Winds of Change.NET: WW 2's destruction of Japan continues

WW 2's destruction of Japan continues

by Donald Sensing at May 7, 2008 4:02 AM

I think a good case can be made that the total victory of the United States over Japan is directly connected with this: "Japan Steadily Becoming a Land Of Few Children."

[T]his is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world.
The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.
The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report.

The massive destruction wrought upon Japan's cities by US forces by 1945, the fact that every Japanese family, with extremely few exceptions, suffered one or more killed either in uniform or not, these things were bad enough. But the decisive defeat of Japan was neither material nor biological, as grave as those things were.

The decisive defeat was psychological and spiritual. Japan's deepest wound was the destruction of its national mythos. Although the cult of the emperor and the code of bushido were relatively recent inventions in Japanese history, by the time the war began, at least three generations had been immersed in it. Japan's conviction of racial superiority and its embrace of a manifest destiny to dominate all Asia almost completely formed the national self-identity and national purpose.

All were entirely wiped away by Japan's surrender in 1945 and its occupation by US forces. Not to be overlooked as well was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's insistence that Emperor Hirohito come to him for their first meeting.

The great rebuilding of Japanese society and industry after the war was accomplished by the same generation that had suffered the crushing blows of the war. Yet I think that this great effort was itself a continuation of bushido - the iron will never to accept defeat.

But before I explore that line further, consider information released by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication:

From the eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century, Japan's population remained steady, at 30 million-plus citizens. However, following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, it began expanding in tandem with the drive to build a modern nation-state. In 1926, it reached 60 million, and in 1967, it surpassed the 100 million mark. However, Japan's population growth has slowed in more recent years, with the annual pace of population growth averaging about one percent from the 1960s through the 1970s. Since the 1980s, it has declined sharply. The population figure of 127.77 million released in the 2005 Population Census was below the 2004 population estimate (127.79 million). This marked the first time since World War II that the population has fallen compared to the previous year. The 2006 population estimate was 127.77 million, remaining at the same level of the previous year. While the population of men recorded two years of natural decrease, that of women had a continuous natural increase.

And there are these helpful graphics:

The ministry points out that since World War II, Japan has enjoyed two baby booms (diagram here). One was 1947-1949, not surprising since almost all wars are followed by increased fecundity of the warring populations, victorious or not. Why did it take two years fr the boom to begin? Part of the time is accounted for by the fact that demobilization of Japan's armed forces took quite a long time. But the greater part can probably be accounted for by the fact that Japan's population was starving by the time the war ended. Calorie consumption fell by war's end to only about 800 per day per person. Baby booms require well nourished populations, and the nutrition emergency of the people actually worsened after the surrender because of poor weather, not least of which was a devastating typhoon in late 1945 that wrecked food stocks so badly that there would truly have been mass starvation deaths had not America fed the country. My assessment is that it simply took two years for nutritional levels to rise to the point of supporting a baby boom. But again, the parents were the adults who had been beaten during the war and who still were imbued with some fire of the bushido code.

The second boom was 1971-1974. These parents were the children of the first boom, reaching maturity and enjoying the first fruits of Japan's postwar economic miracle. Their children have not "boomed," however. Why?

The ministry notes that the second boom was not as strong as the first. I would say that the war generation's will to persevere and then prevail was incompletely passed to their children, and passed not at all to their grandchildren. In its place was . . . nothing.

Understand that Japanese militarism, chauvinistic racism and Shintoism/bushidoism were in fact combined to make their national religion. This was what the war destroyed so deeply that it disappeared in only one more generation. What was left? Only the abyss, for there was nothing at hand to re.place it. With no transcendent ideal commanding their souls, however hideous that ideal once had been, there was nothing for their souls to do but wither away.

And as goes the soul, so follows the flesh.

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