I. The Shadow

On the morning of September 27, 1940 the cables hummed with news of a momentous ceremony. Japanese diplomats in Berlin had signed a military pact with Germany and Italy. That evening in Tokyo the Japanese people received a message from Emperor Hirohito. In their newspapers they read: “We are deeply gratified that a pact has been concluded between these three powers.” The Emperor had spoken. A new alliance had been formed. And a lengthening shadow was spreading over Asia.

TEN YEARS AGO AND NOW

The shadow had first been cast on another September day nearly ten years before, when a railway explosion at Mukden had served as an excuse for the Japanese military to take over Manchuria. As we look back now with the advantage of hindsight, that day—September 18, 1931—looms up as an important milestone. For Japan’s seizure of Manchuria ended one historic era, and began another. It abruptly broke up the period of comparative peace that had succeeded the first World War. And it ushered in our present period of strife and unsettlement. Its indirect effects on European developments were also very great. We know that Japan’s defiance lowered the prestige and authority of the League of Nations. It showed how hard it was to secure international cooperation strong enough to check determined aggression. Japan’s example undoubtedly influenced Mussolini and Hitler in the bold moves they made later on in Europe.

After 1935 German and Italian expansion in Europe paralleled Japan’s drive in the Far East. All of these movements steadily widened their scope. Increasingly these three powers played into one another’s hands, and helped one another’s advance. The anti-Comintern pact of November 1936 drew them closer together. But they were not formally allied until September 27, 1940, when Japan signed the military pact with the Axis powers.

This pact had startling implications. True, Germany and Italy were separated from Japan by vast distances. As long as Britain controlled the seas, the new allies could not actually join military forces. But Germany had only to put pressure on the French authorities at Vichy in order to help Japan win control over Indo-China. An Axis break-through in the Mediterranean, moreover, could swiftly bring her much greater aid.

TOWARD A “NEW ORDER”

It was this possibility that made Japan’s aims, as outlined in the alliance, so significant. Berlin and Rome waved Japan ahead toward the conquest of “Greater East Asia.” Until 1940 Tokyo’s official claims had reached out only to Manchuria and China. But the new term brought southeast Asia into the picture as well. This area would certainly include Indo-China, Siam, Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines. On its outskirts lie Australia, New Zealand and India. By formally announcing “Greater East Asia” as Tokyo’s sphere of influence, the Axis-Japan pact served as a blueprint of the Far Eastern sector of the world order which the Axis alliance hoped to establish.

WHAT IS “GREATER EAST ASIA”?

The new allies were seeking control over three continents. Germany and Italy were bidding for domination over Europe, Africa and the Near East, creating new and urgent problems for us. Tokyo’s bid for supremacy in “Greater East Asia” raised problems which were just as great. To many of us these problems seemed far away—much more remote than those of Europe, to which we are bound by so many close ties. Yet we know now that we should be making a mistake if we tried to close our eyes to them.

More than one billion people, or half the earth’s population, live in the area embraced by “Greater East Asia.” It is thus one of the most populous regions of the globe. Its territorial spread is equally large. Its outside limits range from northern Japan to Australia, and from China and India to New Zealand. The whole North and South American continents, excluding Canada, could be fitted comfortably into this vast territory.

It is, besides, an area of great contrasts—greater, probably, than in any other region of the world. In a score of different localities conditions vary widely—climate, people, language, religion, economic life, government. Coolies working in Korean rice fields are a far cry from English-speaking Australian sheep ranchers, peasants in the remote interior of China from Malayan tin miners or East Indian rubber planters, Indian bazaars under a burning sun from Manchurian cities deep in their winter snows.

A COLONIAL REGION

Another feature of this region became especially important after Germany had conquered several European powers with Far Eastern possessions. For eastern Asia is one of the greatest colonial areas of the world, not even excepting Africa. From Korea to India runs a continuous chain of Japanese, French, American, Dutch and British holdings. Only Japan in the north, and Australia and New Zealand in the south, may be counted as fully independent countries. So this region is the scene not only of imperial rivalries, but of struggles for independence on the part of native peoples.

Thus many factors enter into the international developments affecting this region. Countless threads of policy connect it with Europe. They run to Berlin, and are woven into Hitler’s plans; to London, where they tie in with the problem of what naval and air forces the British can spare for the Far East; to Vichy, and the attitude of the French Government there; and to the refugee Netherlands authorities in Britain taking counsel on the fate of their colonies. Moscow is caught up in this diplomatic network, and so is Washington—their moves can exert decisive influence on the course of events.

JAPAN PULLS THE STRINGS

Yet the main moving force in Far Eastern developments is Japan. In fact, Japan has been pulling the strings ever since September 18, 1931. The challenge to the status quo in East Asia proceeds from Tokyo, just as in Europe it proceeds from Berlin. Like Germany, but in even greater measure, Japan has the strategic advantage of a central position. She need not take too seriously the protests of European powers halfway across the globe, and she is well aware that the main centers of strength in the United States and the Soviet Union are almost equally distant. Only Japan, of the major powers, has her home bases wholly within the Far Eastern region.

And so today we are forced to think more and more about Japan. In large part we are concerned with the immediate present. We want to know what Japan is doing, and what she intends to do. Yet we can understand her present foreign policy and form some idea of her probable future moves only if we know something of her past as well. We must seek out the forces that have shaped modern Japan.

So in this book we shall go back to the legendary traditions of the Japanese nation, today being revived by Japanese patriots and preached as a state religion. We shall see how the belief in hereditary power as the privilege of the few has been strong in Japan from the earliest times, resisting the influence of democratic ideas from both China and the West; how even when Japan set up a constitutional government, the seats of ancient privilege were preserved; and how Japan, with her military leaders in the saddle, finally set out on the road to Empire.