Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (review)

In this fascinating, thought-provoking book, Ohnuki-Tierney examines Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations during the closing years of World War II. Specifically, Ohnuki-Tierney seeks to understand why almost 1,000 student soldiers—idealistic graduates fresh from Japan's most prestigious universities—chose to volunteer for tokkotai duty. How, Ohnuki-Tierney wonders, could such well-read, cosmopolitan, and thoughtful young men, some of whom were committed Marxists and Christians, accept a nationalistic ideology that demanded their futile deaths for the supposed protection of emperor and homeland?

To understand the particular case of the tokkotai pilots, Ohnuki-Tierney tackles a larger historical issue, "the question of how state nationalism is developed and how it succeeds and/or fails to be accepted by 'ordinary' individuals, who, rather than questioning let alone revolting, often embrace as 'natural' basic changes in culture and society initiated by political, military and intellectual elites" (1). Ohnuki-Tierney traces the evolution of Japanese nationalist ideology and the construction of a totalitarian state from the Meiji Restoration through World War II, focusing on the ways in which the state mobilized and manipulated traditional cultural symbols. Examining "the power of aesthetics for political purposes" (9), Ohnuki-Tierney shows how cherry blossoms—"master trope of Japan's imperial nationalism" (3)—were used strategically by the state, working primarily through the educational system, to fashion a culture of self-sacrifice, unquestioning loyalty to the emperor, and unreserved support for Japan's military exploits.

Through a close reading of five diaries left by tokkotai volunteers, Ohnuki-Tierney argues that the student soldiers may have embraced potent symbols like cherry blossoms, but that the meanings that they attached to such symbols were far different from those promoted by the wartime state. Liberal in their thought, steeped in European intellectual traditions, and, in many cases, highly critical of the policies of the Japanese government, the young pilots were drawn to the image of cherry blossoms, not as a symbol of noble sacrifice to a god-emperor, but as an aesthetic vision of their youthful idealism and tragically short lives. Describing the student soldiers as "cosmopolitan patriots"—a far cry from the popular impression of kamikaze pilots as ultra-nationalist fanatics—Ohnuki-Tierney concludes that "they reproduced the emperor-centered military ideology in their action, though not in their thoughts" (7).

Theoretically sophisticated yet admirably free of jargon, Ohnuki-Tierney's analysis provides valuable perspectives on symbolic communication, the distinction between state-centered nationalism and individual patriotism, and the culture of imperial Japan. In exploring how both the tokkotai pilots and the Meiji oligarchs "were intensely patriotic while equally intensely cosmopolitan in their intellectual pursuits" (304), Ohnuki-Tierney argues convincingly that global/local is a false dichotomy: "Nationalism and patriotism are born at the vibrant intersection of the global and the local, rather than being the xenophobic expressions of a hermetically sealed people" (2).

Such insights notwithstanding, critics will find much to query in Ohnuki-Tierney's methodology, use of historical sources, and conception of historical change. Some, for example, might well be uncomfortable about the fact that she uses only five published diaries of student soldiers to characterize the thoughts, aspirations, and consciousness of the tokkotai pilots. Can one really conclude that "none [of the tokkotai volunteers] died for the emperor" based on the reading of only five testaments (299)? Some historians may also question Ohnuki-Tierney's characterization of the Japanese state as monolithic and her notion of Japanese nationalism as thoroughly top-down in execution, a "scheme of the state" that insinuated ultranationalist ideology "like fine invisible rain [that] seeped into the fabric of the daily lives and thoughts of the people" (300). Acknowledging that nationalistic fervor may have sprouted from society's grassroots as well as been imposed from above, might...