hachiro Arita) December 1943.
g. Bei Ei [sic.] No Sekai Shinryoku (American World Agression

9

[sic.] - Kensuku [sic.] Horiuchi) August 1944. 2
h. Dai Toa No Kensetsu (The Building of Greater East Asia - Eigi
Amo) November 1944.
i. Fujin Asia (Asiatic Women - Mainichi Newspaper) Monthly
January 1942 to September 1944.
j. Sakura (Cherry - Mainichi Newspaper Co.) Monthly.
2. These publications will be collected and stored in a central
warehouse. Instructions for the disposal of these publications for pulping
will be issued by this headquarters at a later date.
3. A periodic report will be submitted on the 15th and last day of eachmonth to General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers,
beginning 31 March 1946. This report shall include:a. The name and number of publications collected in the interim
periodb. Source from which obtained, including the name and number ofpublications collected from each sourcec. Total number of publications
d. Gross weighte. Specific location of storage
4. Individual copies in private homes or libraries will be exempted fromaction directed above.
FOR THE SUPREME COMMANDER:[signed]B. M. FITCH,
Brigadier-General, AGD,
Adjutant General

Of the ten works brought up in the memorandum, the publishers of nine
were unidentified, but now it is confirmed that the publisher was the Mainichi
Shinbun. There are three books whose authors are not named (though they are
now known). These ten titles, taken all together, are strange. The mistakeswith the titles, too, stand out.
In other words, at the beginning it was done haphazardly as the American
forces perfunctorily and arbitrarily picked out whatever books were in front ofthem. We can see that from the beginning they were resolved to steadily
increase the implementation of this plan over time, and they obtained theassistance of the Japanese for the all-out confiscation. No one suspected themagnitude of the specifics of the plan at the start. Nonetheless, they were firmin the methodology and policies for the confiscation process, at least, as if they
had done it any number of times before.
What must be noted is the line about “Individual copies in private homes
or libraries.” That is, at the start there was an announcement that those works
that were privately held or in libraries were not subject to confiscation. Instead,
it was to be an exhaustive search of the whole public circuit — not justbookstores and publishing houses — to remove the targeted books.
It was a consistent, coherent policy that was put into execution after theJapanese government stepped in upon receipt of their directive from the GHQ.
To be precise, the occupational authorities did not know the world of Japanese2

The actual title, reflected in the translation of it, was Bei no sekai shinryoku.

10books, and not only did they not do any study of it, all they really did was
decide the policy. That is a critical point.
I did not check into the cases of other countries to see whether theAmerican forces, as well as, perhaps, the British forces, or in general the West,when controlling an occupied territory, habitually acted in the same manner,so this matter is unfortunately not known to me. It is an extremely cunningpolicy to secretly use a country’s government to carry out the confiscations
from public routes, excepting the books in the homes of civilians and libraries,
without the knowledge of their countrymen. Because the occupation forces
knew that the confiscation of books was a destruction of history such as would
not be done by a civilized nation, they were concerned about getting an image
as being book burners. 3 I will touch on this later, but those involved incarrying out the confiscations were under strict orders not to let uninvolved
parties know anything about their activities. Please consider whether this does
not sound somewhat clever and underhanded. At any rate, America occupied
Japan in the name of liberty and democracy, and this was the opening of acurtain onto a bright, new age heralding a Constitution expressing freedom ofspeech and freedom of the press.
Or was it?
Top-secret documents of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS
documents 1,231 A-18, A-19; dated 12 January, 1945), written when Japanwas still being bombed, directed the “prohibition of the diffusion of the ideals
of Japanese militarism and ultranationalism in any form whatsoever” asadministrative principles in the event the American fleet were to occupy “thevarious western and south-western islands, as well as the Kurile Islands.”
Secret meetings in the office of the director of the Imperial
Library and at the official residence of the Prime Minister
From the delivery to the Japanese government of memorandum No. 1 fromthe GHQ titled “Confiscation of Propaganda Publications,” dated 17 March,
1946, until 15 April, 1948, a total of forty-eight similar memoranda (andsupplemental memorandum No. 46) were delivered. (See the appended“Supplement 2.”)After looking closely at them, I realized something interesting. Between
the fourteenth (supplemental memorandum No. 13, dated 2 December, 1946)
and the thirty-third (supplemental memorandum No. 31, dated 2 September,1947), the itemized number of books to be confiscated suddenly increased.
Please note the supplements at the end of this book. In particular, starting withthe thirty-third, suddenly 500 books were designated for confiscation eachtime. That makes 1,000 titles per month. At the beginning it was ten titles(more or less), but it quickly escalated, and in the blink of an eye had becomea torrent of thousands.
I conjecture (and this is, ultimately, just conjecture) that it was at that point
3

The author here again makes a direct analogy, using the term “funsho kôju” (焚書坑儒), toQin Shihuangdi’s burning of the Confucian classics and burying alive Confucian scholars.
Being seen as doing something comparable to so barbaric an act is something the occupation
authorities would have wanted to avoid.

11

that the Japanese collaborators began to participate. One copy each of
approximately 80 to 90 percent of the original total of 7,769 books that
endured the “book-burning” is at present housed in the National Diet Library.
This is natural, as the American army did not confiscate books from libraries.
In response to a recent inquiry I made, the National Diet Library said that as aresult of actually investigating a sampling, they conjectured that they areholding 80 to 90 percent, but they have not made a follow-up examination of
all of them, and in particular they did not treat them any differently than otherbooks from the same period in respect to special markings or catalogue
numbers.
The explanation for why they did not feel the necessity of any special
treatment for those books that had been subjected to the GHQ’s “bookburning” was that the holdings of the National Diet Library had never been
confiscated by the GHQ. The holdings of the present-day National Diet
Library seem to be a continuation of those of the then-Imperial Library. So
now we come to the extremely important testimony from the GHQ that, “Thedesignation of propaganda books for confiscation was made based on theholdings of the Imperial Library, etc.”
In other words, what was to become the setting for the “book-burning”
was inside the Imperial Library. When the investigators needed to take hold of
the books, to screen them, to make their selections, the books they used were
those very same ones that are now held in the National Diet Library. (There isanother record that states that the original books used by the GHQ indesignating titles for confiscation had been sent to the University of
Maryland.)One copy each of the original books is left in the library, but at any rate the
GHQ had the assistance of the Ministry of Education and the police in thevarious stages of the creation of the list for confiscation, and it has been
established that the process for confiscation was an order that was sent to all
the prefectural governors.
The following, from the memoir of Okada Narau, then-director of theImperial Library, is extremely important concerning the above:
Returning the discussion to 1947, investigations for the purge of theexpression of views in published works began in that year. Published works
from the war years as well as those from before the war were held in theImperial Library, so on April 14 of that year an official of the Ministry ofForeign Affairs, Mr. Yano, came to the Library. He was seeking a way [forus] to cooperate in this affair, and a subcommittee was established for the
purpose of investigations connected to the purge of published works. Mr.
Tanaka, who was deputy director of the political department of the Foreign
Affairs Ministry, Mr. Yano, and Mr. Ōta, who was the director of the
Cabinet Liaison Office for Cessation of Hostilities, and others were in
charge. We had as our experts Odaka Kunio and Kaneko Takezō, bothassistant professors at Tokyo University, and I, too, joined in. The
subcommittee generally met in the library director’s office. Meetings under
the supervision of the chairman of the committee, Makino Eiichi, took placein the official residence of the prime minister. It was only natural that the
National Library had to cooperate this way with national policies, and as ajob it was not very pleasant. 4
4

From Shûsen chokugo toshokankai daihendô ki no kaiko (2) (“A recollection of the time ofcatastrophic drift in the library world immediately following the cessation of hostilities (2)” ).

12

He recounts the matter nonchalantly, but is it not testimony ofextraordinary significance?
I was indescribably stunned that the names of three eminent scholars —Odaka Kunio, Kaneko Takezō, and Makino Eiichi — suddenly appear in thisinconspicuous memoir. This is a shocking discovery. So much so, in fact, thatfor the many people who know the history of post-war thought, for a time they
just may not know what to think.
As I have already said, taking September of 1947 as the cutoff point, thenumber of books being seized each month climbed to 1,000. It was evident
that someone with expertise had gotten involved in the “book-burning”
operation as processing the titles had suddenly become systematic andefficient.
Please note again the attached “Supplement 2.” When those two Japanesescholars — representatives of social science and the humanities — joined thesubcommittee, with a senior jurist behind it as the chairman of the “bookcommittee” to oversee the matter of book confiscations, it was none other thanthat same year of 1947.
Odaka Kunio, Kaneko Takezō, and Makino Eiichi
Odaka Kunio (1908–1993) came from a background of industry, labor,
and business. His older brother, Tomoo, was a scholar of the philosophy oflaw, and his younger brother, Hisatada, was a composer and conductor. His
mother was a daughter of Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi. 5 One may say he was ascholar who represented the postwar. Odaka translated Max Weber’s
Wissenschaft als Beruf (Science as a Vocation) into Japanese and was
responsible for the Weber volume in the Sekai no meicho (“Great literaryworks of the world”) published by Chūō Kōronsha. His was a name known to
the general reading public.
Kaneko Takezō (1905–1987) was married to the sixth daughter of Nishida
Kitarō, 6 and the successor to Watsuji Tetsurō’s chair in Japanese Ethics at
Tokyo University. His studies on Hegel are famous, he wrote on Kant, Jaspers,
and others, and I remember reading his 1967 work, Kieerukegooru kara
Sarutoru e (“From Kierkegaard to Sartre”). From the way I saw it at the time,
my impression was that it was a simple, straightforward introduction tophilosophers. In 1958, he was chairman of the Faculty of Letters at Tokyo
University, so his name must be on my diploma, but I do not recall having
taken any of his classes.
Makino Eiichi (1878–1970) was a generation older than the Odaka andKane-ko. It is said that with his 1909 work, Keijigaku no shinshichō toshinkeihō (“Criminal science and new trends of thought and new penal
codes”), he caused a revolution in the theory of criminal law. He seems to
5

Shibusawa Eiichi (1840–1931) is known as “the father of Japanese capitalism.” He foundedJapan’s first stock-owned bank, the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Japan Chamber of Commerceand Industry, and hundreds of businesses and corporations.
6
Nishida Kitarô (1870–1945) was an influential philosopher and the founder of the “Kyoto
School” of thought.

13

have been known as a charismatic scholar who defended his position as aleading light in the academic world while a professor of law at Tokyo Imperial
University before the war. I say “seems” because he was a person in a field I
do not know and in a world from a different time. He reached retirement age
in 1938 but he lived a long life, dying at 92. He spent his time at home in
Chigasaki living a traditional life of retirement, surrounded by his studies, as
three distinct ages — prewar, wartime, and postwar — passed.
Makino spent his youth in the early Meiji years, 7 which still had
something of the atmosphere of the Edo period about them. He played an
active role from the end of the Meiji period through the early Taishō years.
Odaka Kunio and Kaneko Takezō were different. When the Greater East
Asian War broke out, Odaka and Kaneko were 33 and 36, respectively, andbelonged to the so-called war generation, with the greater part of their friends
scattered about on distant battlefields. Their writings and activities began after
the end of the war.
I am troubled that there is so little concrete evidence to show exactly how
these three men participated in the GHQ’s seizure of books. I have only founda book with collected memorial texts (which is not for sale) called Tsuisō
Kaneko Takezō (“Kaneko Takezō: Reminiscences”). In it I unexpectedly ran
across a memoir titled “Kaneko Takezō Sensei no koto” (“About Kaneko
Takeko Sensei”) by none other than Odaka Kunio.
I wonder when it was that I encountered Kaneko Takezō Sensei for the
first time. I think it was perhaps in 1938, when a youthful Kaneko became
an assistant professor at Tokyo University. I was introduced to him at somemeeting about that time. The impression I got at that time was that he wasshort, with a face like a Buddha, and that he was a man unconcerned about
personal appearance.
After the end of the Second World War, when investigation by the
GHQ into war crimes began, a committee was formed for that purpose as
well at the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo University. For some reason, he andI were both selected to be on the committee. So, one day, as the committee
was going about its business, we two were asked to go to the GHQ, near
Hibiya intersection. Although it was an official visit, our personal
appearance was extraordinary. Because of war damage, I possessed nodecent suits, but Kaneko Sensei was even worse. He had a shabby national
uniform jacket, scruffy trousers, worn-out shoes, and a tired felt hat perchedon the back of his head. With heavy steps, we climbed the splendid, wellkept steps of the Dai-Ichi Seimei Building. 8 The Nisei official who cameout to meet us was surprised, staring us up and down. Kaneko never budged,
however, calmly explaining the results of our study.

As you can see, their participation is clear. Moreover, there is clear
evidence that a “committee” for “investigating war crimes” was formed in the
Faculty of Letters of Tokyo University, and it was probably the intention of afaculty meeting that the young duo were chosen for the committee.
It was probably during the period from 17 March, 1946, when the first
GHQ memorandum was delivered to the Japanese government, to sometimearound September of 1947, when the thirty-third memorandum was sent, that a
7

The Meiji period lasted 1868–1912. The Taishô period was 1912–1926. The Edo period,
which was the regime of the Tokugawa shogunate, was 1603–1868; it ended with the Meiji
Restoration.
8
The GHQ had taken over the Dai-Ichi Seimei Building to be its offices.

