Li Yongjing, Department of Political Science, East China Normal University
The Decade of Envoys: The Diary of U.S. Ambassador to Japan, 1932-1942, and Excerpts from Public and Private Documents by Joseph C. Gru, translated by Sha Qingqing, Social Sciences Academic Press, March 2020, 680 pp. 99.00 yuan
Eve of the War: The Historical Stage of the Colonial Empire's "Cutting Belly"
At 3:20 a.m. on December 8, 1941, Japanese fighter jets from six aircraft carriers began airstrikes against the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, and at one and a half o'clock the Japanese had begun to make landfall operations on the Malay Peninsula; at 11:40 a.m., the Japanese Emperor issued a declaration of war, declaring that the united states and Britain had "opened the end of the war.", and Japan and the United States then fought for their lives in the vast pacific ocean and launched a fierce battle. Later generations will often remember the special year of 1941 because of this event. In fact, a moment as stubborn and hostile as in 1941 is unique in the entire history of mankind to date, and it is the epitome of the turbulent years of the entire world in the 1930s, and it is also the peak of the injustice of the modern colonial imperial order initiated by Western Europe. We need to explore the historical significance of this year in the context of world history and the history of civilization.
Because Japan went to war undeclared, took the initiative to start the war in a disgraceful way, and because of its subsequent fiasco, it became the only clown in this historical story. Gru, who had been the U.S. ambassador to Japan for a decade at the outbreak of the war, said long before the war that Japan was on the road of "national cutting." After the war, Japanese and American historians reconstructed and reproduced this "road" from multiple perspectives, and people seem to be familiar with the various details of this story, but this is not a reason why today's readers can not read this history. It's like classic stories like Hamlet and Legend of the Condor Heroes are repeatedly brought to the stage or screen, and no matter how familiar they are with their bridges, they will still get all kinds of inspirations from theater appreciation. What kind of meaning the details of history or the bridge section of the drama will eventually give people depends on people's own consciousness and perspective.
Later generations saw the "failure" of the Japanese Empire, so no matter how this "failure" was described and discussed, it seemed to be successful in conclusion. As everyone knows, this practice actually falls into the historical cognitive model of the king and the loser; it certainly satisfies the basic psychological needs of the world cognition in human childhood--the people of this world can be divided into good people and bad people, and it can also satisfy the Manichaean firm black and white worldview, but it cannot pass through our rational judgment platform: what does failure really mean? In the view of the famous French historian Bloch, "the failure of action is one of the basic elements of human history"; only by seeing "the rich experience of human diversity" in the failures of human beings themselves around 1941 can history help "heal the weakness of blind judgment". Let's start with basic psychological needs and recount the history of Japan's "failure."
On June 22 of that year, Germany suddenly launched a blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union, and the European battlefield expanded dramatically, and the world order further collapsed. Japan suddenly found itself facing a strange situation: a year earlier, Foreign Minister Yoshinori Matsuoka had vigorously facilitated the signing of the Triple Alliance Treaty between Japan and Germany and Italy, forming the so-called "Axis" group. The treaty was directed at the United States and Britain, aimed at redividing the world, and The hostility of the United States toward Japan rose rapidly; the two countries formally began a comprehensive decoupling. How did Japan and the United States get to this point?
Among the various factors that make history, the good players in the world power arena undoubtedly play a life-threatening role. Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka was one of the most striking protagonists on the historical stage of Japan and the world at this time, and some historians even consider him to be "one of the most influential foreign ministers in modern Japanese history." He went to the United States at the age of thirteen to join a relative in business, then spent nine years in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in law from the University of Oregon. Like many Imperial Japanese politicians who had studied in the United States, he called himself an "American master" and believed that "toughness and self-confidence are the most valuable qualities against the United States."
In April 1941, Matsuoka visited Europe in anticipation of what Geru described as "Europe's most famous liar", German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. According to a German translator, "Matsuoka was one of the few people who dared to engage in a similar inter-peer chat with Hitler" ([Japanese] Eri Toda, Japan 1941: Decisions Leading to the Abyss, Xinhua Publishing House, 2020). At this time, Matsuoka had already become famous for his excellent eloquence. As early as December 8, 1932, when Japan participated in the Special Conference of the League of Nations on the illegal establishment of "Manchukuo", he made a famous speech, declaring that Japan was crucified by western imperialist countries like Jesus; Japan was described as a victim of Western conspiracies. In March of the following year, when Japan announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations, he defended Japan for ninety minutes, and Matsuoka gained the status of a hero in the hearts of the Japanese people. This actually paved the way for him to reach the pinnacle of power in 1941.
