Changing Japanese views of the allied occupation of Japan and the war crimes trials

Author: Utsumi Aiko

{1} In research on the Japanese war crimes trials, it is hard to separate the topic from the problem of war responsibility. I would like to consider studies of the war crimes trials in the context of trends in the debate about war responsibility. The postwar debate in Japan on war responsibility may be divided into three phases.

1. The period 1945-1952

{2} The first period is from 1945 to 1952, the allied occupation of Japan. The early occupation period, until 1948 in particular, was the time of the trial of wartime leaders by the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) and the purge of war collaborators from public office. Consequently, much of the discussion of war responsibility consisted of calls for the punishment or purge of those responsible. In this phase of the debate there is no denying that there was a strongly political dimension and that the Japanese Communist Party played a prominent role. Furthermore, in many cases the purges were based not so much on objective materials as on the recollections of members of the parties themselves. On the whole, this was the period during which the debate on war responsibility was most energetically pursued and virtually all of the positions adopted subsequently within the postwar debate on war responsibility were articulated, including the problem of responsibility for Japanese aggression against Asia.

{3} One of the earliest discussions on war responsibility is that published by the journalist Cho Fumitsura (A secret history of the war defeat: A note on war responsibility -- Haisen hishi senso sekinin oboegaki, Jiyu Shobo, 1946). While assuming that the war crime responsibility of Tojo Hideki and the other defendants would be made clear in the forthcoming trials to be conducted by the allied forces, Cho argued that ‘in Japan the people have a duty to pursue the cause of war responsibility by their own efforts, and I consider that if we do not do so we will not be able to establish a genuine democracy based on the principle of responsibility’. Based on his notes from his time as a journalist, he wrote of the way in which the ‘restraint’ policy of Okada Keisuke (Prime Minister 1934-36) and the senior imperial retainers (jushin) had been overruled by other members of the government, army and navy, who were confident of absolute victory over Britain and America. His discussion of war responsibility is that of a journalist, describing the process of mobilizing Japanese society in the name of ‘onward for war, onward for war’, as he himself had witnessed it.

{4} Another very early book is Okuma Nobuyuki’s On war responsibility (Senso sekininron, Ijinsha, 1948). This book reflects how soon after the end of the trials the compilation and study of records from the court began among scholars of law, as well as the defence lawyers. On 1 October 1946, the Society for Research on the IMTFE (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban kenkyukai) was set up by a group comprising Ohama Shingen, Ichimata Masao and others from Waseda University Faculty of Law. This group pursued its research in parallel with the Tokyo Tribunal, and published their work in Volume 1 of Studies on the IMTFE (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban kenkyu, 1947). This also included the articles by Irie Keishiro ‘Allied measures for dealing with war crimes’ (‘Rengokoku no senpan shori hoshin’) and Mizuka Yoshio, ‘Outline of war tribunal composition’ (‘Senso saiban kosei no shotaiyo’) which provided ‘Explanations of the trial’ and also contained outlines dealing with the composition and procedure of the court, ‘Records and materials’ and a ‘Court diary’. On its publication, Ohama Shingen wrote as follows:

Each and every Japanese must resolve anew to keep watch on the proceedings of the trial from the standpoint of international justice, to scrutinize one by one the crimes which are under trial and the evidence brought forward, listen point by point to the arguments of the prosecutors and the rebuttals of the defence lawyers, to reflect deeply about it, to renew our understanding and reaffirm our resolve.

{5} And further:

the Japanese people should regard this as a process which they must pass through in order to be reborn as internationalists and to be admitted to international society as it is reconstituted, and to that end it is far from excessive to say that the records of the International Military Tribunal should be compulsory reading for the Japanese people.

(Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban kenkyu, Volume 1, Heiwa Shobo, 1947, pp. 4-5)

{6} The second volume was published in February 1948. It contained as major reports the articles by Ichimata Masao, ‘War Crimes in International Law’ (‘Kokusai ho ni okeru senso hanzai’) and Eya Yoshio, ‘Indictment procedures in Anglo-American Law’ (‘Eibeiho ni okeru kiso tetsuzuki’). This series of reports was continued until Voume 3, after which they appeared as separate publications.

