"It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result"
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“It goes without saying” is doing the sneakiest work here: a soft-gloved demand that you accept the premise before you can argue with the conclusion. Tojo, a soldier and wartime prime minister, frames conflict as an automatic biological reflex. Survival is “threatened,” therefore “struggles erupt,” therefore wars “result.” No agents, no choices, no accountability. The sentence is engineered to sound like weather.
That structure matters because it launders aggression into inevitability. “Survival” is the master alibi in modern political language: once invoked, it turns expansion into self-defense and preemption into prudence. Tojo’s phrasing also carefully scales up from “peoples” to “nations,” suggesting an almost natural escalation from social friction to state violence, as if diplomacy is a quaint afterthought and ideology doesn’t exist. The word “unfortunate” adds a thin moral sigh, the rhetorical equivalent of regretfully signing a requisition order.
Context sharpens the intent. In Imperial Japan’s 1930s-40s worldview, resource insecurity, embargo pressure, and imperial ambition were narrated as existential constraint. Tojo’s line fits that narrative: Japan is not choosing conquest; it is responding to a “threat” to survival. The subtext is aimed at both domestic audiences (discipline, sacrifice, unity) and foreign ones (don’t blame us for what you forced). It’s a deterministic story that pre-justifies brutality by treating war less as policy than as fate.
That structure matters because it launders aggression into inevitability. “Survival” is the master alibi in modern political language: once invoked, it turns expansion into self-defense and preemption into prudence. Tojo’s phrasing also carefully scales up from “peoples” to “nations,” suggesting an almost natural escalation from social friction to state violence, as if diplomacy is a quaint afterthought and ideology doesn’t exist. The word “unfortunate” adds a thin moral sigh, the rhetorical equivalent of regretfully signing a requisition order.
Context sharpens the intent. In Imperial Japan’s 1930s-40s worldview, resource insecurity, embargo pressure, and imperial ambition were narrated as existential constraint. Tojo’s line fits that narrative: Japan is not choosing conquest; it is responding to a “threat” to survival. The subtext is aimed at both domestic audiences (discipline, sacrifice, unity) and foreign ones (don’t blame us for what you forced). It’s a deterministic story that pre-justifies brutality by treating war less as policy than as fate.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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