[Japanese] Eri Tanada: "Japan 1941: Decisions Leading to the Abyss"
Passing through Moscow on the way, he met three times with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in order to conclude a mutual neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union, but all of them ended in failure. On 13 April, he was given the opportunity to meet Stalin. "During his one-hour meeting with Stalin, he spent fifty-eight minutes preaching Japanese ideology"; he was pursed and "gushed out what communism Stalin was." Gru also made a special note for this in his diary. At the last minute of the talks, Stalin suddenly accepted Matsuoka's statement, and the two sides soon decided to sign the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact. When he left Moscow, Stalin and the Foreign Minister personally sent him off, which is extremely rare. The fundamental goal of the two treaties led by Matsuoka actually had its "bitter intentions": in order to solve what they called the "China Incident", that is, the all-out war of aggression against China that began in 1937, Japan must balance Britain and the United States on the world stage and prevent them from supporting China's War of Resistance.
When he returned to Japan on April 22, Matsuoka was once again greeted heroically and was equally popular in Japanese politics; he did make history. However, the subsequent outbreak of the Soviet-German war left Japan feeling embarrassed: Japan began the so-called "southward" or "northward" strategic choice. Matsuoka firmly advocated "going north" and attacking the Soviet Union. At this time, Japan-US diplomatic negotiations were underway, and he continued to take a tough attitude toward the United States, repeatedly declaring that "the disposition of Americans is to prey on the weak" and "the character of the American people is to bully the weak and fear the hard." Then-Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe was overwhelmed, but helpless, and finally expelled Matsuoka from the cabinet on July 16 by way of a collective resignation of the cabinet.
The United States had thought that when Matsuoka stepped down, Japan would consider breaking with the Axis powers, but the opposite was true. Not only did Japan continue to do so, but on July 21 it forced France to accept Japan's "peaceful" occupation of southern French Indochina and formally entered the country on July 28. This directly threatened the Philippine colonies of the United States and its access to strategic resources such as rubber and tin in Southeast Asia. The odds of a direct conflict between the two colonial empires suddenly soared. The United States immediately announced a freeze on Japanese assets, and on August 1, the U.S. oil embargo on Japan also officially entered into effect. Later historians generally say that this was a crucial part of driving Japan to war: Japan's oil reserves would be depleted the following year, and "the oil gauge has become the clock that counts down to the war." The Japanese political elite, of course, knows this.
However, the Japanese Navy, which was in charge of fighting the United States, was far from being determined to go to war: the result of several wargame deductions was that Japan was ultimately defeated, so that they simply canceled the deduction. But the Navy's boasting of the "Armada" for years has embarrassed policymakers: How do you balance the tension between the rationality of war, which is a matter of life and death, and the glory of empire and the will to power?
On September 3, the Liaison Conference of Japan's Base Camp for Formulating Military Strategy adopted the "Essentials for the Implementation of Imperial National Policy", which for the first time clarified the hard target for Japan to go to war with the United States: if it could not reach a diplomatic agreement with the United States before early October, it would go to war with the United States (Britain); and japan's bottom line when negotiating with the United States (Britain) was that "the United States and Britain must not interfere with or obstruct the Empire in handling the Chinese incident", and must not assist China militarily, politically and economically ([Japanese] Hattori: The Complete History of the Great East Asian War, World Knowledge Publishing House, 2016). The situation is stronger than the people, because the essence of the situation, or "situation", is a social force, formed by the mutual agitation of various short-term and long-term variables that determine the course of history.
[Japanese] Hattori Takushiro: A Complete History of the Great East Asian War
At a time of difficult negotiations between Japan and the United States, an Army officer left a verse that confides in the situation and atmosphere of the era, which is essentially an oppressive structure: "No new progress / Days of bitterness and contemplation continue / How much oil is wasted by a day of delay / How much bloodshed does a day of delay mean / Yet they say, we cannot fight a hundred years' war with the United States!" On November 26, U.S. Secretary of State Hull submitted a "Hull Memorandum" to Japanese Ambassador to the United States Nomura, demanding that Japan completely withdraw its troops from China and Indochina, not recognize the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," reaffirm the validity of the Nine-Power Pact, and demand that Japan abrogate the Triple Alliance Treaty. Japanese Navy and Army officers were relieved that the memorandum was an ultimatum, a "divine favor" that helped Japan "determine the fate of the war and was a happy outcome" ([Japanese] Sadao Asada: The Ghost of Mahan and the Great Collision with the Japanese and U.S. Navies, Xinhua Publishing House, 2018). Thus, the war broke out smoothly. The core clause of the "Hull Memorandum" is not new, but the national policy of the United States since the "918" incident in 1931: not to recognize the "facts" made by Japan.
