10—
The February 26 Incident
I entered middle school in 1931, the year of the Manchurian Incident, and completed it in 1936, the year of the February 26 Incident.[1] During the interim, even though I read the newspaper and listened to the radio every day, I had no idea whatsoever about where Japan was heading. The middle school, or at least the community of middle-school students, was totally removed from the world of cabinet ministers, zaibatsu directors, and young army officers. To us, even assassinations committed by one party against another were nothing more than insignificant
[1] The Manchurian Incident began fifteen years of war between China and Japan until Japan's defeat in 1945: growing Japanese strategic and economic interests in northeastern China, along with the rising tide of Chinese nationalism, prompted junior officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army (with the General Staff's tacit approval) to stage a coup on September 18, 1931, with the aim of turning the region into a Japanese protectorate; faced with this fait accompli and powerless to stop the runaway Kwantung Army, the Japanese government ended up endorsing its actions until nearly all Manchuria was in Japanese hands by January 1932.
The February 26 Incident, the last of a series of direct military actions in the 1930s by extremist army and civilian groups, began in early dawn when twenty-two young officers from the army's ultranationalist Kodo[*] (imperial way) faction and 1,400 troops occupied major government buildings such as the Diet, the Army Ministry, and the General Staff Headquarters and assassinated several cabinet ministers and high-ranking officials. The uprising was suppressed within three days, after initial sympathy for the young insurgent officers turned to widespread condemnation of their attempt at national reconstruction. The chief conspirators and ideological leaders of the uprising, including Kita Ikki and Nishida Zei, were quickly given death sentences, but the failed coup d'état ironically strengthened the army's political influence within the government, and its Tosei[*] (control) faction, the rival of the rebellious Kodo group, became the predominant force.
episodes buried among more important matters such as term examinations, sports meets, and summer vacations. The son of Army Minister Araki was in my grade, but he was just an ordinary student and received no special treatment from anyone.[2] All these incidents took place out of the blue as if completely by accident, and after our momentary shock had subsided, they were quickly forgotten. Such was the case with the assassinations of Finance Minister Inoue, Dan Takuma, and Prime Minister Inukai, the recognition of Manchukuo, the conclusion of the Japan-Manchuria Agreement, and the withdrawal of Japan from the League of Nations.[3] Since none of these incidents had any immediate impact on our daily life, we did not even pause to ponder what significant changes they might bring to our lives in the future.
Father read the newspaper religiously every morning, and when a certain incident took place, he would tell us his views over dinner. As his audience consisted only of members of his own family, he was undoubtedly free to express his views without any fear of censorship or social pressure of any kind. However, the material that informed his opinion was restricted to the kind of information selectively reported by the newspapers and radio stations after they had gone through a process of
[2] Araki Sadao (1877–1966), army minister under the Inukai Tsuyoshi and Saito[*] Makoto administrations and a leader of the army's radical Kodo[*] faction, became minister of education in the first Konoe Fumimaro cabinet (1937–39); sentenced to life imprisonment as a Class-A war criminal after Japan's defeat, he was paroled in 1954 because of ill health.
[3] Inoue Junnosuke (1869–1932), a Minseito[*] politician, served as director of the Bank of Japan in 1919 and 1927 as well as finance minister in the second Yamamoto Gonnohyoe[*] and Hamaguchi Osachi cabinets; he was assassinated by a member of an ultranationalist terrorist group called the Ketsumeidan (league of blood) in February 1932. • Dan Takuma (1858–1932), a former Fukuoka samurai who rose through the ranks to become the leader of the Mitsui zaibatsu and director of the Japan Economic League, was assassinated by a member of the Ketsumeidan in March 1932. • Inukai Tsuyoshi (1855–1932), a leading party politician and a major voice for constitutional democracy in prewar Japan, was elected eighteen times to the House of Representatives; during his distinguished career he was education minister (Okuma[*] Shigenobu cabinet, 1898), minister of communications (Kato[*] Takaaki cabinet, 1924), president of the Seiyukai[*] (1929), and prime minister (1931–32), but his conciliatory policy toward China after the Manchurian Incident and his insistence on democratic principles led to his assassination by military officers in the May 15 Incident in 1932. • Japan's recognition of Manchukuo under its hand-picked ruler, Pu-yi, the last Qing emperor, came in September 1932 from the Saito[*] Makoto administration. The Japan-Manchuria Agreement was ratified the same month, and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in March 1933.
