by | 11 October 2026 · 6:44 am

Demise of Polish Social Media

This week’s Culture.pl newsletter offers retrospectives on its 25-year history of reporting on cultural developments in Poland. Here are some excerpts from a 2025 retrospective by Patryk Zakrzewski, translated in 2026 by Agnieszka Mistur, offering A journey to the graveyard of Polish social media – before Meta products took over the world.

Before the word ‘selfie’ became established in the Polish language, the Fotka.pl service was launched (the portal was inaugurated on Valentine’s Day – 14 February 2001). According to the INNPoland portal, the beginnings of the website were entirely analogue – its creator, Rafał Agnieszczak, had to register the domain by sending an appropriate application to the Research and Academic Computer Network by regular mail and paying a 200zł fee. The inspiration was an American website, Am I Hot or Not? We can learn about the beginnings of Fotka from Bartek Świderski’s review of the website, ‘Żylety i pasztety (Bombs and Hags; the website sexy.onet.pl was also rated), which he published in Machina in 2001.

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The development of these types of portals was coupled with the dynamic development of the digital camera market – in 2005 alone, 900,000 such devices were sold in Poland. Meanwhile, the number of people using the Internet in Poland between 2001 and 2005 doubled thanks, among other things, to the Neostrada service offered by Telekomunikacja Polska.

On the other hand, the massification of the Internet sparked a response from the network elitists (this is when the term ‘Neo kids’ was coined), and photos from Fotka (as well as from NK or Grono, which will be discussed below) became fodder for mocking blogs, such as ‘Białe Kozaczki’ (White Boots) – with women’s outfits considered ‘embarrassing’ or ‘Pobożni Chłopcy’ (Pious Boys), where photos of young men flexing their muscles were displayed against the background of first communion pictures, images of St Mary’s girls and portraits of the Pope.

Incidentally, Fotka – the only dinosaur of Polish social media – is still alive and well (albeit under the more global domain .com). However, it has changed its profile a bit: today, it functions primarily as a dating site.

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In the article ‘Świat jest mały, czyli Grono.net’ (The World Is Small, or Grono.net) by Agata Krzewińska, published in Życie (Life) in 2004, we read:

The fact that the world is small was proved by an American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, in his experiment. In a simple way, the scientist demonstrated that two random people living in two distant locations are connected by a chain of only about six people. This means that only these six people (and not several hundred, as was initially expected) would have to shake hands for each of us to be able to shake hands with the Pope or the president of the United States. The Milgram experiment from the late 1960s has once again become popular thanks to experimental internet websites, such as ‘Social Networking’ […]. Grono.net is the first website of its kind in Poland.

In line with this assumption, anyone visiting the portal could check how many handshakes away they were from another Grono (Group) user. The creators of the website – Piotr Bronowicz (Bronek), Tomasz Lis (Czarodzic) and Wojciech Sobczuk (Sopel) – came from the community centred around the Radiostacja (Radiostation) discussion forum. The people who gathered on Grono were initially ‘alternative warsawites [warszawka]’. That’s what they were called by Piotr Cichocki’s interlocutor in his book Sieć przyjaciół. Serwis społecznościowy oczami etnografa (Network of Friends: A Social Networking Site Through the Eyes of an Ethnographer), which was the result of several years of research into the portal’s community. At that time, the website was semi-closed (only people who received an invitation from someone they knew could join), which fuelled interest – at one point, invitations to join Grono even became the subject of auctions on Allegro. In an article in Przekrój (Cross-Section) from 2004, Izabela Szymańska explained:

The fact that only ‘friends of our friends’ become part of Grono makes you feel that no one unwanted will get in, that you’re among your own. […] Grono’s popularity is based on being part of something which cannot be joined by everyone. As a chosen one, you can show your graciousness to those who are not in Grono but would like to be.

Over time, the elitism of the portal began to decline (and invitations were no longer required). At the end of its life, when the ‘the young and the creative from big centres’ had already moved on to Facebook, it was considered a totally uncool service for gimbusy – unsavvy young teens.

Let us return, however, to the time of its prosperity. Discussions took place in a grono (group) – a thematic forum (to create and moderate your own grono, you had to buy the status of a grono–master via text message). Membership in a grono was displayed on the user’s profile, so the right choice of groups was an important element of self-creation. When creating a profile, the user had to answer the question ‘What am I looking for?’ – they could select: a partner, friends, an adventure or nothing (in which case the profile was not visible in the search engine). Compared to today’s social media, the service was characterised by greater transparency of activities; for example, you received a notification informing you who viewed your profile or removed you from their friends list.

Over time, new functionalities were added: the option to add an mp3 to your profile or change its background; a git button, which is the equivalent of the Facebook ‘like’ button (the most popular photos were added to the Grono greatest hits list, i.e. the ‘top gits’ category visible on the homepage); and, after some time, a kit button to express disapproval.

In 2006, Grono won the Nocne Marki (Night Owl) award from the magazine Aktivist in the category ‘Zajawka 2006: Najlepszy serwis Web 2.0’ (Clip 2006: Best Web 2.0 Service). Other nominees were Moblog (a service for blogging from mobile devices, sponsored by Nokia), Smog (a website for presenting ‘funny stuff’) and Wrzuta.pl (a service for sharing mp3 files).

As recently as 2008, Grono.net was the most popular social media platform in Poland. At that time, all of Central and Eastern Europe was a colourful mosaic of local social media: in the Czech Republic, the most popular service of this type was Lide.cz; in Lithuania, One.lt; in Latvia, Draugiem.lv; in Hungary, Wiw.hu (which, as the founders of Grono said in interviews, was an inspiration for them when creating the website). Parenthetically, Grono made an attempt at foreign expansion – English and Spanish language portals Grapeo.co.uk and Bago.es were created – but failed.

As early as 2009, the website began to lose the competition for the hearts and minds of users to Facebook, which was also due to changes made to the website, such as the introduction of a new layout and additional paid services. The popularity of the thematic group called ŻĄDAMY STAREGO GRONA!!! (WE DEMAND THE OLD GRONO!!!) was skyrocketing, and the profile pictures showed graphics made by the users in Paint with slogans such as ‘Grono has sold itself’ or ‘The new Grono is shitty’ (see illustrations from the abovementioned book by Piotr Cichocki). The portal was closed in 2012.

