G-SEC WORKING PAPER No.14
Tattoi gisei: the aesthetics of “noble sacrifice”
as discourse of re-masculinized national identity
in postwar Japan
M.G. Sheftall1
May, 2007

Abstract
Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War grievously undermined the prewar Imperial Japanesevariant of what George Mosse identifies as “the official linkage of the cult of the fallen to
manliness and national glory”. Evidence of popular rejection of this “cult” and its symbolic
equating of masculinity with war-making capability is clear in the fact that since thepromulgation of Japan's present Constitution in 1947, opinion surveys have consistently shownthat a majority of the Japanese population has always regarded their nation’s formal
renunciation in that document of the right to wage war as a centerpiece of cultural pride andidentity. However, a significant segment of Japanese society has never been comfortable withthis basis of postwar national identity and its prerequisite pride-swallowing historicalinterpretation of Japan’s war as having been unjust, irrational or otherwise ill-advised andmorally flawed. Moreover, influential politicians and public intellectuals have even likened
Japan’s “foreign-imposed” postwar pacifist stance and its dependence on American assistancefor its strategic defense to a form of cultural or even spiritual emasculation. This paper will
examine increasingly successful attempts by “memory activists” to rehabilitate Japan’s war
legacy as part of their proposals for a renaissance of “healthy” Japanese nationalism, and as one
facet of multigenerational and overarching Japanese conservative/revisionist efforts – identified
by Maruyama Masao and Ivan Morris as early as the 1950s – to undo ideological, social,political and cultural changes experienced by Japan as a result of its defeat in the Asia-PacificWar.
Key words/phrases: postwar Japanese nationalism; war memorialization; memory activists

Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Faculty of Informatics, Shizuoka University; E-mail:sheftall@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp

1

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I Introduction/Prologue: The Ghost Dance‘I did this’, says Memory; ‘I cannot have done this,’ says Pride…Memory yields.2
In the 1890s, an ecstatic millenarian movement known as the “Ghost Dance” swept
through Native American communities in government-administered reservations in
the western plains and Rocky Mountain foothills.3 The phenomenon’s eponymous
main event typically entailed group dances and chants that were in equal parts
impassioned entreaty to ancestral ghosts for supernatural assistance and jeremiad
spurring the community to defensive action against encroaching “modernization”.
The Ghost Dancers believed that if their ceremonies were performed with sufficientardor and sincerity, the unwelcome intrusions of a changing world could be turned
away, and the taint of its cultural contamination cleansed. With this cultural
exorcism thus successfully concluded, the community would return apace to thenormality of its “good old days”, and all would be right with the world and theGreat Spirit once again.
II Turning back the clock: the eternal reactionary dream
Two seminal mid-20th century anthropological studies examined the Ghost Dancephenomenon and used it to model the cross-culturality of ceremonial and/or
ideological responses of societies coping with the perceived ontological threat ofunwelcome external cultural influences. The first of these introduced Ralph
Linton’s (1943) theory of “revivalistic nativistic movements”, which he defined as
being “associated with frustrating situations (that) are primarily attempts tocompensate for the frustrations of the society’s members. The elements revived
become symbols of a period when the society was…in retrospect, happy or great.”4
Thirteen years later, Anthony F.C. Wallace – building on Linton’s theory –examined the Ghost Dance as a “revitalization movement”, which he saw as a2This Nietzsche paraphrase is from the translators’ note introduction to Barbara Heimannsberg andChristoph J. Schmidt (eds.) Collective Silence: German Identity and the Legacy of Shame (SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993) (translated by Cynthia Oudejans Harris and Gordon Wheeler), p.xvii.
3
See James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee (New York: Dover Publications,1991). See also http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/19_century/3036491.html
4Ralph Linton, “Nativistic Movements”, American Anthropologist 45 (April-June 1943), pp.230-40,
quotation from p.233.

3“conscious, deliberate, organized effort on the part of some members of society tocreate a more satisfying culture”, returning to “a golden age…a previous conditionof social virtue”. 5
Cross-referencing against Linton’s and Wallace’s respective analytical models,there are intriguing similarities in motive and circumstance between the Native
Americans’ Ghost Dance of the late 19th century and the distinct turn towards
cultural re-enchantment and martial re-valorization taken in recent years byconservative/revisionist (hereafter J-Right) Japanese remembrance discourse of the
Asia-Pacific War of 1931-45.6 “Cultural distortion”7 caused by vanishing ways oflife and values and a collective sense of insecurity over declining communal powervis-à-vis strategic rivals are certainly factors common to both cases. Where the 19th
century Native Americans were faced with depleted buffalo herds, shrinking tribal
lands and smoke-belching Iron Horses bearing seemingly endless streams ofinvasive white settlers, the J-Right at the beginning of the 21st century sees Japan
languishing in fifteen-plus years of economic slump and the ethical character of thenation’s public servants and young people in a tailspin. It sees the population (andthus future national power base) shrinking due to a plummeting birthrate, while
rapidly burgeoning numbers of foreign laborers take up residence in the country,
bringing with them culturally alien customs and value systems and showing few
signs of desiring to assimilate (or, for that matter, being asked to assimilate) into
Japanese society. It sees the Internet and other global developments in borderless
information technology flooding the country with ideas and imagery that threaten
the traditional foundations of national identity. And all the while, of course,
nervous glances are cast across the East China Sea at the first serious rival to
Japan’s East Asian economic hegemony in over a century.
Like their predecessors in the American West over a hundred years ago – andreactionary “traditionalists” in any culture or era – the J-Right’s Ghost Dancers see
the best solution to their community’s current woes as turning back the clock to
5
Anthony F.C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements”, American Anthropologist 58 (1956),
pp.264-81.
6
A comprehensive catalogue of “Japanese Ghost Dance” genre monographs would run literally into
the thousands of entries and is thus beyond the scope of this paper, but one of the more striking recent
examples of the genre the researcher has encountered is the work of Nihon University professor Nishi
Toshio, especially his Kuni Yaburete Makkāsā (“MacArthur destroyed our nation”) (Tokyo: Chūō
Kōronsha, 2005).
7
The phrase is from Wallace (1956), p.269.

4what they regard as the happier, simpler times and culturally-reaffirming ways ofthe past. Identifying Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War and subsequent
seven-year-long occupation by American armed forces as the “originary events” inJapanese socio-cultural space/time from whence all of the nation’s current troubles
have emanated, the postwar J-Right seeks to reverse these effects and return Japanto a putatively more “natural” state, with a “natural” or, in Prime Minister Abe
Shinzō’s pet phrase, “beautiful”8 Japan restored to some pristine (and mythical)“golden age condition of social virtue” of the nation before it had experienced thehumiliation of defeat and the taint of the boots of a foreign army of occupation on
its soil.9 What is sought, in short, is a more compelling narrative of postwar (andjust as crucially, “post-economic miracle”) national identity, which the J-Rightbelieves can only be achieved with the complete extirpation from the very bodyand soul of Japan of any and all social, political, institutional, psychological andspiritual legacies of its 1945 defeat.10 Such legacies include (but are not limited
to):
1)

2)

the 1947 Constitution’s prohibition of the use of military force as
an instrument of state policy (which prevents Japan fromreceiving the proper “respect” it deserves from other countries,
and in a supremely bitter irony, leaves it dependent for its
strategic protection on its former foe, the United States);
the 1947 Constitution itself (which of course makes (1) possible,
but moreover, is also a lingering symbolic legacy of national
shame in and of itself as it was drafted by American Occupation
authorities after Japan’s defeat);8
Prime Minister Abe’s grand manifesto for the restoration of a “beautiful Japan” is outlined in his
Utsukushii Kuni E (“(Working) towards a beautiful country”) (Tokyo: Bungeishunju, 2006).
9
Re: “boot taint”: Etō Jun, Kodama Yoshio (1951), and other commentators – plus many war
survivors interviewed as part of this study – reported the threat of this “foreign boot taint” as a media
image prevalent during the wartime period, employed to exhort soldiers and the populace to fight tothe bitter end. It is interesting to consider whether the considerable stir created in Japan in 2002 by
Donald Rumsfeld’s exhortation to the Japanese government to “put boots on the ground” as part of
Global War on Terror efforts was in part due to unpleasant old memories of this imagery, or whether
both its 21st and 20th century versions both draw their negative emotional power from some
autochthonous Japanese cultural aversion to “dirty footwear” imagery (rendered all the dirtier, ofcourse, when the footwear is “foreign”) in general.
10
Other than its economic benefits, it could probably be safely assumed!

