分类： 前线来信·Mail call

Sune here! I guess I should use a different tagline for this Mail Call since it really deals mostly with real life history.

Today’s update is in response to someone who thinks I am treating Japan badly. The question, when translated, is “How can Japan has a national motivation of securing food when Japan has been a prosperous and capable country in real life?”

Japanese cuisine is typically characterized by its simplicity. This was a historical matter as well as a cultural one. Japan is not a resource rich country. Its cuisine reflects that as a result of both economic and cultural realities. Japanese food economics historically has relied heavily on rice and lesser grains as a staple and seafood as a heavy supplement. Oils, red meats, fats and such are much rarer in Japanese cuisine than its neighbors.

For that matter, most of Japanese land is poor and not suitable for farming. If I tell you people used to fight for the right to eat white rice you might be shocked, but when we have a unit used historically to measure wealth (koku) that is literally an approximation of how much rice a person needs to survive for a year it shows just how important things are.

There is more to the historical precedent.

Historically Imperial Japan recognizes the necessity of living space in the context of food security. While no such term was formally coined like Nazi Germany the concept was the same. The bigger reason is all in the details. The Imperial Japanese Army saw that Germany was reliant on outside resources and became alarmed because when Germany was starved of those resources it was defeated. Virtually all of Japan’s raw materials had to be imported. In order to make Japan self-sufficient so Japan cannot be defeated Japan must create its own empire.

Evicting millions of Chinese farmers from Manchuria to make room for Japanese colonists to produce food for the homeland is one example. Japan being very interested in creating colonies for itself is another. Japanese farms being inefficient and incapable of producing food that allows for sustained national expansion is yet another. Economic interests is yet another.

Japanese reliance on its colonies for producing rice went from about 5% of its overall rice crop in the 1910s to about 20% in less than twenty years. Poor management of domestic policies did not result in an increase of wealth to the Japanese poor and farming classes. While we were starving the subhumans in Asia (Morgane has said that it was a rude word but I am just stating what the Army thought of the non-Japanese in the colonies at the time to emphasize how brutal the times were) a decrease in prices of rice (due to greater imports) resulted in massive poverty. Farmers could not sell their rice at the old prices due to cheaper imports and were forced to buy food. In many cases the cost to produce rice in the Japanese homeland was more than what the farmer would receive on the marketplace. In order to survive and pay rent they must take loans in which many times were very high in interest.

I had the opportunity to look at some not-destroyed records of the time. By 1931 when we were invading Manchuria farmer debt accounted for one THIRD of Japan’s gross national product.

At the time in 1930 documented deaths in newborns and other infants due to malnutrition and starvation was approximately five hundred thousand. About one of every ten child will not live to see his or her first birthday. Two hundred thousand elementary school aged children were attending class without anything to eat for lunch. People were eating tree bark and fertilizer (because of fish bits) and tens of thousands families were literally selling their daughters into sexual slavery just so they could survive.

Japan had problems and food was one of its biggest. I would not say that the militarists and ultranationalists “fooled” the Japanese people by “exploiting” this undercurrent of anger and directed it outward. There is no fooling anyone there. This was a concern significant to the population and most people eagerly went along with it. Japan was not lacking in political diversity or ideology at this time. The people just did not want to do things differently. Especially not when the military actively promoted self-interest and made the lives of those siding with it much better.

Some English-speaking KanColle fans have this idea somehow that everything was wonderful during the pre-war years. I can only say with certainty that parts of Japan was doing very wonderfully. For all of its technological advancements Imperial Japan is an excellent case study for systematically poor management and national policy making.

I tell you this not to embarrass my country and my ancestors. It is simply what it is. In order for Japan to move forward in this world or in our world it is necessary for us to look at history and understand what happened.

Anyway I will not bore you with more details of the rural reform plans or Manchuria or even indigenous Japanese policies that help inspire many angles of Pacific’s Japan. I will simply say that in real life, there is a book, 餓死（うえじに）した英霊たち, showing that more than half of the Japanese military losses were due primarily to hunger and starvation.

