THE RISING SUN IS SETTING

Cue (NZERS), Issue 28, 31 July 1945, Page 1

THE RISING SUN IS SETTING

JT -is four thousand miles in a ■* straight line from the southern fringe of the Netherlands East Indies U) the Russian border in the island of Sakhalin. Between those two points Hies the solid bloc, of continental and [island territories which Japan held within her rapacious grasp sixteen .months ago and which are now being torn piecemeal from her fingers. Japan had seized in a succession of lightning [plows the greater part of East Asia, including the occupied territory of China, Burma, Malaya, the Philippines and a number of islands in the Pacific, and had thrust her armies as far south as New Guinea and the Solomons until even Australia and New Zealand were ‘ threatened with direct attack. ,

; Japan’s blitzkreig of the East had reaped rich dividends. The policy of j war and destruction, of bludgeoning I down her weaker neighbours, and of striking at a time when Germany and Italy were' drawing off the major j weight of Allied resistance, had been amply justified. Or so it appeared at [the time. Today, Allied forces stand < within a few hundred miles of the Japanese mainland, large Japanese forces have been destroyed or immo- ■ ■ . bilised in the outer ring of the enemy’s sphere of . conquest, and almost daily Allied naval and bomber fleets are cascading shells and bombs into the heart of the 'Empire. It is now beginning to diawn on the little yellow race of Nippon that perhaps, after all, they may-have made a mistake .... z

The age-old fairy story of Japan, the fairy story, still accepted by an Indulgent world forty .years ago, of a quaint race of little yellow people living in little paper houses and bowing odd little bows in v odd little kimonos, has evaporated under the hard impact of war; The little land of pleasant make-believe has dropped its mask. No one in the outside world really knows when Japan ceased her window-dressing and reached for the sword of conquest- and destruction, nor even when her dreams of dominating the Far East and the Pacific began to take shape, but the world does know today that long before the ’’China incident”, brought the first rumblings of the storm she had-been preparing for a war of expansion in which she planned to brush aside and, if need be, strike at her former friend’s and allies.

The world stared when Japan occupied eastern Siberia in the last war, but shrugged its shoulders and attached no particular significance to the suddenly militaristic tendencies of the ’’quaint” little Japanese. After all, without oil and iron and with practically no coal supplies they could not aspire to becoming a great industrial

nation, and a nation without heavy industries could not make munitions of war. The Japanese had thought that one out, too. Then came a day when the Japanese walked out of the League of Nations and Japanese armies appropriated still more pieces

of Asia— which' had iron, coal and, to a lesser extent, oil. More, shebegan to lay the foundations for an expansion of industry which, if not as yet on a grandiose scale, was sufficient to enable her to compete in the markets of the world to an everincreasing degree. The extent to which 'Japan came to undersell other nations even on their own markets is too well known to require elaboration. .

But a new factor had arisen, of which only Japan was aware. / The Japanese were using their screen of industrial expansion and competition in the sphere of world trade to hide their preparations for war, a war in which i they well knew they would not be able to rely on their former allies for the munitions and supplies necessary to equip the armies of aggression.

The pattern of events from then on is familiar. Japan built her war machine, tested it in Manchuria and China and finally launched it in an all. out. win-or-lose throw of the dice against the Allies.' That she miscalculated the odds against her the course of the war is now showing, but even when stared, in the face by inevitable defeat the Japanese are still contesting every inch of Allied progress with a fanaticism that none can deny.

What sort of people are the Japanese? From where do they derive the fanaticism which has been made so apparent in war? What makes them fight on in the face of hopeless odds? The answer in each case is not hard to find. Long centuries of rigid training and 1 example in intense pride of. race have inculcated in the Japanese an almost hereditary faculty of selfcontrol and stoicism even in enduring pain or death, and have taught him that personal cowardice is despicable' and loyalty, especially to the throne, the supreme virtue. He is imbued from birth with the ’’sacredness and inviola, bility” of the person of the Emperor, whom his subjects call ’’Tenshi” (’’Son of Heaven”) or ’’Tenno” (’’Heavenly King”).

