Notes on Japanese Revisionism and WW2

It is important to see U.S.-Japan relations and Pearl Harbor in the context of Japan's drive for regional supremacy/domination and autarky. The U.S. oil and steel embargo, financial freeze, etc. were all reactions to that Japanese drive.

I don't necessarily see Japan's unsuccessful pursuit of what it perceived as its national interests to be a moral failing. That would be holding Japan up to an unreasonable standard of moral state behavior (one could fault them in terms of administrative coordination and realistic planning, however). Machiavelli would agree, I suppose.

The problem is that Japanese historical revisionists are trying to engage in this debate on liberal terms, blaming some sort of conspiracy of great powers to keep Japan down or claiming that Japan was trying to liberate Asia (frequently both). The reality is that it was the trend of the times, to some extent, the great depression, exclusive trade blocs, and breakdown of the Anglo-American maintenance of the post-WWI international order (Washington System) that encouraged and enabled Japan to embark on its quest. Japan was in too deep in China, the international system hadn't prevented it from becoming so, and the options presenting themselves to Japanese leaders were all
unpalatable. As Prime Minister Tojo said, sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump off Kiyomizu Temple.

Japan (and Germany) lost the war, and the world may be a "better" place for it, but the revisionists are really fighting the wrong historiographical war, one that they're bound to lose, which seems familiar somehow...

Machiavelli is not popular (probably because he still tells the truth), and we live in a world, Japan included, that believes that states should act in a moral fashion. Japan has crafted its postwar national identity as a victim and a peaceful economic power. Japan trying to liberate Asia fits with that, it harmonizes the past with the present; Japan being a normal, brutal state does not. It forces a violent and masochistic disconnect with the "prosthetic" past.

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For a recent, controversial example of revisionism, please see the paper linked from this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshio_Tamogami

This was written by General Tamogami Toshio, then Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, and was published on October 31st, 2008. Two weeks later, he was removed from his post by the Defense Minister and forced to retire.