35 Now, three years and eigh months later, his task was not merely to call a halt to a lost

war, but to do so without disabowing Japans war aims or acknowledging the nations atrocities and in a manner that divorced him from any personal responsibility for these many years of aggression 36 The emperor never spoke explicity of either surrender or Defeat. He simply observed that the war did not turn in Japans favor, and trends of the world were not advantageous to us. 36 Some confessed to being overcome with a sense of shame and guilt that, in failing to live up to their sovereigns expectations, they had caused him grief 43 Offered a stunning lesson in the kind of matefial strength and affluence that might be attained under American-style democracy 44 fourth rate country line by MAcARthuer 44 This was ex post facto conjecture, but it reflected a common observation that Japan at wars end was vastly weaker than anyone outside the country had imagined or anyone inside it had acknowledged 45 In defeated Japan, it took years to arrive at generally accepted estimates of the price Japan paid for its lost war 45 80% of all ships, 33% of industrial machine tools, 25% of rolling stock/motor vehicles, 33% of total wealth and from 25%-33% of potential income 46 Only thumbs stood up from the flatlands 51 For servicemen in all theaters, repatriation was often delayed by local Allied authorities who chose to use their prisoners for specific postwar purposes 51 By far the most extensive, protacted, and abusice treatment of surrendered forces came at the hands of the Soviets, who entered the war on August 8, one week before the emperors broadcast 53 By 1948, it had also become obvious that the Soviets were delaying repatriation in order to subject prisoners to intensive indoctrination, so that they might contribute to communist agitation on their return 53 The chaos of these numbers hundreds of thoundsands of soldiers, sailors, and civilians simply disappearing overseas suggests how essentially meaningess the formal dating of wars end was for many Japanese 54 Both making and wearing the sennin-bari haramaki were affirmations of the closeness between men fighting abroad and their communities, especially their womenfolk 58 This was especially true among soldiers who had been oredere to fight to the bitter end in the fanatic and futile final campaigns of the war

59 Most of his comrades, he said, died wishing to take not an enemy but one of their officers with them as their souvenir 59 Such confessions, unthinkable before the surrender, exposed the fatuity of wartime propaganda about one hundred million hearts beating as one 59 The emperors loyal soldiers and sailors seemed to have metamorphosed overnight into symbols of the worst sort of egoism and atomization 60 Stories circulated about men who made their way home after years of hardship only to find that their wives had remarried, frequently to a brother or close friend 60 As a result, many ex-servicemen found themselves regarded not just as men who had failed disastrously to accomplish their mission, but also as individuals who had, it was assumed, participated in unspeakable acts 60 They pleaded that the public had to make distrinctions between soldiers or military men and the military cliques who were ultimately responsible for the war and its conduct 61 Despite a mild Buddhist tradition of care for the weak and infirm, despite Confucian homilies about reciprocal obligations between social superiors and inferiors, and despite imperial platitudes about all Japanese being one family under the emperor, Japan was a harsh, inhospitable place for anyone who did not fall into a proper social category 62 There existed no strong tradition of responsibility toward strangers, or of unrequited philanthropy, or of tolerance or even genuine sympathy toward those who suffered misfortune 63 Hayashi Fuimo, a well-known fiction writer from an impoverished background herself, argued in a popular magainze that no country so indifferent to the plight of orphans and the homeless could claim to be cultured 64 A widow asked that same month why war widows should starve while former officers and military men were embezzling military goods. Was there no way, she inquired, that she could get just one months military salaray, or some of the war goods herself, or even a single blanket? 65 Kato Etsuro commented that until capitulation he had drawn not with his hand but with a foot wrapped in military gaiters 67 The downpour of bombs and incendiaries abruptly ceased. Then from the very same sky, the gift of peace began to descend. So-called democratic revolution! Bloodless revolution! 71 The playwright and critic Yamazaki Masakazu, who returned from Manchuria as a ninth grader in 1948, later recalled being impressed with how everything was bein given. Democracy came too easiy in such a milieu and so failed to establish deep roots.

71 Democratization from above, others observed, tended to reinforce the unfortunate logic of irresponsibility whereby everyone was socialized to bow to orders from superiors 77 The United States desires that this government should conform as closely as may be to principles of democratic self-government but it is not the responsibility of the Allied Powers to impose upon Japan any form of government not supported by the freely expressed will of the people 77 The very logic of the argument dictated the imposition of reforms that would create a society in which the will of the people prevailed, thereby eliminateting the will to war that had made Japan the scourge of Asia 79 Race and culture also set Japan apart. Unlike Germany, this vanquished enemy represented an exotic, alien society to its conquerors: nonwhite, non-Western, non-Christian. Yellow, Asian, pagan Japan, supine and vulnerable, provoked an athenocentric missionary zeal inconceivable vis--vis Germany. 80 To American reformers, much of the almost sensual excitement involved in promoting their democratic revolution from above derived from the feeling that this involved denaturing an Oriental adversary and turning it into at least an approximation of an acceptable, healthy, westernized nation [IRONIC] 80 Never had a genuinely democratic revolution been associated with military dictatorship, to say nothing of a neocolonial military dictatorship which, when all was said and done, is what MacArthurs command was. 81 What ultimately impressed Japanese at all levels with the truly ambitious nature of the Americans intensions, however, were two SCAP directeives issued with fanfare more than a month after the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay 81 In addition to the liberalization of the constitution, the government was command to extend the franchise to women, promote labor unionization, open schools to more liberal education, democratize the economy by revising monopolistic industrial controls, and in general eliminate all despotic vestiges in society 82 It was under this charter that the emperors erstwhile subjects became citizens 84 This being the case, their argument continued, sweeping structural and institutional reforms were unnecessary. On the contrary, all that needed to be done was to return the state and society to the status quo ante of the late 1920s, before the militarists took over.