According to the Megapanel/PBI Gemius study Dzieci aktywne online 2007 (Children Active Online 2007), young people in the 15-24 age group constituted the largest group among Internet users (33.76%). Of these, 85% were active users of social media. At that time, 42% of Poles had access to the Internet.

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People with similar interests joined so-called clubs – the equivalent of discussion forums, which also had their own galleries and guestbooks. The online newsletter Pulsik was an original idea – an information portal created by Epuls users for Epuls users. There was also a scoring system for active users of the platform. A feature that originated from Fotka was the ‘Epuls mascots’ tab, which displays users whose profile pictures received the highest ratings from other users.

The platform’s internal currency were called pulsars. They could be used to buy additional emoticons, virtual gifts for friends, features such as quizzes for friends or access to a premium account, a so-called Divine Puls. Another lesson in capitalism was the internal sales platform, where the more entrepreneurial and talented Epuls users, in exchange for pulsars, sold their graphics, which were used as profile photos. The website also collaborated with mBank; Epuls was connected to the electronic banking service called izzyBank – ‘the first virtual bank for young people ages 13 to 18’.

Predatory monetisation, user dissatisfaction with the new website layout and changes to the portal, and of course the expansion of Facebook contributed to a slump in Epuls’s popularity – the portal lost more than 700,000 users within a few months in 2010. A slow decline then began, and the site was finally shut down in 2017.

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We have already mentioned portals with a distinctly youthful profile, so it’s time for an intergenerational service, which for many older users was something like a ‘gateway to the Internet’ – a place where they gained their digital skills and took their first steps in building online relationships.

It was founded in 2006 by Maciej Popowicz, then an IT student at the University of Wrocław, together with Michał Bartoszkiewicz, Paweł Olchawa and Łukasz Adziński. Nasza Klasa (Our Class), because that is what we are talking about, was modelled on the American website Classmates.com, and the name of the portal was taken from a song by Jacek Kaczmarski. The idea was simple – to create a platform that would enable people to find their school friends after many years, and it hit the spot. You could escape from school memories to an imagery faraway space, Neverland, where fictional schools could be created. Hogwarts, of course, attracted the largest group of people.

Over time, the original function of the portal began to be expanded with other services and tools. Nasza Klasa offered a whole range of browser games, including something for those seeking something bucolic (‘Wiejskie życie’ [Rural Life] or ‘PGR’ [Agro-Commune]) or thrills (‘Miejskie gangi’ [Urban Gangs]), and fishing fanatics (‘Na ryby’ [Gone Fishin’]) were not forgotten. In 2009, the website introduced its own internal currency – the euro-sponge. You could use it to buy new emoticons (referred to as ‘super faces’), virtual gifts for your friends, an extra transfer for photos in your gallery or – just after the Smolensk disaster – a black ribbon for your profile photo. The currency was named after the website’s mascot – Pan Gąbka (Mr Sponge).

Since there were also many young users on the portal, Nasza Klasa initiated an educational campaign for children that taught the rules of online safety. Its faces were a pair of superheroes – Sekurion and Protekta.

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In 2010, over 11 million people had accounts on this website – more than half of all internet users in Poland at that time. Soon after, however, the portal underwent rebranding and began to lose its character in competing with foreign social-media giants. Many of the new changes were met with resistance from users – this was the case, for example, with the introduction of śledzik, i.e. the equivalent of Facebook’s newsfeed. People unfamiliar with internet slang – much to the amusement of jokesters – spread a chain letter saying that, to get rid of the hated function, you should enter the code 5P13RD4L4J 5L3D21U (can be read as ‘f**k off śledzik, ed.). However, the real outcry was caused by the new website regulations (operating under the abbreviated name nk.pl since 2010). The main issue was that all content added by users was the property of the portal and could be used, for example, for marketing purposes. Ironically, users generally moved to Facebook, a service that, as we know, does not care much about user privacy and has similar provisions in its terms and conditions. The website only had about one million users in 2020, and it was closed on 27 July 2021 at 11:59pm.

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The Polish response to Twitter was BLIP – the name of the service is an acronym of the slogan ‘Bardzo Lubię Informować Przyjaciół’ (I so like keeping my friends informed). Its launch caused controversy in the Polish blogosphere, although it was not actually to blame. The problem was that shortly before this, Grono had started promoting its service with an almost identical name (Blimp) and functionality (although the launch of Blip had been announced earlier), preceded by an aggressive marketing campaign which involved spamming the most popular Polish blogs with comments …

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Blip users could share short messages of up to 160 characters and attach photos, links or voice messages. ‘Blip weighs nothing, Blip is everywhere’ – a woman’s voice assured us in an advertising spot. On 22 October 2009, the website proudly announced on its blog that 10 million messages had already been sent via Blip. Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych (the Social Insurance Institution, ZUS) had a Blip account, as did the editorial offices of national media (Radio Zet, TVN24, Przekrój), football clubs (Legia Warszawa, Widzew Łódź) and city offices (Radom, Kraków). All the same, it remained a niche service, as the number of Blip users that year was just over 300,000. In 2013, the service was closed, and users were encouraged to migrate to Wykop.pl, which is still in existence today. Other platforms, such as Flaker.pl, Pinger.pl and Spinacz.pl also tried their hand in the microblogging market.

The most popular Polish messenger of the time, Gadu-Gadu (Chit-Chat) (which became the owner of Blip at one point), also tried to promote its social-media platform. The MojaGeneracja.pl portal, which was launched in February 2007, offered the possibility of creating a profile, rating other profiles or running a blog. An original feature was the option to leave voice comments. In addition to the typical set of tools, other branches of MojaGeneracja (MyGeneration) were developed over time, such as the educational portal EduNacja or Muzango, where artists could create their profiles and share mp3 files. The latter was probably an attempt to respond to MySpace.

Official blogs on the portal were also kept by public figures: the band Łzy, Tede, Gosia Andrzejewicz, Doda, Joanna Senyszyn and Lech Wałęsa (at mojageneracja.pl/1980; the former president also received a special number in the Gadu-Gadu messenger – 1980)….