{7} Studies by legal scholars of the relationship between war crimes and international law were also conducted. Yokota Kisabaro’s On war crimes (Senso hanzairon, Yuhikaku, 1947) and Takayanagi Kenzo’s The IMTFE and international law: Pleadings at the IMTFE (Kyokuto saiban to kokusaiho - Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban ni okeru benron) (Yuhikaku, 1948) were representative of this trend. Among journals, the September 1948 issue of Choryu was a special one entitled ‘Learning from the Far East Trial’ (‘Kyokuto saiban ni manabu’), and in September 1948 Rekishi hyoron also published a special issue on the Tokyo trials (‘Tokyo saiban’).

{8} In 1949, the year following the execution of the A class war criminals, Hanayama Nobukatsu, Buddhist chaplain at the Sugamo prison, published Discovering peace (Heiwa no hakken, Asahi Shimbunsha, 1949).

{9} During this period, there was very little discussion of the B and C class war crimes trials, which were conducted at the same time as the Tokyo trial. The only publications were by Munemiya Shinji, who had been involved in the trials conducted on Ambon by Australia and wrote The Ambon war crimes trials (Ambonto senpan saihanki, Horitsu shinposha, 1946), and Kadomatsu Shoichi’s Capital punishment (Koshukei, Jipusha, 1950). During this period, not only were the realities of the B and C-class trials not known, but even in Japan the trials aroused little interest. From around 1950 the men convicted overseas for war crimes were gradually returned to Japan, and articles about the war crimes trials, though written with US Army censorship in mind, began to appear in Sugamo shimbun, the newspaper published inside Sugamo Prison. The B and C class war criminals wrote memoirs, and after the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect on 28 April 1952 and Sugamo Prison came under the jurisdiction of the Japanese Justice Ministry, many such reports began to circulate among the Japanese people.

2. The period 1952-1964

{10} The second period is that which falls between the coming into effect of the San Fransisco Peace Treaty and the Japan-Korea Normalization Treaty of 1965. It coincides with the period in which Stalin began to be criticized in the Soviet Union, and when the way in which the Communist Party had pursued the question of war responsibility during the first period was criticized. Questions were raised about how the Communist Party’s literary figures who had pursued the war responsibility of others had concealed the fact that, during the war, they themselves had undergone ideological ‘conversion’ to become supporters of the war. The party was also criticised for having been unable to do much about stopping the war.

{11} Another characteristic of this period is that there was considerable discussion of the responsibility of intellectuals and literary figures and of the Japanese people for their cooperation in the war, rather than the responsibility of the war leadership.

{12} One example of this is the Showa history (Showashi) [1] debate. This debate gave rise to various discussions on the nature of the Fifteen Year War (1931-45) and the location of responsibility for it. The debate focussed on questions such as whether there had been a possibility of the Communist Party and other political forces preventing the war, and, if there had been such a possibility, what exactly it had been and what was the nature of the war responsibility of the Japanese people, as distinct from the war responsibility of the leadership.

{13} Many essays and monographs were published by the intellectuals who played the central role in postwar debates. To mention only the most representative ones, there were the following: Okuma Nobuyuki, State evil (Kokka aku, Chuo Koronsha, 1957), Kamei Katsuichiro’s Problems of contemporary history (Gendaishi no kadai, Chuo Koronsha, 1957), Takeo Akio and Yoshimoto Takaaki’s The war responsibility of literary figures (Bungakusha no senso sekinin, Awaji Shobo, 1956), and Aoki’s The war responsibility of judges (Saibankan no senso sekinin, Nihon Hyoronsha, 1963).

{14} Apart from these, issue No 17 of the Journal of the Science of Thought Study (Shiso no kagaku kaiho) contained a discussion of war responsibility in which the intellectuals who played a leading role in postwar debate participated, including Maruyama Masao, Ienaga Saburo, Ara Masato, Kuno Osamu, Murakami Hyoe, Ibukata Naokichi, Takeuchi Yoshimi, Hidaka Rokuro, Minami Hiroshi, Tsurumi Shunsuke, and Tsurumi Kazuko.

