The emperor, the army, aerial bombardment, and the decisive home-island battle: A reconsideration of Japan’s delayed surrender in World War II

This paper, which locates Emperor Hirohito as the driving force behind Japanese surrender in World War II, presents new historical evidence to support its threefold case that (i) the emperor feared aerial bombardment, (ii) the atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki magnified that fear, and (iii) this fear was the driving force behind the emperor’s 'sacred decisions' to end the war and submit to foreign military occupation.

This paper also reconsiders the Japanese army’s volatile opposition to surrender. It examines army officers’ fanatical devotion to a decisive home-island battle against invading U.S. forces, and it argues that Japan’s army officers were animated at least as much by romantic dreams of Japan as a nation-in-arms, as they were by the hope of forcing the Americans to the negotiating table. It allows that Soviet entry into the war against Japan played a role in ending those militaristic dreams; it nonetheless finds that the atomic attacks – and the emperor’s reaction thereto – were decidedly more impactful in compelling the army to lay down its arms.

In making these assertions, this paper takes issue with a series of scholarly consensuses and it also wades into several scholarly controversies. These include: (i) the remarkably durable proposition (attributable to Gar Alperovitz and others) that Japan was defeated and on the verge of surrender long before August 1945; (ii) the insistence (attributable to Herbert Bix and others) that the emperor delayed surrender; (iii) the debate (joined by Asada Sadao, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, and Hatano Sumio) over whether the atomic bombs or Soviet entry into the war caused Japanese surrender; and (iv) the debate (sparked initially by Suzuki Kantarō) over whether Army Minister Anami Korechika was a sincere proponent of the decisive home-island battle, or instead an artful proponent of haragei who professed loyalty to the decisive home-island battle while at the same time undermining the army’s hardline position.

Speaker: 

Professor Peter Mauch teaches modern Japanese history at Western Sydney University (Australia). He has authored TOJO (Harvard University Press, under contract) and Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburō and the Japanese-American War (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011). He has contributed essays to the Cambridge History of the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Road to Pearl Harbor: Great Power War in Asia and the Pacific (Naval Institute Press, 2022), and he has published with such journals as Diplomatic History; Pacific Historical Review; Diplomacy and Statecraft; War in History; and the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He was a consultant for the two-part NHK documentary entitled 'Shōwa Tennō ga kataru' ('Shōwa Emperor Speaks').

Image: A 1971 painting of the last imperial conference by Shirokawa Ichirō (1908-1944). The original is held in the collection of the Admiral Baron Suzuki Kantarō collection. 

Contact the ANU Japan Institiute Seminar Series Convener: Dr Andrew  Levidis at andrew.levidis@anu.edu.au

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Japanese war crimes: An assessment

Japanese military personnel committed many war crimes in the course of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and after Pearl Harbor (1941–1945). Some crimes resulted from the initiative of individuals, some were conducted by groups, still others were ordered by Japanese commanders. Many observers have assumed that Japanese war crimes were of a different—more atrocious—order than those of any of Japan’s contemporaries, except perhaps Nazi Germany. The perception of Japanese exceptionalism has underpinned a search for sinister elements in Japanese history and culture that might explain its apparent exceptionalism. In view of our growing knowledge of atrocities committed in the colonial wars and civil wars that drenched the middle decades of the 20th century in blood, the idea of Japanese exceptionalism is open to serious challenge.

This paper reviews the record of Japanese atrocity, identifying what has been invented or exaggerated, what is distressingly similar to the actions of other belligerents in the decades 1930–1960, and what remains as exceptional or unique. I suggest that we can best account for Japanese war crimes by looking at the extraordinary historical circumstances of the Second World War in Asia, and of Japan’s war effort.

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Comparing pathways of digital innovation in Australian and Japanese public services

The ability of governments, even in developed democratic countries, to effectively deal with the rapid pace of digital change in the current globally networked and digitalized society has been increasingly open to question.

This presentation comparatively examines the roles of contexts, relevant mechanisms, and enabling and limiting factors in the mid-term processes of digital innovation within public services in Australia and Japan, specifically delving into areas such as the utilization of open data and the development of one-stop shops. Through this, the presentation endeavours to discuss how the pathways of changes may converge or diverge between countries.


Speaker

Hajime Isozaki is a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra. His specialization lies in public management reforms, with professional experience in the Japanese central government, and his current academic interest extends to public sector innovation. He holds a Master of Policy and Planning Sciences from the University of Tsukuba and an MSc in Public Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics. 

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