official and voluntary censorship. This was a time when freedom of the press did not exist . When Father expressed his thoughts freely about the fall of Nanjing, he—like perhaps the majority of the Japanese people—lacked free access to the facts about the Nanjing Massacre. "Lantern processions are fine, but it really appears we're going to have a tough time ahead" was what he said. If only he had known that the Japanese "imperial army" had massacred tens of thousands of Chinese citizens, including women and children, all in the name of "eternal peace in the Orient" and "friendship with our neighbors," I don't suppose he would have said the same thing about the lantern processions. People who believed they had the greatest freedom even though they had not been informed of anything in fact had the least freedom, just like the many Germans who "had not been told" about the concentration camps for the Jews, or the many Americans who "had not been told" about many Vietnamese towns reduced to rubble because of American bombardment of "military targets."
The commission sent by the League of Nations and headed by England's Earl of Lytton toured China, "Manchukuo," and Japan before producing a compromising report in the fall of 1932. Father thought that the report distorted the intention of the Great Japanese Empire with the aim of exerting unjust pressure on Japan. In the following year, the Japanese representative, Matsuoka, walked out of the General Assembly of the League of Nations in opposition to the passage of a remonstration bill against Japan, thus ensuring Japan's international isolation.[4] Yet to Father, nothing could be more gratifying. On the other hand, Father was critical of the increasing political influence of the army within the country, and when Saito[*] Takao presented his famous speech in the Japanese Diet urging greater army discipline, Father praised him in the highest terms.[5] However, when Father the atheist spoke of the Japanese emperor,
[4] Called the hero of Geneva by Japan's military and right-wing groups, Matsuoka Yosuke[*] (1880–1946) became the president of the South Manchurian Railway (1935–39) and a close ally of Japan's fascist establishment. As foreign minister in the second Konoe cabinet, he signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940 and the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact in 1941. After the war, he was named a Class-A war criminal.
[5] Saito Takao (1870–1949), a Kenseikai and later Minseito[*] politician first elected to the Lower House in 1912 and a notable liberal during the Taisho[*] period. In February 1940 Saito's[*] sharp criticism of Japan's China policy and the high moral rhetoric of Japanese expansionism on the continent led to his expulsion from the Diet (see Gordon Mark Berger, Parties Out of Power in Japan :1931–1941 [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977], 245–48). After the war Saito[*] served under the first Yoshida Shigeru and Katayama Tetsu cabinets.
he always used the expression "His Majesty" with great reverence. His emotional attachment to the emperor was so strong that he would go to the Yoyogi drill ground on the day of the military parade and wait for a long time in the blustery wind just to catch a glimpse of His Majesty from afar. But when the House of Peers attacked Dr. Minobe's theory of the emperor as an organ of the state, Father was impressed with Dr. Minobe's coherent logic while severely criticizing the views of his attackers as totally inconsistent and utterly stupid.[6] "Don't you think it's better not to say too much in front of the children?" Mother said. "No!" Father responded. "Who knows if those incompetent self-proclaimed patriots and the House of Peers wouldn't bring harm to the country and to His Majesty? I'd say it's a mighty good idea to let the children know a thing or two about this."
However, Father's views had made almost no impact on me. Sometimes his views on certain incidents struck me as the only natural thing to say, while at other times I thought they were merely peculiar emotional reactions from someone who belonged to a different generation. Very seldom did his views elucidate the relationship between one incident and another. Causality played no role in Father's world, for to him things just happened haphazardly without any prior warning. His vision of the world was made up of a large number of villains coexisting with a few heroes, and they waged furious battles with one another. But in the final analysis, it was impossible to anticipate when, where, or what these elusive villains were conspiring. One knows not what tomorrow will bring: That was the crux of Father's world.
