Issue:
August 2025
Judge Yoshitada Yamaguchi’s refusal to eat postwar black-market food continues to stir emotions
Shiroishi-cho, Saga Prefecture, is a quiet farming village near the coast of the Ariake Sea in Kyushu. Every autumn, rice stalks ripen in stretches of rice paddies. On October 11, 1947, Yoshitada Yamaguchi died in a room at Yasaka Shrine in Shiroishi-cho. He was 33 years old, and left behind a wife and their two small sons.
The war had ended just over two years earlier. The nation was in disarray, and a serious and persistent food shortage killed many people, including, eventually, Yamaguchi. On the surface, this appeared to be just one of many tragedies. But Yamaguchi’s death had special meaning.
On November 5, the Associated Press reported Yamaguchi's death with a Tokyo dateline. The news, from a small village in a defeated nation, attracted the attention of the international media.
“District Judge Yoshitada Yamaguchi considered himself a man of high principles – so high he could not patronize the black market," the article read. “The judge resolved to support his family on his legal salary and his legal rations. He died of tuberculosis and malnutrition. The story of the struggle between principle and an empty stomach emerged …."
Yamaguchi had sat on the bench of the Tokyo District Court, where he presided over economic crimes. He died after refusing to eat food obtained from the black market. His death provoked a major controversy about morals, ethics and integrity amid the chaotic social conditions of the immediate postwar period.
Yamaguchi was born in Shiroishi in 1913. His father, Ryogo, was principal of the local elementary school and also served as a priest of Yasaka Shinto shrine. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University and passed the bar exam in 1938, after which he was assigned to the Tokyo District Court during World War II. In October 1946, just after the war's end, he was assigned to try people accused of offences related to the economy – what today might be referred to as white-collar crimes.
According to the memoir of his wife, Noriko, on the night of his appointment, Yamaguchi had said to her: “As a human being, I want to live in accordance with my own wishes. I want to do a good job. As a judge, I want to conduct fair trials. Henceforth, I will only eat rationed meals.”
A year later, Yamaguchi would die from malnutrition-related causes. But to fully understand what had transpired, it is necessary to understand the social circumstances of Japan at the time.
In 1945, the year the war ended, Japan experienced a devastating rice crop failure due to a cooler-than-usual summer and flood damage. Millions of Japanese also returned from overseas in a reverse migration, and by the following year an unprecedented food crisis was unfolding. The government rationed food under the Food Control Law, but delays and lack of deliveries became increasingly common.
Even in Tokyo, rationed rice deliveries were often delayed by more than 10 days, and the same applied to vegetables and fish. To survive, people had to obtain food through means other than rationing, which meant via the black market. Many also went to the countryside to visit farmers, exchanging their kimono and other possessions for food, which also violated the Food Control Law. Yamaguchi's job was to try those arrested and charged with these violations.
Objectively speaking, it was practically impossible to observe the Food Control Law as doing so would almost certainly result in death from starvation. That aside, hyperinflation compounded the misery. People’s anger built like subterranean magma, and exploded in May 1946, when a crowd of 250,000 converged on the Imperial Palace plaza to demand that the government improve the rationing system. Some demonstrators even forced their way into the palace and demanded to meet Emperor Hirohito. In a radio broadcast aired immediately afterwards, the emperor implored the public to share their meagre rations, along with their suffering, and to help each other.
There was another important development – the National Diet’s launch, in the summer of 1947, of a special committee on missing military materials. During the war, the government had collected large amounts of precious metals and war materials from the public. But immediately after Japan’s defeat, many materials went missing, triggering rumors that politicians and soldiers had illegally confiscated them and sold them on the black market.
During Yamaguchi’s time as a judge, people's desperation had filled Japan with grotesque contradictions, hypocrisies and deceptions. The government appealed to citizens to obey the law, but anyone who did so to the letter could not possibly hope to survive. And while citizens suffered from inflation and food shortages, opportunists plundered the country's assets and reaped huge profits. It was a world where honesty was for fools. Honesty didn't pay. Yamaguchi's refusal to eat food from the black market may have been his own way of protesting the situation.
In the late summer of 1947, Yamaguchi collapsed in the corridor of the Tokyo District Court and took a leave of absence, returning to his hometown of Shiroishi in Saga to recover. This writer's hometown is Kashima city, which happens to be about 10 km south of Shiroishi. More than 10 years ago, I visited Yamaguchi’s family. His sister, Hagiko, who had visited him at Yasaka Shrine, said to me: “Some people said it was abnormal for him to refuse black market rice until he'd die from starvation. But, after returning from Tokyo, my brother had been eating any food he was given."
Yamaguchi refused black market food during the period when he was a judge trying economic offenders. Once he left this position, he would no longer have to wrestle with a guilty conscience. Freed from his moral responsibilities, he was able to eat what he likes. By that time, however, his physical strength had weakened significantly. As summer turned to autumn, his condition worsened, and finally, on October 11, with Noriko by his side, he breathed his last.
On November 4, the Saga bureau of the Asahi Shimbun reported Yamaguchi's death. It shocked the entire country and provoked controversy over the contradictions of the Food Control Law and government shortcomings. The following day, the Tokyo correspondent of Associated Press reported the story, which was then picked up by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Leading news magazines such as Time and New Republic also ran articles with the headlines " Wages of Sinlessness" and "Man of Principle". The death of a young judge from the countryside of Saga became international news.
In Japan, however, the reaction was mixed. While some praised Yamaguchi's honorable behavior, others criticized him for being foolishly honest, and even sneered. One woman was reported to have said, "I really respect Judge Yamaguchi for his strength of mind, but he was also a fool."
These conflicting opinions about Yamaguchi also tormented his family. According to Hagiko, his widow, Noriko, suffered a nervous breakdown. Yamaguchi's eldest son, Yoshiomi, recalled that when he was little, his father had been called “fūkemon”, which means "fool" in the Saga dialect, as Yoshiomi related to me with a self-deprecating smile.
“The denial of my father by others was my starting point,” Yoshiomi said. “When I entered elementary school, the teachers praised my father. But by the time I entered junior high school, the teachers had become critical of him. I had to adjust my attitude depending on who I was with, which in my own eyes made me feel like a deceitful person.”
The debate continues over Yamaguchi's actions. While his law-abiding spirit is praised in some quarters, others criticize him for leaving behind his wife and children. He had placed his family under public scrutiny. But in the turbulent postwar period, when society was full of hypocrisy and deception, a young judge attempted to lead a noble life, and paid for it with his life. In response, even media from the U.S. – Japan’s victorious wartime nemesis – reported on his actions with respect. Nothing can change that.
Then, 34 years after Yamaguchi's death, something extraordinary happened.
In May 1981, Yamaguchi's widow, Noriko, was awarded the Medal with Blue Ribbon in recognition of the many years she had spent working as a conciliation commissioner at a family court. About 210 recipients, recommended by the Supreme Court and government ministers, were invited to the Imperial Palace, where Noriko stood at the rostrum to thank Emperor Hirohito on behalf of all the recipients.
Why was Noriko chosen to represent the recipients? It is unclear if the emperor had known she was the widow of Judge Yamaguchi. However, the Imperial Palace was where starving demonstrators had flocked immediately after the end of the war, prompting the emperor to issue his appeal for people to help each other through their suffering. As she listened to the emperor’s words of appreciation for her accomplishments, Noriko might well have felt that his words were intended for her late husband.
Eiichiro Tokumoto is a writer living in Tokyo.