In that passionate creed is moulded ■ the Kamikaze suicide pilot and the soldier who- fights to the death or com-’ mits suicide when threatened with ' capture, believing that in so doing h? assures for himself a place in ydfcasuni, the military shrine for all Japanese soldiers who die in battle. In this spirit, also, are preserved the traditions • of the Samurai, the professional war-rior-swordsmen of a few generations back. It 'is the Samurai to whom can be traced the code of bushido (way o . the warrior) as it is known in the Japanese armed forces today, and t e rigid * rules of conduct laid '-.down far Japan’s famous swordsmen are in a large measure reflected in the deman » made of the modern Nipponese soldier.

/The Samurai made self-control the ..ideal of his existence and practised the endurance of suffering so thoroughly that he could unhesitatingly inflict on his own body the most horrible pain. The spirit of loyalty was instilled in him above all things, and he came to regard death by his own hand as a normal eventuality, even to the extent of ending his life by harakiri (disembowelment), an excruciatingly painful mode of suicide, to escape falling into the hands of a victorious enemy or by way of protest against the excesses of, a ’feudal chief or the crimes of a ruler.. • The Japanese is brought up under a moral code which is full of contra- .» dictions; national honour is not the : same as personal honour, inasmuch as

: to the individual Japanese the relative , merits of truth and falsehood are de- • " * ■ • . ■ . . ■ < i termined only by the advantages to be gained from resort to J either (a . trait . which. has transported itself even to yTokio’s international dealings <,f re- ‘ cent decades). A wife must at all times ;be faithful to her husband, but the ‘husband on his side need not be so scrupulous. In business the . end is more important than the means of achieving it, and dishonesty and .crooked dealing are accepted as part /of the game. - ;

V Japan’s'national existence has its roots in the primitive religion of ■(Shintoism, the teachings of which are founded' on a belief that the universe was created by a male deity, Izanagi, and a female deity, Izanami. From Izanagi’s right- eye was born Amaterasu, who became goddess of the sun, and from his left eye came the god of the moon. Tradition has it that the /first sovereign of Japan was the grandson of Amaterasu, and that his descendants have ruled the 7 . land in unbroken succession over since; and ? lt is thus to the sun goddess that the Japanese people, pay reverence above /'all other deities. It is a noteworthy A ■ ' - - .

fact that the Kojiki which forms the scripture pf the Shinto cult, was composed in the eighth century and consists of a somewhat . nebulous and disconnected collection of legends telling how the land and people of Japan were produced by the. gods. Even the name of the first human sovereign of Japan,. Jimmu Tenno, and the supposed date , of his accession (February 11, 660 8.C.) were invented by scholars in the eighth century in accordance with the wish of the leaders of the nation to make the people believe in the antiquity of the Imperial lineage and in the continuity of Japanese history, though in achieving this end both Kojiki and its sister chronicle, Nihongi, ascribe impossibly long reigns to some of Jimmu’s successors. .

? Obscure as Japanese history must necessarily he in the absence of reliable records, the two chronicles serve their main purpose of impressing upon the people the significance ■ attached to the title of Dai Nippon Teikoku ; Tenrio (’’lmperial Son of Heaven of Great Japan”) which the Emperor bears. For seven centuries from 1186 to 1867,

temporal power in Japan was exercised by successive families of . bpguns, with , the Emperors remaining ai spiritual -seclusion. The most, import ant of these families were the Minamoto, who held the Shogunate from' 1186 to. 1219; the Akisagag 1.34 to 1573; and . the Tokugawa, 1603 to 1867 In 1867, the . Emperor, Meiji, grandfather of the present _ Emperor Hirohito, restored the Imperial power after the abdication of the fifteenth and last Tokugawa Shogun Kciki, and four years later the feudal system was entirely suppressed. , ? ? /-