It seems to me that regardless of time and space, the majority of the
[6] Minobe Tatsukichi (1873–1948), eminent constitutional scholar, law professor at Tokyo Imperial University from 1902–32, and a member of the House of Peers who recognized official kokutai (national polity) ideology and saw the emperor as "the highest organ of the state" but "clearly less than the state and subordinate to [its] laws." As a bulwark against Uesugi Shinkichi's more absolutist interpretation of the emperor's position under the Meiji constitution, Minobe's theory was "the dominant legal interpretation of the constitution from World War I until 1935"—the year Minobe's views were denounced in the Diet (John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: The Modern Transformation [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965], 533). For a detailed study of Minobe in English see Frank O. Miller, Minobe Tatsukichi: Interpreter of Constitutionalism in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965).
citizens in a warring state will always try to align their own position with that of their government. When it came to Japan's foreign policy, Father, a supporter of Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations, was no exception. But in his case, his intense dissatisfaction was directed at the existing power establishment and at the general conditions of his time. Perhaps such sentiments only served to heighten his psychological need to support his own government's foreign policy. During my middle-school years, Father no longer maintained much connection with the medical department of his alma mater nor with the local medical society, and the tonari-gumi had not yet been formed.[7] And with the exception of Grandfather's household nearby, Father's social interaction with our relatives was very limited as well. Our family had chosen to live in isolation and was totally powerless in society. Father's medical practice could hardly be called a success, and he himself derived neither satisfaction nor pleasure in his work. He was an honest man with a strong sense of responsibility, but generosity of spirit was definitely not one of his character traits. No one escaped his scathing criticism. To be sure, his criticisms were often very perceptive, though frequently they were also biased. "What good does it do to speak ill of everyone like that?" Mother used to grumble, to which Father would reply, "I'm not saying I'm the smartest man alive. But whether I am or not, it doesn't change the fact that those attacking Minobe's theory are incompetent." He surely had a point there. "Fellows who make a fortune by giving useless injections do not deserve to be called doctors. Giving vitamin shots to patients with no symptoms of vitamin deficiency is cheating." He was right about that one as well. If only the world did not have so many incompetent people and if only deception had not prevailed, surely the enterprise of Japan's wars could not have materialized, sending tens of thousands of young men to the battlefield and driving millions of Japanese into a frenzy just in the name of some short-lived and totally variable goals or ideals.
As I think about them now, most of Father's criticisms were not wide of the mark and most of his arguments were logically sound. However, Mother was concerned not so much with the substance of his criticisms
[7] The tonari-gumi , neighborhood associations for every five to ten households, were formed in 1940 by the Home Ministry to coordinate mobilization at the city and village level and exercise greater supervisory control over its citizens as local indoctrination organs. They also distributed rations and organized anti-air raid drills. The system was abolished in 1947 (see Berger, Parties Out of Power , 282–83).
as with the psychological motivation behind them. It was not in spite of, but rather precisely because of, Father's dissatisfaction with every aspect of society around him that he felt compelled to worship "His Majesty" and to support Japan's international position. I suppose the reason why a great many fervent patriots love their country is that they cannot love their neighbors. And Father also had this fervent, patriotic side to his character. Mother, on the other hand, knew the English nuns only too well during her five years of close association with them to rebuke the Lytton Report and to curse the British people as a whole. And she was too deeply concerned with the lives of her son and his friends to accept the rhetoric of a "sacred war."