{15} Volume 3 of Discovery of the contemporary (Gendai no hakken), entitled War responsibility (Senso sekinin, Shunjusha, 1960), contained Takeuchi Yoshimi’s ‘War responsibility’ (‘Senso sekinin’), Yoshimoto Takaaki’s ‘The original image of Japan’s fascists’ (‘Nihon fashizusuto no genzo’), Murakami Ichiro’s ‘Introduction to the Japanese military’ (‘Nihon guntairon josetsu’), Takeuchi Minoru’s ‘The sense of destiny and sense of being insulted’ (‘Shimeikan to kutsujokukan’), and Hashikawa Bunzo’s ‘The problem of responsibility in modern and contemporary Japanese history’ (‘Nihon kin-gendaishi ni okeru sekinin no mondai’).

{16} There was a close relationship between discussion of the many-sided war responsibility and war cooperation of the Japanese people on the one hand and the publication of trial records of the Tokyo Tribunal and materials on the B and C class tribunals on the other.

{17} During this period, the collection by the Japanese government of records relating to B and C trials slowly got under way. In the case of the Tokyo trial, the collection of materials and records proceeded during the conduct of the trial, but the records of B and C trials were not officially handed over to the Japanese government. Although the staff of the No 1 and No 2 Repatriation Bureaus of the Ministry of Welfare, which had been assigned duties relating to war crimes, had gathered some memos and records, there had been no call from among them for the need for systematic collection. The following is a list of events relating to the collection of materials.

October 1954
Consultations between the various section heads of the Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Welfare, and the representatives of those looking after those punished for war crimes on the collection of B and C class trial-related materials.

April 1955
Start of the actual task of collection of materials by the Ministry of Justice’s Reform Bureau.

December 1955
Opening of joint conference between the Ministries of Justice, Welfare and Foreign Affairs, following which the Ministry of Justice undertook the collection of materials.

April 1956
A Ministry of Justice conference decided on ‘Outline of plan for the collection of war crime related materials’.

September 1956
The task of collection was transferred from the Ministry of Justice’s Reform Bureau to the Cabinet Research Office (Kanbo Chosabu).

May 1958
Further transfer to the Judicial Investigation Section of the Minister of Justice Secretariat’s Judicial Investigation Department, which undertook the collection of materials relating to both A and B or C class war crimes.

{18} As far as the Tokyo Tribunal was concerned, the collection focussed on materials in the possession of the defence lawyers, but in the case of the B and C trials, with two or three exceptions, the defence lawyers were not allowed to take away trial materials. Therefore, the Ministry of Justice had to make its request to the various governments through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their records or copies of records. As a result, records of the trials held by the US Army in Manila were obtained from the Philippines, and copies of indictments and judgements were handed over by France, but no records were obtained from other countries. Collections therefore included records which had been secretly brought back to Japan by those connected with the trials. Copies of judgements and of indictments were included among these materials. However, to this day, because the Justice Ministry says that ‘it is impossible to confirm that these are the same as the originals’, in principle the materials have not been made available. If an application is made by the actual convicted person, or their representative, it is possible to see the materials, but even then it is forbidden to make copies except in note form.

{19} The following materials have been compiled by the Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section over the years since 1958:

• Outline table of the war crimes trials of various countries (Kakkoku senso saiban gaikenhyo)
• Statistical table of war crimes’ trials (Senso hanzai saiban tokeihyo)
• Table of indictment and investigation of war crimes’ trials (Senso hanzai saiban kiso jijitsu chosahyo);
• List of names of those indicted in war crimes trials (Senso saiban hikisosha meibo);
• Table of various war crime-related materials (Senpan shiryo betsu hyo).

{20} In addition, three volumes of edicts relating to war crimes trials (Senso hanzai saiban kankei horeishu) were published in 1963, 1965, and 1967 as Materials on war crimes trials. These included both the original war crimes-related laws and edicts of various countries in the original and a Japanese translation.

{21} Next, the Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section published in 1968 the R.H. Jackson Report, the international conference held in London between June and August 1945 on military tribunals.

{22} In February 1967, the Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section published in mimeographed form the 800-page Outline of the release of war criminals (Senpan shakuho shi yo), a comprehensive report on the release of A, B and C class war criminals.