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3)

formal de-apotheosis of the Emperor and demystification of theImperial institution (kōshitsu) (which denies the state a criticallyimportant
icon
upon
which
to
foregroundaquasi-religious/mystical subsumption of individual identity into
an overarching communal identity for which individual sacrifice –up to and including death in combat – could otherwise be more

4)

5)
6)

readily facilitated);emphasis on the dignity of the individual in public education
policy, to the detriment of “traditional” Japanese senses of civic
obedience/deferential individual subject roles vis-à-vis thecommunity (the restoration of which, similar to the sense of (3), isseen as crucial if Japan is to once again field soldiers capable ofdying for their country);de-emphasis of patriotism/nationalism in public education policy(seen as exacerbating (3) and (4) );inroads into public policy made by the concept of fundamental
gender equality (seen as damaging the institutions of the“traditional” Japanese family structure, and perhaps moreworryingly in terms of national power potential, being the major
cause in the declining Japanese birthrate).

The aforementioned “distinct turn towards cultural re-enchantment and martial
re-valorization taken in recent years by Japanese war remembrance discourse” thatis the subject of this study should be understood as merely one facet – although anincreasingly salient and symbolically important facet – in the context of thisoverarching long-term agenda of J-Right goals.
III Who are the “J-Right”, what motivates them, and what are they trying toaccomplish?
Foregrounded on Kenneth Burke’s pentadic model of motive,11 the main questions
to be addressed in this paper are as follows:

11

See Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969).

61) (Agent) Who – or what – is behind2) (Act) the redirection of Japanese war remembrance from its
traditional postwar milieu of war responsibility discourse andspurring its gradual transformation into a culturally rejuvenating
revitalization movement?
3) (Scene) What are the boundaries of this discourse, who are its
participants, and who comprises its primary target audience?
4) (Agency) What elements and factors are facilitating the discourse?
5) (Purpose) Towards what end is this discursive shift being
promoted?
The aim of this study is not necessarily to provide lengthy and empirically detailed
answers to the above questions12, but rather, and primarily, to impress upon thereader an appreciation that this relatively underexamined J-Right discourse ofmartial or even masculine re-enchantment in the context of war remembrance13 isof critical importance to an understanding of the dynamics of current Japanesepolitics, Japan’s diplomatic relations (particularly with Asian neighbors), andpossible short- and long-term evolutionary directions Japanese national identity
will take in the future.
Moreover, it is hoped that the reader will also appreciate that the actors
driving this discourse are not the “usual suspects” who go careering around Tokyo
in blaring sound trucks and whom one might expect to dominate a charismaticJapanese reactionary movement of this sort. These particular “agents of memory” 14(if they are even deserving of this label) of course support the discourse
wholeheartedly, and they may be adept at unnecessarily adding to the decibel level
12
My upcoming on-topic monograph, on the other hand, will hopefully provide as much or more
empirical detail on the subject as any reader will need or desire.
13
Yoshida Yutaka of Hitotsubashi University can perhaps be considered the “dean” of this somewhat
lonely but nevertheless critical area of studies, and he has been of great personal assistance – bothacademic and moral – towards the researcher being able to make this paper and an upcoming
monograph on the topic possible. Sven Saaler of the University of Tokyo, Nakamura Hideyuki ofRikkyō University, Aaron Gerow of Yale, and both Eric Johnston and Roger Pulvers of the Japan
Times also deserve special mention here as individuals making worthy and important contributions to
the field.
14
In The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), Jay Winter applies this term to public intellectuals, media figuresand others in the public sphere in support of a partisan interpretation of a given historical narrative.

7of Tokyo street corners, but they are not given airtime for televised stump speeches,
their tracts are not sold in bookstores nationwide, their editorials are not carried in
major daily newspapers such as the Sankei and Yomiuri, and they cannot financemajor studio release war movies. Rather, the agents of memory that do possess anduse such media clout are the socially respected, supremely well-connected andpolitically powerful individuals, groups and institutions lending their energies,
status and contact networks to what the researcher terms a Japanese “Lost Cause”(hereafter JLC) tradition, the immediate goal of which is to valorize in the popular
historical consciousness Japan’s war aims and conduct in the Asia-Pacific War.
The main ideological platform of JLC can be outlined as follows:
!
!

!
!
!

the war was unavoidable;
paradoxically, the war was also unwinnable by the Japanese (although it
should be noted that an opinion well represented in J-Right revisionism holds
that the war might have been won with better leadership and/or better luck at
critical junctures in the progress of the war);15
the war was fought for the liberation of Asia (and the protection of Japan)
from Western imperialism;
the war was fought in consideration of Japan’s legitimate national security
interests (as opposed to the satisfaction of its imperialistic rapacity);
Japan’s fighting men – inclusive of the nation in its entirety, as mobilized for
total war effort – were spiritually superior to the enemy (i.e., the Allied forces
and their supporting populations), and were only defeated by the enemy’s
overwhelming material strength and greater numbers;!

the Tokyo Tribunal was a kangaroo court administering “victor’s justice”(shōrisha no sabaki), and all Japanese should reject not only its verdict(s), but
its very institutional and legal legitimacy;!

the sacrifice of human lives in Japan’s cause – most dramatically exemplified

15

There are entire genres and sub-genres not only in Japanese popular literature (including,importantly, manga comic books) and film, but even in video games aimed at young audiences thatare devoted exclusively to this “How Japan Could Have Won” fantasy theme. Pop author and TV
personality Shimoda Kageki and cult hero writer Aramaki Yoshio built lucrative careers around thisgenre in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For an authoritative exploration of this topic, see Morio
Watanabe, “Imagery and War in Japan,” in Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), T. Fujitani,
Geoffrey M. White and Lisa Yoneyama, eds. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp.
129-51.

8by the kamikaze “suicide attack” tactics (hereafter tokkō)16 – was not aninhumane and meaningless waste, but rather, salvaged the honor of the“Japanese race” (Nippon minzoku), even as it was going down to defeat;!

!

Japan’s present day peace and (relative post-Bubble) prosperity is entirely due
to the sacrifices of the war dead, who are now joined with the pantheon ofother traditional “nation-protecting divinities” and are thus deserving of proper
veneration (if not actual worship at appointed Shinto facilities such as
Yasukuni Shrine and its prefectural Gokoku Shrine affiliates); andYasukuni Shrine is the only acceptable venue of centralized national war
memorialization.

Key actors in JLC include:17
!
!
!

!
!
16

Yasukuni Shrine (including its prefectural Gokoku Shrine affiliates);
Nippon Izoku Kai (Japan Association of War Bereaved);
elements within Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the various Diet
member patriotic clubs/“study groups” with which these elements areassociated;
elements within the national bureaucracy, acting both in “official” and “private
individual” capacities;18
Japan Self Defense Force;19Tokkō is an abbreviation for the Japanese wartime euphemism Tokubetsu Kōgeki(tai), directlytranslatable as “Special Attack (Corps)”.
17
The degree of “cross-pollination” among these actors and their various contact networks cannot be
overemphasized; there is striking overlap and interconnectedness in the membership of their various
institutions and groups, most significantly in the organizing and administrative roles played by alumniof the former Imperial Military Academy.
18
E.g., textbook screening by Ministry of Education and Science; also, Ministry of Health, Labor andWelfare (MHLW) bureaucrats have considerable organizational overlap with Izoku Kai, andcoordinate record-keeping activity with Yasukuni Shrine, etc.
19
The involvement of this institution in JLC is clearly evident in its use of this tradition for recruit
education and “professional development”, and in the maintenance of museum exhibits and/or
memorials on JSDF base grounds at taxpayer expense, as well as performance and/or sponsoring of
memorial ceremonies both on and off JSDF base grounds. Of the sixty-one formal public orsemi-public works of monumental statuary honoring the tokkō in Japan proper (an additional fivemonuments are located overseas, mostly in the Philippines), six are located on the grounds of JSDF
facilities (Nakae Hitoshi, ed., Shōwashi no Shōgen [II]: Tokkō Sange (Tokyo: Kaikō Shōgai
Gakushūjuku [Imperial Military Academy Alumni Association Institute of Lifetime Learning], 1998).
In the course of on-topic fieldwork, the researcher has observed JSDF personnel participating in war
remembrance activities of clear JLC ideological slant, in both “on” and “off duty” modes on many

