Tamura Yoshikazu is destined to die on the alien shores of the New Guinea warzone. Devoid of family contact, perplexed by the unfamiliarity of his environment, deprived of even meagre amenities and faced with the spectre of debilitating illness and starvation, this solitary soldier commenced a diary in the early part of 1943. Employed in the hard labour of building airstrips, he is ground down by tedium, disheartened by the now dysfunctional military hierarchy, consumed by grief at the meaningless deaths of comrades, and stripped of any chance of being involved in an aspect of war that he considers heroic and meaningful. Profoundly unsettled by all that appears to be at odds with the *kokutai* ideology, Tamura employs strategies through the vehicle of his diary to enable him to remain committed to the pathway of death on behalf of the Emperor.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Prologue
- Background
- The Role of ATIS in Intelligence Gathering
- Methodology
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Setting the Scene
- A Synopsis of Japanese Military History
- The Emergence of the Kokutai: The Re-creation of the Ancient Myth
- Japan at War
- Becoming the Emperor’s Soldiers
- The Ultimate Weapon: The Spirit of Yamato Damashii
- Creating Tragic Heroes
- 2. An Extraordinary Diary of an Ordinary Soldier
- Diary Writing in Japan
- The Diarist: Tamura Yoshikazu
- A Soldier Diarist’s Journey
- The Diary of Tamura Yoshikazu
- The Diary as a Tool of Investigation: Uncovering Kokutai
- For Whom Does Tamura Write?
- Why Does Tamura Write?
- How Does Tamura Write?
- What Does Tamura Write?
- 3. Priming the Country for War: Imperial Rescripts as Fortifiers of the Kokutai
- Disseminating Kokutai Ideology: Imperial Rescripts
- From Ritualism to Unconditional Conformism: Enforcing the Kokutai
- The Ultimate Kokutai Text: The Kokutai no Hongi
- Educating in the Kokutai
- War and the Kokutai
- Ensuring Soldiers’ Compliance: The Senjinkun
- The Kokutai as Dysfunctional Military Family
- Wholesale Acceptance?
- 4. Out of Landscape
- Japan as the Sublime: The Acculturation of Japanese Nature
- A Hellhole of a Place
- The Jungle as Physically Perverse
- The Jungle as Disorder
- The Ennui of Endless Rain
- 5. The Landscape of Deprivation
- No Tropical Paradise
- The Spectre of Starvation
- Disease, Illness, and Utter Fatigue
- Submitting to Power
- Communication Breakdown
- 6. Creating an Idealized World
- Diasporic Dilemma
- Enforced Exile
- Media
- Travel in the Homeland
- Journey across the Asian Continent
- Letters
- 7. Re-creating an EmotionallyAccommodating Landscape
- Setting It Right
- Nature: Controller or Controlled
- Autumn as a Seasonal Anchor
- Mountains as Redemption
- The Moon as Traveller
- The Battlefield as Surreal Landscape
- 8. Death as Man’s True Calling
- The Grand Desire to Die for the Emperor
- Ego Involvement: Reward for Loyalty
- Committing to Taigi
- The Ocean as Facilitator of a Noble Death
- Motifs of Death
- The Already Dead
- 9. Challenges to a Resolve to Die
- The Useless Rhetoric of the Emancipation of Asia
- The Tedium, the Terror, and the Lowly Role
- Death as Ignoble Reality
- A Life Flawed
- 10. Reconciling Death
- Relinquishing a Sense of Self – Jibun ga Nai
- The Torment of Becoming a Man without a Me
- Accepting Death: The Final Act of Loyalty
- Epilogue
- Glossary of Terms
- Abbreviations for sources heldat the Australian War Memorial(Canberra, ACT)
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Images and Maps
- Image 1
- Image 2
- Image 3
- Image 4
- Image 5
- Image 6
- Image 7
- Image 8
- Image 9
- Image 10
- Map 1
- Map 2
- Map 3
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