Category Archives: China

by Joel | 14 October 2026 · 5:59 am

Ambassador Kurusu Profile

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 337-340:

DESPITE HIS UNQUESTIONED INTELLECT and experience, Kurusu was an unfortunate choice in a public relations sense. To the outside world, Kurusu was known only as the man who signed the Tripartite Pact, having been photographed next to Hitler at the height of German-Japanese friendship. He was actually strongly opposed to the pact but was obliged to sign it as Japan’s ambassador to Germany in the autumn of 1940. Kurusu never wanted the Berlin job and had turned it down several times. He was ready to retire after his tenure in Belgium, where he was posted from 1936 to 1939. His time in Brussels coincided with the outbreak and intensification of the China War under the first Konoe government. He tried in his capacity as ambassador to initiate a settlement of the China conflict through the mediation of the Belgian and French governments. He knew that Japan lacked any coherent plans for that war and, more damningly, an effective leader. The escalation, in his words, came about because “the government always allowed itself to be dragged along by the faits accomplis in the field without any prospects of long-term solution.” Worse, there was “no coordination within and between the army and the navy” and everyone was “preoccupied with saving face and evading responsibilities.”

Kurusu could not have envisioned that things would get so bad so fast when he and his family, along with a crowd of enthused spectators, welcomed the record-setting Kamikaze aviators at the Brussels airport in April 1937. Kurusu accepted the ambassadorship to Berlin in 1939 only in the hope that he might prevent Japan’s diplomatic course from going further astray. Once in Berlin, he continued to seek ways to settle the China War through the third-party intervention of Germany. But just as things seemed to be moving in the right direction, Konoe, in his second premiership, recognized Wang Jingwei’s China, thereby alienating Chiang Kai-shek forever.

Kurusu was soon left out of all key communications between German and Japanese officials. Hitler’s government judged that Japan could not be wooed sufficiently through Kurusu, and the agreement on the Tripartite Pact was hastily reached between Matsuoka and a German envoy visiting Tokyo. Nonetheless, because Kurusu was photographed standing side by side with Hitler, his reputation became forever tainted.

Kurusu was so disgusted by that and other experiences in Germany that he requested to be relieved of his post and was allowed to leave Berlin in February 1941. Back in Japan, he led the life of a recluse, turning down government appointments, including a position in Tojo’s cabinet. Kurusu, however, could not reject the emergency call to Washington. A peaceful settlement of U.S.-Japanese differences was something he truly desired. He was pro-Anglo-American at heart. Perhaps as the son of the successful industrialist who had developed the cosmopolitan port of Yokohama, he had the appreciation of mercantile liberalism in his blood. The port town served as the window to the world during Japan’s rapid modernization and was known for its unsentimental, practical people like Kurusu.

Kurusu also had a personal stake in the future of the United States and Japan. He was married to an American from New York City born to British parents (her father was an Anglican clergyman). Kurusu wanted to do everything in his power to avoid a war between the two countries that meant the most to his family. It was to be a perilous mission. There were some on the Army General Staff who openly said they wished Kurusu’s plane would crash. With such ill wishes behind him, he departed for Taiwan in the early morning of November 7.

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by Joel | 12 October 2026 · 5:07 am

Japan’s Wartime Censorship, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 286-287:

On January 11, 1941, the government issued, as a supplement to the National Mobilization Law, a set of regulations concerning newspapers and other media. Sensitive matters of military, diplomatic, and fiscal policies could no longer be officially written or spoken about, and there were detailed instructions regarding the coverage of resource shortages, weather forecasts (because of their potential strategic sensitivity), family problems (such as adultery committed by wives of soldiers fighting in China), and many other social topics that might obstruct successful mobilization on the home front. Though these rules certainly restricted newspaper reporting, freedom of the press in Japan was, and had been, nonexistent for some time.

As noted earlier, from the Manchurian Incident onward, major newspapers had been especially blatant in their support of state policies, appealing to patriotic fervor to compete in a fierce circulation war. When the Japanese invaded Manchuria, military men and journalists actively cultivated one another, drawing closer as more and more journalists were dispatched to the battlefront. Objective reporting was abandoned. The policy of selective reporting, concentrating on Japanese victories, continued after the outbreak of the China War, and by 1941, it had become impossible for the Japanese media to disentangle themselves from their dangerous liaison with the military.

