Xenophobia in Shōwa Japan refers to
xenophobia and
racial discrimination displayed
toward non-Japanese during the first part of the
Shōwa era.
Racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial
Japan, having begun with the start of Japanese colonialism. . The
Shōwa regime thus preached racial superiority and racialist
theories, based on sacred nature of the
Yamato-damashii. According to historian
Kurakichi Shiratori, one of
emperor
Shōwa's teachers :«Therefore nothing in the world compares to
the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the
majesty of our national polity (
kokutai).
Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority.»
According
to , a 1943 report of the Ministry of Health and Welfare
completed on July 1, 1943, just as a family has
harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the
Japanese, as a purportedly racially
superior people, were destined to rule Asia “eternally” as the
head of the family of Asian nations.
Attacks
against Western foreigners and their Japanese friends by ordinary
citizens, rose in the 1930s under the influence of Japanese
military-political doctrines in the Showa period, after a long
build-up starting in the Meiji period
when only a few samurai die-hards
did not accept foreigners in Japan
.
Racism was omnipresent in the shōwa press during the
Holy war against China and the
Greater East Asia War and the
media's descriptions of the superiority of the
Yamato people was unwaveringly consistent. .
The first major anti-foreigner publicity campaign, called
Bōchō (Guard Against Espionage), was launched in 1940
alongside the proclamation of the
Tōa shin Shitsujō (New
Order in East Asia) and its first step, the
Hakko ichiu.
Mostly after the launching of the
Greater East Asia War, Westerners were
detained by official authorities or nationalists, and on occasion
were objects of violent assaults, sent to police jails or military
detention centers or suffered bad treatment in the street.
This
applied particularly to Americans
and British
; in Manchukuo at the same period xenophobic attacks were carried out against
Chinese
and other non-Japanese.
Examples of xenophobia
- Nationalist gangs threw stones at the British
embassy in Tokyo
and other
partisans in China attacked British citizens in Tientsin
.
- The American Embassy was spotted with excrement at least
twice
- The case of Journalist Cox, a Reuters
correspondent and his fate later when in Kempeitai hands.
- In
1934, a New
Zealander
named
Bickerton, a teacher of English in
a Tokyo school, was arrested by Keishicho. He was held incommunicado for 10
days in a dirty jail with common criminals and lunatics. Later he
was submitted to interrogation and tortured for 24 hours. Through
diplomatic pressure he was permitted to leave. Bickerton gave a
detailed story to the Manchester
Guardian about his time in prison. He said how he received
numerous blows with a baseball bat, trampling and pricking from
guards.
Separate from official authorities, with direct or indirect support
the Japanese
nationalists believed in
their "right" to inflict bad treatment on foreigners.
- In February 1941, when the move of Japanese forces into South
Asian lands started, the Count of
Tascher, commercial attaché at the French Embassy in Tokyo was
subject to a violent assault, suffered blows and was knocked
unconscious. The "patriots" kicked the diplomat and inflicted
injuries in his stomach and face. The "patriots" abandoned the
diplomat with blood over the street, near Kobe
where he had recently arriving from Shanghai aboard the American vessel President
Coolidge.
This incident provoked diplomatic protests from ambassadors led by
American diplomat
Joseph C.
Grew accompanied by an Italian
diplomat,
with exception of German
Ambassador. The Italian representative added why his wife
was also attacked by
nationalists in
the same period.
- Other examples of the particular "friendly" reception of
natives was with some British merchants, who were objects of
citizen "arrests" by nationalists and sent to police prison. It was
alleged that they held a list of secret keys. In the end these
"keys" were only lists made by his wife for making local crafts
from fabric.