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!
!
!
!
!

war veterans’ associations;
Imperial Military Academy and Imperial Naval Academy alumni associations(i.e., the Kaikōsha and Suikōsha,20 respectively);
corporate elite patriotic clubs/associations (e.g., the Dōdai Keizai Konwa Kai[Dōdai Economic Club]21);
other similar special interest memorial organizations with MHLW-approved
zaidan hōjin status as NPOs; andindividual, group or other institutional actors in media, literature/arts, andacademia lending creative, pedagogical, logistic or ideological support toJLC.22

IV How modern societies pursue “defeat closure”
War remembrance is never a simple matter for a society recovering from the trauma
of armed conflict, but it is never as potentially fractious and problematic as in thecommemoration of a defeat. Greatly complicating matters is the severity of thedefeat,23 not only in terms of human loss, squandered treasure or forfeited territory,
occasions.
20
Both the Kaikōsha and Suikōsha have recently changed their respective membership
qualifications to allow for the entry of recently retired JSDF personnel with no direct personalconnections to the prewar/wartime service academies. This critical decision has significant positive
ramifications for the future multigenerational sustainability of JLC.
21
The Dōdai group’s membership consists of alumni of the former Imperial Military Academy, otherprewar and wartime Imperial Japanese Army officer training programs affiliated with the academy,
and also of graduates of the postwar JSDF National Defense Academy who have reached top
executive levels in their respective careers in the Japanese corporate world. Many of its members also
hold key leadership roles in other JLC institutions/groups, an arrangement with self-evident benefits
from the standpoint of networking and coordinating movement-wide JLC activities. This association
maintains a website at http://www.decaa.org/ (last accessed February 26, 2007) with a link to an
English mirror site. It was the main sponsor of the twin “memorials” for dissenting Tokyo Tribunal
jurist Rhadhabinod Pal found at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and Ryōzen Gokoku Shrine in Kyoto,respectively. Featured prominently on the monuments is an inscription quoting from Pal’s dissenting
opinion at the conclusion of the Tribunal: "When time shall have softened passion and prejudice,when Reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentation, then justice, holding evenly her
scales, will require much of past censure and praise to change places."
22
Representative of this variety of “memory agent” is the Jiyū Shugi Shikan (Association for
Advancement of Unbiased View of History), established by Tokyo University professor Fujioka
Nobukatsu. This organization maintains an English website at http://www.jiyuu-shikan.org/e/ (lastaccessed February 26, 2007). This group – and Professor Fujioka – are of course also associated withthe considerably more vociferous Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho wo Tsukuru Kai (Society for the
Making of New History Textbooks), whose original membership included manga artist and revisionist
extraordinaire Kobayashi Yoshinori.
23
Of course, as the case may be, the community may try to forget its defeat – although willfully

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but perhaps even more lastingly and critically, in terms of the collective
psychological damage – the shock, humiliation, demoralization and disillusionment– incurred by the defeated society as a result of its calamity. One formulation of the
non-physical damage thus involved might be that the trauma resulting from amilitary defeat is directly proportional to the cultural prestige the society originallystaked on the conflict.
In cases of truly ruinous defeat, as when a community experiences a lengthy
foreign occupation and the loss or forced transformation of culturally important
institutions and traditions, the damage may reach beyond the realm of emotions,
economics or politics to approach a meta-level threat of ontological catastrophe.
Such a defeat can be defined as one that, from the standpoint of the vanquishedsociety, poses significant danger of causing:
1)
2)
3)

4)

loss of prestige and legitimacy of traditional social and/or politicalhierarchies;
the undermining of cultural foundation myths;24
theological trauma, in the sense of a perceived or imagined drop(or abandonment) in collective standing vis-à-vis Divine
Providence (or the culturally relevant theological equivalent); 25
and
as a cumulative effect of the above three factors, profound damage
to the individual and collective “mazeway” of the community’samnesiac policies tend to create more problems than they solve, especially when neighbors and/or
former foes have long memories.
24
Most, if not all, of these list items apply to the case of defeated Imperial Japan. John Dower’s
Embracing Defeat:Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999) is theyardstick for English language treatments of this era in Japanese history. The literary works of Abe
Kobo, especially Woman in the Dunes (1962) and The Face of Another (1964), and Yukio, particularly
his Sea of Fertility tetralogy (1964-70), all available in English translation, provide a useful Japaneseperspective on Japan’s post-ontological catastrophe disillusionment (although in Mishima’s case it
might be said that the artist’s own life evoked this disillusionment – and the pathology it caused –more dramatically than anything he ever wrote).
25
The respective experiences of the post-Civil War American South and the post-Ottoman Empire
umma provide the most illustrative cases of this phenomenon in modern history. See Wilson (1980)
for a theological analysis of the former; and Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong?: The Clash between
Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2001) for ananalysis of Islamic ontological trauma in the modern era.

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members.26
Journalist Tom Gross, in a recent Japan Times article, succinctly frames thethematic boundaries of a defeat remembrance discourse, providing a useful idea ofthe emotions – and the stakes – involved:
Making sense of the horror of war is arguably much easier for the victor;
the sacrifices, though tragic, can be rationalized in the context of battles
won, enemies bested and freedoms defended. The defeated meanwhile isleft to ask how it all happened and what it was worth, questions that canhaunt a nation and guide its future for a generation or more.27
It is axiomatic that if a society that has suffered such an “ontologicallycatastrophic” defeat wishes to maintain recognizable continuity with its pre-defeat
identity and not simply atomize into a mass of stateless refugees, it must takemeasures to attenuate the various collective and individual traumas the community
and its members will experience as aftershocks of the calamity. This claim iswell-supported by numerous cases in the modern era of societies recovering fromdefeat in “total” wars fueled and sustained by populist nationalism28 (which lay theonus of shame and humiliation for the defeat directly on the populace as a whole,rather than limiting it to threat to the prestige and authority of the communal rulers,
as was generally the case in pre-modern times).
That said, however (and as will be discussed in more detail below), politicalconsiderations may on occasion discourage insistence on continuity with the recent
communal wartime past as something that will do the society more harm than good
if sustained or revived. In such a case, the war and defeat episodes will be treated

26
The concept of “mazeway” is explained in Wallace (1956). This concept could be somewhat
clumsily defined for our purposes here as an individual’s culturally determined “perception ofreality”.
27“A checkup on war wounds 60 years on”, The Japan Times, February 14, 2007.
28
A by no means comprehensive list of such societies would include: France in 1814 (and after abrief flash of false hope, once again in 1815); the American South in 1865; France in 1871; Germany
and the former Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in 1918; and the vanquished Axis powers(with the possible exception of Italy) in 1945, et al. There has not been a “total war” between
industrialized states since 1945, and given the current proliferation of nuclear weapons around theglobe, the world may never see another of these conflicts again.