14request was made by the Japanese government to Tokyo University forcooperation and a committee was formed in the Faculty of Letters. (Tokyo
University’s president at the time was Nanbara Shigeru.) Two assistantprofessors were tapped for the committee and were eventually summoned to
the Imperial Library, where they joined the “subcommittee” for the purging of
published works as “expert advisors,” which met in the office of Okada Narau,
who was director of the library. Such is the chain of events as I understandthem.
I dare say that, with that conclusion, I imagine Makino Eiichi heading themeetings of the “book committee” in a businesslike fashion, going about thetask of approving the decisions on which books should be seized, in a meetingroom in the official residence of the prime minister.
At this same time, Kaneko Takezō wrote the current affairs critiques“Taisen no jinrinteki hansei” (“A humanistic reflection on war”) and“Nihonjin no shimei ni tsuite” (“Concerning the mission of the Japanese”). 9
Supposing there may be some kind of hint therein, I quickly read them; but
they were commonplace essays of the kind reflecting on Japan as if they had
come out under the name of a Western philosopher. I could discern no bearing
on this matter at all.
I have discovered no other traces of Odaka Kunio’s cooperation with the
GHQ beside the “explaining the results of their investigations” with Kaneko
when they went to the GHQ, which I have already presented.
What must not be overlooked is the fact that from April of 1947 to May of1948, Makino Eiichi worked as a member of the Central Public Official
Suitability Review Board. It goes without saying that this tormented theJapanese of the day; it was a committee formed to cooperate with the purge of
public officials by the GHQ. Here, too, he was on the side of the erstwhile
enemy, taking the role of judging those who had been friends up to the day
before. He also worked as an expert examiner at the National Diet Libraryfrom July of 1948 to November of 1958. The abominable “book-burning”
policy, expanding nation-wide the seizure of books from his own country at
the behest of the occupation forces, went from that same July of 1948 to theend of the occupation (in other words, until the conclusion of the peace treaty),
and there are sufficient facts to allow us to suppose that Makino was deeply
involved in the same affair throughout the entire period.
Exact details on the participation by these three scholars, however,remains shrouded in a dense fog and is still unexplained.
Separating the good from the bad by those who drew up
the occupation forces’ list of books for confiscation
I have already outlined this, but the principal activity of the GHQ’s Civil
Censorship Detachment (CCD) was checking up on the mass media. In otherwords, censoring the information that was out in front of people. To the pointthat this extended to even opening private mail made its bad reputation
infamous in postwar history. One branch of the CCD was the Press, Pictorial
9

The former appeared in the February, 1946, issue of Tenbô (“Outlook”), and the latter in theMay, 1946, issue of Sekai (“World”).

15

& Broadcast Division (PPB). A sub-branch in the PPB was the Research
Section, which had been formed with the purpose creating a list of prewar
books to be banned. I think it would be fair for the time being to call the
Research Section “those who drew up the list of propaganda publications forconfiscation.” In every respect, their purpose was creating the list; they were
not the group that carried out the actual confiscation. (The idea was to have
the Japanese government carry it out.)
The Civil Censorship Detachment were already heavily involved insurveilling the mass media that was in the public eye, so there were no capable
people to spare. The Research Section thus had only six American civilians in
the employ of the army (two senior officials and four others) attached to it asstaff. They were set off on their confiscatory operations but were simply
unable to; the Research Section had no choice but to request Japanese help. It
seems that they added between nine and twenty-five Japanese to their number.
I wanted to know their names so I started investigating in the National Diet
Library. From a telephone book of the time, I was only able to ascertain asingle name of one of the Americans: a Lt. F. A. Bonner. I was unable to workout the names of any of the Japanese staff. I expected to see the names of
Odaka Kunio and Kaneko Takezō as leaders in the staff, but I had no success.
The total number of publications seized from the targeted period of
confiscation (1 January, 1928 to 2 September, 1945) was 221,223. Of that
number, 9,288 items that seem to apply to confiscated publications wereselected at first. This initial rough selection ought to have been conclusively
vital. Looking at it now, however, the classification was slipshod. There arebooks that I wonder why they were chosen, and there are books that, looking
at them from the position of a former enemy, I would consider dangerous andwonder why they were not. The operation lacked precision. We can make theassumption that there was a deficiency in manpower and in time, but it may bethat there was also a deficiency of capable people.
I now have in my hands several hundred pages of copied material
originally from that time and place which came to me via America. An
English-language explanation for the publications that were so crudely
selected is included. I would like to present two or three real examples. (See“Supplement 3” at the end of this book.) It is probable that both time andmanpower would quickly become insufficient if they were to attach an
explanation for each individual book as carefully as here. I understand thatthey were honest in the assessment itself of the books. There were 9,288 titles
that were screened and looked into, and ultimately 7,769 books were
designated for confiscation. In March of 1946, the business of separating thewheat from the chaff began. Forty-six times in sequence decisions wererelayed to the Japanese government, and in July of 1948, they stopped.
Compared with the first narrowing down of the list, the second operation musthave taken more time and been more attentive to thinking it out. That is
because they selected 85 percent (more or less) of the titles decided upon.
It is vexing that we do not know who the Japanese intellectuals involved
were, or when, where, and what exactly they were doing while they were
doing it.

16

Nation-wide expansion of confiscation with the
deputy minister of education’s directive
The list for books designated for confiscation compiled by the Research
Section of the Press, Pictorial & Broadcast Division of the Civil Censorship
Detachment was conveyed as a directive to the Japanese government via theCentral Liaison Office.
As I previously described, these orders were broken down into forty-six
exacting directives. At first, the Japanese police were to carry out theconfiscation of the books, but starting in June of 1948 the task was transferredto the Social Education Bureau of the Ministry of Education. With this, adirective was sent from the deputy minister of education notifying thegovernors of all Japan’s prefectures that they were now those responsible forcarrying out the confiscation. (See the appended “Supplement 4.”)
With a careful reading of this directive, various things become clear.
It was a very precise order. The deputy minister directs the prefectural
governors to work with the police, and the governors were required to selectemployed persons connected with education from their municipalities to be
designated as “confiscation officials.” Local educators, however, were to be
exempted from selection, and they should refrain from confiscating books
from school libraries. Instead, relevant books at publishing houses and inbookstores were to be seized altogether, and it called for thoroughness in theirdestruction. It also says that they should not overlook works in circulation or
being distributed. Seeing the passage, “including the interiors of stores selling
new books, those selling used books, and shops loaning books, as well as theirstore-rooms,” one can understand its thoroughness. The directive carried out
the spirit of items one and four in the first memorandum sent by the GHQ to
the Japanese government. They still did not know the world of Japanese books
very well, so they only decided on a definite objective first.
As it was confiscation, no money was paid out for the books being taken.
As for the investigation and confiscation of the applicable books, or in otherwords searching for and snatching them, one should keep a lookout for where
it says, “Confiscation and investigation is something that should take placewith the cooperation of the person being dealt with, but if the subject of aconfiscation complains about the investigation or confiscation, or if theconfiscator is in fear of harm or the like, he will be expected to request theassistance of police officials and to carry out his duty.”
In item 5 of the deputy minister’s directive, there is a mistake where it
notes that those who resist would be punished in accordance with Imperial
Ordinance No. 311, dated 12 June, 1936. To be precise, it is “Imperial
Ordinance No. 311. Concerning the punishment for acts prejudicial to the
Occupation objectives,” which was announced on 12 June, 1946. I found thisout as a result of my investigation. He miswrote “1946” as “1936.” That
document proclaims that, by Imperial decree, those acting contrary to theobjectives of the GHQ would be punished, and article 4 says that offenders“will be punished with sentences up to ten years at hard labor or fines up to¥75,000, or detention or a minor fine.”
The deputy minister’s directive was careful to provide blank forms plainly
showing illustrations to indicate how the “identification document” that the17confiscation officer had to carry and the “confiscated work” chart for details
on the confiscated books that was to be taken to the location where the books
were being confiscated were to be made up. (See the appended “Supplement
4.”)What is interesting is the point that while they did only this, it was all tohappen in secret; they were quaking with a concern bordering on neurosis as
the GHQ’s designs were not to be made known to the Japanese population.
Item 9 said, “The work on this matter shall not be disclosed to those who are
not connected with it.” Item 3 on the back of the confiscating officers’
identification card read, “You must not let those not involved with these
operations know about the execution of these operations.”
I’m sure it is understood that everything I’ve said means that all the
meetings that took place at Tokyo University, the Imperial Library, and theprime minister’s residence related to the “book-burning” were secret meetingsand no written records remain. If any of those involved let a few loose words
slip in memoirs, our eyes would get as big as saucers. It is a mysterious world
and one beyond our ability to try to reconstruct the whole affair by anything
but inference.
If any one of my readers finds a new bit of information from someone thatis more useful in clarifying this mystery, please let me know. My narrative isnothing more than a story based on the deductions I have been able to put
together given the state of the data as I presently understand it.
At any rate, what is strange is that the document directs that confiscations
were not to be carried out from private owners or libraries, that teachers at
schools were not to be apprised of the situation, and that outside parties were
not to be spoken to of it, but that is it. There is no specific punishment
connected with violations of this strict secrecy. They could not control
people’s tongues. Still, Japanese society has become immobilized, as if
numbed by some narcotic, and over a period of sixty years has locked away
her own past and totally forgotten that this “book burning” had even takenplace.
Could this be due to the mystery of human nature? Could it be due toJapan’s particular sentiments of defeat? Could it be the American occupation
force’s skill in laying psychological traps? Or, perhaps, could it be because it
was nothing more than a “book-burning” and not something like a groupmassacre? Was it because the Japanese personally tended heavily toward
excessive self-regulation that, in a reverse-propaganda, militaristic books werelabeled the devil’s books? (Though there was a military organization in Japan,
Japan itself was not militaristic. If one says that it was, one might as well say
the same of America at the time.) Did this create a taboo deep in the hearts of
the Japanese, and before they knew it they had lost the freedom to think atease and without concern about their own history?
The occupation forces had a sense of having blundered
There is one remaining interesting result. The occupation forces did notalways have a sense of achievement or satisfaction, and they were left with asense of failure that the “book burning” operation could not have been called aclear success.
18

It seems that early on there were those who got the feeling that things were
not going to go well. A memorandum to Gen. MacArthur dated 15 April, 1946,(Central Liaison Office document No. 173) says that the number of printed
copies of Japanese publications of the period from prewar through the end of
the war were, generally, few in number, and many of them that had been
scattered about had been reduced to ashes in the American bombing ofJapanese cities.
Early on in the occupation, there were things the Americans seized anddisposed of on their own. The book shops were dissatisfied about not being
recompensed for the items being seized and were uncooperative. As a generalrule, they were not able to touch works that were intentionally kept or hiddenin private houses. It is said that the cause of the ultimate feeling of failure isthat they were ordered not to let anyone not involved in the confiscation
operations know about them, so it would have been difficult to seek thecooperation of the Japanese populace at large.
Still, with the support from the Japanese government during the period of
operation (March of 1946 through July of 1948), based on the list narrowed
down to 7,769 works designated for seizure, they just managed to succeed inconfiscating a total of 38,330 items. We still have a chart that was made perdirections from both sides which puts together a precise record of the total
number of all the works confiscated during each reporting period. (Seeappended “Supplement 5.”)The chart is in sequential order, but the vice minister of education’s
directive, which was issued encouraging the action of the prefectural
governors and expanded the confiscation operations nationwide, was issued
just after the chart ends — that is, after July of 1948. Therefore, the actual
total number of books confiscated is not just over 38,000 items. It has to havebeen more, but we just have not found the document with those numbers.
When I was a student, I often found these kinds of books in second-handbook shops. I have to wonder if a considerable number of items may haveescaped, hidden from the investigations of the GHQ, but I just do not know.
The whereabouts of the large number of works sent to America
Officially, books that were privately held and those kept in libraries
remained in Japan just as they were, while those seized by the GHQ were
almost entirely pulped and given new life as books for Japanese school
children.
Unfortunately, I do not know at present whether the original books used in
making decisions for confiscation by the Research Section of the Press,
Pictorial & Broadcast Division of the Civil Censorship Detachment are
actually housed in the National Diet Library as expected, or whether they weredifferent books. If they are one and the same, the Research Section marched
into the then-Imperial Library to set about their work.
According to a different document, after having been stored in the CCD
library, the original books that were used were shipped to the University of
Maryland.
Here, I have to give a brief account of the general means by which thebooks, periodicals, newspapers, etc., seized in Japan during the occupation
19

were shipped to America. Generally it breaks down into two routes.
One route had works that had been submitted to the CCD for review, after
being collected in the CCD library, shipped to the University of Maryland by
Gordon W. Prange, a University of Maryland professor who worked for theGHQ. It is a huge collection, containing some 71,000 books and pamphlets,
14,000 magazines, and 18,000 newspapers, as well as maps, posters,
photographs, etc. The other route was to the Washington Document Center(WDC) where they were briefly stored before being sent to the Library ofCongress and the National Archives.
Many times I have said that the “censorship” of postwar publications andletters and “book burning” of prewar and wartime publications were two
separate matters that must be distinguished as such. The amount of material
sent to America from Japan was massive and the two mixed together
complicatedly so of course they can not be easily divided; but I suppose it
would be fair to say roughly that items in the censored category were sent toMaryland University and formed the Prange Collection, while the confiscatedbooks that were designated for “burning” escaped pulping in Japan and weretransferred to the Washington Document Center. Of course, it appears that
there are books in the Prange Collection that were designated for confiscation.
We will consider this later. The works transferred to the Washington
Document Center began by being sent to the Library of Congress just after thewar (that is, quickly, in 1946), and was a grouping of 27,000 works that were
mostly books and periodicals.
Consider it this way: it is a fact that works on Japanese history, and inparticular the Shōwa history that had the value of knowing about thebackground for the formation of her fighting spirit, were thoroughly shipped
off to America.
I have already said that the Prange Collection is primarily publications
from the time of the occupation, while the Washington Document Centercollection is primarily made up of works from before and during the war. In
the Prange Collection, however, Prange wrote that there were 4,500 prewar
books, apparently designated for confiscation, that had been turned over by the
Ministry of Education then at no charge. When I recently made an inquiry
with the University of Maryland about this, however, they were unable toconfirm the existence of the materials. It appears that the university has 4,000–
6,000 Japanese books that are now incomplete, and the majority of them arenaval library documents, confiscated documents, and censored prewar
documents from the Ministry of Home Affairs. There is no way to know how
to tell which, if any, of them were handed over by the Ministry of Education.
These materials are not actively open to the public, but they will show them topeople who have an interest.
Concerning works in the Prange collection other than items censoredduring the occupation, in other words prewar and wartime books, there is aninvestigative report by Eiko Sakaguchi. 10 In the Prange Collection there are
only thirty-seven books that predate 15 August, 1945, and they are allidentified as “confiscated books” with the date of 1947.
10

Eiko Sakaguchi is currently curator of the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of
Maryland. The study was published in The Australian National University, Newsletter No. 48(Dec. 2005)20

