On Interaction between the Society, the Media and the Government before the War
Akio Kawato
Japan-World Trends

Discussions in Japan on the responsibility for the Second World War have frustrated me from the past because they do not seem to cover the whole picture. Legal talks have been brought too much to the fore, and discussions have not captured the actual feelings of the time. I tried reading some Asahi Shimbun newspapers published from around the time of the Manchurian Incident(note: Invasion of Manchuria by Japanese Army, which occured in 1931. This incident and ensuing Japan's inroad to China's inland led to the Pacific War.). The newspapers from that era stored at the National Diet Library are well-worn and seem to have been read by a lot of people.

Judging from the papers, the Manchurian Incident was like a bolt out of the blue for Japan's peaceful society of that time. Though the first news ran on the first page of the Asahi Shimbun, around 70% of the content in the newspapers is about peaceful domestic issues.

The only source covering the cause of the outbreak of the incident(A blast at South-Manchurian Railway) is a wire from a correspondent of “Dentsu,” a news agency at that time, saying “It started because the Chinese side blew up the Manchurian Railway.” There are no on-site interviews or indication of information sources; only a minimal statement.

After the Manchurian Incident, the newspapers seem to report the progress of the war in a straightforward manner without adding judgment. The start of fighting, however, is in fact justified in the running of numerous articles saying, “Until the blast Japan’s rights connected with the South Manchurian Railway (note: These rights had been acquired as a resulet of Russo-Japanese War in 1904) have frequently been infringed upon by China.” The independent actions of Colonel Daisaku Komoto and the Kwantung Army (According to later research, the blast was organized by a few Japanese officers without a consent from Tokyo), which were kept an internal secret of the army, are of course not covered in articles.

This incident took place two years later after the Great Depression (Black Thursday) in the US. The United Kingdom came off the gold standard soon after the Manchurian incident occurred, and currency devaluation and market enclosure competitions began to take place globally. It was during this time that a powerful earthquake originating in nearby Saitama Prefecture shook Tokyo “for an unusually long time.” This was around the time when radio began to spread, and newspapers were forced to compete with it. So, the papers wanted to accomodate with the moves in social atmosphere.

Six years later in 1937, around the time of the Japanese army’s occupation of Nanjing (Japanese papers kept silence about the massacre), the war had already become “an everyday thing,” and around 70% of the newspaper content is on the war. The war was justified, fallen officers and soldiers became heroes.

Let us recall that public opinion’s assessment of the military used to low before the Manchurian Incident. Officers even avoided to wear the uniform in the public. It seems to me that the Manchurian Incident changed the picture 180 degrees. Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, called "Lifeline for Japan"at that time, came to be perceived as a light at the end of the tunnel for overcoming the depression.

I still do not know whether the Japanese people knew that the wars in Manchuria and China had been instigated by limited number of fanatic officers without approval of the Government. However, even if they had known about it, things might have been little different. For in Japan people who defy their superiors and stand for an allegedly right cause tend to be cheered on and viewed as heroes. Since Japanese government was not good at PR, the public must have become distrustful and dissatisfied toward the government.

While the major newspapers in Japan aspire to become like the “quality papers” of Europe and the United States, faced by the need to increase subscriptions in order to survive (the number of daily readers is close to ten millions for Yomiuri and Asahi newspapers each), they read the direction of public opinion and cater to it. As a result, public opinion and the mass media end up fueling each other, and it is easy for them to go off on tangents hand-in-hand.

Of the modern nation states, Japan has been the most easily swayed by public opinion. This is also true now. This is true of the debate on nuclear armament, the debate on reviewing the Japan-US alliance, and the debate on the threat of China.

Is this because the country lacks strong leaders? Aside from a few exceptions, it probably is. Japan has basically been a bureaucrat-led nation, which probably explains why it has rarely produced leaders who directly explain to the public what can be done and what cannot be done and what has to be done even if it means bearing a burden—even at the risk of being assassinated at times.

The issue of war responsibility should not just be a backward-looking discussion on who made mistakes and who is to blame. It also needs to be discussed from the perspective of what should be done to prevent a reoccurrence and what should be done to properly run a modern nation state that has military and police capacities as the enormously powerful devices of force.

The running of a democracy, which has become strikingly complicated, is also a difficult issue for other developed countries aside from Japan. If Japan were to amend its constitution, for example, the amendment should not be merely a legitimization of military forces. Consideration should be given to attach a system of checking to ensure that a decision to use military force will not be made based simply on the mood of society. Otherwise, an amendment of the Constitution will just unnecessarily draw suspicion from the world.