Moja Generacja is a prime example of rapid growth and equally abrupt decline in user numbers. In 2008, there were 5 million registered accounts on the platform, but by 2012, this number had dropped to less than half a million. Despite protests from people attached to the portal, the decision to shut it down was made in November 2012….

In the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, domestic social media were already basically an endangered species – and those that survived were a mere shadow of their former popularity.

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Filed under economics, education, language, Poland, publishing, U.S.

by | 10 October 2026 · 9:32 am

25 years of Culture.pl

This week’s Culture.pl newsletter offers retrospectives on its 25-year history of reporting on cultural developments in Poland. Here’s a brief excerpt from one of its many articles.

Join me in travelling back in time. It’s Poland, 2001, the first year of Culture.pl’s existence. These were the days of Poland’s first ever reality show, the Polish edition of Big Brother and the popularity of the cult TV series The Lousy World (Świat według Kiepskich), which followed the lives of a dysfunctional family from Wrocław. It was also the beginning of ‘Małyszomania’ (the collective obsession with award-winning ski jumper Adam Małysz and, what followed, the sport itself) and ‘Pottermania’ (the brilliant translation of the first Harry Potter book only came out in 2000, three years after its debut in the UK). It was also the year in which the horrific attacks on the World Trade Centre took place and the ‘war on terror’ began. 2001 also saw Steve Jobs unveil the iPod (yes, dear children, iPod, not iPhone), which set off a domino effect, ultimately leading to the shift away from physical media and the emergence of a model of cultural participation based on subscriptions and streaming, in which we own nothing, but have access to (practically) everything.

Let’s begin with a closer look at the very reason our website could be created in the first place. In 2001, less than 20% of Poles are said to have had access to the internet. On 15th January 2001, the Polish Telecommunications company (Telekomunikacja Polska, TP for short) launched their newest service, Neostrada. Neostrada broadband internet quickly became a symbol of the emergence of the internet in Poland (the young users flooding onto the web, unfamiliar with – brace yourselves – ‘netiquette’, were dubbed ‘neo kids’). The cheapest subscription cost 300 PLN a month (which in 2001 amounted to almost 15% of the average salary); initially, the service was also available only in Warsaw. In September 2001, the Polish-language Wikipedia was launched, and by the end of the year it already had over 500 pages (today it has over 1.7 million). Although the popular Polish instant messaging service Gadu-Gadu had been in existence since 2000 (with 250,000 users by 2001), the social media revolution hadn’t even begun yet. Even MySpace, which seems prehistoric from today’s perspective, would not launch for another two years. In a 2001 article in Machina magazine, you could read about this internet novelty: ‘A new literary genre has emerged. It’s called a blog.’

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Filed under democracy, economics, education, language, Poland, publishing

by | 9 October 2026 · 7:52 am

Japan’s Bakuryo Decision Makers

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 178-180:

[Foreign Minister] Matsuoka … was wrongly convinced of a swift German victory over the Soviet Union (as were many others, including some in Britain and the United States), but he was now rightly worried about the risk of a severe Anglo-American retaliation should Japan decide to occupy even more of France’s colonial territory. That would unduly advertise Japan’s greater ambition in the region, sending up a flare in Washington. The question of whether to strike north (the Soviet Union) or go south became the focus of Tokyo’s policy deliberations in late June 1941. The institutional forces and mechanisms that enabled such a debate would have a lasting impact on Tokyo’s policy formulation in the following months.

Broadly, Japan’s strategic outline was set by the Imperial General Headquarters, the highest organ of the high command of the Army and Navy General Staffs. The general staffs initiated strategic proposals, but so did the Army and Navy Ministries, which were part of the cabinet. In both these ministries, ministers resided at the top of the institutional hierarchy, followed by vice ministers, chiefs of various bureaus (including military affairs, personnel, legal affairs, and supply and accounts), and then chiefs of sections (subgroups within the bureaus). The general staffs had a similar chain of command, with the chiefs of staff at the top, followed by vice chiefs of staff, chiefs of divisions (including operations, information, and mobilization), and, finally, various section chiefs. Strategic proposals were rarely formulated at the top levels; they were usually initiated at the bureau and section levels of the ministries and at the division and section levels of the general staffs. With many specialist groups trying to advance their interests, arriving at a new policy was a very complicated business.

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This sort of painstaking institutional groundwork was carried out by middle-ranking military planners, most of whom did not even attend the liaison meetings of the top leaders. They were aptly called bakuryo, which literally means “officers behind the curtains.” In the olden days, the word baku (curtains) had a double meaning in explaining concentration of power. One was political, synonymous with the government, as in bakufu (shogunate), meaning “a regime behind the curtains.” The other was strategic, alluding to the makeshift curtains used in encampments during field combat to identify the headquarters, where strategies were secretly debated among the select few. In prewar Japan, bakuryo had come to assume both the political task of negotiating and liaising with different sources of power and the more practical task of planning strategies. Because of the pivotal role bakuryo would come to assume in directing Japan’s policy after July, the term evoked the image of war planners furtively creating bellicose policies in the name of assisting and advising their superiors.

In the early summer of 1941, Japan’s three most influential bakuryo, all about fifty years old, were the chief of the Army General Staff’s Operations Division, Tanaka Shin’ichi; the chief of the Army Ministry’s Military Affairs Bureau, Muto Akira; and the aforementioned chief of the Navy Ministry’s Naval Affairs Bureau, Oka Takazumi. Muto and Oka had the crucial role of working together to create an interservice agreement. Tanaka, on the other hand, often worked alone, driven by a hostile worldview that made him the doomsday oracle of the Army General Staff. His division was the most aggressive. Tanaka consistently promoted a hard-line stance in China. For him, total victory was the only option, and the willingness Japanese leaders had been showing of late to negotiate with the United States was a disgrace. Refraining from war equated to cowardly surrender and was worse than losing everything after having fought a proper war. Because of the strength of his convictions and his forceful personality, and even though he was only third in the chain of command, he would come to have a greater influence on policy than anyone else on the Army General Staff.

