http://www.uglychinese.org/japanese.htm
The Ainu (The characters mean ‘beast’ or ‘animal’) are a different race than the Yamato Japanese. The Ainu have long been persecuted by the Yamato. Your oversimplification is a revisionism of history.
As Kitsune indicates at the top of his post, he uses the terms Ainu and Yamato to denote value systems not ethnic groups.
Dirt: You sincerely have a major hate-on for the Japanese, don’t you? Is it as big as the one you said that you had for gays and gay marriage a few months back, or slightly smaller?
I don’t think I can measure it that way. I don’t hate the Japanese. Especially individually. I enjoy much of what their culture has to offer. However, I can’t ignore all the atrocities that the Japanese, as a race, has committed against my own race, the Chinese. Iris Chang’s ‘The Rape of Nanking’ is only 1 instance of the evils of the Japanese people, 1 instance of the barbarity of their actions in only just the 20th century, the modern age. Because of these actions, I would fight with my own life until my dying breath to ensure that the Japanese never have the ability or the opportunity to commit atrocities again. So, do I hate the Japanese more than gays? No, I don’t hate Japanese people or gay people. But, I do believe that the Japanese should never have an army much, much more than not allowing gay marriage.
P.S. Don’t over-generalize, I never said I hate gays. I just don’t believe in gay marriage.
I don’t believe in Chinese marriage. Does that make us set on equal footing?
:lol:
Pretty much any ‘race’ that has waged colonial wars are guilty of atrocities that could be labeled genocidal. Germans, Belgians, Russians, Turks, Swedes, Greeks, Italians, Mexicans shold not be allowed to have an army according to your standards. And although I do not know much of Chinese history I think it is a pretty safe bet that the Han Chinese under one of their expansionist periods commited atrocities themselves, and if not what they did inflict on themselves during Mao and the cultural revolution and the great leap should be enough to disqualify them from keeping an army by your reasoing .
Don’t forget “American” in that list of countries that have committed horrible atrocities against other races!
Oh, that was “manifest destiny!”
I don’t agree with Dirt’s reasons for his stance against Japan having a military. By this argument, Germany should definitely never have one but it does. And if any country in the world shouldn’t be permitted an army, it’s Russia.
Furthermore, the Rape of Nanking wasn’t a sanctioned event. It was simply an army without any discipline marching into a city and then running loose. While it is a big blip on the radar as far as major single events go, it pales in comparison to the rest of the Japanese atrocities in China from 1937-1945. These were government-mandated “pacification” efforts in order to stamp out guerillas. Quite literally the order came down to “burn, kill and demolish the villages farms and hamlets because that’s where the rebels reside. Any true non-combatants have since retreated into the cities.” Estimates suggest that anywhere from 2-3 million died from that during the first half of the war when this “pacification” phase was at its peak.
However… that’s war. The US would REALLY have had to engage in atrocities if their troops landed on Kyushu and Honshu. Women, children, old folks - all being trained to fight. And even if only one in ten chose to, that one in ten would hide behind the other 9. Atrocities are part and parcel of total war and while I think we should always try to avoid them, it’s foolish to assume that you can ever have war without committing atrocities, even as the “good guys”, as the US was in the Pacific War.
The reason Japan shouldn’t be militarized is because it has never come to terms with its behavior. Japanese people might not be militaristic right now but there are certainly elements in the upper levels of Japanese society that do want a return to empire.
I’m reading a biography of Hirohito that explains his involvement in the war right now and it’s not a pretty story. The worst part of it is that in order to secure a peaceful transition and occupation, MacArthur protected Hirohito. Indeed, the emperor had no legal power after the 1947 constitution but that doesn’t mean he was without influence.
The first priority during the occupation for the former government was protection of the emperor system. While in general they failed w.r.t. keeping all his privileges and prerogatives as under the Meiji constitution, they did preserve his mystique and dynasty. He continually exerted influence towards rebuilding his powers, leading to the 1955 debates over a return to pre-war rule and militarization for “self-defense”, as opposed to self-defense. The 1937 war with China started as “self-defense” and later became a million-man “incident” in order to “chastise” the Nationalist army and make their leadership “reflect” on their actions.
The main method for both the Americans and Japanese to protect the emperor was to portray him as a puppet who finally forced peace when the military faction lost enough power due to the bombs and Soviet declaration of war 1 week later. Thus, all the blame had to go on the militarists. While it’s true that the Imperial Navy and especially Army were rather independent-minded of the Japanese government and began and/or expanded both the Manchurian and Chinese “incidents”, neither of those bloomed into a full-scale war until after Hirohito approved. Hirohito also personally approved Pearl Harbor before it was launched. So in the end the Japanese people got a mixed message. Hirohito was being punished by having his powers taken away even though he was a “good guy” who “stopped the war”. According to Hirohito’s court group, it was the fault of the average Japanese that Japan lost the war and even began it in the first place - since they supported the militarists. According to the occupying American forces, it was those military leaders, not the poor, exploited Japanese who were at fault.
The Japanese as a whole have never taken responsibility. Yes, many were ignorant of the goings-on in the war, like many Germans were of the atrocities. And yet popular opinion remained a vital factor before and throughout the war. It was only because the Japanese had been worked up so easily to support their empire (via Hirohito’s court group and their militarist allies), that the wars of expansion were permitted. If Hirohito had felt that his public position was endangered by an alliance with the militarist elements, he would not have gone into it. However, public opinion supported them.
