You wouldn’t think it today - what with all their adorable Pokemon and Hello Kitty toys - but Japan was a pretty serious imperial power at one point. In fact, they were so good at stealing other people’s stuff that they became known as the “British of Asia.” That's not a compliment; just in case you missed the last few centuries of human history.
Japan caused a lot of trouble for such a relatively small island. How British.
This is a story about war, loyalty and cancel culture. This is the story of Hideki Tojo, the leader of Japan’s government during World War 2. Although Tojo wasn't a dictator in the sense of having total power, he did wield an obscene amount of influence. Notably, he’s caricatured as the reason Japan lost the war so spectacularly - which is a bit harsh but not totally untrue.
Early Life
Tojo was born in the Tokyo district in December 1884. As a kid, he excelled at getting into brawls and being bullied by his teachers. Unsurprisingly, he chose soldiering as a career. More unsurprising given that Japanese society held that the duty of boys was to fight in wars. The duty of girls was to give birth to boys who would fight in wars.
Military Career
Enlisting in 1905, Tojo found that he was much better at the admin “paper pushing'' than the “shooting and getting shot at” part of the job. Once again, Tojo was teased. This time for being a “battlefield virgin” who was more comfortable handling a ball point pen than a handgun.
A young Hideki Tojo, shortly after joining the army. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Speaking of virginity, Tojo got married in 1909 and eventually had 7 kids. He refused to have any part in raising them though. Instead, he used the time to focus on his work which in terms of productivity methods is right up there next to the Pomodoro technique and time-blocking.
Tojo’s radical work ethic earned him the nickname “the Razor”. But again, this was mocking his bureaucratic ruthlessness rather than praising his intelligence or fighting ability.
The Tojo family.
Japan And The Americans
Tojo, like most army men, believed that the Emperor was a living god and considered it his highest duty to faithfully follow any order from the man above. Which is a perfectly healthy way of viewing authority. And like many people in Japan, Tojo despised the USA.
Since 1904, Japan and the USA had been the best of frenemies; united in fighting Russia but side-eying each other while doing so. This passive-aggressive relationship turned to just an aggressive one in 1924, when the US Congress passed the Immigration Control Act. This law banned all Asians from coming into the United States on the basis that Asians worked harder than whites and would “steal” American jobs.
I mean...what even is this? Image courtesy of we’rehistory.org
Tojo was offended.
And look, I get it. But perhaps Razor Tojo, the guy who was too busy to raise his own kids, wasn’t the most suitable poster boy for outrage against that particular stereotype.
This, among other things like the decadence, the sleazy way women dressed and the consumption culture that pervaded America fuelled Tojo’s dislike for the West. Well, the West except Germany.
How Tojo Came to Power
Much like Germany, Japan wasn’t REALLY a democracy. Even though the country was run by Ministers appointed by the Emperor, the army was the most powerful state organ in the land.
The military was dominated by 2 factions: the Tōseiha ("Control") and the more radical Kōdōha ("Imperial Way") groups. Both sides wanted to expand the Japanese empire but disagreed on how. The Imperial Way favoured invading the Soviet Union while the Control faction wanted to defeat the United States (and “the West”) before making such a move.
In August 1935, Major General Nagata, leader of the Control group, was sliced in half - Samurai style - by a member of the rival group. While the assassin was caught and put to death by firing squad, Japan’s military was left in disarray. The Emperor needed to find someone to unite it.
The obvious choice was Razor Tojo.
Tojo was named military commander and used his new found authority to reshape the army. He eradicated the Imperial Way, arguing that Japan should be a totalitarian state. The Emperor (obviously) agreed, patted Tojo on the head like an obedient lapdog and appointed him head of Japan's military police, the Kempeitai.
The Kempeitai were very similar to Germany’s secret police (the Gestapo). If the gestapo were ruthless, bloodthirsty maniacs who weren’t bound by any kind of rules. Oh, wait…
Wait, those guys look a lot like…
Image courtesy of nationalinterest.org
Sadistic masters of torture whose primary job was to assuage Tojo’s paranoia by stomping out anti-Japanese sentiment wherever it sprung up, the Kemptai used torture to draw out more confessions than an Usher album.