However, this does not mean that Japan believes that the Hull Memorandum has deceived itself by removing the ultimate psychological obstacle to war against the United States. From another point of view, Japan and the United States will eventually compete on the battlefield, which is almost the general consensus of the people at that time. The publication of this memorandum, rather, eventually ignited the long-accumulated psychological energy. Military rationality was, of course, never absent; in order to prevent the United States from sneaking into Japan without declaring a war, Japanese generals took advantage of their Meiji ancestors and developed a strategy of attacking first: a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, just as Japan did at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War. U.S. politicians have predicted that Japan could launch a surprise attack at any time and thought of the possibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor, but still believe that Japan's primary target should be the U.S. naval base in the Philippines. As a result, Japan won a tactical victory, but turned what it "hoped for a limited war into a life-and-death infinite war," and the "national slicing" predicted by Gru was staged.
This prophecy undoubtedly contains prejudice and hostility, but it is not a momentary indignation. In his diary, Gru mentioned this statement three times. In his report to the Secretary of State on November 3, 1941, Gru warned Hull that "Japan may launch a suicide attack on the United States in a rash manner"; in his diary the following day, he wrote emphatically that "[Japan] may have to fight with all its might, even at the expense of the nation"; on December 8, when he learned that the great war had begun, he mentioned this statement again, "and is glad that this statement has been recorded". In fact, on December 27, 1934, two years after becoming ambassador to Japan, he predicted that "the soldiers of this country can completely break through the government's constraints" and will do something almost "national cutting"; unless "the more sober-minded people in the government" can turn the tide and prevent the country from embarking on the "road of national suicide". But this possibility soon disappeared completely: after the "226 Incident" in 1936, when the young officers launched a military coup, the Japanese government was further controlled by the military and in fact became an outright militarist state.
At about 3:30 a.m. on December 8, 1941, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Shijie learned of Japan's war against the United States and immediately "notified the Central Daily that this was the beginning of Japan's 'belly cutting' operation." On December 9, the Ta Kung Pao published an editorial entitled "The Outbreak of the Pacific War, the Violent Sun Embarks on the Road of Cutting the Belly," pointing out that "now the Tyrannical Sun has declared war on Britain and the United States, and there is absolutely no chance of victory, and it has embarked on the road of cutting the abdomen with great compassion and generosity when there is no way out."; on December 10, the Ta Kung Pao again published an editorial: "(China) adhered to the national policy of resisting the war to the end, fought bitterly for four and a half years, plunged the Japanese into a quagmire, tortured the Japanese valve to depression and impatience, and finally embarked on the road of risking and cutting the abdomen." (Deng Ye, "Chiang Kai-shek's Strategic Layout: 1939-1941", Social Sciences Academic Press, 2019)
It is true that Japan has embarked on the path of the metaphor of "cutting the abdomen." In fact, China's will to resist war, which will never speak of peace, the anti-war action of the whole people, and the unconditional withdrawal of Japan's troops demanded by the "Hull Memorandum" have made it difficult for Japan to ride the tiger, and it can only choose to fight with its life. On August 15, 1941, the United States and Britain issued the Atlantic Charter, which seemed to Japan to be equivalent to a declaration of war. Fierce critics argue that the United States and Britain are "forcing countries to accept the Anglo-American view of the world order"; that "the United States and Britain are two great powers that prey on others, and they want to expel Japan from China"; and that if Japan is going to yield, Then Japan "will give up not only the results of the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, but also the benefits of the 'Manchurian Incident' ([American] McLean, History of Japan, Hainan Publishing House, 2014). They do not see that the Atlantic Charter has become a beacon of the new world order, and that the role of the United States in the evolution of the world order has changed, as if it had become the terminator of the world order of the colonial empire.
McLean: A History of Japan
The individual provisions of this charter, though imperfect, are collectively recognized as a re-expression of the American "Wilsonian idealism." The fierce critical rhetoric in Japan here shows that the principles and ideals proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter have in fact hit their "sore spots" to the point of indignation. Why, then, has Japan failed to take a step back from this, return to the Nine-Power Pact, which the United States has repeatedly demanded that Japan abide by, and restore the pattern before the "918" incident? Why was it that when the Japan-US War broke out, all the parties involved, including Japan itself, cheered? The story of Japan-U.S. relations in 1941, in fact, has many hidden feelings, and they have not yet been fully examined rationally.
"Manchuria": the latest stage of the struggle in the colonial empire
In 1941, China had already made great sacrifices to resist the aggression of the Japanese militarists, and the people and the national territory had been devastated. After the end of the war, the Chinese government and the people generally responded to Japan with a moral attitude of revenge, and the leniency toward Japan made many Japanese people feel nostalgic. Time has passed, and as the shadow caused by the war has disappeared from people's memory, it seems to be missing the point by repeating the phrase "national cutting the belly" at this time. But the question arises again: Why did Japan in 1941 have to choose to go to war with the United States?
