Japan Is Nobody's Ally

by OWEN LATTIMORE

1

AMERICAN policy in Japan is based on the assumption that as Japan goes, so Asia can be made to go. The fundamental assumption of our policy is that Japan can be made the workshop of Asia and a bulwark against Russia. This assumption is based on the theory that Japan, as an instrument of American policy, combines all the virtues of Britain, Germany, and the Kingdom of Nepal. Like Britain, it is to be used as a stationary aircraft carrier. Like Germany, it is superior in industrial development to all the countries near it, and therefore like Germany it is to be made the center from which the industrial development of the mainland near it is coordinated, controlled, and oriented against Russia. Like the Kingdom of Nepal, which is independent of India and furnishes fierce mercenary Gurkha warriors to both India and Britain, the “naturally disciplined” people of Japan, who are “traditionally anti-Russian,”are expected, as time goes on, to furnish tough colonial legions of a new kind which will be solidly loyal to the America which supports their Homeland “workshop.”

The first link in this chain of assumptions is the entirely fanciful theory that Japan can be made not only into a workshop, but a workshop that controls Asia. The second is the equally fanciful theory that Japan can be made into a politically reliable bulwark against Russia. The third is the most fanciful theory of all: that there is only one Japan, a solid, internally indivisible unit, like one Republican, or one trained seal.

This whole chain of assumptions and cluster of fantasies is an illusion. The illusion was born out of the stunned docility with which the Japanese accepted surrender. After the fanatic, bitter-end ferocity with which the Japanese had fought throughout the South Pacific and at Tarawa and on Okinawa, it was thought that this unbelievably sudden and complete meekness could only be explained by the “inherent sense of discipline” of the Japanese when the Emperor ordered them to surrender. The growth of the illusion was fostered by the precise, clockwork efficiency with which General MacArthur took over. He did, probably, the best job of its kind that has ever been done. The illusion grew to full stature during the first period of General MacArthur’s administration, which ran from the surrender in August, 1945, well into 1946.

In this period an American New Deal was carried out in Japan. With the touch of fatherly mysticism that he combines with his old-line Republicanism, General MacArthur salted New Dealers all through SCAP, his headquarters organization as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. It is true that there were never many at the very top; but there were a great many in the middle ranks, which in any bureaucracy are all-important. They were especially influential in the drafting of policy, with the result that even in this period policies were usually more progressive and New Dealish in the form in which they were announced than in the form in which they were carried out.

Some of the New Dealers were civilian officers who had been commissioned during the war. Some came straight from Washington after the surrender, when SCAP in Tokyo, desperately short of experienced bureaucrats, was squalling for help just at the time that President Truman, in his first pathetic attempt to appease the Republicans in the name of “unity,” was junking New Dealers as fast as they could be nudged out of the way by the coldshoulder treatment. The irony of this migration from Washington to Tokyo recalled the good old days when America shipped so much scrap iron to Japan that we had a shortage of scrap in America.

Portentous changes began when the Eightieth Congress was elected in America. As its first war whoops were borne on the air waves to Tokyo, its tribal kinsmen on General MacArthur’s staff began to gather in powwows of their own. The scalps of the pale-faced New Dealers began to come loose. There was a purge. The cleverest—and crookedest — of the old-line Japanese politicians caught on. Recovering their poise and agility, they made new bids. Get Japan off ihe neck of the American taxpayer? Nothing easier, they said with perfectly straight faces. If only the American taxpayer would stick his neck a long, long way out, they would get off it. They would make Japan an ally, a workshop, a bulwark.

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IN the development of the whole situation, and in the widening gap between the realities of Japan and the illusory picture of Japan that has been built up in America, General MacArthur’s personal publicrelations setup has been of incalculable importance. No American general has ever had public-relations henchmen who were so fast on their feet or so slow in the head. Their creed is that General MacArthur should be represented not only as a source of great wisdom, which he is, but as the only source of unerring wisdom, which he is not. It is a tragedy that this should be so, because when the mirage breaks down, General MacArthur’s high and deserved place in history is likely to be damaged. lie is a general of genius, an extremely capable administrator, a great statesman, and potentially a very great statesman. His one weakness, which has prevented him from realizing his full potential as a statesman, is his inability to keep sycophants out of his entourage.