Pacific’s Japan knows this and tries to learn from this. Its strategy of trying to obtain living space and to improve its domestic industries has not changed from the defeated empire. From a purely thematic perspective my emphasis for Japan is practicality above all else. Much like real life history the Japanese government is still ran by the old Imperialists in Pacific. The old fears are also still there, but unlike the Empire Japan now has no colonies to extract food from.

And so Japan placed all of its hopes on three things. Scientific advancement. National patriotism. Time. Like Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan did the first two things and waited for an opportunity. It would soon get one.

When the U.S. Pacific Fleet was nearly eradicated in a skirmish (covered up as a nuclear detonation + weapons system malfunction) against the Abyssal Fleet in a foolish show of force, Japan saw its chance. Here was the perfect chance to realign and revitalize itself nationally and militarily. The resurgent Soviet Union, a growing Chinese threat, and the weakened American presence in East Asia all pointed to an opportunity of the once in a lifetime type for Japan to make it great (?) again.

The opportunity died with the Hyuuga Incident.

Again, this mail call is more of a “group” of question types that’s been raised up during discussion. Specifically, the nature of the cold war and how the world alters.

“If the US and the USSR cooperates more does it mean there’s no cold war?”

Not really. Countries have different interests, and the US and the USSR will still be going head to head on certain matters that will result in tensions and will result in conflict. In order to maintain a reasonable degree of believability we can’t just have the USSR and the US and everyone else hold hands and suddenly be friends. While that’s what I’d like to see happen, it’s going to take decades of continued work to get to that point, and some of the more cynical folks would point to say, our relationship with France or the UK and say that there’s no such thing as friendships between countries.

However, how the two countries compete. How they choose to interact. That, I think is worth exploring. Let me show you an example.

This proposal, raised by Eisenhower in 1955, is commonly known as the Open Skies doctrine, though I’ve heard that the concept is really termed “mutual aerial observation.” The proposal to the Soviets was pretty simple. You give us your maps, we give you ours, and we each allow unlimited observational flights over each other’s territory. We’ll tell each other where our military bases are so we can check on each other in case there are arms build-ups and the like.

In real life, the Soviets rejected this. Khrushchev denounced the idea, calling it little more than “U.S. espionage.” Latter media (not only Russian media, American media as well) has criticized Eisenhower’s intent, critiquing that he probably knew the Soviets would never have agreed to such an idea and wanted to use it to embarrass the Soviet Union so that the US could maintain the moral high ground by appearing to be more pro-peace.

Studying Eisenhower’s biography, however, and I think this is an important perspective to keep in mind. Frequently, I believe US policy is not entirely dictated by the realities of realpolitik. Rather, much of the policies set forth do depend heavily on the individual in question. There’s a particular brand of idealism found in the ideas presented by many U.S. presidents, possibly due to historical tradition or cultural values, and I think Eisenhower is no exception. I’m not saying that he doesn’t see the reason in presenting the US as the country calling for peace. Leaders of countries are frequently far more capable than we give them credit for. What I am saying that Eisenhower’s military experience gave him a lot of personal reasons to not want to see a “nuclear Pearl Harbor” or for us to get into an arms race.

A trip to the Eisenhower library or even the website’ll tell you a lot about his personality and there’s plenty of quotes online that you can look at to see if you reach similar conclusions.

So, what happens in Pacific, then?

Of course the Soviets shoot the idea down! At the time, it simply wouldn’t be realistic enough for the Soviets to agree to something as drastic as this.

However, given the overall trajectory of this particular world’s historical development, the rejection wasn’t as blunt. Khrushchev might have thought for a moment and said nothing, and the Soviet delegate hurriedly called the meeting to a close without commenting on it terribly much.

Or maybe that there were talks to begin about what the details may be, and because the US and the Soviets couldn’t agree on anything, the talks never went through.

Now you see why I find Pacific fun. There are several things I’d like to see happen, and one of the ways to do this is through careful arrangements of historical events. Ultimately, it’s up to the reader to decide if the path we took is believable. 🙂

See you next time.