As readers of historical stories, it may be helpful to change our perspectives. In fact, later generations of historians often have a kind of "conceit" when facing history: they have unveiled the mystery of history, because they have reorganized the materials they see and woven them into a seamless story with the hindsight that everyone has. But this is likely to be an "illusion" or "hallucination". After the historian's objective and careful treatment of the "material", as we have seen above, is it really close to the truth and meaning of the history we are seeking? The German philosopher Dilthey repeatedly admonished in The Meaning of History that no particular "event" or "material" can confirm or falsify the truth of history; the key is to understand the "interrelationship" of events and the "psychological structure" of people. The "material" or "event" provided by historians may be organized in another "relational" structure, revealing different "psychological contents" of people. Bloch, whom we quoted earlier, said that when historians are confronted with "materials," they are ultimately confronted with human "consciousness," which is actually derived from the same historical understanding. We can open our minds: if future generations write about the situation and events in which we are in the present moment, what kind of trade-offs will they make? The purpose of these questions is not to answer, but to restore our pluralistic feelings about history and reality, to help us see the questions we have turned a blind eye to.
Back to the previous question. The 1941 Japan-U.S. War is widely believed to have originated from Japan's sabotage of the so-called "International Order in the Far East" and the "Versailles-Washington System" (1919-1922) formed after World War I; among them, the "918" Incident launched by the Kwantung Army led by Ishihara Guan'er and the subsequent establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo were the main culprits. In 1946, when the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried the crimes of the Japanese militarists, the starting point of retrospection was set for this incident. After the incident, both the Chinese government and the League of Nations demanded that Japan restore its status quo ante and abide by the League of Nations Convention, the Nine-Power Convention, and the Kellogg-Briand Convention. As mentioned earlier, during the final negotiations between the United States and Japan in November 1941, the United States still insisted that Japan should return to the framework of the Nine-Power Pact and abandon the "Manchukuo" it had illegally concocted. Conversely, since Japan would not consider spitting out its prey in any case, this eventually led to a situation in which it was forced to go to war with the United States.
But the question doesn't end there: Is the international order in the Far East, bound by the "Versailles-Washington system," really an order of justice? While the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" that Japan is trying to replace it is unjust and in fact notorious for its brutality and tyranny, we cannot say the other way around that the "Versailles-Washington system" was still worth remembering in 1941 and beyond. The "Versailles-Washington system" that Japan and the United States are fighting for head-on is a rearrangement of the modern colonial imperial system after World War I; its essence is that the modern colonial imperial system itself has the fundamental attribute of competing for and dividing imperial interests. In fact, the unfolding of history that we have seen is precisely the process of overcoming the system — a process of Chinese people rebelling against colonial aggression and the colonial order.
Needless to say, the above statement does not mean that Japan's challenge to this system is legitimate; Japan's challenge and the "modern superpower" it pursues are in fact manifested as aggression against China, and thus the logic itself of the world system of modern colonial empires. The elite of the Japanese Empire did not realize that the system was on the eve of its end, and that their reckless behavior in 1931 was the last straw that crushed it.
Admittedly, for some weak countries at the time, including China, the "Versailles-Washington" system was not without good intentions; the Japanese-American historian Akira Irie concluded that "the Chinese leadership is not trying to overthrow the existing international order at this time, but to integrate into it" ([American] Akira Irie: The Origins of World War II in Asia and the Pacific, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2016). Integrating into the world system, rather than challenging it, is both a strategy for China's survival and development as a weak country, and the "goodwill" that this system presents in the East Asian world: although China's rights and interests in the Shandong Peninsula were betrayed at the Versailles Conference and president Wilson's idealism of creating a new world order was hit hard, the Washington Conference (1921-1922) forced Japan to "return" the Shandong Peninsula after all, which gave China the incentive to "integrate into it".
Akira Irie: The Origins of World War II in Asia and the Pacific
Nevertheless, this colonial empire-led arrangement has its insurmountable unrighteous attributes and inherent contradictions. The imperialists may be completely indifferent to this injustice, but they are extremely sensitive to the contradictions in them: contradictions will make this predatory system inoperative, so this contradiction must be eliminated! In East Asia, how to accept and appease Japan, which has successfully promoted to a colonial empire, has become a major issue in the imperial order. Japan was an interloper in the Western world, and at this time it had already shown the mental state of a "world revolutionary": why could the European and American empires divide the world? The British and American sides claimed to be relying on the "mission of civilization", and the reasons were grand; but Japan countered that the Western Empire relied on nothing more than violence, civilizational "double standards" and blatant "racial discrimination". This has indeed left the West speechless. Japan tried to include anti-racism provisions in the statutes of the League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference, and as a result, the European and American colonial empires joined forces to bring Japan down. The Japanese political elite must have silently made an assessment of this "revolutionary" act at this time: under the existing world order, Japan will never be welcomed.