I do not know for certain whether those thirty-seven books were fromamong those 4,500 books.
The Prange Collection’s principle assembled content — documents used in
occupation-era censorship — was made known to the Japanese around 1970,
and in 1972 the Diet took up the issue of requesting the materials berepatriated. In view of their importance, the National Diet Library has started
microfilming them. The microfilming of the magazine and newspaper sections
should be finished by now. This means that it is now possible to read them inJapan.
As for the prewar and wartime “burned books,” on the other hand, their
exact whereabouts are unknown. As I have said, they do not fit in with thefield of the Prange Collection.
I have already said that the confiscated books in the Washington
Document Center are primarily those that were sent to the Library of Congress.
Of the 27,000 items said to be in this collection, 23,000 were works related to
the Imperial army and navy, and these were returned to the Japan Defense
Agency (now the Japanese Ministry of Defense) in 1974.
In addition, a section on documents censored for being unpatriotic by the
prewar Ministry of Home Affairs was returned and is now in the National Diet
Library, and materials related to the cabinet and the various ministries was
returned and is housed in the National Archives of Japan. “Publications
Targeted for Seizure During the Occupation and Stored in the United States
Library of Congress” (see “Supplement 6”), which takes a look at all of them,is an important and very useful page.
Please look at it carefully. It seems certain that the confiscated books weare looking for are on that chart as serial 5 number 1.
These on serial 5 make up a large number, and the work of cataloguingthem ended by ’96, but just the cataloguing from ’93 to ’96 had reached
60,000 works. It goes without saying that even before that the cataloguing
had been going on, and we don’t know the exact number of volumes. Also,
besides items targeted for confiscation, the United States Library ofCongress had been collecting Japanese books and magazines even before
the war, and together with those they are now listed in an online cataloguethat can be referenced. 11

After looking it up on the internet, I found that the majority of theconfiscated books are there. That is to say, we have ascertained that they are at
the Library of Congress. I must state in advance that this is not the result of
looking up each and every book; rather, it is from looking up a chosen sampleof them.
Other than these, as I have said, eighty to ninety percent are in the
National Diet Library in Japan.
From my research on the internet I realized that the collection of Japanesebooks in the Library of Congress is both large-scale and exhaustive. It is notthat the confiscated books are collected there; rather, the books of the sameauthors (those that avoided the “book burning”) are almost all there in
scrupulously kept collections of their complete works.
11

Wada Atsuhiko, “Ryûtsû · shozô jôhô o toraeru bungaku kenkyû e” (“Toward a study ofliterature that grasps information circulation & possession”). Nihon Bungaku, 57-1, 2008, p.
56-67.

21

The possibility of a connection with the Tokyo Trials
In a memorandum from the Civil Censorship Detachment’s Research
Section (the group who produced the list of works for confiscation) dated 4
April, 1946, the following is written (and given the date, we do not knowwhether the confiscation work had begun or not; it was in the early stages ofgetting under way):
Approximately 15,000 works held at the library of the Greater East
Asia Co-prosperity Sphere Research Institute are in the hands of theadvance team from the Washington Document Center. They are principallyreference works in English and Japanese, and those in Japanese havealready been shipped to the Washington Document Center. As for theWestern books, some have been taken as the personal property of American
officials, and some have been taken [by others] as presents when they returnto their own country. Many are lost.

This tells us of the victors’ rough handling of their plundered goods.
Officials who just arrived in Japan scraped together anything they could get
their hands on and sent things to America or took them as their own. This was
happening at the same time as the GHQ was sending its first memorandum to
the Japanese government detailing their orders for confiscation of books.
On 24 April of that same year, George Atcheson, Jr., head of the
Diplomatic Section of the GHQ, wrote the following memorandum:“Concerning the confiscation of propaganda publications, I believe theAmerican State Department wants to demonstrate its interest, so both I and the
GHQ Diplomatic Section want to receive five of each of the confiscatedpublications.”
On 26 April, the American army’s intelligence department sent a reply to
Atcheson consenting to his request.
If things were put into effect in this manner, it is a possibility that several
tens of thousands of important books were shipped off to Washington at thisearly stage.
We do not know what happened. The care with which the Research
Section finally put together their list after taking two years and three monthsof a secretive screening and inquiry process until the handing down of averdict of “guilty” on the books ought to have been assessed, but by taking
advantage of the confusion, before that, other wild outrages were overlooked.
There is now no way to search out by what route each one of the tens of
thousands of important Japanese books that passed through the Washington
Document Center to be collected in the Library of Congress made their way
across the sea.
For the record, the director of the Diplomatic Section, George Atcheson,
was not the same person as the secretary of state during the Korean War, Dean
Acheson. He had been sent by the State Department to Japan to act as apolitical advisor to MacArthur, and served as chairman of the Allied Council
for Japan. He was killed in a plane crash in 1947.
In Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan, Richard B.
Finn wrote the following:
22

[T]he political adviser in Tokyo, George Atcheson, wrote President
Truman on January 4, 1946, that “the emperor system must disappear if
Japan is ever to be wholly democratic.”...
George Atcheson suggested to the general [MacArthur] on November 6that the trials be expedited....
MacArthur asked the political adviser on November 7 to list persons hethought should be arrested and to provide evidence. Largely on the basis of
information from Washington, Atcheson submitted four lists in November
and December, compiled by Robert A. Fearey and John Emmerson of his
staff with the help of Canadian diplomat Herbert Norman. 12

Atcheson was serving as chairman of the Allied Council for Japan at thetime he was discussing the issue of book confiscations with related countries.
The Soviet Union and China made relentless attacks and demands that theJapanese political make-up be utterly destroyed, but he just ignored them. On
this matter, however, he was not about to listen to the Japanese side.
Atcheson’s objectives in punishing Japan are truly clear as shown in theabove fact that Herbert Norman contributed to the selection of names to betried at the Tokyo Trials, and that Atcheson himself had written to Truman
advocating the extinction of the “emperor system.” At the heart of the GHQ,he was of course concerned with the “book burning” and he participated in it
without fail.
Herbert Norman went to Japan immediately after the war, becoming amember of GHQ while a Canadian citizen. He developed deep associations
with the leadership of the Japanese Communist Party who were now free tooperate, and based on their conversations wrote the documents charging theClass-A war criminals. I am at present completely in the dark as to how or
where Norman was involved with the “book burning” or whether in fact heactually was — but if he was, it has deep implications. This is because as theprosecutors indicated at the Tokyo Trials with “Charge One (conspiracy tocommit crimes against peace),” that conspiracy “began on 1 January, 1928.”
That is the exact same day that was designated for the start of the bookburning period.
Everything about the “book burning” is shrouded in mystery. I havealready mentioned how we have to produce our inferences by tying small facts
together. Those victims made to cooperate and those who willingly
collaborated were aware that they were doing things they should have beenashamed of; but putting on an innocent face, they continued their offences.
This is because book burning is an act of selling one’s soul.
Japan lost the war, but there was absolutely no reason for “book burning.”
There is no reason for the living foundation of any country — its politics,
thought, history, culture, ethics, military, diplomacy, and, lastly, religion — tobe judged by another people. It was a mistake for Japan to deny that theirprewar and wartime stance was assertive when others pointed it out. It was ablunder. Because their books were burned and they lost them, postwar they
don’t even realize the fact that they are just living but they are not themselves.
The dispirited appearance of recent Japan and recent Japanese has its roots
12

Richard B. Finn, Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992) pp. 73, 78.

23

in this.
I think that, to take back their selves, they have to start by taking back thebooks that disappeared from them. That is why I have taken up this task.
A sampling of the confiscated books
Exactly what types of books were those that were targeted for
confiscation? Finally, I would like to introduce a few random authors andtitles, broken down here into several different groupings.
• Hasegawa Ryō, Nichibei kaisen no shinsō (“The facts about the outbreakof war between Japan and America”), Dai-Nippon Shuppan• Kuruse Saburō, Nichibei kōshō no keii (“Chronology of the JapaneseAmerican negotiations”), Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbunsha 13• Nakama Teruhisa, Nichibei tatakau beki ka (“Must Japan and America
fight?”), Shinkōsha• Kawamura Mikio, Nichibei fu sen ron (“Arguments against war between
Japan and America”), Kaigun Kenkyūsha• Suetsugu Nobumasa and Nakano Seigō, Nichibei kiki to sono mitōshi(“The Japanese-American crisis and seeing through it”), Shin Keizai
Jōhōsha• Yasuoka Masahiro, Tōyō seiji tetsugaku (“Eastern political philosophy”),
Genkōsha• Miyazaki Ichisada, Tōyō ni okeru sobokushugi no minzoku tobunmeishugi no shakai (“Simplistic peoples and civilized societies inthe East”), Fuzambō• Ishibashi Tanzan, Chōki kensetu no igi to waga keizai no taikyūryoku(“The significance of long-term construction and the stamina of oureconomy”), Tōyō Keizai• Sugiyama Heisuke, Shina to Shinajin to Nihon (“China, the Chinese, andJapan”), Kaizōsha• Yoshino Sakuzō, Jiji mondai kōza (7) Tai-Shi mondai (“Course on
current topics (7) The China question”), Nippon Hyōronsha• Wang Jingwei (trans. Kurone Shōsaku), Nihon to tazusaete (“Brought
along with Japan”), Asahi Shinbunsha• Watsuji Tetsurō, Nihon no shindō, Amerika no kokuminsei (“Japan’s wayof loyalty, America’s national characteristics”), Chikuma Shobō• Nakagawa Yoichi, Nihon no risō (“The Japanese dream”), Hakusuisha• Itō Sei, Sensō no bungaku (“The literature of war”), Zenkoku Shobō• Mushakōji Saneatsu, Daitōa sensō shikan (“Personal impressions of theGreat East Asian War”), Kawade Shobō• Shinobu Junpei, Fusen jōyaku ron (“Discussions on an anti-war treaty”),
Kokusai Renmei Kyōkai• Kiyosawa Kiyoshi, Dai-niji Ōshū taisen no kenkyū (“A study of theSecond World War in Europe”), Tōyō Keizai• Takahashi Kamekichi, Senji keizai kōwa (“A discourse on wartime
13

Now known as the Mainichi Shinbunsha.

24economics”), Konnichi no Mondai Sha• Kanda Kōichi, Shisōsen to senden (“Thought warfare and propaganda”),
Kashiwa Shobō• Sakurai Tadashi, Daitōa Kaikyō hatten shi (“A history of the growth ofIslam in Greater East Asia”), Sanseidō• Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai (=NHK Shuppan), Shussei heishi o okuru
uta (“Songs for sending soldiers off to the front”)• NHK Shuppan, Kigen ni-sen roppyaku nen shōka (“An anthem marking
the 2,600th year of Japan’s founding [1940]”)• NHK Shuppan, Moyuru ōzora (“The blazing heavens”)• NHK Shuppan, Umi o wataru arawashi (“The air ace going overseas”)• NHK Shuppan, Aa Kitashirakawa-no-miya denka (“Ah, your highness
Kita-shirakawa!”)• Yomiuri Shinbunsha, Shina jihen jikki (2)–(15) (“A true record of the
China Incident” (2)–(15)”), Hibonsha• Miyai Kōtarō, Shina jihen jūgun kishūroku (1) (2) (3) (“Collected records
from accompanying the army during the China Incident (1), (2), (3)”),Kyō-a Kyōkai• Tamai Seigorō, Shina jihen seisen shashin shi (“A photographic historyof the China Incident crusade”), Chūyūsha• Rikugun Gahō Sha, Shina jihen senseki no shiori (“A guidebook to oldbattlefields of the China Incident (all 3 vols.)”), Rikugun Juppei Bu• Ministry of the Navy, Kagayaku Chūsei: Shina jihen hōkoku bidan (1)(5) (6) (8) (“Shining loyalty: moving tales of patriotism in the China
Incident (1) (5) (6) (8)”) Kaigun Kyōkai• Araki Sadao, Teikoku no gunjin seishin (“The spirit of the imperial
soldier”), Chōfūsha• Mayama Seika, Nōgi shōgun (“General Nōgi”), Dai-Nippon Yūbenkai
Kōdansha• Matsunami Jirō, Hagakure bushidō (“Hagakure-style bushidō”), Ichiro
Shoen• Sano Yasushi, Attsu-to gunshin butai tōkon ki (“A record of the fighting
spirit of the heroic forces on Attu Island”), Reimei Chōsha• Yamanaka Minetarō, Nomonhan sen hishi (“A secret history of the battleof Khalkhin Gol”), Seibundō Shinkōsha• Tsurumi Yūsuke, Bōchō no Nihon (“The expanding Japan”), Dai-Nippon
Yūbenkai Kōdansha• Rash Behari Bose and Ishii Tetsuo, Indo shinryaku hishi (“The tragic
history of the invasion of India”), Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbunsha• Nihon-Thai Kyōkai, Tai-koku tsūshi (“An overview of the history ofThailand”), Kyō-a Nippon Sha• Matsuda Nobuo, Nyūjirando no sangyō shigen (“Industrial resources of
New Zealand”), Shunchōsha• Sakakibara Jun, Biruma no asa (“Morning in Burma”), Konnichi no
Mondai Sha

25• Yamada Yoshio, Kokutai no hongi (“Underlying principles of thenational polity”), Hōbunkan• Ministry of Education, Kokutai no hongi (“Underlying principles of thenational polity”), Cabinet Printing Office• Satomi Kishio, Kokutaihō no kenkyū (“A study of the laws of thenational polity”), Kinshōsha• Sugiura Shigetake and Shiratori Kuraichi, Kokutai shingi (“The true
meaning of the national polity”), Sekai Bunko Kankōkai• Tokutomi Iichirō (Sohō), Kōdō Nippon no sekaika (“The Imperial Way:
the globalization of Japan”), Min’yūsha• Kageyama Masaharu, Kōdō Man-Shi kensetsu shian (“A private plan toestablish the Imperial Way in Manchuria and China”), Dai-Nippon
Seisantō• Uchida Ryōhei, Shina kan: kokunan taru (“Regarding China: the coming
national crisis”), Wakabayashi Han• Yanagita Kunio, Shintō to minzokugaku (“Shintō and ethnology”),
Meiseidō Shoten• Uehara Kunzō, Hyōjun Uehara Marai-go (1) (2) (3) (“Standard Uehara
Malaysian (1) (2) (3)”), Seinansha• Sawa Hisaji, Gobi sabaku tankengyō (“The Gobi Desert expedition.”),Meguro Shoten• Ishigami Sei, Arasuka, Aryūshan (“Alaska, the Aleutians”), Kikō
Seinensha• Hibino Shirō, Ūson Kuriiku (“Wusong Creek”), Chūō Kōronsha• Ō no Tadatatsu, Gagaku (“Gagaku — traditional court music”), Rokkō
Shōkai• Kikuchi Kan (Hiroshi), Ni-sen roppyaku nen shisshō (“Historicalextracts of 2,600 years”), Dōmei Tsūshinsha• Minoda Muneki, Nippon seishin to kagaku seishin (“Japanese spirit andscientific spirit”). Genri Nippon Sha• Kamei Katsuichirō, Nihonjin no shi (“The death of the Japanese”),
Shinkōsha
• Ōkawa Shūmei, Nippon seishin kenkyū (“Studies of the Japanese spirit”),
Meiji Shobō• Inoue Tetsujirō, Shūsei zōho: Nippon seishin no honshitsu (“The essenceof the Japanese spirit — Revised and expanded edition”), Kōbundō
Shoten• Josef März, Kaiyō chiseijigaku: rekkyō to seikaiken (“Ocean geopolitics:
the great powers and control of the seas”), Kagakushugi Kōgyōsha• Rudolf von Weldt, Kakute Doitsu ha kaisen shita (“Thus Germany
started the war”), Kaizōsha• Walter Pal???, Shigen sensō (“A war of resources”), Seibundō
Shinkōsha
• Oswald Spengler, Sekai wa doko e iku (“Where is the world going?”),Nihon Gaiji Kyōkai• P. Argus???, Sensha ni miru Doku-So sensen (“Seeing the German26

コメント [茂木1]: Let’s go withthis now.