While a part of Father betrayed his impassioned patriotism, he did not allow himself to turn into a fanatic. He lacked the attributes necessary to be one. There was nothing in his character that would induce him to become supralogically possessed by some "divine spirit." His thorough, positivistic skepticism would not let him accept any frenzied ideology. As the war progressed, the more fanatical the behavior of the "clowns" in the army—that was what Father scornfully called them—the more frosty and brusquely sardonic his attitude became toward war propaganda. "All this rubbish about the divine wind and stuff like that! Total nonsense!" But this happened later on. When he supported Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations, he was at the same time in favor of Saito's[*] speech demanding the tightening of army discipline. I wonder what he thought about the relationship between those two positions. In the 1930s when he supported the foreign policy of the Japanese government on the one hand and opposed the military's interference in domestic politics on the other, I wonder what he thought of the role of the military in the making of Japanese foreign policy. He probably hadn't thought through these issues adequately.
There was only one substantial difference between Father's thinking at that time and mine after the outbreak of the Pacific War during the early 1940s. I remembered how difficult it was to establish any logical coherence in the various views he expressed over dinner when I was still a middle-school student. I tried to interpret the multitude of events taking place in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident as a movement within Japanese society toward a particular direction. My understanding was indisputably naive, but there were no logical inconsistencies in it. I detested militarism and considered the propaganda by fanatical patriots ridiculously anachronistic, and I never sanctioned the
war aims as enunciated by the government of the Great Japanese Empire. Needless to say, whether I approved or disapproved of the war, my views were strictly private. No one threatened me because of my ideas and they didn't influence anyone, much less affect what I was doing at the time. In this sense, my attitude toward the war in the 1940s was not the least different from Father's attitude toward Japan's aggression against China.
Every now and then my relatives would gather at Grandfather's house, and sometimes somebody would say, "Here's something for your ears only," and then proceed to relate an insider story—or what sounded like one. They talked about rumors like such-and-such army division would leave Japan in the coming month, about Mazaki as the one behind such-and-such an incident and not Araki, or how His Majesty had said this and that to the prime minister.[8] Regardless of where these rumors might have originated, they somehow managed to filter into Grandfather's household. My uncle from Osaka loved to tell these insider stories, although he most certainly had no way of really knowing them. On the other hand, my uncle in the navy surely did have access to secret information, but even on the rare occasions when he appeared among our relatives, he never allowed anything to slip from his lips. But in most cases, one's assessment of any situation, whether it turns out to be right or wrong, seldom ever changes as a result of some secret information, to say nothing of words "for your ears only." That I had absolutely no idea of where Japan was heading when I was in middle school had nothing to do with any scarcity of information, but instead with my inability to analyze and synthesize it. Such a skill was not something I could learn from Father or from anyone around me. I could not think of anyone among my secondary school teachers, or among my relatives (including the industrialist, the top naval officer, the doctor, the merchant, and other men and women), who in this respect was any more capable than a middle-school student. And so in this way, we spoke of the war in a calm and leisurely manner without understanding what it meant. Even though we might occasionally hear about "dreadful" or "important" insider stories, never in our dreams could we imagine that dreadful things would ever come our way. In
[8] General Mazaki Jinzaburo[*] (1876–1956), a leader of the army's Kodo[*] faction and inspector general of military education in 1934. Although his role in the February 26 Incident was suspected, he was subsequently cleared of any complicity.
short, we, as good citizens, were awaiting the coming of February 26, 1936, without knowing it.
In that February of 1936, I was preparing for the entrance examination scheduled in March and did practically nothing except go over the intolerably boring reference books again and again. I cannot even remember whether I commuted to school every day. Most likely, the school was closed for holidays, in which case I must have kept myself at home most of the time. Each day was just like another. At times like that, watching the sunset from the window of the study on the second floor was the major event of the day. Sometimes the wind rattled the windows, and sometimes raindrops fell on the outside of the clouded glass. A raindrop might slowly glide down the surface, then come to a virtual stop at a certain point before continuing down again with a spirited dash. I thought of writing the name of my loved one on the clouded window, but since I didn't have a loved one and didn't even know a young girl I could pretend was my love, all I could do was write my own name, only to give up halfway through.
