Talking about the War

In the December 1^st issue of Jinja Shinpō they completed the reprinting of a series of three articles by Ashizu Uzuhiko (葦津珍彦), originally published in 1963. These articles set out Ashizu’s position on the war.

He argues that the claim, common then and now, that Japan was motivated purely by imperialist ambitions is unjustified. Most Japanese, he says, genuinely believed that the purpose of the war was to liberate Asia from white imperialism (a phrase he actually uses), and the result of the war was, in fact, to bring about that liberation.

On the other hand, he says that the Japanese must not ignore the fact that a lot of Japan’s policy in that period aimed at building a new US-European style empire, and that in fact Japan did a lot of damage to many other countries in Asia. He says that the Japanese as a people should [untranslatable]. The untranslatable word is “hansei” (反省), which means look back on something and learn lessons from it, normally with a strong nuance that it should not have happened. It is not the same as reflection, regret, remorse, or repentance, however, which is why it is untranslatable as a single word.

I think that is a reasonable position. Japan’s militarisation did start as resistance to white imperialism, and that was always the official purpose, so I am sure that most ordinary Japanese believed it. On the other hand, the damage done by Japanese imperialism is equally undeniable, and hansei is very important.

There is also an important lesson here for the contemporary Western progressive left. The Japanese were people of colour fighting to free themselves and other people of colour from white imperialism, but they committed terrible crimes, mainly against people of colour, in that process. And their white allies were Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The ends do not necessarily justify the means.

I am most interested, however, in the question of why the series was reprinted. There is no need for them to reiterate the idea that Japan had noble goals during the War of Greater East Asia — that has been asserted multiple times in other articles in Jinja Shinpō over the course of this year. On the other hand, there has been no other reference to the suffering inflicted on Asia by the Japanese, nor to the need for hansei.

Thus, I think someone at Jinja Shinpō, someone with authority, must have thought that the Shinto community was in danger of losing sight of what the Japanese did wrong in that period, and would benefit from a reminder. Ashizu is still revered in contemporary Shinto, and primarily for his opinions. Thus, reminding people that Ashizu (who lived through the war, of course) thought that the Japanese had important things to hansei is, rhetorically, a very effective way of doing this.

The position of the war in the Shinto community is rather more complex than it might sometimes appear.