The national radio monopoly NHK had always surpassed the newspapers in its self-conscious role as the mouthpiece of official policy. One day in May 1938, it aired what it touted as the first-ever live broadcast of a battle, from an unnamed site in Xuzhou in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu in China. The announcer’s excited voice echoed all over Japan, describing what was developing in front of him as “the hell of victory.” In reality, the enemy forces had quickly retreated, and there had been little combat. But that was not what the listeners were told. “The fall of Xuzhou! The fall of Xuzhou! Dear listeners on the home front, it is, however, premature to hear your joyous cheers. The joy of victory still awaits us. Our greatest search-and-destroy mission goes on as I speak. So please, everyone back home, stay up all night tonight and pray for Japan’s greatest victory!” Under the spell of this adrenaline-filled call, many gathered at the Yasukuni Shrine, forming a long line to say midnight prayers. This was a dress rehearsal for the greater radio announcement of the morning of December 8, 1941.

Not all media had been as overtly uncritical as NHK or the major newspapers. The so-called general magazines, appealing to middlebrow and highbrow audiences and usually published monthly, featured political commentaries as well as literary pieces. They now were especially vulnerable. Their publishers were given the names of banned liberal contributors and were made to submit a list of subscribers, in addition to the detailed outlines of upcoming issues, to be approved by the Information Division of the government. Magazines for children were no exception. Japan’s young audience was dispirited in the fall of 1941 when a hugely successful ten-year-old cartoon serialized in a boys’ magazine came to an abrupt end; the tales of the adventures and exploits of the stray-dog soldier Norakuro were deemed disrespectful to the military not so much because they were critical of Japanese militarism but because the soldiers were all animals.

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by Joel | 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.

…

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.

…

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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by Joel | 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 Joel | 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 Joel | 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 Joel | 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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by Joel | 1 October 2026 · 2:11 am

Japan Promotes Austerity, 1940

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 22-23:

The deglamorization of city life signified the resounding triumph of a publicity campaign to promote nationwide austerity—prompted by the prolongation of Japanese military engagement in China—that started in the summer of 1940. Fifteen hundred signs bearing slogans such as “A True Japanese Cannot Afford to Be Indulgent” and “Luxury Is the Enemy” (Zeitaku wa Tekida) were put up all over Tokyo (though the insertion of one syllable by a graffitist often turned the latter phrase into “Luxury Is Wonderful” [Zeitaku wa Su-Tekida]).

Volunteers from patriotic women’s associations took to the streets, leading this campaign. These righteous women admonished those who, in their vigilant eyes, wore the kind of lavish clothes they themselves had given up, and they handed out note cards asking them to “please exercise self-restraint.” Women who wore permed hairdos, rings, nail polish, lipstick, or gold-rimmed glasses were also targeted because they were seen as endorsing a “corrupt” and “individualistic” Western lifestyle. There was some angry resistance to this type of witch-hunting. One woman was spotted crying and shouting hysterically, “I can’t stand this!” A young man strutted down the street wearing makeup, daring the patriotic fashion police: “Well, aren’t you going to say something?” But these were very small acts of defiance in the larger scheme of things.

Department stores, once places where dreams were sold, came under strict surveillance, too. Every store was told to enforce a one-item-per-customer policy to discourage excessive spending, which was deemed disrespectful of the general austerity efforts. In 1935, the cosmetics company Shiseido began having beautifully presented “service girls” give free makeup lessons to customers at its department store counters, increasing sales of its beauty lotion twenty-three-fold within two years. But as the China War dragged on, “wartime care packages” replaced cosmetics as top-selling products. These packages, filled with little snacks, handkerchiefs, pencils, and notepads, were sent to soldiers at the front as a show of moral support from home.