コメント [茂木2]: same

Soviet front lines from their tanks”), Okakura Shobō• Rudolf Kjellen, Ryōdo, minzoku, kokka: chiseigaku no genten(“Dominions, nations, and states: the original text on geopolitics” =Der Staat als Lebensform), Sanseidō• Wolf Dewelt???, Eikoku kaigun ron (“Discourse on the British navy”),
Asahi Shinbunsha• Takahashi Yū, Ajia shinryaku shi (“A history of aggression in Asia”),
Kasumigaseki Shobō• Miya Keiji, Amerika no tai-Nichi bōryaku shi (“A history of American
scheming against Japan”), Dai Tōa Sha• Saitō Eizaburō, Eikoku no sekai shinryaku shi (“A history of Britain’s
world aggression”), Daitō Shuppansha• Arita Hachirō, Bei-Ei no Tōa kakuran (“British and American
disturbances in East Asia”), Mainichi Shinbunsha• Horinouchi Kensuke, Bei-Ei no sekai shinryaku (“British and American
world aggression”), Mainichi Shinbunsha
A deeply interesting thing turns up as a result of investigating the list of
the GHQ ranking by author of the confiscated books, so please take note ofSupplement No. 7.
The top three companies targeted by the GHQ for the most elimination of
their published products are the Asahi Shinbunsha with 140 items, the DaiNippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha with 83 items, and the Mainichi Shinbunsha with
81 items.
For a long time after the war, these companies embraced a left-wing, antiAmerican mood, and these are representative historical masochists of the mass
media who have continued to carp on about Japanese aggression and Japanese
disturbances in Asia. Is this not strange? Is it not interesting? I would like toknow what you think about this.
Iwanami Shoten is a publishing company that has been occupied by theJapanese Communist Party, so their left turn was purely a postwar
development. The Asahi, the Mainichi, and Kōdansha are not like Iwanami.
As I see it, their having been subjected to “book-burning” by the GHQ isclosely connected to this at a level deep in their psyches. When the vanquishedhas the depths of their spirit shattered, they cozy up with the victors, flattering
them, even going so far as to make the victor’s gods their gods.

27

コメント [茂木3]: same

Chapter Two:
Disobedience at the Heart of Japan’s Serenity
as the Occupation Began“The post-war war” of words and schemes
One peculiarity of the American occupation policy was their not issuingorders to do this, but instead forbidding that. I recall Miura Shumon telling me
this in a conversation we had long ago. For example, they did not order
everyone to hang the Stars and Stripes at their houses. Instead, anyone who
abused or slandered MacArthur or the occupation forces even the slightest bit
was punished by being sent down to Okinawa as forced laborers. The
occupation forces did not act to cause widespread animosity among theJapanese; rather, to create a fear of disobedience. They were successful at thisbecause that fear lurked deep within, transmitted wordlessly from one person
to the next, and Japanese themselves went forward and promoted therestrictions on their own. Prohibitions spread automatically.
The occupation did not pointlessly try to convert the Japanese population
to Christianity all at once. Destroying faith ultimately pins down a country’s
national power, however, and they knew that that was the best scheme fordestroying a country. This is why they allowed the imperial system remain,
though they confiscated the larger part of the imperial family’s properties, andancient members of the imperial family — who should have been thebulwarks of the house — were divested of their imperial status. They had theemperor issue his “Declaration of Humanity,” and had a Quaker widow
assigned as tutor for the crown prince. They went so far as to remove all thebarriers and made the emperor as any other Japanese person. This dressed up
the imperial house as democratized. They set the time bomb that
foreshadowed the eventual powerlessness of the imperial system somedecades later.
I can only presume they believed they were working to civilize theJapanese — a meddlesome, interfering missionary zeal of teaching andmaking Japan an advanced culture.
As I think about it, the censorship and book prohibitions by the GHQ was
the most complete form of not issuing any orders to do this but instead
forbidding that, and it has to be considered the ultimate destruction of thought.
In particular, looking back several decades later at the book prohibitions, it
was one of those time bombs that, as time passed, turned out to have beenquite effective. Though we cannot make an accurate count, some 500 bookswith the words “imperial household,” “national polity,” “emperor,” “imperialway,” “Shintō,” or “Japanese spirit” in their titles were thoroughly abandoned;
it seems as if there was some plan that saw through the coming destruction offaith by the occupation. I believe that traditional Anglo-Saxon methods of28

governorship were foisted on other occupied country besides Japan, where
they took root. We can only think that the reason Japan did not take as easily
to Christianity as did the Philippines or Korea was the depth of her singular
history, cultivated by 2,000 years of Buddhism and Shintō.
In particular, the book prohibitions that erased the history of thoseseventeen years of the formative period of Japan’s fighting spirit in front ofher people and forced them to wear blinders was an embarrassing act that diddamage to depths of the Japanese soul. That was not all, however. There wasalso the presupposition that the occupying forces would inculcate on Japan a
new history — a viewpoint of American creation. That is, a foolish fairy talein which, from the Manchurian Incident on, Japan became a devilish country,
an aggressor nation, and America, who actually did not want war and tried andtried to prevent it, was finally forced to stand up and smite the devilish country.
It was an absolutely necessary process that this fairy tale be forced into theheads of the Japanese.
One hundred million people were completely ruled by the myth that
America would give Japan democracy and a rebirth before anyone knew it.
In other words, it would be fair to say that a postwar war — a war ofwords and schemes — continued from 1945. The Civil Censorship
Detachment (CCD) of the GHQ was on the front line of that engagement, andone might say that the six-member Research Section (RS) was the vanguard in
the hand-to-hand fighting, so to speak. It is interesting to note that early on in1946 the GHQ was uneasy, and that there was a sense that implementation ofa banning of books would be a failure may be because there was a sense that
there was a secret resistance among the Japanese, an undergroundinsubordination against the occupation forces. Having said that, the Japanese
as a whole were little by little getting used to obediently wearing their blinders,and before anyone knew it, by around 1948 or 1949 they were all on their way
to being pro-American. Whether it was a victory by the GHQ’s strategies orthe degree of Japan’s submission, this area is related to the secrets hidden inpeople’s hearts so even though we try to clarify it, it is inexplicable and mostdifficult to understand part of the mystery of postwar history.
I remember from my youth that there was a feeling of wide-spreaddisobedience for the average Japanese citizen. It is sad to say, but I have towonder if it was not the leadership class who were the most fragile, with noresistance to the American occupation forces. In particular, the weakness of
the intellectual leaders — the intelligentsia, the academics, and the literati —was embarrassing. This means that we need to reexamine and evaluate Japan’s
cooperation with America, such as the purge of public officials like Makino
Eiichi of Tokyo University’s faculty of letters, who had been recognized
before the war as a first-rate legal scholar. There is not sufficient evidence todetermine what Kaneko Takezō and Odaka Kunio did individually, but in theTokyo University faculty of letters in 1946–47, it was “guilt by association”
and everyone was guilty.
If we think about it, were they not betraying their own people? They
committed crimes like those committed by the collaborators in the Vichy
government in Nazi-occupied France and who were judged by the French after
the war, and they should therefore meet the same fates.
For some reason, to this day Japan has gone on without an awareness ofthese issues occurring. Might this be because Japan was the defeated country?
29

To be sure, one can not say that France was exactly a victorious country. Be
that as it may, on the point of obliterating a country’s history, annihilating its
culture, and destroying the patriotism of its citizens, excepting certain barbaric
acts there is really no difference between the things done by the occupation
forces of Nazi Germany and America.
Confiscations were carried out in accordance with a certain directive of thevice-minister of the Ministry of Education based on advice from intelligentsia
of different prefectures, designated by their governors, and intellectuals otherthan local teachers connected with education. Because of this, there surely
must be no shortage of lists from around 1948 of “officials responsible forseizure of propaganda texts” buried deep in the archives in each prefectural
governor’s office. Without a doubt these people, putting on innocent faces,
later became celebrated individuals in their locales and achieved some status.
Even though considerable time has passed, their names must now be madepublic to ascertain who these officials responsible for seizure of propaganda
texts were. There is no statute of limitations on issues of this sort. Without aprecise remorseful conclusion, Japanese will not be able to stand up as
independent people no matter how much time passes.
The dreadful system where private messages were censored
I hope that questioning those connected with the event who are still alive
will take place without fail it to find out who it was who executed theprohibitions, and that other investigators will follow me. The situation with“censorship,” however, has been studied, and it is more or less known about.
Some may be familiar with Etō Jun’s book, Tozasareta gengo kūkan (“Thelocked language-room”). It bears the subtitle “Occupation army censorshipand postwar Japan.”This was a book that investigated the matter of GHQ censorship at thelibrary of the University of Maryland, and informed the Japanese of the resultof that research. This work is an extraordinarily important investigation into
the Prange Collection 14 and its background, and it would be fair to say that it
has had a considerable impact. Of course, the book does not have as its theme
the prohibition of books. I can not be certain, but as far as I can tell, Etō did
not know much about the existence of the proscribed books. He studied theactivities of the CCD, but he made no references to its subsection, the RS.
Etō wrote an article titled “Amerika wa Nihon de no ken’etsu o ikani junbi
shite ita ka?” (“How did America prepare for censorship in Japan?”) that was
published in the November, 1982, edition of Shokun! magazine. Tozasareta
gengo kūkan was published in 1989. The existence of the Prange Collection
came to be known in Japan about the middle of 1965, and the Diet has brought
up demands for the return of the confiscated materials any number of times
since 1972. The National Diet Library came to know of the importance of
those materials from that time. All the GHQ paperwork was gathered andshipped to America in 1949, but in 1992, work began to put the Prange
14
Prof. Gordon William Prange had been MacArthur’s chief historian, and when censorship
was lifted in 1949, he shipped the records of the CCD to the University of Maryland, where
they remain today.

30Collection on microfilm. First microfilmed were the magazines; and then the
microfilmed newspapers, made by the Maryland University, were purchased.
Now they seem to be going for the children’s books. Etō’s research waslaboriously done under this flowing chain of microfilm work.
Given this, there is a certain amount of hope on the theme of “censorship,”and as the schemes of the occupation forces also have come to light, we next
turn our eyes to the important “confiscated propaganda texts” transferred fromthe Washington Document Center (WDC) to the Library of Congress where
they are now housed. Does one not start to feel that it is time to make a request
for a factual investigation of them and that they be returned to Japan? One of
the goals of this book is to raise new questions for the reader to consider, but
before that, we must turn our attention once again to political andpsychological themes to inquire why America was able to cajole Japan soeasily.
For example, right after the war, on Sept. 18, 1945, an interview with
Hatoyama Ichirō criticizing the cruelty of the atomic bomb massacre wasincluded in the Asahi newspaper, but the publication of the newspaper wasprevented. 15 When Ishibashi Tanzan (at the time, president of the Tōyō Keizai
Shinpō — the Oriental Economist) criticized the acts of violence by soldiersof the occupation army in the Tōyō Keizai Shinpō, every single edition wasseized. Etō recounts these events in his book.
I do not know whether the reader knows this, but for a long time after thewar, one would not have been able to read an article or see any picturesconcerning the atomic bomb massacre. One was able to do so for the first time
only after the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, in Asahi Graph.
Until that time, the Japanese people had not been permitted to see photographsof the damage caused by the atomic bomb.
Not all, but many, of the letters written by fathers and uncles of mygeneration, or people a bit older than I, were arbitrarily selected for
examination and were censored. Approximately one letter out of every
hundred was opened and read. There are many people who can remember
receiving the opened letters; that is, letters that bear the censors’ stamp. These
opened letters even included personal correspondence.
One may say that this censorship, and this book’s subject of prohibitedbooks, are separate incidents, but though the method of execution was
different, the organization and motive on the part of the Americans were thesame. Therefore, the political and psychological circumstances for both ofthem of course shared common features.
The people who participated in the censorship of magazine and newspaper
articles and letters were all Japanese. All were intelligent: they could speak
English, and all were expert at translating Japanese text into English. There
were between 8,000 and 10,000 of these Japanese cooperating with theoccupation forces.
As to how this cooperation transpired, right after the war, there were nojobs and no food for the demobilized intelligentsia. Since they had no moneyand nothing to eat, they worried about starving. The one thing they did have,
however, was an ability with English. Such people responded to the GHQ’s
15

Immediately after this, Hatoyama organized the Liberal Party (Jiyûtô) and became itspresident.

