“The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (2-vol Set)”, by John Toland

 

1176 pages, Random House (Book Club Edition), ISBN: 978-0812968583

There was time, in my misspent youth, when I bought damn near any and every book I came across, just to have it and, maybe, even to read it. Later. Like this: The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 by John Toland that I got at a neighbor’s garage sale. This was actually a special edition printed by Random House in two volumes for the Book Club, so the paper quality is rather pulpy and the dimensions are a little small, especially compared to the original, first edition that they resemble. Don’t know why Random House did that: I mean, I suppose they saved money on the materials, but then they had to print it in two volumes, which would imply greater cost. Or maybe not. Dunno. Okay, then…

The Rising Sun was first published in 1970 when there were few works that sought the Japanese side of the Pacific War, and so, for that reason alone, it was an important milestone in the historiography of the Second World War. But there is sympathy and there is apologia, and all too often Toland slips into the later. In one of the first chapters he attempts to explain Japanese culture and attitudes to his audience, but except for the fact that it is a positive narrative, it reads for all the world like Allied propaganda: the Japanese come across as semi-mystical beings whose thoughts and beliefs were so alien to the average Westerner as to be wholly impenetrable. This, of course, is nonsense: while there were, of course, cultural differences between East and West, there were many more all-too recognizable human impulses and strengths and weaknesses which shaped the war for the Empire of Japan that are familiar to even an amateur historian.

Toland’s attempt to write a more sympathetic, non-judgmental narrative also means that the actions of the Japanese are forgiven in ways they would not have been if one of the Western colonial powers had committed them. The refrain that “Americans don’t understand the Japanese mentality and culture” and it was this “misunderstanding” that led to the war becomes tedious right quick, with Japanese decision-makers like Prince Konoe – and other militaristic firebrands of the 1930s – being portrayed with a certain hazy romanticism (while the book starts in 1936 most knowledgeable people know that the march to war really began with the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1932). Japan’s imperialist, racist elite by-and-large get let off the hook as Toland dwells on the supposed pan-Asian liberation ideology used to justify Japan’s actions while excusing Japan’s decades of atrocities in China, Korea and the Philippines.

This last bit really stuck in my craw, especially when Toland goes on to state that the aspirations of the Japanese Empire were in sympathy with the aspirations of all of the nations of Asia of the time; namely, to escape Western colonial domination. The Japanese desire to chuck the round eyes from the East was well-known and trumpeted by their propaganda, but not because of any kind of altruistic drive or desire to stick it to whitey. No, the principle reason the Empire of Japan wanted the Western barbarian empires to fall was because they stood in the way of their own empire – or should I say, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Toland also claims Japan was constantly menaced by the Soviet Union which accounted for its ultra-right-wing attitudes, a patently inaccurate assessment as he also goes out of his way to distance Japan from Nazi Germany, but I found most of his assertions unconvincing.

The military took control in the 1930s, but Toland doesn’t really say how, almost as if the country woke up one day and…there it was. He describes in detail the February 26^th Incident of young officers in 1936 and how they were willing to kill without compunction and how fanatical they were…yet we are then told that they supposedly opposed expansion into China and that the repression of this coup attempt would lead to an expanded war. Toland defines the Japanese term Gekokujō as being some sort of insubordination that led to the Kwantung Army to feel it could move, presumably without orders from Tokyo, into Manchuria. However, he doesn’t explain how this could happen for there is little description of the power structure in Japan; we do know that there was some attempt to create parliamentary democracy but there were also the giant oligarchs who had much power, to say nothing of the military hierarchy.

And on and on and on…The Rising Sun could have been an invaluable insight into the minds and motivations of those who ran the Empire of Japan as it embarked on its conquest of Asia…but alack, he wrote what was instead an apologia for war, death, human suffering and geopolitical catastrophe that has not aged well at all.