Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 11, No. 2, pp 295–298 2008
Published online October 31, 2008

doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyn053............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Review Essays
The Debate over Japan’s War Responsibility
INOUE Toshikazu*
From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible?, edited by James E. Auer. Tokyo:
The Yomiuri Shinbun, 2006, 408 pp., U4,200 (hardcover ISBN 4-643-06012-3 C0021)
Nitchu Sens
o kara Sekai Sens
o e (From the Sino-Japanese War to World War), by Nagai Kazu.
Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2007, 480 pp., U7,600 (hardcover ISBN 978-4-7842-1334-4)
From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor is the English translation of Kensh
o: Senso Sekinin (2006)
written and edited by the Yomiuri Shimbun Sens
o Sekinin Kensho Iinkai. The organization of thecontents of the English and Japanese editions differ, reflecting their assumed readerships, but theoverall views presented are the same. The explanation of the Yomiuri Shinbun, with which the editor
and authors are affiliated, as given in the book (p. 441) is quite inadequate, so I would like to supplement it here.
The Yomiuri Shinbun is the national newspaper with the largest circulation in Japan, and it stands
out among other papers in that its editorial stance closely reflects the views of Watanabe Tsuneo, thechairman and editor in chief of the Yomiuri Shinbun Group. This is the only newspaper in Japan
where one individual’s position is so thoroughly reflected in its content.
Another point that must be noted is that this book is not a work of research in the strict sense, butreflects particular political motives. The original Japanese edition is based on a column commemorating
the 60th year since the war’s end serialized in the Yomiuri Shinbun from August 2005 to March 2006.
The timing is significant, as the column’s publication coincided with conflicts both nationally and internationally over Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichir
o’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Yomiuri Shinbun has
traditionally taken a conservative stance regarding such issues, but when editor-in-chief Watanabe
switched from favoring the visits to opposing them, the column was launched, not to defend, but ratherto critique the story of Japan’s wartime experience. The column, blasted by conservatives determined todefend the actions of prewar Japan, ended up adding fuel to the long-smoldering ‘Yasukuni problem’.
With this background in mind, we can more clearly see the true motive of this book, which is dedicated to ‘our neighbors’. While directly referring to China and South Korea, it also points indirectly
to the United States. The dedication makes the book’s intent clear: to improve Japan’s diplomatic
relations with neighboring countries—the US included.
............................................................................................................................................................................................................

INOUE Toshikazu is a Professor of Law at Gakushuin University. He has an LL.D. from Hitotsubashi University, where healso earned his B.A. in Sociology. His publications include: Kiki no naka no Kyocho Gaiko (Cooperative Diplomacy in times ofCrisis), Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha (1994), Ajiashugi wo Toinaosu (Reconsidering ‘Asianism’), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo(2006), Nitchu Sens
oka no Nihon (Japan during the Sino-Japanese War), Tokyo: Kodansha (2007), and Sh
owashi no Gyakusetsu(The Paradox of Showa History), Tokyo: Shinch
osha (2008). He can be reached at the Faculty of Law, Gakushuin University,
1-5-1 Mejiro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 171-8588 JAPAN, or by email at 19890219@gakushuin.ac.jp.
*Translated from the Japanese by Graham Carpenter.
ª The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the University of Tokyo. All rights reserved.