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by Joel | 10 September 2026 · 4:59 am

Islam Penetrates Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 250-254:

Whether rulers adopted it out of genuine preference for its monotheistic belief and universalism, out of commercial or other temporal interest, or because of conquest, Islam spread from the top downwards. How long that took, and the depth to which it penetrated, depended on many factors. Even in Sumatra the progress of Islam was slow and fitful. Tomé Pires, writing in the early sixteenth century, recorded that most rulers in Sumatra were Muslims, but those in the west and interior were heathen and ‘some make a practice of eating their enemies when they capture them.’ In other words, not much had changed since Ibn Battuta’s visit 150 years earlier.

…

During that era the only place where Islam was on the retreat was in Spain and North Africa. But again that helped Islam in the east. The Spanish conquest of Arab Granada in 1492 and subsequent oppression of non-Christians propelled a Muslim exodus that reverberated as far east as Maluku. There, as in other places they visited two decades later, the Portuguese were surprised to find Spanish speakers.

The spread of Islam gradually eliminated Hindu and Buddhist worship from the whole archipelago except Bali. On the mainland, however, Islam never penetrated far inland, where it was up against a form of Buddhism which in practice gave strength to the kingdoms in what are now Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. Known as Theravada, this version of Buddhism originated from Sri Lanka and focused on the role of sangha, or monkhood, and the accumulation of merit through works. This fitted well with concepts of kingship, but also enabled the absorption of earlier concepts of spirits and minor deities. But more importantly, these states were more agrarian, mostly more populous and far less reliant on foreign trade, so less subject to the influence of foreign Muslim merchants.

The Sufi Influence

The Islam which spread through the archipelago varied according to its source and the strength of the existing belief systems. A relatively far greater number of Muslims arrived in the less populated, trade-oriented Sumatra and the peninsula than in Java, where conversion of traditional rulers was the key. The difference is reflected in many ways, such as the fact that Arabic-derived script, Jawi, was the norm in Sumatra and the Malay peninsula by the fifteenth century, whereas in Java Kawi continued to be widely used into the twentieth century. Both were then largely supplanted by Roman script.

An important factor in the spread of Islam, especially in Java, was that the dominant strain was Sunni Sufism. Sufism, found in both Sunni and Shia Islam, has at times been viewed as heretical by more legalistic Muslims but was strong among Indian Muslims from Gujarat and Bengal and in the Ottoman realm. Its emphasis on direct communication with God, its mysticism, its admiration for holy men and ascetics and its focus on individual teachers rather than rituals and laws helped acceptance. Under the overlay of Hindu-Buddhist features was an older belief system in which the spiritual and temporal were one. In this domain lived the spirits of nature, who needed to be respected. Sufi mysticism could accommodate this.

…

Singing, dancing, drumming and recitation of phrases were a means of embracing the divine spirit, which merged well with existing traditions. Sufism also often recognized the importance of ancestral links to past teachers, so focus on the lineage of rulers was accepted. At the populist level none of this may have mattered greatly, but at least it left room for gradualism. In many cases, Islamization amounted to little more than circumcision and the end of eating pork. The more conversions were obtained by local people rather than by Muslims from overseas, the less likely they were to be overly strict, or indeed to be well acquainted with the Qur’an and Hadith.

…

Essentially, Java’s Muslim rulers were pragmatists who could readily tolerate the old practices alongside nominal acceptance of the new. Such syncretism was to reach its apogee in the seventeenth century when Muslim Mataram, under Sultan Agung (1613–45) briefly came to rule most of Java. The exceptions and last bastions of Hinduism on Java were Banten [in the extreme west] and Balambangan in the extreme east. Formally and avowedly Muslim, Mataram combined many of the features of pre-Islamic customs and beliefs, had its own unique calendar and maintained its own very elegant version of the Kawi writing system. Although Muslim, the Mataram sultans were suspicious both of the ambitions of ulamas and of the trading cities with their wealth and foreign-inspired religious orthodoxy.

