Violence of Exceptionalism

Kosuke Koyama ^[1]

"God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector." (Luke 18:11)

Each of us is unique and in one sense exceptional, endowed with the intrinsic dignity of being human. Exceptionalism, however, is an exclusivist ideology often combined with selfish pride. It undermines the health of human community.

From Dec. 7, 1941 (Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor)
to September 8, 1951 (The San Francisco Peace Treaty)

I wish to share with you some of my thoughts on this 64th anniversary of the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor that started what has been perhaps the most destructive chapter of human history. Early in the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Air Force made a massive surprise attack against the American naval base in Pearl Harbor. Later in the same day at 11.00 a.m. the emperor of Japan issued the declaration of war ("Imperial Rescript") which begins with these glorious words:

We, by grace of heaven, Emperor of Japan, seated on the Throne of a line unbroken for ages eternal, enjoin ye, Our loyal and brave subjects�

I felt an instant sense of pride when I heard these words, though I was only 11 years of age. For my country was exceptional, ruled by a divine emperor who was "seated on the Throne of a line unbroken for ages eternal." The Rescript continues:

We hereby declare War on the United States of America and the British Empire. The men and officers of Our Army and Navy shall do their utmost in prosecuting the war. Our public servants of various departments shall perform faithfully and diligently their respective duties; the entire nation with a united will shall mobilize their total strength so that nothing will miscarry in the attainment of Our war aims.

The Rescript concludes:

The situation being such as it is, Our Empire, for its existence and self-defense has no other recourse but to appeal to arms and to crush every obstacle in its path. The hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors guarding Us from above, We rely upon the loyalty and courage of Our subjects in Our confident expectation that the task bequeathed by Our forefathers will be carried forward and that the source of evil will be speedily eradicated and an enduring peace immutably established in East Asia, preserving thereby the glory of Our Empire.

Instantly, like a mighty tsunami, tremendous patriotic energy swept the nation. The air-waves began to repeat endlessly such phrases as: "Crush every obstacle!" "Glory of Our Empire!" and "Eradicate the source of evil!" Only four years later � four years of unprecedented destruction and killing throughout Asia and beyond � exactly at noon on August 15, 1945, standing in attention under the bright summer sun in a yard of a bombed factory where I was mobilized, I heard the "Dragon Voice" of the emperor telling us of "Ending the War." He said:

To Our good and loyal subjects:

After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our Empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.

We have ordered our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our Empire accepts the provisions of the joint declaration.

After brief four paragraphs explaining that "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan�s advantage" and the enemy�s use of the "new and most cruel bomb", the Rescript continues:

Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the Powers.

�. It is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable. �

The last paragraph reads:

Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith in the imperishableness of its divine land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it. Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, nobility of spirit, and work with resolution so that you may enhance the innate glory of the imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world.

On August 14, 1945 Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration issued on July 26, 1945. The Declaration reads in parts:

We � the President of the United States, the President of the National Government of the Republic of China, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, representing the hundreds of millions of our countrymen, have conferred and agree that Japan should be given an opportunity to end this war. � The full application of our military power, backed by our resolve, will mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland. �We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurance of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.

The Japanese people by then knew in body and spirit what "utter destruction" means. The hopeless war relentlessly continued. No one could stop it. It was as though some super demon had grasped the whole nation. I was struck by the word "unconditional surrender." Unconditional? What does it mean? "Japan should be given an opportunity to end this war." This sounded confusing to the nation that had become mentally unbalanced and deluded. Between the Potsdam Declaration and the surrender two nuclear bomb attacks took place on August 6 and 9, and the Soviet Union declared war against Japan on August 8, 1945. In fact, Japan�s prospect of winning the war had already been lost at the battle Midway when the bulk of the Japanese navy was sunk. The Midway battle took place only 6 months after Pearl Harbor.

The Emperor�s rescript ending the war was silent about the devastation Japan had inflicted upon the neighboring countries. It does not admit any wrongdoing on the part of Japan. It avoided the words "defeat" or "surrender." It still called Japan the "divine land." How can this exceptional nation perish?

