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Abstract
This paper is about two paintings by the Japanese artist Fujita Tsuguharu (1886–1968) of separate incidents that occurred during the Battle of Nomonhan, a summer-long conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union that took place in 1939 and ended in costly defeat and humiliation for Japan. Following the theme of art, war and truth, I attempt to reconstruct the original context of the paintings from historical sources and to discover or uncover, as reasonably as possible, their meaning and relationship to truth.
Notes
1 Coox (Citation1985, p. 914, note 1) borrowed with minor editing by this author.
2 These paintings were discussed as examples of a new kind of Shinto icon in McDonald (Citation2012).
3 Seamus Heaney: ‘[…] the imaginative transformation of human life is the means by which we can most truly grasp and comprehend it.’ (Heaney, Citation1995, p. xviii).
4 For all particulars concerning the battle and the combatants, I have relied primarily on Coox (Citation1985), Drea (Citation1981) (2005 reprint), and Goldman (Citation2012). Any error or misrepresentation will be mine.
5 Please note: the names of principals and possible stakeholders who might be invested in how the battle is remembered or represented will appear in bold on first appearance. Japanese names are presented surname first; long and short vowels will not be distinguished.
6 Written by Maj. Tsuji Masanobu (1901–1961), Kwantung Army Operations Staff Officer and notorious tactician, suspected of war crimes for his part in the Bataan Death March and other atrocities, but never prosecuted (Goldman, Citation2012: 84–88, 130,197, note 13).
7 Yasuoka Masaomi (1886–1948) survived Nomonhan but resigned from the military in 1941; in 1942 he was appointed military governor of Surabaya, Java, which had been taken from the Dutch. In 1948, following his conviction in a Dutch military tribunal, he was hanged for war-crimes.
8 The ground force, 15,000 men, 120 artillery (outmoded, short-range guns ill-suited to anti-tank warfare) arrived in Hailar in early June after an exhausting 193-km journey through paralyzing mud and drenching rain mainly on horseback and foot with infantry carrying 36-kg packs.
9 The 71st Inf. Regt., commanded by Col. Okamoto Tokuzo; the 72nd Inf. Regt., commanded by Col. Sakai Mikio, motorized offensive units led by Col. Sumi Shinichiro (26th Inf. Regt.), Artillery units led by 13th Field Arty. Regt. Commander Col. Ise Takahide, accompanied by the 23rd Engineer. Regt., led by Lt. Col. Saito Isamu.
10 Yasuoka was relieved of duty on 9 July and his units were recalled; Japanese forces at Nomonhan were left without tanks or armoured cars for the duration of the war.
11 Japan's disadvantages at Nomonhan were overwhelming: lack of supplies and transport, poor tactical coordination, and the lack of anti-tank defence. They were outclassed by every measure. Unreliable intelligence and outmoded stereotypes of the Russian soldier led to a fatal underestimation of the enemy. Soviet advantages were staggering, beginning with nearly unlimited resources. In August they brought in heavy flame-throwing tanks, which ran on diesel and were harder to set on fire. They enjoyed superior intelligence and sophisticated strategies of disinformation, and had the luck of the higher ground, which allowed them to anticipate every Japanese movement.
12 Bushido is the ancient Japanese samurai tradition, which valued loyalty and valour. Drea explains that during the creation of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Meiji Period (1868–1912), a time when the samurai class was discredited, soldiers aspired by indoctrination to a ‘greatly romanticized and idealized version of bushido’, (Citation2009: 48).
13 Sakai, badly wounded on 24 August, was eventually evacuated (later suicide) (Coox, Citation1985: 712ff.).
14 Sumi, who was punished by the KwAHQ, was the sole regiment commander to survive Nomonhan (Coox, Citation1985: 972).
15 If he had not, Goldman (Citation2012: 149) speculates, the 23rd's headquarters at Hailar would have fallen, and all of western Manchuria would have been gravely threatened.
16 He noted that it reminded him of a painting he had seen in Moscow.
17 Generals Zhukov and Shtern were appointed Heros of the Soviet Union. Zhukov was elevated to full general and personally assigned by Stalin to the Kiev Military District; he drew on his experience at Nomonhan to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II (Goldman, Citation2012: 3; Coox, Citation1985: 991–993). Shtern fell victim to Stalin's purges and was executed in October 1941 (Coox, Citation1985: 992).
18 Hiroaki Kuromiya believes Komatsubara was a Russian spy possibly killed by agents of Stalin (Kuromiya, Citation2011: 667). According to Coox (Citation1985: 955), Komatsubara suffered extreme remorse for the loss of Ise and Yamagata.
19 In the 4 October 1939 edition of The New York Times a journalist reported that the figure of 18,000 Nomonhan casualties had just been revealed to the Japanese public by a representative of the War Office.
20 Tojo, who would become Japan's Prime Minister for most of the war, was executed for war crimes in 1948. Ogisu became a wartime leader of the quasi-fascist Imperial Rule Assistance Association, established in October 1940 (Coox, Citation1985: 954–955).
21 Ogisu may have chosen Fujita because of Fujita's personal military connections. His father was a former Surgeon-General. Mark Sandler has suggested that Ogisu met Fujita when Fujita was in China researching war paintings in October 1938 and Ogisu was commander of the Japanese Wuhan Campaign (Sandler, Citation2001: 198).
22 His first war painting, which hung in the Navy headquarters in Tokyo, is preserved in the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art.
23 Fujita left France in late May 1940 and arrived in Japan on 7 July.
24 Reported by a Tokyo correspondent of The Times, on Saturday, 13 July 1940; p. 3. The writer comments ‘Newspapers and correspondents can be muzzled, but not returned soldiers’. Note: there were no more Japanese tanks at Nomonhan at that time to oppose the Soviet tanks. See note 10.
25 The Times, Saturday, 13 July 1940, p. 3.
26 Francisco Goya (1746–1828); a series of over 80 etchings graphically depicting atrocities committed by Napoleon's armies in Spain and completed between 1810 and 1820. See Hofer (Citation2006).
27 Fujita's visit to Nomonhan took place in August. Tokyo Asahi Newspaper, 22 April 1941.
28 According to the article all that was missing was the air battle.
29 Houchi Newspaper, 16 June 1941.
30 The wildflowers, or ‘Nomonhan cherries’, consoled Japanese soldiers through their similarity to cherry blossoms (Ohnuki-Tierney, Citation2006: 122).
31 Yasukuni Shrine has been since the Russo-Japanese War a ‘centerpiece of militarism’ (Drea, Citation2009: 122), where the spirits of soldiers who died in the service of the Emperor were venerated as war gods. See Antoni (Citation1988).
32 Ogisu's intention was widely publicized beginning with Tokyo Asahi Newspaper, 22 April 1941.
33 One of these, a large war painting of an earlier Manchurian battle: All-out Offensive at Kubeiko, was exhibited at the Second Holy War Exhibition in July.
34 From several sources: NHK television production, 23 September Citation1999, Tanaka (Citation1988: 182ff), Hasegawa (Citation1974), and Hayashi (Citation2008).
35 The Times, 13 July 1940, p. 3.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Aya Louisa McDonald
Aya Louisa McDonald is co-editor of Art and War in Japan and its Empire: 1931–1960, Brill 2012. After completing post-graduate study in medieval Japanese art at Tokyo University she received her PhD in Art History from Stanford University. A former Associate in Research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University, her current interests include the relationship between Art and War, with a special focus on the artist Fujita Tsuguharu (1886–1964). She is Chair of the Art Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Associate Professor of Art History. Email: [email protected].