September 28, 1997The Sun Also Sets
By DONALD M. GOLDSTEIN
The decline of the Japanese military code during the 20th century.
WARRIORS OF THE RISING SUN
A History of the Japanese Military.
By Robert B. Edgerton.
Illustrated. 384 pp. New York:
W. W. Norton & Company. $29.95.
uring the first eight months of World War II in the Pacific, the triumphant Japanese swept across Southeast Asia to the doorsteps of Australia. Their tactics were relatively simple. There were no huge attacks with men marching shoulder to shoulder. There was no front line of the World War I pattern. Instead, the Japanese fought as an invisible enemy. They hid behind retiring British columns, blocked roads and staged ambushes. When the battle grew too hot, they disappeared into the jungle. The simplicity of their tactics, more than anything else, made them a formidable foe.
The Allies' error was initially to underestimate the capabilities of the Japanese armed forces and then, following the early Japanese victories, to overestimate them. Thus the myth of the invincible Japanese supermen was born, and played an important role in Japan's early successes. This myth was nurtured by Japanese propaganda and by credulous war correspondents who wrote about their invincibility. While the Japanese were successful, they became known as barbarians. Their war crimes in China and Korea before Pearl Harbor shocked the world. Nanking, where 20,000 women were raped and some 200,000 men, women and children were killed, was documented, as was the later famous Bataan death march. The use of human beings for biological and medical experiments and the escapades of their biological units 721 and 100 have been revealed.
In ''Warriors of the Rising Sun,'' Robert B. Edgerton, who has written several works on wars, among them the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and the Zulu War in South Africa, does not deny these atrocities. However, he believes that the Japanese soldier has a much worthier heritage, as the heir of the samurai; that before 1905 he was much less barbaric than soldiers from China, France, Russia, Britain and even America; and that Japanese fighting men were among the finest in the world. So why did things change after 1905 and what were the ramifications of that change for the future?
Edgerton uses the early chapters of his book to describe the Japanese military before the Boxer Rebellion, during the Boxer Rebellion and during the Opium Wars in China. These chapters are very detailed, with colorful descriptions revealing British, French, Italian, German and even American behavior at its worst. There was rampant rape, murder and killing for fun. One can see why China has been so bent on the return of Hong Kong as a symbol of honor and revenge for a dark period in its history.
Although Japanese soldiers did commit atrocities, detailed in the author's descriptions of wars against China and Russia, for the most part they were much more humane than the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War (1895) and than the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War (1905). Edgerton concludes that one reason for a change in Japanese feelings toward the West was that the Japanese felt that the United States (President Theodore Roosevelt in particular, when he brokered the peace treaty ending the 1905 war) cheated them out of land and reparations that they thought they should have received.
He offers several reasons for Japan's change in military ethos in the 20th century. He believes that for many years Japan had an inferiority complex in its relations with China, from which it had borrowed much of its culture. This changed when the Japanese saw how poorly the Chinese fought against the great powers of Europe. After 1905 Japan saw the Chinese as despicable and inferior people. Japan's attitude toward the West, which began with great respect for Western technology, also changed as Japan began to build its own military-industrial complex. Japanese schools, theaters and the press began to depict the Japanese as superior to Western barbarians. Slogans and cartoons taught young people to hate Westerners.
This change in Japanese thought carried over to Bushido, the code of military ethics. Soldiers no longer were loyal to their military leaders and respective units but to the emperor only. No moral authority above the emperor was acceptable. One lived and died for the emperor and country only. No one was held accountable for rape, murder or atrocities against civilians. Peer pressure to commit barbaric deeds overcame reason. At the same time, military training became compulsory for all young men and death was preached as good: ''Every morning be sure to take time to think of yourself as dead.''
The author concludes that before the 1905 Japanese war with Russia, soldiers and sailors in Japan were subject to international law. During World War II they were subject to their own law, and they committed atrocities accordingly. The Bushido called for no surrender. Hence there was no respect for Allied prisoners, for by Japanese standards they were dead.
Edgerton writes that in the late 16th century, with a large and superbly disciplined army, Japan could have been a world power, but chose not to pursue imperialism until the middle of the 19th century. Had it done so earlier, it might have succeeded, but it was too late for colonialism -- the West had already done that -- and too early to become an economic power. Today Japan is on the brink of being a world power, and although it spends close to $30 billion a year on defense, it has chosen to limit its military capability. In the new world order, and facing the threat of China, it might once again be able to have an honorable and respected army.
''Warriors of the Rising Sun'' is a little weak on Japanese military history before the Boxer Rebellion. As in most books of this type, there are some errors. Thus, there were two waves of attacking planes at Pearl Harbor, not one; the third wave was canceled, not the second; and the second wave did a lot of damage. The JN-25 military Japanese code was not broken before Pearl Harbor but after. Admiral Yamamoto promised to run wild in the Pacific for six months, not a year, and Minoru Genda, not Yamamoto, was the real architect of the attack.
The book is well documented and has an excellent bibliography. It is well worth reading, for it gives both Japanese and Americans an insight into Japanese military history and thinking and raises the question: if Japan was a responsible military power once, why can't it be one now?
Donald M. Goldstein was a collaborator with Gordon W. Prange on ''At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor.'' His latest work, with K. V. Dillon, is ''Amelia: The Centennial Biography of an Aviation Pioneer.''
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