The Specter of Revolution: The Domestic Sources of Japan's Decision to Surrender

Abstract

Japan took a bold gamble in initiating the Pacific War against the United States, an adversary that possessed a potential strength many times that of Japan. Though Japan initially succeeded in conquering a large portion of the Asia-Pacific, in the long run the gamble failed to pay off. By 1944, it had become clear that the Japanese Empire could not muster the wherewithal to match the United States' war machine. But the Japanese persisted in the war - no matter how steeply the scales of war tipped against them - until a large portion of the home islands were destroyed and the nation's industrial capacity was crippled. It took an intervention by the Emperor in mid-August 1945, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan to bring about a Japanese decision to surrender. With such military power arrayed against Japan, it is no wonder that scholarly treatment of Japan's decision to surrender highlight mainly the adverse military situation. Special emphasis has been placed on a wide variety of military issues, from the strategic bombing campaign to the naval blockade, the atomic bombings that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the shock of the Soviet entry into the Pacific War. Even Robert J.C. Butow's seminal work, Japan's Decision to Surrender, which has long been regarded the traditional interpretation of the end of the Pacific War, implicity emphasizes the military dimensions of the political decision to surrender. Butow argues that the worsening military situation divided the wartime ruling elite into a hardliner faction that wanted to fight to the finish and a peace faction that pressed for a prompt end to the hostilities; it took the atomic bombings and the Soviet entry to create an atmosphere where the Emperor could intervene to end the war. These interpretations shed light on the decision to surrender. But by focusing on the foreign dimension of the political decision to end the war while excluding a broader analysis of the domestic dimension, Butow and others only tell one, albeit critical, portion of the story. The military situation was not the Japanese leaders' only concern by 1945. As the war became a desperate struggle for Japan, many key decision-makers began to perceive that they were fighting a losing battle on two fronts: foreign and domestic. On the foreign front, the Japanese military's fighting power and discipline steadily deteriorated in the face of Anglo-American might. The only way to counter the steady stream of military losses, military leaders reasoned, was to engage in Ketsu-Go, an all-out decisive battle for the homeland. On the domestic front, many elites were increasingly worried about both a communist fifth column waiting to destroy the kokutai (national polity) from within and a deteriorating national morale that could be mobilized for the same purpose. Their only means of dealing with these fears of social revolution was to arrest increasing numbers of subversives for promoting ‘dangerous thoughts,' but as we shall see, this had the opposite effect of making the elites feel more apprehensive. Scholarly works that deal with Japanese leaders' concerns for the foreign front abound. Conversely, the fear of Japan;s domestic situation as a motivation factor for capitulation has been left relatively unexplored.