The Road to War and its Costs

In the 1930s, Japan made numerous fateful decisions—miscalculations, some might say--that propelled the country towards military aggression in China and eventually war with the United States. The war turned out to be a particularly brutal and destructive one, as some of the accounts in Telling Lives and Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies make clear. But it was also a war in which the Japanese government, largely in the hands of the military, was extremely skilled at mobilizing all citizens and imbuing them with a sense of mission, convincing them that it was worth sacrificing everything for. Rarely has a populace been so thoroughly galvanized though the diarists in Yamashita's book often express their frustration and disappointment with their government.

In the final paper, I would like you to be reflective about this difficult and complex subject, and discuss also how the Japanese themselves reflected upon the dilemma of the war in the early postwar years. Write an essay that explores the vantage points found in film we watched in class, "Twenty-four Eyes," and in Yamashita's book, Leaves from an Autumn of Emergecies. What sort of contrasting viewpoints do they present about the causes and nature of the war, about its effects, and about the nature of Japan itself? What do we learn from these materials about how Japanese reflected on the causes and consequences of war? How does the portrayal of the lives of children in "Twenty-four Eyes" operate as a critique of prewar society and its values? Following the article by Orr, what are some limitations of this critique?

Length, 6-8 pages; Due Tuesday, Dec. 12 2:30 pm