Prange collection<\/a> of occupation period magazines, complete with US censorship documents and the actual censors comments and markings on the original submissions, I can confirm that whether due to self-censorship or some other reason – there are few articles which even try to submit something using any of the familiar wartime expressions.<\/p>\nHowever, there is at least one very interesting exception to this that I came across which, after much feedback, I have decided to drop completely from my writing on this topic. This is the case of an obscure Ibaraki prefecture publication that goes by the name of Taiwa Shinron<\/em> (\u5927\u548c\u65b0\u8ad6\uff09and it is interesting to me because, while it is quite representative of the kind of early postwar global-oriented “transnational idealism” I have found to be so strong at the time, it continued to use the now discredited idiom of Japan’s wartime empire.
\n
\nIn May, 1946 the inaugural issue of Taiwa Shinron<\/em> (New Thesis of the Great Peace) announced the goals of its new publication with an article entitled \u201cAbandon War in Order to Establish World Peace.\u201d It had been less than a year since Japan had surrendered to Allied forces. The General Assembly of the new United Nations had met for the first time just a few months earlier on January 10, and a draft of Japan\u2019s new constitution, eventually promulgated in November, had been unveiled to the public only two months earlier on March 6. <\/p>\nBefore celebrating Japan\u2019s abandonment of war in the draft constitution, proclaiming early support for the United Nations, and discussing the need to establish a new, \u201cmoral order based on coexistence and co-prosperity [\u5171\u5b58\u5171\u6804]\u201d the magazine\u2019s editor, Matsunobu Kitar\u014d (\u677e\u5ef6\u5176\u592a\u90ce) explains the title of the magazine:<\/p>\n
Today [is] the second creation of Japan. We must become 8,000,000 gods and bring to realization the ideal of an exalted and beautiful state. And moreover, this must not stop at just the reconstruction of Japan. The nations of all the world, in other words, the entire world must unite in the supreme aim of our notion that is [read as] TAIWA [\u4e16\u754c\u306e\u5404\u56fd\u5bb6\u304c\u5373\u3061\u5168\u4e16\u754c\u304c\u56fd\u5bb6\u6700\u9ad8\u306e\u76ee\u7684\u306b\u5e30\u4e00\u3059\u308b\u5176\u6700\u9ad8\u76ee\u7684\u3068\u306f\u5373\u3061\u5927\u548c\u306e\u5927\u9053\u306b\u5e30\u4e00\u3059\u308b\u3053\u3068\u3067\u3042\u308b].1<\/span><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis passage failed to pass the inspection of the SCAP occupation authority\u2019s Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD). The examiner\u2019s notes gives us an explanation:<\/p>\n
Ex\u2019s Notes \u2013 Above objectionable propaganda. External meaning of world peace ok, but TAIWA has a double meaning \u2013 \u201cGreat Peace\u201d, and when read Yamato, \u201cJapan\u201d. Particularly since the magazine is called TAIWA SHINRON and its nature is reactionary, the clever use of this as propaganda deserves attention. (Quotation DISAPPROVED \u2013 propaganda)2<\/span><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe compound being using to describe a great peace, taiwa<\/em> [\u5927\u548c] is most commonly read as yamato<\/em>, referring to Japan. Indeed, with the exception of one name of a town in central Miyagi prefecture, there are no entries in any major Japanese dictionary that lists taiwa<\/em> as the pronunciation of this compound on its own.3<\/span><\/sup> And yet, beginning with the second issue and in every issue thereafter, any ambiguity surrounding the pronunciation of the two characters was removed by adding the Romanization of the publication\u2019s title on the cover next to its Japanese equivalent: \u201cTaiwa\u2014Shinron.\u201d<\/p>\nSince the explanation quoted above was banned by the censors, however, the first issue is left without any explanation of the \u201creactionary\u201d magazine\u2019s interesting title, and its readers had to guess for themselves what the title is all about as they go on to read the next article which argued that women\u2019s involvement in politics is crucial for the country\u2019s reconstruction.4<\/span><\/sup> Over two hundred articles from the magazine, covering the years 1946-1949 can be found, along with censorship documents, in the Gorden W. Prange collection, and their contents range from praise for land reform and democratization to local news from Ishioka and articles on developments in agriculture.