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Published by H-US-Japan@h-net.msu.edu (November 29, 2001)

James J. Orr. _The Victim as Hero_. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001. viii + 271 pp. Appendixes, notes, bibliography and index. ISBN 0-8248-2355-9 (cloth); $22.95, ISBN 0-8248-2435-0 (paper).

Reviewed for H-US-Japan by Jing Zhao (jzhao@mail.h-net.msu.edu), US-Japan-China Comparative Policy Research Institute, San Jose, USA.

Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan 1945 - 1972 (*1)

There are many books, in Japanese as well as in English, which illustrate the struggling processes in the postwar Japanese society over the memories of loss and trauma of war (*2). In this book under review, James Orr provides the first systematic, historical inquiry into the emergence of the concept of victimhood in postwar Japan. This is a concise book. It covers Japan in the first three decades since the end of World War II. "He describes vividly how the notion of victimhood has been institutionalized through the use of elite political rhetoric, school texts, novels, films, and reparations battles, and he offers a compelling explanation for the peculiar, distorted form that moral argumentation surrounding war responsibility has taken." (Gary Allinson, back cover).

Chapter 2, "Leaders and Victims: Personal War Responsibility During the Occupation," describes how in the early years after defeat, the Japanese people came to feel they had been duped by their wartime leaders. In contrast to the previous wars (the 1894 Sino-Japanese War and the 1904 Russo-Japanese War) in which Japan won, Japan's defeat in World War II brought the Japanese people a debacle they had never experienced. Although "it was sometimes unclear whether it was the moral responsibility for waging a war of aggression or the strategic responsibility of losing it" (p.2), personal war responsibility was one central issue if Japan were to avoid another such destructive war.

This 22-pages chapter arrives at balanced as well as dispassionate conclusions. However, some analytical parts are not so illuminating nor persuasive, especially from the eyes of Asian people, who righteously view this subject with passions. One example is on MacArthur's "remembrance" record of his impression on first meeting with Hirohito. It seems that the historian author truly believes the ridiculous story: "After the emperor offered to bear sole responsibility for the actions of his people during the war, MacArthor was moved by this assumption of responsibility" (p.19).

Even though the author points out the fact that U.S. occupation policy shifted from reforming a vanquished enemy to nurturing a stable Cold War ally, he does not explore the logical consequence of the fact. The U.S. occupation policy prevented Japan from becoming a true peace country; and, in this regard, the Japanese victimhood, including the A-bomb victim experience, sometimes becomes not only meaningless but also hypocritical, as viewed from "passionate" Asian eyes. The author also fails to point out that the Tokyo Trails served the U.S. Asia strategy/interest more than Asia's true peace. For some people outside of Asia, it would be difficult to understand why in December 2000, fifty-five years after the end of the war, there was a Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery in Tokyo (*3). However, I think most Asian people would agree with Asai Motofumi: "Except their America attitude and policy, the Japanese ruling class changed nothing" (*4).

Chapter 3, "Hiroshima and Yuiitsu no hibakukoku: Atomic Victimhood in the Antinuclear Movement," describes the political and cultural meanings that "Hiroshima" carried from 1945 to the early 1960s. This chapter shows how the antinuclear movement succeeded to some degree in Japan. At least, "it prevented the United States from openly stationing unclear weapons on Japanese soil" (p.69) and the Japanese government also has been forced, in public, to follow the so-called "three non-nuclear principles." The chapter also explains the movement's limitations: first, the conservative forces and the U.S. feared the movement would develop into a movement against the Security Treaty; second, "Japanese consciousness as victimizer played little role in antinuclear pacifism" (p.66). From my experience, except a few responses from Europeans or Americans, Japan's "yuiitsu" (Japan-only) Atomic victimhood experience appealed little to the Asian people.

When I entered Qinghua University's Engineering (Nuclear) Physics Department after China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, we suddenly found that, except Nuclear Physics, China had no field to compete with the outside world. Nicknamed as "the cradle of China's bombs," and administered under the Seventh (Nuclear) Industry Ministry, we were proud of our department as one core factor contributing to China's strength in standing against the two superpowers' nuclear threats. However, one classmate, his name is Zhang Jingbo, declared that he would not study knowledge to kill the human being and requested to change to other peaceful majors. This surprised all of us, especially the school administration. That was not allowed under China's education system. He was dismissed from the school (*5). One of China's "A-bomb fathers," who gave up his American professorship and returned China, educated us: "I don't want to kill either. However, I will never want to be a humiliated Chinese again." Marshal Chen Yi's statement was famous to us: "As PRC's Foreign Minister, I'd rather have an A-bomb than clothes."