The truth is that the present “realistic” policy in Japan is going to fail, because it is not in fact realistic, but pseudo-realistic. The truth is that there have in recent history been several Japans. There is the Japan that we defeated. There is the interim Japan of the New Deal period between V-J Day in August, 1945, and the election of the Eightieth Congress in the fall of 1946. There is the Japan that American policy has aimed at creating through 1947 and 1948 and still hopes to create. And, finally, there is the real Japan of today. This real Japan is unstable in its internal composition. It is likely to blow up in our faces.

The Japan that we defeated has always been presented to the American public as a Japan stunned by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but still disciplined in its reflexes and responsive to the Emperor’s command to surrender, which saved untold American casualties. But the fact is that the Japan which was ready for surrender, with or without the atom bomb, was being held together in those last days by fear, not by loyalty to the Emperor.

It can be said with certainty that the prestige of the Emperor had become so hollow that only a thin veneer remained uncracked. What saved the Emperor was General MacArthur’s skill in treating him with just the right amount of dignity over and above what was required by correct protocol, and the clear American intention that he should be retained as t he symbolic head of state.

The fear that held priority in Japan in the last weeks before surrender was the fear that the Americans would land like ravening savages, slaughtering men, women, and children. This fear made it seem better to die like brave Japanese, facing the beaches, than to submit and be slaughtered. It was not the authority of the Emperor, ordering surrender, that quelled this fear, but the instinctive knowledge of a people who had never in all their history had an order from an Emperor that was not for the good of the Emperor. If the Emperor ordered surrender, he must have fixed things up.

Once MacArthur had shown, after the landing, that his troops were under belter discipline than the Japanese had over known among their own troops, there was a shaky period in which the revulsion of feeling made admiration for the Americans paramount over respect for the Emperor or any of the other old symbols of authority. With an admirable combination of firmness and condescension toward a people who had always been used to authority and who were emotionally shattered by defeat. General MacArthur steadied the populace and guided the government into the channels of his New Deal period.

In this period the representatives of the old authority were given the fright of their lives, but were gradually allowed to understand that the Americans would not let the wrath of the people work up to a full head of steam. The people were given to understand that the Americans would grant them a lot more democracy than they had ever had before, but that they had better not try to win any democracy for themselves above and beyond what was prescribed in the SCAP directives. Political jails were opened. Even Communists were let out. Labor unions were allowed to assert themselves once more. There was liberty of the press, radio, the theater, public speech, and assembly to a degree altogether surprising under a military occupation of a defeated country.

Eager New Deal beavers slapped together a new constitution which was to be the ark of the new covenant of democracy. General MacArthur took great personal interest in it. Several passages of rich, beautiful prose, including a total renunciation of war and of the right to maintain armed forces, standing out like the phrases in capital letters in a Hearst editorial, were universally ascribed to the General himself. It was — of course — officially a Japanese constitution, promulgated not by SCAP but by the Japanese authorities. Japanese delicately intimated that they knew what the score was by circulating the story, after the Japanese text had been published, “What do you think of the new constitution i ” “I don’t know; I cant read English.” And indeed, there were many passages difficult to translate into intelligible Japanese.

In spite of its inevitable touches of irony and pathos, this was a good period. Real democracy cannot be given. It must be earned, and won against opposition. Above all, it is impossible to “give” democracy under an alien military occupation. What General MacArthur really gave to the Japanese people — and it was the best and wisest thing in his power to give them — was a schooling in the practices of democracy. They were allowed to act as if they had won and created some of the basic rights and duties of democracy. They were put through their paces. The difference between all this and real democracy is like the difference between taking the subway to a riding school in Manhattan and being turned loose with a horse in Montana and told to find your own way to Arizona; but the practice was invaluable for a people who will one day sign a peace treaty and see the occupation end, and will then have to find their way from their own Montana to their own Arizona.