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as historical “bumps in the road” and the desired comforting “continuity” with thepast will, of necessity, be sought farther back in communal memory.
Some possible measures of defeat recovery in this vein will involve a
considerable but unavoidable amount of political and psychological sacrifice. One
such measure that can be quite effective (but also quite traumatic – especially in its
early stages) is to embark on a “crash course” of collective contrition andself-excoriation by which the community will reject in toto the recent defeat
experience as an aberration to be expunged from the memorial canon of communal
identity. The most bitter pills to swallow as part of this course of recovery will be
the acceptance that:
1)

2)
3)

4)

the entire society must shoulder responsibility not so much for having
lost the war, but rather for having been “duped” into supporting the
war in the first place;sincere, unconditional contrition for 1) must be displayed in order forthe society to achieve “closure” over the defeat;in order for the sincerity of 2) to be beyond suspicion both within thecommunity and in the eyes of Out-group victims aggrieved (orotherwise offended) by the war, the defeated society’s interpretational
war remembrance narrative for domestic consumption must be
entirely bereft of any lionization or otherwise vindicating
rationalization of the conflict and any publicly expressed
nostalgia/pride for feats of arms conducted in its pursuit (i.e., there
must be no “stab in the back” narratives explaining the defeat, no
public monuments to military glory, no valorizing episodic accountsof wartime events in school textbooks/popular entertainment, etc.);
those who have died either in pursuit of the war effort or as innocent
victims have, for all intents and purposes, died in vain, outside of avery narrow interpretation that these sacrifices were made so that thesurviving community could awake from its “folly” and change its
misguided ways.

Such a “crash course” recovery can be significantly expedited when blame for thecalamitous defeat can be assigned to a small, well-defined political or military13

leadership clique or to a failed ideology readily identifiable as being of recent andartificial origin (therefore minimalizing threat to the society/culture’s “traditional”
identity and values). With the society’s “official history” thus framed “for therecord”, such a recovery, as best demonstrated by the post-Second World Warexperience of Germany,29 can be a fairly straightforward matter: the community
collectively acknowledges its “error” in having allowed itself to be misled into
following the flawed ideology/leadership; scholarly and pedagogical efforts isolate
and vilify the recent regrettable past as an aberration in the society’s otherwise
proud history; and of crucial importance, regret and contrition over the damage andhuman loss incurred by said aberration or mistake is publicly and convincingly
expressed in both domestic and international venues. Once these unpleasant but
necessary tasks have been attended to, the community may proceed apace toward
hermetically sealing the war away in a safely quarantined past.
V “Lost Cause” traditions
But what about cases of defeated societies that are, for whatever reason, unwillingto accept a harsh regimen of recovery – let alone a “judgment of history” that thecause for which they fought and sacrificed so much was misguided and tragicallyflawed, if not actually criminal?
Gaines Foster’s Ghosts of the Confederacy (1986) is an important study of asociety that found itself in just such a post-defeat scenario. His analysis of the“Lost Cause tradition”30 that arose in post-Civil War American South during theperiod of 1865-1913 as a reaction to such circumstances is the first to apply
Linton’s and Wallace’s respective frameworks of revitalization and revivalistic
movements – including significant allegorical reference to the Ghost Dancephenomenon – to an examination of a modern era society dealing with theaftermath of ontologically catastrophic defeat.
Foster argues very convincingly that one way in which the postbellum
American South resisted and overcame the “cultural distortion” resulting from its
29

It may very well be that Germany is the only polity in modern history – if not in the entirety ofrecorded history – to have followed a “bitter pill” course of defeat recovery to a relatively successful
conclusion.
30
The phrase “Lost Cause” as applied to Confederate remembrance in the postbellum South first
appeared in Edward Pollard’s The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of theConfederates (New York: E.B. Treat & Co., 1866.

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ontological catastrophe was to salvage and secure culturally defining customs,
characteristics and institutions (including an institutionalized racism that went on tosurvive another hundred years, largely thanks to these efforts) from the ashes of its
ordeal through the creation of a vigorous Lost Cause tradition. The parallels with
the Japanese postwar experience are striking.
A “Lost Cause” tradition is primarily a discourse created and sustained byrhetorical strategies of apologia31 employed to valorize, vindicate and/or otherwise
rationalize a defeat narrative to ease the collective trauma of a vanquished society.
At the micro-level of individuals, this discourse can help to assuage the grief of the
war-bereaved by assigning “meaning” to the deaths of loved ones (or with thepassage of time, ancestors). At the macro-level of the community, it can be
employed to restore the damaged authority of surviving political institutions andstabilize society by maintaining a notion of continuity with prewar times.
A successful Lost Cause discourse can be said to follow an evolutionary
course that roughly parallels the biological lifespan of the war veterans who
typically form its driving force. Its immediate postwar function – which generallycommences as the first surviving veterans make their way home from theirrespective battlefield debacles – is to reassure the defeated society that the losses it
has incurred in its military struggle have not been in vain.
These earliest efforts tend to be carried out at the interpersonal level, but as
the catastrophe recedes in time and societal conditions begin to return to asemblance of normalcy, the veterans begin to overcome the shame of their defeat tothe point where they can function in public venues as “agents of memory” qualified(if not expected) to interpret the collective defeat experience rhetorically andceremonially. Once this shift has transpired, acts of organized group bereavement
and formal commemoration such as the erection of monumental statuary, theholding of public memorial ceremonies and the formation of fraternal veterans’
associations will begin to take place.
As the “lifespan” of the discourse passes into “middle age” and the Lost
Cause tradition’s most immediate “crisis recovery” tasks have been performed, its
primary function typically morphs from memorialization into political and/or
31
By my working definition of “apologia”, the rhetoric involved therein is not limited to speech or
written text; I hold that filmic, ceremonial, artistic and architectural “text” can also be submitted togenre analysis as apologia.

15

pedagogical activism. One of the goals of this activism is to insure that a “proper
history” of the defeat narrative is recorded before the war’s first-hand witnesses
have passed from the scene. This is typically rationalized as being carried out forthe pedagogical benefit of current or future generations of the society without
personal memories of the war (although it could be said that in some cases thisputative “benefit” will be highly dubious, depending on the pedagogues’ working
definition of “proper history”). Worries on the part of the veterans about
posthumous representation in historical posterity of their cause and conduct clearly
comprise an additional (if not sometimes overriding) motivational factor behindsuch efforts.32
Finally, if the Lost Cause tradition has functioned as intended, when thefirst-hand war bereaved and the old soldiers begin to “fade away” (to use themetaphor of a famously understated American general), the defeat narrative will
undergo a metamorphosis from living history to immortal myth and legend.33
Obviously, there are post-defeat scenarios – such as the aforementioned
experience of post-1945 Germany, or perhaps also that of the former Republic of(South) Vietnam after 1975 – in which the notion (or illusion) of
cultural/political/institutional continuity with the immediate pre-defeat society has
decidedly limited appeal, and in such instances the appearance of a Lost Cause
tradition is unlikely. Such cases aside, however, any defeated society desiring to32

Due to its considerably delayed postwar start, Japan’s Lost Cause can probably be said to be haveat long last reached this developmental stage in earnest only about ten or fifteen years ago, when thegreat majority of its war veterans were already well into their seventies.There are many factors in this
delay, and they are not limited to the political effects of the American postwar occupation and its
policies, or to the deep-rooted pacifism/anti-militarism that characterizes the politics of many
Japanese of the wartime and immediate postwar generations. It is the opinion of the researcher, basedon fieldwork interviewing numerous Japanese war veterans, that culturally specific concepts of shameand expectations regarding contrition displays for failure responsibility vis-à-vis society “gagged” thevast majority of these veterans for several decades after the war. Most did not begin to participate
wholeheartedly in veteran activities until they had reached retirement age. For informative analyses ofthis dynamic and of the culture of Japanese war veterans’ associations in general, see Takahashi
Saburō et al., Kyōdō Kenkyū: Senyūkai (“Group research: war veterans’ associations”)(Tokyo:
Inpakuto Shuppan Kai, 2005).
33
For an excellent comprehensive analysis of this process, see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Cultureof Defeat (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002). For specific treatment of the immediate
postwar Japanese case, John Dower’s Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (NewYork: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999) is the one of best studies to date. Howard Schonberger’s
Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan, 1945-1952 (Kent, OH: The Kent State
University Press, 1989) provides a very detailed analysis of the immediate postwar economic andpolitical factors – as well as American Cold War strategic exigencies – that facilitated later JLC.

