Posted on 08/15/2018 7:01:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia.
From Homo erectus to the present day - more than a million years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.
For three hours a week - 105 hours over the year - we edged towards the 20th Century.
It's hardly surprising that some classes, in some schools, never get there, and are told by teachers to finish the book in their spare time.
When I returned recently to my old school, Sacred Heart in Tokyo, teachers told me they often have to start hurrying, near the end of the year, to make sure they have time for World War II.
[SNIP]
When we did finally get there, it turned out only 19 of the book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.
There was one page on what is known as the Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers blew up a railway in Manchuria in China in 1931.
There was one page on other events leading up to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including one line, in a footnote, about the massacre that took place when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing - the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing.
There was another sentence on the Koreans and the Chinese who were brought to Japan as miners during the war, and one line, again in a footnote, on "comfort women" - a prostitution corps created by the Imperial Army
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Read somewhere recently that the Germans seem bent on genocide. First against the European Jews, and now against themselves.
The America GHQ in Japan purged left wingers during Korea war, because Japanese communist party were quite popular, left wingers dominated education system, Universities, media......
It has everything to do with humanity
Japanese may be business partners but they are not admired respected or trusted - nor do they return those innate feelings to other Asians, being proud haughty and xenophobic
They have no reputation as “humanitarians”
Its a bit remarkable the US has been able to build a military coalition willing to defend Japan from China
Korea and China would more naturally form against a resurgent Japan, given what they suffered from Japan throughout history
Other than business realities and the US presence as a centrifying force to keep the Pacific open for trade and shipping, I doubt the people of SEA, RP, Singapore and Australia see Japan as a noble culture for the same reason
I worked for years at a Japanese company. I had many many Japanese co-workers. I remember one time when the subject of World War II came up. A Japanese man born about 1962 knew that World War II was the war when Japanese civilians were bombed by Americans. That was all that he knew about WW II. He was a university graduate and the head of the IT department.
The Rape of Nanking is something else. So was the stuff Unit 731 used to do.
Some of it made the Germans look like Catholic school bullies.
They would have contests to see how many heads could be lopped off in a single swing. They’d stand Chinese people in a line 2 to 4 deep and then swing.
At least the end was quick. The Japanese tried to wipe out Korea, ethnically, as well.
It’s a funny place. Their culture is pretty cool, but they’ve been capable of some pretty weird stuff.
Every culture has those stories I suppose, but Japan’s was mucho.
I got the impression that much of Japan’s rebuilding came as the result of the Korean campaign and the years following.
“The Koreans have never liked the Japanese”
That is a lie. Koreans and the Japanese were close just before the Meji Restoration. Once Japan wanted to establish itself as a great power to waive off western encroachment, they then rapidly westernized themselves and their military, and copied the very gun boat diplomacy that was used on them to target Korea, much to their surprise, and afterwards Koreans considered the Japanese to be western traitors because they did nothing to provoke them.
Obviously Korea had a hard existence as a colony of Japan up until 1945.....but goodness knows why they aren’t big fans of them outside of a counterbalance with China?
And if you are clueless of the millions the Japanese killed in China in the 30s and 40s, then you ought to spend some time reading more and not wave it off as “those darn commies just want to ignore their own screw ups”.
The average person with living memory of that time would totally be amused to listen to you tell them that the Rape of Nanking or the “comfort women” of Korea are just a big whatever, because they supposedly are mad about Japan’s ethnic makeup and immagration policy.
Japan got off real easy for the brutal way they treated much of E. Asia, and they utterly refuse in most cases to act like anything other than victums themselves or play stupid, mainly because in most cases it isnt taught.
If you think that doesn’t rub its neighbors the wrong way, then you are mistaken.
I was born right after the war, so I did not live through it so my knowledge is 2nd hand. I believe the American public’s hatred during the war was towards the Japanese, not the Germans. It may well have been racial (although we didn’t have problems with the Chinese), but the fact is the Japanese attacked us, not (Animal House not withstanding) the Germans. Before Pearl Harbor there was the attack on USS Panay. The Japanese conducted the Death March. Beheadings of POWs shocked us. The execution of some of Dolittle’s pilots, the rape of Nanking, and the list goes on and on.
We didn’t like the Germans and thought Hitler was nuts, but for the most part, until the very end of the war, they followed the rules for POWs (at least our POWs). People forget that information about the Holocaust only came out after the war was over. After the war the enormity of the Holocaust caused the public to rightfully hate the Germans for what they did.
Two years ago, I launched the History of Southeast Asia Podcast. The podcast has moved ahead chronologically from the stone age to the present, and for the past few months has covered World War II events. Now I am wondering how many Japanese are listening to it.
I read that the Japanese military had a plan for the genocide of Australia’s population if they had conquered it. They had a process where they would remove the nutritional food value from rice. Then feed that to the Australians over time starving them to death by denying them nutrition.
