10.(14-17) Matsuoka's Story - Meet Adolf & Eva

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14.   Thus Spake Matsuoka

THE CAST: I Yosuke Matsuoka the only one who truly understood the world in Fall 1941; you Friend Tojo the only one with good sense to comprehend what I said then; the Emperor a mixed up youth with a Napoleon-Darwin split; Prime Minister Konoye an effete aristocrat who preferred asshole-poking to providing leadership; and, speaking of assholes, the Military, yourself excluded. They all said Matsuoka is crazy.
   HG Wells wrote: “In the Kingdom of the Blind the one-eyed man is supreme.” I say: “In an Empire of no-brain boobs a half-brain man is genius.” In final analysis after future historian sorts out jetsam and flotsam it will be seen that I Matsuoka was the one who placed Japan on Right Road. Perhaps in 1944 this seems Incredible Assertion but we live in Incredible Time, Japan is Incredible Country, and I am Incredible Inhabitant.

   Allow me to begin the beguine – metaphorically! I, child in Meiji Japan begin to experience Gay Nineties America. Can you imagine? Of course you cannot! It is too incredible, as am I!

   Vast fields of wheat, green peaceful countryside, gracefully mannered people; women going to church on Sunday in long, ruffled-sleeve dresses, men in dungarees and rolled-up shirt sleeves tinkering in barn with newfangled horseless carriage; kitchen table with dumpling, apple pie, pitcher of milk. This is Real America! It is my America and my Americans; there is no other America!

   I was brought up from age 13 in America, did the Grand Tour in Europe and returned to Japan for World War 1. Those days, a younker who spoke English, had seen the world, had a college degree and called himself a Christian, such an one – me – had a ticket to ride as diplomat right to top, assuming he was at least slightly brilliant. And I was more than slightly! No boast – fact!
   First, at Versailles Conference I went along at my Ambassador’s side and got a chance to see Big Boy Clemenceau close up. I studied his technique: Outrageous demand clothed in patriotic flimflam far in excess of anything he expected to get and then compromising to get what he really wanted. There I decided, Japan could ultimately surpass America despite disparity of size and resources. Our secret weapon would be my ability to see Future.
   At Versailles – 37 year old enfant terrible – I formulated the policy that got us the former German Pacific Islands which the Americans are now blasting us off thanks to the Pearl Harbor stupidity.
   After Versailles came my Shanghai Gesture, my fake war to scare Chiang Kai-shek into accepting our control in Manchuria. Then my League of Nations walkout! It was obvious to me at Versailles that Britain and France are has-beens and it will be America’s time to howl and, when the Americans repudiated Wilson’s baby, I knew the League would degenerate into a ball-less, gutless talking instrument. So when it censored us for the Manchurian Incident, I short-circuited the chain of command and requested the Emperor directly that we leave the League. When my senile chief got word of my action he went bonkers and so did most other fools in that cabinet. They all said it was typical of Matsuoka’s un-Japaneseness, another indication of his megalomania – that he, an Americanized whippersnapper, should presume to send message advising the Emperor. They all said that if we walked out we would be punished. They all turned out nincom-boobs, if I may coin the word and thank you Mr. HL Mencken?

   Well, the majority is always wrong – I said that not Oscar! Happily for our country then, there were intelligent minds in higher places that recognized brilliance so one week after I’d sent my brash message I got a note from a lady-in-waiting at the Palace to come there forthwith that night. The interview was top secret.
   As those of us who have been inner circle know, our heavenly Ruler fosters appearance of being above politics and leadership, and has thus remained in the flexible position of avoiding blame for error of policy like bungled assassination or unsuccessful war.
   The night of the note, I am driven into inner palace ground in shuttered Daimler for my first visit with our God and do not know what to expect. The driver deserts, leaving me in dark in back seat. After minutes, a young man, an aide I guess, opens car door, wordlessly leads me up stone walkway to unprepossessing, wood-slatted Japanese shoji-style house, pulls aside white, rice-papered slide and ushers me in, following.
   Stepping up from vestibule I find myself in cozily coherent small, low-ceiling, plush-carpet room with table, chairs and sofa. In alcove to my right I see busts of Darwin and Napoleon. On wall to left is big blow-up photo of the Emperor, ten years before as Regent for his ailing father during the famous European trip; the picture with the Prince of Wales who said “You call me, Eddy and I’ll call you Heery.” Experiencing shock of recognition I turn to the young man I had thought an aide and prostrate myself.

   The Emperor puts me at ease with joking tap on head and request that I not stand, and certainly not on ceremony so we sit all night and discuss the League of Nations and the future. I find him intelligent, urbane and westernized but deeply split; and as he talked I understand the symbolism of his conflicting gods: Darwin and Napoleon. His Darwinian intellect tells him Japan must throw off anachronistic feudalistic past and travel toward scientific industrialism; his Napoleonic urge pushes him toward war.

