Comments on: 60 Years On, A Reflection on Energy

By: ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » War-time Japan

ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » War-time Japan — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 16:31:25 +0000

[...] Why Do China and the Koreas hate Japan?But will cooler heads prevail?US-Japan RelationsThe slow death of Article 960 Years On, A Reflection on Energy [...]

By: Mutantfrog

Mutantfrog — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 04:39:56 +0000

Japan during WW2 was under military rule by people with little sense of reality. A civilian government technically existed, but various factions within both civilian and military institutions were secretive and kept information from each other. Not to mention the often clueless civilian population, who were constantly told that their nation was liberating Asia from the colonial West. I think many people today underestimate the power of government propaganda in an age before the internet, satellites and even TV when it was actually possible for the government to control all sources of civilian media.

Yes, the creation of their empire in East Asia was absolutely a choice, and one that the leaders deserved to be held accountable for. But it is true that by time that the attack on Pearl Harbor was being planned the empire had become completely unsustainable. Since the US was blocking their fuel supply lines, they thought that destroying the Naval base in Hawaii would cripple the ability of the US to control the Pacific.

In retrospect it seems to us like a completely insane act by the Japanese military, but they must have counted on Nazi Germany putting up a more formidable fight and keeping the US in a two-front war. If Germany had lasted longer and the US did not have the luxury of focusing the bulk of their efforts on the Pacific War then the outcome may have been different.

By: somercet

somercet — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 13:23:04 +0000

Yes, the Japanese did have a choice. The Emperor could have sustained the politicians against the militarists. He could have ordered the militarists to commit seppeku. They could have stopped in Manchukuo. They didn’t have to fight the Soviet Union forces under Marshal Zukov. They didn’t have to rape Nanking or turn the entire Pacific Rim against themselves.

Saying “they found it impossible” means that the Japanese culture was too rigid and inflexible to find another way out, which is no one’s fault but Japan’s, as a whole nation.

By: Jing

Jing — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 12:41:49 +0000

Sure they had a choice. They chose to annex Korea, they then chose to annex Manchuria, they then chose to start a full blown war by invading the rest of China, and then they chose to invade SE Asia to perpetuate their war in China. Come now, I was expecting Japanese apologists to come up with better excuses than, “they didn’t have a choice”. Honestly if they simply stopped at Manchuria and didn’t invade the rest of China, Japan could have readily avoided dragging the US into WW2. Chiang Kai Shek wasn’t in any real position or even inclined to dislodge them considering how focused and driven he was on combating the communists. The Japanese simply got overambitious and overextended themselves. With each territorial acquisition, they chose through the aggressive logic of empire, that more land was needed to provide a buffer zone for what they had already conquered. If Japan hadn’t started the war in China in 1937, the map of Asia today could very readily have Japan spanning all of NE China, the Korean peninsula, and the Japanese home islands, with a population of close to 300 million. The PRC would likely not even exist today and the RoC would still be the government, with Taiwan being part of Japan. The Japanese had plenty of choices, they chose to gamble for all of Asia, and lost.

By: shakuhachi

shakuhachi — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:27:20 +0000

Great post.

When you look at it this way, the Japanese didnt have a choice. Could you imagine any Japanese politicians wanting to be the ones that went down in the history books as being the one that gave up the Japanese empire? At the time, Japanese politicians were also being murdered by the extremist clique that wanted empire at any cost.

By: Saru

Saru — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 15:48:12 +0000

Great link IJ. Thanks.

By: IJ

IJ — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 08:04:59 +0000

Who needs the IMF? Not China or Russia, for starters.

From The ‘Great Game’ Heats Up in Central Asia:
“The international community should establish an economic and trade regime that is comprehensive and widely accepted and that operates through the means of holding negotiations on an equal footing, discarding the practice of applying pressure and sanctions to coerce unilateral economic concessions, and bringing into play the roles of global and regional multilateral organizations and mechanisms.”

By: Saru

Saru — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 19:15:26 +0000

“The drafters of the UN Charter didn’t seem to think that addressing a cause of the world war with Japan (energy) was practical.”

Who needs the IMF when you’ve got SCAP!

By: IJ

IJ — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 16:32:04 +0000

Japan is at the mercy of an energy blockade.

This article from Chatham House talks of many new geopolitical factors that may threaten Japan’s future supplies of energy.

Last month Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed three communiques and issued a joint statement on “A New 21st Century World Order.”

By: Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 15:15:25 +0000

Japan’s fundamental problem is that she has no significant natural energy resources. So she was, and is, at the mercy of any energy blockade. South Africa was similarly isolated when under apartheid, but South Africa had a lot of coal, so it could convert this, first to gas by heating (burning some coal), and then by polymerizing the gas by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (burning more coal) to make gasoline and heavier fuels. This “gas to liquids” technology is being developed to convert Qatar’s enormous gas reserves into liquid fuels.
Spark ignition engines can run on gas, so the children’s fuel could be used on vehicles that had a gasifier. There are great pictures of vehicles with gasifiers at http://www.woodgas.com/History.htm . The roots must have been converted into gas and on to liquids to make fuels for planes.

By: IJ

IJ — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:09:43 +0000

“Of course, energy was the reason Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in the first place.”

Following WW2, the United Nations was created with a special economic agency, the International Monetary Fund. The new IMF was intended to prevent the ‘beggar thy neighbour” policies that led to the world war involving Germany. The drafters had good intentions, but adequate enforcement has proved impossible internationally.

The drafters of the UN Charter didn’t seem to think that addressing a cause of the world war with Japan (energy) was practical.