At this time, Japan chose to be hasty and patient. Therefore, to safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, adhere to the commercial principles of equal opportunities and open doors, the new and old colonial empires soon reached an agreement. This system ensured that Japan would come to the table rather than lift it, but it could not make it fundamentally satisfactory. The subsequent immigration bill passed by the United States to restrict Japanese immigration once again deeply humiliated Japan and rekindled its will as a "revolutionary." The old order once again prepared itself with the seeds of "revolution". Of course, Japan is actually going to carry out a pseudo-revolution, although it occupies a "moral" high point in form. It repeatedly criticized the unjust nature of the world order dominated by the colonial empire at the time, but in practice it acted in full accordance with the principles of the colonial empire. In fact, Japan is a veritable student of the modern Western colonial empire, and it is also a "superior student"; it can even be said that the Japanese Empire is their concubine, but the Japanese are at best "honorary whites" and are not welcome. Japan has repeatedly been angry: Why can't the great powers "wait for me equally"? Why was it that the United States, which was also latecomer, could annex Hawaii, occupy Cuba, and colonize the Philippines, while Japan could not include "Manchuria"? At this time, there was also another time; Japan did not realize that the times had changed.
At this time, the imperialist countries such as the United States and Japan did not realize that the ninth country of the Nine-Power Pact was growing into a real revolutionary of the system: China's revolutionary forces were stirred up in the First World War and gained nationalist support; a new "Chinese nation" had entered the stage of world history. The Northern Expedition in 1924, under the banner of the "Three People's Principles," was both a war for China's reunification and a revolutionary war against the old world order. Japan bore the brunt of the attack: the revolutionary government claimed to take over the "Manchurian" rights that had been plundered and plundered, which put Japan at risk of losing its colonies. On May 1, 1928, the day the Northern Expeditionary Army marched into Jinan, Japan brazenly sent troops to occupy Jinan, Qingdao and jiaoji along the railway, followed by a large-scale killing, and more than 10,000 people were unfortunately killed; Chiang Kai-shek fled from Jinan City in a hurry, only to be spared, as his own shame and humiliation (Wang Feng: "Chiang Kai-shek on the Battlefield of Songhu", Modern Publishing House, 2017). After entering the 1930s, as the domestic order gradually stabilized, China began strategic preparation activities against Japan.
Wang Feng: "Chiang Kai-shek on the Battlefield of Songhu"
The Japanese Empire's vicious attack foreshadowed the inevitability of its subsequent action: it was tit-for-tat, trying to separate northeast China from China forever; "Manchukuo" had appeared in the empire's vision and regarded it as a forbidden city. As a result, this was the cause of the disintegration of the Versailles-Washington system in the Far East, where American interests were mortally threatened. In the 1941 negotiations between the United States and Japan, some historians praised the United States as "the United States risked war with Japan to help China", in fact, this only told the beautiful half of the truth, and the other half of the truth was the instinct of the empire. The failure of the Western colonial empires to immediately punish Japan's adventurous actions in 1931 for ravaging Northeast China was motivated by its own selfishness to preserve the colonial world order, which further bred the seeds of revolution against themselves.
The Japan-American War: The Self-Fulfillment of Prophecy
By August 1941, the U.S. oil embargo against Japan meant a complete decoupling of the two empires. The War between Japan and the United States is already like an arrow on the string; the predicted "Japan-America War" or "Pacific War" may break out at any time. On December 7, 1941, in a private conversation, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt told The Chinese ambassador to the United States, Hu Shi, that Japan might launch an attack within forty-eight hours, and advised China to "mourn and not rejoice" — not to base its happiness on the outbreak of a War between Japan and the United States, because the United States might suffer losses. Roosevelt even accurately predicted the time when the war would break out.
This is not to say how amazing Roosevelt or the American statesman was. The "accurate" prediction of the War between Japan and the United States in the United States can actually be traced back about half a century. In May 1897, the famous American military theorist Mahan privately told then-President Theodore Roosevelt that "in Asia, not In Europe, there is the most significant danger to our direct interests" and that there is "a real and urgent danger of war" between the United States and Japan. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States seized the philippines and guam colonies. In 1906, because of the U.S. policy of restricting Asian immigration, there was an anti-Japanese movement in California, and the United States, fearing that Japan would use the pretext of waging war, formulated the "Orange Plan" against Japan. In an extremely poorly organized international community, inter-state behavior tends to exhibit clear chain features: in 1907, the Japanese Navy designated the United States as an imaginary enemy ([Japanese] Sadao Mada, "Fateful Showdown: The Ghost of Mahan and the Great Collision of the Japanese and U.S. Navies," Xinhua Publishing House, 2018).
