2. Build-up to War
• 1931: Manchurian Incident (pretext for invading Manchuria and
establishing Manchukuo puppet state). Tokyo newspapers begin
nationalist rhetoric.
• 1932: Imperial naval officers assassinate Prime Minister Tsuyoshi (to
‘restore the emperor’). Failed coup d’état.
• 1936: 1,400 rebel troops assassinate key government officials in the
name of emperor worship and ‘national essence’ (kokutai)
• Late 1930s: Authorities arrest communists, leftists and dissenters.
Rigorous censorship imposed on writing considered ‘not overtly
patriotic’. Music and arts became militarised: ballets entitled ‘Decisive
Aerial Warfare Suite’
• 1940: Parades celebrated the 2600th anniversary of the founding of the
imperial line, fuelling nationalist sentiment. Dance halls, jazz
performances and western-style clothes banned.
3. Social Impacts on
• Tokyo resurges.
Late 1930s: Artists resurrect traditional myths as
subjects; Meiji and Tokugawa literature
• 1944: Cinemas, theatres and geisha houses closed.
Performers and geisha coerced into working in
factories for the war effort. Theatres requisitioned and
gutted, also for war effort.
• Rations and extreme food shortages
• Widespread poverty, increasing homelessness
• 一億玉砕 (ichioku gyokusai, literally 100 million shattered
jewels) expectation that all Japanese (at the time
including Korea and Taiwan) should defend the
emperor until extinction
4. Doolittle Raid, 1942
• Results:
• Demonstrated vulnerability of
• 16 B-52s launched from
Japan (specifically significant
California
targets like Tokyo) to air raids
• 10 military and industrial
• “Sow doubt about the reliability
targets in Tokyo, Yokohama,
of [Japanese] leaders”
Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka
(J. Doolittle)
• 8 targets hit: oil tank farm,
• US morale boost after 1941
power plants, army hospital,
attack on Pearl Harbour
schools
• Little material damage; main
impact was psychological
5. February 1943
Bombing
• ‘Test run’ for 1944-45 raids
• 130 bombers
• 25,000 buildings destroyed
• Several hundred people
killed
• Result ‘deemed satisfactory’
6. Nov 1944 - Aug
1945
• “Only thumbs stood up from the flatlands - the chimneys of
bathhouses, heavy house safes and an occasional stout building
Russell Brines
with heavy iron shutters.” First foreign journalist in post-war Tokyo
7. • 102 B-29 raids
• Worst on night of 9-10 March 1945
• 364 planes dropped over 2,000 tons of incendiary
and traditional fragmentary bombs
• Incendiary bombs: oil, napalm, jellied gasoline,
phosphorous
• Asakusa and east Sumida targeted (Edogawa-ku
and Urayasu-ku)
• Fires could be seen from 150 miles away in the
Pacific
8. • Another 4,000 tons of incendiary bomb dropped in
May 1945
• Some US opposition to ferocity of bombing: Brigadier
Bonner Fellers, MacArthur’s military secretary,
condemned the bombings as “one of the most ruthless
and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.”
• Two-fifths of the city burnt down
• Similar attacks on Kawasaki and Yokohama
• Devastatingly beautiful: "the most beautiful fireworks
display I have ever seen" - Mishima Yukio
9. • In terms of population...
• Between February 1944 and November 1945, 3.8 million of Tokyo's
7.3 million were either killed or evacuated (52% of total population)
• Compared to 2012 Tokyo:
(Roughly 6.8 million people)
(Roughly 8.8 million people)
10. For the survivors...
• Disillusionment: anonymous letters to newspapers (never published)
• 'Kill the emperor!' 'Overthrow the government!' 'End the war!'
• 'Authorities suggested there was little difference in taste between
rats and small birds'
• Family heirlooms exchanged with farmers for rice, vegetables
• 3 million new homeless; extreme poverty, shantytowns
• Senso-ji and Meiji jingu destroyed
• 5 miles between Hibiya and Shibuya, formerly 'downtown' reduced
to plains
11. • "living conditions were deplorable. Children, many
of them orphaned, lived in the ruins, in train
stations or under overpasses, making out as best
they could by selling newspapers, recycling goods,
shining shoes, dealing in illegal food coupons or
working as pickpockets and beggars.
Abandoned dogs, with a newly acquired taste for
human flesh, ran in packs at night through the city
like wolves. Rats and crows found rich pickings
among the ruins. The use of rivers and canals as
toilets exacerbated the incidence of typhus and
cholera."
Mansfield
12. 'The blue-eyed shogun'
• Occupation under General MacArthur:
• Banning or heavy censorship of theatre
• Censorship of all publications (including those about
censorship)
• Banning of images relating to Shintoism or Emperor
worship - eg. Fuji
• Massive wealth disparity between Japanese and 'Little
America'
• Rise of black markets - Shinjuku and Ueno (Ameyoko)