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The navy, too, had its middle-ranking hawks. The primary example was Ishikawa Shingo, a section chief in the Navy Ministry’s Military Affairs Bureau, also in his midforties. In 1931, around the time of the Manchurian Incident, he wrote a controversial book, Japan’s Crisis, under a pseudonym (and without permission from the navy, grounds enough for dismissal from the service). In it, he warned that the United States had entertained ambitions to control the East since the middle of the previous century, and he urged Japan to embark on a “great national march to ensure its right to survival” in the face of impending American threats. He thought the conferences on naval reduction that had been held in Washington and London were part of a Western conspiracy to obstruct Japan’s rise to prominence. Like the army’s Ishiwara Kanji, who had conceived of the Manchurian takeover, Ishikawa greatly influenced younger officers with his polemical book, turning many in what had traditionally been the pro-British navy into Nazi sympathizers. His fanatical personality had long alarmed the top brass. Nicknamed Wild Shot, he had been consistently passed over for influential positions for much of his career. Now, in the fall of 1940, Oka, chief of the Naval Affairs Bureau and a strong advocate of Japan’s Axis alliance, appointed Ishikawa leader of its Arms Division, overriding objections from the Personnel Bureau.

Ishikawa, along with other like-minded associates, formed the First Naval Defense Policy Committee (the so-called First Committee), which would shape the navy’s prowar position on the eve of Pearl Harbor. He believed, like Tanaka, that war with the United States was something not to be avoided but to be faced heroically. In his thinking, Japan’s military occupation of French Indochina was about preparing for an inevitable war rather than a possible one. Ishikawa, in fact, favored a forceful military advance beyond Indochinese borders and advocated the conquest of British Malaya within 1941. Ishikawa would later boast, “I am the one who brought Japan to the war course.”

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Filed under Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, military, nationalism, Southeast Asia, U.S., USSR, war

by | 8 October 2026 · 9:13 am

Unwinnable War Inevitable, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 231-234:

On the morning of August 27, 1941, a group of graduate students at the Total War Research Institute [総力戦研究所, Sōryokusen Kenkyūjo] gathered at the official residence of the prime minister of Japan. The atmosphere was subdued, even gloomy, a mood made even more so by the on-and-off late-summer rain. In a grand chandelier-lit hall, the researchers, whose average age was a mere thirty-three, came face-to-face with the cabinet. From nine o’clock in the morning until six in the evening, and then again the following day, they presented a lengthy report. After careful consideration of an array of ministerial data, and having simulated various diplomatic and strategic situations over the previous six weeks, the group concluded that should Japan go to war with the United States and its allies, Japan would necessarily lose. If such a war occurred, Japan might very well prevail in a few initial battles, but it would then be forced into a prolonged war that would see its resources dwindle and eventually run out.

The researchers making the predictions had had approximately ten years of professional experience before joining the Total War Research Institute. The institute was opened in April 1941 and was loosely modeled on Britain’s Imperial Defence College, where officers and leaders were trained in an intensive one-year program. It was meant to be an elite educational institution that would prepare Japan’s future leaders, both military and civilian, for greatness.

The high aspirations of its founders were never realized. Each ministry sent its top candidate, so the students were the crème de la crème of Japan’s midcareer civil servants. But despite the institute’s prime location in central Tokyo, the building itself was enough to make the hearts of the newly arriving students sink. It was a two-story shanty that looked especially incongruous surrounded by the imposing redbrick buildings of the government district. Many recruits felt they had been dragged down to a lowly student existence.

The researchers liked the institute’s first dean, Lieutenant General Iimura Jo. An amiable man and a formidable linguist fluent in French and Russian, he had lectured at an army academy in Turkey and had translated many strategic documents into Japanese. His magnetic personality attracted some interesting people to give special talks at the institute, including one by Ozaki Hotsumi, [Richard] Sorge’s fellow spy. Still, most students were dissatisfied with the life that had been suddenly forced upon them. They had expected to do high-level research but were instead reduced to attending basic physical education and other unoriginal and often ill-prepared classes.

So a trip to Japan’s central region, starting on June 20, 1941, came as a much-needed breather. The group visited the navy’s flagship, the Nagato, at Ise Bay, where Yamamoto Isoroku was headquartered. Aboard the Nagato and another warship, the Hyuga, both equipped with the navy’s latest technologies, the researchers had special permission to observe maneuvers. Everything seemed to go beautifully. But the visitors were most impressed by the capacity of the ships to simulate torpedo attacks in total darkness with astonishing precision, guided by a lighting system embedded in the torpedo itself.

After the maneuvers, Yamamoto was eager to hear what the visitors thought of his fleet. He called on Higasa Hiroo, who’d come to the institute from the governor-general’s office in Korea. He responded with due deference: “I was impressed with your defense system against submarines, sir. The same goes for your bombing strategies. But I sensed a certain vulnerability to aerial attacks.”

Higasa was quite right. A lesser military man might have been irritated by the young civilian’s impertinence, but Yamamoto instead rewarded Higasa with a bottle of whiskey, by then a prized commodity in Japan. Yamamoto was pleased that Higasa had looked beyond the obvious and spoken frankly, something he felt Japan’s elites were generally incapable of. Yes, those impressive naval ships were not as unassailable as they appeared, and Yamamoto would have been the first to admit it.

The researchers remained with the fleet until it reached Shibushi Bay in southern Japan. (Adjacent to this bay was Kinko Bay, which is shaped remarkably like Pearl Harbor.) It was then that the radio informed them of Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union. That, and the resultant decision to occupy southern Indochina, suddenly made the researchers’ work far more urgent.

Shortly after their return to Tokyo, the researchers were assigned a war game exercise. Each member was given a cabinet role to play in a hypothetical government of a hypothetical country (modeled on Japan). From their respective cabinet positions, they were to participate in a hypothetical war with a hypothetical enemy (the United States) and its allies. The exercise started on July 12; not so far away, Foreign Minister Matsuoka was attending his final liaison conference.

For this total war, the cabinet needed to develop policies covering all areas of military strategy, diplomacy, ideology, and economics. The guidelines presented to the researchers by their instructors noted that “the various plans need to correspond to the changes in both domestic and external situations anticipated in the coming two years.… Your policies need to be devised on a specific monthly basis or on a few-monthly basis.” The researchers were meant to simulate real-world developments as accurately as possible, consulting actual data brought in by various ministers from their home ministries. In the end, this war seemed to be more real than imaginary.

