Hirohito and the making of modern Japan by Herbert P Bix 2001 582 pg

April 2024  Parts of the book  the Introduction

Post 1915 the racialist ultranationalist of the" Imperial Way" that had powered Japanese aggression disintegrated .

The Meijj Constitution of 1889 was grafted to an absolutist system of power and ascribed to the sacred and inviolable emperor enormous military and civil powers. Imperial Rescript on Education also prevented a true constitutional monarchy from evolving, but actually the authority resided in the cabinet. 

Between1925 and 1945 the led to repressive responses to dissent at home and to rising nationalism

1931 an insubordinate young officer fearing that Chiang Kai-shek campaign would reunify China in defiance of the Emperor began a campaign in Manchuria thus railway rights in these areas were divided into Japanese and American Spheres of influence.

1922 Nine power treaty was supposed to guarantee Chinas territorial integrity and the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact.

 1920s Hirohiito  abandoned the party based cabinets and presided over a balance of powers amongst the elites the military the parliament and business community. This was designed to fortify the throne by entrusting power to elderly admirals.

1936 A bloody mutiny the largest ever ,resulted in murder of Hirohito's closest advisers. This was suppressed and the Emperor to on greater decision making power 

1919 Japans proposal for a racial equality at t he Paris peace Conference. Australia, the US and Canada all had discriminatory and humiliating immigration policies.

1924 Congress Immigration Act gave quotes against genetically inferior Eastern European Jews , Italians and Japanese. Some Japanese considered that immigration had declared war on Japan.

1930 Tokyo's withdrawal from the League of Nations and encouraged Japanese elites to reconstruct a national policy.

In China Chiang's  forces were weakened but this failed to bring a victory to Japan. Japan was now pinning it last homes on Moscow's mediation.

1941 Hirohito was deeply involved in planning the US attack. The military leaders , Hirohito and the Court Group all contributed to Japans defeat. On report say that it was not the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but that Russia was about to enter the war against Japan that finally bough the capitulation. Consider that Japan's last hope was for Russia to mediate. Truman carefully avoided inviting Stalin to sign.

1945  Feb14th  Prince Konoe Fumimaro pleaded with Hirohito to surrender immediately he was brushed aside.

Late July there were few Japanese cities left to be destroyed with bombs and incendiaries.

All the good that came with the restoration of peace is attributed to Hirohito assisted by the occupation forces.

Douglas Mc Author relied on the emperor to legitimize extensive occupation, reforms and further his own political ambitions.  The emperor could have been indicted at the International Military Tribunal in Tokyo.

1947 National Constitution drafted by Mc Author stripped the monarch of power diminished his authority and redefined him as a "symbol emperor" Okinawa became an American naval base to dominate the pacific.

1951 When Macarthur was fired by Truman for taking a political stand on Korea General Mathew Ridgeway replaced him 

1989 Hirohito  Died  56 year old Crown Prince Akihito succeeded him. Akihito said my generation has lived for a long time with out war and I have no need to reflect on war. They visited China in 1982

1989 End of Cold war

2000 China's spectacular economic was based on its huge underutilization of its population and formidable manufacturing capacity..

2001 PM Kolzumi Junichtra of Japan

2001 When America went to war against Iraq PM Kaifu Toshiki supported the oil sanctions and provided substantial finding  because of Japans need for oil.

Spratly Archipelago here china build artificial island to bolster her claim to most of the South China Sea.

The Nuclear policy of Kim John Un is a defensive reaction to Washington's long standing policy of regime change.

China is determined to prevent the Kim regime collapsing into chaos.

2007 the Japan house of representatives accepted responsibility for the comfort women or sexual slavery practices by the Imperial Armed Forces during their occupation of the Asian island.

2014 The truth behind Japans involvement in WW2 came with the official release of Hirohito's biography. This is in 18 volumes. The monarchy never hesitated from a foreign power protecting it against communism. 

2019 Nurihito became Emperor of Japan as his father abdicated.

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert 2003,288pg to reedit

 The  story of Eustace Conway and about rural America   6/5/24

1961 Born in South Carolina his house was next to an original old world forest that had not yet been developed.  His mother taught him to camp, fish build a fire handle wildlife and weave grasses into rope. He read books on Davy Crocket and Wild world Wisdom how to sew buckskin. American History goes - there was a frontier and then there was not. Nostalgia for Buffalo Bill Wild West show and Frederick Remington's art. Reading Jack London can give you the itch to travel.

1818 a British observer noted that every American considers that its impossible for a foreigner to teach him anything. Challenged of a new worlds virgin wilderness was unhindered by class or urban squalor.

1824 German born Gottfried Duden travelled to the West to find suitable homestead places for German families interested in immigrating. This was a time when Ohio farmers were constructing a 230 mile canal without a licensed engineer.