Never in Japanese school texts do you see references to the atrocious actions of “Japan” during the war, never mind those of the people that permitted those wars to be waged. Germany is a different story - they fess up and accept responsibility.
The second immediate post-war priority was how to match the United States in war power. The Japanese court group and remaining military leadership were fascinated with American technology, often symbolized in the B-29. Before the war, Japan wasn’t actually a technologically advanced nation. Most of their combat equipment left a lot to be desired. There are a few exceptions, such as the Zero, but Japan was in general behind the Allies in terms of technical expertise. This gap widened vastly throughout the war.
Japanese leadership then had to - privately - come to terms with the fact that they engaged in a stupid war against the United States in which they were outmanned 2:1, faced an industrial superpower with many times Japan’s capacity, and not only that, their own products couldn’t stand 1:1 against American. So while they persisted in the belief that Japanese “spirit” permitted the average Japanese to fight better than the average American, they had to admit that due to shoddy equipment, it was impossible for “spirit” to prevail.
The immediate plan was therefore to surpass American industry and technology to make up for the manpower and resource shortages that Japan faced.
Is this beginning to sound familiar?
So how did the powerless emperor and court group push this through? They didn’t really have to. Japanese post-war leadership was still comprised mostly of those who led before the war. The whole 1955 “crisis” over the emperor and militarization was begun by Class-A war crimes suspects elected to the government who’d been leaders during the war. Many post-war politicians still revered the emperor and didn’t believe that Japan could be “Japanese” if the emperor didn’t have power and was no longer the source of morality. So just because the emperor doesn’t have power in the constitution doesn’t mean he can’t have influence in the government.
Hirohito’s main concern was always his own power and preservation of the dynasty. That was drilled into him from the day of his birth. Japan surrendered after the two atomic bombs and Soviet declaration of war not because he cared about the millions that were going to die in the war, but because the Soviets would bring with them monarchy-hating communism, the Americans would bring monarchy-hating republicanism, and the people would buy into it because they were finally starting to question their own leadership.
It is this very inability to ask those hard questions, the stupid sanctity of the throne and emperor, which led to the war in the first place. To this day many Japanese revere the old emperor because he is now portrayed as a hero who stopped the war. We’re going back to square one and I believe that aggressive Japanese militarism is bubbling beneath the surface. The people will be swayed, like they were in the pacifist 1920s, by those elements still dedicated to a strong emperor.
What’s sad is how so many of those same Japanese who took part in the atrocities were, after the war, given special status by the Communist government and allowed back into China to do business.
What are you angry about? That’s business. China wanted to break away from Soviet domination, didn’t want to fall into the American sphere so they compromised with Japan. Sure it’s a questionable moral decision but China became stronger for it.
Japan was no military threat to China and any ideologies spewing from Japan wouldn’t be accepted by the Chinese people, while American or British influence could be significant. On the other hand, Japan had the capital, industrial expertise and need of Chinese labor to help build Chinese industries.
This was a perfect deal for China. They didn’t compromise their own ideologies, they strengthened themselves, they moved away from the Soviet sphere while at the same time not moving towards America’s economically imperialistic exploitation.
What are you angry about? That’s business. China wanted to break away from Soviet domination, didn’t want to fall into the American sphere so they compromised with Japan. Sure it’s a questionable moral decision but China became stronger for it.
Japan was no military threat to China and any ideologies spewing from Japan wouldn’t be accepted by the Chinese people, while American or British influence could be significant. On the other hand, Japan had the capital, industrial expertise and need of Chinese labor to help build Chinese industries.
This was a perfect deal for China. They didn’t compromise their own ideologies, they strengthened themselves, they moved away from the Soviet sphere while at the same time not moving towards America’s economically imperialistic exploitation.[/quote]
I said ‘sad’, I didn’t say I was angry.
Sad, angry, same difference. It’s still a good business decision.
yikes
it’d be like the USA doing business with the bin Laden family. oh wait.
However… that’s war. The US would REALLY have had to engage in atrocities if their troops landed on Kyushu and Honshu.
Would anything we would have done in such an invasion, raping pillaging summary executions etc., have been worse than mass incineration of civilians by the tens of thousands, which is what occurred at Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki?
IOW, it seems to me that if the one is an atrocity, then so is the other; and so there is no “would” about it – we did engage in atrocities, just of a more remote sort. (Whether those atrocities are less egregious because “they started it,” and/or are justified under the larger goal of ending the war by any means necessary, is another question.)
(edit: Jakub: not implying that you said those bombings weren’t an atrocity. Nor that you said they were. Just trying to zero in on this point because as far as I can tell, targeting civilians is targeting civilians, whether you bayonet a baby or drop a bomb on one from 20,000 feet.)
I don’t deny that atrocities were committed by the Allies. Dresden is probably the best-known example.
However, within the context of a truly total war, as World War II clearly was, the very idea of a “non-combatant” enemy population is somewhat silly. Both sides are mobilizing their resources to the utmost, every man-work-hour matters. A civilian assembling the very tanks, aircraft, ships and rifles being used in battle the next day is as part of the war as the soldiers using them. This labor, skilled or otherwise, is as much a target as their factories and weapons.
Nanking stands out because it was a conquered city, there was no reason to destroy the population. The massacre of Jews, Slavs and Gypsies by the Nazis also falls into that category - they were already under German control and for the most part subdued. Well, perhaps not Slavs. Both Poles and Russians had partisan movements far more active and effective than that of the Free French.