VLVL 4: Vet Business

[Dave Monroe]

See, by the way ...

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko.  Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms,
   and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics
   in Japanese History.  Chicago: U of Chicago P,
   2002.

Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student
soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai
(kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II,
even though Japan was losing the war? Did they embody
the imperial ideology both in thought and in action? 

In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and
aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko
Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the
time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to
convince people that it was their honor to "die like
beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor.
Drawing on diaries never before published in English,
Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and
even defiance against the imperial ideology.
Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual
traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in
militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful
beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically
brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author
breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic
communication, nationalism, and totalitarian
ideologies and their execution. 

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15259.ctl

--- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> VL.147 
> 
> She was referring to what he had always called his
> "interesting work with airplanes" during World War
> II. "Though to be frank," she continued, I can't
> imagine you in anybody's air force, let alone the
> kamikaze, who, I understand from the history books,
> were fairly picky about who flew for 'em."

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