Posted on 08/06/2015 4:20:58 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
It's an old adage that Americans smile because they are happy, while Japanese smile because they want you to be happy. The Japanese think they are doing Americans a favor by fake-smiling, but the usual result is that Americans think they have been hoodwinked by slant-eyed liars, which is one of the emotional reasons for the hatred of Japan during WWII.
There is a Japanese equivalent to this, by the way. I'll just give one example. When you visit a home in Japan, you bring something to eat (cookies, crackers, etc.), to repay the host for the trouble of letting you in the home. The host then asks you if you want some tea. You always say no. The host then serves it to you and him/herself anyway, along with whatever you brought; you and the host drink the host's tea, and the host and you eat the guest's sweets, and that way you establish a harmonic connection. So a Japanese comes to an American home with something to eat. The American expresses gratitude for the gift, takes it into the kitchen, and leaves it there, because it would be impolite to serve a guest his/her own gift. The American then asks the Japanese if s/he would like something to drink, and the Japanese says no. The American then takes the Japanese at his/her word, makes something for him/herself, and visits with the Japanese, who is neither eating nor drinking, and is also greatly insulted--but who is smiling profusely because s/he wants the American to be happy, all the while slow-burning inside, while the American thinks s/he is being a great host, the proof of which is how happy the Japanese is acting.
That's a very roundabout nemawashi way to say that Imabari was bombed just as much as any other city in Japan, and there are two paragraphs about it in today's edition. I am sitting in front of my computer this morning, thinking about how Imabari looked all the times I was there, and it hits me: there were no pre-war buildings anywhere. (The castle is a copy of the original, but that is true throughout most of Japan, and it was because most of the castles were torn down after the Meiji Restoration, in the 1870s.) Every once in a while, for someone who lived in Japan, and who has studied Japanese culture for decades, I can be a naïve American, and get hoodwinked, believing Japanese who tell me what they think I want to hear.
But I will return to something I said yesterday: if we're bombing a schlub place like Imabari in August 1945, we're running out of places to bomb in Japan. If all the incendiary bombing in the world wasn't going to end the war--and on August 6, 1945, that was becoming painfully obvious to both sides--it was going to take at least two atomic bombs.
“3,200 War Letters Penned by Queens Mother to Five Sons and Their Comrades’ Families – 6”
I read this orginally as the Queen Mother. Was confused by the 5 sons part.
Tomorrow’s reporting should be interesting. How much info about “the bomb” was released?
Fascinating insights; thank you. There are some questions I’ve had about the Japanese, and would like to hear your thoughts.
Why were the Japanese so “barbaric” (by our standards) during World War 2? It is my understanding that the commonplace brutalities inflicted upon POWs in World War 2 were not inflicted on Russians in 1904 or on Germans in 1905.
The Japanese occupation of Asian territories was not benign either, yet their stated aim was “Asia for the Asiatics.” I can understand that their real aim was to supplant European rule with Japanese, but why did they have to be such dicks about it?
After the war, the overtly barbaric traits manifested in mistreatment of POWs and Asian locals seem to have disappered from Japanese culture, and did so rapidly. Did they disappear, or simply become subdued? Given another opportunity, would the Japanese go back to using Aussies for bayonet practice?
PS: Different topic, your idea that if we are bombing a schlub place like Imabari, we’re running out of targets is well taken. I believe that is exactly what is happeing. When you think about it, the air war against Japan only started in earnest in March with the firebombing of Tokyo. In five months, we have utterly destoyed an entire country’s economy and ability to wage war.
The Japanese never felt as though they had to apologize either. Not so much to us but to the Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Burmese or Malaysians. Those were the people who suffered the most. Maybe its just not in their culture to admit to it.
I waited until today to respond to this, because it relates to "today."
As I see it, there are two reasons the Japanese balk at apologizing. The first relates to their take on Confucianism. Confucian thinking is group-centered: every group is organized according to the family-hierarchy model (father, eldest son, other sons, mother, eldest dtr, other dtrs), where each person in the hierarchy owes allegiance to those above, and responsibility for the wellbeing of those below. A Japanese who does well honors the group, while one who does poorly shames the group, and it is the group that keeps everyone in line.
A Japanese lives in a series of concentric circles, with the family being innermost, then the widening circles of the business, the neighborhood, any hobby groups (such as joining a school of tea ceremony), the "clan" (intergenerational interfamilies), and then the widest circle, the nation-race.
But that is where the circles end, and anyone outside of the circles is gaijin, written as 外人. The second symbol means "person," but look at the first symbol--and here I am going to engage in a form of deconstructionism, though in this case I think it fits. Technically, the first symbol is made up of the rising moon on the left, and a tortoise shell on the right, meaning a diviner, someone whom you consult in the evening. But only a kanji scholar would "get" the connection. A more prosaic observation is that it looks like someone trying to push in a door, the handle of which is controlled on the inside--in other words, someone who wants to be let in. As far as most Japanese are concerned, there are only two types of people in the world, the Japanese and those who wish they could have been born Japanese, but who will (in this incarnation) have to suffer the indignity of not being Japanese.