For much of Java, Sultan Agung’s rule was crucial for embedding old systems within the new and for creating a lasting culture which remains at the heart of the modern state and the essentially theist principles expressed in the Indonesian constitution. Elsewhere too, old and new went side by side, with Hindu epics being modified and appearing in both Javanese in Kawi script and in Malay in Jawi. Thus today in Indonesia it is possible to say that ‘Islam is our religion, kakawin [the Javanese rhythmic narrative verse which mixes Hindu mythology and Javanese settings] our culture.’

The sultanate also aligned itself with the pre-Hindu legend of the goddess of the sea, Nyai Roro Kidul. Belief in the powers of this lady from the Indian Ocean, sometimes portrayed as a mermaid, is still strong in popular culture of the southern Javanese and Sundanese. Other legends mixing Hindu and earlier beliefs also live on.

Well, I’ve approached the publisher’s warning limit for copying from the Kindle version of this book, so this will have to be my last post from this work. The next chapter, titled “Nusantaria: Holed Near the Waterline,” is about the arrival of the Portuguese, so this is a good break point.

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Filed under China, economics, language, migration, Portugal, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Spain

by Joel | 9 September 2026 · 5:34 am

Widespread Literacy in Nusantaria

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 294-296:

As elsewhere in the maritime zone, Chinese and Europeans alike were surprised at the prominent economic role of women, particularly in trade. But even more remarked was widespread literacy, of women in particular, albeit their literacy was used only for transient or practical purposes, for messages and personal letters rather than the reading and writing of literature. Spanish priest Pedro Chirino, writing in 1604, noted: ‘So accustomed are all these islanders to writing and reading that there is scarcely a man, still less a woman, who cannot read and write.’ Similarly, de Morga wrote, of the Tagals at least: ‘Almost all the inhabitants, both men and women, write in this language, and there are very few of them who do not write it very well.’

The legacy of the Indian cultural influence which had come via Srivijaya and Java had left behind scripts which were in widespread use when the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century but gradually died out over the next 300 years. Although they varied according to location, all were derived from Kawi, hence arrived from Java, Sumatra or possibly Champa.

The spread and usage of Kawi-derived scripts across Nusantaria is one of the lesser-known facts of the era before Islam and European dominance brought about the supremacy of Arabic then Roman scripts. The diversity of Kawi-derived scripts was such that Bali and Madura scripts both differed from each other and from Javanese, even if largely stylistically, and Sunda had its own script. So too did the Minangkabau of Sumatra and the Bataks, the latter writing on bark rolls. Makassar and the Bugis also had their own [Lontara], as did Palawan, whose Tagbanwa script resembled Tagalog Baybayin, and Mindoro, whose related script was known as Mangyan [or Buhid, or Hanunoo]. There is debate over whether Baybayin was the result of Bugis influence – with which its script shares some unique features – or from Sumatra or elsewhere. But the essential point is that basic literacy in a local script was common throughout the archipelago.

The arrival of paper to replace palm leaves and other traditional media, and the coming of printing, undermined the position of the traditional scripts. An additional source of weakness was that they were used mainly for transient purposes such as brief letters rather than for recording laws or literature. There were important exceptions to this, notably Javanese poems and epics, and Makassarese annals. Spanish priests made some effort to translate Christian doctrines into Tagalog using Baybayin, and elsewhere some Muslim texts were written in local languages using their scripts. But the weight of religious orthodoxy and then of administrative demands, plus the commercial use of Malay written in Jawi, proved too much. The result was that Nusantaria, which in 1500 had perhaps been the most literate place in the world, at least if central Luzon is a guide, lost what could have been a singular advantage for a future era when mass literacy became a necessity for economic progress.

Nor was pre-Hispanic Luzon unique. Elsewhere, old writing systems survived for centuries. There is evidence of high levels of basic literacy in Bali, and the same may have applied to much of Java and parts of Sumatra. As late as the 1930s a survey found that the most literate province in the Dutch East Indies was Lampung in south Sumatra, where schools were few. Male literacy was 45 per cent, female 33 per cent, but the literacy was mostly in the local Lampung script, not Roman or Jawi. It was particularly used in the exchanges of poetic verses between courting couples – just as described by Alcina in the Visayas. Literacy was higher among older people, indicating that the knowledge was handed down through families, not formally taught, and was by then slowly dying.