16

legitimize its continued existence and minimize the perceived effect of unwanted
post-defeat influences on its identity will give rise to a Lost Cause tradition of one
form or another and to more or less of a degree. Following this premise, it can besaid that a particularly robust Lost Cause tradition can be expected to crystallize ina defeated society which:
1)

2)

3)

is unwilling (or otherwise unable) to make remedial changes and/or
adaptations in its fundamental structure or “traditional” values
despite strong evidence that these factors share culpability for thecatastrophe the society has suffered;adheres to a concept of collective identity based on romantic,
semi-mythical, essentialist notions of immutable communal
character, thus denying the possibility that this character or“essence” has been irreversibly altered/damaged by the defeat; andsuccumbs to collective ressentiment as a strategy for deflecting
and/or obfuscating threatening inquiries into the contradictions
inherent in 1) and 2).

A model of position or agenda options for framers of Lost Cause traditions can be
categorized with one, or combinations, of the following four general orientations,represented here in descending order of specific resonance with a J-Right“preferred reading” of Japan’s defeat narrative:34!
34

Apologia Type A (transcendence)35: “Our experience in the war does

The term “preferred reading” is from Stuart Hall’s ‘Culture, the media and the “ideological effect”’,
in James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woolacott (eds) Mass Communication and Society(London: Edward Arnold, 1977), pp.315-48. It is used here in Hall’s “Birmingham
School”/post-Gramscian sense of the term as a parameter of discursive hegemony. However, as clear
hegemony over the defeat interpretive discourse at a societal has yet to be won, the phrase as used in
the context of this study refers to self-contained discourses within the boundaries of memory agent
communities (e.g. the J-Right). Indeed, one of the theses of this paper is that the separate (thoughconsiderably overlapping) preferred readings (e.g. the four apologia types presented here) possessing
currency within the war remembrance community are showing signs of a gradual merging towards a
grand preferred reading closer in meaning to Hall’s original concept.
35
Parenthesized and italicized terms in this list are from William L. Benoit’s Accounts, Excuses, and
Apologies : a Theory of Image Restoration Strategies (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1995). The primary analytical framework of the dissertation monograph from which this paper
is excerpted is based on the researcher’s theory that defeat remembrance is fundamentally a discourse

17

not have to be defined as a ‘defeat’ at all, but rather, can be regarded asa “moral” victory if cultural, social, political and historical continuity
with the pre-defeat community can be demonstrated, and if it can beshown that our efforts resulted in some benefits (e.g., “liberation” of
Asia from Western colonialism/imperialism, preservation of theImperial throne, etc.).”!

!

!

Apologia Type B (scapegoating): “The defeat happened, but it was due
to extenuating circumstances of the overwhelming material superiorityof the enemy and not to any inherent flaws in ourcause/conduct/character; if we had possessed material parity, our side
would – and should – have won.”
Apologia Type C (bolstering): “The defeat happened, but at least we
can say that we fought valiantly, and our efforts and sacrifices should
be honored accordingly.”
Apologia Type D (compensation): “The defeat happened, but we cansnatch victory from the jaws of defeat by ensuring that our community
never fights another war. We owe this much, at least, to honor those
who made the ultimate sacrifice; failure to do so would be tantamountto rendering those sacrifices as having been for naught.”

Each of the above four apologetic types (often in some combination with one ormore of the others) have broad appeal in popular Japanese consciousness of theexperience of defeat in the Asia-Pacific War.36 Moreover, Type D could be said toof apologia, or to use Benoit’s phrase, “image restoration”. The structure of a bona fide Lost Cause
tradition has a complex architecture of various apologia strategies supporting a “grand narrative” thatexonerates a society from blame for a defeat and legitimizes the continuity of institutions, belief
systems, and power and social hierarchies that have survived the debacle. An excellent study of image
restoration apologia with direct cultural relevance to the Japanese case is Jane Yamazaki’s Japanese
Apologies for World War II (London: Routledge, 2005).
36
The researcher – based on his general observations during on-topic field work and long residence
in Japan – speculates that there is considerable variance of favored (if any) apologia type preference
according to age, social background, gender, educational level, and area of residence. According to
Yoshida Yutaka’s Nihonjin no Sensōkan (Tokyo: Iwanami Gendai Bunko, 2005), the last researchattempts to collect opinion poll data sorted to this level of demographically sorted detail wereconducted in the 1950s – obviously too long ago to be of practical use for the present study. But one
nevertheless wonders how far off the fifty-year-old data would be from the demographic picture today,
and if there has been any overwhelming shift in the interim from the J-Right’s traditionally staunchest
general population support base of working class males engaged in non-professional, industrial or

18

be the very ideological cornerstone of the postwar concept of “war-renouncing
Japan”, and as such, likely remains the Lost Cause interpretation adhered to by thelargest number of Japanese. However, it is interesting – and politically andideologically revealing – that of these four Lost Cause subtypes, the (as of yet still)most popular version, for reasons that will be explained below, is also the one least
favored by the JLC’s most ardent hagiographers.
VI The limits of “victimization” as defeat-exonerating iconography
In the closing months of the Asia-Pacific War, scores of Japanese cities andhundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were incinerated by American B-29
bombers. A dispassionate observer of the Japanese Lost Cause (JLC) discourse
familiar with this history might point out the ready utility of this miserable
experience (and the issue of American accountability for same) in crafting aninterpretation of Japan’s defeat narrative that could deflect (if not altogether
exonerate) Japanese culpability for the war. If emphasis on Japanese victimization,
then, is a potential framework for a viable and guilt-free Japanese war
remembrance discourse, what better poster child for the same, one might argue,
than the American firebombing of Japanese urban areas in 1944-45, climaxing withmushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Not surprisingly, at least threepostwar generations of Japanese politicians, public intellectuals and educators havecome up with the very same idea, and have made extensive and quite effective
historiographical, ideological and pedagogical efforts accordingly.37
However, the expediency of this victimization iconography can come with aprice many Japanese are unwilling to accept. For while historical interpretive
attention paid to victimization has utility in emphasizing themonstrosity/inhumanity/criminality of the victimizers, there is also a reverse side tothat coin: given its intrinsic nature, emphasizing “victimization” can also put underunflattering scrutiny the impotence of the victim vis-à-vis the victimizers, with all
the unwelcome attendant intimations of weakness, incompetence andagricultural occupations, living away from major urban centers.
37
For an informative and parsimoniously focused study of this phenomenon, see James J Orr, The
Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2001). See also Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany andJapan (London: Phoenix, 1994); and Bruce Stronach’s Beyond the Rising Sun: Nationalism inContemporary Japan (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), especially pp.52-4.

19submissiveness that status may entail. If victimization is degrading from theperspective of the victimizer, then it is also degrading from the perspective of thevictim. For Japanese cherishing memories (or media-generated simulations ofsame) of an undefeated Japan sure of its cultural superiority and divinely ordained
invincibility, it is difficult to imagine a more ego-threatening train of thought.
Moreover, emphasis on victimization can pose threats more immediate anduncomfortably close to the political bone than melancholy despair over a noble
Japan long gone with the divine wind: namely, the indignation of “How could ourenemies have done this to us?” can all too easily lead to the self-excoriation of“How could we have allowed this to happen to ourselves?” And while Japanese of
every political stripe regularly engage in impassioned breast-beating for the benefit
of both domestic and international audiences in addressing the first question,
Japanese whose alchemy of defeat remembrance requires a modern mythology ofunsullied national honor may not want the latter question even to be asked at all.
It is clearly in reaction to the ideological and political danger posed by inquiry
into Japan’s primary culpability for its own misfortune that historical revisionist 38
groups such as the Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho wo Tsukuru Kai (Society for the
Making of New History Textbooks) and Nippon Kaigi (Japan Council) label as“masochistic history” (jigyaku shikan) efforts to critically examine imperialist era
Japan’s war responsibility and to incorporate discussion of the issues raised therein
into the nation’s educational curricula.39 A visit to the Yūshūkan Museum of
Yasukuni Shrine – that Valhalla of Japanese martial pride, where scarcely amention of Japanese cities in ashes (or, for that matter, of Japanese civilian wartime
suffering of any kind) is to be found – can reveal this dynamic far more eloquently