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INOUE Toshikazu

The title, too, makes the intent clear. The Japanese version has the noncommittal title Kensho Sens
oSekinin (Investigating War Responsibility), but the English version raises the question more directly:‘who was responsible?’ The volume’s investigation focuses on who was responsible for events from theManchurian Incident up to the outbreak of the Pacific War.
This book can be credited on three points. First, it provides a concise introduction to Japan’s wartime and prewar history for Anglophone readers. Equipped with graphs, maps, photographs anda glossary, Chapter 1 of the first part effectively delivers the preliminary knowledge necessary to give
readers a firm background to matters of Japan’s war responsibility. This diligent effort to inform thereader should not be overlooked. It represents an extremely useful approach that encourages dispassionate debate without prejudice and preconception.
Second, the book approaches the attribution of war responsibility by tracing the lineages of faulty
decision-making. For example, Chapter 2 discusses the avenues by which members of the military elite
meddled in political affairs; Chapter 3 looks at the ramifications of foreign minister Hirota K
oki’s submissiveness to the military and inability to recognize the power of Chinese nationalism and Chapter 4
demonstrates how Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro’s failure to exercise strong political leadership led
to the expansion of the Sino-Japanese War.
Third, the book examines the wartime leadership as the preeminent source of war responsibility.
For example, in Chapter 8, blame for the defeat in the Battle of Midway is attributed to the ‘personal
vanity’ of military leaders and their failures of judgment during battle. Moreover, as illustrated in
Chapter 9, the book condemns the lack of rational tactical decision-making by the military, andthe futile rivalry between the army and navy that resulted in soldiers choosing ‘honorable deaths’.
Despite the above strong points, the book suffers from a number of problems. First, even though thepoints at issue are made quite clear, the discussion offers surprisingly little that goes beyond conventionalviews. To be sure, the book pursues war responsibility in detail, such as in Chapter 16, which points toparticular errors of political judgment that led to the collapse of Japan’s war effort by figures such as
Konoe and Toj
o Hideki. But the characterization of the prewar Japanese political leadership based on
this analysis is little different from faulting it for being a ‘system of irresponsibility’, as is often foundin previous studies. The reader thus searches in vain for much that is original or new in this debate.
Secondly, the book does not adequately trace the expansion of the war from the Manchurian Incident to the defeat in 1945 in terms of fluctuations in international relations. This shortcoming
can be seen in the way the book refers to the war as the ‘Sh
owa War’. Why must it evoke the imperial
era name? What is the merit in preferring this terminology over the more established ‘Fifteen-year
War’ or ‘Asia-Pacific War’? The book does not make this clear. ‘Sh
owa War’ would tend to emphasize
Japan’s internal affairs during the war. Japan was involved in what was just one of the fronts of WorldWar II, so greater reference should have been made to its international dimension.
The second work here under review, Nitchu Sens
o kara Sekai Sens
o e by Nagai Kazu, is a collectionof previously published essays by the author. In evaluating this work, some background may be usefulfor readers who are not familiar with the study of Japan.
Marxist methodology dominated historic research in postwar Japan for a long time, and this bookreflects that tradition. For example, Chapter 2 (‘The Sino-Japanese War and Anglo-Japanese Friction’) features ‘Japanese imperialism’ as its subject and analyzes how the conflict with Great Britain
over China resulted in the expansion of the war. This point must be kept in mind in order to understand the history of the conflict described in the addendum.
However, the book is no mere repetition of Marxist history. While carrying on the traditional analysis of the structure of modern Japan in typical Marxist historiographical style, it also adheres to theprinciples of historical empiricism, which makes this book a valuable work of scholarship.