Chapter 4, "Educating a Peace-Loving People: Narratives of War in Postwar Textbooks," focuses on how the war was presented in elementary and middle school social studies texts. Since the book covers only until the early 1970s and the issue becomes intensified in the 1980s, 1990s and in the new century, I feel the study in this chapter is neither comprehensive nor complete. I would like to signify 1972 as the year for Japan to have "resolved" the most important postwar issue when it "normalized" its relations with the PRC. This normalization provided Japanese ordinary people the way to communicate with the Chinese people directly. Issues on the textbooks, state reparations (especially with North Korea), and individual level war reparations including the Ianfu survivors, are far from resolved. Unless these issues are honestly addressed and properly resolved, Japan's "Sengo" (postwar) will never have an end.

Chapter 5, " 'Sentimental Humanism': The Victim in Novels and Film," analyzes three popular antiwar novels and films to demonstrate how basic themes of war victimhood are reflected and reinforced. The contents here are fine. I should admit that I have not read nor watched the three works discussed in this chapter: Twenty-Four Eyes (Nijushi no hitomi) by Tsuboi Sakae, The Human Condition (Nigen no joken) by Gomikawa Junpei, and Black Rain (Kuroi ame) by Ibuse Masuji. Among the potential candidates for the author's analysis, I only read and watched Takeyama Michio's Harp of Burma (Biruma no tategoto) (note 6, p.221).

And this is another example of how a Japanese wartime literature is perceived differently from Asian eyes. When I finished my "special Japanese training" at Dalian (*6), the Japanese teachers delegation presented each Chinese student a copy of Harp of Burma. I tried to read it because our Chinese teachers, following the government's instruction, informed us not to read it because it "falsely glorifies brutal Japanese aggressors." I could not understand why the author wrote on such a topic and how he could find any audience. Later, when I watched the video, in Japan, I realized that the Japanese people need this kind of story describing their soldiers as heroic victims, rather than cruel victimizers. It seems the Chinese government was right: this is not a good book; and people could easily extend this conclusion to other similar Japanese wartime literatures. In fact, most Chinese only know the wartime Japanese victimhood through Japan's Proletarian Literature, such as the Japanese communist writer Kobayashi Takiji who suffered death by torture.

Chapter 6, "Compensating Victims: The Politics of Victimhood," shows how in the 1960s the victim mythology had become political capital that special interests (landlords and repatriates, but not the A-bomb victims) could manipulate for their own benefit. I have a little difficulty to understand why the author includes landlords in this chapter. The landlords are "victims" of the postwar land reform, but not victims of the war; their compensation campaigns had no relation with Japan's peace ideologies or national identity.

Since the book covers only until the early 1970s, the author could not develop how the Japanese victimhood interacted with its Asian neighbors more recently. For example, one important fact is that the PRC leadership also utilized this the-Japanese-people-are-also-victims pretext (*7) to explain to the Chinese people of its Japan policy. Thus any Japanese political figure violating this pretext would cause troubles to China, and eventually to Japan too (*8). I suggest the author add the time span 1945 - 1972 to the book subtitle "Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan."

Technically, there are some points that need improvement. For example, the Index should include more items used in the book, such as Marco Polo (Lugou) Bridge, Port Arthor (Nushun). The main difficulty to read this book, though, is to match the right kanji of many Latinized Japanese words (the book has not a single kanji or kana). Since the book studies Japan on a rather specific topic utilizing mainly Japanese materials, readers without Japanese language knowledge will have difficulty to understand many Latinized Japanese usages. For readers with Japanese language knowledge, however, we would very much like to read the kanji along with their Latinized spellings, especially for Japanese names. For example, note 76 of chapter 6 (p.235) prints the whole Latinized text of "Furusato no tuschi" (The Soil of My Village Home). I don't think anyone will read, nor can understand them without the original Japanese text. In this regard, I would suggest research and academic publications follow The Journal of Asian Studies and print out Chinese characters.

As a publication directly derived from a Ph. D. dissertation, the book displayed the author's ability to analyze delicate subjects. In fact, there are 58 pages of notes for the 179-pages text. This is another indication that the topics of the textbooks, the war responsibility, and the A-bomb experience, need more thorough study without time limitation imposed by the book. In this regard, until the true victims, the Asian people, become heroes, the theme of this book will continue, to the second or third generation. We look forward to seeing the author to publish his new research on this subject from a wider perspective and a longer span.

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