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We all know that, to start a war, you need an enemy, while ending a war needs the two enemies to reach an agreement to stop fighting. The difficulty then is in implementing the agreement. There is always an “enemy within” that will oppose it. This becomes an internal debate that can even be more complicated to handle than the one with the enemy itself. The story of Japan in the Second World War helps us understand that it is this internal dimension that is blocking the negotiating mechanisms that aim to end the wars in Lebanon and Gaza.
Eighty years ago, after the US dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan did not “capitulate” or “surrender” to the Americans. There was a difficult discussion that was mainly internal within Japan that led to a formulation that was palatable internally and took Japanese sensitivities into account. The historian Richard Overy explains this in his book “Rain of Ruin.” It was crucial to avoid the word “capitulation” in order to reconcile Japan’s surrender with the country’s cultural ethos of honor and loyalty to the emperor, meaning the wording was everything.
Overy describes an intense debate between different factions within Japan, such as the military and those calling for resistance and addressing public sentiment. The final decision was shaped as much by internal politics as by external pressure. It was moderates arguing against hard-liners, who resisted any form of surrender, and the different interpretations of loss, dignity and survival. The surrender had to be framed in such a way as to allow Japan to accept the terms without feeling annihilated. Emperor Hirohito broke the deadlock by using abstract and indirect language. Instead of using triggering words like “surrender” or “defeat,” he spoke of “enduring the unendurable” to restore peace.
