• A paper delivered to a conference at the United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, 8 February 1990

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The Strategy of Failure

THEME The argument of this paper is as follows. In the wake of Ivan Morris's brilliant and provocative study, The Nobility of Failure, I take one instance of strategic conduct from mediaeval Japanese history, embodied in the figure of Kusunoki Masashige. The symbolism associated with this figure is then applied to a particular modern instance of a Japanese 'strategy of failure', namely the 'Special Attack Units' (shimpu! kamikaze) employed 1944-1945 as a desperate measure to stave off defeat and/or compel the US forces to a negotiated peace. In conclusion, I attempt to reverse the traditional view of the coherence of the Kusunoki myth with that of the Pacific gyokusai ('fight to the last man') garrisons of World War Two and the kamikaze units. To do this, I apply the interpretation of Professor Watanabe Shoichi in his Peasant Soul ofJapan and the as yet untranslated second volume of his Nihonshi kara mita Nihonjin ('The Japanese in the light of their history') (, 1989) to show that the traditional Japanese interpretation of the military conduct of Kusunoki is incorrect, or rather that it is based not on his conduct but on the symbolism derived from what was believed to be his personality and the nature of his imperialism. I use Watanabe's distinction between the military modes of an equestrian and an agrarian society to show a different reading of Kusunoki, which in turn casts doubt on (a) the admirability of failure (b) the admirability of the notion of gyokusai (resistance to death or beyond death) which played such an important role in significant engagements of the Pacific War (Myitkyina, Saipan, Okinawa). battalion of embattled schoolgirls on the island of Okinawa, in the spring of A 1945, christened themselves 'the Chihaya Battalion'. The young assassin who thrust his knife into the aged socialist politician Asanuma, in 1960, wore, for the action, a headband with the characters inscribed: 'seven lives for the country'. The novelist , before cutting his belly open in protest at his country's concessions to comfort and a life of dull happiness, tied a similar headband round his forehead. The suicide operations in Okinawa by the Japanese Navy were termed Kikusui, 'floating chrysanthemum'. An intelligence and reconnaissance unit which

88 THE STRATEGY OF FAILURE tried to pass through the British lines in Burma during the desperate breakout of 28 Army in July 1945, called itself the 'Kusunoki Organisation'. I could continue this kind of enumeration, but the point is not to make a mere statistic, but to indicate symbolic value. All these names or phrases are linked with a single figure in mediaeval Japanese history. The legend which grew up round him is the core of the strategy of 'noble failure' which is the theme of this paper. Chihaya is the name of a castle he defended for his emperor. 'Seven lives for the country' is the phrase his brother used just before both committed ritual suicide. 'Floating chrysanthemum' is his family crest. His name is Kusunoki Masashige, and the first part of this paper tries to describe exactly what that name means in the historical and military mythology of . He personifies the attraction which, according to Ivan Morris in one of the fascinating studies of his Nobility of Failure. 1 is exerted on the Japanese mind by the image of selfless immolation on behalf of a cause, when that cause is bound to fail. Not any failure will do. There is no question here of a squalid defeat of an ignoble purpose, or a setback of some sort in the progress of a worldly ambition, but a failure on which hangs the issue of life or death for the individual, and glory or decay for a country. And the failure should, most appropriately, end with the act of suicide. Can it be said, though, that the act of failure, or the acknowledgment of failure, constitutes a 'strategy'? Can we be sure that the interpretation which Japanese tradition puts upon Kusunoki's moves is a correct one? A recent interpretation, by a Professor of English at the Sophia University of Tokyo, suggests not. His different interpretation suggests, on the contrary, that Japanese who take Kusunoki for a model are monstrously deceived. I would like to outline the traditional view, to start with, and then examine to what extent Professor Watanabe is right when he suggests that this view has led to gross and bloody misunderstandings. The story of Kusunoki Masashige belongs to that period of Japanese mediaeval history when the Hojo family, who ran the shogunate from their capital at Kamakura, were briefly threatened by an imperial restoration, and then finally ousted by a rival family for the shogunate, the Ashikaga. To be precise, we are speaking of the reign of the Emperor Go Daigo (1319-1338), in which a modem French historian sees the hinge offate ofJapanese history as a whole.2 The reason is not far to seek: Go Daigo, against the whole current of Japanese history, saw it as the imperial function to rule, not just to reign; the Ashikaga shogun disabused him of this idea, and, whatever its vicissitudes, the shogunal regime lasted from that time until 1868, i.e. a regime in which the Emperor reigned, a spiritual presence in the capital city of , while the practical governance of the country was in the hands of the family which produced the military leader, or shogun, in another city, Kamakura and then later Edo (now Tokyo). All this is common knowledge, and without going into the tedious and confusing details of mediaeval Japanese dynastic history, we should briefly set the scene for the activities of Kusunoki Masashige, spectacular failure and perennial hero. There is everything in the story to remind us of the Wars of the Roses in England: succession disputes, treachery, tergiversation, the intervention of powerful military figures, the conflict between self-interest and loyalty to a cause, and so on. In the early fourteenth century, the imperial house of Japan was divided into two lines, a Senior line and a Junior line, or in other phrasing, a Northern House and a Southern House. The emperor in Kyoto reigned, but did not rule. Power was exercised by a military leader, the head of the family which used the title 'Barbarian Subduing Generalissimo' (sei-i-taishOgun, of which shOgun is an abbreviation). In a

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