Biographies, at least in English, about Japanese who played key roles in the Second World War are relatively rare. Chiang Kai-shek, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin—each the subject of dozens of biographies—have all attracted a great deal of attention. General Tojo Hideki, Japan’s leader for most of the war, has however had only several books dedicated to him. For the leader of an empire that held Manchuria in its grip, overran much of China, occupied French Indochina, and seized throughout Southeast Asia the colonies of the Americans, British, and Dutch before going down in defeat, this relative lack of attention is remarkable.
Peter Mauch gives us a revealing portrait of the Japanese wartime leader in his absorbing military biography of General Tojo Hideki. An Australian historian of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, Mauch dives deep into Japanese archives and libraries to write a biography of the resolute army officer who marched through the harsh terrain of Japanese politics in a career that took him to the pinnacle of power.
Tojo has until now received too little attention in the Anglosphere.
Born in 1884 in Tokyo to an officer who reached the rank of lieutenant general, Tojo Hideki showed promise from the start of his career, marked by study at the Army War College and work in the important Army Affairs Section of the War Ministry’s Military Affairs Bureau. A defining moment came in February 1936. When young army officers in Tokyo attempted to overthrow the government, many senior officers wavered, waiting to see which way the wind blew. Tojo, commanding the Kwantung Army Military Police (the Kempeitai) in Hsinking, capital of the Japanese puppet empire of Manchukuo, acted without hesitation to maintain order in his area of responsibility. He would continue for the rest of his career to show a firm resolve and an inclination to use the Kempeitai against those whom he saw as threatening order.
Tojo then in succession headed the Kwantung Army General Staff, served as army vice minister, and became the inspector general of military aviation, a key post that gave him direct reporting access to Emperor Hirohito, whom he revered.
In 1940, Prince Konoe Fumimaro brought Tojo into his cabinet as war minister to control the army as he sought to terminate Japan’s war in China on favorable terms and steer a course to benefit from Axis victories in Europe. After Japan had joined Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact, embarked on a course towards war with the United States and the British Empire, Tojo in October 1941 became prime minister. Unable to convince the United States to accept Japanese domination of China and Southeast Asia, Tojo led his country into war rather than yield to the American demand to abandon all Japan’s hard-won gains in East Asia since the seizure of Manchuria in 1931.
Tojo turned in his final days to Japanese poetry and Buddhism to prepare for his final journey. He died on the gallows in December 1948.
The author of this biography excels in describing the difficulties Tojo faced atop Tokyo’s fragmented power structure. Tojo had long maintained that the longstanding Japanese arrangement of an army and navy independent of one another, with army and navy general staffs refusing even the “interference” of their respective ministries in the conduct of military and naval operations, was no longer viable in an age of total war.
Unable to forge a joint command under conditions of total war, Tojo did the best he could by acquiring portfolios. In his time as prime minister, he also acquired the posts of war minister, home minister, foreign minister, munitions minister, and army chief of staff, while also making a pliant admiral his navy minister, in an attempt to bring Tokyo’s disparate centers of power under his control.
Even so, as the author of this biography writes, Tojo could only “act” the dictator. Japan’s snowballing losses to the Allied forces in Asia and the Pacific resulted in his resigning and going on the military reserve list in July 1944.
Following Japan’s surrender in August 1945, Tojo played his final role as a defendant in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. “Tojo’s Last Stand”, this biography’s final chapter, is among the most striking ones in this book. Tojo took the stand determined to take responsibility for Japan’s “crime” of having gone to war and to shield the emperor from possible prosecution. He acted, according to the author, with “a fierce and uncompromising dignity”. Mauch’s description of how the sharp general ran circles around Joseph B Keenan, the “hard-drinking, hopelessly outclassed” chief prosecutor, is riveting. Understanding from the start that he would go to the gallows, Tojo turned in his final days to Japanese poetry and Buddhism to prepare for his final journey. He died on the gallows in December 1948.
The author takes pains to dispel the facile impression of “good navy, bad army” found in some histories of the Japanese Empire’s downfall.
As a military biography, Mauch’s book offers a myriad of details on such issues as the factional politics of the Imperial Japanese Army and the constant focus of army leaders on a future, decisive war with the Soviet Union. The author takes pains to dispel the facile impression of “good navy, bad army” found in some histories of the Japanese Empire’s downfall. While Mauch strives to present a balanced portrait of Tojo—“neither hero nor villain”— the erratic Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke stands out as an incompetent leader whose mistakes had much to do with setting Japan on a course to an unwinnable war.
Tojo has until now received too little attention in the Anglosphere. Peter Mauch’s engrossing book is an excellent biography for anyone interested in knowing more about this Japanese leader in the Second World War.