[Japanese] Masao Mada: "FateFul Showdown: Mahan's Ghost Collides with the Japanese and U.S. Navies"
In 1925, the British journalist Bywart published a war novel depicting Japan and the United States going to war in 1931. It was the first hypothetical novel to predict a war between Japan and the United States from a Western perspective, and at least two similar novels had appeared in Japan by this time. Japan firmly believes that "its future, even its survival, depends on its exploitation of China." As a result, Japan's "spared no effort to prevent The Unity of China," "spared no effort to maintain control over China," and "turned a blind eye to the interests of other powers in East Asia," which became the root cause of the doomed War between Japan and the United States ([Byevot]: Pacific War, Tiandi Press, 2019). In January 1941, a book describing the War between Japan and the United States appeared again in Japan, and it is said that tens of thousands of copies were sold within a month.
Bywater: Pacific War
The fictional world of the novel, the real historical world, and the world of power in the minds of politicians are folded together. As early as May 1931, Then War Secretary Hurley recorded that the United States "endured or fought" in the face of Japan, because Japan's "policy is to use one fait accompli after another against the whole world." On December 13, 1937, the Chinese capital Nanjing fell, and the U.S. ship Panai, which was carrying U.S. embassy personnel, was sunk by low-flying Japanese aircraft; Japanese surface ships also approached and fired. After the Panai personnel escaped, "the escapees were strafed by Japanese aircraft." After Japan excused itself on "error" and "expressed remorse and offered compensation in a timely manner," the United States put up with it. Gru wrote down the event emphatically in his diary. However, we still do not know whether the United States realized at this time that it was a deliberate humiliation of Japan to the United States.
On July 25, 1941, the President of the United States announced the freezing of Japanese assets in the United States, which was a retaliation for the previous Japanese Government of France's Vichy government forced to agree to Japan's "occupation of the base" at a strategic location in Indochina. Japan had now chosen the strategy of "going south," which in its view was a key part of the final solution to the "China problem": cutting off China's route to obtain strategic goods from the outside. Although the "southward advance" actually threatened the interests of the United States, the United States could not make up its mind to go to war at this moment; it did not want to go to war with Japan on the Pacific side while fully supporting Britain against Germany.
But by this time the wood was in a boat, and it was too late; the "psychological content" of Japan's war against the United States had gone from a trickle to a gushing river. This involves the cognition and perception of "reality". In The Diary of Gelug (July 26, 1940), there is a conversation between him and Yoshitoshi Matsuoka, the new Foreign Minister of Japan: "Mr. Matsuoka said that history is mainly driven by blind forces that are not always controllable in a rapidly changing world. I acknowledge that blind forces have played a role in history, but I add that one of the fundamental duties of diplomats and politicians is to steer these forces on a healthy track. From 1897 to 1941, the repeatedly predicted War between Japan and the United States became a reality. Is this the result of the blind forces of history at work, or is it the dereliction of duty of what Gru calls "diplomats and politicians"?
When analyzing the spiritual form of the Japanese military rulers, Maruo Maruyama, a scholar of the history of Japanese political thought, listed the above passages separately to illustrate the "shortness" and "loss" of subjectivity of the Japanese militarists. Maruyama analyzed that the Japanese militarists "actively create facts on the one hand, and once the facts are created, they in turn want to rely on the surrounding and popular public opinion" ([Japanese] Maruo Maruyama: Thoughts and Actions of Modern Politics, Commercial Press, 2018). In the process of "making" facts, "public opinion" plays a life-threatening role. Maruyama points out elsewhere that the innumerable daily actions of the "non-political" masses are reflected in the superficial political arena through complex twists and turns, and that, in turn, the decisions displayed on this stage "fall into the realm of everyday life through complex refractions"; the political energy of reality arises from "the innumerable interweaving of these two".
Maruo Maruyama: Thoughts and Actions of Modern Politics
Maruyama's description from the perspective of spiritual history reveals the "psychological structure" behind the historical events around 1941. The dialogue between Matsuoka yo-yo and Gru actually touches on real history from different angles: Matsuoka sees the "blind force" as the result of the interaction of various historical factors, which is the result of the interaction of various short-term and long-term variables, and has a powerful restraining effect on the parties involved in history; in contrast, Gross believes that the purpose of politicians' existence is to guide this "blind force" and then create history. Gru is clearly higher than Matsuoka in terms of psychological pattern.
This "psychological content" of politicians often has the power to create history, because it will be transformed into a specific reality, showing a certain "blind" character. However, sociology has long revealed the mechanism of this "blind force": this is the so-called "self-realization of prophecy", which is the inevitable result of human limited rationality. American sociologist W. I. Thomas said, "If certain situations are found to be true, they become true as a result." The sociologist Merton considered this to be the fundamental truth of the social sciences, calling it "Thomas's theorem." The application of Thomas's theorem proposes how to break the tragic and often evil cyclic situation of self-justification prophecy by "abandoning the initial determination of the situation, which initiates the cycle of self-justifying prophecy." Only by questioning the original hypothesis and introducing a new definition can the subsequent series of events make that initial hypothesis a lie. Only then will this belief not generate facts."
