10.(11-13) Tojo and Friend

Slim Novel 10 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage

11.  Light Shines from the East

Late afternoon, Kimi is busy weeding the garden, and Mrs. T. comes out, saying an important guest is arrived. When Kimi enters study, the window is covered and the General sits with the guest watching a movie on a set-up screen. In it, the same man as the guest sits at a desk dressed in formal black diplomat suit. He is saying:

Can we expect the waves of the Pacific as calm as today? Japan’s holy mission is to establish peace in the Orient. The League of Nations does not respect this mission. The day will come when Japan shall make the whole world look up to its national virtues.

Screen shows a map NEW ORDER IN ASIA with Japan and Manchukuo at center and Siberia, China, SE Asia, India, Australia and the western Pacific to Hawaii radiating out towards periphery. Then the guest gives final words.

Fellow Asians! I fervently beseech you to strive onward united under Hakkou Ichi-u, the one-world, eight-corner Japanese umbrella.

His face fades as patriotic music sounds and the screen fills with LIGHT SHINES FROM THE EAST in flaming calligraphy.

12.  The Guest

Mrs Tojo lets there be light by pulling the window shades. To Kimi, the guest looks about age 60, a Japanese of Prussian military type with short haircut and mustache. Somewhere, sometime, Kimi thinks, she has seen him. Mrs. T. introduces Kimi as the General’s new personal secretary. The guest stands, bows and says “Matsuoka at your service.” Then he surprises by grabbing her right hand and pulling it towards him at same time bowing again and planting a kiss on the back of her hand in European fashion.
   Addressing Mrs. T., he speaks in what to Kimi is a theatrically dramatic voice:
   “Only you, esteemed madam, should have confidence enough in a husband to allow him so beautiful a personal secretary.” As he speaks, Kimi realizes who the “Matsuoka” is. Years before, in a dark cinema, she sat watching a younger him addressing The League of Nations for Japan on Manchukuo with great theatricality and then recalled him finishing speech, gathering up his papers and walking out, taking Japan with him. (To see and hear Matsuoka give the famous speech at the League of Nations, click the following YouTube)

Japan leaves the League of Nations in 1933 - YouTube

Everyone knows the Matsuoka, popular but controversial foreign minister before being retired in 1941.
   Yosuke Matsuoka – dubbed by his friends and enemies the man of fifty thousand words because of his habit of talking rings around everyone. Considered insane by many because almost in same breath he could give conflicting idea then change opinion overnight like phase of moon, Yosuke Matsuoka – who had reduced Hitler to speechlessness in Berlin then upstaged him in balcony scene at the Chancellery; who had amazed the world by going to Moscow and embracing Joe Stalin.
   Yosuke Matsuoka, talking head, now being served the Tojos’ best Twining English tea in Czech gold inlayed ormolu teacup with outer intaglio design of medieval kings and queens. Yosuke Matsuoka!
   “Wow!” thinks Kimi. “I really stepped in it!”

13.  Matsuoka

Matsuoka and Tojo had been friends since the early 1930's when Matsuoka had headed the Manchurian Railway and later they were together in Prince Konoye's, Cabinet when Konoye was Prime Minister. Over bean soup, sashimi and rice followed by black-market American coffee, Matsuoka holds forth on his favorite theme: The victorious Japan that might have been had the Emperor done as Matsuoka had advised in 1941. As Kimi listens to the avalanche of words she recalls what she kinows about him.

Taken to America at 13, adopted by American family in Oregon where he ditch-dug his way to and thru college and got degree and then law clerked while preaching born-again Christianity, Matsuoka was the most cosmopolitan and most Americanized of Japan’s leaders. Brilliant and outspoken, he was a most un-Jap Jap which made him anathema in militarist circles where they thought they were starting war to preserve Japan’s ancient culture from Western contamination. But Matsuoka soon earned respect from sharper-minded military men like Tojo and, more importantly, from the Emperor, because of Matsuoka's uncanny ability to correctly predict how the Western Powers would react to Japan’s aggressive moves.
   In 1932 he accurately predicted the Imperial Army’s terrorization of Shanghai – the Fake War – would draw the world’s attention away from the more significant aggression in Manchuria and also be useful as quid-pro-quo bargaining chip. In 1933 he foresaw the west would not respond to Japan’s withdrawal from The League of Nations and carried it out in a way that elicited admiration from Japanese militarists, the European fascists, and even observers in the West.

   As World War 2 opened, Matsuoka shook the tree of world politics by signing a Friendship Pact with fascist Germany and Italy, and a non-aggression pact with the USSR when it seemed inevitable that Fascist and Communist would soon try to hack each other to bloody shreds. The pacts outraged many high in the leadership who felt that on the one hand Matsuoka had irrevocably linked Japan to a Hitlerian destiny and on the other had made Japan a Stalin puppet. Still he survived by being, some said, Svengali to the Emperor’s Trilby. Then came July 1941 and its week of final decision to make or not to make war on U.S.A., U.K., France and the Dutch.
   To everyone’s surprise Matsuoka suddenly advised shelving southeast Asian and eastward Pacific war in favor of moving across the Amur River in an attack against the USSR that Hitler had started in June. His opposition to war with America and his espousal of attack on Russia were so vigorous, logical, cutting, and in retrospect now embarrassingly correct – so un-Japanese - that he forced delay and almost managed to convince the Emperor of the soundness of his fight-Russia-now, America-later tactic. But in the end, emotion prevailed over intellection, word was spread of Matsuoka’s poor health and need for retirement, and Pearl Harbor exploded on the world’s scene as postscript.

  Now, listening to Matsuoka, Kimi – pencil hurrying over notepad –speed writes what he has to say
   To read on, click 10.(14-17) Matsuoka's Story - Meet Adolf & Eva