Also like the Nazis, Tojo believed that countries populated by “inferior” races were fair game for ethnically superior nations ie them. For Hitler and co, Eastern Europe was the favoured pillaging ground. For Japan, this was China.
From today’s perspective, that sounds strange, if not unbelievable. But remember that it wasn’t until the late 1980’s that China emerged as the peeping-tom, iron-fisted, central government bureaucratic superpower that we know now. Back then, China was little more than a rice-farm strewn backwater with a large peasant population.
Add to this that Japan isn’t exactly known for its rolling countryside, open meadows and spacious yards and its obvious why China became not only a prime source of cheap labour - a party the rest of the world was late too but has more than made up for since then - but an ideal place to relocate a large portion of its population.
As early as 1931, Japan invaded China’s north eastern region and stationed troops there. In 1937, Japanese troops stationed close to the ominously named Marco-Polo Bridge reported one of their privates missing. The Japanese demanded to cross the bridge, into Chinese territory, to look for him. China politely replied, “hell no”.
The Marco Polo Bridge today. Image courtesy of mapcarta.com
This crisis could have been easily sorted out by a calm, rational discussion. So the 2 countries went to war.
The Japanese easily overwhelmed the Chinese in a strategic victory and days later, the Japanese army was marching towards Peking (Beijing), whipping butt and taking names along the way.
As Japan advanced into the city of Nainjin, over 300,000 Chinese people were killed in the most horrific ways imaginable. The Japanese used a variety of methods including disembowelment, beheading and dousing victims in petrol and setting them alight. The fortunate few were shot but the Japanese were reluctant to “waste” their bullets in this way. Indeed, a Japanese officer even referred to the Chinese as “bacteria”. So you know, the Japanese weren’t all that great to the Chinese.
The Japanese Emperor was impressed. The only things he was missing were a sphynx cat, a swiveling chair and creepy background music. For his “good” work, Tojo was promoted to Army Minister in 1940.
A later picture of Tojo and his totally legit badges. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Taking over China was just the beginning. Tojo believed that the Japanese economy was on the verge of collapse because of the island’s lack of natural resources and limited food supply. To his credit, he did have a point. But pinching your neighbours’ lands and subjugating them to lives of penury and slavery doesn’t seem like the most progressive solution to that problem.
Anyway, Tojo identified the European colonies in SouthEast Asia as ripe for invasion. These areas were excellent sources of oil and rubber and, happily, were also vulnerable. By that time, World War 2 was underway. France had been handed what was to be their most humiliating defeat until the knockout rounds of Euro 2020. Britain was about to be over-run by the Nazis and the Dutch...well, they were the Dutch.
The big obstacle to Japan’s expansion plan was the USA. The Americans weren’t ready to accept another super-power in town - especially an overzealous Japanese empire that couldn’t be trusted to not try to take over the world.
In 1941, Tojo wormed his way to becoming the Prime Minister and made a great show of trying to make peace with the USA. This was an act almost as obvious as Blue Therapy. Secretly, he prepared for war and even went to the Frankensteinian lengths of investigating ways of killing more efficiently.
Japan opened a research lab in China creatively named Unit 731. Here scientists investigated the extremes of human suffering. Experiments included fun stuff like dissecting “patients” alive (without anaesthetic so the results weren’t compromised), freezing limbs to see how frostbite worked, tying prisoners to posts and throwing experimental bombs, grenades and flames on them.
Unit 731 “researchers” conduct a bacteriological trial on a test subject in China’s Jilin Province. Image courtesy of Getty Images.
Suffice to say, then, that if Japan was going to fight the USA, they were willing to play as dirty as Ric Flair in a cage match. With escalating tensions between the two, war became inevitable.
On 7 December 1941, 343 aircraft Japanese descended on Pearl Harbour, an American naval base off the coast of Hawaii. The surprise attack killed 2400 Americans, injured over 1,000 and left America angrier than a mosquito in a morgue. It only took 24 hours for the US Senate to unanimously declare war.