Then came the period in which policies in Tokyo echoed first the approach and then the arrival of the Eightieth Congress. The equivalent of the end of price controls in America was permission for American businessmen to take advantage of the American government’s practical monopoly of control over Japan to resume private enterprise. The costs of occupation were paid by the taxpayer (though nominally charged to the Japanese government, to be paid in some unknown future). Any profits that could be made by private enterprise stayed private. In order that the government, in the public interest, should determine the proper scope of business interest, influential businessmen were assigned to one official mission after another and sent out to Japan.

The equivalent of the Taft-Hartley Act was a tightened control of labor unions. Strikes whjph the unions were likely to lose were of course permitted. Important strikes which the unions might have won were called off by administrative order. The program for breaking up the Zaibatsu, the great combined vertical and horizontal trusts, was put in the icebox.

In this period it became evident that the society of Japan is still, like the society of Germany, a sick society. Imperialism, like fascism, is a disease that bites deep. Those who wish to cure it simply by drafting well-worded constitutions and circulating some improving literature should face the facts.

The grip that imperialism or fascism gets on a people depends on whether they get anything out of it. For decades, long before Pearl Harbor, a lot of Japanese got a lot out of imperialism. Formosa, Korea, and later Manchuria provided not only big profits for big shots, but jobs and the interest of travel and the feeling of belonging to a superior people for hundreds of thousands of Japanese who otherwise would never have had anything except the humblest employment. Engineers, technicians, newspaper correspondents, and traveling salesmen benefited as well as army officers. The feeling grew that the Japanese were entitled to be better off than their neighbors, and to have their neighbors pay for it.

In their post-surrender New Deal period the Japanese took their new democracy seriously, because that was the period in which it seemed most certain that they were going to have to work their own passage into the future. They could not do so unless they abandoned the feelings of superiority and privilege. In the Eightieth Congress period the old disease came back on them because the American emphasis on the American interest in making Japan the workshop of Asia and a bulwark against Russia seemed to assure them once more of a higher position in life than the one they actually earned: the Americans would support them in the style of life to which they had become accustomed while lording it over the Formosans, the Koreans, and the Chinese.

It is with this feeling well revived and going strong that the Eightieth Congress period of American policy in Japan has merged into the present period. Our policy now aims at creating a Japan which is to be the counterpart in Asia of the kind of Germany we are trying to create in Europe. It is to be less and less a conquered enemy, a ward, or even an instrument of policy, and to become more and more an overt ally. As the workshop of Asia, it is to be closely integrated with America, so that American economic policy will flow unobstructed through Japan into the rest of Asia. As an ally, it is to be not only an ally against Russia, but an ally taking precedence over China, our own former ally and Japan’s former enemy, in which we are now so sadly disappointed.

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THERE remains the necessity of scrutinizing our hopeful policy for the future. We must realizethat nothing ties Japan down to be America’s permanent ally in Asia. A Japan made strong enough by American subsidy to hold an economic ascendancy over the rest of Asia, and strong enough to be an American ally against Russia if it wants to be, is automatically a Japan strong enough to doublecross America and make its own deals both with Russia and with the rest of Asia.

It is true that Japan must be included in the eventual balance to be struck between the American interest in Asia and the Russian interest. But it is equally true that America cannot force the striking of that balance by trying to make Japan or any other single country in Asia the primary instrument of American policy. The general stabilization that will eventually emerge between America and Russia will in large part result from the realization that Asia cannot be brought fully under the control of either of them. It is unwise to overlook the historical part played by Japan in transforming an Asia under control into an Asia out ol control. There are Japanese who realize that Japan will only be able to become free by taking its place not a dominant place — in an Asia out of the control of either of the two superpowers.

It is in this light that we must study the real Japan that underlies all the other partly historical, partly transitory, and partly illusory Japans. This real Japan is undergoing internal changes. More than one outcome is possible. Our policy problem therefore ranges beyond “what to do with Japan. We must also think of the effects in Japan of our policy about Japan.

