[Special Feature: Passing Down the War] Takeyuki Tokura: Challenges and Possibilities of War Research in Keio University History

Image: November 23, 1943, "After the Student Soldier Send-off Ceremony," Keio students leaving Mita through the Main Gate (Maboroshi no Mon)

It goes without saying that the pioneer of research on the war period at Keio University was Professor Emeritus Atsushi Shirai of the Faculty of Economics, who began the joint research project "The Pacific War and Keio University" with his seminar students in 1991 and made it his life's work thereafter. The monumental achievements of the Shirai survey are represented by the creation of an unprecedentedly thorough roll of the war dead, which revealed the details and real names of over 2,200 war dead associated with Keio University, and the implementation of a survey of unprecedented scale sent to Keio University alumni of the war-experienced generation to investigate the actual situation of Keio University during the war.

In 2013, the 70th anniversary of the student mobilization, the Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Archives, acting as the archive for Keio University history, received a large designated donation for the purpose of researching the war period from the late Mr. Shunji Kono (former President and Chairman of Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance, himself a graduate of the University of Tokyo). Mr. Kono's older brother was Muneaki Kono (a 1944 graduate of the Faculty of Economics), a Keio University alumni who died in a special attack mission. Taking this opportunity, I began a survey of the war period under the name "Keio University and the War" Archive Project. I first visited Professor Shirai to inherit his research materials, including thousands of original individual survey forms. To complement the Shirai survey, I identified four valuable goals to pursue from that point forward: ① Collection of primary sources. Since raw materials conveying the lives of Keio students and Keio University alumni during the war were hardly housed at the Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Archives at the time, I aimed to collect and preserve physical materials such as letters, diaries, photographs, and personal items to form a collection of a certain density. ② Conduct and record interviews with war survivors while it was still possible. ③ Tabulate internal university documents to clarify statistical data on the period of student mobilization. ④ Promote the development of research in this field by exhibiting and publishing the results of these activities.

Since then, after more than a decade, the collected materials have grown to a scale that I can proudly say possesses a depth unparalleled by other universities. We have organized various exhibition opportunities, and with the opening of the Keio History Museum in 2021, we were able to establish a permanent war-related section. Interviews have been conducted with approximately 100 people, and the analysis of statistical data continues even now, while various limitations of the source materials are being identified. Furthermore, a lecture series titled "Modern Japan and Keio University," focusing on Keio University during the war, has been established at Hiyoshi and attracts many students. Opportunities such as tours in collaboration with the Association for the Preservation of the Hiyoshidai Underground Tunnels, which has been active for a long time, have also increased significantly. Through this project, I believe I have contributed at least somewhat to expanding the circle of people who talk about and discuss "Keio University and the War."

Making war a research theme is difficult. With the defeat in 1945, some wandered between life and death, losing families and homes, while others reached the post-war era with almost no impact. Because people do not know what sensitive nerves they might touch in one another, they stopped speaking lightly of the war era. It is natural for each individual's perception of the war to differ, but it is undoubtedly one of the topics about which Japanese people remain intolerant today, to the extent that such differences can instantly sever ties with best friends or lead to exchanges of total personal hatred. Inherently, to seek peace, one must research and discuss war and military affairs from multiple perspectives. I am reminded of how Professor Shirai always referred to it as "the greatest incident in Japanese history." Precisely because it brought such calamity on a global scale, we must learn from it. Even if local governments across Japan establish facilities to remember the history of the war, they are not called war museums, but are uniformly called peace... museums. Here too, one can see an unnatural state where people choose their words carefully when talking about war, while resenting the war era that deprived them of the freedom to say whatever they wanted. Without even reaching a common consensus on what to call the war being researched, terms like "the previous war" have become the correct choice.

In school history as well, the war era has long been avoided. Without even a sufficient clarification of the actual facts that should be done first, the next breath often questions the university's recognition of its war responsibility. Few people would willingly approach such a theme.

In the case of Keio University, the 100th Anniversary Commemorative Project began shortly after the war, and the compilation of the "Centenary History of Keio University" was carried out. Since the middle volume (part 2) covering the war period was published in 1964, it has the strength of being compiled by faculty and staff of the war era with sufficient materials and memories, and is written using real names. On the other hand, it is conceivable that there were things they naturally did not touch upon, and one cannot deny a sense of insufficiency from an era when surrounding materials were not yet fully available.

It is quite difficult to view a school's history objectively. Documents on school history are usually written by insiders. Many people are interested if it is their alma mater or the school where they work, but they cannot have much interest in other schools. Unless one is interested in that school and familiar with its inner workings, there are cases where one cannot perceive its unique culture or nuances.

