Monologue
My mother was born as the eldest daughter of a relatively affluent family that ran a dyeing factory in Osaka. Before the war intensified, the factory stood within the grounds of their home and was even connected to a Japan National Railways spur line. It must have been a privileged life for the time. But as air raids and material rationing escalated, the factory ceased operations, and their daily meals were barely sustained by “unofficial” food aid from my grandmother’s family. Outside the scope of the state’s war plans, survival depended solely on ingenuity.
My grandfather, being the eldest son, was originally exempt from conscription. However, because he held a license to drive large vehicles, he was drafted as a transport soldier and sent to the Burma front. He never returned. The death notice arrived a few days after the war ended, dated August 21, 1945. It stated he had died of illness at a field hospital in Rangoon.
At the time, my mother was a student at a girls’ school and, through student mobilization, worked at the Osaka Army Arsenal assisting in the production of military supplies. On August 14, 1945—the day before the war ended—the arsenal was subjected to a massive air raid by American B-29 bombers. Most of the facility was destroyed, and hundreds lost their lives. Around the arsenal, a one-ton bomb was dropped on Kyobashi Station, causing many casualties. My mother was caught in that air raid. Amid the chaos of the bombing, she walked home. The bridges were already impassable, so she crossed the Yodo River by walking along the Joto freight line, where she could see the water through the gaps between the railroad ties. She told me she remembered the sky glowing red and the river gaping open beneath her feet.
Because the factory at home was connected to a rail spur, it was frequently targeted by strafing runs from U.S. Navy aircraft entering via the Kanzaki River. Gunfire echoed day and night from low-altitude flights. My mother’s younger sister—my aunt—grew up never knowing her father’s face.
The house I lived in as a child still bore the scars of those strafing runs. Bullet marks remained on the walls, and the concrete floor was blackened where incendiary bombs had fallen. Across from the Tokaido Line, remnants of an anti-aircraft gun emplacement still stood. These things spoke to me of war, even though no one did.
But now, the house has been rebuilt. The bullet marks, the scorched concrete—all of it is gone. The townscape has been tidied, and memory quietly peels away from the land. War is becoming something that merely “once was.”
Still, I want to remember. I want to remember how the nation brought absence to a single family, what it took away, and what it ended without ever speaking of. And I want to consider what must be etched into our ethics to ensure it never happens again.
1. War Responsibility and National Ethics
What emerges through my mother’s memories is the stark reality that, under the name of the nation, families were torn apart and people’s lives were dismantled without reason. And more painfully, much of that sacrifice was not the result of calculated strategy, but of reckless wartime leadership driven by emotion and vague spiritualism—without foresight or rational planning.
The Japanese military’s conduct of war, despite the courage of its frontline soldiers, was marked by a triple failure: disregard for logistics, disregard for intelligence, and a lack of understanding of practical military technology. In the Imphal campaign, operations were forced through despite the collapse of supply lines, leading to mass starvation and death from illness among the troops. My grandfather, who died in a field hospital in Rangoon, may well have been one of those soldiers who “lost their lives without fighting.”
In terms of military technology, Japan lagged fatally behind. By the final stages of the war, the U.S. military had secured absolute air defense superiority through radar-guided fire control systems and anti-aircraft artillery equipped with VT (proximity) fuses. Against this, Japan deployed outdated aircraft with inferior maneuverability and speed in kamikaze missions—tactics with virtually no chance of success, bordering on strategic collapse. Worse still, these missions were institutionalized by certain high-ranking officers as “voluntary” in name only. When death becomes a routine premise of strategy, ethics cease to exist.
War, at its core, should be an extreme political act undertaken for the survival of the nation. Those who are asked to serve must be given explanations with the utmost rationality and sincerity. Yet the Imperial General Headquarters, even as defeat loomed, refused to tell the truth to the public. Instead, it painted over reality with spiritual rhetoric and consumed the lives of citizens like expendable ammunition.
The question we must ask is not “Who killed the enemy?” but rather, “Who demanded that others offer up their lives?”
And the fact that no one has ever properly answered that question may be the very starting point of Japan’s ethical void.
2. Postwar Education as a Possible Starting Point for National Ethics
Following its defeat in war, Japan quite literally lost its national form. Just as its cities were reduced to ashes by air raids, so too was the nation’s ethical consciousness burned to the ground. Although the core of the imperial system remained intact, the military was dismantled, the Meiji Constitution was suspended, and the country had no choice but to begin anew under a new constitution.
At that moment, where could one find the remaining fragments of ethics within Japanese society? They were embedded in the newly enacted Constitution of Japan, and in the postwar education that sought to put its principles into practice on the ground. “Pacifism,” “rejection of war,” “respect for human rights,” and “democracy”—these values, transcending even the intentions of the occupying forces, were placed at the heart of school education. In retrospect, this deserves recognition as a historically significant development.