At the start of the war game, Japan was on the cusp of declaring war on the United States. The U.S. and British governments having placed embargos against it, Japan was now completely isolated economically. Therefore, it would have to go farther into Southeast Asia to procure resources by force.

The researchers were uneasy with the premise provided by their instructors. They felt that going into Southeast Asia—most likely the Dutch East Indies—made war with the West inevitable, without giving diplomacy a chance to prevent it. Most cabinet members projected that the country would probably be able to secure the Indonesian oil fields but that the enemy fleet stationed in the Philippines would soon launch an all-out attack on Japanese ships, making the transport of resources impossible and defeating the whole purpose of accessing Indonesian oil. As a result, Japan would be provoked into a larger-scale war with the United States, which the country could ill afford. Most ministers had determined even before the simulation started that such a war would be unwinnable and should not be waged.

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Filed under Japan, military, U.S., war, nationalism, Britain, education, economics, industry, Southeast Asia

by | 7 October 2026 · 6:57 am

Manchukuo Quagmire Spreads, 1930s

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 75-78:

By February 1932, the three Manchurian provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin were all under the control of the Japanese army. That garrison forces could occupy portions of China without formal approval sent a dangerous signal. Young and frustrated soldiers, willing to blame those in power for various social and economic difficulties facing Japan, had been wanting to force radical change for some time. Now inaction in Tokyo and the absence of clear instructions from the top invited further violent actions. The ancient samurai would have called this a retainer supplanting his lord. In modern military terms, it was simple insubordination. Yet no army leader was willing to put his foot down.

Japan’s actions in Manchuria marked a major step toward political isolation, even though very few Japanese recognized it as such. The Kwantung Army’s establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo—comprising the captured provinces—was proclaimed on March 1, 1932. International condemnation followed. On May 15, a group of young naval officers and army cadets burst into the prime minister’s official residence and shot Inukai; he died that evening. The killers were alarmed that Inukai was becoming soft on China, possibly yielding Japanese control of Manchukuo. Japan had been an exemplary member of the League of Nations throughout most of its existence, but the country renounced its membership in March 1933 on account of Manchukuo.

Sino-Japanese relations did not break down entirely, however, because of the confluence of pragmatic interests on both sides. Through the mid-1930s Tokyo oscillated between a more cautious, even friendly, China policy and a hardline approach backed by military pressure. Chiang, preoccupied by the problem of consolidating his control over the rest of China, and especially by fighting the Communists who had established independent “Soviet Republics” in the hinterland of southern and central China, seemed willing to overlook the sticky question of Manchukuo for the time being. He certainly did his best to avoid major clashes with Japan in the north. Recognizing a window of opportunity, the Kwantung Army expanded Japan’s sphere of influence first toward Rehe (Jehol) Province, west of Manchuria, which became part of Manchukuo in 1933, and then toward the nearby areas of Hebei and Chahar (Inner Mongolia). In a series of Sino-Japanese agreements reached in 1933 and 1935, the Guomindang accepted humiliating terms that included partial demilitarization of North China, the withdrawal of the Guomindang organizations from Manchukuo’s vicinity, and the establishment of autonomous, pro-Japanese governments in East Hebei and Chahar.

At home, as Japanese society struggled to recover from the economic slump caused by, among other things, the worldwide depression, fear and unrest were growing. In this dismal atmosphere, on February 26, 1936, a nearly successful coup was launched in Tokyo by young army officers. The officers assassinated several key government figures before surrendering. Prince Saionji, the principal target of the assassins, escaped. Prime Minister Hirota Koki’s cabinet was formed on March 9, but only after Prince Konoe had declined to assume the post, claiming poor health. (He may well have not wanted to purge elements sympathetic to the rebel officers, as he himself wished to remain on good terms with them. His later attempt to pardon the indicted officers only corroborates this view.)

Hirota’s government now adopted a tougher foreign policy as a way to divert domestic discontent. It called for a military buildup in preparation for a possible war with China, the Soviet Union, and the Western powers, all the while making plans for advancing into Southeast Asia. The Japanese policy shift was immediately felt in China, which explains the volatile atmosphere at the Marco Polo Bridge. The number of Japanese troops had tripled in 1936, to almost six thousand, without prior consultation with the Chinese.

China’s domestic situation had substantially changed by then. Japanese expansionism and Chiang’s ambition of leading a strong, unified China could only cohabit for so long. Because of his earlier concessions to Japan, Chiang had become increasingly vulnerable to Communist propaganda, which painted him as a traitor to the nation who gave into Japanese imperialist pressure and who was willing to sacrifice fellow Chinese. The decisive turning point happened in December 1936, when Chiang was kidnapped by the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, the son of Zhang Zuolin, a Manchurian warlord assassinated by the Japanese in 1928; Zhang wanted Chiang to join a united front against Japan together with the Communists. To preserve his legitimacy as China’s national leader, Chiang decided he could no longer afford to look conciliatory toward Japan. This meant that he and the Japanese army stopped sharing the same priority of defeating the Communists, be they Chinese or Soviet. This development, in turn, persuaded the Japanese military hardliners to push for a more aggressive policy, especially in the north, to sustain and maximize its existing interests.

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by | 6 October 2026 · 5:33 am

Tangled Loyalties: Aizu, Meiji, U.S.

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 124-127:

In the summer of 1882, the year the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors was issued, a tall and slender beauty with a perfectly oval face stood on a college auditorium platform in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was one of the select few in the graduating class asked to deliver a valedictory address based on her dissertation. Yamakawa Sutematsu stood out among her classmates at Vassar. She was class president, graduated magna cum laude, and was a member of several prestigious societies. She behaved like a perfect Western woman, but beneath her soft, elegant appearance and impeccable manners lay a will of steel. She was the first Japanese woman to be awarded a bachelor of arts degree.

