Zenmei Hasuda

was a Japanese nationalist, Shinto fundamentalist, and scholar of kokugaku as well as classical Japanese literature. He was also a historian, author, and military officer.

Biography

Hasuda was born in 1904 into the family of , abbot of the Ōtani Jōdo temple in the town of Ueki. His father possessed a sword that once belonged to Katō Kiyomasa.

In 1918, he contracted pleurisy and took a leave of absence from school until the following year. Around this time he wrote one of his early poems. Pleurisy haunted him for the remainder of his life, and several years before his death he was found to have lesions in his hilar nodes.

He was known for his simultaneous pursuit of literature and martial arts.

After entering college in 1923, he became influenced by Prof. and developed an interest in kokugaku, by that time a mostly abandoned discipline, and studied the writings of Motoori Norinaga. Hasuda was strongly impressed with the book by historian Ishihara Shiko'o on the Shinpūren Rebellion. Ishihara elaborated upon the teachings of the nativist Hayashi Ōen, according to whom the affairs of government ought to be entirely subordinated to the affairs of Shinto through systematic divination, a position that Hasuda respected.

The true meaning of "expel the barbarians" was ultimately guarding and passing on Japan's exceptional national history. However, even now this motive is not well understood. People today keep such things at arm's length, hurling insults [at those who advocated it], calling [them] backward and narrow-minded. But that is the fundamental idea which was handed down by generation after generation of scholars of national studies, who believed in it with the purest sincerity and defended it to the very end even as it became madness in the eyes of the world. — Hasuda Zenmei, (1942)

At the time of Hirohito's order to surrender, Hasuda had a conversation with another an officer named . Takagi said, "Now [that we've been defeated], in the future when Japanese children are asked 'Who is the most important man in Japan?' they will say either Roosevelt or Chiang Kai-shek." Enraged, Hasuda shouted, "That is an idiotic thing to say. As long as Japan exists, as long as the Japanese race exists, the Emperor will be supreme, and no matter who teaches them, the children of Japan will always revere him as supreme." Takagi said, "That's merely an ideal." Still fuming, Hasuda said, "Just because we were defeated doesn't make it any less crucial." Takagi shot back, saying, "What a joke. We don't even know whether or not we'll make it home alive. As the regiment commander suggested, instead of wasting time with useless ideology, shouldn't we be figuring out how to get back alive in the fall?" Hasuda replied, "Whether we return alive or dead, we must never abandon the Japanese spirit!"

Hasuda's regiment commander Colonel announced that the division would surrender immediately to British forces. Upon hearing Nakajō's statement, Hasuda flew into a rage. By that point, Hasuda had already become convinced that Nakajō was in fact a Korean spy who had sabotaged the division and whose real name was "Kim" (金). Hasuda had brought his father's sword with him, and wanted to use it to kill Nakajō. However, he was unskilled in kendō and hesitated, deciding to use his Nanbu pistol instead. When Nakajō was proceeding to Shōnan Shrine in order to burn the regimental flags prior to surrender, Hasuda ambushed his entourage.

Accusing the others of treason, he shot Nakajō to death and then immediately put the pistol to his own temple and pulled the trigger. The pistol misfired, but bystanders did not interfere. Hasuda manually cycled the pistol to clear the jam and shot himself in the head. After his death, a postcard was found on his person into which he had written (the idea of a sacrificed stone is an allusion to the game of Go, in which a stone played on the board may be sacrificed to the opponent as part of a strategy to achieve a higher goal). He was cremated by Japanese personnel in Johor Bahru.

After the war, the Allied powers did not allow Hasuda's remains to be returned to Japan. As a result, his bones were disposed of in an unmarked grave in a rubber tree orchard near Singapore.