   It is morning and he and I are still talking or, rather, I talk, he listens. I sketch the foreign policy Japan must follow next fifty years in order to become 21^st century leader: A surface opportunism with dissimulation underpinned by the rock hard prinzip that we must not have war with USA.
   Opportunistic we should be – taking advantage of the havoc Hitler creates in Europe and the anticommunist mania in America - to carve a buffer state in Manchuria and control China. Dissimulative we should be in particular toward America, turning Teddy Roosevelt’s words upside down by speaking loudly and carrying a carrot instead of stick – the carrot being our ability to stand as Far East buffer contra Communism; the price – American scrap metal and foreign oil, and acquiescence in our new sphere of influence. But such a policy requires a powerful leader who controls the martial enthusiasm of our Navy and Army men who think they are still knights of yore and are dying to go out and do battle with technologically superior dragon. The Emperor’s eyes are now sparking and he assures me he gets my message and will exercise leadership with me at his right hand playing Grand Vizier to his Caliph. As evidence that this is not just a piddle in puddle he appoints me on the spot Special Envoy to the League for sole purpose of Japan’s quitting it. The interview ends with breakfast of oatmeal and sliced banana with cream; then bacon and two poached eggs on exquisite toast and Columbian coffee served by the Empress herself.

   Well, Friend Tojo, the end of this story we all know. One month after the meeting I stage my famous Geneva walkout after telling the League just where to get off in best Oxford English and overnight I become celebrity.

15.  Thus Spake Matsuoka More

The Emperor remained true to word and when Prince Konoye formed his next cabinet it is I Yosuke Matsuoka, Foreign Minister. Time is near for my startling move to point Japan towards my 21^st century. Germany is gobbling Europe, eating Polish sausage and French fries, and getting Greece; and the Soviets are vomiting from Stalin’s purges. The question mark is USA with its isolationists led by Lucky Lindy and interventionists led by Roosevelt, at loggerheads.
   Poised for insertion into this equation is Japan just struggling out of its mewling Middle Ages wanting to lead all Asians as inheritors of the great Han culture – Light from East, etc. – yet containing such disparate, desperate elements as to unfit it for the colossal struggle about to commence. The contradiction, as Marxian dialectical materialists are wont to invoke, is between the thin shell of its westernized elite and the hard core of its ignorant masses – Mr. Mencken’s Boobery. Of course every culture has leaders and led; The Fuhrer Prinzip, what! But ours has the complication of the leadership adopting an alien culture because of that culture's functional superiority over the native one, while using for emotional appeal to the masses the argument of preserving the traditional culture called our unique Japanese-ness. It is a situation that leads to cynicism among the leaders and dangerous blindness among the led. At highest level are conflicts among the elite, who are composed of the aristocracy energized by the wish to preserve their luxurious, social-parasite lives and the technocrats like you and I, Friend Tojo, hoping to move Japan into a future based on Science unobstructed by sentiment and tradition, and willing to use any means to accomplish that. And throw into this an energetic young man – the Emperor – with absolute power based on Godness, a young man straddling the rapidly widening mentality split between Feudalism and Futurism and there you have the Japan that I Yosuke Matsuoka, guardian angel, had to work with.

   It is not the time for a Foreign Minister to sit back and react to initiatives of the throne, of the militarists, of the nationalist gangsters; it is a time for bold action to satisfy the emotional needs of those power groups yet deflect the flow of history toward the future of my plan without these disparate groups realizing it.

   The Emperor in Napoleonic mood left to himself was blundering towards a lose-lose war – a war we lose even if we win. And our Military were simply dying to use their nice new toys and by now most have ended simply dead. They pressed heavily on the Emperor and were a taut bow with arrow in his hands demanding war – sooner, better. To paraphrase the U.S. Civil War Admiral Farragut: Damn the consequences – full speed ahead to lose a war! Then there were the urban gangsters – Black Dragon Society led by Dr. Okawa and pushing the Emperor sharply towards war as they assassinated any opposition cautionary voice.

   Finally I succeeding in convincing the Emperor to approved my trip to Europe.

16.  Matsuoka Continues – At Long Last. Lvov!

I go to Berlin by the Trans-Siberian Railroad, switching at Minsk to German rails, crossing their part of Poland and arriving Berlin in 1 week.

   Russia: Past bleak Siberian treeless shrubby plain – tundra – where tribesman still lives in circular domed skin tent, past wide stretches of flowering meadowland backed by snow-capped Ural peaks that reduce Mt. Fuji to postcard size, past the vast Ukrainian wheat fields where swarms of Cossack-clothed collective-farmer Kolhozhniki cut the summer wheat.

   Poland – Soviet Zone. At long last, Lvov! And we sup with an upper-up from Moscow, a round-face Russian “Krewschawff” and – Mark it! – That man is destined to be Big Boss after Stalin kicks bucket! As he sits beside a huff-puffing steam locomotive, over open table spread of caviar on black bread that we wash down with vodka, Comrade K. – looking quaint in white-cotton Ukrainian peasant outfit – is disarmingly frank, a quality in a Russian often a sign of boastful cunning, I am told. He claims Stalin signed with Hitler to play for time in order to prepare for the expected German onslaught; then he warns me that Japan too is on Hitler’s little list. I quip that Stalin got the better of Hitler: after all, Hitler simply got a cheap ticket to temporarily annex Western Poland but Russia picked up Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Eastern Poland. And also – and here I wink in my American-learned way – “Russia got a Secret Weapon – more than a million Jews that Hitler stupidly lost by declaring them ineligible for honorary Aryanship, as we Japanese, who, according to the inestimable Dr. Goebbels, are.” K. laughs almost uncontrollably at this and replies “Yes, that is correct, Matsuoka san! But, unfortunately, with the Jews we also got 2 million Poles!” He loudly laughs at that, then belches and gives a sap-slap on the back of his unhappy Polish aide, who is probably thinking “Oh no! Not another Dumb Polack joke!”

