On a previous version of this blog, I did a lengthy review of Ben-Ami Shilony’s Revolt in Japan: The Young Officers and the February 26, 1936 Incident. The focus of my earlier post reviewing of Revolt in Japan was the importance of templates. A group or community without much in the way of strategic acumen can use a commonly shared myth (often expressed in the form of a stylized scenario) to organize and steer themselves. 1
The natural sequel is Danny Orbach’s more ambitious book A Curse On This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan. Much of what is merely subtext in Shilony is made explicit here, in sometimes painful detail.
I was not surprised to learn of the origins of Shilony’s “shishi” (men of spirit, loosely translated) in the “floating world” of pre-Meiji Japan: brothels, geisha houses, inns, restaurants, and similar establishments. These were men that lacked much in the way of real structure or discipline in their lives. The lack of long-term life plans dovetailed with their indifference to the consequences of their violent actions. Intention behind action was prized over results.
The genius of Orbach’s book is its description of how a demonic apparatus pushing Japan into total war emerged by the 1930s, and how successive governments failed to check it over decades of similar political crises. Military revolts, colonial expansion, and ideological extremism all provided opportunities for revanchist forces to carve out political concessions and find common cause with each other.
No one in the Japanese government was far-sighted enough to see it growing. By the 1930s, it was much too late. The Gordian knot of threads linking together military officers, intelligence operatives, civilian right-wing fanatics, and a generalized cabal of thugs and criminals could not be cut. Even the failure of the great February 26 rebellion merely resulted in militarists gaining more power.
I am not sure about Orbach’s argument of the post-Meiji order as overdetermined to fail, but the book is well worth a read.