What Abenomics is really about – death worship
It’s not news that Abenomics should be called Abepolitics, even it doesn’t sound so good. But let’s be blunt about Abepolitics (ok, let’s call it Abeism – it does sound much better).
Abeism is the wrong word because it singles out an individual. This is misleading. There is a whole class of people in Japan who hate Japan’s post-war regime. They hate being branded as war-mongers, they hate the fact that they lost the war, and they hate the fact that ‘their’ war is regarded as stupid and reckless.
As far as they are concerned, the war was justified by the actions of the US, the potential gains were worth the risk, Japan waged war just like everybody else, and war crimes trials are always a sham.
That’s not the worst of it. They feel the Japanese spirit reached its apogee during the war. They feel that post-war capitalist society is decadent, selfish, slothful and a disgrace to the national spirit in comparison.
For them, the essence of the Pacific War is the smiling Kamikaze Pilot, downing his sake on the airfield tarmac, white silk scarf around his neck, samurai sword clasped under his arm.
His combination of youth, weaponry and pending death give these old men and women a sexual thrill.
These people may even be ready to die themselves, but probably not as horribly as the 150,000 Tokyo citizens incinerated in 1945, or the sailors and airmen trapped in the hellholes of Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. No, if they die (it’s their choice, of course) they want to die like the muscular young officer in Yukio Mishima’s film about the pathetic military uprising in 1936 – elegantly, aesthetically, preferably after having sashimi’d their wife and children.
This is what grates. There are all kinds of reasons not to demonize Japan for its role in the WW2. Much of the right wing indignation against US hypocrisy is justified. But what makes one shudder is the death worship. In essence, what is so repellent is the fact that these men and women are nostalgic for the actual waging of the war, not just unhappy that they did not reach their catastrophically ill-judged objectives. For these people, it’s still all about ‘shattering the 100 million jewels’.
As usual, one has to compare to Germany. As we increasingly know, Germany’s loud apologies after WW2 conceal a lot. Killers in the army, SS, police, judiciary and the Nazi party were amnestied as long they did not break contemporary laws when they executed opponents, slaughtered jews and left Russian POWs to rot. Even the worst criminals like SS doctor Mengele received government pensions for decades after the war.
But – and this is a big but – you just don’t get a large portion of the population clamouring to have another go at building the Third Reich and wishing their children could fall gloriously on the Russian front. Germany (apart from the country bumpkins in the East) has embraced Europe if not multi-culturalism, business, consumerism, pacifism and so on. There is a Nazi movement, but it’s really small.
I have an 82 year old friend. He was sent to navy suicide school in 1945 as a child. He escaped because the same bombers who laid waste to central Tokyo also destroyed his barracks. He fled to an adjacent graveyard,where he was joined by US POWs. Together, they watched as the B-52 cruised over Tokyo, unleashing destruction. The US POWs cheered themselves hoarse. I’m pretty glad he never launched himself against the US navy. He’s the father of my wife.
He’s always been very kind to me, and any other Westerners he comes across. Unlike the elite political dynasties, he saw from the bottom up what war does. He’s anxious for reconciliation and loathes right-wing tropes like emperor worship and militarism. It’s not surprising that it’s ordinary Japanese people who are most welcoming to foreigners, while it’s the traditional elite which is frankly speaking the most racist.
