The following article is a reformatted reprint of a unit developed by MIT Visualizing Cultures, a project focused on image-driven scholarship. Click here to view the essay in its original, visually-rich layout. This is part two of the second in a series of Visualizing Cultures reprints. In the coming months the Asia-Pacific Journal will reprint a number of articles on the theme of social protest in Japan originally posted at MIT VC, together with an introduction by John W. Dower to the series. These are the first in a continuing series of collaborations between APJ and VC designed to highlight the visual possibilities of the historical and contemporary Asia-Pacific, particularly for classroom applications.

World War II demonstrated an enormous shift in the technological capability of the United States to bring death and destruction to the civilian populations of its enemies through aerial attack. The American air forces undertook strategic bombing campaigns that pulverized and burned numerous German and Japanese cities, culminating in the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This bombing killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Although the massive killing of noncombatants did not provoke widespread protests or recriminations among Americans at the time, the aftermath was not a simple story of acceptance of the practice as a common and legitimate method of warfare in a new technological age of air power. The experience of the Korean War demonstrated that American moral scruples against targeting civilians did not disappear with the bombing in World War II, as some historians have argued. Instead, American norms about bombing civilians followed a more complicated evolution.

In the following article, two distinguished experts affiliated with the Open Society Institute examine key aspects of Japan's 2013 “Specially Designated Secrets Protection Act.” (“SDS”) They are concerned with two central problems: defects in the process that led to adoption of the SDS, and shortcomings in the text of the law itself.

Seasoned observers of lawmaking in Japan are familiar with the scenario that played out in the fall of 2013. The SDS bill law was drafted in secret in the administrative offices of government, rather than by the elected representatives of the people in the national legislature. The resulting “government bill” was presented to the Diet for its approval. Because ruling political parties control large majorities in both houses, debate on the floor of the Diet was a mere formality. Opposition party members were allowed to make comments and question government representatives before national television cameras, but the prospect that this would lead to actual revision of the bill was nonexistent.

Readers familiar with my research will know that its focus has been on the wartime actions and statements of Japan's institutional Buddhist leaders, most especially those affiliated with the Zen school. Nearly to a man, their actions and statements were strongly supportive of Japanese aggression and imperialist actions. In the postwar era many of these same Zen leaders played a seminal role in the introduction of Zen to the West. Thus, it came as a shock to their Western adherents to learn that their beloved Zen masters had once been fervent advocates of aggressive war. They believed, or wanted to believe, that “enlightened” Zen masters were unlike those priests, rabbis, chaplains of other faiths who, with but few exceptions, have always expressed their unstinting support for the wars fought by their nations.

In this country it is uncommon to have the opportunity to reflect on the conscience of those who were opposed to war. However, now is the time to direct our thoughts to the way of life and words of a Buddhist priest who risked his life in the prewar era to proclaim: “War is a Crime.”

The village of Taruichō in Gifu prefecture once prospered as a stage on the pre-modern Nakasendō main road. Today, when you get off the train at Tarui station on the Tokaidō line, you find yourself in the midst of an agricultural area full of rice paddies. Travelling by car for another four kilometers eventually takes you to an old temple by the name of Myōsenji, affiliated with the Ōtani branch of the Shin [True Pure Land] sect.