JAPAN'S LIBERALS

Evening Post, Volume cxxiv, Issue 148, 20 December 1937, Page 12

JAPAN'S LIBERALS

MUZZLED AMID WAR

INFLUENCE OF TRADITION

Japanese liberalism has been placed in cold storage for the duration of the war, writes W. H. Chamberlain from Tokio to the "Christian Science Monitor."

There was a striking- and instructive contrast between the -winter and summer sessions of the Diet. In the former there was an open season for free and outspoken criticism of the Government, the Army, the bureaucracy. Japan's most consistent veteran radical, Yukio Ozaki, delivered two long speeches full of sharp reproaches against the fighting services for usurping the proper functions of the civilian branches of the Government.

On the other hand, the two recent short sessions of the Diet have strongly suggested the proceedings of some totalitarian legislative body. The Government was granted whatever laws and appropriations it wanted, with little debate and without opposition. The supposedly left-wing group in the Diet, the Social Mass Party, had no word of criticism for the Government's policy in China. Mr. Ozaki and men who thought like him were silent.

The difference between the two Diet sessions, of course, was the difference between a state of peace and a state of actual, although undeclared, war. In normal times the Diet plays the role of a safety valve, letting off a good deal of the steam of popular discontent, although its powers of positive initiative in legislation are very limited. In the event of war, however, the old tribal instinct reasserts itself, the ranks close, and Japan presents an outwardly completely united front to the outside world. , NOTHING ARTICULATE. Not only has there been no articulate opposition to the war; there has also been no attempt on the part of Japan's Liberals to formulate reasonable and moderate terms of peace. Some of them have simply echoed the prevailing slogans; the others have ' remained silent. I recently talked with one of those who remained silent, an acquaintance whose background is-;in-ternationalist, even pacifist. His comment reflected the defeatism that is now the predominant, mood . among the minority of Japanese who have been attached to ideals of international conciliation: "When I was younger I felt that one must struggle against, such, .conflicts as the one between Japan and China. New it seems useless; when national aspirations come into too sharp conflict there is sometimes no escape from the appeal to arms. In any case, to oppose war in Japan is to swim against a hopelessly swift current. I can see that my own children, who have not been chauvinistically brought up, grow excited and enthusiastic over the stories of heroic acts of Japanese soldiers and sailors that fill the newspapers. "History has left little place for liberalism in Japan. We were handicapped by our long period of selfimposed seclusion; we came on the international stage late and had a harder struggle for existence than some other nations. Moreover, all our modernisation was decreed from above. Our industries grew up with Government help and under Government supervision. Liberalism in politics is, I think, associated with a less regimented economic life than circumstances have imposed on us." Another reason why the liberalism which is mildly articulate in Japan in peaceful periods and exercised real influence on the course of national development before 1931 becomes mute when the bugles begin to blow, is that Japan's military leaders can point to an unbroken record of victory on land and sea. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, the operations against Tsingtao and the German Pacific islands in the World War, the fighting with China in 1931, 1932, and 1933, all ended in success for Japanese arms. LUCKY IN OPPONENTS. It is true that Japan has been distinctly lucky in its opponents. For the last two generations it has been sufficiently ahead of China in economic development and in the efficiency of its State organisation to possess an overwhelming margin of advantage in any armed conflict. Russia in 1904 and 1905 was in the throes of internal revolution which Staturally handicapped its operations on the remote Oriental front. Germany was in no position to make any serious defence of its Far Eastern possessions.

But the Japanese masses do not1 take these factors into consideration. Brought up from childhood in the firm belief that the Japanese are a chosen and peculiar people, energetically schooled in the deeds of medieval heroes and in the especially courageous actions of their soldiers in modern wars, they are convinced that Japan is invincible. This conviction is further sustained by the fact that Japan has never been invaded, so that the people have no consciousness of the misery of war on their own soil. Moreover, the Japanese officer has a super-heroic code of military ethics to live up to. A foreign military observer, on asking what were the Japanese tactics in the event of a retreat, was told by a Japanese officer that no such tactics were needed, because a Japanese army would never retreat. It is considered such a disgrace for an officer to be captured, no matter what may be the odds against him, that he must atone for it by taking his own life at the first opportunity. Against such a high-pitched martial tradition, associated with a constant record of victory, Japanese liberalism was bound to prove a weak and broken reed. Only a stunning defeat, approaching the proportions of a national disaster, which could not be concealed or glossed over, would be likely to shake the hold on the Japanese masses of the military creed of unquestioning sacrifice for the Empire and a minimum of questioning as to the causes which made this sacrifice necessary.