894.00/1074: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received 12:30 p.m.]
1052. 1. It is now possible to grasp a little more clearly the factors which led to the recent Cabinet crisis and from those factors to deduce with a degree of reasonable assurance the chief landmarks which will guide Japan’s policy in the immediate future. No foreigner in Japan is nowadays allowed an intimate glimpse behind the political scenes but sufficient clues have been dropped from the stage to give the audience a fair conception of the developing situation.
2. It will have been noted that both in official utterances and in Japanese press comments subsequent to the fall of the Cabinet the customary references to the determination of the new government to follow Japan’s immutable policy and the lip service rendered to the Axis alliance have been given their proper place but they have been [Page 337] overshadowed by the marked emphasis on the point that in the world as it exists no nation can be wholly trusted and that Japan must henceforth pursue her course independently and alone. From the emphasis on this point and from other evidence we may deduce with reasonable assurance the thesis that Japan is no longer happy in the tripartite alliance and that while it was Germany’s unexpected attack on Soviet Russia, of which we have every reason to believe that Japan was not forewarned, that actually “broke the camel’s back”, nevertheless the ties binding Japan to the Axis have been gradually weakening over a considerable period of time.
3. I have always predicted that sooner or later the Germans, if true to form, would overplay their hand in Japan and that their scarcely concealed arrogance and their fundamental contempt for the yellow race (as often revealed by the former Kaiser and as clearly indicated in Hitler’s Mein Kampf) would eventually become clear to this proud and sensitive people.
The increasing influx into Tokyo of Nazi officials, including members of the Gestapo, and their efforts to exert a controlling influence in many phases of Japanese life and in matters of purely domestic concern, added to the continual interference of the German Ambassador in an endeavor to regiment the Japanese press along Axis lines, have created a growing feeling among many Japanese that their country was being treated as a satellite if not a dependent. I recollect the remark of one prominent Japanese editor who, on emerging from a scolding from the German Ambassador,46 said to a friend: “What do they think we are? Vassals?”
4. The primary cause of the fall of the Cabinet was, as reported in a previous telegram, Baron Hiranuma’s insistence that the Cabinet should accept responsibility for failure to foresee the German attack on Soviet Russia [apparent omission] it from all available evidence we may reasonably believe that this was merely the culmination of a marked and growing dissatisfaction with Japan’s role as an increasingly controlled appendage of the Axis. I have heard Mr. Matsuoka referenced to as “Hitler’s office boy”. The Germans, as usual, have overplayed their hand.
5. As to the future, I look for no sudden new orientation in Japan’s foreign policy nor for any move to free herself from Axis ties. It is not impossible that the Government, in dropping Mr. Matsuoka, had found such new orientation and if a new tendency of rapprochement to the Anglo-American camp is to appear, there is every probability that it will appear only by slow degrees. If such is the case, we may look for a gradual preparing of public opinion through the doctored press which will have our most careful study for the purpose of [Page 338] observing any new trends that may appear. Any sudden volte face of such a nature would be unthinkable. For the present we may assume that the emphasis in Japan’s policy will be placed on an increasingly independent attitude toward all nations, including Japan’s allies in the Tripartite Pact.
- Maj. Gen. Eugen Ott↩