For example, the "cap" is important in Keio University history. The school cap for Keio students was a round cap common from junior high school to university. This can be interpreted as a culture of intentionally wearing a lower-ranking cap (resistance to the authoritarianism of caps) in the hierarchy of uniform culture where the square cap was the highest authority. This can be interpreted as an extension of how, in the era of Yukichi Fukuzawa, the merchant-style attire of students—wearing a casual kimono with a square belt—was a rebellious resistance against the common sense of other schools, such as government-run ones, where students wore hakama, a symbol of the samurai (for more on this, see my book "Yukichi Fukuzawa as Media"). The round cap was called the "Juku cap" and was a source of pride for Keio University. In the interviews I conducted, the topic of whether or not one wore the Juku cap during labor mobilization at the end of the war came up. At least for the narrator at that time, continuing to wear the Juku cap even at the end of the war was a context that carried a meaning of resistance. While asking anyone about caps in an interview regarding labor mobilization might seem meaningless (as khaki combat caps were widely worn at the end of the war), it holds meaning as a story of Keio. Like this cap at the end of the war, there are parts of school history that cannot be seen unless one enters the worldview of that school, making it even harder to maintain a cross-sectional perspective.

Therefore, it is extremely difficult to verify whether the school was more cooperative with the war than others. Let us consider President Shinzo Koizumi. One often sees writings stating that President Koizumi during the war actively cooperated with the war and sent students to the battlefield. Does this mean he was more active compared to the presidents of Tokyo Imperial University or Waseda University? As far as I know, there are no examples where such verification has been sufficiently performed. Regarding the person Shinzo Koizumi, to put it plainly, people's likes and dislikes are divided. His character had a charismatic side, which some people dislike. Furthermore, the fact that Koizumi was an economist known as a fierce critic of Marxism throughout the pre-war and post-war periods was sufficient grounds for him to be evaluated negatively in the post-war academic world where Marxism was at its peak. His activities as a participant in the education of the Crown Prince after the war would likely lead those who do not accept the Emperor system to evaluate him as someone unworthy of being called a scholar, and naturally, they would lean toward viewing Koizumi during the war negatively as well.

When the "Shinzo Koizumi Exhibition" was held at the Mita Campus in the spring of 2008, I was in charge of the exhibition structure. I struggled not to be one-sided regarding the war era, and while I recognize that the exhibition content was not necessarily defensive, I received a fair number of critical voices. I was called out by a certain Professor Emeritus who wanted to speak with the organizer of the exhibition, and was told to my face, "I'm surprised you were able to put on an exhibition like this." It was not a compliment, but a maximum sarcasm. This is still burned into my memory.

It was after this experience that the aforementioned project was launched. One of my interests was to touch upon the actual feelings of how Keio students at the time viewed President Koizumi. I always asked about President Koizumi in every interview, but on reflection, one cannot say much about one's impression of the President during one's own student days. However, it was interesting to see that different narrators looked at completely different aspects. One Keio University alumni remembered that Koizumi used the word "refreshing" in a talk given to Keio students immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and said he is still "bothered" by it. On the other hand, another Keio University alumni who entered the university preparatory course in April 1941 spoke of being moved by the fact that the President, at the entrance ceremony, spoke only of Fukuzawa and did not use any of the "loyal and patriotic" language he had been accustomed to hearing at junior high schools outside the Juku.

I heard the following story from the son of someone who became a professor at Keio after the war. When the student mobilization was decided, neighbors and relatives all said with straight faces things to the effect of "go and die for the country," and he wondered what was happening and if they really thought that. In that environment, only President Koizumi, whom he went to greet, said, "Make sure you come back alive." That became his only hope, and he did return. It is said to be a fragment told briefly by his father, who suffered gunshot wounds and infectious diseases in the South and almost never spoke of the war. Although this story is hearsay of a later account, I felt it was accompanied by a heavy sense of reality.

One Keio University alumni who studied from the Yochisha Elementary School and became a military doctor evaluated Koizumi by saying, "He wasn't bellicose, but he wasn't anti-war either." Everyone views Koizumi from their own benchmarks, and each is different. That is precisely why I felt there was meaning in aggregating as many samples as possible. Although they cannot be included this time due to space limitations, multiple primary sources such as diaries of Keio students that mention the President were collected. Verifying these from a comprehensive perspective, as well as comparing them with other universities, should be a task for the future.

War research is criticized no matter what or how you do it. I have become quite thick-skinned. I have been asked why I only target Keio, why only the intelligentsia, and if I am saying the deaths of children from rural villages are worthless. If everyone across Japan does what they can in their own area and brings it together, that is enough. This field is still at that stage. My driving force, if I may risk being misunderstood, is that it is "interesting." I make sure to tell students this in my classes at Hiyoshi. I tell them it is okay to think it is "interesting" without being irreverent, and that because they are interested, they should be able to think deeply. One must not lose moderation, but a sense of normative consciousness that one must face the war "correctly" only clouds one's vision.