Having lived in the United States since the age of eleven, Stematz (as she spelled her name for the benefit of her American peers) was a product of the successful social engineering undertaken by the young Meiji government, with help from goodwilled Americans. She was one of five girls sent to the United States on government stipends to become prototypes of the modern Japanese woman, an idea originally conceived by the samurai-turned-statesman Kuroda Kiyotaka, who was in charge of developing Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. The minister was impressed with the American women he saw on a trip to the United States in 1871. He was especially impressed with the sturdy ladies he saw tilling the soil of the frontier alongside their men. Just as the American West was pioneered by both men and women, Kuroda reasoned, Japanese women, as wives, mothers, and even hard laborers, should play their part in the birth of Japan as a great nation.

The Yamakawas, a venerable old samurai family, were in the service of the lord of Aizu. In the Japanese civil war, Aizu backed the declining Tokugawa shogunate and, along with several other northern domains that did the same, was branded an enemy of the imperial court. In August 1868, in one of the final and fiercest battles of the war, Stematz, eight years old, fought together with the men and women of Aizu, who were under siege by enemy forces. She was in charge of preventing explosions in the domain’s castle by covering unexploded cannon shells with futon mattresses. Those shells were fired by a Satsuma battalion led by her future husband, Army Minister Oyama.

The northern rebel domains proved utterly powerless in the face of the British-backed technologies of the southern forces. With the fall of Aizu, the fortunes of the Yamakawa family declined as well. Something drastic had to be done to regain social respectability. Education was the best, and often the only, way to recover one’s status. At the time, the government was calling for applicants to study abroad, urging young people to acquire knowledge in the West. Many young men from the formerly well-to-do families of those fallen domains took on the challenge. Although very few families were willing to send their daughters so far away for so long, the Yamakawas, in dire straits, decided to send theirs.

Stematz thrived in the home of Leonard Bacon, an abolitionist clergyman in New Haven, Connecticut. Growing up with his fourteen children, she attended local schools before enrolling at Vassar. Her best friend was Bacon’s youngest daughter, Alice Mabel, who would help establish a women’s college in Japan many years later. Unlike some other Japanese students, who assimilated to the extent of almost losing their mother tongue altogether, Stematz, determined to keep her Japanese language skills, wrote letters home every day.

In the early summer of 1882, Stematz’s loyalties were many: to the new Japanese government, which enabled her to study in the United States; to her family, who tried to clear its rebel name; to the Bacons, who raised her as one of their own; and to Vassar, which enabled her to become an independent-thinking woman. She was eager to be of use in the real world.

Stematz’s homecoming at the end of 1882, after eleven years abroad, would be something of a disappointment. She was overeducated and overqualified for the jobs available to women in Meiji Japan. Then she married one of the most powerful men in the Meiji government. Oyama Iwao was a widower eighteen years her senior. He was also the general responsible for bringing down her family’s feudal domain. This would have been a union unimaginable in less enlightened circles. After the marriage, Stematz was able to initiate various philanthropic and educational enterprises.

The story of Prince Oyama and his Vassar bride was an example of how individual innovation, industry, grand ambition, and imagination could overcome the historical wounds that divided Japan. It was a union in which Japan’s future enemy, the United States, was a prime inspiration. Both Japan and the United States were emerging powers coming into their own just as the world itself was going through profound change. In the words of one historian, it was “a world of empires gained and maintained by military power,” and yet it was also “an internationalizing world; a world yearly more conscious of its one-ness” owing to economic interdependence, peace movements, and mass media (though the term “globalization” had not yet been coined). In a world of competing agendas and great uncertainties, Japan looked to the United States as a sympathetic mentor. “To catch up to and surpass the West” was the mantra of Japan’s national quest. And more often than not, the West meant the United States, not old Europe.

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by | 5 October 2026 · 5:47 am

1940 Olympics & 1937 Kamikaze

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 80-83:

The China War cost Japan the chance to recover the international respectability it had lost with its incursion into Manchuria. In July 1936, exactly one year before the outbreak of the war, Tokyo had won its bid to host the Olympic Games in 1940. The Japanese had lobbied tirelessly for the honor. It was to be one of the most important national projects for modern Japan, the first non-Western country to host the games. Construction of stadiums began swiftly. By 1938, though, international pressure on Japan to give up the games had been mounting. Some countries, including the United States, hinted at a boycott. With no end to the China War in sight, the military, worried about its resource requirements, suggested that only lumber and stone be used for projects related to the games. Major newspapers that had been the biggest cheerleaders for the Tokyo Olympics became conspicuously silent on the issue. In late June 1938, Konoe’s cabinet placed quotas on the use of industrial materials meant for projects other than war. This effectively put an end to Japan’s Olympic dream. Tokyo would have to wait another two dozen years for its moment of Olympic glory.

Ironically, the hardening of international opinion against Japan took place just as the country was experiencing a surge in self-confidence apart from its military might. At the 1937 Paris Exposition, the thirty-six-year-old architect Sakakura Junzo, a disciple of Le Corbusier, won the top prize for his Japanese Pavilion. In August, Tokyo proudly hosted the World Federation of Education Associations’ seventh biennial conference, the first to be held in Asia, which was attended by three thousand participants from forty-eight countries. And then there was the flight of the Kamikaze. When the two-seater left Tokyo on April 6, 1937, nobody in Europe seemed to have taken any notice of the great challenge that its twenty-four-year-old pilot, Iinuma Masaaki, and thirty-six-year-old flight engineer, Tsukagoshi Kenji, had undertaken. Japan was a completely unknown quantity in the glamorous but highly dangerous world of record-setting long-distance air races dominated by European and North American pilots. The Japanese flight was ostensibly planned to celebrate the coronation of King George VI, to be held on May 12, and to make goodwill visits to various European capitals. It was, in fact, a great publicity stunt for the Asahi, which followed in the footsteps of European newspapers by employing its own pilots to promote itself (and to gather news, of course).

The Kamikaze vogue became much more than a corporate advertisement as the whole nation became engrossed in the exploits of the two fliers. The aircraft, a test plane manufactured by Mitsubishi in Nagoya for military reconnaissance, was touted as “purely” Japanese-made, adding to the patriotic fervor. (Actually, the metals to construct it had come from somewhere else, as did the gasoline to fly it. And Tsukagoshi was half English.) The name of the plane was chosen from approximately five hundred thousand entries from Asahi readers. The naming ceremony on April 1 was presided over by Imperial Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, the emperor’s uncle by marriage, making the flight’s success all the more a matter of national pride.

