On July 26, 2022, the Global Asia Research Center, Waseda University, hosted a workshop entitled “(Un)certain Deaths: Wartime Resistance to Kamikaze Tactics in the Japanese Military”, presented by Dr. Nick Kapur, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University.

The presentation began with the introduction of the Traditional Account of the Origins of the Kamikaze. Vice Admiral Onishi Takajirō, who invents kamikaze tactics in response to wartime exigencies during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, is remembered as the “father of the kamikaze”.

Dr. Nick has discussed the previous scholarship on Kamikaze, which has highlighted the views of elite former university students who lost draft deferments and were inducted into the “special attack” units. Dr. Nick, however, presented that the former university students comprised less than twenty percent of the “special attack” forces. Dr. Nick also showed a few other examples of mid-level officers expressing resistance to “special attacks”. For example, the presentation quoted the word of Yoshida Atsushi, (Maj. 615th Army Air Group): “We will not carry out body-ramming attacks. Do whatever it takes to survive. “

The presentation concluded that investigating the process by which “special attacks” were implemented and evidence of resistance by mid-ranking officers from humble backgrounds and even senior officers helps us move beyond previous scholarship focused on elite former university students. Dr. Nick has argued that “special attacks” were not over-determined and deeply rooted in Japan’s culture or even its more recent history of modernization. Dr. Nick has emphasized that these tactics were the idiosyncratic choice of a small group of senior leaders, amid constant exitance of resistance.