31

recruitment, running to sell out their country and hoping to hide the fact.
Among these 8,000 to 10,000 Japanese were people who became the heads ofreform governing bodies, the presidents of major corporations, celebrated
journalists, or university professors. None of them, however, have ever spoken
a single word about their erstwhile involvement in the job of censoring
documents.
There was, however, one exceptional, brave individual who offered apersonal confession. The above information is in the book GHQ ken’etsu kan(“A GHQ censor”), by Kai Yuzuru. He had been born in 1910. He had
graduated from Tokyo University with a degree in English and then worked asan education official in a Japanese government–established education facility
in Mongolia, and then had been demobilized. Without a job, there was no way
he could make a living, so he applied to take the censor’s test and passed it.
His book details the conditions that led him to become a censor, and the
difficult and painful time he spent working a job that must have humiliatedhim. Kai was fortunate in being able to find another job, so he only worked asa censor for two months.
The object was reading Japanese people’s letters, translating them into
English, and then showing them to the Americans of the occupying army. I
imagine people would think, “why not write fake English translations toprotect Japanese friends?”, but there was a frightful system in place. There
were censors placed above other censors. If there were a hundred letters, it
was the American army who extracted a hundred letters. If, for example, theJapanese censor who handed them over found five letters that he thought were
problems, he would translate them and present the translations. Should theAmerican army censor above the Japanese censor wonder whether there might
be more suspicious letters among the remaining ninety-five, once again theywould extract a sampling. They created a harsh system wherein Japanese had
to investigate other Japanese and one censor would inspect another.
There were criteria for something to be censored. I was shocked when I
learned of them, but they were very thorough:(1) “Items with the slogan ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ or
praise for the conduct of the Japanese military.” (2) “Items with criticism ofthese.” I can understand why the first would be no good, but the second was
also problematic for some reason. (3) “Items with praise of the supremecommander, Gen. Mac-Arthur.” (4) “Items insulting the same.” Both of thesewere forbidden, but which one really should be? (5) “Items critical of theoccupation army.” (6) “Items receptive of the same.” Which of these twoshould be a problem? (7) “Items making suggestions about direct actions of
the occupation army.” (8) “Items commending the speech or actions ofcommissioned officers [of the occupation].” I can understand that one should
not write about the occupation army doing this or that, but the second is also
forbidden. These rules were harsh! (9) “Items offering the pros and cons of the
New Constitution presently under development.” Both of those aspects are
forbidden: one can not praise it, nor can one complain about it. In other words,
any letter referencing the New Constitution could not do either of those things.
Comparing such criteria, if there are a hundred letters, a hundred were
censored. If five of those letters were suspicious and extracted, the remaining
ninety-five were given to someone else to do. If someone had tried to trick the32system and hide something, and it was discovered, he would have lost his job.
Immediately. The next day, there would be nothing to eat.
It was a nasty way to do things.
The Japanese society’s eerie silence
We must think about what kind of an age it was where such things became
possible, and we must make a re-examination of the profound Japanese
psychology.
We certainly seem to be caught in a really outrageous trap, do we not?
In Etō’s book, Tozasareta gengo kūkan, he wrote of a significant point.
When the occupation army first came into Japan, what surprised them was that
all the people in Japan were entirely too calm. They thought they were being
set up in some sort of trap. It was that quiet. Other occupied countries had notbeen like that. The populace would rampage while the army would revolt.
That is why the occupation came into Japan wondering, “How many bloody
disasters will we have to endure to govern that fanatical Japan, that Japan with
their kamikaze planes?” Japan, however, was completely silent. Deathly quiet.
It was enough to make people feel uneasy.
What was it with the Japanese society’s eerie silence?
Etō quoted a letter from a Japanese person exposed by the censors then:It’s sudden, so I’m surprised. No matter how horrible the actual
condition with the government became, no one wanted anyone to die in vain
above and beyond their vows to accomplish the crusade. The enemy goes on
about their humanitarianism and their internationalism, but how will they
really behave toward the Japanese? I want you to think about all thosevictims of the war, who are beyond counting. It’s impossible not to feelhatred.

Japanese of the time only naturally would have thought that way. These
were their true sentiments.
Here is another a passage from a confiscated letter:
Yesterday I went to Isezaki-chō and saw them for the first time. They
were proudly driving around in their automobiles and walking about. A
sentry by the bridge plopped his butt on the handrail, dangling his gun on
his shoulder, chewing gum.
When I think of how we were beaten by such a slovenly army, I’m somortified I just can’t stand it.

The occupation army said such letters from Japanese were “outrageous”
and would not pass them on to the addressees. As the Americans saw it, thisshowed the wicked hearts of the Japanese of the time, the true feelings ofJapanese who had not given much reconsideration to things. Immediately after
the occupation began, the American army censored these letters and sealed
them up as they were unsympathetic and afraid that the Japanese, reading suchthings, would, as fellow Japanese, come to feel the same way as each other.
That the Japanese society was eerily quiet was likely a result of this. Or,
perhaps, there was a deeper psychological background for it.

33

This is what Etō writes of the real feelings of Japanese of the time. It is an
important point, so I will quote him:
The Japanese then did not think at all that the misery of the war and thedefeat had been brought about by their own “wickedness.”Those “victims of the war, who are beyond counting” were not the
product of Japanese wickedness; rather, they were the result of slaughterand destruction wrought by the enemy (that is, the American army). The one
for whom one feels that “hatred” has to be, rather than the Japanese
government or the Japanese army, the one who was their killer and theirdestroyer. Japanese then most typically thought this way. From thisviewpoint when looking at the signs of the times, even though Japanese
were school children, they had to feel the eyes of “Mr. Soldier-who-died-inbattle” on their backs. In other words, both the living and the dead shared
the same sights here.

I, too, clearly remember those times. I was a fourth grader at the time, andI distinctly recall when the American soldiers came to our school for the firsttime. I also remember Japanese being surprisingly calm. I think the American
occupation army was afraid of the calm Japanese.
It is true that “the one for whom one feels that ‘hatred’ has to be, rather
than the Japanese government or the Japanese army, the one who was theirkiller and their destroyer. Japanese then most typically thought this way.” Theoccupation forces were susceptible to feeling this, and they used every means
necessary to forbid Japanese from exchanging their mutual feelings even alittle bit, or talking together.
Several reasons Japan became instantly docile after the war
The censoring of journalism and correspondence began in September,
1945.
I do not know whether it was because it was effective, but when the bookprohibitions were taking place all over Japan, everyone seemed to becompletely won over by American culture. As I have already said, the orderfor the prohibitions was in 1946, and immediately thereafter it began and thenumber of targeted books gradually increased. The directive was issued by thevice minister of the Ministry of Education, and when it was actually
happening all over Japan was July, 1947. Japan at this time switched to being
very pro-American.
I was a seventh grader in 1948, and I clearly remember the changing tides.
Experts on America suddenly threw their weight around, and going off tostudy in America became a cherished goal. Chewing gum, hot dogs, and CocaCola became immensely popular. People flocked to see the film Tarzan. They
crowded in to see films like Hitchcock’s Suspicion, and westerns like John
Ford’s My Darling Clementine, which re-invigorated a certain zest for life. In
1948, the San Francisco Seals, a triple-A baseball team, went to Japan, andmany actresses showed up at Haneda Airport with bouquets for them.
In a manner of speaking, Japan became captivated by America. Hating
America that much and then going to war — what had it all been for? The
Japanese had completely reversed course. I do not know what was in their34

hearts, but there can be no mistake that on the surface at least they had truly
changed.
What was this complete change all about? I view it as a great mystery, andat the same time the Japanese also view it as such even today, but in that
atmosphere the effect of the prohibition of books gradually took hold. I do notknow when the prohibition of books ended. I do not know whether it went onright up to the day the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed. Even so, as I
mentioned in the first chapter about such a situation where books were on saleat used book stores, that no one would buy them. New books put out by thenormal distribution system were obliterating the older ones, and there was asense of war-weariness as well. Upon being told that certain volumes could
not be read publicly, people pounced on new books instead of taking any
notice of old ones. The war was over. Gradually it became normal that no one
was reading the old books. We probably can not exclude consideration ofJapanese fickleness either, but the first salvo was “censorship,” and the second
salvo was “prohibition of books,” and it would be fair to say that their effect
was that the world changed.
The film Aoi sanmyaku (“Blue Mountain Range”) premiered, and a songwith lyrics saying “good-bye to old-fashioned garb” was in vogue. Pre-war
books had become like that “old-fashioned garb.” Times changed in such an
atmosphere.
The war ended and the Japanese became completely tranquil. They
became totally docile towards America. What might have been the source of
this loss of feelings of hostility? Even today this is a mystery. Still, I would
like to dig a little deeper on this point, and try to consider it in a more
integrated fashion.
The next point is something I wrote about in my book Kokumin no rekishi(“The people’s history”), in chapter 28, titled “What defeated Japan was the‘post-war war’.” The first thing that I have to bring up is something simple. It
is the fact that for Japan to survive economically after the war, Japan had to bepart of the American market. There was a revolution taking place in China,
and a war was brewing in Korea. Such were the times, and the only country
Japan could rely on was America. This is an extremely easily understoodreason.
The second reason is that from the beginning the Japanese really did nothate America or the Americans. For example, Poles hated Russians andGermans to the core, but Japanese did not have such a hatred toward
Americans. It was out of pride that Japan fought America. I have to wonder,
then, if the war with America was not in fact an abstract war. In the first place,
before the war, most Japanese had never even seen an American, so there wasno concrete animosity. That is, the Japanese were fighting an enemy they had
never seen, and was not the enemy really Western rationalism? I imagine there
was also a trace of fighting their own history there.
The third point is, I think, the most important. Even though there was no
actual fighting on the home soil, Japan was afflicted by aerial bombardment
and the atomic bombings. Though people nurse a desire for retribution
regarding petty slights, they can not strike back against major ones. Such is thementality. The people in the colonies in all the Asian countries were
thoroughly tormented by means of petty slights on the part of the advanced
nations of Europe and America, but Japan was not one of the countries who
35

had been on the receiving end of those slights. That is why Japan was able tofight for so long, but finally, at the end of a desperate resistance, they werestruck down by the dropping of the atomic bombs. Every possible means ofgoing on was exhausted. Japan had been militarily knocked off her feet. Thatis the third major reason.
The fourth reason, I think, is that European and American cultures wereoriginally the model for Japan. To fight with and be defeated by such a model
would be extremely difficult to bear. Being defeated by the thing one desires
to be before one is sufficiently like that thing oneself was a tremendous blow
to the Japanese psyche. I think it is this problem, in particular, that is thereason for a complicated mentality where Japanese fall into “selfpunishment.”
There are other reasons beyond these that the post-war Japanese became
docile.
Why did the Japanese become so docile? Why is it that the Japanese had
no revengefulness? What was the candidness of the Japanese ego? What was
the weakness? The Japanese have thought about and worried about manythings to this point. Only seventy-some years after the Meiji Restoration Japan
was probably still unskilled at international diplomacy. It is also possible there
was a national sense that was peculiar to being an island nation. I suspect there
was also an accumulated feeling of war-weariness, and a backlash against the
military’s swaggering ways. Not only that, but there was also anger by thepeople against the poor way of taking responsibility for governing where not
one high official in the government took responsibility after losing the war.
All of these various things are important, and putting it all together it is anunmistakable fact that we suddenly arrive here.
At the same time, the American army who came to occupy Japan and theBritish army vigorously argued, in effect, that “the enemy of the Japanesepeople was not the Americans, nor the British, nor the Russians; but rather, it
was those who have led Japan up to this point” — or “the enemy was Japan’s
own feudal history.” With that, the tense thread that had been preserved untilthat time was summarily snipped. The view of Japanese historical guilt hit likean avalanche.
I think that there are sufficient reasons in all that I have presented here, but
to be honest, I would like to offer one completely different reason.
The fighting was over but the war went on
The Japanese became docile, or they were struck down by a sense of
defeat. The reason for this may be contrary to popular psychology. Might it bepossible that, though defeated in outward appearance, deep in their hearts theJapanese continued to harbor a sense of “disobedience”? This “disobedience”
was, in other words, the Japanese thinking, “we haven’t lost yet!” On thesurface they may have seemed defeated, but my sense is that the outcome wasthey were not obedient.
The truth is that this feeling was held by some Japanese. I have alreadydescribed that point in this book.
That fanaticism and that ambition that burned for that furious war
suddenly became as quiet as a graveyard and as cold as ice. I have already said36

how, on seeing this, the occupation army was surprised, stunned, and thensuspicious. Was this silence an indication of the Japanese resolution to
eventually rise in retribution and endure incredible hardships to extract their
vengeance? Was this domestic serenity because the Japanese had not
sufficiently accepted their defeat? Such were the discomfiting thoughts going
through their minds.
With this, they turned a harsh observant eye toward the inner hearts of theJapanese. Even though Japanese were outwardly falsifying their feelings, intheir hearts they were concealing a sense of disobedience. Were theoccupation forces not seeing through the mentality of disobedience toward
historical judgment that was lurking under the surface of the Japanese
tranquility? The various countries of Europe and America, surreptitiously
observing this, said, “we will not allow this!”
The fighting was over but the war went on. That is what I am saying here.
In an article that appeared outside Japan in September, 1945, the AlliedPowers raised their voices and pointed out that, “the Japanese areinsufficiently sincerely cognizant of the fact of their defeat.” For example, it
seems that a certain Japanese general, when told he would not be permitted towear his sword at the surrender negotiations, openly displayed his anger andthereby almost brought the negotiations to an grinding halt. Some may
remember how, after the Russo–Japanese War, Gen. Nogi Maresuke allowed
Gen. Anatoly Stoessel to wear his sword at their meeting at Suishigong — but
the Allied Powers would not allow such a thing. In other words, the Allies had
extremely strong suspicions that the Japanese army did not yet have a deep
acceptance of the situation and did not acknowledge the reality that the war
was lost.
As a matter of fact, what we were taught as children and accepted was thatJapan had not been defeated by the war but instead had been defeated by thepower of science. All Japanese thought that it had not been the war, but theatomic bomb that defeated them.
It is a fact that there was a sense of disobedience hidden in the Japanese. It
is in me still now, and it is still truly in the Japanese of today. Such sentimentis still there, sixty years later; but no, in the past ten or twenty years the antiAmerican feeling has gradually grown stronger.
Is that all right? The American army did not liberate Japan. I myself haveno awareness of having been liberated. The only thing I have any
consciousness of is the occupation. My sense is clearly that, though defeatedby force, Japan was not defeated by justice. Such feelings have continued tothis day in our hearts. Is it not probable that this is actually why Japan’s postwar serenity and tranquility has been able to stay alive?
In other words, the fighting is over but the war continues.
On Aug. 29, 1945 when the fighting had been over for two weeks, a
Yomiuri Hōchi editorial said that they could not accept that Japan had lost thewar:
From the beginning, there was not a single person who failed to revere
the Imperial Rescript. It is with a sense that it cannot be, this attitude of
acceptance of the truth of our defeat, for we made it to today and we have
not yet been wiped out.