On January 1, 1946, the New Year was opened with the "Declaration of the Humanity of the Emperor" which says:

The ties between Us and Our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection and do not depend upon mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine, and the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.

I personally remember that the official government propaganda before and during the war was that "the Emperor is divine, and the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world." With this peculiar declaration in the world of the 20th century, the nation took a first step to restore a normal sense of its humanity. This New Year experience was a cynical one, however, since most of the Japanese people had never accepted the myth of imperial divinity. In 1946, Japan shed the "Emperor�s Clothes" syndrome under which it had ruled for 70 years.

The Preamble of the post-war Constitution of Japan promulgated in May 1947 reads in part:

We believe that no nation is responsible to itself alone, but that laws of political morality are universal; and that obedience to such laws is incumbent upon all nations who would sustain their own sovereignty and justify their sovereign relationship with other nations.

This is a remarkable paragraph. It proclaims exactly opposite of the war time propaganda. A universal political morality must be the basis for the sovereignty of nations. Sovereignty requires a sense of international mutuality. It echoes the message of the Golden Rule: "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets" (Matt.7:12). Japan learned this great principle of human community only after it inflicted enormous destruction upon other peoples and upon itself! Exorcizing the nation of the unclean spirit of exceptionalism happened to be an extremely painful, costly and wasteful process!

Article Nine of the post-war constitution, known as "Renunciation of War," was a great gift from the American people to the people of the defeated nation.

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. The article stipulates the complete unconditional renunciation of war. Brought to their knees in 1945, the Japanese people took this covenant as their own national commitment. Personally I think of that time with nostalgic affection. At that time, though for a short while, the nation was repentant and honest. The harrowed spirits of the imperial ancestors were discredited. The "emperor was naked"! And so were the 100 million people! The truth finally came out. The nation vomited the rancid ideology of the center-complex. "The truth will make you free" (Jn. 8:32) spoke to Japan. The moment was similar to the return of the war-frenzied prodigal son to the truth of the renunciation of war, to borrow the story line of the parable of Jesus (Luke 15: 1-24). Japan, the prodigal son, squandered all it had. The Roman emperor Augustus said that "war is like fishing with a golden net" (Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitude Toward War and Peace, 140). Some years after 1946, however, Japanese conservative political powers began to demand revision or abolition of Article Nine. The nation that gave this article to Japan has changed its mind also. All nations, without exception, repeat the tragedy of self-destruction as Barbara Tuchman�s The March of Folly narrates.

When Japan accepted unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers in 1945, Japan was at enmity with 52 nations. In 1951 at the San Francisco Peace Treaty all nations, except the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia, signed the Treaty. Thus came to an end the tragic 70 year-episode of Japan�s demonic exceptionalism: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people, �". It was this unclean spirit that instigated the attack on Pearl Harbor, the event which President Roosevelt called the historic "infamy."

Christian Dialogue

Do not trust in these deceptive words: "This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in the place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever. (Jeremiah 7:4-7)

The ancient Jews thought Jerusalem was safe from Babylonian attacks because the temple was in it. So Jeremiah seems to mock their trust with the chant, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." Just so the Japanese felt secure from American attack because Tokyo had "the palace of the divine emperor, the palace of the divine emperor, the palace of the divine emperor." Both Jerusalem (BCE 587) and Tokyo (1945) were destroyed, 25 centuries apart because they failed to take care of the weaker members of the community. This story has been especially poignant for me personally for I was in Tokyo when it was devastated by bombs in 1945. Tokyo, just like Jerusalem, believed in the "deceptive words" of exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism: It may be true that if Japan had more technologically advanced war machines it could have won the war. But I am saying that it was not military inferiority that destroyed Japan. Rather, it was exceptionalism, a parochial sense of self-aggrandizement � I call it the center complex � that caused its defeat. It was surely an inflated self-esteem, exceptionalism, that made it plunge into war. "God, I thank you that I am not like other people�." destroyed Japan. Paul Tillich writes:

Idolatry is the elevation of a preliminary concern to ultimacy. Something essentially conditioned is taken as unconditional, something essentially partial is boosted into universality, and something essentially finite is given infinite significance. (Systematic Theology, James Nisbet, 1953, Vol. I., 16)

Japan "boosted" itself. It engaged in self-idolatry, a national delusion.