38“Revisionists” can be defined, for purposes of this paper, as J-Right advocates of a more positive
interpretation of Japan’s cause and conduct in the Asia-Pacific War. Examples of such advocacy
abound in modern day Japanese politics and “pop” scholarship for mass audience consumption on TV
talk shows, in weekly magazines, etc. For an examination of this phenomenon at the grass-roots level,
see Oguma Eiji and Ueno Yōko, Iyashi no Nashonarizumu: Kusa no Ne Hoshu Undō no JisshōKenkyū (Tokyo: Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Shuppan Kai, 2003).
39
See http://www.ne.jp/asahi/kyokasho/net21/siryou_jiukyokutusin9910.htm; John W. Nelson,‘Signs of Recovery for Japanese Nationalism? The Citizen's Committee for Reclaiming Cultural
Identity through Textbook Reform’, Pacific Rim Report, No. 15, January 2001,
http://www.pacificrim.usfca.edu/research/pacrimreport/pacrimreport15.html; See also McCormack,
Aaron Gerow, ‘Consuming Asia, Consuming Japan: The New Neonationalist Revisionism in Japan’,and Nozaki Yoshiko and Inokuchi Hiromitsu, ‘Japanese Education, Nationalism and Ienaga Saburō’s
Textbook Lawsuits’ in Censoring History, pp. 53-73, 74-95, and 96-126, respectively.

20

than either space or the author’s ability allow it to be explained here. In this sense,and certainly from a JLC standpoint, the utility of victimization imagery forfacilitating a viable alchemy of Asia-Pacific War remembrance is clearly limited, if
not actually counterproductive.
JLC approaches tend instead to emphasize Japanese wartime heroism andsacrifice, with the ultimate aim of achieving a popular consensus on interpretationof the war from which all legacies of shame and humiliation have been expunged.
This goal has of course been a top-slot item in one form or another on the J-Right
agenda since the ink on the Treaty of San Francisco was still drying, and it could beargued that former Prime Minister Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits, aside from theirpolitical utility in pandering to the traditional LDP support base of its largely
elderly and rural conservative constituency, also in part comprised a sincere – if
ham-handed – attempt to kickstart a process that will serve just this long termgoal.40
But the J-Right’s traditional Yasukuni-centric tack and concomitant central
thesis that the “Great East Asian War” was a war of Asian liberation has proved, atleast so far, to be its greatest weakness.41 Either due to having contradictory (i.e.,
decidedly inglorious or otherwise horrific) first-hand experiences in the war, or tohaving been schooled under the more stridently pacifist education policies of theearly postwar decades, there are still too many Japanese who have too muchdifficulty accepting the traditional “hardcore” JLC canon for its lionizing
interpretation of the legacy of Japan’s war to secure a decisive consensus among
the general population. But this demographic reality is not permanent, and thegeneration(s) of Japanese intellectually equipped to be skeptical towards the JLC
line are aging and gradually withdrawing from the classroom, workplace andpolitical podium (and with increasing rapidity, from this mortal coil as well).

40
Koizumi’s personal emotional investment in this issue should not be overlooked. His first cousin,
Iryo Tetsugoro, died as a tokkō pilot at the age of twenty in 1945.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1773883,00.html;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junichiro_Koizumi
41
Yasukuni Shrine’s recent attempts to “clean up” the infamously JLC-slanted tone of its Yūshūkan
Museum with third party assistance from the likes of former professional diplomat (and current
chairman of the “pragmatic conservative” think tank Okazaki Institute) Okazaki Hisahiko (“Yasukuni
Shrine museum finally coming to grips with history?” International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun,
October 20, 2006) can certainly be viewed as begrudging admittance of this reality, and a subsequent
subtle tactic change to accommodate same.

21

Younger generations stepping up to take their leadership spots in Japanese society
have received next to no formal classroom education about the war, and theresultant pedagogical gap in their historical knowledge has been filled with JLC (orJLC-leaning) popular entertainment media interpretations of the war instead.
In the meantime, a toned-down JLC approach more likely to win broader
public support might be found in intimate, humanistic treatments of the
Asia-Pacific War dead – especially of those who died in combat in the Pacific andJapan proper against American and other Western allied forces (i.e. Nanking
pillagers need not apply). Such an approach would be more in the tragic hero mode
traditionally favored in Japanese lore42 than the JLC’s imagery of Japan’s wartime
soldiers as benevolent, continent-liberating supermen. Towards this end, thehistorical figure of the wartime tokkō suicide attack pilot has excellent potential forbeing recruited as just such a symbol, and it is the belief of this researcher thatexactly such a “recruitment process” is currently at work in recent JLC efforts.43
VII The utility of tokkō imagery in a JLC context
While the wartime exploits of the tokkō tinged Western and especially Americanstereotypes of Japanese Other-ness with an aspect of exotic fanaticism still
lingering since the events of 1944-4544 – a cross-cultural (mis)perception nothelped by the newest suicide attack threat the West now faces vis-à-vis Al Qaeda
and its ilk – the tokkō legacy has developed quite differently in Japan's postwar
collective memory. Sixty-one years after the last sortie was flown, the tokkō
campaign remains a complicated and controversial topic in Japan, associated as it
is with debate over the nation’s militarist past and the risks of future
re-militarization, State Shinto and Yasukuni Shrine, and the perennially42

For a critical examination of this genre, see Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes inthe History of Japan (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).
43
There has been a veritable explosion of tokko-themed major studio release films and television
dramas since the mid-1990s, and the rate of the appearance of new media treatments has only
accelerated since the early 2000s.
44
The Henshū Techō column of the 23 March 2006 edition of Yomiuri Shimbun comments – and notwithout a palpable measure of pride – on foreign news media references to Japan’s triumph in the2006 World Baseball Classic as a ‘kamikaze’ victory. While Yomiuri’s editors parse the quote in thecontext of the original ‘kamikaze’ – the storms that destroyed Kublai Khan’s invasion fleets menacing
Japan in 1274 and 1281, respectively – it seems more than likely that the foreign journalists inquestion were evoking memories of the Asia-Pacific War suicide tactic.

22

hypersensitive inujini question. 45 Rare lines of bolder discourse even occasionallydare to venture into soul-searching over the possible existence of deep-level causesin the sociopolitical infrastructure of Japanese culture itself that created thecircumstances under which such an organized, systematic and not only
state-sanctioned but also popularly supported tragedy could occur in the firstplace.46
But from the perspectives of both its lionizers and its critics – as well as of therelatively voiceless majority of Japanese whose views fall somewhere between
these extremes – tokkō is a historical theme saturated with heartrending pathos andheady iconic potency with utility for portraying Japan’s war as adoomed-yet-valiant defensive struggle by a spiritual/traditional Asian society
against a rapaciously acquisitive, spiritually barren but materially overwhelmingWest – a depiction helped to no end by the ready historical imagery of Westerners
in armadas of gleaming, high tech airplanes firebombing wooden cities full of
Asian civilians in the end game phase of that struggle.47 Moreover, tokkō can also
be seen in pride-saving counterpoint to the pathetic imagery of the bombed cities(and in the overarching context of Japan’s defeat as a whole) as a bold rejection of
the passive victim role, therein reifying a libidinally cathected, idealized primal

45
Namely: “Did Japan’s Asia-Pacific War dead perish in vain?” Used in a 1931-45 historical context,
the term inujini – literally “dying a dog’s death” – is generally taken to infer that Japan’s war deaddied for nothing, as their sacrifice was made for a defeated or even unjust cause. Rarely seen in print
in recent years outside of ultra-conservative commentary putting words into the mouths of left wing
critics of Japan’s war legacy, the term was more common in the early postwar writings of Japaneseveterans and/or bereaved family members who held a critical view of Japan’s wartime efforts and of
the consequences therein for lost comrades and/or loved ones – voices that receive comparatively
little attention from mainstream Japanese media today. The work of scholar and activist Ienaga
Saburō – particularly his Taiheiyō Sensō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1968), as well as the 1960s-1970s
work of journalist and non-fiction author (and former wartime Army cameraman) Takagi Tokurō was
exemplary of a genre of postwar commentary that could be said to comprise an “inujini school” ofinterpretations of Japan’s war aims and the consequences of same. Needless to say, this position has
not struck a particularly positive responsive chord among the majority of Japan’s war bereaved.
46
Fukabori Michiyoshi’s Tokkō no Shinjutsu (Hara Shobō, 2001) and Hosaka Masayasu’s Tokkō toNihonjin (Kōdansha Shinsho, 2005) are notable recent books in this genre. Fukabori is the son of
wartime tokkō Sixth Air Army commander Lieutenant General Sugawara Michiō, and journalist
Hosaka is a widely published commentator on Japanese military, political and social issues. Also
noteworthy is the autobiographical memoir of tokkō pilot survivor Kuwahara Kei’ichi, Katararezaru
Tokkō Kichi Kushira (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, 2006).
47
As noted in the previous section, the J-Right hagiographer must be prudent in his or her use of thisvictimization imagery, so as not to besmirch the honor of the Japanese fighting man by implying (orat least overemphasizing) the relative impotence of Japanese arms in the closing phase of the war.