{23} Apart from this, the Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section compiled a Brief table of IMTFE evidence (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban shosho ichiranhyo), and a Chronology of the IMTFE (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban kohan nisshi), both of uncertain publication date, and in 1971 the List of materials related to the IMTFE (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban shiryo mokuroku).

{24} The Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section collected a mass of materials but has not published them, taking the view that ‘to do so would raise large problems from the point of view of protection of related people’. There are some materials of which even perusal is not permitted.

{25} Although it happens during Stage 3, a comprehensive ‘Outline of the history of war crimes trials’ (‘Senso hanzai saiban gai shi yo’) compiled by the Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section, was published in August 1973. Written by three members of that section, including Toyoda Kumao, it is the most comprehensive study of the Tokyo trial and the B and C class trials. However, it is marked ‘Handle with care’, and has not been commercially published.

{26} Prior to these moves at the level of government, various materials facilitating research towards a comprehensive picture of the Tokyo Trial were published during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953 the Asahi Shimbun’s Research Department compiled Index and ready reference to the IMTFE (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban - mokuroku oyobi soin), which provided a clue to the overall scale of the trial records. Also, the Tokyo Trial Publication Society (Tokyo saiban kankokai) published its three volume Tokyo trial (Tokyo saiban) in 1962, and Nakazawa Tamotsu in 1963 published ‘List of IMTFE-related materials in the Waseda University Library’ (‘Waseda Daigaku toshokan zo kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban kiroku mokuhyo’) in Waseda University Library Review (Waseda Daigaku Toshokan kiyo).

{27} It was during this period that interest began to extend not only to the problem of the Tokyo Trial but to the B and C trials, and to the problem of release of the convicted. Following the adoption of the San Fransisco Peace Treaty, the administration of war criminals was transferred to Japan’s Ministry of Justice and the movement for the release of the prisoners held in Sugamo Prison developed. The truth about war crimes trials (Senpan saiban no jisso), published by the Sugamo Legal Affairs Committee, showed how unjust many of the proceedings of the B and C trials had been. This 852-page volume, prepared by the prisoners themselves in mimeographed format, gave an outline of the trials while arguing that the B and C trials were ‘a theatre of revenge in the garb of a trial’. This volume, which recorded in detail the illegalities of the trials conducted by the various countries, and the ill-treatment and torture of those being held prisoner, was subsequently published in 5 volumes, in pocket-book size, by Tochosha as Records of historical truth - War trials (Shijitsu kiroku - Senso saiban). This book was written to try to convince the majority of the Japanese people who were more or less ignorant of the B and C trials of their illegality, in order to push the case of the movement for the release of the prisoners. The basic position of the book was the adoption of the position of the victims, the B and C war criminals who had been ‘sacrificed in the illegal trials conducted by the victors’.

{28} Another book which exercised a large influence on views of the B and C trials was Testaments for the century (Seiki no isho), published in 1953 by the Sugamo Testament Editorial Committee (Sugamo isho henshukai). This was a compilation of last testaments written for their families and friends by those being executed as war criminals. Its contents focussed on the wrongness of the judgements handing down the death penalty.

{29} An enormous number of memoirs were written at Sugamo Prison, some of which were subsequently published. Films and television dramas have been based upon such memoirs. I want to be a shellfish (Watashi wa kai ni naritai), the masterpiece among post-war television dramas, was based on memoirs such as I had to die (Ware shinubeshiya, edited by Ato Shobo, Ato Shobo, 1952), Seven years later (Are kara 7 nen, Kobunsha, 1953), and Room with thick walls (Kabe atsuki heya, Rironsha, 1953), and dramatized by Hashimoto Shinobu. Most such memoirs had been written by student conscripts (gakutohei) and, unlike the Jisso cited earlier, these works directly addressed the question of war responsibility from the position of the B and C war criminals themselves. They discussed the war crimes of the Japanese Army, criticised the Japanese leadership (officers, politicians, bureaucrats) who had avoided trial as war criminals and criticised the trials conducted by the allies, berating them for their ignorance of the reality of the Japanese Army and power strucure.

3. The period 1965-1990

{30} In 1965 the Vietnam War intensified and the movement against the Vietnam War in Japan reached a peak. The criticism of American aggression led to criticism of Japan’s support for the war, which in turn provided the occasion for further developments in the debate on war responsibility. The debate during this period was a very factually-oriented debate on responsibility, based upon many newly discovered materials or the digging up of long-concealed facts.