Bombing: The most appalling terror homo sapiens have ever engaged in is the bombing of inhabited cities. Bombs kill indiscriminately, pregnant women, suckling infants and kindergarten children included. A sacred principle of human community is that "one cannot dehumanize others without dehumanizing oneself" (James Baldwin). That is, "one cannot bomb others without bombing oneself." In this connection I have three observations:

(a) Christian community is not possible apart from human community for the former exists within the latter. What matters to Buddhist (or Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, etc.) and secular community matters to Christian community. Christian community which disdains Muslim community or any other community disdains its own Christian community.

(b) What do we mean by "victory"? Think of the untold human sorrow and misery caused by war for both the defeated and the victorious. In war are not both sides defeated? In this sense I hear the words of Jesus; "All who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matt. 26:52). Can any Japanese be happy today over the Rape of Nanjing in 1937? Can any American be happy today over the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 1945? These are chapters of unredeemable horror. The Second World War destroyed 35 to 60 million human lives (D.W. Shriver, An Ethic for Enemies, 247). And today Japan and Germany are friends of America! All enemies are "temporary" enemies.

(c) When people are bombed God is bombed. Is that a blasphemous thought? In Elie Wiesel�s Night I came across the words responding to the question, "where is God?" In the sight of the Jewish boy dangling from the gallows in Auschwitz someone whispered "God is dangling there" pointing to the boy.

Fundamentalism: "The less God is obvious, the more God is powerfully present" (Richard Bauckham, The Tablet, 12 Nov. 2005, p. 10). "Christ is hidden everywhere in the mystery of his lowliness" (Orthodox theologian George Khodr, "The Ecumenical Movement", in An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices, eds. Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, p. 403). Destruction often visits humanity by those who claim to know God exceptionally well "from A to Z." When the word of the holy God is too obvious, too easily known, that word may be simply parroting what the preacher/prophet thinks. We may say, such a God is a ventriloquized God. That is fundamentalism.

History is not a predetermined fate: True religion is focused upon what we do while we are alive. No one can "love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18) after death. History is open to change by our acts of love or acts of hate. We can destroy or preserve the biosphere of our planet. We can decide for or against bombing. Jesus made "love your neighbor as yourself" a radical command when he said, "love your enemies" (Matt. 5:44). What is the meaning of the Last Judgment? It is "to clothe the naked" now (Matt. 25:31-46). "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me," and these "will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. 25:31-46). Then the Muslims and Buddhists who help "one of the least of these" will go into eternal life!

"God shows no partiality" (Rm. 2:11): We note with some irony Chaplain Downey�s prayer at sending the Enola Gay off on the Hiroshima mission (Tinian Island, 1945 August 6, at 12.15 am):

Almighty Father, Who wilt hear in the prayer of them that love Thee, we pray Thee to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven and who carry the battle to our enemies. Guard and protect them, we pray Thee, as they fly their appointed rounds.

May they, as well as we, know Thy strength and power, and armed with Thy might may they bring this war to a rapid end. We pray Thee that the end of the war may come soon, and that once more we may know peace on earth. May the men who fly this night be kept safe in thy care, and may they be returned safely to us. We shall go forward trusting in Thee, knowing that we are in Thy care now and forever. In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen. (Enola Gay, by Gordeon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, Stein and Day/Publisher/ New York, 1977)

From the Japanese viewpoint, America was the enemy. From the American viewpoint, Japan was enemy. From God�s viewpoint, who was the enemy? Was there an enemy? Were not the people of Hiroshima also "in Thy care"?

Notes:

1. Kosuke Koyama is Professor Emeritus of Ecumenical Studies at Union Theological Seminary, New York, USA. A former executive director of the Association for Theological Education in South East Asia (ATESEA), he shared this speech, which was given at the House of Hope Presbyterian Church, in St. Paul, Minnesota, on December 7, 2005 during the 64th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attack by the Japanese Naval Air Force.