In those days, the place we called our dining room was next to the kitchen on the north side of the first floor. With our coal-burning stove, the room was warm even on wintry nights. After we finished dinner there, Father would read his newspaper, while Mother would clear the table and wash the dishes with Sister. When I was through with the newspaper, I would turn to my reference books. Our family would spend the evening there reading, writing letters, or having a quiet conversation. Sometimes after my parents and sister had retired to their chilly bedrooms, I would stay by myself in the room for a while. Since the stove had been filled with coal and started before dinnertime, the fire burned vigorously throughout the evening and into the middle of the night. Before it completely died out, I would warm my pajamas by the stove and then go to bed. From the outside I could hear the flute of the noodle peddler and the sound of freight trains as they ran over the short iron bridge at Shibuya Station, their rumbling noises echoing in the late night air. So went another day, I thought. Tomorrow would begin and end just like this, and the pattern would repeat itself until the end of my entrance examination. My life would—and could only—begin after I had escaped from the clutch of my cursed middle school that had prepared me for nothing except examinations. But of course history marched on irrespective of my entrance examination.
One snowy morning, Father heard on the radio's morning broadcast
about the coup d'état by army officers. "It's probably not a good idea to send the children to school today," he remarked. The family gathering in front of the radio soon learned that Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, Minister of the Interior Saito[*] Makoto, Inspector General of Army Education Watanabe Jotaro[*] , and possibly Prime Minister Okada Keisuke had all been killed and that the rebellious troops had now occupied the vicinity of Nagata-cho[*] , where the prime minister's residence and the Diet building were located.[9] "I'm so glad you didn't go to school today," Mother said. But as it became evident soon afterwards, even if we had gone to our school near Nagata-cho, we would have had nothing to fear for our personal safety. Since the occupation troops had blocked off traffic at Akasaka Mitsuke, students going to school that morning found themselves chatting and smiling with armed soldiers, and when they were told to go home in any case, they all did. No one was as safe as a middleschool student. Although the soldiers had killed cabinet ministers, attacked the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, and thrown sand into the rotary machines at the Asahi newspaper company, they did not regard Tokyo citizens as their enemies.
This of course does not mean that they regarded the citizens as their allies either. Father did not like the coup d'état from the beginning. He thought that Takahashi Korekiyo and Saito Makoto, unlike the corrupt politicians of the time, were exceptional men who had no desire for personal gain. To have them killed in order to "purify" politics hardly seemed logical to him. In his eyes, the rebellion and assassinations were just manifestations of the army's uncontrollable ambitions. When he
[9] Takahashi Korekiyo (1854–1936) was president of the Bank of Japan in 1911, finance minister in six separate cabinets, prime minister (1921–22), and president of the Seiyukai[*] (1921–25); his moderate fiscal policy antagonized the radical factions in the army that demanded greater military spending. • Saito Makoto (1858–1936) was an admiral who served as governor general of Korea (1919–27, 1929–31) and as prime minister (1932–34) his administration recognized Manchukuo in 1932 and withdrew Japan from the League of Nations in 1933. • Watanabe Jotaro (1874–1936) was a moderate army general of the Tosei[*] faction who served as inspector general of military education from 1935. • Okada Keisuke (1868–1952) was an admiral and a former naval minister in the Tanaka Giichi and Saito Makoto administrations and prime minister (1934–36); his administration could not restrain the army's radical faction in disputes over the constitutional status of the emperor and aggressive military involvement on the Chinese continent. He barely escaped assassination in the February 26 Incident, but rumors about his death led to his cabinet's resignation the following March.
learned that the navy was gathering its combined fleet in Tokyo Bay in opposition to the army, Father said happily, "Looks like not everything is going the way the army wishes." When he heard on the radio Martial Law Commander Kashii Kohei's[*] appeal to the rebellious troops, "It's not too late yet. Return to your original units!" he thought that the incident would soon come to an end.[10] It would be best if the rebellious troops would surrender; if not, a short skirmish would settle everything. The matter did not concern us one way or the other.