Of course, not all aspects of that education were successful. There were instances of ideological bias, radical teachers, and periods when classrooms became battlegrounds for political struggle. Yet for my generation at least, war was not a distant myth from the past—it was something to be thought about. Why did the war begin? Why did we lose? Why were civilians caught up in it, and why did the atomic bombs have to be dropped? Through repeated questioning, we began to acquire a perspective that did not align automatically with the state.
It was not a perspective born of hatred toward the nation, but one that demanded ethics from it.
Is the state meant to protect human beings, or to consume them? In giving us that question from an early age, postwar education—at least for me—is not something to be dismissed. On the contrary, it offered a “starting point” for national ethics, unearthed from the scorched earth.
3. What Japan Needs to Become a Respected Nation
In the international community, a nation earns respect not necessarily through economic or military power. Rather, it depends on whether the nation is trusted as an ethical entity. For Japan to build such a position, it must move beyond pride in its former status as an “economic superpower” and instead internalize a self-image as an ethical nation.
The principles of the Japanese Constitution—renunciation of war, respect for fundamental human rights, and sovereignty residing in the people—are not merely the byproducts of post-defeat arrangements. They were, at the time, a cutting-edge response to the ethical challenges that modern states cannot avoid. In this sense, the sincere effort to embrace the Constitution’s ideals within postwar society was one of Japan’s most commendable ethical legacies.
Now, the question we must ask anew is whether those ethics remain mere ideals, or whether they are consistently embodied across all aspects of national governance—diplomacy, security, education, welfare, and institutional design.
Just as each citizen is expected to respect diversity and recognize the dignity of others, the state too must show respect for the independence, dignity, and diverse cultures and religions of other nations. Only then can Japan, as “Japan within Asia,” transcend the memory of past aggression and be regarded as a trustworthy neighbor.
In this light, conservatism is not simply the blind preservation of tradition. Rather, it is an intellectual stance that upholds the ethical foundations of the nation while continuously renewing them in response to the times. To be truly conservative is to see the nation not as a “legacy of the past,” but as a “responsibility for the future.”
4. Discomfort with Conservative Thought Detached from Ethics
In recent years, I’ve sensed a growing tendency within self-proclaimed conservative discourse to prioritize notions like “self-interest” and “national pride” over ethics. Voices that question war responsibility are dismissed as “masochistic views of history,” and the ideals of the Constitution are belittled as mere “GHQ impositions.” But to confront the darker chapters of history is not to deny the nation—it is, in fact, a measure of sincerity toward it. To reject such reflection reveals a lack of ethical commitment to the state itself.
Conservatism, at its core, should begin with the question of how to preserve and pass on the “sustained ethics” of the national community. Yet today, some strands of conservative rhetoric justify state actions solely by their outcomes or victories, while turning a blind eye to the unethical nature of the means employed. Beneath this lies not a logic of ethics, but a logic of belonging. Simply being part of the Japanese community is treated as the source of righteousness, and any criticism of that community is instantly branded as “betrayal.” This is no longer the realm of thought—it is the realm of emotion.
“Patriotism” may be a moral stance, but “blind obedience” is not an ethical one.
When we speak of war, we must address the ethical responsibilities of the state before discussing victory or legitimacy. The true role of conservatism is not to ask how the Japanese military fought, but to ask what choices the Japanese state imposed upon its citizens.
5. Internalizing National Ethics as the Core of Conservatism
Conservatism is not about clinging to past glories or rigidly preserving institutional forms. At its heart, it is an intellectual stance that cherishes the ethical foundations cultivated over time by a nation or society, and seeks to pass them on to the next generation. When those foundations are lost—or burned away by war—what conservatism must do is rediscover and reconstruct ethics from within the ruins.
The ideals embraced by postwar Japan—pacifism, renunciation of war, respect for fundamental human rights, and sovereignty of the people—were born from the reflection on defeat. But they were not fleeting. They represented an attempt to redefine the nation as an “ethical community.” It is easy to dismiss these ideals as mere impositions by the occupying forces. Yet to neglect the effort to sincerely engage with and internalize them is to leave the ethical void of the nation untouched.
The conservatism I envision does not begin by invoking national dignity. It begins by asking why the nation must be worthy of respect in the first place. What is needed is not loud nationalism, but the quiet accumulation of ethical practice, the courage to confront the past that led to war, and above all, the resolve to bear ethical responsibility for the actions of the state—on behalf of the future.
What we must do now is not simply ask, “What is a nation?” Rather, we must face the far more difficult and fundamental question: “What should a nation be?”—as individuals, as a society, and as a state.
Only beyond that question can we begin to see a vision of the nation we can truly be proud of.
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