23

essence of Japanese masculinity. 48
Such emotionally laden and idealized iconography has potentiallyparadigm-shifting utility in forming a crystallization point around which analchemy for ego-protecting and emotionally gratifying Asia-Pacific War defeat
remembrance can coalesce. Used to such ends, tokkō imagery can:
!
!
!
!

!

!

48

emphasize Japanese martial prowess, but in a defensive rather than amore morally questionable offensive context;
repair damage to Japanese (and perhaps particularly male) pride sufferedfrom the defeat and subsequent Allied occupation;emphasize Japan’s war with the West – specifically with superpower
America – as opposed to its victimization of other Asians;
cast the war in a populist ‘by the people, for the people’ light byshowcasing the deeds of the Japanese rank-and-file citizen-soldier rather
than the activities of high level policymakers (imagery that can lay blameon a political elite for Japan’s calamity – payment for which issymbolized by the sacrifice of the tokkō – while simultaneously
alleviating the state’s burden of responsibility by spreading duplicity forthe tokkō concept as widely and evenly as possible in referring to thepilots as “volunteers”);
arouse sympathy in generations of Japanese unfamiliar with the war, butmore in a sense of gratitude and admiration for the sacrifices of its
fighting men than of pity over their fate; andbe portrayed as embodying the finest aspects of an idealized national
character (kokuminsei), particularly loyalty, bravery, purity of spirit andcommitment to selfless sacrifice (messhi hōkō), implying a comforting
sense of spiritual continuity with a halcyon Japanese past.49

The concept of libidinal cathexis in the context of idealized self-imagery (in this case, an
ethnocentric identity-reinforcing palimpsest of idealized masculinity) is cited here in the sense
described in Mitscherlich, pp.25-31, 35.
49
See Kobayashi Yoshinori, Sensōron (Tokyo: Gentōsha, 1998), et al. For a more “politicallycorrect” treatment of what is basically the same concept of “multigenerational cultural continuity”
vis-à-vis “tokkō spirit” (i.e. “the leaders” and “the war” were bad, but messhi hōkō – and therefore thevalue system enabling tokkō – is identifiable in an essentialist sense as a temporally/historicallytranscendent sui generis Japanese character trait), see Ogiwara Hiroshi, Bokutachi no Sensō (Tokyo:
Futabasha, 2004).

24

Although aggrandizing the legacy of the tokkō for such purposes would appear to
run the risk of also highlighting the horror and waste of human life entailed in thetactic, the J-Right agent of memory (savvy or not) rejects out of hand this potential
ideological hazard, confident – and probably not without reason – that his or her
countrymen – or at least any a revisionist would consider worthy of that distinction– would never dare to subscribe (at least publicly) to a disparaging view of thesacrifices of the brave but innocent young tokkō.
The historical figure of the tokkō pilot thus offers the tantalizing potential ofbeing simultaneously dashing hero, sterling role model, and victim of historicalforces beyond his control (a qualification conveniently obfuscating the causality
implications of Japan’s decision to wage the war in the first place). He is both lamband lion, a figure upon whom – if the fate of the human beings whose bodies heexploded and whose flesh he sprayed with flaming aviation fuel can be dismissed
as insignificant – little or no moral censure can be levied. As recent Japanese filmic
and literary treatments of his exploits demonstrate so emphatically, he is the perfecticon within the context and requirements of a JLC narrative of defeat remembrance
from which shame and guilt over the Asia-Pacific War are to be expunged.
VIII The tokkō as cultural role model
As strongly evidenced by the runaway popularity of sympathetic treatments of thetheme in popular literature and other media (and again, this is a momentum
increasing in recent years), tokkō is seen by many Japanese today as proof of theexistence, in a culturally essentialist sense, of some primal, sacrosanct, immortal
quality of Japanese identity (particularly its masculine aspects) – comforting
reassurance that the “Japanese spirit” or yamato damashii has survived intact into
the modern era. Parsing this agenda in a simple semiotic and logical framework,
JLC’s agents of tokkō hagiography seek to “naturalize” the tokkō “signifier” to thepoint where “patriotic” Japanese will be beholden to the following syllogistic loop:!
!

The tokkō concept and (its concomitant) tokkō seishin (tokkō spirit)
are proud and beautiful sui generis qualities of Japaneseness.
To reject proud and beautiful such sui generis qualities ofJapaneseness as evil or misguided is to deny one’s own identity as a25!

Japanese.
To reject the tokkō concept and tokkō seishin as evil or misguided isto deny one’s own identity as a Japanese.

Once horrific and/or unappealingly fanatic aspects can be expunged from the tokkō
legacy, this agenda will proceed apace, with only tokkō’s positive aspects ofbravery, patriotism and “noble sacrifice” (tattoi gisei) left within the field of vision.
The JLC’s adherents believe this historiographical flanking movement will be of
immeasurable benefit to the self-esteem of current and future generations ofJapanese.50
In addition to this adept use of intensely socialized uchi/soto(In-group/Out-group) patterns of exclusivist Japanese group identity in promoting
adherence to the JLC tokkō canon (a tactic clearly identifiable in Durkheimian
terms as a utilization of the coercive power of a conscience collective51), thepresentation of preferred readings of the tokkō historical narrative sweetened with
self-Orientalizing trappings is another effective tack taken by tokkō hagiographers.
Such practice, of course, is in keeping with time-honored tropes of Japanese
identification/portrayal of the Self vis-à-vis a non-Japanese Other dating at leastfrom the Meiji Period 52 , and as tokkō hagiography produced for popular
consumption has increasingly demonstrated from the wartime era to the present day,this tradition is clearly evoked in efforts to naturalize tokkō referents towards
making this imagery and concept all the more accessible – and thus
psychologically digestible – for the Japanese public. Moreover, time would appear
to be on the side of the hagiographers, for as raw and traumatic images of the war
50 Representative of this interpretation of the tokkō narrative is the ideological stance of the Tokkōtai
Senbotsusha Irei Heiwa Kinen Kyōkai (Special Attack Corps Memorial Association), Japan’s premiertokkō memorial association. The association maintains a Japanese language website at
http://www.tokkotai.or.jp/index.htm. The Association’s entire catalogue of newsletters published since
1984 can be downloaded at http://www.tokkotai.or.jp/kikanshi/bach-number-syoukai-1.htm.
51
This interpretation of Durkheim’s terminology is from Tony Bilton, ed., Introductory Sociology(London: Macmillan, 1996), p.656.
52
The researcher refers here to the reactionary response from Japanese traditionalists to the Meiji
regime’s immediate post-Restoration “housecleaning” of “outdated” Japanese customs, and theregime’s subsequent accommodation of this reaction in the Westernized/Orientalized pastiche thatlater came to define Meiji and, arguably, modern day ideological framings of Japanese identity. The
modern genealogy of this essentialism could arguably be traced half a century earlier to late
Tokugawa kokugaku/Mito School thought. See Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-images(Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002).