One thing I can’t get a good explanation of is what made the Japanese military so brutal. (The samurai culture explanation is too simple!). During the Russo-Japanese War - 1905 the Japanese captured large numbers of Russians. I can’t find any examples of ill-treatment of the Russians. In WWI Japan was on the side of the Allies, they captured a few Germans - military & civilians when they seized German possessions in China & the Pacific. Again no stories of ill-treatment! What changed? I have read about the re-emphasize of the Emperor Cult as well as Shinto but it all seemed too small & disorganized to be effective in instituting that kind of change.
RE: Rape of Nanking - bet the Japanese school groups dont go there.
Some thoughts as per the article ( a japanese woman who studied in Australia later ):
1) The Ministry of Education’s guidelines for junior high schools state that all children must be taught about Japan’s “historical relations with its Asian neighbors and the catastrophic damage caused by the World War II to humanity at large”.
The only problem with the above is this — IT’s TOO GENERAL.
Based on our guideline, each school decides which specific events they focus on depending on the areas and the situation of the school and the students’ maturity.
It is uncertain whether such atrocities as Bataan or the comfort women or the deliberate killing of civilians will be taught in each individual schools the way they are being taught in China or Korea.
2) May students are prepping for higher education — getting into some of the best college and universities in Japan which is EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE.
For students who are competing to get into a good senior high school or university, the race is extremely tough and requires memorization of hundreds of historical dates, on top of all the other subjects that have to be studied.
They have no time to dwell on a few pages of war atrocities, even if they read them in their textbooks.
3) The saving grace of all these is — Japan does not censor literature or the internet ( unlike China for instance ). So, any honest Japanese who wants to know the truth can read all about it ( if he is interested ).
By and large, The Japanese people, after decades of indoctrination, are socialists trapped in the democratic governmental framework set up by the USA after the war. When the country began to thrive, economically, they had time for selective introspection but they had limited material to choose from, and limited desire to see the whole truth. Before the bubble burst in the 80s, they even regained much of their racial and national arrogance.
An interesting trichotomy emerged. The older folks who remembered the war and its aftermath, were mostly traditionalists in lifestyle but ambivalent (warm) towards the West and the USA, the middle-agers who, while modernists in lifestyle, harbored guilt and resentment that manifested as anger towards all things western and the USA in particular, and the young folk who wanted no part of the traditional Japanese lifestyles and embraced a love of all things foreign.
In truth, no one in these 3 groups ever received a proper government-supplied History education about the war and Japan’s role.
Hard to point any fingers when you take a look at the ignorance of the American kids when it comes to an understanding of our basic history.
Since 1920s, the expansion of the Empire of Japan was mainly pushed by middle-level military officials and right wing fascist civil groups. They were radical, unscrupulous and defiant, conducted a series of coups and assassinations to intimidate civil government and military leaders.
Yeah I read about that, but there didn’t seem to be a political ideology driving it. It all seemed to me to be nothing more then blind unscrupulous ambition.
Oh well one of histories mysteries, I guess !
I agree with everything you said.
However, Japan does not censor literature, neither does she censor the internet ( unlike China ).
Any honest Japanese bent on knowing the truth can find out about it.
Speaking of the Battan Death March, there was a well-done documentary this week (anniversary of Hiroshima bombing week) where a famous TV talent and her mother traveled back to the Philippines where her grandfather died in the War.
The film tracked the destruction of the Japanese Army geographically. They digitized the US Army's handwritten daily reports of "Jap Deaths" by various army divisions.
The film showed the steady progress of the US Army by a time-lapse painting of red dots on a map of the main Philippines island where 320,000 Japanese were steadily killed. An estimated 15,000 Americans were killed during this campaign and that doesn't include the many thousand Americans killed on the Battan Death March
The documentary made visits to several places along this march to talk to Filipino people and see various sites where Japanese soldiers had occupied and died.
Here are some observations on the content:
Finally, I'll note that I never heard of the American conquest of the Philippines until a Filipino told me about it on an on-line computer forum. The US State Department stated that war "resulted in the death of over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants", and that "as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease".
As I watch the steady influence of American Fake News on Japanese news coverage, I believe the people of Japan are as prone as ever to propaganda. Like so many Americans, they live in a mental prison of what the cultural masters teach them they "must" believe.
it turned out only 19 of the book’s 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.
Today’s school books here in the USA do not mention WW2 much or not at all except to vilify the USA.
“but there didn’t seem to be a political ideology”
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So called Japanese Jingoism. In 1920s,30s, Japanese fascist intellectuals promoted national socialism(domestic), pan-Asia(expansion).
True enough, SeekAndFind, a Chinese-like censorship does not exist there but there are other kinds.. Even here in this country. Let an American college student in a History class speak about the Democrat party and its relationship to Jim Crow, the KKK, and the fight against the Civil Rights movement and he or she can watch their GPA plummet and they could consider themselves lucky if they are only kicked out of the class and not the institution itself! Japanese institutions of learning don’t like upstarts, either.
Herr Rabe, a Nazi with a conscience. Like a Schindler but on a much grander scale, saving tens of thousands. Proof that one can’t absolutely define a person’s humanity until real stress is applied. He did pass the test.
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