On the same day, Tojo hopped onto the radio to announce that Japan was now at war with the USA and her friends. Just in case anyone had missed that fact from the whole bombing their base thing.
Yeah, so that happened. Moments after the Pearl Harbour attack. Image courtesy of Brittanica.com.
War Crimes
As the conflict erupted, Tojo continued to strengthen his political position. Through a combination of hook and crook, bureaucratic maneuvering and just being the Emperor’s pet, Tojo appointed himself as Education Minister.
He used the platform to initiate a propaganda and indoctrination campaign that even Kim Jung Un would probably label “a little much.” Western countries were presented as comic book level villains and openly expressing anything other than glowing praise and admiration for Tojo and unconditional support for the war attracted a jail term.
And to be fair, there was lots for the Japanese to cheer about. The first phase of the war was going really well. The Japanese army won several victories as they continued their advance into SouthEast Asia.
At this point, it's worth noting that much of the Japanese army’s success wasn’t due all that much to tactical genius so much as their willingness to plumb the depths of cruelty and barbarism.
Japan hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention, an agreement between the nations of the world to play nice while slaughtering each other, which seems pretty strange considering what war is. Like, you’re allowed to kill people but please, whatever you do, don’t make them feel bad about it.
Anywho, this meant that Japan didn’t give a camel’s backside about treating prisoners of war nicely. Which kind of makes sense anyway since Japanese Samurai’s whole shtick was to never surrender. So if you were captured, you forfeited all honour and for that, as everyone knows: you deserved to die.
As a prisoner, there was little chance of obtaining mercy from Japanese soldiers. In addition to being strictly indoctrinated to follow orders, these guys were regularly beaten and tortured during training. So by the time they graduated they were unhinged automatons ready to slice throats open at the slightest provocation.
As they marched through Asia, the Japanese army went on random killing sprees, doing weird stuff like decapitating tall people. You know, because height was viewed as a Caucasian trait. Any prisoners of war were either bludgeoned to death with the efficiency of a hyena in a steak house or enlisted into forced labour. Any who got sick or injured were simply killed off.
One of the most shocking incidents happened at Alexandra Hospital in Singapore. This hospital was home to wounded British soldiers. In February 1942, Tojo allegedly ordered his troops to cut off the water supply to the hospital. A few days later, soldiers stormed the premises where they bayonetted injured patients to death, harangued medical staff and subjected others to inhumane torture.
Nice hospital. Would be a shame if murderous Japanese troops rampaged through it in a deranged and barbaric killing spree...
By May 1942, the war effort was going so well that Tojo drew up a list of "non-negotiable" demands to be presented once the Allies inevitably gave up. He wanted Japan to retain control of a bunch of territories including India and Honduras, Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. Tojo, not exactly one for temperance, also included most of Latin America and the rest of the West Indies in his demands.
How It Ended
The Japanese bubble was soon to burst. Part of the reason was that Tojo got over-confident and overstretched his forces. The other is that nobody could have seen America’s reaction to Pearl Harbour coming.
In an unprecedented move, America enlisted 16 MILLION people to serve in the armed forces, a good number who were sent to Europe to repel the advance of Hitler and Friends. That's a lot of troops.
And this made the difference.
At the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Japan suffered its first naval defeat in 75 years. This was also the point where that ominous background music started playing and the reality of what he’d done tore into a sizable chunk of Tojo’s gluteus muscles.
To make matters worse, US forces cut off oil fields across Asia. Japan was now not only facing a military flogging but an economic crisis too.
Tojo devised a hail Mary plan to weaken the Allies by knocking Britain out of the war. The Japanese would attack India, one of their prime colonies. And so, in 1944, Japan launched its invasion of India.
Apparently nobody informed the Japanese how big India is. The troops took only 20 days worth of food with them. On Day 21, they had to resort to stealing food from the British to avoid starving which wasn’t exactly the point of the mission. Unsurprisingly, there were also reports of cannibalism in the armed forces.
All this to say that the invasion of India ended in tears.
