A BRIEF CASE HISTORY OF JAPANESE SELF-DECEPTION 325

the faults of his own country—although perhaps not all her faults !
What we had anticipated as a grim and ghastly evening proved to
be quite the contrary.

A BRIEF CASE HISTORY OF JAPANESE
SELF-DECEPTION

March 26, 1941

To what extent the intelligent Japanese were guilty of intellectual
dishonesty, or to what extent they arrive at honest convictions from
the propaganda with which they are fed, is always to me an open
question. Since they are not allowed to know the facts, perhaps we
can give them the benefit of the doubt, yet it is a little difficult to
understand how an intelligent and scholarly man like the President
of Waseda University, which has long stood for liberalism, can write
such stuff as the following :

As stressed in the Konoye statement made some time ago, Japan's
purpose in the present conflict is not a petty territorial acquisition.
... It is rather to safeguard China's independence, and, respect-
ing her sovereignty, to establish a New Order in East Asia. In
order to fulfil this noble mission, Japan has had to venture the
greatest war in history. . . . Where in the world can another
example of a battle fought with such a lofty ideal be found ? This
may truly be termed a Sacred War. . . . The countries that are
most strongly insisting upon the maintenance of the " Open Door
policy " and the principle of " equal opportunity " in the world
to-day are the least willing to put into practice what they are
advocating. Can international justice be established while such
inconsistency prevails ?

Yet some of them have a sense of humour in spite of all, and
the following item recently appeared in the Japan Times and
Advertiser:

Because Britain has occupied Danish Iceland illegally the
German Government has denounced it and applied the submarine
blockade thereto. That should teach the British not to take over
other people's territory without due process of law.

The hide of the Germans is far too thick ever to see the irony intended.
A certain Japanese once remarked about the Germans : " What do
they think we are ? Vassals ? " And the other day he told me
he thought that the touchiness of the Germans springs from a marked
inferiority complex. That from a Japanese is good.

On another occasion the same newspaper published a phrase from
one of Hitler's speeches—" the Herrenvolk, the master race "—as
" the hairy horde, the monster ape." I don't believe that the printer's
devil could have been responsible for that one.