Main Drive Behind Japanese National Policies

Abstract

FOR a decade past the publicity organs of the Army, the Navy, and many other agencies in Japan have been shouting, Prepare for the Crisis. They early succeeded in arousing a mild degree of alarm among the general population, but it took the outbreak of the China Incident to sweep away all effective resistance to a recasting of national ideas and policies which is nothing short of revolutionary. Like some subterranean upheaval, mighty social and political forces have been changing the face of the nation. The Japanese are right when they talk about a New Order in East Asia, but that order is much wider and deeper than anything they have been able to convey to the sceptical West by their vague and inept pronouncements. I propose, therefore, to probe beneath the surface and try to discover some of the driving ideas underneath Japanese imperial policies. There are at least three such ideas. The first is Kad5, the Imperial Way. To the occidental reader this is simply an odd term which whets his mild curiosity. But to every Japanese it is freighted with a store of precious associations. They make his pulse beat faster, for around them cluster adoration of the Imperial House, pride in his nation's history, consciousness of belonging to a divinely guided people. The average Japanese would doubtless be as much nonplussed to define Kada as would the average American to define the American Way. The reason is that K5da, to the common man, is more a complex of emotions than it is an intellectual concept. But upon closer analysis, Kad& turns out to be a religious sentiment or cult, a code of ethics, and a political principle, albeit none of these can be stated with legal precision. The term Kada was given currency and popular appeal shortly after the Manchurian Incident of ig3i by the preachments of General Araki, one of the most respected advocates of moral reform and national expansion. In its religious aspect, Kada is intertwined with Shinto mythology,