26

in living Japanese memory gradually recede and disappear, space in the popular
consciousness is vacated to be replaced by more aesthetically and patrioticallyappealing myth and legend.
However, that said, it should be kept in mind that in the postwar period thetokkō legacy has not always been regarded – even by those who initially sought tomemorialize it publicly – as viable symbolism around which a recovered Japanesenational pride might crystallize. Rather, in the immediate postwar Occupation
period – partly as a result of a media campaign no doubt carefully watched, if notactually assisted, by SCAP53 – many, if not most, Japanese specifically targeted
and vilified the tokkō as having embodied the worst excesses of prewar andwartime Japanese militarism and ultranationalist education.54 Even more tellingly(and poignantly), the great majority of the thousands of tokkō veterans who
survived the war, fearing rebuke and ostracism, carefully hid their former identities
as members of suicide attack units, even neglecting in many cases to tell their own
families about their wartime experiences. 55 It would not be untoward tohypothesize that an early postwar prediction that Japanese movies, comic books,
novels, television programs, memorials and museum exhibits would (or moreprovocatively, should) someday make not only tenderly sympathetic but also
glowingly laudatory references to tokkō would have met with utter incredulity – if
not outright rage – from a Japanese audience fifty or sixty years ago.
But nevertheless, half a century later, the evidence points increasingly to thesuccessful, if gradual, naturalization of the tokkō signifier: the hypotheticallyprophesied literary and cinematic encomia exist, consumed with cathartic ardor by
millions of Japanese readers and moviegoers; the memorial statuary and museum
exhibits stand from the southern tip of Okinawa to the northern tip of Hokkaido;
53

American military authorities released Japanese wartime “military secrets” regarding tokkō
operations, replete with extensive technological detail, to the Japanese press in the early months after
the war, likely in culturally subjective expectation that the Japanese populace would be shocked bythese revelations of the “inhumanity” to tokkō to the same extent the Americans were. An example ofan article written with obvious “informational assistance” by the authorities appeared in the Asahi
Shimbun of October 6, 1945 under the headline “Jinrai (‘Divine Thunder’ Ōka rocket bomb unit):
actual configuration was a missile/mother ship unit; the ‘V-1 rockets with human eyes’ shared thetragic fate of their slow, unwieldy mother ships.”
54
Particularly noteworthy in this genre of immediate postwar tokkō opprobrium is a December 16,
1945 submission to the Asahi Shimbun editorial column Koe (“Voice”) by novelist Shiga Naoya.
55
See M.G. Sheftall, Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (New York: NAL
Caliber, 2005).

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even Japanese fans attending recent Winter Olympics games to cheer on theirnational team’s ski jumpers have been conspicuous in television coverage beamedaround the globe, sporting “kamikaze” headbands identical in design (神○風) to
those worn by tokkō pilots of sixty-some years ago. These same headbands areavailable for reasonable prices in souvenir shops at Narita Airport and Tokyo Tower.
Judging from this evidence, it must be acknowledged that the J-Right’s efforts tovalidate and valorize the historical legacy of the tokkō (and by association, thelegacy of Japan’s war with the West as a whole) comprise one of the most patient,
determined and ultimately successful “image restoration” campaigns in the historyof defeated societies.
IX Conclusion
It should be stressed that the J-Right’s dogmatic JLC interpretation of the
Asia-Pacific War and its scathing appraisal of the consequences of this defeat havenever reached anything approaching overwhelming popular consensus in postwar
Japan. On the contrary, the nation’s defeat in the war brought about changes ofwhich many – if not most – Japanese now approve. One of the earliest and mostsignificant of these changes was the grievous undermining in the national psyche of
the very thing that the J-Right most earnestly seeks to revive, i.e., the prewar
Imperial Japanese variant of what George Mosse identifies as “the official linkageof the cult of the fallen to manliness and national glory”. 56 And as any
self-respecting advocate of the J-Right cause would be only too quick to concur, it
would be no exaggeration to claim that the Japanese state has never been the same
since the demise of this “cult”.
Widespread popular rejection of the “cult of martial glory” and its
hyper-gendered symbolic equating of war-making capability with ideal masculine
qualities is evident in the fact that since the promulgation of Japan's present
Constitution in 1947, opinion surveys have consistently shown that a majority of
the Japanese population (with a slight gender variation favoring women) has
regarded the nation’s formal renunciation in that document of the right to wage war
as a centerpiece of cultural pride and identity. 57 However, a demographically56
George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (London: Oxford
University Press, 1990), p.223.
57
See Yoshida ( 2005), and Saaler (2004).

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smaller but (as present conditions clearly demonstrate) no less politicallysignificant segment of Japanese society – i.e., the J-Right’s main popular support
base – has never been comfortable with this basis of postwar national identity, itsprerequisite pride-swallowing historical interpretation of Japan’s war as having
been unjust, irrational or otherwise ill-advised and morally flawed, and the state’s
perennial subservient role in the postwar U.S./Japan defense relationship. As
evidenced by the sheer emotionality of long-simmering controversies over such
issues as Yasukuni Shrine, school textbook treatments of the war, the uproar overofficial recognition of the “Comfort Women” in the early 1990s, and Article 9
debates, these J-Right sympathies form a strong undercurrent of sentiment inJapanese politics. 58
Most conspicuous in recent years has been the appeal of J-Right thought
among younger Japanese with no direct experience of (and, as noted earlier, little
or no formal education about) the war, who see the postwar changes forced on theircountry as being little more than arbitrarily and disrespectfully applied legacies ofAllied “victor’s justice” and multigenerational sources of national humiliation. As
long as the J-Right has the ability to reach audiences in this demographic slot with
its ressentiment-fueled “Who Moved My Warrior Mojo?” jeremiad – either throughdirect appeal via editorialization in news media, or perhaps much more effectively,
through the emotion-stimulating image machine of popular entertainment – theJLC’s Ghost Dance will continue, its energy available on tap for shrewd politicians
and perennially frustrating Japan’s hopes of achieving resolution on war issues
with Asian neighbors and former foes.
Despite their dramatic progress of recent decades, even the most optimistic
J-Right policitians and pundits are likely resigned to the idea that they will not live
to see the most rewarding fruits from the ideological seedlings and tree branches
that have been planted and pruned with such devotion and care since the return ofJapanese sovereignty in 1952. And this would hold as true for relative “youngsters”
like Abe Shinzō as it traditionally has for the J-Right’s ideological fathers and58

See Buruma (1994); Gavan McCormack, ‘The Japanese Movement to “Correct” History’, inCensoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, Mark Seldenand Laura Hein, eds. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000); John Nathan, Japan Unbound: A Volatile
Nation’s Quest for Pride and Purpose (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Franziska Seraphim, War
Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,2006).

29

grandfathers (literally, in Abe’s case). But if the movement has demonstrated any
consistent characteristics during its sixty-year-long and continuing campaign, it isthat it possesses patience and determination that are decidedly lacking in the efforts
of its ideological foes of the long hopelessly moribund and now effectively gagged(at least in terms of the ability to reach mass audiences) J-Left.
As a result, the dominant narrative in the public historical consciousness of
the Asia-Pacific War is being effectively transformed from “cautionary tale”59 tofeel-good heroic myth, particularly in the context of that conflict being viewed as
the culmination of Japan’s rapid post-Meiji modernization as a necessary measure
to confront Western “imperialism”. And as this transformation takes place, so will
the Japanese move that much closer to once again tolerating the thought of theirsons (and likely, in future conflict, daughters) participating – and dying – incombat.
It is the hope of the researcher that readers will have gleaned from this paper
an appreciation that this transformation is not a theoretical possibility but a realprocess that is not only already long underway, but probably by now unstoppable.
The J-Right has not yet won its war, but in sparking and sustaining thistransformation in popular Japanese historical consciousness it has won a criticallyimportant battle. Regardless of whether historians far in the future will praise ordamn this victory, none will be able to deny that it was a turning point in theevolutionary course of postwar Japanese national identity.
M.G. SHEFTALL is a PhD candidate at Waseda University’s Graduate School of
Asia-Pacific studies, a member of the Faculty of Informatics of Shizuoka University
and the author of Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (NewYork: NAL Caliber, 2005).

59

This phrase – and its contextual usage – is from Carol Gluck’s “The Past in the Present”, inPostwar Japan as History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), pp.64-98, 79.