<\/p>\nIn addition to adding a Romanization of the title, the second issue of the publication makes one more major adjustment by changing its motto, printed next to the header of each issue, from \u201cOur principle is to support Great Peace for eternity\u201d (\u543e\u304c\u4e3b\u5f35\u306f\u842c\u4e16\u306e\u5927\u548c\u306a\u308a) to \u201cHarmony is a most precious thing\u201d (\u548c\u3092\u4ee5\u3066\u8cb4\u3057\u3068\u306a\u3059), thus removing the only other major reference to taiwa besides the publication\u2019s name. Somewhat ironically, however, the new motto invokes an even more powerful link to Japan\u2019s past. The phrase is taken from the opening line of Prince Sh\u014dtoku\u2019s famous Seventeen-Article Constitution from the early 7th century, the third article of which begins with, \u201cWhen you receive the imperial commands, fail not scrupulously to obey them.\u201d5<\/span><\/sup> Wartime booklets issued by the Ministry of Education go into great detail on how exactly this harmony, or wa<\/em>, is to be achieved, for example, through a \u201cself-negating devotion\u201d to one\u2019s superiors.6<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\nThe censors failed to notice this reference or, for some reason, did not find it as problematic as the \u201cclever\u201d use of taiwa<\/em> in the opening issue. Nor did censors find objectionable the name of a similarly entitled magazine Daiwa<\/em>, which uses the same two characters. The only way this second more moderate magazine dedicated to politics, economics, and literature resembles Taiwa Shinron<\/em> is when it justifies its choice of title to show its high regard for \u201cpeace, that is, great peace [\u5927\u548c].\u201d7<\/span><\/sup> This is in stark contrast to the handling of a third publication of genuinely nationalist credentials, Yamato Damashii<\/em> [\u5927\u548c\u9b42], a small Hokkaido literary magazine filled with poems dedicated to the Japanese emperor. The magazine\u2019s few issues are heavily censored and suspected by some examiners of being in league with other nationalist organizations and publications.8<\/span><\/sup> <\/p>\nCensorship examiners continued to censor Taiwa Shinron<\/em> in later issues however, despite increasing evidence that it had anything but \u201creactionary\u201d content. The magazine uses the vocabulary and symbols of wartime Japan not only to advocate world peace, but to buttress a strong editorial policy supporting world federalism. In a September 1948 article on \u201cThe Establishment of a World Government\u201d we find the following passage, again by Matsunobu:<\/p>\nThere is no goal more important than to build a peaceful world without war and human conflict, that is, the world must become as one family [\u4e16\u754c\u4e00\u5bb6]. It is exactly this philosophy of the world as one family that emperor Jinmu was proclaiming when, on ascending the throne, he issued an imperial rescript which put all of mankind together, united the world as one family [\u5929\u4e0b\u4e00\u5bb6], and made a roof [\u5b87] to cover the eight corners of the world [\u516b\u7d18].9<\/span><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nOnly after pre-publication censorship ended in the summer of 1948 and a more focused post-publication censorship took over could an author be confident that a passage like this would make its way to the Ibaraki reader.10<\/span><\/sup> The passage almost exactly reproduces the slogan of \u201cthe eight corners of the world under one roof\u201d [hakk\u014d ichiu \u516b\u7d18\u4e00\u5b87] found in plans for establishing the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and appearing frequently in wartime publications.11<\/span><\/sup> Just as Nishida Kitar\u014d [\u897f\u7530\u5e7e\u591a\u90ce] (1870-1945) tried to rehabilitate the term hakk\u014d ichiu<\/em> in his weak critique of the Japanese military\u2019s \u201cethnocentric egoism,\u201d and use it to support a conception of global unity based on independent ethnic nations, here the term is invoked to support global unity and the eradication of war without any reference to preserving nations or ethnic identities at all.12<\/span><\/sup> <\/p>\nThe same kind of language could not have been used at all a few years earlier, and the CCD was sensitive to anything which even resembled wartime ideology. The censors, for example, took issue with a few poetic lines in the opening issue of Taiwa Shinron<\/em> written by a far better known author, the aging parliamentarian Ozaki Yukio, entitled \u201cThe Whole World as One Family\u201d:<\/p>\n[In t]his land of the Gods where now[,] because of the avarice of some, the people are starving and freezing and homeless.