37

The meaning of that “it cannot be” was that Japan still had a margin of
military strength. Looking at it today it is a bit of a joke, but this is anewspaper publicly displaying its martial spirit two weeks after the day the
war ended.
In a speech on the program for his administration given on Sept. 5, Prime
Minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko said that the decision to end the war
had been made in solemn accord with the wishes of the emperor, and that thepeople needed to apologize to the emperor for not making enough of an effort
in the war. This, too, shows a continuation of the martial spirit.
For the occupation forces, this was difficult to accept. They had to dosomething — anything — to beat down such martial sentiments. I havebrought up the manifestation of that in this work: the prohibition of books, and
the American army’s censorship and regulation of speech as presented in Etō’s
book, Toza-sareta gengo kūkan.
At the time, there was no one who said that Japan had been evil in fighting
the war, so no one was talking about “responsibility for the war.” If someone
had said any such thing, people around him would probably have recoiled inshock. It would have been as if he started frothing at the mouth and fallen over.
The phrase “war responsibility” was not the product of Japanese thought;
rather, it had been a propaganda term by their former enemies which
descended on Japan like a tidal wave, and it was to implant in the Japanese asense of guilt. The occupation army, feeling uneasy over the tranquility they
just could not explain in post-war Japan, tried all manner of things to divulge
their true colors and to make sure that Japan would not rise up again. They had
to thoroughly plunder Japan’s vitality. This extended to the act of banningbooks, and to this day 7,000 works — or perhaps even more books beyond
that number — have yet to resurface. With this, those books have been erased
from the hearts of the Japanese.
As I have already said, if we think we would like to see these books, we
can read them to a certain extent at the National Diet Library. If we want to try
we can conduct a detailed study. But the books are not in our hands.
Researchers cannot freely get a hold of them and read them. Neither are they
freely lent out, and there is a limit on how much can be copied. Studying thebanned books is not a simple matter.
I have little by little been revealing the subject matter of the prohibitedbooks that have been discretely entrusted to me, and what I would like to do
from this point on is talk about them and say that there are books such as theseand that they have been neglected for sixty years. I want to once more breathlife into the hearts of Japanese of that time, written in those books, and how
they saw the world.
I do not know how many books this task will require of me, but the second
volume is already in preparation, and is being readied for printing. This is achallenge for which there is no end.
Japan’s quiet determination during the war against the ABCD LineI would like to present one final illustration in this chapter.
One of the books to be banned that had the shortest shelf life was Bei-Eichosen no shinso (“The real situation with the Anglo–American challenge ”),
38

edited by the Far East War Investigative Committee, published on June 1,
1943, by the Mainichi Newspaper Co. The book was part of a series, andprominent people at the time were contributors. The series therefore quickly
came under the scrutiny of the American forces, and more than half of themwere proscribed.
Many things that could not be spoken of were included in this book, so theoccupation choked off the discussion. Readers may be familiar with the socalled ABCD Line. It was formed by the military might of the Americans,
British, Chinese, and Dutch (thus “ABCD”) to encircle the Japanese in the
Pacific. What kind of implications this line might have had, how it was formed,
and how Japan’s government and military understood it at the time — all ofthese discussions were in that book.
What was surprising to me was the fact that the Japanese knew all aboutthe Line. They grasped the fine details right down to the military capabilities
involved. I will take up those particulars at a future opportunity, but at the end
there is a part concerning this “vicious anti-Japanese Line.” I have alreadygone into some detail on this point, so I will briefly excerpt:
From immediately after the Russo–Japanese War and right up until theoutbreak of this present war, the United States has either ostracized or
coerced, and on top of that oppressed, and more. This contempt andrudeness heaped on Japan is something rare in the 4,000-year history ofinternational diplomacy. In addition, the attitude taken by Great Britain
toward Japan from around the time of the Meiji Restoration to the First
Sino–Japanese War, as well as from the Washington Conference to justbefore the present war, is as difficult to distinguish from that of the UnitedStates as it is to tell a male crow from a female one. The only difference isGreat Britain lacks an American-like attitude of imbecilic and baseexhibitionism, and there it ends. When we regard the manner of many past
British and American diplomatic moves concerning Japan — with their
overbearing substance being a given, as well as their attitude andhaughtiness, their language and arrogance — it is a difficult thing todescribe in view of their vicious and unjust words. Looking back on it, how
could they, our seniors, dare come to us expecting forbearance? In spite ofourselves we cannot help but remember the copious bitter tears hidden
behind that great weight.

Only reading this much, it sounds like pretty harsh language, but the“viciousness” of the ABCD Line is presented before this in some detail, so it
is a piece with considerable persuasive power. It is also related to what I
mentioned earlier, that the Japanese war was fought out of the pride of being anation of the first rank — it was a war against an enemy who had never been
seen, a war against Western rationalism, a war against their own pre-Meiji
Restoration history. It was an insult to Japan so strong that one may wonder, if
perhaps they had not fought and lost their self-respect, would the Japan of the
post-war revival have existed?
We shall take up the history of Anglo–American insults and contempt
toward Japan to a different volume. Only matters of a military nature are
here, so we will stop at pointing out the strategic enemy character this antiJapanese Line has. We do not hesitate to assert that never before in recorded
history has there been a vicious strategy of this degree.

39

Next, the authors discuss the thoroughness of the ABCD Line, and thegeographical and strategic relationships behind it.
Before surrounding Japan militarily, they planned to diplomaticallyisolate and make us helpless, but they were not satisfied by that diplomatic
encirclement and again they devised a plan to bring about Japan’s poverty
and decline. We have already written about how they continued theirunderhanded economic pressure on us to drive us into economic isolation.
They completely rejected Japanese immigrants, the importation of Japanese
goods and products and the exportation of theirs to Japan, and they planned
Japan’s ostracism even from other peoples’ countries as they liked, not justrestricting Japan from their own countries and their dependent dominions.
That is to say, with this plan to make us a total outcast and a pauper,
their scorn of Japan and anti-Japanese policies created the goal of economic
encirclement and economic blockade by whatever means available. Theirplan was to strip us bare and leave us unarmed and to militarily surround us
and then gang up on us. Above all, it was their intent to cut off our access tooil that was the most villainous thing of all. If our ships, planes, andmechanized units were immobilized because the access to oil had been cut
off, it would disarm Japan without a fight. If we made even the slightest
military preparations, the result would be the same due to the limitation of
the amount of our own domestic oil to support those preparations. This was
the manner in which they planned to gang up on Japan and strike us down.

What should be noted here is that it did not really become like this. Had
Japan not risen up, her adversaries thought they would have ended up making
Japan only a little country, subsisting on the oil it could produce on its own.
On top of that, they also thought to strike Japan down.
To give an example, speaking of a gang-leader and his subordinates,
they surround a single good boy and show their intention to gang up on him
and beat him, heaping insults, abuse, and difficulties on him, posturing tobeat him down. That was the anti-Japanese [ABCD] Line.

An important point here is that the Japanese government knew of the
ABCD Line’s formidability and strength, and of its dreadful nature.
As we have previously related, the Line before the outbreak of the war
was not an encircling line, but a siege line. It would only be natural that any
country should take whatever steps were necessary to prepare for their own
defense, and of course it is also only natural that in the case of war against ahypothetical enemy sufficient consideration must be given before hand; andthe substance of these actions, as well as their appearance, must be
defensive. We can state with certainty that this strategy of challenging us bycreating a siege line around Japan poised to gang up on us, giving us nochoice but to rise up as foes (but if we did so we would be ganged up on andbeaten) is a vicious strategy of a type unseen in the history of the world.
...
Such is this vicious Line. It was, as it were, a direct challenge. Had we
not risen up, Japan would either have destroyed herself, or been ganged up
on and beaten to death. That Japan stood up, resolute in self-reliant selfdefense, was only the natural consequence, so to speak.

What was it that was the strength of Japanese back then?

40

There was an inevitability about Japan’s entry into war. History textbooks
long ago said this. Even though it was a small country, it was only natural thatJapan would rise up after having been forced to endure all those conditions.
Even today, this is still being said. I imagine, therefore, that such quotations as
those above contain nothing surprising; but in truth, the situation with Japan
being encircled was actually quite hard. The Soviet Union was moving south.
Mainland China, which was being targeted by every country, was in a state ofperpetual unrest. France controlled French Indochina; the British were in India,
Burma, and Malaysia; the Dutch had Indonesia under their thumb; andAmerica was on various Pacific islands and totally occupied the Philippines.
That is why the border separating the United States and Japan before the war
was between Taiwan and the Philippines. Australia joined hands with America
and pulled every possible dirty trick. Considering such conditions, it is clear
Japan really was deeply cornered by that Line of their enemies’.
Why did it become so? We have to think deeply about that question, butwhen I read Bei-Ei chosen no shinso, there was just one thing I thought
strange: while everyone knew that the ABCD Line was rational and extremely
secure, Japan went about it calmly. That is, Japan was not terribly concerned.
We can see a resolution as if to say, “I’ll fight all four of you, fair and square!”
There was very little agitation, as well. When I think about it now, it strikes
me as very peculiar.
This book came out in 1943, when the war was at its height. Moreover, it
examines in detail the enemies’ Line. The authors knew in detail about its
military strength and disposition. I look at it closely. This is realism. They
were not underrating the enemy. There is no arrogant posturing. Neither were
they throwing themselves headlong into a war they knew they could not win.
These are the things I get out of this book. It was written by people with arational, strategic, and pragmatic eye. They saw through the difficulty of theaffair, and said that there was no option but to rise up. The strength of heart of
the Japanese in those days is a mystery. Nonetheless, it is a reality of history,
and as a truth that was in our past, it will not change. Today we can no longer
conceive of such strength.
Why might this be?
I do not know. I just do not know.
Historical mysteries such as this one must be hidden within thoseprohibited books. Of course, I am not giving one iota of thought to militarism
and the march to war, or a history of Japan’s crimes. We are treading the pathof the inevitable current where things that had to happen historically happened— and in the flow of history, we have arrived where we are.
In this book, I will not only present for consideration descriptions ofindividual events, I will look at why things happened that were in theprohibited books, what was happening in the background, and what thementality of Japanese in those days was. I will also confirm that the motives of
the Allied Powers leading up to the war continued to move them after the war.
When the war ended, we thought the war was over. The “post-war war”
continued, however. The pre-war anti-Japanese Line continued after the war in
the form of book-banning and censorship. And it also menaces present-day
Japan. I will verify these things, and starting with the next chapter I hope topresent concrete examples for consideration.

41

42

Appended Supplementary Materials
Supplement One: Memorandum from the SCAP GHQ (copy of original) .............................. 39
Supplement Two: Memorandum from the SCAP GHQ ........................................................... 41
Supplement Three: Textual materials drawn up for selecting publications to be
seized by the GHQ civilian censorship task force department .................... 45
Supplement Four: Directive from the Vice-Minister of Education
concerning the confiscation of publications ................................................ 47
Supplement Five: Summary of the number of books confiscated by theJapanese government on GHQ orders ......................................................... 51
Supplement Six:
Publications targeted for seizure during the occupation andstored in the United States Library of Congress .......................................... 53
Supplement Seven: Ranking of GHQ-confiscated works by author ........................................... 55
Supplement Eight: History of the occupation and government of the South Sea
Islands ......................................................................................................... 63

43

44

Supplementary Document One:
Memorandum from SCAP GHQ(copy of original)

45

46

Supplementary Document Two:
Memorandum from SCAP GHQ

Memorandum
This matter in the memorandum from the SCAP is being carried out atpresent by the GHQ as well as the Civil Censorship Detachment incooperation with the Far East Military Intelligence Section.
The entire texts of the memoranda (omitting the books’ titles and otherinformation) follows.
I. Memorandum concerning the confiscation of propaganda publications(dated 17 March, 1946)
1. The Japanese government is directed to collect all propaganda
publications from warehouses, bookstores, book dealers, publishingcompanies, distribution companies, and all commercial establishments,
as well as various Japanese governmental offices, etc., where
propaganda publications are held in bulk, excepting privately held
[copies], as follows:
Title
War & Construction

AuthorHirata Tokijirō

Publisher
Asahi Newspaper Co.

