182 | WILLIAM M. TSUTSUI Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthet- ics in Japanese History. By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002) 411 pp. $45.00 cloth $20.00 paper In this fascinating, thought-provoking book, Ohnuki-Tierney examines Japan’s tokko¯tai (kamikaze) operations during the closing years of World War II. Speciªcally, Ohnuki-Tierney seeks to understand why almost

1,000 student soldiers—idealistic graduates fresh from Japan’s most pres- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/35/1/182/1704721/002219504323091720.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 tigious universities—chose to volunteer for tokk tai duty. How, Ohnuki-Tierney wonders, could such well-read, cosmopolitan, and thoughtful young men, some of whom were committed Marxists and Christians, accept a nationalistic ideology that demanded their futile deaths for the supposed protection of emperor and homeland? To understand the particular case of the tokkötai pilots, Ohnuki- Tierney tackles a larger historical issue, “the question of how state na- tionalism is developed and how it succeeds and/or fails to be accepted by ‘ordinary’ individuals, who, rather than questioning let alone revolting, often embrace as ‘natural’ basic changes in culture and society initiated by political, military and intellectual elites” (1). Ohnuki-Tierney traces the evolution of Japanese nationalist ideology and the construction of a totalitarian state from the Meiji Restoration through World War II, fo- cusing on the ways in which the state mobilized and manipulated tradi- tional cultural symbols. Examining “the power of aesthetics for political purposes” (9), Ohnuki-Tierney shows how cherry blossoms—“master trope of Japan’s imperial nationalism” (3)—were used strategically by the state, working primarily through the educational system, to fashion a culture of self-sacriªce, unquestioning loyalty to the emperor, and unre- served support for Japan’s military exploits. Through a close reading of ªve diaries left by tokkötai volunteers, Ohnuki-Tierney argues that the student soldiers may have embraced potent symbols like cherry blossoms, but that the meanings that they attached to such symbols were far different from those promoted by the wartime state. Liberal in their thought, steeped in European intellectual traditions, and, in many cases, highly critical of the policies of the Japa- nese government, the young pilots were drawn to the image of cherry blossoms, not as a symbol of noble sacriªce to a god-emperor, but as an aesthetic vision of their youthful idealism and tragically short lives. Describing the student soldiers as “cosmopolitan patriots”—a far cry from the popular impression of kamikaze pilots as ultra-nationalist fanatics—Ohnuki-Tierney concludes that “they reproduced the emperor-centered military ideology in their action, though not in their thoughts” (7). Theoretically sophisticated yet admirably free of jargon, Ohnuki- Tierney’s analysis provides valuable perspectives on symbolic communi- cation, the distinction between state-centered nationalism and individ- ual patriotism, and the culture of imperial Japan. In exploring how both the tokkötai pilots and the Meiji oligarchs “were intensely patriotic REVIEWS | 183 while equally intensely cosmopolitan in their intellectual pursuits” (304), Ohnuki-Tierney argues convincingly that global/local is a false dichot- omy: “Nationalism and patriotism are born at the vibrant intersection of the global and the local, rather than being the xenophobic expressions of a hermetically sealed people” (2). Such insights notwithstanding, critics will ªnd much to query in Ohnuki-Tierney’s methodology, use of historical sources, and concep- tion of historical change. Some, for example, might well be uncomfort- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article-pdf/35/1/182/1704721/002219504323091720.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 able about the fact that she uses only ªve published diaries of student sol- diers to characterize the thoughts, aspirations, and consciousness of the tokkötai pilots. Can one really conclude that “none [of the tokkötai vol- unteers] died for the emperor” based on the reading of only ªve testa- ments (299)? Some historians may also question Ohnuki-Tierney’s char- acterization of the Japanese state as monolithic and her notion of Japanese nationalism as thoroughly top-down in execution, a “scheme of the state” that insinuated ultranationalist ideology “like ªne invisible rain [that] seeped into the fabric of the daily lives and thoughts of the people” (300). Acknowledging that nationalistic fervor may have sprouted from society’s grassroots as well as been imposed from above, might we view Ohnuki-Tierney’s “cosmopolitan patriots” less as naive victims of an aesthetically oriented statist plot than as active participants in the construction of an all-encompassing nationalistic ethos in prewar and wartime Japan? William M. Tsutsui University of Kansas