Hasuda Zenmei

Hasuda Zenmei
蓮田 善明
Photograph of Hasuda Zenmei, before 1940.
Personal details
Born	July 28, 1904 Ueki, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan
Died	August 19, 1945(1945-08-19) (aged 41) Johor Bahru, Johor, British Malaya
Cause of death	Suicide
Occupation	Author
Military service
Allegiance	Imperial Japanese Army
Rank	First lieutenant (中尉, chūi)
Battles/wars	Second Sino-Japanese War World War II Pacific War

In this Japanese name, the surname is Hasuda.

Hasuda Zenmei during the Second World War.

Hasuda Zenmei (蓮田 善明, 1904–1945) 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 Hasuda Jizen (蓮田 慈善, 1851–1938), abbot of the Ōtani Jōdo Konrenji (金蓮寺) 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, People Are Made to Die (人は死ぬものである, Hito wa shinumono dearu). 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 literary and martial arts.

After entering college in 1923, he became influenced by Prof. Saitō Kiyoe 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, League of the Divine Wind: A History of Blood and Tears (神風連血涙史, Shinpūren Ketsuruishi). 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 - Heart of the Shinpūren (神風連のこころ, Shinpūren no kokoro) (1942)

Through Shimizu Fumio, Hasuda became acquainted with the young Hiraoka Kimitake, later known as Yukio Mishima. On October 25, 1943, Hasuda was called to active service in the Imperial Japanese Army. Before his departure for Southeast Asia, he reportedly said to Mishima, "I entrust the future of Japan to you" (日本のあとのことをおまえに託した, Nihon no ato no koto o omae ni takushita). Kuriyama Riichi recalled Hasuda raging as he prepared to leave, saying "Those American bastards..." (あのアメリカの奴め等が…, A no Amerika no yatsumera ga…).

In 1945, Hasuda's platoon advanced to Shōnan where he was assigned to a mortar regiment headquartered at the Royal Palace of Johor. Immediately after Hasuda and his men arrived in Singapore, one of his subordinates got into a fight with an officer of the Kenpeitai and injured him. When the subordinate was about to be punished by the regimental authorities, Hasuda suggested that he, as the platoon commander, was responsible for the subordinate's negligence, and he and his Captain went to personally apologize. The subordinate's punishment was dropped.

At the time of Hirohito's order to stand down, Hasuda's commanding officer Colonel Nakajō Toyoma (中条豊馬) 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 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 killed himself with the same pistol. After his death, a postcard was found on his person into which he had written "For the sake of Japan, I am left with no choice but to cut down these wicked traitors and become a foundation stone of the Empire" (日本のため、やむにやまれず、奸賊を斬り皇国日本の捨石となる, Nihon no tame, yamu ni yamarezu, kanzoku o kiri kōkoku Nihon no suteishi to naru). 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.