Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (71 page)

[212]
Shōko Nagasaki, personal correspondence.

[213]
In the actual article, the location is deleted and described as “A Base Somewhere In Japan” (
Marumaru-kichi
). This convention is ignored in my translation for purposes of clarity.

[214]
This, apparently, is Miss Sada’s own interpretation of the old Shinto taboo against female physical contact with hallowed ground or sacred weaponry. The most well known surviving legacy in modern day Japan of this nearly extinct belief is the taboo against female contact with any of the apparatus involved in sumo wrestling, including setting foot in the ring. This causes protocol problems every year at the trophy presentation ceremony after the Osaka tourney, as the current governor of the prefecture is a woman. Despite initial protest not only on her part but also from women’s rights groups and other liberals around the country, the governor caved to the forces of tradition just before her moment of truth, and has delegated the ceremonial duties to a male subordinate ever since.

[215]
Akabane (2001), p.76

[216]
From text of display at Tomiya Ryokan

[217]
A diminutive familiar abbreviation of Miyakawa’s first name, Saburō.

[218]
Dialogue reconstructed from Akabane (2001) pp.160-166 and interview of May 31, 2002.

[219]
Naoko Motoki, personal communication.

[220]
http://ww.tcr.org/tcr/essays/EPrize_kamikaze.pdf

[221]
Axell & Kase (2002), p.55

[222]
Takagi (1973), p.119

[223]
Axell & Kase (2001), p.70

[224]
Satō (1997), p.20

[225]
Satō (1997), p.21

[226]
Shiino (2000), p.186

[227]
The symbolism seems to hint at the intriguing possibility that at this stage of the war – mid-August 1945 – the Americans were psychologically preparing the Japanese people for the a joint Soviet-American occupation scenario.

[228]
Takagi (1973) p.202

[229]
Residents of the area – and most of the Japanese population – still had no knowledge of the atomic bombings by this time, and would not until several years after the war.

[230]
Takagi (1973), p.200

[231]
Both during and immediately after the war, rumors of uncontrollable American sexual avarice terrified the Japanese populace (perhaps fueled in part by the exploits of their own China campaign veterans?). One of the odder rumors was that American males were driven to paroxysms of lust by the sight of bare female feet, prompting a desperate op-ed plea in the September 9, 1945 issue of the Asahi Shimbun for the immediate distribution of socks to the nation’s women before the bulk of the Occupation troops arrived.

[232]
See Kosaka (2001) for more about the former Nadeshiko Unit members’ immediate postwar memorial activities in Chiran.

[233]
At the request of her survivors, the names of “Naoko Motoki” and her immediate family members as they appear in this book are aliases.

[234]
See Longstreet (1970) and Pincus (1996) for studies of these respective Japanese subcultures.

[235]
See Silverberg (1998) for a sociological and gender analysis of this phenomenon.

[236]
Donald Keene’s
Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World 1852-1912
(2002) is the most authoritative English language biography of the Emperor.

[237]
The Kokuchūkai (National Pillar Society) – a lay Nichiren Buddhist political organization – was one of the leading social and cultural proponents of this movement. Its membership included famed children’s author, folklorist and nativist Kenji Miyazawa, an
d influential Nichiren Buddhist activist Chigaku Tanaka, one of the earliest proponents of
hakkō ichiu
doctrine as a justification for Japanese imperialist expansion on the Asian continent (Oguma (1996) pp150-151). Tanaka’s teachings enjoyed a wide following among
Kōdōha
“Imperialist Way” faction army officers, and were used in part to justify a failed February 1936 coup attempt.

[238]
n.b. Toshio Yoshitake’s adoption described in Section Two

[239]
See Behr (1989) pp.45-47 for an account of Hirohito’s conduct in the aftermath of the earthquake.

[240]
The name of this eminently scary ultranationalist political and criminal organization is only occasionally correctly translated as the “Amur River Society,” but is more often mistakenly and overdramatically translated as “Black Dragon Society”, an error probably stemming from some semi-Japanese literate Western journalist’s misinterpretation of the kanji rendering of the name of a Manchurian river as instead being an Oriental poeticism describing an ominous mythological be
ast (although the metaphor, in this case, is appropriate). Formed in 1901 by Mitsuru Tōyama and Ryōhei Uchida, the political aim of the virulently xenophobic Kokuryūkai was to further Japanese imperialistic influence in Asia with the immediate aim of putting Manchuria under Japanese rule, a goal that was effectively achieved by 1931.

[241]
Morris-Suzuki (1998), p.105.

[242]
Bix (2000) p. 140.

[243]
This son was in his late teens and already out of the home by 1923.

[244]
This cast of characters is, respectively: Gi’ichi Tanaka (PM 1927-1929), Kuni’aki Koiso (PM 1944-1945), Mitsuru Tōyama (co-founder of the Kokuryūkai), Iwane Matsui (commander of the IJA China Expeditionary Force which committed the Nanking Massacre in December 1937), Sadao Araki (future Army Minister and spiritual leader of the Kodoha or “Imperial Way Faction”, a loose association of most junior and field grade officers dedicated to the elimination of party influence from Japanese politics and restoring the Emperor as an absolute ruler with the army as his main organ of policy). See Humphreys (1995) for detailed analysis of prewar IJA factionalism. 

[245]
Zhang was assassinated in 1928, when Kwantung Army officers bombed a railway overpass on the South Manchurian Railway near Mukden, destroying the warlord’s
private train. Shirō was with the bodyguard detachment at Mukden Station, ostensibly awaiting his employer’s return from a summit meeting in Beijing.

