Depictions of the Japanese during WWII tend to portray them as fanatics, willing to throw their lives away in the name of the nation and the emperor even in ways that wouldn't bring any particular benefit. This is especially commonly brought up any time the possibility of an invasion of the Japanese islands at the end of the war is discussed, as an explanation for why the atomic bombings were necessary - supposedly the Japanese civilian population largely would have been willing to throw their lives away in fruitless attempts at resistance. This characterization strikes me as kind of orientalistic, what basis does it have in historical research? Was the Japanese civilian population actually more fanatical in its desire to defend the islands than the populations of the other Axis powers were to defend their own homelands?
"Fanaticism" might be the wrong word to describe the motives of Japanese population in 1944 and 1945. There certainly were fanatics in the government, armed forces, and civil society. But you'll also see people acting out of fear, force of habit, social pressure, war weariness, and a sense of resignation - the desire to "just get it over with."
Japanese society during the war years of 1931-1945 is a pressure cooker of propaganda, indoctrination, and social control. Although we'll never know just what would have happened in an invasion of the Home Islands, the invasions of Saipan in June-July 1944, Tinian in July-August 1944, and Okinawa in April-June 1945 offer a grim look into what might have been. Suicide. Murder. Conscription. Execution.
What was Japanese society like in 1931-1945?
Staring in 1890, students were required to memorize and recite the Imperial Rescript on Education. The Emperor Meiji's words ordered students to "offer yourselves courageously to the State" and emphasized the values of "loyalty and filial piety." Individualism and self-preservation were downplayed. Loyalty and self-scrifice became paramount. The Mieji reforms had made education compulsory, so every Japanese child grew up learning this dicta.
The popular "Song of Young Japan" neatly encapsulated the values Japanese militarists wanted to instill in children:
Brave warriors united in justice
In spirit a match for a million –
Ready like the myriad cherry blossoms to scatter
In the spring sky of the Shōwa Restoration.
As Japan built up its military in the 1930s, more and more militaristic material crept into the syllabus. Students ran military-style obstacle courses, marched in formation, practiced aircraft recognition, flew aircraft simulators, and drilled with wooden rifles (you can see some examples of this from 11:30 onwards). High school students visited local military units - some even got to ride in military aircraft.
This program had a visible effect on children, as John Dower writes in Embracing Defeat:
Children's games can provide a barometer of their times ... their play became a lively measure of the obsessions of adult society. Not long before, boys in particular had played war with a chilling innocence of what they were being encouraged to become. They donned headbands and imagined themselves piloting the planes that would, in fact, never return. They played at being heroic sailors long after the imperial navy began to be decimated. Armed with wooden spears and bayonets, they threw themselves screaming at mockups of Roosevelt and Churchill and presented they were saving the country for the foreign devils.
As the war progressed, the indoctrination became even more pointed. Dower writes:
Until Japan surrendered, the emperor was the heart and soul of ideological indoctrination. Every soldier went to battle carrying the pocket-sized Senjinkun or Field Service Code, whose opening sentence was this: "The battlefield is where the Imperial Army, acting under the Imperial command, displays its true character, conquering whenever it attacks, winning whenever it engages in combat, in order to spread the Imperial Way far and wide so that the enemy may look up in awe to the august virtues of His Majesty." In Shimin no Michi (The Way of the Subject), a major tract issued four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor ... was at pains to denounce the "individualism, liberalism, utilitarianism, and materialism" that imperiled these virtues [of filial piety and loyalty to the imperial state]. Emperor Hirohito was sacrosanct. His war was holy. The virtues he embodied were unique and immutable.
In 1943, the Shotōka Chiri elementary school geography textbook trumpeted Japanese exceptionalism when it declared:
"The shape of the Japan islands is not ordinary... In this way, we feel that God truly created our country, Japan, which is blessed with matchless territory in this location and its shapes..."
"According with the Emperor's will, a hundred million of our brethren who are born in Japan should accomplish the great task of building the Greater East Asia region, in which we should not be a disappointment to our ancestors."
Continued...