Nationalist politics

Origin of nationalist structures and parties


In 1882 the Japanese Government organized the Teiseito (Imperial Gubernative Party), one of first nationalist parties in the country. From the Russo-Japanese War Japan was called "Dai Nippon Teikoku", setting up a real Empire, with the inclusions of Formosa (1895), the Liaodong Peninsula and Karafuto (1905), the South Pacific Mandate islands (1918-19) and aiming at control of Joseon (Korea)(1905-10).



The wars against China and Russia were total wars, and required a nationalistic focus of patriotic sentiment. From this period the Yasukuni Jinja was converted into a center of the new patriotic sense. During the 1920s years the official establishment was conceptually organized in this form: Nobility and Aristocracy (Mombatsu); Commercial and Industrialist (Zaibatsu); military and some great landowner clan allies (Gumbatsu).



In 1926-28 the central government organized the "Peace preservation Department" (an antisubversive police section), and prosecuted all local communists who proposed a socialist form of government. The Japanese Army organized the Kempeitai (Military police service) and the Japanese Navy an equivalent. These security groups not only had military police responsibilities, additionally they possessed special weapons (groups in Manchuria), and a political department, and were ideologically related to the Kōdōha Party (a faction, and a political branch of the Army in civil government) and the colonial and security administrations.



Realities of political power


According to some authors, to call Japan in 1941 fascist or totalitarian is an error. The "New Structure" in Japan did not depend on one leader at the centre, a Mussolini or Hitler. Japanese citizens were rallied to the "Defensive State" or "Consensus State", in which all efforts of the nation supported collective objectives, by guidance from national myths, history and dogmas, obtaining a "national consensus".



Since the Meiji restoration, the central figure of the state was the Tenno, the emperor. According to the constitution, the tenno was head of the state (article 4) and commander of the Army and the Navy (article 11). Emperor Showa was also, from 1937, the commander of the Imperial General Headquarters.



About who really held the political power in Japan, there are three versions. One says that real control was exerted by the Emperor over the military; another validates a "consensus leadership" between the Emperor the other members of the Imperial General Headquarters, the government and the zaibatsu. There is also the 'militarist' position, denying politics as a factor. It argues that real control did lie with the military, behind a front formed by the Emperor and Government (as certainly occurred in Manchukuo with the Kangde Emperor Puyi).




For many historians such as Akira Fujiwara, Akira Yamada, Peter Wetzler, Herbert Bix and John Dower, the work done by Douglas MacArthur and SCAP during the first months of the occupation of Japan to exonerate Hirohito and all the imperial family from criminal prosecutions in the Tokyo tribunal was the predominant factor in the successful campaign to diminish in retrospect the role played by the emperor during the war. They argue that post-war view focused on the imperial conferences and missed the numerous "behind the crysanthemum curtain" meetings where the real decisions were made between emperor Showa, his chiefs of staff and the cabinet. For Fujiwara, "the thesis that the Emperor, as an organ of responsibility, could not reverse cabinet decision, is a myth (shinwa) fabricated after the war.


The principal military figures were:

• General Hideki Tojo, First chief of Kempeitai in Manchukuo, prime minister, war minister, interior affairs Minister also in 1941 head of Kodoha party,
• Lieutenant-General Hyotaro Yamada,War vice-minister,
• General Sadao Araki, Army radical ideologist, also founder and first chief of the Kodoha party right-wing nationalist movement and during 1938-39 are Ministry of Education,
• General Hachiro Arita, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Army thinker, he had engineered a pact with the Axis powers against Russia, also himself brainchild of "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" Concept,
• Prince Kan'in Kotohito, chief of staff of the Army
• General Hajime Sujiyama, state chief of Army,
• General Otozo Yamada, Home defense commander in chief of military instructions,
• Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi, chief of staff of the Navy
• Admiral Osami Nagano, state chief of Navy,
• Admiral Koshiró Oikawa,Marine Minister, also one of navy strategists why organized the conquest plans to southern area
• Rear Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, second state chief of Navy,
• Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, Marine Minister,
• Admiral Mineo Osumi, nobility member and oldest member of the Supreme War Council (Japan) and ex-Marine Minister,
• Admiral Teijiro Toyoda,Ex-vice Marine Minister, Commerce & Industry and Foreign Affairs Minister, relationed with Mitsui Zaibatsu Clan,
• General Juichi Terauchi, son of Marshal Masatake Terauchi, in charge of the Army forces during the early Pacific war in South Asia,
• General Takazo Numata, second Commander of Army forces in South Asia,
• Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Chief of Combined Pacific Fleet, himself conceived the Hawaii Operation and directed the Navy forces during the Pearl Harbor attack and early Pacific war,
• Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, second chief of Combined Pacific Fleet, more remembered himself how some survivor of American shot-down of Isoroku Yamamoto's Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" Command Transport in Salomon Islands, and last direct navy commander of final Kamikaze Mission in Okinawa,
• Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, direct Navy Commander the Japanese Task force during Hawaii Operation,
• Vice Admiral Takijiro Ohnishi, head of Naval Aviation Division of Munitions Ministry, also later First Air Fleet Land-based Commander in Northern Philippines, since October 1944, well known as founder of the Kamikaze special forces,
• General Hiroshi Oshima, the official contact with Germany, and a firm supporter of the Nazis,
• Major-General Kazuo Otani, another Japanese contact with Europeans and some supporter of Nazis too,
• Lieutenant-General Seizo Sakonji, Commerce & Industry minister replacing Admiral Toyoda

The names of Mitsui, Mitsubishi (Iwasaki), Sumitomo, Okura, Asano, Kuhara and Yasuda, amongst others, were prominent as industrialists.