1850 The English travel writer described the rugged men she encountered. American bough the hype of what was an American Man, and by 1890 the American frontier suddenly closed. We were taught that resourcefulness  is next to godliness. Much inspired by the poems of Walt Whitman.

1883 Teddy Roosevelt boasted his rugged experiences in a buckskin shirt and horsehide chaparajos.

 

Things like fast food are  bringing poorer health, we seem to have the same disregard for our bodies as we have for natural resources .There is not difference between winter and summer if you can eat strawberries every day. People have fallen out of step with natural cycles. In nature everything is connected, circular. The planet is circular and so is the passage of the sun as well as life cycles of plants and animals. The civilized world is scarier than the woods.

1804Thomas Jefferson knew Meriwether Lewis well, he commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition to investigate the Louisiana purchase lands.

Eustace liked reading about the Indian wars, he didn't  have friends and had not time for kids who spent time watching TV. The children were more like his apprentices. He showed them how to catch snakes and find food for his turtles. Eustace's father was a mountain man who knew everything about hunting riding. He was and engineer and academic.

He got to know the Indian tribes and Eustace's picture appeared in the press with his successes in completions and Indian dances .He was presented with the National Youth Award from the Smithsonian.

His parents never got on and family advised his mother  to leave the marriage but she never found the courage. Divorces was a mortal sin. Despite what his father would do or say about him, he would be a Man of destiny. His mother would go to the library and bring him piles of biographies of Washington , Daniel Boone , Davy Crocket, Lincoln, Kit Carlson, John Fremont, Andrew Jackson , Geronimo , Red Cloud and Sitting Bull.

Wagon trails going west were filled with young boys who had left home for a number of reasons. They were drawn to the frontier due to bad relationships or tough fathers.

When he finished high school he took some books, his hand made teepee and split. He lived around Gastonia N. Carolina. for a while in Tennessee he worked as a nature educator for disabled kids.

 Eustace Conway who at 18 walked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia surviving on what he hunted and gathered with a friend. They caught crawfish and trout, killed rattlesnakes. They came to a small town where there was a family who keep the common hog and they took charge of it but ate all the food over meant for it, perfectly good food.

Eustace refused to go to church and studied every religion he could get books for of and found that god is only available in nature. In James Ferrimore Coopers Dear Slayer Natty never marries as he would have to give up his world of solitude.

He met Donna on the trail and he slipped into her tent He taught her about every plant or rock that passed .Frank bowed out of the challenge but Donna joined him. He finished hiking the trail in Sept 1981 it took him 4 and a half months. He found that if he went to the garbage outside a supermarket  could find wrapped whole steaks and plenty of food just passed the sell by date that was perfectly wholesome to eat.

He met Alan York later who said lets hike across Alaska but the kayaked instead. After that he went to rural Mexico to study pottery and weaving and flew to Guatemala to see the most privative people.

He later went back to collage as he had good grades. He went to Gaston Community  College and then to Appalachian State University in Boone , North Carolina. 1984 Graduated with honors He majored in English and Archaeology and started teaching all  over the south in public schools. When he travelled on the road and found a roadkill animal if fleas were still jumping on it it was fresh enough to cook and eat.

People went hunting and didn't even want the meat. Every place he set up camp got sold out and developed into neighborhoods .Bulldozers will keep coming till every tree is gone and there is no safe place.

America has always lent herself to visions of Utopian plans . Sir Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella , Francis Beacon, Rabelais , Montaigne , Hobbes, but these men never turned dreams into reality

The Amanist came in 1842 to the US . The Shakers also flourished. New Harmony was founded in Indiana in 1925, but by 1900 most of Americas idealistic communities had vanished 

1960s the communes that were set up folded because of drug abuse, disorganization apathy resentment and bankruptcy. Eustace hated drug use. Hog Farm thrived for 25 years because of its visionary leader Hugh Romney.

There are second growth forests forest that have taken over after being cleared more than a century ago.

Eustace bought 1000 acres in woods by an unspoiled basin and created Turtle Island, he was not merely a hermit or a hippie but a survivalist. The basic needs of humanity food clothing shelter transportations sexual pleasure are all available for cash. 

 He gave summer camps there to teach kids how to be a man. He felt he knew a better way of life for all Americans. The neighbours were hog farmers and it was ideal but he needed $80,000. He had to renew his relationship to his father got the loan and paid it back in a year. He went on punishing speaking tours. His first camp was 1989. He gave lessons on survival to even adults and kindergarten kids .Later he bough the peaks of each hill that surrounded the valley.to guard his watershed. Eustace got his brothers to work for him as councilors in the camps, he taught you can do anything you believe you can do. This is a last parcel of the American frontier .He was overbooked by clients and had more work than he needed. He couldn't hold on to his staff. He helped children become fit or even roll hoops or use the simplest tools. A young women Segal had served in the Israeli military and thrived in his system.

