Imperial Eclipse: Japan's Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia Before August 1945

320 Pages·2013·2.521 MB·English

by  Yukiko Koshiro

IMPERIAL ECLIPSE
Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute,
Columbia University
The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia
University were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the
results of signifi cant new research on modern and contemporary
East Asia.
IMPERIAL
ECLIPSE
Japan’s Strategic Thinking about
Continental Asia before August 1945
Yukiko Koshiro
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof,
must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the pub-
lisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State
Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2013 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Koshiro, Yukiko.
Imperial eclipse : Japan’s strategic thinking about continental Asia before August
1945 / Yukiko Koshiro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 8014- 5180- 5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Japan— Foreign relations— Asia. 2. Asia— Foreign relations— Japan.
3. Japan— Foreign relations— 1912–1945. 4. World War, 1939– 1945—Japan.
I. Title.
DS33.4.J3K67 2013
327.520509'041—dc23 2012039751
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and
materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials
include vegetable-b ased, low-V OC inks and acid-f ree papers that are recycled, totally
chlorine- free, or partly composed of nonwood fi bers. For further information, visit
our website at www .cornellpress .cornell .edu .
Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Maps and Tables vii
Ac know ledg ments ix
Abbreviations for the Notes and Selected Bibliography xiii
Introduction: The World of Japan’s Eurasian- Pacifi c War 1
Part I THE PLACE OF RUS SIA IN PREWAR JAPAN
1. Communist Ideology and Alliance with the Soviet Union 15
Allures of Utopia 18
The Soviet Union as Radical Hope 30
Alliance with the Soviet Union 38
2. Culture and Race: Rus sians in the Japa nese Empire 45
Americans in Japan: The Most Isolated 50
Rus sians in Japan: The Blue- eyed Neighbors 61
Rus sians in Japan’s Pan- Asianism 72
Part II THE FUTURE OF EAST ASIA AFTER THE
JAPA NESE EMPIRE
3. Mao’s Communist Revolution: Who Will Rule China? 85
Japan’s China Studies and the CCP 88
Japa nese Military Appraisal of CCP Propaganda 97
Moscow- Yan’an Dissonance 107
Toward the Recognition of Yan’an 115
4. International Rivalry over Divided Korea:
Who to Replace Japan? 124
Early War Years: Assessing Communist Infl uences from Abroad 126
Understanding International Ambitions for Korea:
The View from 1944 137
Part III ENDING THE WAR AND BEYOND
5. Cold War Rising: Observing US- Soviet Dissonance 153
Diplomatic Charades with the Soviet Union 155
vi CONTENTS
Japa nese Peace Feelers and the United States 163
Moscow- Washington Dissonance and Competing Visions
for a Postwar World 169
China Intrigue 185
6. Military Showdown: Ending the War without
Two- Front Battles 193
The Improbability of Two- Front Attacks 194
Korean Gambit 210
7. Japan’s Surrender: Views of the Nation 223
From Mokusatsu to Surrender: The Final Twenty Days
of Japan’s War 225
Soviet Entry into the War and the American Use of the
Atomic Bombs 236
Collapse of Japan’s Continental Empire 244
Appendix 254
Part IV INVENTING JAPAN’S WAR: EURASIAN ECLIPSE
8. Memories and Narratives of Japan’s War 257
Views of the War’s End and Beyond 257
Writing a History of Japan’s War 268
Epilogue: Toward a New Understanding of Japan’s
Eurasian- Pacifi c War 285
Index 293
Maps and Tables
Maps
Map 2.1. The Trans- Eurasian Continental Railway network via
western Siberia, 1927 46
Map 5.1. The Japa nese Empire with regard to Soviet considerations
in World War II, based on ESR1 world data, 1945 161
Map 6.1. The Kwantung Army’s six strategic plans against anticipated
Soviet attack on Manchuria and beyond, early August 1944 198
Tables
Table 2.1. Alien population in Japan by nationality, 1876– 1937 51
Table 2.2. Occupations of US, British, German, and French residents
in Japan, 1924 52
Table 2.3. Foreign residents in various occupations, 1924 53
Table 2.4. Percentage of intermarriages with Japa nese citizens in
Hyogo Prefecture, 1935 59
Table 2.5. Employment patterns of Rus sian émigrés in Japan proper,
1924– 38 68
Table 4.1. Arrests for seditious activities in Korea, 1939– 44 139
Table 4.2. Arrests of Soviet spies in Korea, August 1944 140
Table 4.3. Arrests of CCP spies in Korea, August 1944 146
Table 5.1. A draft proposal on Japa nese concessions to the
Soviet Union in the pro cess of Soviet- Japanese negotiations 158
vii

