Conclusion

In the few years before 1937 attempts by the state to dominate national life, though of limited success in the economic sphere, were noticeably effective in the realm of personal and political freedom. From the late 1920s, internal control was achieved despite organized radicalism and the more general growth of awareness of the individual’s place in the society. At the same time, national consciousness was inculcated to a degree unprecedented in Japanese history. Moreover, governments of the day never had to grapple seriously with political opposition that could claim to be more truly nationalist, thanks to the capture by the Meiji bureaucratic elite of the supreme symbol of the nation’s identity, the emperor himself, as part of the process of Restoration.

Nevertheless, the 1930s successors of the Meiji statesmen, though still able to assert the state’s power in the name of the emperor at home, were in no position to overcome problems abroad by wielding the same symbol in the face of foreign, especially Chinese, nationalists. Their own extreme form of nationalism that in some senses served so well at home, was not effective as a tool of foreign policy; yet the government was committed to it since it justified reshaping the world order as well as explaining the Japanese national entity.

Furthermore, the commitment of the Japanese leadership in the late 1930s to the idea that their country was truly the emperor’s state, and their success in suppressing contrary ideas, made the solution of the greatest problem of political life all the more difficult. The fragmentation of political leadership was screened from view behind clouds of ultranationalist thought. The hard fact was that the process of modernization had thrown up new kinds of men with claims for a share in politics to safeguard the proper operation of important areas of national life: army officers, the managers of giant business combines, party politicians, and high bureaucrats. In the absence of a core of responsible men to succeed the genro in the weighty task of making the most important political decisions in foreign affairs, it was open to the most assertive of the newcomers to press decisions on their colleagues in the name of the emperor. Here the residual powers of the armed services under the constitution were most important, for what was done was done legally.

For some commentators on the history of the 1930s, the failure of Japanese political parties to produce figures of central importance in politics is critical; for others, the narrowly technical outlook of leaders in the army and in other groups is paramount. But a more general description of the character of political decision making in the critical area of foreign relations, subsuming these and other characteristics, lays stress on the fragmentation of Japan’s leadership, together with resultant loss of rational flexibility as well as political unity. This situation was in sharp contrast to the Style of government operating in the Meiji and Taisho eras, which had been at once more relaxed and more genuinely tied to consensus. Moreover, the potential for irresponsibility in fragmented leadership was a danger Japan could ill afford in the circumstances confronting her abroad in and after 1937. 1 2 as a result of the fires. Overall, nearly one-third of the houses in the Kanto area were damaged or destroyed and more than one hundred thousand people killed or posted missing. Breakdown in communications made it difficult to combat the panic and fear that spread quickly and seized on a number of things, including the Korean minority which was in real danger. An account of the social impact of the earthquake is not readily available in English, but a firsthand account of the physical effects can be found in Poole, The Death of Old Yokohama in the Great Japanese Earthquake of September ], 1923.