Pub. Add.
2-3 Yūrakuchō,
Kōjimachi, Tokyo

Pub. Date
Dec. 1943(Nine omitted titles follow)
2. Steps for the pulping and recycling of collected publications will bedirected at a future date by this headquarters.
3. Scheduled reports concerning confiscations are to be made to thisheadquarters each month on the 15th and at the end of the month, thefirst report date being 31 March. The following information is to be
included in these reports:
a. The name and number of publications collected in the interim periodb. The location whence collected, and the names and number ofpublications collected at each locationc. Total number of publications collectedd. Gross weighte. Specific storage location
4. Publications personally held in the homes of average people or inlibraries are exempt from these directions.
II. Addendum #1 to the above memorandum (dated 27 March, 1946)
1. Refers to the memorandum dated 17 March.
2. Item 2 is as detailed in the previous memorandum, but there are six
publications that have newly been designated for confiscation:(Six titles omitted)
47

3, 4, 5. The content of these is the same as items 2, 3, and 4 of the previous
memorandum.
6. The Central Liaison Office made instructions concerning the civilian
censors at the GHQ on the following two reasons for selecting theperson(s) responsible for making the scheduled reports:
a. To acknowledge the appended list of propaganda publications thatmust be collected and carrying out item 3 in the original
memorandum.
b. To issue scheduled reports on the collection of propaganda
publications.
III. Addendum #2 to the above memorandum (dated 15 April, 1946)
The content of this memorandum is identical with that of the previous
memoranda, with an additional 16 works designated to be confiscated.
(Sixteen titles omitted.)
IV. Addendum #3 to the above memorandum (dated 30 April, 1946)
Designated 26 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
V. Addendum #4 to the above memorandum (dated 5 May, 1946)
Designated 14 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
VI. Addendum #5 to the above memorandum (dated 31 May, 1946)
Designated 11 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)VII. Addendum #6 to the above memorandum (dated 10 June, 1946)
Designated 11 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
VIII. Addendum #7 to the above memorandum (dated 1 July, 1946)
Designated 5 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
IX. Addendum #8 to the above memorandum (dated 21 July, 1946)
Designated 17 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
X. Addendum #9 to the above memorandum (dated 15 August, 1946)
Designated 38 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XI. Addendum #10 to the above memorandum (dated 31 August, 1946)
Designated 15 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XII. Addendum #11 to the above memorandum (dated 2 October, 1946)
Designated 4 publications for confiscation, and 13 musical scores
published by the Japan National Broadcasting Company.
XIII. Addendum #12 to the above memorandum (dated 31 October, 1946)
Designated 12 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XIV. Addendum #13 to the above memorandum (dated 21 December, 1946)
Designated 41 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XV. On 23 January, 1947, verbal notice was made from Maj. Costello, thedirector of the newspaper, publication and broadcasting department of
the Civil Censorship Detachment of the GHQ’s Office of MilitaryIntelligence, reported via the Central Liaison Office, to the Japanese
government, that some the locations for publications being confiscatedthrough Addendum #14 had been changed.
(Verbal notice)
The Central Liaison Office directs all the personnel taking part in theplans for confiscation of propaganda publications should be instructedto concentrate their full efforts on typical distribution networks such as
bookstores, publishers’ warehouses and distribution services, etc.
The investigation of schools, libraries, and private collections isparticularly forbidden.
48

XVI. Addendum #14 to the above memorandum (dated 17 December, 1946)
Designated 20 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XVII. Addendum #15 to the above memorandum (dated 31 December, 1946)
Designated 27 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XVIII. Addendum #16 to the above memorandum (dated 17 January, 1947)
Designated 60 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XIX. Addendum #17 to the above memorandum (dated 3 February, 1947)
Designated 24 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XX. Addendum #18 to the above memorandum (dated 15 February, 1947)
Designated 31 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXI. Addendum #19 to the above memorandum (dated 1 March, 1947)
Designated 58 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXII. Addendum #20 to the above memorandum (dated 17 March, 1947)
Designated 28 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXIII. Addendum #21 to the above memorandum (dated 21 May, 1947)
Designated 39 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXIV. Addendum #22 to the above memorandum (dated 15 April, 1947)
Designated 56 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXV. Addendum #23 to the above memorandum (dated 1 May, 1947)
Designated 50 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXVI. Addendum #24 to the above memorandum (dated 15 May, 1947)
Designated 50 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXVII. Addendum #25 to the above memorandum (dated 2 June, 1947)
Designated 60 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)• From this point this affair was transferred from the Police Department of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Social Education Department of the
Ministry of Education.
XXVIII. Addendum #26 to the above memorandum (dated 16 June, 1947)
Designated 29 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXIX. Addendum #27 to the above memorandum (dated 1 July, 1947)
Designated 61 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXX. Addendum #28 to the above memorandum (dated 15 July, 1947)
Designated 50 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXI. Addendum #29 to the above memorandum (dated 1 August, 1947)
Designated 39 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXII. Addendum #30 to the above memorandum (dated 15 August, 1947)
Designated 88 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXIII. Addendum #31 to the above memorandum (dated 2 September,
1947)
Designated 500 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXIV. Addendum #32 to the above memorandum (dated 15 September,
1947)
Designated 540 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXV. Addendum #33 to the above memorandum (dated 1 October, 1947)
Designated 515 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXVI. Addendum #34 to the above memorandum (dated 15 October, 1947)
Designated 450 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)

49

XXXVII. Addendum #35 to the above memorandum (dated 1 November,
1947)
Designated 560 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXVIII. Addendum #36 to the above memorandum (dated 15 November,
1947)
Designated 605 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XXXIX. Addendum #37 to the above memorandum (dated 1 December, 1947)
Designated 550 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XL. Addendum #38 to the above memorandum (dated 26 December, 1947)
Designated 500 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XLI. Addendum #39 to the above memorandum (dated 1 January, 1948)
Designated 550 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XLII. Addendum #40 to the above memorandum (dated 23 January, 1948)
Designated 550 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)XLIII. Addendum #41 to the above memorandum (dated 1 February, 1948)
Designated 550 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XLIV. Addendum #42 to the above memorandum (dated 15 February, 1948)
Designated 500 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XLV. Addendum #43 to the above memorandum (dated 1 March, 1948)
Designated 240 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
XLVI. Addendum #44 to the above memorandum (dated 15 March, 1948)
Designated 80 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)XLVII. Addendum #45 to the above memorandum (dated 1 April, 1948)
Designated 60 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)XLVIII. Addendum #46 to the above memorandum (dated 15 April, 1948)
Designated 20 publications for confiscation. (Titles omitted.)
These are the memoranda, but I, II, and XV are particularly important andneed to be noted.
Such was the situation with the Japanese government’s method of
confiscating the publications — as in accordance with the notification fromthe vice-minister of the Ministry of Education requesting cooperation from all
the regional governors, they then requested cooperation of their Boards ofEducation.

50

Supplementary Document Three:Textual Materials Drawn Up for Selecting Publications
to Be Seized by the GHQ Civilian Censorship
Task Force Department

51

52

Supplementary Document Four:
Directive from the Vice-Minister of Education
Concerning the Confiscation of Publications

Facsimile of Vice-Minister of Education’s Directive
Number 174
22 June, 1948
Vice-Minister, Ministry of Education
To all prefectural governors:
Concerning the confiscation of propaganda publications —The transfer of control from the police department to the education department inall the prefectures in accordance with the execution of the new Police Law is to be
carried out as instructed in the directive co-signed by the director of the Ministry of
Education’s Social Education Bureau and the first director of the Department ofHome Affairs, Ministry Notice no. 75, dated 5 May of this year, to the SuperintendantGeneral of the Metropolitan Police and to all the prefectural governors, and the
directive from the director of the Social Education Bureau of the Ministry of
Education, Ministry Notice no. 98, dated 6 June, to all the prefectural governors andto Superintendant General of the Metropolitan Police. However, on a different aspect
in regards to the afore-mentioned transfer of control, we have now changed the way
those who enforce that work deal with it as follows, so I would like to request yourconsideration so as not to have any omissions in the paperwork.
Text
1. The business of confiscating propaganda publications, shall be dealt with inaccordance with the memorandum from the SCAP GHQ dated 17 March, 1946, andthe subsequent additional memoranda up to no. 46.
2. The person responsible for the confiscation activities in each prefecture is to be
the governor.
3. (1) Heretofore in carrying out the work of enforcing confiscations, the education
department has dispatched police officials who then directly went out andreturned; but henceforth the governors shall make careful selection ofsuitable individuals from among the educational administration officials andeducation officials (but not to include school faculty members) in themunicipalities under their jurisdiction as an auxiliary apparatus, appointing
them to carry out the work of confiscations.
(2) The number of those responsible for the afore-mentioned confiscations will
be determined by the governors after consideration of the number of actual
book stores as well as the state of distribution and so forth in themunicipalities under their jurisdictions.
(3) The governors will have the afore-mentioned persons responsible for theconfiscations regularly carry the enclosed form no.1 as an identification
document to clarify their status in the paperwork.
(4) Particularly close cooperation will be undertaken with police officials incarrying out the confiscations, and as need should arise their assistance shallbe requested. Confiscation and investigation is something that should takeplace with the cooperation of the person being dealt with, but if the subject ofa confiscation complains about the investigation or confiscation, or if the53

confiscator is in fear of harm or the like, he will be expected to request theassistance of police officials and to carry out his duty.
4. (1) Confiscations have been carried out in bookstores (including the interiors ofstores selling new books, those selling used books, and shops loaning books,
as well as their store-rooms), distribution centers, printing houses, etc., andon books sold and in transport, but private collections and libraries have been
excluded up to this point.
(2) We will want to exercise sufficient care when confiscating works, as there
are cases where the titles are the same but the author or publisher are
different.
5. Violations of this matter will be subject to punishment in accordance with
Imperial Ordinance No. 311, dated 12 June, 1936.
6. Upon the confiscation of an applicable publication, the enclosed form no. 2,“confiscated work,” will be issued to the person from whom it is being confiscated.
7. The size of the identification paper and confiscated work [forms] are convenient;
we would wish the items mentioned to be on the forms. We would like the registerof issued credentials and the collated forms for confiscated books to be available
for inspection at any time by commissioned officers connected with the local
military or governmental departments.
8. The fixed term for [filing] written reports on the situation with the confiscations,regardless of the presence or absence of confiscated material, is twice monthly (onthe first and fifteenth), and they should be sent to this ministry. The title of theconfiscated work, the place of confiscation, the name of the book store (as well as
the name of the individual responsible), and the quantity confiscated are to berecorded.
9. The work on this matter shall not be disclosed to those who are not connectedwith it.
Notes:
The following is being telegraphed from the central headquarters of the nation’s
regional police (the jurisdiction of the criminal prevention division) to the heads ofthe police force in each prefecture, to be thoroughly circulated to the police stations
within their jurisdiction:“Concerning the notification sent to the governor by the Ministry of Education on
the confiscation of propaganda publications as ordered by the GHQ: the appropriate
officials are the ones who will carry this out, and you shall cooperate with themshould the police be needed. We are making this notification to be sure that there isno misunderstanding.”

Attachment 1:

54

Attachment 2:

55

56

Supplementary Document Five:
Summary of the Number of Books Confiscatedby the Japanese Government on GHQ Orders

57

58

Supplementary Document Six:
Publications Targeted for Seizure During the Occupationand Stored in the United States Library of Congress

Location,Transfer
Info.

Serial
No.

小番
号

Title

Quant.

1

1

Children’s literature published during the
Occupation

1116 titles

No

LCOC

LC

1

2

Children’s magazines published during
the Occupation

219 titles,
1,814 vols.

No

LCOC

LC

1

3

Textbooks for children published during
the Occupation

665 titles

No

LCOC

LC

2

1

Books published during the Occupation

1,555 titles

No

LCOC

LC

2

2

Magazines published during the
Occupation

3,547 titles,
517 reels

Yes,
1998

YKC ’06,
LCOC

LC

3

1

Censored books of the Ministry of Home
Affairs

933 titles,
1,066 vols.

Yes,
75–78

YKC ’92,
LCOC

3

2

Censored books of the Ministry of Home
Affairs

434 titles,
439 vols.,
32 reels

Yes,
1997

YKC ’02,
LCOC

LC

3

3

Censored books of the Ministry of Home
Affairs

2,000 vols.

No

LCOC

LC

3

4

Censored periodicals of the Ministry ofHome Affairs

10 titles,
512 vols.,
31 reels

Yes,
1968

YKC ’92,
LCOC

LC

3

5

Censored periodicals of the Ministry ofHome Affairs

352 titles,
228 reels

Yes,
76–80

YKC ’94,
LCOC

LC

3

6

Censored periodicals of the Ministry ofHome Affairs

755 titles,
976 vols.,
44 reels

Yes,
1990

YKC ’94,
LCOC

LC

7

Censored periodicals of the Ministry ofHome Affairs

103 titles

Yes,
1999

YKC ’02,
LCOC

LC

Documents pertaining to the Imperial
Japanese Army and Navy

5,748
documents

No

THC ’95

LC

3

4

MicroCatalog
filmedSupplemental

Repatriated Part not yet
in Diet
76–78
possession

5

1Books published before and during the
War

No

LCOC

LC

5

2

Periodicals published before and during
the WarPartialYKM 92–
06,
LCOC

LC

59

103 titles
found inadditionto 755above

6 titles,
546 vols.,
37 reels

6

LCOC
(80%)

LC

Yes,
67–73

YKC ’92

Repatriated1973 (Nat’lArchives ofJapan)

350 reels(incl. 5-1);
226 ofthese arecataloged

Yes,
63–06

YKC ’02,
’06

LC

Part
found inaddition
to above

Unsorted periodicals, etc.

1,500 vols.

No

7

1

Documents

2,200 titles,
21,597 vols.,
129 reels

72Documents

2,716 titles,
168 reels

73

Uncompleted documents, etc.

No

LC
Sent tocollegesthroughout
the USA,
49–50

8

1

Redundant books and periodicals

3,000 vols.

No

LCOC

8

2

Redundant books and periodicals

6,000–
7,000 vols.

No

Sent toRyūkyū
University,
1955

8

3

Redundant books and periodicals

No

Sent tovariouscolleges in
USA

8

4

Torn or discarded documents

No

Unknown

LC = Library of Congress.
LCOC = Library of Congress Online Catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov).
YKC = Yoshimura Keiko’s Catalog (a catalogue created by Yoshimura Keiko;a copy is on file at the National Diet Library in the constitutional government
reference room).
THC = Tanaka Hiromi Catalog (appears in Senryō sesshū kyū rikukaigun
shiryō sōmokuroku [An index of d Imperial Armed Forces documents
confiscated under the Occupation], published in 1995 by Tōyō Shorin.
Repatriated = Returned to Japan.

60

Also
reports
from1960

Supplementary Document Seven:
Ranking of GHQ-Confiscated Works by Author

Authors with more than six proscribed works
Rank

Name

Notes

Works
banned1

Noyori Hideichi

Intellectual; owner of Teito Hibi Newspaper.

23

2

Nakakōji Akira

Intellectual.

22

3

Nagano Akira

China specialist; Takushoku University
professor

18

Kōno Seizō

Shintō scholar; president of Kokugakuin
University.

18

5

Yamanaka
Minetarō

Writer.

17

6

Nagamatsu Senzō

Writer.

14

Tokutomi Iichirō(AKA: T. Sohō)

Intellectual.

14

Ishimaru Tōta

Naval lieutenant commander; historian.

14

Minowa Kōson

Editor of army-related examinations.

14

Sakurai Tadayoshi

Officer subordinate to Gen. Nogi; author of
the war record, Nikudan (“Human bullets”).

14

Sōma Motoi

Critic; Mainichi Newspaper journalist; sumō
reporter.

14

Watari Shōzaburō

Tokyo Teachers’ School and moral educator.