{31} It had various features, one of which was the raising of questions about the responsibility of various intermediary organizations, such as newspapers and schools, standing in between the state and the people. The confession of war responsibility by the Japan Christian Federation (Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan) occurred in March 1967.

{32} Secondly, after the Japan-Korea Normalization Treaty, questions were asked about the responsibility of capital for Japanese military advances into Asia and aggression. Such aggression was then seen not just as the act of the army or government, but as the responsibility of Japanese soldiers and ordinary people at the lowest levels. Tonnaga Saburo’s The postwar history of some BC-class war criminals (Aru BC kyu senpan no sengoshi) was published by Shinchosha in 1977.

{33} Thirdly, as the political role of the emperor grew larger during the 1970s, the question of the war responsibility of the Showa emperor came to be widely debated. Also related to this was the publication of primary materials recording the words and deeds of the emperor during the war. Relevant publications include the Kido diary (Kido nikki) and the Sugiyama memo (Sugiyama memo). The Kido Koichi diary - the time of the Tokyo trial (Kido Koichi nikki - Tokyo saibanki), (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980), and the Tokyo trial materials - Interrogations of Kido Koichi (Tokyo saiban shiryo - Kido Koichi shunmon chosho), was published in 1987 by Otsuki Shoten, edited by Awaya Kentaro and his colleagues.

{34} Fourthly, there is the problem of the war responsibility of the Allies. The responsibility of the US for the dropping of the atomic bomb or the bombing of Tokyo came to be discussed in light of the evidence.

{35} Also in connection with war trials, in 1968 the IMTFE shorthand record (ten volumes, Yushodo) was reissued. Also in 1968 the Tokyo Trial Research Society’s Joint research - The judgement of Mr Justice Pal (Kyodo kenkyu - Pal hanji hanketsusho) was published.

{36} In 1971 the Tokyo University’s Institute of Social Science issued its Records of the IMTFE (Kyokuto kokusai gunji saiban kiroku) listing its holdings. This list was based on the materials held by Kanamori Kunji, counsel for Hashimoto Kingoro, and Sanmonji Shosuke, counsel for Koiso Kuniaki.

{37} The National Diet Library in 1978 began to collect in microfilm form the occupation records held in the American National Records Center. By 1988, the microfilming of approximately 3.65 million pages of the records of the Justice Department’s Legal Section was completed and published. Among the documents of the Legal Section were materials pertaining to the Yokohama, Manila, Shanghai, and Guam Trials. Also included were materials concerning individuals suspected of war crimes and individual allied prisoners, compilations of materials concerning events in the different regions listed according to the various POW camps, and documents setting out how it came about that suspected A class war criminals were not indicted. Apart from these, records of the Yokohama B and C trials and retrials were also published.

{38} During this period interest in the Tokyo trial, but also in the B and C class trials reached a second high point. The film Tokyo trial (directed by Kobayashi Masaaki) was released in 1983 and an international symposium on the Tokyo Trial was conducted in Tokyo to which the the Dutch judge Roling, was invited. The proceedings of that symposium were also published (Tokyo saiban o tou, Hosoya Chiharo et al. (eds.), Kodansha, 1984).

{39} Since the ‘Outline history of war crimes trials’ prepared in August 1973 by Toyoda Kumao and his colleagues of the Justice Ministry’s Judicial Investigation Section had not been released commercially, it was published in 1986 by Gakuseisha as Additional records of war trials (Senso saiban yoroku).

4. The period from 1990 to the present

{40} From 1990 Japan has been shaken by the swelling demand for compensation for wartime suffering from other countries of Asia. Meanwhile, opponents of the decision to include references to ‘comfort women’ in junior secondary school history textbooks from 1998 have even been petitioning local assemblies to call for such references to be deleted.