The Western media, indifferent at first, became enthralled. By the time the plane left Karachi and entered Mediterranean airspace on April 8, Europe began to hold its breath. On April 9, the plane appeared in the sky over the southern London neighborhood of Croydon. The aircraft circled around a few times, as if to please the cheering crowd of four thousand, including three hundred Japanese filled with joy and pride. The plane made an impeccable landing at half past three. The two aviators had established a long-distance world record, flying between Tokyo and London in fifty-one hours, nineteen minutes, and twenty-three seconds, with an average speed of 185.9 miles (299.2 kilometers) per hour. The Times of London reported: “As the airmen struggled to the ground from Divine Wind, they were greeted with cheers and cries of ‘Banzai’ (‘live forever’), were decked with garlands of flowers and were submitted to an ordeal of handshaking and congratulation.” The two continued to receive an enthusiastic welcome, winning great accolades, including the Legion of Honor accorded by the French government. In Brussels, on April 16, they were presented with flowers by Suwa Nejiko, a former child prodigy about to launch her career as a concert violinist in Europe, along with the family of the Japanese ambassador to Belgium, Kurusu Saburo.

Not unlike the Kamikaze aviators, the violinist Suwa had known something of the weight of enormous national expectations. Her success on the international stage had been a great source of Japanese pride for most of her young life. Still, she was like any other awestruck seventeen-year-old when she met the pilots. “How dreamy they are, both of them! Mr. Iinuma particularly is so very handsome … and I could just stare and admire him as much as I liked! Such a happy day it’s been!” she recorded in her diary. This brief encounter in a Brussels airport presented a snapshot of the youthful beauty and exuberance that would soon elude Japan, like an ever-fleeting mirage. It was an image of Japan that could have been.

To celebrate the success of the Kamikaze flight, the proud sponsor published a message to the British nation in the pages of The Times on April 10, 1937. The flight, it said, would foster “an atmosphere of peace and cordiality in the midst of the storms and thunder which rage over international relations today and threaten the world peace of tomorrow.” If only that had been true. Alas, Konoe’s leadership did not live up to the feats of the Kamikaze.

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by | 4 October 2026 · 6:05 am

Tojo’s Pessimism, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 29-30, 35:

Tojo, in his selective explanation of the events leading to Pearl Harbor, insisted that the war Japan had just initiated was a “defensive” war. He faithfully echoed Japan’s deep-seated feelings of persecution, wounded national pride, and yearning for greater recognition, which together might be called, for the want of a better phrase, anti-Westernism. It was a sentimental speech, and it was notable for what was left unsaid.

There had been no clear-cut, overwhelming consensus among the Japanese leaders to take preemptive actions in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Many remained hopelessly uncertain and ambivalent about their decision. True, Tojo is famous for having said, “Occasionally, one must conjure up enough courage, close one’s eyes, and jump off the platform of the Kiyomizu,” and these words, referencing a Buddhist temple in Kyoto known for a veranda that juts out over a cliff, are often cited as a sign of his rash adventurism. But even Tojo, vilified as a military dictator who blindly pushed Japan into war, felt torn, especially in the two months preceding the attack. Throughout the course of the government’s final discussions over going to war, Tojo was acutely aware of the small possibility of Japanese victory. As a result, at the last minute, he tried to conciliate those who argued for immediate war. When he became prime minister on October 18, 1941, the first task he set himself was to attempt to resurrect diplomatic options with the United States.

Some leaders were misguidedly hopeful, but none were confident of Japan’s eventual victory. Tojo’s predecessor, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, a civilian politician, was prime minister on and off for nearly three of the four years immediately prior to Pearl Harbor. His flirtations with a totalitarian style of leadership did incalculable damage to Japan’s international standing and helped to maximize the military voice in the government. But at the same time, Konoe was unmistakably against a war with the West. According to his aide and son-in-law, Hosokawa Morisada, upon hearing the news of Japan’s entry into war, Konoe barely managed to say, “What on earth! I really feel a miserable defeat coming. This [favorable situation for Japan] will only last two or three months.”

…

One should not, of course, underestimate the enormous pressure these leaders faced on the eve of Pearl Harbor. They felt they had to choose between waging a reckless war and giving up all of Japan’s imperialistic conquests of many years in order to stave off war. They tended to ignore that such extreme choices grew directly out of their own recent decisions and actions. As they made more diplomatic missteps and committed themselves to an impracticable war, claiming all the while to be more prepared than they ever were, their range of policy options both at home and with the outside world narrowed considerably. It was as if Tokyo had gotten stuck in the thin end of a funnel. The war option, it must have seemed to those leaders, provided the quickest and surest way of breaking free of that constricting situation. That they didn’t think about what would happen afterward was a tragic act of negligence.

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by | 3 October 2026 · 5:11 am

Japan’s Diplomacy Fails, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 47-48:

With the German military successes in Europe since the spring of 1940, the call for solidifying Japan’s ties with Germany resurfaced. Still believing that a fascist alliance would be a mistake, Navy Minister Yoshida Zengo, in the autumn of 1940, opposed the signing of an Axis pact with such vehemence that a heart condition (but some also speculate a failed suicide attempt) landed him in the hospital, forcing him to resign right before the German negotiators arrived in Tokyo. Without Yoshida, and with more and more admirers of Germany in their midst (owing in no small part to the initial blitzkrieg successes), the navy agreed to support the pact, as long as it was explicit that Japan would not automatically be required to participate in a German war with the United States. (For falling in line with the government and army preferences, the navy was promised a bigger budget.) A new era of Japanese diplomacy had begun.

In early 1941, rumors of war began to circulate within Tokyo’s diplomatic community. The deteriorating relations with Japan prompted the United States to start bringing back home family members of the U.S. embassy personnel stationed in Japan. An American school in Tokyo was forced to announce its closure in February, just as a major publisher released a book predicting and analyzing a hypothetical Japanese-American war (won by Japan, naturally), which sold fifty-three thousand copies in one month.

