NEW YORK -- The influence of fundamentalist and evangelical religion on U.S. politics, both domestic and abroad, is growing, but something similar happened during the early part of the Showa Era (1926-89). I thought of this recently when I read Daikichi Terauchi's "Kejo no Showa Shi" (A History of Showa as a Phantom City; Mainichi Shimbun Sha, 1988).
Terauchi begins his account with the Manchurian Incident in September 1931. He decided to start with it, he wrote, because he could not forget one photograph he saw during the war -- the one taken of the conference on Feb. 16, 1932, in Mukden (now Shenyang), which was convened to discuss the creation of Manchukuo. It shows Commander in Chief of the Kwantung Army Shigeru Honjo sitting center front, with two Manchurian leaders on each side, and 11 men standing behind them, mostly in military uniform.
What caught Terauchi's attention was a sizable drape hanging on the wall behind the men and what's written on it in a large, distinctive script: Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, "Praise to the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law" -- the prayer of the Nichiren school of Buddhism. What is a Buddhist prayer doing in a conference like that? This kept Terauchi thinking until he decided to write about it in his mid-60s.