Ac know ledg ments
The suburbs of Yokohoma in the 1960s betrayed hardly any trace of Japan’s
Eurasian- Pacifi c War. Just two dec ades after surrender, the war was already a dis-
tant event of the past, and we children had little desire to feel any connection.
Japa nese society did not encourage us to do so either, other than imparting the
rather powerful moral lesson that war, a very general and abstract concept lacking
historical specifi city, meant only killing and destruction and as such was inherently
wrong. None of the adults around me who lived through the war— my immediate
family, relatives, neighbors, and even teachers— talked about Japan’s war at all,
much less recounted their opinions and memories of it.
The rare exceptions proved the rule. Every year at our New Year’s family re-
union, my grandmother would reminisce about the massive Yokohama air raid
of May 29, 1945, that claimed ten thousand lives. As her house began burning, she
fl ed with her small children and barely cheated death. She grabbed only an ohitsu
(a wooden container for cooked rice) and a pair of hair clippers. Feeding the chil-
dren was her top priority during the war and so the ohitsu was a precious item.
And the clippers? When the air raid began, she happened to be trimming the hair
of one of her sons. At this point in the story, she giggled wryly. Her adult children,
my aunts and uncles, laughed at her blunder, too. How many times I heard this
episode I can’t recall: it was one of the rare occasions my grandmother or anyone
else in the family talked about their experiences in Japan’s war. Only much later,
when my uncles and aunts were in their sixties and seventies, did they begin shar-
ing small episodes of the war, still selectively. Along the way I learned that some
maternal and paternal relatives had lived and worked in Korea and Manchuria.
No one has ever been forthcoming with details.
In the last phase of the war my father was a young signal corps engineer sta-
tioned in southern Taiwan. The only thing he used to tell my sister and me about
his wart ime experience was that he ate bananas as often as he wanted, because no
fi ghting ever occurred on the island. He portrayed his time in Taiwan as ridicu-
lously carefree. We believed it. Long after his passing I learned that his unit had
to remain in Taiwan for more than a year after August 1945. Things were not as
simple as he had conveyed. As for my mother, she began working as a teenage
substitute teacher in April 1945, and she lived with her students, who had been
compulsorily evacuated to a remote mountain area. She never told us about her
life there or anything whatsoever about her war time experience. Only recently,
ix
x AC KNOW LEDGM ENTS
six de cades later, did she begin telling us bits and pieces of stories. We learned that
in 1940 as her school’s student representative, she attended the emperor’s 2,600th
Anniversary Ceremony held at the Kashihara Shrine in Nara. Unable to muster
any enthusiasm, she lip- synched all the recitations and songs in the ceremony,
she explained with a small guilty grin. Even today she does not tell us how or
what she taught to her wart ime students. My older relatives’ stories w ere so lim-
ited and fragmented that I could never get a sense of the war they lived through.
In my own research, I avoided tackling Japan’s war. Once I began teaching in
the United States, students, American and international alike, asked me with such
vehemence about Japan’s Pacifi c War and Japa nese colonialism that I realized I
could no longer avoid formal study of the war. When the Enola Gay contro-
versy in 1995 broke out, my American students wanted me to explain what the
Japa nese people thought of the exhibit, to relate the Japa nese side of story sur-
rounding the atomic bombs, and to confi rm whether the Japan ese w ere really
fanatics prepared to fi ght to the last man, woman, and child. Having always
emphasized that every episode in Japan ese history has some logical explana-
tion, I found myself unable to provide these students one convincing enough,
due to the sheer paucity of evidence in either Eng lish or Japan ese. I promised my
students that I would remedy this absence and so this study began.
Serious research began in 1999 during a year at Waseda University on the
Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (The Social Science Research Council) fellowship,
under the sponsorship of Hirano Ken’ichiro. When Anders Stephanson of
Columbia University provided the opportunity of publishing a historiographical
study of Japan’s war, I combed Waseda library’s basements for materials for the
article completed under his guidance.
A year later I returned to the United States to resume teaching. Williams Col-
lege, Bates College, Colgate University, and American University all generously
offered me time, space, and resources to continue this research, while allowing
me to engage in fascinating discussions with not only their faculty members but
also students in courses on modern Japan, US– East Asian relations, and World
War II. Without the support and encouragement of Sam Crane of Williams Col-
lege and Dennis Graffl in of Bates College, the early stages of this project would
never have taken off. Sam Crane helped me renew my career path in the United
States and accommodated my status as a resident-r esearcher during the second
year at Williams. Offering me invaluable moral support, Dennis Graffl in went
out of his way to help edit an early draft of the book- length manuscript.
Given how challenging this project proved to be, I have been fortunate to receive
numerous forms of professional support and assistance. Grants from the Association
for Asian Studies and the Japan Foundation allowed me to return to Japan for archi-
val research in the summers in 2001 and 2002. Many people have offered me venues