WHAT KIND OF PEACE FOR JAPAN?
Lattimore, Eleanor
What Kind Of Peace For Japan? WHAT TO DO WITH JAPAN, by Wilfred Fleisher. Doubleday, Doran. $2. Reviewed by Eleanor Lattimore "WHAT to do with Japan" is a question which concerns not only the...
...The discussion of a new policy toward dependent peoples is perhaps the most enlightened of any in the book...
...He found in talking with American and visiting foreign statesmen that "a pattern already exists," and he believes that the plan he presents in this book "will give a fair advance idea of the sort of peace we may expect unless there is a great change of opinion among leaders in the meantime...
...As for occupation and disarmament, the author believes that Japan must not be let off lightly or treated softly and that official quarters in Washington favor "doing a thorough job of it and getting it over as quickly as possible...
...If the Japanese are inscrutable to Mr...
...MR...
...On reading further it seemed to me that Mr...
...They are human beings, and no matter how pathological they may be and how perverted by their environment, surely it is possible for wise experts to untangle their mental processes and to foresee their reactions and behavior...
...It is therefore extremely disconcerting, not to say discouraging, to read in the fourth sentence of the book that Mr...
...Reviewed by Eleanor Lattimore "WHAT to do with Japan" is a question which concerns not only the State Department and Military Government officials but every American, because the transforming of Japan into a peaceful, peace-loving nation where the seeds of militarism and aggression cannot germinate again is vital to the peace of the world...
...We have not in the past been very successful in using "moronic little kings," and I have found that the more recent tendency among Washington officials to soft pedal the whole question of the Emperor as being less important than other questions which must be decided...
...Knowing this background the public expects an authoritative treatment, and the publishers claim on the jacket that "Mr...
...Fleisher could not have intended to write that disconcerting sentence, for he presents on the whole a clear and well rounded picture of the future of Japan and the part we must play in its rebuilding...
...FLEISHER puts great emphasis on the role of the Emperor in postwar Japan and believes that while Hirohito must go we should keep and use the institution of the Emperor, possibly in the person of the Crown Prince or Prince Chichibu...
...The task offers baffling problems to even the wisest heads, and because Japanese social structure and Japanese psychology are so little understood in this country a book by a man who has spent much of his life in Japan should be welcomed by the American public...
...Fleisher we feel defeated before we start and are inclined to read no farther...
...Fleisher went to Japan in 1914 to join the staff of his father's newspaper, the Japan Advertiser, with which he has been connected for most of the time from then until 1940...
...I did read farther, because I had promised to write this review and because I have come to believe that the inscrutability of the Japanese has been greatly exaggerated by the experts...
...Fleisher knows the Japanese better than almost any other Occidental...
...It is not alone his own picture which he presents, for he has talked with almost all the other experts and has included their views along with his own...
...The chapters on "Stripping Japan of her Conquests" and "Occupation and Disarmament" pose more important problems and offer many practical and sound solutions...
...Fleisher believes the Japanese to be "inscrutable...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 20
