The Grand Alliance (118 page)

In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man.” The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this, the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare, and very few among our experts could form any true impression of the Japanese mind. It was indeed inscrutable. The old and new societies, with the chasm of the ages between them, were intermingled and reacted upon each other in ways that no foreigner could The Grand Alliance

711

understand. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Japan knew her own mind, or what forces in her nature would predominate in the hour of decision.

The hierarchy of the Japanese Army formed a series of concentric circles united by the Samurai tradition, which inspired all its chiefs and their subordinates to die for the military honour of Japan and to face each man’s court of ancestors with confidence. But as Japan emerged from long seclusion into the vast world which opened about her and blithely placed lethal weapons of hitherto unimagined power in the hands of her warriors, there also formed with cold, slow growth the design to master Asia, and perhaps thereafter lead that continent to the conquest of the world.

There was even talk of “the Hundred Years’ Plan,” though this was but the impelling background to continually changing conditions and events.

The strongest check on the power and ambitions of the Army, in the period after the outbreak of the Second World War, came from the Navy. In the nineteenth century the Japanese Army was trained by German instructors, and the Navy by British. This left lasting differences of mentality, which were emphasised by the conditions of Service life.

Army officers hardly ever went abroad – except to make war – and cultivated a more narrowly arrogant, nationalist spirit than naval officers, who frequently visited foreign ports and knew something of the world outside Japan. Whereas also the Army was conscious of its capacity to defeat or hold its own against any military forces existing in the Far East, or which could get there, the Navy was painfully aware of its inferiority in fleet strength to the British and American Navies, especially for action outside Japanese home waters. Thus the Navy tended to be more cautious and moderate in outlook than the Army.

The Grand Alliance

712

The commercial classes had no official recognition or organisation like the Army or Navy, nor had they ever a single policy common to all the various financial, industrial, and trading interests by which they lived. Their influence was exerted partly through the political parties in the Diet, and partly through connections with Court circles. In general, the commercial interests were opposed to serious warlike adventures, but some of them, particularly those with investments in China, supported the Army in expansionist policies. The masses of the Japanese people tended in a crisis to support the Army rather than the liberal bourgeois leadership, because of the Army’s traditional prestige and the popular belief that it was the custodian of the national interest against the aims of private capitalists.

By the Japanese Constitution of 1889 the making of treaties, the declaration of war, and conclusion of peace lay within the prerogative of the Emperor and were not subject to control by the Diet. The Emperor also had the supreme command of the armed forces. He was however supposed to exercise his authority on the advice of the Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff and to conduct foreign policy on the advice of the Cabinet. The Cabinet under the Japanese Constitution was not responsible to the Diet, though it needed a majority in both Houses in order to legislate. It was for the Emperor to choose and appoint the Prime Minister. By custom he did so on the advice of a body of

“elder statesmen,” or Genro. Early in the present century there were several Genro, but they died without being replaced, until in 1940 only Prince Saionji was left. After he died at the end of that year the nomination was made by a

The Grand Alliance

713

conference of all ex-Premiers, known as the “New Genro,”

of whom in 1941 there were eight.

The Army and Navy Ministers of the Cabinet had to be respectively a general and an admiral on the active list. If a Prime Minister could not find a general or an admiral to hold these offices he could not form or maintain a Cabinet, and professional spirit was so strong that no general or admiral would serve as Army or Navy Minister in a Cabinet whose policy was strongly disapproved of by his Service. Thus the Army and Navy Staffs were able to exert a continual, and at times decisive, influence on policy by withdrawing, or threatening to withdraw, the Service Ministers from a Cabinet.

In 1936 Japan had concluded with Germany the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was originally negotiated by the Japanese War Ministry, with Ribbentrop representing the Nazi Party, behind the backs of both the then Foreign Ministers. This was not yet an alliance, but it provided the basis for one. In the spring of 1939 the Army Minister in the Cabinet, headed by Baron Hiranuma, tried to conclude a full military alliance with Germany. He failed owing to the opposition of the Navy Minister, Admiral Yonai. In August, 1939, Japan was not only engaged in the war in China which had begun in July, 1937, but was also involved in localised hostilities with Russia about the boundary between the newly created State of Manchukuo and Outer Mongolia. Along and behind this smouldering front large armies lay. When, on the eve of the European war, Germany made her Non-Aggression Pact with Russia without consulting or informing Japan, her Anti-Comintern partner, the Japanese felt with reason that they had been ill-The Grand Alliance

714

used. Their dispute with Russia fell into the background, and Japanese resentment against Germany was strong.