[246]
The Motokis were originally
ashigaru
samurai from the Nagasaki region.
Ashigaru
was the lowest rank of warrior recognized as samurai in the traditional four-tiered Japanese caste system. The title, directly translated as “light foot soldier”, refers to this rank’s original battlefield use as dismounted men-at-arms, which was probably a deployment of necessity given the prohibitive cost of maintaining a warhorse. An equivalent Western feudal rank would be a (sometimes barely) gentrified yeoman.
Ashigaru
households had often originally been given this status as a reward for outstanding service – usually but not exclusively military – to the local
daimyo
lord. The status became hereditary after its initial awarding. This process resulted in a gradual increase in the size of the samurai caste over the centuries, especially when battlefield deaths were effectively eliminated as demographically significant factors during the long Pax Edo.

[247]
A kind of “mom and pop factory” in a residential district where piece work is done for larger companies

[248]
Akio was actually his nephew – Shirō adopted him as his son when his own marriage proved unable to produce children.

[249]
Junior high school was a six-year program under the prewar Japanese education system. Compulsory education extended only to the completion of elementary school. (This
is explained in more detail in a Section One footnote)

[250]
Literally “masterless samurai” – in the twentieth century, a euphemism for “mercenary”.

[251]
This was good enough to satisfy army spousal secondary education requirements.

[252]
Akio
’s biological mother – Shirō’s older brother’s wife – was a four-star general’s daughter.

[253]
This word, in Japanese, can also mean “last will and testament.” For examples of thse translated into English, see Japan Memorial Society for the Students Killed in the War (2000). See also Yasukuni Shrine (1995) for less well known but equally exemplary letters, in addition to informative photographs of hanayome ningyo and other tokkō pilots’ personal effects.

[254]
Japanese for “uncle”, but also used by youngsters as a term of respect when addressing older males (generally mid-thirties and up). Similar in usage to French pere. Sometimes considered pejorative/policially incorrect in modern usage, as it involves a subjective judgment of relative age difference on the part of the user towards the addressee.

[255]
This mural can be seen online at:
http://www.town.chiran.kagoshima.jp/touristinfo/heiwakaikan/sub03.html

[256]
In an American or European milieu, Sugawara would no doubt have been involved in libel litigation for much of the remainder of his life. But in this, the land of fifty-year-long lawsuit cases, all but the very rich or the very foolish avoid civil cases like the plague. 

[257]
Surname differs because he married into a family without a male heir, and assumed their surname.

[258]
Obviously, there was no IMA graduating class of ’48 – the war having ended during the summer of Sugawara’s plebe year.

[259]
There is no provision for trial by jury of peers in the Japanese legal system, although there have been proposals of late for its institution.

[260]
Until the end of the nineteenth century, many Japanese, especially in rural areas, afforded photographs supernatural powers, believing – similar to American Plains Indians of the era – that a person’s spirit could be trapped when their picture was taken. The custom described here may have its roots in some legacy of this folk belief.

[261]
Age restrictions for Kō Shū were lowered after Tadao’s group, which is what allowed Tokurō Takei and Akinori Asano to enter the
Kō-
13 cycle at fourteen.

[262]
www.jmdb.ne.jp/1942/br001160.htm

[263]
Tsuburaya’s techniques were so impressive, it is said that when American occupation authorities viewed the film for the first time after the war, they thought the aerial combat sequences were genuine documentary footage. (http://www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp/okapi/tokusatu.htm)

[264]
Attachment point between an aircraft’s wings and fuselage.

[265]
It is a laminated copy of this picture that Doctor Hiroshima carries in his jacket pocket to this day.

[266]
See Nila (2002) for details of IJN aviator’s kit.

[267]
Hiroshima (1977). This was the shelling that blew the roof of of Tokurō Takei’s junior high school in Hamamatsu.

[268]
The other Suiseis that sortied this day all carried full two-man crew complement, with the rear-seater manning a rearward firing defensive machine gun. Why Tadao alone was made to fly solo has never bee
n explained.

[269]
Sugiyama (1962), p.68

[270]
Morison (1960), pp.332-333

[271]
The Japanese Navy and Army ministries were still functioning in administrative matters and repatriation efforts at this point in the Occupation.

[272]
This is not a Shinto shrine, but an annex facility of Setagaya Kannon. It was dedicated in 1955.

[273]
Buruma (1995), p.227

[274]
www.town.chiran.kagoshima.jp/touristinfo/heiwakaikan/

[275]
With apologies to George Orwell

[276]
Lyrics by Yatsuto Saijō, music by Yoshiaki Ōmura (1943).

[277]
The building they used was later the site of the postwar Tokyo Tribunals and, on November 25, 1970, the dramatic suicide of novelist and right-wing activist Yukio Mishima.

[278]
The “Forty Seven Rōnin” were a band of samurai whose lord, Asano, was forced to commit ritual suicide to atone for the capital crime of drawing a sword in the Shōgun’s palace during a quarrel with a fellow noble, Lord Kira. The Rōnin exacted revenge by killing Kira after a year of laying low and plotting their attack. After the 1707 incident, all forty-seven rōnin were also obliged to kill themselves. The tale has long been considered exemplary of bushidō values, and was used as such in the moral education of generations of Japanese schoolboys from the late Edo Period until the end of World War II.

[279]
Still a holiday today, although it is now referred to as “Culture Day.” Hirohito’s (Emperor Showa) birthday on April 29 was and still is a national holiday – now called “Green Day.” The Emperor Taisho, for some reason, has not been so honored after his death, perhaps because his birthday of October 31 falls to close to his father’s.

[280]
In fact, English instruction continued at the academy even after the outbreak of the war, and was stopped only by direct intervention of the Navy Ministry out of political considerations.