17.  Adolf and Eva

We whiz over German Poland in Hitler’s personal train whose smashing speed comes from newly invented engine.
   I send my young aide – an MIT trained fellow named Honda - up front with sketchbook to have talk with the engineer.

With German punctuality we arrive 3 PM. The Nazi political apparatus led by Hitler is lined up. He is exactly as in newsreel: shock of black hair artfully arranged over forehead on right; brutal sawed off mustache, and lips set in almost frown; also an elegant tailored uniform with visor hat and Iron Cross won for valor in France in WW1, singly displayed at breast pocket level. Above all else the eyes shine black, distant and hypnotic. Even I, Yosuke Matsuoka, Homo superior, want to do his bidding after one soulful look into ‘dem dare eyes’, if I may be allowed the American jazz aside.
   Hitler is world-beater actor – takes one to know one, don't you know? On later occasion with lovely lady I observe him to talk charmingly in low musical voice with what Germans call Austrian gemutlichkeit, or charm.

   Here is Der Führer Prinzip in action, I think, as he shakes my hand stiffly with jerky forearm action like un-oiled metal robot and says through interpreter that my stay in Germany will be pleasant, productive and educational. His voice is different from the shout his speeches suggest; it is clipped and mechanical.

   Flanking him is Der Grosser Goering, then at peak as Luftwaffe chief who is expected to destroy the Brit wit to fight (He’s failed so far) and who rose to top Nazidom (He is officially designated heir apparent) by being bagman par excellence funneling money from aristocrat and industrialist, including many Swedes via his Svenska aristo wife. After him stands the diminutive gimp-legged Dr. Goebbels, the “Dr.” from his Ph.D. in philosophy at Heidelburg, also called Little Demon by those in the know because he is thought to be evil eminence grise behind the Great Dictator. And after him, Neanderthal-eyebrow-ridge Rudolf Hess who had climbed to fame by taking the dictation of Mein Kampf in prison after the failed 1923 Putsch. Little did I know then that he would fly to England with the mysterious peace proposal? And after the Deputy Fuhrer, comes the elegant von Ribbentrop my counterpart who represents the Prussian Junker Class and was the link between Hitler and von Hindenburg. Lastly on line is the horrible Himmler looking owlish behind round horn-rim glasses, an ex school teacher, I’m told, who now ruthlessly gestalts Gestapo. And of course there are the generals – never saw so many Iron Crosses in one place.

   Hitler and I ride triumphantly side by side in rear of transparent bubble-top tour car driven by Hitler’s trusted bodyguard and confidante, who, my sources say, is Martin Bormann but he never is introduced and keeps name secret to protect family, I am told, but also I guess to protect himself in case the Nazis lose it all and he needs to go south as they say in America.
   I had studied a map of streets of Berlin so I become aware something is up when instead of heading for the Chancellery in accord with original itinerary our car turns toward Tempelhof Aerodrome.

   Several minutes later I find myself stepping into Hitler’s private plane, an outré outfitted tri-engine Heinkel. We fly high, heading south in Fuhrer’s own air corridor and two hours later the pilot – Bormann still; Hitler trusts no one else at control of vehicles he is in – sets us down in perfect 3-point landing on deserted mountain strip. Only Hitler, myself and Bormann; so mysterious! I love a mystery!
   As we alight from the plane, the most unusual car I ever saw screams to stop before us. In shape it resembles an upside down gravy saucer or the bodiless carapace of bug or beetle. Vented exhausts jut from behind signifying rear drive and it is small, 4-door and I guess would be cramped for more than 4 people but its most interesting accessory is the blonde fraulein behind its wheel. Pretty and insouciant with gray beret and matching leather riding coat and boots beneath above-knee wool skirt, she is a picture of carefree youth whom we in Japan call Moga or Modern Girl, a 1930's modern update of the 1920's flapper. She hurries from driver seat and flings arms about Hitler who appears much discomfited trying to preserve grim iron-man look and failing miserably. Releasing him she holds out dainty white-gloved hand and says in perfectly enunciated artificially clipped English “Good to meet you, Matsuoka san. I am Eva Braun but friends call me Eve so why shouldn’t you?”

   As ex Christian minister, the symbolic Adolf and Eva strikes me, but I don’t share it. After brief bumpy ride up mountain through a checkpoint where armed guards stand attention we pull up at front of mountain manse.

Kimi keeps scribbling Matsuoka's account.

   To read Adolf Hitler's revelation, click 10.(18-19) Adolf Hitler Speaks - His Astounding R...