Unlike Germany, Japan has no Ruhr. In attempting to make Japan the workshop of Asia and a bulwark against Russia, there are certain advantages that we can exploit; but there are also serious deficiencies to be overcome. The balance sheet is not in our favor.

What Japan does not have is coking coal, iron, oil, bauxite for making aluminum, or the capacity to produce on a large scale some of the important agricultural raw materials for industry, such as cotton. Japan does not have enough salt to sustain its chemical industry or enough wood of the right kind to sustain its rayon industry; and both of these were formerly important earners of foreign exchange. In addition, of course, Japan has about a £0 per cent deficiency in food production; and this problem is aggravated by lack of fertilizers, which have to be imported.

What Japan does have is hydroelectric energy, one of the big requirements of both heavy and light industry; coal other than coking coal, though not enough of it; and silk. Japan’s most important resources, however, are human: the most advanced and diversified technical and managerial know-how in Asia, and the largest pool of skilled industrial labor.

With these resources and in spite of these deficiencies Japan in fact was for a while the workshop of Asia. The use of military power was what bridged the deficiencies. By imperial control ol Korea and Formosa, later of Manchuria, and for a while of much of China and all Indo-China, Siam, Malaya, Burma, and Netherlands India, Japan was able to plan the extraction of raw materials and to regulate processing and distribution. The form of control made it possible not only to obtain raw materials, but to dictate exchange values. Raw materials were extracted at colonial or coolie wage rates. When processed, one portion was set aside to maintain the military machine that kept the whole business going. Another was allocated to consumer goods for the countries that produced the raw materials. A third, before Pearl Harbor, went into world trade and earned dollars and pounds sterling.

The United States cannot put Japan back in business as a workshop of this kind. America made enormous sacrifices to break Japan’s imperial grip on Asia and the Pacific. Even war scares about liussia are not enough to make American public opinion reverse itself and demand an American reconquest, on Japan’s behalf, of Japan’s old fields of aggression in Asia.

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A PROGRAM for making Japan a workshop must depend either on American subsidies or on direct agreements between Japan and parts of Asia which America cannot control. Direct American grants to Japan jumped from 96 million dollars in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1946, to 292 million dollars in 1947 and 423 million dollars in 1948. In addition, loans and credits totaled 116 million dollars in 1947 and 61 million dollars in the fiscal year ending in 1948. Adding the costs of actual military occupation which nominally are chargeable to the Japanese government at some time in the future when Japan becomes solvent — it is a reasonable estimate that the total American expenditure on Japan, including military costs, approaches a billion a year.

Japan now gets its major imports of food and raw cotton from the United States, on a government basis. In 1947, 53 per cent of the value of Japan’s imports was in grain and starch, 13 per cent in raw cotton, and 12 per cent in fertilizers. By 1948, Japan attained a favorable ratio of eight to one in its exports to the Orient as compared with imports from other countries, but was able to export to the United States only one twenty-fifth of the value of its imports from the United States. 1 hese ratios indicate an increasing indebtedness to the United Stales, with no increase in the ability to pay off the debt, since the “soft currency” income from Japanese sales to Asia is not wanted by the United States.

Meanwhile it is apparent that China will soon be in a position to make economic oilers to Japan. The northeastern provinces (Manchuria), formerly so closely integrated with Japan, have a surplus of food to offer. Most of this surplus never was marketed in China; the established channels of trade do not run in that direction. There will be an overall food deficiency in China until the 1949 harvests, because of the civil war; but after that, offering food to Japan would not cause hardships in China.

This food could be offered to Japan at prices much lower than food from America. Soybeans, ol which there are big accumulated stocks, are useful for many industrial purposes, as well as for food. The cake that is left after pressing out the bean oil is of high value both as cattle feed and as fertilizer, of which Japan is desperately short.

More important still, the northern and northeastern provinces of China are traditionally Japan’s greatest sources of iron and coking coal, and of salt for the chemical industry. Japan formerly used China’s iron ore and coking coal to make first pig iron and then steel.

