War And Militarism In Modern Japan

A considerable amount of writing has been published on Japan at war in WWII. Scholars have been revisiting the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. This volume examines Japan’s twentieth-century approach to war and militarism in a wider perspective, bringing hitherto unexamined new themes and subject-matter under scrutiny up to the present day.

The intertwined issues of Japanese `identity' and `normality' are at the centre of the tension between internal and external pressures on Japanese defence and security policies. With chapters on peace thought, the militarisation and demilitarisation of language as well as the `hard' aspects of the Japanese military build up in the 1980s and the response to the Gulf War in the 1990s, this study challenges many of the preconceived notions on Japanese defence and security policies and the policy making process in Japan.

In Playing War, Sabine Frühstück makes a bold proposition: that for over a century throughout Japan and beyond, children and concepts of childhood have been appropriated as tools for decidedly unchildlike purposes: to validate, moralize, humanize, and naturalize war, and to sentimentalize peace. She argues that modern conceptions of war insist on and exploit a specific and static notion of the child: that the child, though the embodiment of vulnerability and innocence, nonetheless possesses an inherent will to war, and that this seemingly contradictory creature demonstrates what it means to be human. In examining the intersection of children/childhood with war/military, Frühstück identifies the insidious factors perpetuating this alliance, thus rethinking the very foundations of modern militarism. She interrogates how essentialist notions of both childhood and war have been productively intertwined; how assumptions about childhood and war have converged; and how children and childhood have worked as symbolic constructions and powerful rhetorical tools, particularly in the decades between the nation- and empire-building efforts of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries up to the uneven manifestations of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first.

This is the first ever English-language study of the war which established Japan's image as a warrior nation, an image which in many ways persists today. Using extensive Japanese materials, including the letters of frontline troops and provincial newspapers, it presents the diverse experience both of soldiers and civilians and reveals how war accelerated the modernization of Japanese society. Included are such topics as the soldiers' impressions of duty, nation, and their 'fellow' Asians; the role of the emperor as commander-in-chief; the use of the war in schools; as well as the activities of small business, institutional religion, and patriotic societies.

The Japanese are the only people in the world who have experienced the horror of nuclear weapons with their own flesh. Atomic holocaust was followed by American occupation and the American-inspired, postwar Japanese ‘Peace Constitution’ which explicitly outlawed Japanese military forces and the use of war as an instrument of state policy. At the time of original publication the author argued that contemporary forces within Japan were combining to create a strong movement for revision of the constitution and for the acquisition of nuclear weapons by renewed and powerful military establishment. The American government, which had encouraged rearmament, was beginning to wonder about the world effect of an economically powerful rearmed Japan and was weighing the consequences of considering Japan its only major ally in East Asia. Albert Axelbank suggests that shifting international politics and the conservative momentum in Japan make revision of the constitution and the development of Japanese militarism and nuclear weapons almost inevitable.

"This is one of the best—most surprising, insightful, provocative—books I've read on the complex interplay of memory, militarism and masculinity. Japan specialists will be sure to find it thought-provoking. But it should also be 'must reading' for all students of masculinity, femininity, militarization, and soldiering. This is comparative feminist ethnography at its smartest."—Cynthia Enloe, author of The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire "Uneasy Warriors presents a rare and intimate view into the psychological and social workings of the Self-Defense Forces. As the US and Japanese governments gear up to change the Japanese anti-war constitution, this book is even more important for understanding what the consequences will be."—Catherine Lutz, author of Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century "Sabine Frühstück expertly describes the ambiguous status of the Japanese Self Defense Forces. The book reveals insights gained from several years of sustained research, including a stint "in uniform" at an army base near Mt. Fuji. Frühstück's observations about the SDF's public relations emphasis on "cute" popular cultural media are timely and trenchant, as are her analyses of the militarization of masculinity and femininity."—Jennifer Robertson, author of Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan

First published in 1991. This book attempts to clarify the psychology and status of the Japanese people during the period from 1931, when Japan's military expansion started, to 1945, when Japan experienced a catastrophic defeat in the Pacific War. This period is one of the most turbulent in the nation's history: it saw the rise of fascism and militarism which led to confrontation and conflict with countries which stood for democracy, liberty and freedom.