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16 March, 2004
Perspectives on History
There's very little written, at least here in the U.S., about the Occupation of Japan after World War II.
 It's all in the perspective: Two views of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, "Facing East and Facing West." |
This is a mystery to me, because it was such a unique event in world history. It was the first time that a victorious country occupied a vanquished one with the stated intent of establishing a democracy and changing their entire society for the better. It was also the first time in history that this was done in a specific amount of time - the Occupation began in 1945, weeks after Hirohito's famous radio speech to the Japanese urging them to "endure the unendurable," and ended in 1952, with the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty between the U.S. and Japan.
It was also the first time that an American general, Douglas MacArthur, ran a country as a de facto military ruler, with the title, Supreme Commander Allied Powers. Although the Occupation was technically a combined effort of the allies, including the U.S., Australia, Britain and Russia, the fact was that the charismatic and quirky MacArthur ran the show, and ignored not only input from other countries, he created policies independent of the U.S. government when it suited his purposes.
This period in Japan's modern history brought tumultuous change - a new Constitution (written by Americans), equality (in theory) for women, a Democratic, elected government (sort of), economic reforms (sort of), educational reforms, land reforms and freedom of the press - and was rife with colorful characters and movements from the rise of the modern Yakuza and a thriving black market to the establishment of unions and a paranoid anti-communist backlash. And, it gave thousands of people a chance to reinvent their lives from the ashes of cites and civil records that had been burned to the ground.
So why isn't there much known about this period? There are only a few books about it available in the U.S., and the best by far is "Embracing Defeat" (1999, Norton & Company) by John Dower, a history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book even won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.
 MIT professor, historian and Japan scholar John Dower |
I had a chance over the weekend to meet Dower, when he was in town with an exhibit that opened at the Boulder Public Library, "Facing East, Facing West: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan," that celebrates the era depicted in "The Last Samurai," when Japan was opened up to the West for the first time in 1853.
The exhibit is a mere excerpt of the wealth of material that Dower and the exhibit's co-creator, Shigeru Miyagawa, a professor of Linguistics & Far Eastern Languages at M.I.T., gathered together on a Web site: www.blackshipsandsamurai.com.
The exhibit's most interesting aspect is how each side viewed this historic moment. Commodore Matthew C. Perry had a German-born artist traveling with him who chronicled the arrival in Tokyo Bay (then called Edo Bay) of Perry's steamships, which spewed black smoke. The Japanese, on the other hand, recorded Perry's arrival through the eyes of many artists who drew and painted various aspects of the interchange.
The difference is striking - where Perry's version has his ships looking heroic and powerful, the Japanese depiction of Perry's flagship is of a demon boat. The Perry we know from Western lithographs and early photographs make him out to be a heroic officer, but the Japanese view is of a loony-looking person with blue eyes (the eyes were painted blue, but not the pupil).
Such was the introduction of the West into Japan, a country that had been closed to the outside world for more than 200 years. Suddenly the samurai who ran the country were faced with Western technology such as the steamship itself, which was a recent invention in the U.S., as well as a miniature locomotive. Such technology, as well as the guns that came with the Americans were carefully studied and recreated in short order for Japan's quick evolution into a world power by the end of the century.
 Perry's "black ship," depicted by the Japanese as a demonic sea creature spouting black smoke. |
In a lecture for area schoolteachers, Dower made the point that this critical moment in history, which the Japanese government has been celebrating for a year and a half, is problematic. Sure, it led to today's model relationship between the U.S. and Japan. But back then, the U.S. saw Japan as a foothold in Asia at a time when the British, Portuguese, Dutch and French already had colonial outposts through the continent. Perry was chosen to open up Japan to a trade treaty because he was a hero from the war against Mexico, and had helped win California as a U.S. territory. Perry steamed into Tokyo with his guns and cannon aimed at Japan and told the samurai he would return the next year with a treaty and they'd better sign it or else.
Such was Japan's nudge into the modern age. "I bet some foreign minister's just dying for the 150th year celebrations to finally end," Dower quipped during his lecture.
The connections between the two countries have never been simple. It's easy, Dower says, to laugh at the uncivilized Japanese of the 1850s and see how they've been copying Americans ever since. But, he points out, America was barely modern itself. This was before the Civil War, and slavery was still part of American life. That complexity also colors the post-war years when the U.S. played "big brother" to Japan during the Occupation.
During a break, I got the chance to speak to Dower about my interest in the Occupation years, and "Embracing Defeat." I noted how it's still difficult to find out much about the contribution of Japanese American soldiers to the Occupation. They served as translators for Occupation forces, and helped in intelligence gathering, interrogating former Japanese POWs, and in the fight against spies and Communists. But they're all but invisible in the history books.
"It's true," Dower lit up. "Those Japanese American soldiers gave an oath of secrecy, and tot his day, they won't talk about what they did."
Dower's work is one of the foundations of the research into that era. I hope to add some of my own, because my father worked for the Occupation, first as a houseboy for GIs and then as a translator and finally as part of the Counter Intelligence Corps.
So I thanked Dower for helping me get started down my own path, digging through the past. Historians like Dower are a crucial part of our understanding of the present.
Everyone should visit his Web site about Perry, and follow his future online projects, which promise to cover such topics as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (next year is the 60th anniversary).
Learn more about Perry's arrival in Japan at blackshipsandsamurai.com.