JAPAN AND THE NEW ORDER
By JAYA DEVA
FIVE years ago, on November 25th, 1936, the anti-Comintern Pact was signed between Japan and Germany. The Japanese have ever since claimed that it was they who first gave a lead to the Nazis in the prosecution of the " New Order " policy. In March, 1933, Japan decided to leave the League of Nations ; Germany followed suit seven months later and Italy much later still. In December, 1934, Japan ended the Washington Naval Treaty and in 1936 withdrew from the London Naval Conference. Germany was meanwhile proceeding to tear up the clauses of the Versailles Treaty one by one. The anti-Comintern Pact was joined by Italy only later, in November, 1937, and by other satellites in 1939. Every alliance is ultimately a war- alliance, and this doctrine has been punctually observed by the Nazis and the Nipponists. After the fall of France in the summer of 1940, negotiations began for a Three-Power military alliance. In September, 194o, a Ten-Year Pact was signed between Japan, Germany and Italy, under which the European Fascist Powers " recognise and respect the leadership of Japan in the establishment of a new order in Eastern Asia," and vice versa. Last week Hitler announced a further agreement, under which the three States undertake to make no separate peace and to collaborate in establishing the New Order.
The Far Eastern sector of the New Order, closely correspond- ing to the Nazi Prof. Haushofer's " geopolitic " schemes, covers an area of over 16,000,000 square kilometres, i.e., about 12 per cent. of the world's total area, and has a population of nearly 700 millions, i.e., 32 per cent. of the world's total. It includes China, Manchukuo, Indo-China, Thailand, the Netherlands East Indies, British Malaya, British Borneo and the Philippine Islands. Japan proper itself, with its 73 millions and territory representing about 2.0 per cent. only of this New Order area, is to be the metropolis of the new culture—and of finance and heavy industry, while the remaining countries, consisting of hewers of wood and drawers of water, are to provide the raw materials, foodstuffs_ and light industry.
Among the political gains to Japan from the Anti-Comintern Pact has been Hitler's recognition (the much-desired foreign recognition) of the Japanese puppet regime of Manchukuo and the Nanking Government of Wang Ching-wei, the Japanese quisling. On the other side of the ledger are the 3,000 expert Nazi propagandists working under Gen. Eugene Ott, the German Ambassador in Tokyo. They are attached as advisers to many State departments, and unofficially coach the potential Schnelle Truppen (Speed Troops) through the several Patriotic Societies. There are Heinz and Col. Meisinger, who organised the Gestapo work in Spain and Poland respectively. Hitler's former aide-de-camp, Wiedemann, who was expelled from his post as Nazi Consul-General at San Francisco, is now the Consul-General at Tientsin. The value of his knowledge of the American Pacific coast is obvious.
The Japanese leaders have openly boasted that the Tripartite Alliance is not merely a political pact, but a great partnership in the common ideological and spiritual struggle. Indeed, the further claim is made that the new ideas of European Fascism have always been the cherished ideals of Japan. Mr. Shiratori, a former Japanese Ambassador in Italy and a leader of one of the cliques of the influential bureaucracy, writes approvingly of his country " reverting to totalitarianism, which has been the fundamental principle of Japan's national life for the past thirty centuries. For Oriental nations the question is not one of making a new choice, but of rediscovering themselves and returning to their ancient faith . . . it makes our hearts warm to see ideas that have influenced our races for centuries in the past embodied in the systems of modern States of Europe."
Three years ago Japan took the first most important step towards becoming a totalitarian State. The National Mobilisation Act of 1938 gives the State the entire power over the moral and material resources of the country. It is rightly compared to the Nazi Enabling Act of 1933, investing, as it does, the executive with plenary powers of ruing the country by ordinances without having to consult the Diet or the people. Again, the militarists had been clamouring for the creation of one Single Party, which may still arise, with its own Fiihrer or Duce. But as a modus vivendi all political parties were " voluntarily " dis- solved in 194o, and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association was built on the model of the Italian Fascist Grand Council. The
institution of the Heaven-born Emperor is still more venerated and exploited for their own purposes by the various groups of Japanese imperialists. " Our ideal Hitler," said a spokesman of that school, " is one who in all obedience and docility resembles the model wife of old Japan, a featureless doll."
Under the Peace Preservation Law more than too,000 arrests have been made during the list five years among students and people holding radical views and " dangerous thoughts." Pro- fessors of the universities have been expelled for expressing liberal views : Prof. Minobe, the well-known authority on Con- stitutional Law, was dismissed, and had to resign from the House of Peers, for the offence of interpreting monarchy as an organ of the State. Special books on " True Meaning of the National Polity," published by the Department of Education, are prescribed in schools and colleges, and the propaganda is done through the Reservists' Associations, Young Men's Associations and the terrorist Patriotic Societies. Recently the novels of one of the greatest short-story writers in the world's literature, Guy de Maupassant, were put on the Index librorum prohibitorum of Nipponism because of their " individualism, jealousy, eroticism and what not, and no Japanese should indulge in such morals at this time." Japan's aim in education is similar to Dr. Ley's: " Great in knowledge, blind in obedience and fanatical in faith."
The ideological and spiritual partnership with the Nazis, so much vaunted by Japanese leaders, extends even to anti-Semitism, which is now raising its head in the country—a fact little known abroad. Several hundred refugees who fled to Japan have now been turned out of the country and sent to Shanghai and else- where. True, there are not many Jews in Japan ; the few there are went there in the sixteenth century and have now been absorbed into all classes. Still, a Japanese newspaper, Hochi, recently wrote: " The Jew must be recognised as the wielder of unlimited financial power ; the originator of the gold standard ; the creator of Masonry as well as other social and recreational institutions which shed a demoralising influence, such as cafés, dance-halls and certain moving pictures of an undesir- able nature. The presence of the 3,000 Jews in any country is sufficient to carry out subversive activities." Another influential journal, Asahi, a mouthpiece of the Japanese Army, lashed the Jews for having " re-elected Roosevelt for a third term ; they had coaxed Churchill to wage war on Germany ; the Jews also backed Stalin ; the Jews are conspiring to overthrow the world's ruling powers."
Despite the avowed ideological kinship, the Nazis and Japanese are bound to come to a clash sooner or later. The world-dominating aims and aspirations of their expanding systems will encroach on each other's preserves. Admiral Suetsugu, as the Home Minister in 1938, said that the objects of Japan cannot be achieved " unless the world, now dominated by the white race, is reconstructed for that purpose." General Araki, the exponent of the Gospel of Bushido, proposes to carry to the further corners of the world " the true spirit of Asia, the civilisation of Asia, the benevolence of Asia and, going a step further, make manifest to them the mission of Japan." Unfor- tunately for these national leaders, the Nazi Fiihrer does not recognise that Japan is, or has ever been, capable of creating a culture. In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that Japan "owes the fundamental elements of its culture to foreign races, assimilating and elaborating such elements." It can there- fore only be called " the depository, but never the creator, of a culture."
This judgement of the Nazis has always rankled in the minds of the proud and sensitive Japanese and caused misgivings as to the permanence of the Axis partnership. Long ago, a Japanese pro-Nazi journal wrote, paraphrasing Aristotle " We love our friend Hitler, but we love our own country more." But the Japanese leaders, having once started on the road of wars and expansion as a way out of the internal social crisis, find it hard now to bring themselves to reverse. Caught in the vicious circle of their own creation, they move on from crises to " incidents " and from incidents to wars, and from wars to the present " greatest crisis in the 3,000 years' .history of Japan."
" It is a strange desire," said Bacon, " to seek power and to lose liberty ; or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self."
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