Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…r's leading his life. And here you can see the consequences of this, right? If you're focusing on no fears of death, and if you can't succeed, living on is a disaster. So, think of the banzai charges. When Japanese remnants would go headlong into oncoming machine gun fire, knowing full well what was going to happen. This is not the way other armies have behaved. Different value system. 0:13:45 In addition to death, the Bushido literature's emphasis is on honor. Back to Yamamoto. "The way of avoiding shame is different. It's simply death. Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate." Think of General Tojo and Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku. And here's the, if you suffer a catastrophic defeat, here's the solution. In the event of a mortifying failure, you're gonna wind up committing suicide. 'Cause the alternative, if you live on in shame, you're bringing everyone you're associated with shame. So how does the suicide work? It's seppuku, hara-kiri. The Samurai who's doing it kneels down with short sword, he plunges it into his belly tries to do a full revolution. And then his second, usually a close associate, takes the long sword, if he does it right, one sweep, head in lap, upright corpse, blood everywhere. 0:14:47 Diplomats in the 19th century, Western diplomats, were told to witness this. If a samurai had murdered a Westerner, okay, the diplomats had to come in and watch the proceedings. They just about lost their lunch. So the Japanese think that they are showing, and what the Westerners think they're seeing, aren't aligning. And I'm going to use Nitobe to be the cultural bridge. He said, "in our minds, this mode of death is associated with the instances of nobles, deeds and most touching pathos. So this form of death assumes a sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life." It's a way to escape from disgrace. And in Japanese literature, there is the tragic hero who is pursuing noble but unattainable aims, and rather than making disagreeable compromises, goes down in flames. 0:15:42 This is what seppuku is all about and Nitobe is saying look, death involving a question of honor was accepted in bushido as a key solution to many complex problems. And you can think in World War II, yeah, it was. Complex problems like battle plans not working out and a war that was truly not working out. And you can see the suicide going on both individual and group. And I remember going in the caves in Okinawa and understanding how that works because you could see a lot of the damage. If your commanding officer decides to commit suicide and tosses a grenade in the right direction, the entire room goes with him. All right, so in addition to death and suicide and honor, we've got loyalty. It's another key value. I'm back to Yamamoto: "Being a good retainer is nothing other than being a supporter of one's lord. A man is a good retainer to the extent that he earnestly places importance in his master. Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness." So much for Silicon Valley. er of one's lord. A man is a good retainer to the extent that he earnestly places importance in his master. Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness." So much for Silicon Valley. "For a warrior, there is nothing other than thinking of his master." 0:16:52 And so back in the day it's thinking of your feudal Lord and more recent times it's prioritizing your company over family. In China, it's the reverse - priority is family over company. It’s different cultures, different priorities. Alright, there are strategic implications if this is your value system. This is what arises from it. First of all, you're looking at damage limitation, damage control, not in terms of the physical cost of losing lives, having property blown up, but in terms of honor. Also there's a tendency to equate operational with strategic success. Operational success is "I win this battle here and now." Strategic success is, “okay, we're in a war for some reason”. 0:17:42 What is the reason you're in the war? Japan's reasons for being in China had to do with containing communist expansion and also stabilizing the place so that they could make money out of business. So that's your strategic objective. It's not your operational one, but the Japanese Samurai are equating the two saying if I take this hill somehow it's automatically going to deliver the strategic objective. And in fact, they won most of the battles in China, but they lost that war. Also, there's this focus on what constitutes an honorable death. The western focus of literature is all about preparing the field of battle in advance for success, whereas this literature is all focusing on what to do after disaster. 0:18:28 Here are some more implications. Once the Japanese are failing in battle, operational failure, they are on death ground. What does that mean? It means that… death ground means the only way you survive is if you fight harder. This is what's going on in Ukraine right now, is that when you decide you're going to annihilate an entire culture, you put people on death ground and then they have very few choices on what they do next. It means for the Japanese to feel that they're on death ground when they're failing means they're not going to give up. They're going to fight brutally against overwhelming odds. So in the West, when we like to mirror image, we want to think of the rational actor with some kind of mathematically based cost benefit of when you should give up, when the costs are so high above whatever your value of the object is you ought to call it quits. Well that kind of calculation does not translate well across the divides between civilizations. 0:19:32 I've got a nice picture here of Lieutenant Onoda who had been hanging out in Philippine jungles for what, 30 years after the end of the war? Carrying on the war in isolation. I don't believe this is how most other armies work or soldiers in them. Different culture, different things you do with your life. 30 years after the end of the war? Carrying on the war in isolation. I don't believe this is how most other armies work or soldiers in them. Different culture, different things you do with your life. And here is Sir William Slim, Field Marshal, British 14th Army, that he led in Burma, commenting on his experiences: "If 500 Japanese were ordered to hold a position, we had to kill 495, the last five committed suicide before we could take the place." And “it was this combination of obedience and ferocity that made the Japanese so formidable”. 0:20:12 Okay, this brings me to another value that's emphasized in Bushido: willpower. Back to Yamamoto: "There is nothing that cannot be done. The way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Simply become insane and desperate, and it'll somehow work out for you. One can accomplish any feat." Think of Pearl Harbor. And this emphasis on willpower and just trying harder, it denigrates strategy. And here you see a picture of the supreme example of honor and loyalty and willpower - the kamikaze pilots. But if this is what you're doing, you're denigrating strategy. And here Yamamoto's talking about tactics, but it has operational and strategic implications. He says, "Learning such things as military tactics is useless. The way of the samurai is one of immediacy and it is best to dash in headlong. If one were informed of military tactics, he would have many doubts." 0:21:14 So the idea is if you think about these things in peacetime, you'll start hesitating in wartime. It won't work out for you if you do this. "During times of peace, when listening to the stories of battle, we should never say 'In facing such a situation, what would a person do?'" Well, so much for my job at the Naval War College. So much for the case studies. "No matter what the circumstances might be, once you be of the mind to win, once you'd be holding the first spear to strike." So, here's the implications, if you believe this. What you're doing, it's a very unanalytical way to approach wars. It's all about, whatever it is you want, you just steel the will and go for it, and somehow you'll get it if you want. There's a lack of grand strategy. What's grand strategy? It's integrating all the instruments of national power, not just the army, or the army and the navy, which is what the Japanese are trying to do. But all instruments of national power in pursuit of - if the bigger aim is to stabilize China and keep the communists out, there ought to be some diplomacy and some other things going on. But that's not what's happening in the samurai literature. It's a focus on the military instrument exclusively. 0:22:31 So, I'll give you an example of how this works out. Before the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy invaded French Indochina, neither one of them did a little study saying, "Hey, if we do that, let's check the other side of the tennis court net and what other people, how they might react." They just steel the will and march right on in. Okay, that triggered the U.S. 100% oil embargo. That's a problem. Strategy operational success, strategic mess.…

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