An important variation on this pattern is now possible, China could offer pig iron and later, as the Chinese iron and steel industries develop, semiprocessed and processed iron and steel in various forms. In this way Japan could retain a useful and profitable steel and machine-building industry, which step by step could contribute to the industrialization of the rest of Asia. A high level of employment could be sustained, and a full scope of usefulness for Japan’s managers and technicians. Yet Asia and the world would he secured against a revival of Japanese militarism and aggression because Japan would no longer control the sources of supply. By withholding raw ore and supplying Japan only with pig iron and other semiproeessed materials, China would have absolute power to cut off the revival of Japanese war industry.

Moves and offers of this kind are now practical politics. Their political importance is sharpened by the fact that Japan, while under American control, is not a free agent. China can make offers which flatter the Japanese with the prospect of honorable economic interdependence, on terms of costs and prices that suit both countries. These offers can be worded in such a way that if Japan, under American control, is constrained to turn them down and to continue in a growing dependence on America and indebtedness to America, it will be very difficult for American policy to escape looking like a dog in the Japanese manger.

Such moves would affect the conditions under which both America and Russia maneuver for economic, political, and strategic advantage. They would also do more than that. They would promote new groupings in Japanese domestic politics. Both the labor union movement and the parties of the Left would be able to press demands for friendly reintegration with Asia, based not simply on political sympathy but on arguments of solid economic advantage. The effort, of the Japanese Communists to take over a large part of the membership of the Social Democrats would be strengthened. General MacArthur would find military occupation and administrative control less and less adequate for chastening the labor unions, manipulating political parties, and jockeying the Communists and the rest of the radical Left out of position. America would slip from ascendancy over the whole of Japan to the awkward position of partisan support of the Right in a divided Japan.

Rightist interests in Japan are already aware of these possibilities, and are preparing their countermoves. Without giving any hint that they might, if it ever suits them, refuse to let Japan be used as America’s vanguard against Russia, they will, as time passes, steadily build up the emphasis on America’s obligation to protect them from Russia. When the end of the war forced Japan out of colonial Southeast Asia, the conservatives saw dearly what the next phase of colonial politics was going to be like and what opportunities it held for them. Japanese conservatives and leftists have one thing in common: they realize that as a defeated and occupied nation, Japan has a long and rough road to travel to get back to independence and freedom of action in international politics. In this, it is like the colonial countries which are struggling to get as much independence as they can from a Europe backed by America.

It is dangerous for America to overlook this fact. There is an important area of political maneuver in which Japanese conservatives and leftists and rightwing and left-wing colonial nationalists can get together. As maneuvering goes on, it will be possible for Japan to emerge, suddenly and without warning, and with the hearty participation of some of the most powerful Japanese conservatives, in a position more anti-American than anti-Russian. Once the occupation has ended, it will be possible for Japan to make such a move at any moment when it appears that the combined strength of Japan and the colonial peoples has reached a point where they can form a solid front against, an American-backed Europe. The move, when made, might either be permitted without interference from Russia and China, or actually be assisted by them.

An Asia out of control may set tle into a new position in world politics during the next, few decades by a series of landslips, each causing a series of alarming tremors but no general earthquake. During one or another of these landslips Japan, after talking a wonderful anti-Russian line up to the very last moment, and after getting every possible kind of help out of America, may see an opening which makes it possible to slip out from under America’s control without coming under Russia’s control. And Russian policy, for decades to come, may be guided by the belief that if it. is not. possible to bring under Russian control, or into a federation dominated by Russia, any part of Asia that may break away from European or American control, then it is wisest to settle for an Asia out of control.

The mere possibility of such developments affects the American interest in Japan and American policy toward Japan as a part of Asia. The possibility that as Japan goes, so Asia can be made to go, is in fact a decreasing possibility. The increasing probability is that as Asia goes, so Japan will go — in its alignments with other countries and in the alignments and oppositions of its own political parties.