In historical narratives, it is often said that the war against the United States is "the fate that Japan cannot escape", which is exactly what Matsuoka Yoshitoshi calls a manifestation of the "blind power" of history. The "self-justifying prophecy" of the Japanese-American War had already begun, and the colonial imperial order of the time provided an unusually fertile ground for the self-realization of this prophecy: brutal colonial policies, the barbaric forces of early industrialization and capitalism, the double standards of civilization, racism, genocide and extermination, which today make people indignant, which are the standard of the world order at that time. The theoreticians of the Japanese Empire were early on aware of the injustices of this order. At the beginning of the empire, Fukuzawa gave the idea of being in league with the Western powers and breaking off friendship with its bad friends in East Asia; at a time when the empire was in full swing, Ishihara conceived of a perfect "final war in the world", and the decisive battle would be fought between Japan and the United States.
Racism: The Chronic Disease of Modern Civilization and Modernity
This "fatalistic" logic of action has been brilliantly revealed by sociologists; however, it also has a logic of survival. In driving Japan and the United States to a showdown, the latter played a fatal role in the process of forming the "blind force" of history, that is, racism. In the minds of politicians in Western colonial empires at the time, racism formed the most transparent part of their "psychological content": through the mechanism of self-deception, politicians could accept the naked oppression and even massacre of one race against another. This idea is a barbaric historical force, and the Japanese Empire, because of its special psychological and geographical structure, has keenly captured its entire message: Japan, in the sense of existence, has felt the cruelty of the modern world order, so it has chosen to pursue the basic laws of the jungle world.
Theoretically, this logic of the survival dimension was described by the military theorists of the German Empire as the "living space" theory. "The biological law of the struggle for space, and the truth in the struggle for survival between nations", this is the whole point of departure and destination of this theory. After the Second World War, as humanity as a whole took a step toward civilization, jungle rules became the object of moral abandonment, and the theory of living space became infamous. In order to preserve the gains made in civilization, it is also necessary for people today to uphold this sense of moral superiority in order to be able to resist this temptation to appeal to the biological instincts of men.
But we should not forget that in the mid-to-late nineteenth century in the field of East Asian world history, biological racism and the theory of living space once dominated people's cognition and behavior patterns. The outstanding military theorist Haushofer's eyes were like a torch, and a few words portrayed Japan's "fate". He wrote: "The Japanese state's pressure gauge readings are unique on earth, and the other countries have almost no access to Japan's sensitivity to distance, and this sensitivity has developed into a telepathic miracle that Japan can even perceive the threat of self-determination that may only endanger itself; and once such danger is perceived, Japan's admirable ability to subordinate all other functions to the preservation of self-determination is almost unmatched." ([De] Haushofer: Pacific Geopolitics, Huaxia Publishing House, 2019) Under the impact of western colonial empires, there are not many peoples who realize that "seed preservation" and can act quickly, and Japan is outstanding.
Haushofer: Pacific Geopolitics
In its fight against the colonial empire, Japan chose to deal with barbarism against the barbaric jungle rules. From the point of view of national rationality, this is understandable, but it has used too much force to awaken the primitive demon inside, and the Western colonial empire is trying to tame this demon at this time. The "Versailles-Washington" system formed after world war I, which was mentioned earlier, was an attempt to rebuild the civilized order under the leadership of the rising new empire and the new world in the United States. It is precisely for this reason that Japan's forcible appropriation of northeast China for itself shows the nature of moving against civilization. As a result, Japan once again labeled the Western colonial empire as "barbaric", and in the "barbaric-civilized" cognition of modern Western European civilization, Japan was naturally in a "barbaric" or "semi-civilized" state.
The ultimate expression of the "civilization-barbarism" view that modern colonial empires used to construct the world order was racism. This idea is not a divergence of modernity, but its fruit: from Voltaire and Hume to Kant and Hegel, the idea of "race" in their philosophical writings constituted the most "just" civilization and world understanding of the time ([law] Taguiev: The Origins of Racism, Triptych Bookstore, 2005). The reason why the "Yellow Peril" theory from Europe to the United States in the late nineteenth century was able to become popular was perhaps the mirror image of the self-consciousness of the colonial imperialists: they saw their own fate in the various people of color they oppressed and killed.
This idea did not come out of nowhere and was repeatedly translated into reality by the xenophobic policies of the colonial empire. As historians have documented, at least fifteen or some of the federal laws passed in the United States between 1882 and 1913 specifically listed Chinese as undesirable immigrants, "and no other country has suffered the same humiliation." In 1942, the United States and the United Kingdom, as symbols of support for China's equal status, abrogated the unequal treaty with China, but it was not until the end of 1943 that the Chinese Exclusion Act was reluctantly amended. Interestingly, this is still motivated by racist considerations: to ensure that Chinese are on the side of the White Race. The American historian Doyle notes that at this time ," the American people's respect for China, Chinese is closely intertwined with the idea that Chinese may have grasped the key to the survival of white Christian civilization" ([American] Doyle: The Merciless War: Race and Power in the Pacific War, CITIC Publishing Group, 2019).