- Joe Dynan, aide to the chief in the Associated Press local office Max Hill, did
not return after making a visit to a friend in the outskirts of
Tokyo. Joe had taken the last train out to Yokohama at Shinagawa, but
seeing as the train did not finish the journey, he decided to wait
in a station. Here he saw some military trucks with soldiers and
movements of trains full of Imperial Troops. He continued his
observation when a Keishicho officer
arrested him for espionage at 1:00 a.m. Joe was taken to the police
station and submitted to heavy interrogation by the security
authorities. The next day with the assistance of some influential
friends they convinced the authorities of his innocence, and he was
released.
- The wife of American businessmen of American President Lines, was
surprised when meeting some "strange" person searching her home
under her furniture for any important papers. This company was
important to the authorities and foreign or native workers were
kept under surveillance.
- An engineer of the Lockheed
Aircraft Company, had his door forced in the Imperial Hotel and his
suitcases searched. He saw this with some frequency and seeing one
Keishicho officer by mistake one day, he excused his entry as an
"error". Another colleague asked why his
correspondence sent from California
was opened or lost en route.
- Hal Schlieder, another American who remained, was calling upon
one day by Keishicho authorities, in the Station Hotel of Tokyo,
living with his wife. The authorities wanted to know the meaning of
some "object" in their window at the Imperial Palace
. He explained that the "object" was only a
razor blade left there in error.
- The author of "Goodbye Japan", Joseph Newman was object of
similar actions by Keishicho units, and a victim of telephone
tapping by the Tokko service, when he sent his
information to the New York
Herald Tribune.
- The wife of American Tea businessman who cycled the Taihoku streets, was detained.
- Matsuo a Japanese worker at the American embassy in the
province, was convicted of espionage for
the Americans and immediately arrested. The American
authorities were ordered to detain any Japanese Custom Dispatches
in Manila
Port under
pressure of the authorities. The allegations by the local
security authorities was why Japanese workers had to question about
which cars would be bought in the next year. Such questions were
considered a national security topic. The Americans energetically
protested, but the Japanese reaffirmed their allegations of
American spying. Days later Matsuo was freed from jail.
- Surprised when the war broke out in Europe, German and Italian vessels
sought refuge in the ports of Formosa, but the request was denied
by the Japanese authorities on the islands
Departure of Westerners
When they
saw these attacks, the United States Department of
State
sent advice to their citizens and other westerners
to leave Japan as promptly as possibly; they started the exodus to
America in October 1940 to October 1941.
2,500 Americans left; only those remained to support necessary
commerce and diplomacy. In October 1940 the last edition of the
Japan Advertiser was published, the last American independent
journal in Japan. Some of the contributors were:
Don Brown (from
Philadelphia
), the director Newton Edgards (from Seattle
), Richard Fujii, (American-Japanese from Honolulu
), Al Downs (from Montana
), Jim Tew (from Florida
, Dick Tenelly (from Washington
), the social journalist Thelma Hecht (from Hollywood
), Wilfred Fleisher, Ray
Cromley along with other collaborators Clarence Davies, Al
Pinder, and B.W.Fleisher the advertising director decided to sell
the properties to locals before return to United States.
Tenelly decided to gallantly continue as the correspondent working
in the
National Broadcasting Company and
Reuters, Downs working with
International News Service,
Cromley remained in the service of the
Wall Street Journal, Fleisher continued
with the
New York Herald
Tribune as a correspondent and arrived at
Yokohama port to take leave of his old friends and
companions retiring from the country aboard
Yawata Maru the last vessel from Japan. From
October 1941 other vessels, the
Tatsuta
Maru and Taiyo Maru, recovered the last foreigners who
remaining in Japan in last days at the outbreak of the
conflict.
These voyages were symbols of the situation of foreigners in the
last days caused by xenophobic aggression before December 1941,
when the
Pacific War started.
See also
References
- Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan,
2001, p.280
- Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War, 1998, p.104
- Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi, Anti-Foreignism and Western
Learning in Early-Modern Japan, Council on East-Asian Studies,
Harvard University, 1986. ISBN 0674040376
- David C. Earhart, Certain Victory, 2008, p.335
- David C. Earhart, Certain Victory, 2008, p. 339
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