\nThe name nation sounds dignified and austere, but it has become a world smaller than a clan [\u85e9].
\nBecause clans were abolished and provinces established, our Land of Yamato became great.
\nIf there are no clans, nor any nations, then the whole world would become as one house (family) and the people shall be prosperous.
\nThis land of the Gods where world justice [\u5929\u5730\u6b63\u5927] is the aspiration, has surrendered to those republics.13<\/span><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nAlong with the translation of most of the poem, the examiner\u2019s notes say, \u201cNot the famous \u2018Hakko Ichiu\u2019 phrase, but a modern version of it. Not very good\u2026(Poems DISAPPROVED \u2013 propaganda)\u201d14<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\nFrom this brief look at a small regional publication from Ibaraki prefecture and a few of the Allied censorship documents attached to it in the Prange archives one can make a number of observations. I’ll only make two here. First, one finds in this curious little journal a strong internationalist tone. However, word \u201cinternationalist\u201d is a somewhat problematic, since this is not the classic internationalism of Nitobe Inazo [\u65b0\u6e21\u6238\u7a32\u9020] (1862-1933) and others who believed that \u201cinternationalism was based on the nation-state, and loyalty to the international community was compatible with loyalty to one\u2019s nation.\u201d15<\/span><\/sup> Instead, there are a number of articles throughout the issues of this magazine committed to the complete dissolution of, or transcendence of the national community to form a political unit, if not an entire moral order, on the global level. In the early aftermath of the war, those who supported more radical proposals for global union, ones which were often critical of the United Nations, often supported various conceptions of world federation, world governments, or world constitutions (such as the “Chiago Draft”). Ozaki Yukio, whose poem was quoted above, became one of the most enthusiastic spokesmen for the World Federation movement in postwar Japan, right up until his death. Like so many writings one can find in the early occupation period, Taiwa Shinron<\/em> is filled with optimism for a new age of democracy, peace, and reform. However, it also embraces a transnational, or supra-national vision which we might believe to have been thoroughly discredited along with the wartime ideology proclaiming a pan-Asianist co-prosperity sphere under the tutelage of a benevolent Japanese empire.<\/p>\nSecondly, we see that the use of symbols and language to express such idealistic visions for the future are put under unique constraints in an occupied Japan where an elaborate Allied bureaucracy is dedicated to censoring any publications that are deemed too reactionary or radical in political leanings, or which critique any of the Allied nations. Ozaki Yukio, for example, would have plenty of opportunities to support world federalism and peace among peoples in other publications, but only by using language found appropriate to the occupation authorities. His poem found here in Taiwa Shinron<\/em>, mixing the story of the unification of the \u201cland of the Gods\u201d with dreams of world unity were censored as being too close to the wartime \u201cpropaganda\u201d of hakk\u014d ichiu, and contributed to the magazine’s label as “reactionary,” a label which could lead to far closer scrutiny of the publication by SCAP censors.<\/p>\nMy reading in dozens of other contemporary magazines reveals that Taiwa Shinron<\/em>, though only a regional and obscure publication, is highly representative in terms of its content and goals. While far from the center, it shows the same interesting shift from support for Asian unity to global unity that I can show for major intellectuals supporting Japan’s wartime pan-Asianism. However, it is a rare exception in terms of its language, and at the hands of occupation censors it would share the fate of those rare but more genuinely “reactionary” nationalist publications which, instead of praising peace and reform, tried to continue publishing articles and literature dedicated to emperor and empire.<\/p>\n