Doyle: The Unforgiving War: Race and Power in the Pacific War
In times of crisis, people express their true worries, fears, and hopes in a revealing way. Thus, when Haushofer argues that he has found "the biological laws of the struggle for space, and the truth in the struggle for survival between nations," he in fact reveals the underlying logic of the world order of modern colonial empires. The idea of race, like Camus's plague, became part of life after the plague.
The Japanese Empire was also infected with this "virus". Ironically, though, unlike the old colonial empires of Europe and the United States, Japan realized the dual character of the virus: it tried to build its own empire in a way that was anti-racist. As early as the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Japan was attracted the attention of nationalists in colonial and semi-colonial countries at that time for defeating whites for the first time in world history. Therefore, unlike China at that time, Japan expressed unprecedented anger at the anti-Japanese bill formulated by the United States on the issue of immigration; the call for the United States to prepare for war and start a war repeatedly appeared in Japan's sense of survival.
When the virus of racism was linked to the primitive desire of people to preserve themselves, there was an incurable chronic disease of the world order in the modern colonial empire. Colonial imperialists can only form a false "herd immunity" and when the crisis comes, they are completely helpless against the ravages of the virus. After the outbreak of the Japanese-American War in December 1941, propaganda machines on both sides strove to reduce each other's personality and moral standards to below animal levels. If we only think that the understanding of the two sides is absurd and stupid, then we ignore the above-mentioned chronic disease of the modern world order and ignore the real "psychological content" of the colonial imperialists at that time.
However, the Japanese Empire's use of racist weapons to fight the Western powers did produce a "non-intentional" result: it shattered the illusion created by modern racism. The French philosopher Raymond Aaron noted early on the political consequences of the Europeans' maritime hegemony "overthrown by the indiscriminate bombardment of the Japanese Empire" ([French] Aaron: Dimensions of Historical Consciousness, East China Normal University Press, 2017); the American historian Doyle argues: "Although the Japanese have repeatedly emphasized the racist behavior of whites in their propaganda, it is Japan's actions, not its language, that have really changed many non-white worldviews." The Japanese dared to challenge the dominance of the whites, and their initial victories humiliated the Europeans and americans in memorable ways and destroyed forever the myth of 'white omnipotence' and even 'white efficacy'. In other words, Japan's challenge to the United States and Britain in 1941 dealt a fatal blow to the underlying logic of the modern world order. Although the Japanese Empire was reduced to powder by its own hasty blows, the old world order itself accelerated the historical process of collapse and disintegration.
Aaron: The Dimension of Historical Consciousness
Conclusion: China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Birth of a New World Order
In this way, the historical events that occurred around 1941 have their inherent deep logic, which mainly includes three dimensions of mechanism: (1) the struggle of emerging colonial empires for world hegemony in East Asia on the big stage of world politics; (2) the competition for living space and racist concepts of colonial empires; and (3) the struggle of oppressed countries and nations for liberation. Japan and the United States mainly engaged in a comprehensive contest and confrontation in the first two dimensions, while China, as the oppressed, initially had to resist the aggression of the Japanese Empire alone. In January 1942, China formally formed an anti-fascist alliance with Britain, the United States and other countries, and the rudiments of a new world order were formed.
In the process of the rebirth of this world order, China has indeed played an extraordinary role. People in the historical scene mainly value the military significance of China's War of Resistance, and people today mostly define the meaning of war from the perspective of "world anti-fascism". There is no problem with this view, of course, but from the perspective of the transformation of the world order, China has played a more important role: China has risen from an oppressed nation to a true world revolutionary, and finally changed the nature of the world war in the colonial empire. The success of the Chinese revolution has accelerated the collapse of the modern colonial imperial order; the racist myths of "white omnipotence" and "Western supremacy" have been shattered, providing a new "psychological content" for the anti-colonial movement that subsequently emerged in the Asian, African and Latin American worlds.
Therefore, when we re-read the relationship between Japan and the United States around 1941, simply viewing Japan as an "evil person" and repeating its "failure" will limit our understanding of world history and the history of civilization. In contrast, simply viewing America's actions as "just" also ignores its historical role as a member of the colonial empire. Of course, the United States' pursuit of Wilsonian internationalism here means that a new civilizational force has emerged within the old order. This brings us to the fact that China, the United States, and Japan have all expressed their dissatisfaction with the old order in their own ways, and that conflict and cooperation between the three ultimately buried the dominance of the colonial imperial order in East Asia and around the world. From then on, people began to see the course of world history and civilization with a different kind of eye; the competition of nations on the world stage also gained new forms, and new prospects for civilization emerged.
Editor-in-Charge: Ding Xiongfei
Proofreader: Liu Wei