{41} Those calling for such deletion on 2 December 1996 established the Society for the Making of New History Textbooks, following an appeal by a group of nine people including the prominent authors Hayashi Mariko and Fukada Yusuke and the Tokyo University professor Fujioka Nobukatsu. Among those who expressed public support for the call were listed the names of 78 people, including academics such as Iida Tsuneo and Haga Toru, professors, from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Hata Ikuhiko, Chiba University professor, and prominent business figures such as the Managing Director of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank, the chairman of Fujitsu Corporation and the permanent advisor to Nomura Securities and journalists.

{42} Attention deserves to be paid to the sense of history expressed in the ‘Statement issued on formation’ of this group, since it is not concerned only with deletion of references to ‘comfort women’. The statement reads:

The sense of history of the victorious powers, the USA and the Soviet Union, which negates Japan’s historical past, have been present in compound form in the thinking of postwar Japanese intellectuals. As a result, Japan has lost its own sense of history.

{43} And, for that reason, the statement goes on:

We call for a reform of the way of thinking that has developed over these 50 postwar years, and we strongly urge the necessity of an effort to recover that authentic sense of history which is the unique possession of every nation, through a return to the principles outlined in 'What is history?'.

{44} In short, they negate the Tokyo trial view of history. The view of the Asia-Pacific War as one for survival and self-defence, as articulated by Tojo Hideki and others at the Tokyo trial, has lived on in post-war Japan. Books criticizing the Tokyo Trial view of Japan’s aggressive war have been published before. For example, Sabaki no niwa ni loikatete (Passing through the garden of judgement) was written and published at his own expense by Fuji Nobuo, who had actually participated in and missed not a single day of the trial, and in 1986 it was published in the Kodansha Scientific Library (Gakujutsu bunko) series. Reprint issues of the two volume The Pal judgement (Paru hanketsusho) were also issued by the same publisher.

{45} Kobori Keiichiro’s The Tokyo trial: Japan’s case (Tokyo saiban - Nihon no benmei, Kodansha gakujutsu bunko, 1995) contains excerpts from ‘the signed statement of Japan’s case’. This was a part of the documents prepared by the defence team but not allowed to be presented to the court. The materials themselves amount to 5,500 pages and have been brought together in 8 volumes by Kokusho Kankokai.

{46} On the other hand, the interrogations conducted by the International Prosecution Section (IPS) have been edited by Awaya Kentaro and his colleagues and published by Nihon Tosho Senta. The Tokyo trial and beyond, by the Dutch judge B.V.A. Roling, was also translated and published as Reringu hanji no Tokyo saiban (Shinchosha, 1993).

{47} At last it becomes possible to grasp the meaning of the Tokyo trial, including the minority as well as majority views. So far as the B and C trials are concerned, there is still the problem that materials within Japan are not open, but various studies have begun to appear based on materials in the archives in Australia and also in Britain and the USA. Over 50 years have now elapsed since the war, and at last academic interest in the war trials among researchers in Japan is burgeoning once again.

NOTE: In accordance with Japanese practice, Japanese names appear with the surname first.

© Utsumi Aiko

Utsumi Aiko, a Professor at Keisen University, has published extensively on Japanese history, especially on B and C class war crimes trials.

Note

1. The Showa history (Showashi) debate is the debate over the joint volume Showashi, by Toyama Shigeki, Imai Sei-ichi, and Fujiwara Akira, published in November 1951 by Iwanami. Based on criticism and counter-criticism of the method and problematic of Marxist historical method, in particular of the research and construction of the historical narrative of the Showa period, a multi-faceted debate was stirred up which extended to the fundamental problem of the nature of history, concerning ‘the problem of humanity in historical consciousness and narrative’. In the background to the debate was the ‘6th Plenum’ of July 1955 and the following year’s criticism of Stalin, but the immediate occasion was the criticism advanced in 1956 by Kamei Katsuichiro, ‘Doubts about contemporary historical studies’ (‘Gendai rekishigaku e no gimon’, Bungei shunju, March 1956), that in Showashi there were only the ruling classes which caused the war and the progressive forces which opposed it, and that the people who were wavering in between the two were absent. Following that, the point about the lack of a ‘love for humanity’ in the Showashi was also made by Matsuda Michio and Yamamuro Shizuka, thus agreeing with Kamei. Toyama and his colleagues insisted on the scientific character of history, and strongly emphasized the difference in the purpose and method of the way humanity is depicted in history and in the arts.