While listening to the radio broadcast over dinner, we also talked about the kitten somebody had given to Sister, what to feed it, in which room to make its bed, and how to train it. From the moment it became clear that the failed rebellion had come to an end, the whole incident became even less real to us than a small kitten. "Since it has been fed milk before, I think we should also let it drink milk," Sister said.
"Now, that's a little extravagant, isn't it?" somebody said.
"No, we'll do that only for a short time."
Nevertheless, I cannot say that the February 26 Incident did not leave marks on me. I was strongly impressed, first of all, by the fact that army officers who had risen in rebellion in the name of the emperor were later indicted by the emperor himself as "traitors." Secondly, the army leaders who had initially praised the army officers as "troops rising in a high spirit of indignation" subsequently condemned them as "rebels" and began to prepare for their suppression. I don't mean to say that I was sympathetic with the rebellious officers, but in their betrayal I witnessed the unspeakable ruthlessness in the exercise of political power. Wise is the man who keeps politics at arm's length, for the political world is one in which sincerity is met with betrayal, idealism met with exploitation, and yesterday's loyalty construed as today's conspiracy as soon as one has outlived his usefulness. I had no intention of going into politics in the first place, and even if I had, I did not have the means to do so. My conclusion about politics did not change my views in the slightest. On the contrary, it only confirmed what I had believed all along. But beyond that, I would soon find out what the February 26 Incident meant in Japanese history.
When I entered First Higher School, I attended Professor Yanaihara
[10] Kashii Kohei[*] (1881–1954), a member of the imperial faction and sympathetic to the rebellious troops, was then the commanding officer for the security of Tokyo.
Tadao's lectures on "Legal Systems in Societies" that were offered to science students at the time.[11] The lecture class met only once a week for an hour, making it impossible to discuss in detail the technical aspects of social systems. Perhaps for this reason, Professor Yanaihara wished to speak about the spirit of parliamentary democracy as it was breathing its last breath in Japan. He said that by exploiting the stipulation that cabinet ministers for the armed forces be chosen only from officers on active duty, the army could in effect paralyze the system of responsible cabinets.
"I see. Without the army minister, no cabinet can be formed," a student remarked. "But I suppose this also means that if the Diet refuses to make any compromise, the army can't create a cabinet either. After the army has aborted a cabinet, I wonder if it isn't impossible to continue without one while making no compromise with the army in policy decisions?"
Professor Yanaihara had been listening attentively to the question with downcast eyes. At that point, he suddenly lifted up his face and spoke in a calm but firm voice: "If that should happen, I am afraid that the army would come and surround the Diet with their machine guns." For a moment the classroom fell into a dead silence. We could see how the path toward military dictatorship would lead us straight into a desolate future. At that very moment and in that very room, we had a distinct feeling that we were listening to the final words of Japan's last liberal thinker. The meaning of the February 26 Incident was clear. At the same time, it also became clear to me what courage and nobility of spirit meant.
[11] Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961), an ardent Christian profoundly influenced by Nitobe Inazo[*] and Uchimura Kanzo[*] during his student days at the First Higher School and by Yoshino Sakuzo's[*] liberal ideas when he was a student of politics at Tokyo Imperial University. Yanaihara taught economics at the latter institution from 1920 and wrote empirical and critical studies of Japanese colonialism: Shokumin oyobi shokumin seisaku (Colonization and colonization policy, 1926), Teikokushugika no Taiwan (Taiwan under imperialism, 1929), and Manshu[*] mondai (The Manchurian question, 1934). His thoughtful September 1937 article "Kokka no riso[*] " (The ideals of the nation; in Chuo[*] Koron[*] ), written immediately after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, was attacked for its pacifist message, leading to his resignation from the university in December 1937. Despite government pressure, Yanaihara continued his Christian faith and antiwar position during the war years. He returned to Tokyo University in November 1945 and was its president from 1951 to 1957.