Review Essays

297The book is organized as follows. The preface, ‘Japan in the 20th Century History of East Asia’, discusses the position in which Japan should be placed in the discussion of 20th century East Asia andserves as the introduction to the following chapters. Chapter 1, ‘Japanese Army’s North China Occupation Plan’, excavates and analyzes historical documents that reveal the Japanese army’s plan to occupy North China. Chapter 2, ‘The Second Sino-Japanese War and the Anglo-Japanese Friction’,and Chapter 3, ‘The Anti-British Movements of 1939’, discuss the conflict between Japan and GreatBritain during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Chapter 4, ‘The Second Sino-Japanese War and the Imperial Diet’, studies the process by which wartime legislation was deliberated. Chapter 5, ‘Second SinoJapanese War and the Army’s Comfort Stations’, proposes a third alternative theory regarding the issueof military comfort women. The addendum gives attention to the research of historian Eguchi Keiichi
and offers a new viewpoint by organizing the controversies regarding the history of the war.
The first strong point of the book that must be pointed out is the veracity of the historical sourceson which it is based. This strength is fully demonstrated in Chapter 5. The debate over whether thecomfort women were brought in forcefully by the military has raged over interpretations of a single
document, but this book explores other relevant sources, and offers a third interpretation. While stating that interpretations that argue categorically or speculate about forced recruitment will not holdup, it presents a persuasive analysis showing that ‘in early 1938 the military/government adopted
a policy of setting up comfort stations’.
Second, the book successfully asserts the original arguments regarding the conflict between Japanand Great Britain. From today’s vantage point, knowing that the Second Sino-Japanese War expanded
to the Pacific War, there is naturally a tendency to analyze the war from the viewpoint of the US–Japan
conflict. If there had been a confrontation over empire, however, it would have been with Britain, andthis book should be praised for bringing this point to our attention.
The third strength, as indicated by the title ‘From Second Sino-Japanese War to a World War’, ishow the book reconstructs the expansion of the war in terms of international relations. This analyticalview is effective not only in this chapter and the preface but also in Chapter 4, where it describes, forexample, how the Diet debated the ‘New Order in East Asia’.
Even with the above excellent qualities, the book is not without its faults. First, the analysis is not
systematic. This may be inevitable due to its structure as a collection of essays. But the author could
have tied the debate in the preface and the topics in the later chapters together through supplemental
improvements, such as adding further comments at the end of the preface. Because the book provides
so many new ideas and much new knowledge, this may not be too much to ask of the author.
The other problem is its self-contained nature. This book carries on the orthodox lineage of postwar Japanese history, with a highly self-contained structure in that particular school, which is one major drawback. The author could have set his research in a way that would encompass the developmentof Japanese historical study in its entirety through expanding his argument and expanding his discussion to cover other schools.
These two books differ in their purposes, critical interests and analytical viewpoints, but they havemuch in common in other respects, particularly: their basic stance of pursuing the cause of the expansion of the war. From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor tries to investigate the main causes of thewar’s expansion by investigating individual war responsibilities, while Nitchu Sens
o kara Sekai Sens
oe analyzes the mechanism of the expansion from the point of conflicts between imperialist nations.
The results obtained from this method demonstrate that the research in this field has moved intothe next stage.
In other words, as From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor shows, Japanese can hold ideologicallyconservative views towards history and yet have a critical view of history that does not glamorize the298

INOUE Toshikazu

prewar era. We also learn from Nitchu Sens
o kara Sekai Sens
o e that, through reading this kind of solid
factual research, we can develop arguments on the basis of rigorous, critical examination of historical
documents, regardless of our political beliefs. It should be noted that the publication of these twobooks coincided with the end of the long-lasting, ideologically driven and completely unproductive
debate over the content of Japan’s high school history textbooks.
Despite the significant contributions made by these two books, both leave problems that have yet tobe addressed. First is the issue of Japan’s internal structure. While From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl
Harbor may have made clear the individual war responsibilities of the prime minister, foreign ministerand members of the military, without unraveling the reasons workers, peasants and women voluntarily
took part in the war, it will be impossible to unravel the entire mechanism that led to the expansion of
the war. Based on these two books, an analytical viewpoint on the internal structure that led to that
expansion must be sought that incorporates psychology, sociology and economic history into thescope of research.
Another problem is that analyses of the policy-making process are poorly elaborated. For example, if
focusing on the clash of empires, as does Nitchu Sens
o kara Sekai Sens
o e, then there could have been
the possibility of imperialistic compromises, that is, compromises between Japan and Great Britain atthe expense of China, and yet the war expanded. Much more detailed analysis must be made of thepolicy-making processes.
These two books represent highpoints of the historical study of postwar Japanese history, but theyalso can be considered signposts for further research. I hope that the publication of these two books
will help move this field of research in new directions.

ReferenceYomiuri Shinbun Sens
o Sekinin Kensho Iinkai. 2006. Kensh
o: Senso Sekinin (Investigating War Responsibility). Tokyo: ChuoKoron Shinsha.