Episode 587 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 4

History of Japan

Isaac Meyer

Japan, History, Japanese

4.8 • 744 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, conspiracism takes a new twist in Japan, from paranoid worries about Christianity to paranoid beliefs in "Western encirclement". How did this new form of conspiracism help drive Japan's descent into fascism, empire, and eventually the self-destructive decisions of the Second World War?

Show notes here.

Transcript

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1:02.4	Indeed.com slash show. Terms and conditions apply. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 587, The Allseeing Eye, Part 4.
1:30.7	On November 11, 1941, the British political cartoonist Sir David Lowe put out a piece of work.
1:38.8	That cartoon, entitled Japan Protests Against Encircleclement shows three figures.
1:45.2	The American President Franklin Roosevelt, his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull,
1:50.0	and the Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Wells,
1:53.1	craning their heads behind them to stare at a figure of Japan's then-prime minister,
1:57.6	Toljol Hideki, who was running circles around them while complaining that he was being encircled.
2:04.6	Lowe, quite obviously, was lampooning the latest news from Asia of the growing crisis in U.S.-Japan relations,
2:11.5	with the United States protesting against Japan's aggressive seizures of territory in French Indochina,
2:19.0	taking advantage of the collapse of France's government after the German invasion, as well as its ongoing war in China.
2:25.9	Tokyo, meanwhile, was constantly issuing declarations to the effect that it was defending itself
2:31.6	against the so-called ABCD encirclement or ABCD line,
2:37.3	referring to America, Britain, China, and the Dutch, who were the colonial rulers of what is now
	...

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