Americans went as far in the opposite direction as the Japanese in theirs. Americans threw themselves into the war effort because this fight had been forced upon us. We had been attacked, therefore let the enemy beware. No spokesman, planning how he could reassure the rank and file of Americans, said of Pearl Harbor or of Bataan, ‘These were fully taken account of by us in our plans.’ Our officials said instead, ‘The enemy asked for it. We will show them what we can do.’ Americans gear all their living to a constantly challenging world – and are prepared to accept the challenge. Japanese reassurances are based rather on a way of life that is planned and charted beforehand and where the greatest threat comes from the unforeseen.
Another constant theme in Japanese conduct of the war was also revealing about Japanese life. They continually spoke of how ‘the eyes of the world were upon them.’ Therefore they must show to the full the spirit of Japan. Americans landed on Guadalcanal, and Japanese orders to troops were that now they were under direct observation ‘by the world’ and should show what they were made of. Japanese seamen were warned that in case they were torpedoed and the order given to abandon ship, they should man the lifeboats with the utmost decorum or ‘the world will laugh at you. The Americans will take movies of you and show them in New York.’ It mattered what account they gave of themselves to the world. And their concern with this point also was a concern deeply imbedded in Japanese culture.
The most famous question about Japanese attitudes concerned His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor. What was the hold of the Emperor on his subjects? Some American authorities pointed out that through all Japan’s seven feudal centuries the Emperor was a shadowy figurehead. Every man’s immediate loyalty was due to his lord, the daimyo, and, beyond that, to the military Generalissimo, the Shogun. Fealty to the Emperor was hardly an issue. He was kept secluded in an isolated court whose ceremonies and activities were rigorously circumscribed by the Shogun’s regulations. It was treason even for a great feudal lord to pay his respects to the Emperor, and for the people of Japan he hardly existed. Japan could only be understood by its history, these American analysts insisted; how could an Emperor who had been brought out from obscurity within the memory of still living people be the real rallying point of a conservative nation like Japan? The Japanese publicists who again and again reiterated the undying hold of the Emperor upon his subjects were over-protesting, they said, and their insistence only proved the weakness of their case. There was no reason, therefore, that American policy during the war should draw on kid gloves in dealing with the Emperor. There was every reason rather why we should direct our strongest attacks against this evil Fuehrer concept that Japan had recently concocted. It was the very heart of its modern nationalistic Shinto religion and if we undermined and challenged the sanctity of the Emperor, the whole structure of enemy Japan would fall in ruins.
Many capable Americans who knew Japan and who saw the reports from the front lines and from Japanese sources were of the opposite persuasion. Those who had lived in Japan well knew that nothing stung the Japanese people to bitterness and whipped up their morale like any depreciatory word against the Emperor or any outright attack on him. They did not believe that in attacking the Emperor we would in the eyes of the Japanese be attacking militarism. They had seen that reverence for the Emperor had been equally strong in those years after the First World War when ‘de-mok-ra-sie’ was the great watchword and militarism was so discredited that army men prudently changed to mufti before they went out on the streets of Tokyo. The reverence of the Japanese for their Imperial chief could not be compared, these old Japanese residents insisted, with Heil-Hitler veneration which was a barometer of the fortunes of the Nazi party and bound up with all the evils of a fascist program.
Certainly the testimony of Japanese prisoners of war bore them out. Unlike Western soldiers, these prisoners had not been instructed about what to say and what to keep silent about when captured and their responses on all subjects were strikingly unregimented. This failure to indoctrinate was of course due to Japan’s no-surrender policy. It was not remedied until the last months of the war, and even then only in certain armies or local units. The prisoners’ testimony was worth paying attention to for they represented a cross-section of opinion in the Japanese Army. They were not troops whose low morale had caused them to surrender – and who might therefore be atypical. All but a few were wounded and unconscious soldiers unable to resist when captured.