British support and sympathy for China had estranged us from our former ally, and during the first few months of the European war our relations with Japan were already by no means friendly. There was however in Japan little or no enthusiasm for Germany.

The Hiranuma Cabinet “lost face” on account of the German-Soviet Pact and had to resign. It was succeeded by a Cabinet under General Abe, who, although an Army man (retired), was reckoned a moderate, and he in January, 1940, was replaced by Admiral Yonai, who as Hiranuma’s Navy Minister had opposed the alliance with Germany. Under the Abe and Yonai administrations Japan’s policy was neutrality in Europe combined with the prosecution of Japan’s own war in China. But soon supreme convulsions shook the world. With the fall of France and the Low Countries under Hitler’s onslaught, and the prospect of the invasion and destruction of Britain in the autumn of 1940, long-cherished, glittering schemes sprang from dreamland into reality. Was Japan to gain nothing from the collapse of France, of Holland, and it might well be of Britain, with all their vast possessions in East Asia? Had not her historic moment come? Deep passions stirred in Army and Nationalist political circles. It was demanded that Japan should at once begin to move south and seize French Indo-China, Malaya, and the coveted Dutch East Indies. To force this policy the Army Minister, General Hata, withdrew from the Cabinet, and thus compelled Admiral Yonai to resign his Premiership.

The sober and prudent elements, which Japan has never lacked, were hard pressed to maintain their control. In Yonai’s place the Genro nominated Prince Konoye, an aristocrat in the prime of life who had close connections The Grand Alliance

715

with the Imperial Court, but was also on good terms with the leaders of the Army. Prince Konoye held office from July, 1940, to October, 1941. He was a highly respected and extremely subtle politician, whose method was to give the Army symbolic satisfactions without ever allowing it to drag the country into a major war. During the summer of 1940 Prince Konoye managed to restrain the Army from making any attack on British or Dutch possessions. On the other hand, he agreed to put pressure on Vichy France for air bases in Northern Indo-China, and in September he concluded the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. This instrument bound Japan to enter the European war on the Axis side if America should enter it on behalf of Britain.

Meanwhile other great events became apparent. By the end of November, 1940, the result of the Battle of Britain and Hitler’s recoil from his invasion boasts were recognised in Japan as facts of the first order. The successful British air attack on the Italian Fleet at Taranto, throwing modern first-class battleships out of action for many months, profoundly impressed the Japanese Navy with the power and possibilities of the new Air Arm, especially when combined with surprise. Japan became convinced that Britain was by no means finished. She was undoubtedly going on, and indeed growing stronger. There was a widespread feeling that the Tripartite Pact had been a mistake. Always there loomed the fear of united action by the British Empire and the United States, with its combination of the two strongest navies afloat and with resources, which once developed were measureless and incomparable. This danger seemed to draw ever nearer. In the spring of 1941 Konoye obtained the agreement of his Cabinet to open conversations with the United States for the settlement of outstanding issues between the two countries. It is worthy of note that on this occasion General Tojo, as Army Minister, supported the

The Grand Alliance

716

policy of Konoye against the Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, whose protests that such talks with America would be contrary to the German alliance were thus overruled.

Nevertheless, the ferment in Japanese minds grew constantly more intense. Beneath the normal modernised processes of their political life thousands of officers and persons occupying responsible, if minor, positions seemed to hear

Ancestral voices prophesying war.

Must they not be worthy of their fathers who had paid with interest the vengeance they owed to the Mongols of the thirteenth century, whom they had identified with the Russia of the Czars? This prodigious feat of the preceding generation incited their sons to the utmost daring. And here was the whole world in storm and flux. New forces and new Titans had appeared. There was to be a “New Order” in Europe. Was this not the time to have a “New Order” in Asia? Within all this framework lay plans evolved with minute and patient care and brought up to date with every change in the movement of world catastrophe. It was claimed by the Army leaders that
they
should be the authority to select the moment when the signal should be given. They could certainly assert that if Japan was to strike at all, the best opportunity – the fall of France – had already been missed by cautious or craven politicians.

The Emperor and the Imperial Princes, around whom gathered the highest aristocracy, were against an aggressive war. They had too much to lose in a violent era.

Many of them had travelled and met their equals in foreign courts. They admired the life of Europe and feared its