Oh What a Lovely War?

The revelers in the Ginza cocktail lounge looked like any other gathering of Japanese junior executives: a bit soft around the middle, a bit busky-cheeked from golf and gin, affluent and amiable. The song they were singing sent a charge of shock through the bar: "Monday and Monday, Tuesday, Wed nesday, Thursday, Friday and Friday.". It was a battle song of the Japanese Imperial Navy, extolling daily dedication to the glory of Nippon. As the singing died away, the men spontaneously turned to reminiscences of Rabaul and Savo Island, Bataan and Okinawa. "Wasn't it great," said one, "those days in the war?"

"Glorious Records." Nearly a generation after her crushing defeat in World War II, Japan is experiencing a wave of nostalgia for "the Pacific War." Every Sunday at 9 a.m., tots around the country gather before the TV to watch "Zero Fighter Hayato" knock a dozen American P-38s or Wildcats from the skies. Plastic-model Zero fighters and picture books are bestsellers from Hokkaido to Kyushu, while adults are now reading a book called Glorious Records, which praises the wartime Burma-Siam railway project that built the bridge over the River Kwai. A new series of junior high school history textbooks, approved by the Ministry of Education, implies that the blame for World War II lay not so much with Japanese aggression but with economic pressure exerted against Japan by "the ABCD Ring" (America, Britain, China and the Dutch). General Hideki Tojo, who coined the wartime ABCD rationale in the first place, is no longer pictured in the textbooks as a militarist on trial in a war crimes courtroom but as a kindly gent patting the heads of children.

Nowhere has the attempt to justify Japan's role in World War II been argued more vehemently than in the prestigious intellectual monthly Chuo Koron (circ. 180,000), which recently concluded a 16-part series by Novelist Fusap Hayashi. Tojo's execution as a war criminal, argues Hayashi, was part of a "ritualized vendetta" that began with Roosevelt's attempts to draw Japan into war. By terminating the U.S.-Japanese treaty of commerce in 1939, and then putting an embargo on petroleum exports to Japan, Roosevelt left Tokyo with "no alternative but to move south for resources to Indonesia." Japan, writes Hayashi, was justified in attacking Pearl Harbor out of self-defense. "How was it possible," he asks, "to maintain peace and order when one guy takes away food from the other and strangles his neck?"

Western observers see the new Japanese justification of the Pacific war as a logical outgrowth of the country's search for national identity. As the world's fifth-ranking industrial power and Asia's wealthiest nation, Japan feels a need to reassert itself in Asian affairs. Tokyo University Political Scientist Masao Maruyama suggests that the war in Viet Nam--which pits Asians against whites--tends to reinforce Japanese views that the Pacific war was justifiable as an "anti-colonial" and anti-white crusade.

Several prominent newspapers have taken issue with the trend toward glorification of war, and the September issue of Chuo Koron is filled with rebuttals of Hayashi's series. The rebuttals point out the fatuity of Hayashi's attempt to "revive the old glories of the Japanese Empire," and detect in the pro-war sentiments a Japanese sense of mission for the "liberation" of Asia from Western colonialism, and a sense of superiority over other Asians.

One obvious--but as yet undeveloped --corollary to the new logic is the need for a militarily strong Japan. That, of course, is forbidden by the Japanese constitution. Former Premier Nobusuke Kishi, writing in October's Foreign Affairs, argues that the constitution should be revised to permit a full-scale defense force. Only thus, he maintains, will the Japanese "regain their self-confidence and pride." Kishi's brother, Premier Eisaku Sato, does not go quite that far, but with the pressure for rearmament slowly building, he may yet demand a constitutional amendment. "The true rehabilitation of Japan will begin at this point," writes Kishi. "Japan cannot be said to have found itself as a nation just because everyone has a TV set, plenty to eat and a higher income."

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