Nationalism, Militarism, and War
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fierce national pride and a fanatical sense of devotion to the emperor—and to the army as the visible symbol of imperial might and authority. The peasants, on the other hand, denied their share of economic prosperity and still too untutored to take their part in politics, found army life far less onerous than did the city youths, and looked upon the army and the reservist organization for discharged soldiers as their only means of achieving personal glory and prestige in an otherwise humdrum, miserable existence. As peasants they were insignificant members of a poor and downtrodden class. As soldiers they were honored members of a mystic elite corps, participating directly in all the glories of Japan as a world power.
The army officers, with predominantly rural or small town family backgrounds and an intimate and paternalistic relation with peasant soldiers, came to have a deeper understanding of the peasant and a more genuine interest in his welfare than did the representatives of big business interests or the city intellectuals, who more often looked upon the peasant as hopelessly backward and outside the pale of the new Japanese culture. Younger army officers, resenting the political and economic domination of business men, doubtful of the ethical or even the economic value of the whole capitalistic system, and distrusting deeply the liberal philosophy of the intelligentsia, gradually came to champion the economic interests of the peasantry against the big city groups, particularly the capitalists. In return, the peasantry gave the army and its officer corps blind but inarticulate support. Many young army officers, moving toward an almost revolutionary hatred of