■Far from being the papier mache towns that legend has painted them, the cities of modern Japan upon which bombs, have been raining with such devastating effect in. the present war are .as modern, ' solidly built and well appointed in essential respects as the major cities of Europe. Even the, Japanese - dwelling-house, which has long clung to the pattern of the Tokugawa period— a wooden building .divided into rooms by sliding screens,, with sliding ’windows. of paper-covered lattice —is beginning to reflect the westernisation so evident in the business areas. - Successive disastrous earthquakes and 1 fires, and particularly ■ those which destroyed- large areas of Tokio. and Yokohama in 192 J have taught the .people their lesson; and the interest apparent in Western styles of architecture towards the end u of last century has developed so strongly that all public buildings are now erected in ' accordance with the ferro-concrete principles of Western designing,' with

the incorporation of . every possible earthquake and fire-resisting -device. In . the private home the maintenance of many old customs and the age-old taste for simplicity are responsible for the retention of most of the traditional features. ; Attempts have been made at times to harmonise the Western , and native modes, but with little success.

’ Much has been made of the influence of great industrial interests on the trend of Japanese national-life, and to a large extent this is jusiilW. More than half of Japan’s actual wealth, with the exception of the Emperor’s fortune and the funds of the national treasury, lies in the-hands of a few families, of which the most important are the J Mitsui. ' These families,. which . are nothing more or less than great trad.? ing houses,, virtually control, by their - immense wealth and power, the destinies ,of the seventy million or so people of Jttpah proper, and to some? extent those •of the millions within the . sphere of Japanese domination, in so/ far as they' handle a staggering percentage of the manufactures and products which go to build up every-day. commercial life. Practically every bomb which hits ,an industrial target;, in Japan strikes' in- some way at the pockets of - the Mitsui or one of the other patriarchal clans whose names: spell ’’Big Business” in the land oft Nippon. ... . ' -.

Japan had a / sizeable empire even without the territories she has dominated since she began her war of conquest. In addition to the four, mam islands of Honshiu, Kyushiu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido, there are many smaller islands, said to number 4,223 in all, m the homeland group. Formosa aim the Pescadores were ceded by China at the close of the Sino- Japanese war in . 1895; Japanese Karafuto (Sakhalin) was ceded by Russia id . 0 (Port .Arthur and adjacent territory--and waters were leased, to Japan a the same time) ; Kwantung Province, a peninsula to the south of Manchun , was obtained on a 99-year lease frQjn China in 1905 ; Korea was annexe J . 1910; and under the Treaty of yesailles of 1919-the Marshall, Caroli . / Ladrone (excluding Guam) and ™ Islands, former German possessions h the 7 ' north Pacific, were placed 11111 - Japanese mandate with the name „ Nanyo. Japan also lias a ’’protec

interest in Manchukuo. a state she established by armed force and which is not recognised by the other nations of the worlds According to the census of 1940 the total population of the Japanese Empire was - 105,226,000. Large areas of China have been overrun since the Japanese declaration of war on that country : in 1937, while following the launching of her. Pacific •war Japan has. invaded and occupied the Philippines, • a great part of the Netherlands East Indies, Hong Kong, Malaya, and Burma, as well as other Pacific outposts. An impressive proportion of these territories is now back in Allied hands. The population of the Japanese, capital, Tokio, is believed to be about seven millions, while that of the second city, Osaka, is about three and a-half millions. Other cities with populations of over a million are Kyoto, the ancient capital, and Nagoya, with Yokohama and Kobe nearing the seven-figure mark.

The Japan of today, desperately trying to stem the tide of defeat and

retribution, is a 'different country from the Japan that stepped out so jauntily on the road of conquest in 1937 and consummated that blunder in the even more reckless southward plunge into the Pacific in 1941. The people, of Japan have seen one ill-gotten gain after another wrested from them. They know, too, that others will follow in short order, that even the sacred precincts of the homeland itself may be torn wide open at any ‘moment Emerging at last from the fit of super, patriotism into which clever propaganda and dazzling military triumphs had doped them, they see the Rising Sun in imminent danger of setting once and for all. And the people of Japan, with theirproud racial ties, their faith in the destiny of a master race divinely led, and their fast-receding hopes of the realisation of the much-? vaunted?’’Greater. East Asia Co-Pros-perity Sphere” as a means of dominating a hemisphere,-are about to drain the cup of defeat to the last bitter dregs. • ' •