Tentative Guidelines for building partner armies post conflict

[John T. Fishel]

Tom, I think that our disagreement on Japan's position in the West during WWII is more a matter of degree than kind. To my way of thinking, the Meiji Restoration was Japan's conscious decision to become a Western Power. They adopted the forms of British constitutional monarchy with the Diet having real power; the Royal Navy tradition, and (less certain of this) the Prussian army. They, of course, also picked up some of the failings of their models (eg the Diet functioned more like the Kaiser's Reichstag than the Mother of Parliaments). But the Japanese also sought to preserve their cultural heritage and make use of it in purely Japanese ways to secure power in the new system for old elites. Hence Shinto and the cult of Emperor worship.

Germany, of course, voted itself out of a modern democratic state into a modern totalitarian dictatorship. France was sufferring coup attempts as late as the early 1960s and the 5th Republic was born out of a "coup" in 1958. Although these (and other similar cases) may not be hallmarks of modernity, they are examples of recent history of the West and all would be comprehensible to Japanes political and military leaders of the 1930s.

Cheers

JohnT