Japan’s relations with Britain, too, had been strained of late. Traditionally, the British attitude toward Japan had been one of pragmatism and conciliation. In July 1939, the two countries had reached the Arita-Craigie Agreement, signed by Foreign Minister Arita Hachiro and British ambassador Sir Robert Craigie: Britain had agreed to neither actively resist nor legally recognize Japanese conduct in China. One year after that agreement, in July 1940, Britain conceded to Japan’s request to close the Burma Road, a vital supply route for the transportation of materials to Chiang Kai-shek. But Japan’s occupation of northern Indochina finally prompted Britain to abandon its appeasement policy. In December 1940, Britain agreed to lend £10 million to the Guomindang and to reopen the Burma Road. And in the north, one shouldn’t forget, lurked the Soviet Union, with its threat of Bolshevism. Japan started 1941 facing more enemies than it was ever prepared to handle.

For the Japanese people, 1941 was a year of less and less food and fuel. The struggling epicurean Kafu, who had developed an overwhelmingly carnivorous appetite during his long stays in the United States and France, was always ready to pay a good price for a good meal. But even he had tremendous problems. “Compared to half a year ago,” he complained that spring, “the quality of meat and vegetables has declined drastically.” This was only the beginning. Within a few months, he would write: “I have not seen any vegetables or fruit for the past few days. Tofu isn’t sold, either. People are feeling distressed.” Even a gourmet grocer in the fashionable Ginza district, famous for its pampered fruits (the shiniest apples wrapped in delicate washi paper, fragrant melons sold in individual wooden boxes, and the like), did not have anything to sell, except for a few measly peaches. As for the meat that Kafu so craved: “No beef to be seen anywhere.” And for cooking and heating, citizens had to make do with charcoal, since petroleum and coal were reserved for military use. Public buses ran on charcoal, and those resources were beginning to get scarce.

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by | 2 October 2026 · 4:47 am

Japan Celebrates, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 20-21, 24:

In the early-morning hours of a frosty day, December 8, 1941, the Japanese nation woke to astonishing news. It was announced, shortly after seven, that Japan had “entered into a situation of war with the United States and Britain in the Western Pacific before dawn.” Though no specifics were given, by then the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, had been successfully attacked—the first wave of planes was dispatched at 1:30 a.m., Japanese time, and the surprise operation was completed by 5:30 a.m. When news of the attack arrived at 11:30 a.m., the nation was electrified. This was soon followed by Japan’s formal declaration of war on the Allies and the report of its further military successes in British Malaya and Hong Kong. (The Malayan operation actually preceded the Pacific offensive by almost two hours.) Throughout the day, the public broadcasting network, NHK, aired twelve special news reports in addition to six regularly scheduled ones for the millions of Japanese glued to their radios. On what, because of the time difference, had been December 7 in Hawaii, the air force division of the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk or damaged numerous ships, aircraft, and military facilities. About twenty-four hundred people were killed in the raid or died shortly afterward from their injuries. The devastating attack was carried out without a formal termination of diplomatic relations by Japan, let alone a declaration of war, a heavy, infamous legacy for the nation. But such tactical details did not interest ordinary Japanese citizens on December 8. The immediate public reaction was one of celebration.

When Japan sent planes to attack Pearl Harbor, it was mired in economic and political uncertainties. A sense of helplessness pervaded its population as the state took more and more control of public life. From the beginning of Japan’s war with China in mid-1937, its people were led to believe a swift, decisive victory was imminent. Despite all the announcements of Japanese victories in China, however, the Guomindang (a.k.a. Kuomintang, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party) leader Chiang Kai-shek was not about to give up. Similar to Napoleon’s army in Russia, the Japanese forces were drawn far too deep into harsh, unfamiliar terrain to carry out an effective operation. The jingoistic tone of Japan’s media coverage continued regardless, but people were privately beginning to question why the war had not ended. Though largely ignorant of the true state of Japanese diplomacy, they had been told that Nomura Kichisaburo, a navy admiral and former foreign minister, had been dispatched to Washington, D.C., in early 1941 to negotiate a peaceful solution to Japan’s international isolation. But no good news was forthcoming, and its absence made people fearful. Many knew the United States was upset over recent Japanese initiatives—such as allying with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and occupying first northern and then southern French Indochina—and seemed intent, unless a diplomatic settlement could be reached soon, on crippling Japan with economic sanctions.

…

But December 8, 1941, changed everything. The gloom of the national impasse that had arisen over the past couple of years turned almost instantly into euphoria as most Japanese cheered the successful attack. A man who was a second grader at the time of the attack, whose father owned a radio shop in Tokyo, recalled his surprise at the sight of a long line forming in front of his father’s store. People were waiting to get their radio sets repaired, in anticipation of more special government announcements. He never saw his father do so much business in one day before or after.

There was very little of the famous Japanese reserve. Strangers congratulated each other on the street. Others gathered at the public square outside the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo, falling to the ground and thanking the emperor for his divine guidance of their nation. Aboard an overcrowded train that evening, the diarist Kafu detachedly observed “a fellow making speeches in shrill voice,” apparently unable to contain his excitement over the day’s news. This outpouring of emotion stood in stark contrast to the many contrived victory celebrations orchestrated by the government over the previous few years in an effort to rouse support for its lingering war in China.

Men of letters were not immune to the Pearl Harbor spell. One of the most distinguished poets of twentieth-century Japan, Saito Mokichi, fifty-nine at the time, recorded in his diary: “The red blood of my old age is now bursting with life! … Hawaii has been attacked!” The thirty-six-year-old novelist Ito Sei wrote in his journal: “A fine deed. The Japanese tactic wonderfully resembles the one employed in the Russo-Japanese War.” Indeed, that war started with Japan’s surprise attack on Russian ships in Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, two days before Japan’s formal declaration of war. Japan won that war.

Even those Japanese who had previously disapproved of their country’s expansionism in Asia were excited by Japan’s war with the West. In an instant, the official claim, gradually adopted by the Japanese government over the preceding decade, of liberating Asia from Western encroachment gained legitimacy in their eyes. Until then, the innately self-contradictory nature of fighting an anti-imperialist war for Asia against fellow Asians in China had tormented them.

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