Most American don't want to live off the land but get a thrill from Eustaces assurance that you can.

Davy Crocket knew how to use the back woods charisma to become a Congressman. He released his heroic memoirs to coincide with the 1833 elections. Daniel Boone late became a real estate speculator and developer. Kit Karson had dozens of adventure novels written about him. 

Eustace was less convinced that his talks were having any effect. His girlfriend for 15 years Valerie said she loved him but I lost my identity in his. We should have concentrated on our relationship and less on our goals.  He had accomplished much but was not able to keep a wife and have children.   Eustace wanted absolute love and absolute control

He owned 10 horses and said it is easier to feed yourself than a horse.. in 1995 he got the notion to ride a horse across America and did this in 103 days. He went with his brother Judson. They called themselves the Long Riders. They rode from Alabama to California. The mass media had done away with local dialects Appalachian children spoke different to their grandparents. The ride became a parade and people from miles came to see them. People warned them not to go through the Apache Reservation but they did and were welcomed. They were met by mayors and minister and people all wanted to do what they were doing. They read Cormack McCarthy Books along the way.

Mules used as packhorses are brainy and can be malicious.`

Today in the US, some wives earn more than husbands and women are increasingly in control of their biological and economic destinies thus the mans role has changed.

eustasy is a geological world meaning a world wide change in sea level.

Many of the tribes today have massive windfall profit from the casinos on their reserves.

In 2013 the North Carolina passed a law allowing special building codes for privative structures for his Turtle Island.

John Muir the naturalist was also a man about the frontier and there is a blog entry  about him also

A far cry from Kensington. Muriel Spark 1988 175pg

  26/4/24 This is a conscious exercise in looking back and about the publishing world. In the post WW2 period.

 To a bad writer she had to look in his face and tell him exactly what she thinks about his urinating frightful prose. When you speak the plain truth out aloud how to survive the consequences. Post War London comes back to life the novel is distinctly revival.

1954. I was comfortable in my fatness known as a  wonderful woman and enjoyed universal affection. A large women is definitely somebody. Then decided to be thin and right away I noticed that people didn't confide in me their thoughts so much.

Milly kept the rooming house, had met her husband in her native Cork. Katy the book keeper had survived the concentration camps of the 1930s in Germany.

With the austerity of wartime there was a shortage of paper supplies and printers, while the public were avid for books. When a couple were fighting the policeman said don't come between a husband and wife till there is a lull.

If it is widely believed you have money and wealth, this belief creates confidence and confidence makes  business.

Refugees brought their courage with them. They knew  far better how to tap the resources of post war Britain than the locals. The Poles sent home parcels of warm clothing. Poles had left a  world of beaurocratic tyranny. Business cannot be carried out unless people are honest. Survivors of death camps were known to inflict on themselves later in life that, that they had escaped.

1954 Roger Bannister beat the 4 minute mile record  and became a brain surgeon later.

A person who is a good vivacious talker, he is bound to be a good writer unfortunately is not the case.

Pisseur de copie is a hack writer as a urinator of Journalistic copy.

Cultured people are not necessary nicer people . suitable jobs can be found through the most unlikely people. People love coincidence, so  tell everyone you are looking for a job.

On this new job the coworkers were handicapped in some way either physically or other, but the were agreeable people. A doctor struck off the roll or an accountant with a stammer or a woman with a port wine birthmark on her face. A daughter of a mass killer  and  Nancy was fat. They sent out manuscripts to readers who were mostly retired but were readers with a certain amount of education and earned some money from this. She wonders how many good writers never achieves what they should have.

To become a writer you have to write like letters to a good friend who will read it over and over as you write the story develops itself.  Before you marry someone see what he is like when drunk.

The upper class could not live and would disintegrate  without the ordinary class  while they could live with out the upper class. On the top of the bus now 10 years after the war ended, in London there were few streets intact and houses were separated by areas of a bomb gap. London was still sooty from coal fires.

During the war women went into the Lands Army to work in agriculture as the men were fighting. V1 bombs fell from July1944.

In England love and hate are entirely different things. They are not even opposites, love comes in first from the heart, hate arises basically from principle.

Nancy now worked for a group of homosexuals who were US refugees from Senator McCarthy's political persecution and were in Highgate, North London. Americans were also becoming very much at home in France and Italy. Here she was tired of being Mrs. Hawkins and wanted to be Nancy. Everyone in this office used first names and as she had  lost weight she could reinvent herself. It was easier to work for gays than strait men. Homosexualism was still against the law and it made them more hysterical than today.