He surveyed Tokyo’s smoggy, disordered skyline and saw a nation long risen from the ashes of war, poised now on the cusp of world domination. How easy to forget that the war had ended his father’s life and the lives of thousands of men like him. Sadly, for the generations of Japanese born after the surrender, the Pacific War was as unimportant in the scheme of things as the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and his Black Ships in 1853.
But for Tokugawa, the war and Japan’s defeat burned in his mind as brightly and as fiercely as if it had happened yesterday.
Hatoyama spoke to Tokugawa’s back. “The members have asked me to speak on their behalf.”
Tokugawa turned and faced the six of them.
Hoshino, almost ninety, a millionaire investor and survivor of the New Guinea campaign. He’d served under the command of a general who, after the war, had been executed for atrocities his troops had committed against Australian and American POWs.
Satsuma, late seventies, chairman of Daiwa Properties, Ltd., a holding company. He was that rarest of breeds, a shamed kamikaze pilot who had lived only because the war had ended before he’d been able to sacrifice himself for Hirohito.
Yukawa, sixty-year-old playboy multimillionaire owner of Nippon Image, Inc., publisher of lurid tabloids. He was the son of a war criminal executed for the mass murder of Filipino women and children in Manila. Many of the victims, the court said, had been burned alive.
Fukuda, fifty-year-old investment banker, grandson of an army officer convicted of killing American POWs forced to build a railroad through the impenetrable jungles of Burma.
Ishigari, sixty-five-year-old magnate, owner of IKE and J-Global shipbuilding. He was a nephew of the notorious General Homma, “Tiger of Malaya,” hanged for committing atrocities against civilian and military prisoners.
Hatoyama, grandson of an army officer hanged for ordering the ritual beheading of three captured Doolittle fliers shot down over Japanese-occupied territory in Kiangsi Province, China.
Hatoyama tugged his cuff links and said, “As you know, Iseda-san, the situation in North Korea presents both potential problems and potential opportunities for Japan. I refer, of course, to the trade and defense agreements under consideration by the United States and Japan.”
The agreement had sprung from a bruising trade embargo and heightened tensions between Washington and Tokyo over the enormous trade deficit the U.S. had rung up. The defense agreement negotiated to solve the problem, if approved, would permit the deployment of an American-designed theater-missile defense system on Japanese soil. The system was supposed to blunt any threat posed by Chinese and North Korean ballistic missiles.
Critics argued that the agreement was too one-sided and favored Japan, that it was a give-away of American technology. They claimed that Japan, instead of being a democratic, free-market trader, was engaging in predatory trade policies. They charged that an elite group of right-wing Japanese politicians and businessmen were working behind the scenes to push the agreements through in an effort to have access to technologies too expensive to develop from scratch in Japan. More than one critic had denounced Japan, saying its tactics were like those it had used in World War II.
Hatoyama said, “Our enemies in America say that we are once again out to conquer the world, this time with our economic prowess. Some interpret our actions as a modern version of 1930s expansionism.”
Tokugawa said nothing.
“These are lies, but now, at the very moment Japan may be threatened by the new regime in North Korea, the Americans are threatening to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea. Which leaves the defense agreement in limbo.”
Hatoyama paused before continuing. “It will be a disaster if the Americans and North Koreans go to war. We will be caught in the middle.”
Tokugawa surveyed the others, then said, “And what is it that you expect of me?”
“May I speak frankly?” asked Hatoyama.
Tokugawa nodded.
“You have great influence with the prime minister. He owes his office to you — please, Iseda-san, hear me out — therefore, you must make him see that he has to give in to American demands and resolve the trade issue in their favor. That is the only way we can prove to the Americans that we are allied with them against North Korea.”
Tokugawa glared at Hatoyama. “Give in to the Americans—”
“Yes, Iseda-san, we need their help.”
Tokugawa drew himself up. “We don’t need help from the Americans. Not after they have denounced us as predators and refuse to accept us as their equal. The Americans are arrogant and belligerent. They pursue a goal of global and economic hegemony. They created the North Korean situation, not us. We owe them nothing. Have you forgotten what we stand for?”
Hatoyama and the others had heard it all before. Tokugawa’s loathing of the U.S. for having defeated Japan. For dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the deaths of his mother, brothers, and sisters in Nagasaki. For his father having committed seppuku — ritual suicide — at war’s end after his indictment by General Douglas MacArthur as a Class A War Criminal.
Tokugawa’s goal, when he’d founded the Japan Pacific War Veterans Association, had been to rehabilitate the images of former Japanese war criminals, like his father, into heroes of Japan. But Japan had changed, and the names Tojo, Homma, Araki, Kido, and Tokugawa had all but faded from collective memory.
Hatoyama said, “I have forgotten nothing. Certainly not the generation that fought so gloriously in the Pacific conflict. Nor that America and Japan have sharply divergent views about that war. And we will never bend to those in the West who say the Pacific War was an act of brutal aggression by Japan. We glorify our war dead for the blood they shed fighting an enemy bent on our annihilation. We must never capitulate to the dictates of revisionism no matter how fashionable it may be.”
Old Hoshino, the veteran of New Guinea, suddenly croaked, “We went to war because America wanted to destroy us. We created the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to liberate Asian peoples from European colonialists. We brought them independence.” His voice faltered, but he managed, “I am very proud of that.”
“And your father was a brave man, Tokugawa-san,” said Satsuma, chairman of Daiwa Properties.
“He was a simple army lieutenant caught up in circumstances beyond his control,” Tokugawa told his colleagues. “He did his duty.”
“But let us also be practical,” said Yukawa, the playboy publisher. “While we honor the past, we must protect our future. No one here needs to be reminded of the heroic deeds of our forebears. But now we face a serious challenge to our economic well-being, and if the North Koreans—”
“The North Koreans are not our enemy,” Tokugawa said with an edge in his voice. “The United States is our enemy. U.S. multinational corporations are our enemy. Emboldened by America’s unilateral employment of military force around the world, they will eventually penetrate every market we control. But General Jin and I will blunt America’s influence, not only in Southeast Asia, but in the world.”
The association members reacted to Tokugawa’s pronouncement with silence.
“What I have said is true.” He looked at the members, daring them to say otherwise.
Hatoyama bowed deeply. “Iseda-san, I apologize for our shameful manners. None of us have ever doubted you. Instead of exchanging harsh language, we must reach a meeting of the minds and seek the path of tranquillity through stormy seas. After all, each of us has a stake in seeing to it that this problem is resolved to our mutual benefit. The hundreds of billions of yen we have invested in our businesses are at risk. “