14

13Ōgushi Toyoo

Scholar of civics and constitutional law.

13

14

Takasu Yoshijirō

Scholar of Japanese literature and Mito-gaku.

12

Katō TotsudōIntellectual on Buddhist and Confucian
thought and self-discipline.

12Ōtani Kōzui

Buddhist religionist; master of the Nishi
Honganji.

12

Mutō Teiichi

Critic of military affairs and diplomacy with
the Asahi Newspaper.

12

Owari Shinnosuke

Editor and publisher at Kodansha.

12

Nishi Shin’ichirō

Philosopher, professor at Hiroshima Bunrika

12

61

Rank

Name

Notes

Works
bannedUniversity.
20

25

33

39

62

Satō Giryō (AKA S.
Yoshisuke)

Founder of Shinchōsha (a publisher).

11

NakanoYasohachi

President of Seimei Gakuen (attached to
Takushoku University); educator.

11

Ikezaki Tadataka(aka Akagi Kōhei)Critic; politician.

11

Fujisawa Chikao

Intellectual; staff at National Institute of Spirit
and Culture.

11

Kobayashi
Tomoharu

Writer of military history.

11

Sōsa Tanetsugu

Rear admiral, graduated in the 26th class of
the Imperial Naval Academy; historian.

10

Miura Tōsaku

Ethics/moral philosopher; writer.

10

Hata Kensuke

Writer with the army.

10

Matsuoka Yōsuke

Politician.

10

Murofuse Kōshin

Critic.

10

Itō Masanosuke

Historiographer.

10

Sasaki Kazuo

Colonel; military historian.

10

Nakajima Takeshi

Naval military historian.

10

Matsushita Yoshio Army first lieutenant; military affairs historian.

9

Kojima Seiichi

Economist.

9

Takahashi
Kamekichi

Economic critic.

9

Satō Kiyokatsu

Lieutenant general; historian.

9

Mori Kiyondo

Scholar of imperial edicts; editor of Collected
Imperial Edicts.

9

Higuchi Masanori

Publisher and editor of Shūkan Asahi
magazine.

9

Inoue Masaji

Advisor on financial affairs in the Korean
government.

8

Yamamotoji Chiei

Editor and journalist at the Asahi Newspaper.

8

Araki Sadao

General.

8

Terada Yakichi

Philosopher; intellectual.

8

Rank

47

60

Name

Notes

Works
bannedTakayanagi
Mitsutoshi

Historiographer; specialist in Japan’s warring
states period.

8

Funabashi
Shigeru

Colonel; military historian.

8Ōkawa Shūmei

Intellectual.

8

Satomi Kishio

Intellectual; founder of the Risshō Kyōdan
religious organization.

8

Hino Ashihei

Writer.

7

Yamaguchi Gorō

Writer.

7

Sawada Ken

Biographer.

7

Katō Kazuo

Writer; critic.

7

Shibata Ken’ichi

Writer of military history.

7

Obama Shigeo

Resources specialist.

7

Kihira Tadayoshi

Philosopher

7

Yoshida Kumaji

Educator.

7

FukunagaKyōsuke

Naval captain; military historian.

7

Nakashiba
SuezumiMajor general; military historian.

7

Kiyohara Sadao

Historiographer.

7

Kiyosawa Kiyoshi

Critic, Intellectual.

7

Nakano SeigōIntellectual.

7

Asaka Kōji

Film director.

6

Kubo Kanzaburō

Philosopher.

6

Takagi
Tomosaburō

Economist.

6

Takagi Yoshikata

Kodansha editor.

6

Matsunaga Motoki

Intellectual.

6

Kobayashi Ichirō

Scholar of Buddhist thought.

6

Shida Nobuyoshi

Scholar of Japanese literature.

6

Ogura Kyōji

Shintō scholar.

6

Komaki
Saneshige

Geologist.

6

63

Rank

Name

Notes

Works
bannedIkeoka Naotaka

Ethics and morality educator.

6

Kikuchi Kan(AKA K. Hiroshi)

Writer.

6

Matsunami Jirō

Writer.

6

Mizuno Masaji

Historian.

6

Minoda MunekiIntellectual, critic of Marxism.

6

Narasaki Toshio

Economist.

6

Ishikawa Eiyō

Scholar of civic planning.

6

Hirade Hideo

Military historian; naval studies.

6

Akamatsu
Hiroyuki

Diplomat; historian.

6

Hasegawa Ryō

Scholar of the history of diplomacy.

6

Nakahira Ryō

Journalist with the Asahi Newspaper; critic.

6

Itō Kinjirō

Writer of military history.

6

Hirose Hikota

Naval captain; military historian.

6

Suzuki Kazuma

Lieutenant general; Naval Journal
association.

6

Maeda Iwatarō

Imperial army; tactical researcher.

6

Ōba Yahei

Major general; tactical researcher.

6

Takizawa
Masakatsu

Imperial army; tactical researcher.

6

Kikuchi Ikujirō

Editor, Transcripts of Army Lectures.

6

Other authors (names arbitrarily recorded)

64

Name

Notes

Works
bannedSuetsugu Nobumasa

Commander-in-Chief of the combined fleet.

5

Takagusu Junjirō

Scholar of Indian philosophy; president of Musashino
Women’s College

5

Taniguchi Masaharu

Religionist; president of Seichō no Ie (a new religious
movement).

5

Yasuoka Seitoku

Intellectual.

4

Name

Notes

Works
bannedShirayanagi Shūko

Historian.

4

Akao Yoshio

President of Ōbunsha publishing company.

4

Rōyama Masamichi

Political scientist.

4

Kajima Morinosuke

President of Kajima Construction Co.

4

Miyake Setsurei

Critic.

4

Yamaoka Sōhachi

Writer.

3

Ozaki Shirō

Writer.

3

Sasaki Nobutsuna

Poet.

3

Naruse Sekiji

Specialist in Japanese swords.

3

Ishiwara Kanji

Lieutenant general.

3

Hayashi Fusao

Writer.

3

Mukai Junkichi

Artist.

2

Matsumae
Shigeyoshi

Scholar; president of Tōkai University.

2

Nitobe InazōIntellectual; educator.

2

Nakaya Ken’ichi

Newspaper journalist; scholar.

2

Tanaka Masaaki

Private secretary to Gen. Matsui Iwane; intellectual.

2

Kishi Nobusuke

Cabinet minister; politician.

1

Yasuda Yojūro

Intellectual.

1

Tōyama Mitsuru

Intellectual.

1

Watsuji Tetsurō

Philosopher.

1Kamei Katsuichirō

Critic.

1

Hisamatsu Sen’ichi

Scholar of Japanese literature.

1

Itō SeiWriter.

1

Yanagita Kunio

Scholar of folklore.

1

Kusano Shinpei

Poet.

1

Saijō Yaso

Poet.

1

Doi Bansui(AKA Rinkichi, AKA
Tsuchii Bansui)

Poet, scholar.

1Ishikawa Tatsuzō

Writer.

1

65

Name

Notes

Works
bannedKishida Kunio

Dramatist.

1

Sakaguchi Ango

Writer.

1

Osaragi Jirō

Writer.

1

Mushakōji Saneatsu

Writer.

1

Ogawa Takuji

Geologist.

1

Shinobu Junpei

Legal scholar.

1

Obara Kuniyoshi

Educator; founder of Tamagawa Gakuen.

1

Koizumi Shinzō

Educator; president of Keiō University.

1

Kaigo Tokiomi

Pedagogue.

1

Fujita Tsuguharu

Artist.

1

Sano Shūichi

Actor.

1

Authors whose works cannot be found on the proscribed list
Name

Notes

Works
bannedKobayashi Takiji

Writer.

0

Takami Jun

Writer.

0

Hayashi FumikoWriter.

0

Miyamoto Yuriko

Writer.

0

Sakai ToshihikoSocial activist.

0

Nosaka Sanzō

Communist Party member.

0Mori Shōzō

Mainichi Newspaper journalist; editor.

0

Ozaki Hotsumi

Asahi Newspaper journalist; implicated as an
informant in the Sorge espionage incident andexecuted.

0

Miki Kiyoshi

Intellectual.

0

Yanagida KenjūrōIntellectual; Marxist.

0

Kagawa Toyohiko

Religionist.

0

Kawakami Hajime

Scholar.

0

Takikawa Yukitoki

Scholar.

0

66

Name

Notes

Works
bannedTakikawa Masajirō

Scholar.

0

Tsuru Shigeto

Scholar.

0

Amano Teiyū

Scholar.

0

Minobe Tatukichi

Scholar.

0

Yokota Kisaburō

Legal scholar; chief justice of the Supreme Court

0

Morito Tatsuo

Economist.

0

Minobe Ryōkichi

Economist.

0Ōuchi Hyōe

Economist.

0

Nishida Kitarō

Philosopher.

0

Kobayashi Hideo

Literary critic.

0(names arbitrarily recorded)
Source: Compiled by Mizokuchi Kunio from Bosshū shitei toshosōmokuroku (Complete index of books designated for confiscation).

67

68

Supplementary Document Eight:
History of the Occupation and Government of
the South Sea Islands

Eastern Region
Island Name

Year of Discovery, Occupation,
and/or Mandate

Area (sq.
miles)

Population(in 1936)

Hawaiian Islands

1528 (Spain); 1898 (USA)6,456

396,715(a)Teraina(Washington Island)1892 (Britain)

6

131

Tabuaeran(Fanning Atoll)

1892 (Britain)

15

175

Phoenix Islands

1886 (Britain)

16

95

Samoa

1772 (Holland); 1812 (France); 1872
(USA); 1899 (Britain & Germany); 1920
(USA, New Zealand Mandate)

776

66,000Tonga

1643 (Holland); 1773 (Britain)

385

31,604

Malden Island

1886 (Britain)

35

102

Marquesas1595 (Spain); 1777 (France)

490

999

Society Islands

1605 (Spain); 1767 (Britain); 1768
(France)657

30,824

Tuamoto Archipelago

1606 (Spain); 1843 (France)

222

4,346

Pitcairn Island

1767 (Britain)

2

209

Cook Islands

1774 (Britain)

111

12,000Island Name

Year of Discovery, Occupation,
and/or Mandate

Area (sq.
miles)

Population(in 1936)

Marianas1521 (Spain); 1899 (German); 1920
(Japanese Mandate)705

109,847 (a)Marshall Islands

1527 (Spain); 1885 (Britain); 1886
(Germany); 1920 (Japanese Mandate)

*

*

Palau

1527 (Spain); 1898 (Germany); 1920
(Japanese Mandate)**

Caroline Island

1527 (Spain); 1899 (Germany); 1920
(Japanese Mandate)**Central Region

69

Jaluit Atoll

1888 (Germany); 1920 (Japanese
Mandate)

*

*

Guam

1521 (Spain); 1898 (USA)225

22,137 (a)New Guinea

1511 (Holland); 1606 (Spain); 1885–6(Britain, Germany, Holland); 1920
(Britain, Holland, Australian Mandate)

9,300 (e)548,291

Nauru

1798 (Germany); 1920 (British
Mandate)8

3,097 (a)Bismarck Archipelago

1615 (Holland); 1884 (Germany); 1920
(Australian Mandate)

181,571

75,920Australia

1605 (Holland); 1770 (Britain)

2,974,581

6,806,752

Gilbert Islands

1764 (Britain)

166

27,029Tuvalu1781 (Spain); 1892 (Britain)

14

4,124

Banaba Island(Ocean Island)1892 (Britain)

6

2,791

Solomon Islands

1567 (Spain); 1616 (Holland); 1857
(Britain); 1884 (Germany); 1894
(Britain)

375,000(e)

94,155

Santa Cruz Islands

1767 (Britain)

380

5,000 (e)New Hebrides

1606 (Spain); 1774 (Britain); 1906
(Anglo-French Co-Mandate)

5,700 (e)40,000 (b,e)

New Caledonia

1774 (Britain); 1843 (France)

8,548

53,245

Fiji

1643 (Spain, Holland); 1840 (USA);1874 (Britain)

7,083

201,086

New Zealand

1642 (Holland); 1769 (Britain)

103,7226,806,752

Island Name

Year of Discovery, Occupation,
and/or Mandate

Area (sq.
miles)

Population(in 1936)

Philippines

1521 (Portugal, Spain); 1569 (Spain);1898 (USA)97,104

13,266,700

Moluccas(Spice Islands)

1512 (Portugal); 1622 (Holland); 1798
(Britain); 1814 (Holland)

1,350

720,558 (d)Borneo1511 (Portugal); 1604 (Holland); 1798
(Britain); 1842 (Britain, Holland)

285,391

2,944,661(c)

Celebes1511 (Portugal); 1798 (Britain); 1802
(Holland); 1810 (France); 1814
(Holland)

72,9864.231.906

Sumatra1511 (Portugal); 1798 (Britain); 1802
(Holland); 1810 (France); 1814
(Holland)

1,774,448

6,779,706

Western Region70

Jarvis Island(Bunker Island)

1511 (Portugal); 1798 (Britain); 1802
(Holland); 1810 (France); 1814
(Holland)

4,611

205,363

リアリガ

1511 (Portugal); 1798 (Britain); 1802
(Holland); 1810 (France); 1814
(Holland)

12,235298,225

Bali

1511 (Portugal); 1798 (Britain); 1802
(Holland); 1810 (France); 1814
(Holland)

3,973

1,802,683

Java

1619 (Holland); 1811 (Britain); 1816
(Holland)

——

——

Timor

1515 (Portugal); 1859 (Portugal,
Holland)7.300

460.655 (b)Christmas Island

1777 (Spain); 1888 (Britain)

62

1,237

Labuan1846 (Britain)40

8.111 (a)Singapore

1619 (Britain)

220

651,486 (a)Ceylon1505 (Portugal); 1602 (Holland); 1782
(Britain)

25,332

5,312,548(c)This chart is primarily derived from the 1939 World Year Book, edited by theJapanese Association of International Affairs.
(a) In 1937 (b) In 1934 (c) In 1931
Included in the numbers for Marianas.

(d) In 1930(e) Approximation(*)

Source: Ajia shinryaku hishi (A secret history of the Asian Invasion) by Kuwahara
Saburō (Shimizu Shobō, 1961).

71

コメント [茂木4]: This may be
Small Sunda excluding Bali,
Timor