Aside from starving, the Japanese lost one third of their troops in Burma on the way into India. Many others simply fell sick from the harsh weather and dysentry.
And as cruel as Tojo was to his enemies, he was equally indifferent to the plight of his own men. After all, soldiers were meant to be stoic tough guys who never complained or gave up. But things reached a tipping point in June 1944 where it was estimated that for every 1 Japanese soldier killed by a bullet, another one died of starvation.
On 5 July 1944, the Emperor formally ended the Indian invasion. More than 72,000 Japanese soldiers were dead.
Japanese forces get ready to (try) invade India. Although they were thoroughly beaten in the end, they did manage to do exciting things like torturing and even reportedly eating Indian prisoners of war. Image courtesy of daydaynews.cc
Having failed to beat the Brits and with the Americans now inching closer to mainland Japan, Tojo enlisted ordinary citizens to join the fight. The groundwork for this had been laid through earlier propaganda campaigns. It wasn’t all that hard to convince people to take up arms against the Americans when they’d been taught that the rednecks were Satan’s spawn.
One example of the effectiveness of the propaganda was on the Japanese controlled island of Saipan. The US Marines overpowered the Japanese and took over the island. Instead of surrendering (because once again, that’s not something the Japanese did), thousands of civilians and soldiers jumped off the nearby cliffs to their deaths.
As tragic as this is, the mass suicides pleased Tojo and friends. You see, their fear was that the American troops would treat Japanese prisoners of war humanely and undo all the brainwashing they’d worked so hard to do. And if the people realised that their government was lying to them, who knows, maybe they’d be incited to start demanding rights, new leaders and an end to the war. And we couldn’t have that.
As it turned out, public opinion should have been the least of Tojo’s worries. After the news of the disastrous Saipan defeat slipped out, the Emperor himself was so enraged that he basically forced Tojo to resign.
Scenes from the Battle of Saipan. Image courtesy of cnn.
But Japan’s military machine was like eating a packet of Doritos: once you’ve started, it's virtually impossible to stop it. Even though Tojo was gone and Japan’s chances of winning the war were about the same as the chances of getting a good Fast & The Furious movie, the army persisted.
In August 1945, the Allies called on Japan to formally lay down arms. They were greeted with deafening silence. After repeated pleas that weren’t responded to, America dropped the gauntlet. On the 6th of August 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in surely the biggest overreaction to an unreplied message ever.
It would take a second atom bomb on the city of Nagasaki 3 days later for the Japanese to get the message and finally surrender.
Mushroom clouds loom over the cities of Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right) shortly after the atomic bombs are dropped. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
So yeah, I’m not saying it's Tojo’s fault that Japan was nuked. I’m also not NOT saying that.
At any rate, after Japan gave up, the USA ordered the arrest of 40 individuals suspected of war crimes, including Tojo.
On 11 September 1945, 5 American soldiers were sent to arrest Tojo; not exactly a grand cavalry and kind of insulting to a man of Tojo’s stature to be honest. As they surrounded Tojo’s house (yeah, an internationally wanted war criminal was just chilling at home with his feet on the couch watching reruns of Gone With The Wind all day), Tojo drew a pistol and shot himself in the chest. No surrender, remember.
Well, it turns out that Tojo’s old comrades were right. When it came to using weapons, Tojo was as useful as an inflatable dartboard. Although seriously wounded, he had missed his heart and was captured alive.
Hideki Tojo was in terrible shape. Gaunt and malnourished, almost all his teeth were decaying. US medics replaced his rotting fangs with dentures but very naughtily inscribed morse code onto them that read “remember Pearl Harbour”. Petty.
“I regret nothing”. Tojo at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Image courtesy of nationalinterest.org
Eventually Tojo was tried and found guilty of 7 war crimes. True to form, Tojo declared in his final statement that he didn’t regret the war. Nope, not even a little bit.
Hideki Tojo was hanged on the 3rd of December 1948.
And after that, Tojo was effectively erased from Japanese history. As Japan tracked a new democratic path, you’d have a better chance of hearing the Remix to Ignition played at a feminist rally than hearing Tojo taught about in schools.
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