The word "foreigner" in English means someone from another country: in English, an American is a foreigner in Germany, and a German is a foreigner in America. But gaijin doesn't mean this: it means a person who is not Japanese. I am a gaijin in Japan, but I am still a gaijin in America, and a Japanese does not become a gaijin upon landing on American shores, s/he is always a Nihonjin 日本人, a person 人 from the origin 本 of the sun 日.
This leads us to the first reason Japan doesn't apologize: according to its own brand of Confucianism, all non-Japanese are gaijin, not part of any Confucian group. There is no shame in mistreating a non-Japanese, unless the non-Japanese happens to be one's guest, and in WWII, none of the conquered people were considered guests. The only Japanese who apologize come in one of three flavors: those who do it for self-serving reasons, such as Japanese businesses wanting to do business overseas; Christians, who see all people as God's children; those Japanese whose Confucianism has expanded to include the whole world in the largest circle.
That is the first reason. For the second reason, look to Hiroshima.
From today's description of the bombing, of people wandering in the immediate aftermath: "It was a parade of wraiths, an evocation of Buddhist hell." If there is one thing the Japanese and the Americans agree upon concerning Hiroshima, it is that the bomb was payback--but if you dig deeper, you find that the agreement really isn't an agreement.
To Americans, Hiroshima is the counterbalance to Pearl Harbor: you hit us, well by God we'll hit you back so that you'll never hit us again. The proof of the result of such an act is an apology by the initial aggressor, that he shouldn't have done what he did, he's sorry, and he won't do it again.
But to the Japanese, Hiroshima is karma, in the strict Buddhist sense. It would take a long discussion to explain it in full, but karma is not only what happens to you because of bad things you do: it is also the expiation of those bad things, so that when you are finished with your karma, you are free to resume your trek towards nirvana.
In a awkward sense, America gave Japan an enormous gift on August 6, 1945, and again three days later: it gave Japan karma for all of the nefarious deeds the Japanese had done, so that while the Japanese had hurt others in a way never before seen in modern history, the Japanese themselves--and remember, all Japanese see themselves as part of the nihonjin family--had also suffered in a way never before seen in modern history, so now they were free to remove the shackles of militarism and continue as part of a peaceful and one-day prosperous Japan.
(One proof of this, by the way, is the 1956 movie Harp of Burma, about a Japanese soldier who becomes a Buddhist monk, remaining in Burma after the war as part of the expiation, spending his life burying the bodies of Japanese soldiers there.)
In short, they don't have to apologize to us, because we're not Japanese, and in any case they got their karma, handed to them on a B-29 platter.
Canada Ping!
I was answering this as you typed it :-) see #27. However...
The Japanese occupation of Asian territories was not benign either, yet their stated aim was “Asia for the Asiatics.” I can understand that their real aim was to supplant European rule with Japanese, but why did they have to be such dicks about it?
This answer is hidden in #27 and in some messages from a few days ago, but I'll try to quickly unhide it.
Two reasons, as I see it. The first is that the Japanese leaders wanted to prove to the world that they had the same ability to rule colonies as did white Europeans. What they didn't realize was that colonialism was dying of old age, and wasn't going to survive another generation no matter what: the British already knew by the 1930s that they were going to be out of India, Africa, and the Middle East within a generation, and the rest of Europe would have figured that out soon after. (The one country that could see what was coming was the US, the proof being our express intention to give up our own colonies in places like the Philippines, and not attempt to gain any new ones.)
Just imagine how different 20th century history would have been if Hirohito had decided, not to try to conquer China, but to establish a trade-and-military alliance with the Nationalists against Mao's forces? Chiang would have handed Hirohito Manchuria on a platter, the Japanese could have expanded their lebensraum, Mao would have been pushed back to Mongolia or worse, China would have eventually become a democracy just as we've seen in Taiwan, and America would have brought the Philippines into a Pacific alliance that would have avoided war from Calcutta to California.
But to the second reason. At least at first, the Japanese were convinced they were doing their little brothers in Asia a favor by taking them from European rule, to a better life under the enlightened rule of the Rising Sun. It genuinely surprised the Japanese leaders that their little brothers didn't fall into their Confucian roles and treat the Japanese with deference, but rather chafed even more under Japanese rule than they did under European rule: the Europeans were bad but that's be expected with ignorant Caucasians, while the Japanese should know better than to treat fellow Asians with a sense of superiority. The response of the Japanese was swift and nasty, because their little brothers were not being Confucian and were shaming their "family" (as defined by Asia with Japan at the head), and also because the Japanese thought the way plantation owners used to think about their slaves, that the only way to keep them in line was brutality.
After the war, the overtly barbaric traits manifested in mistreatment of POWs and Asian locals seem to have disappered from Japanese culture, and did so rapidly. Did they disappear, or simply become subdued? Given another opportunity, would the Japanese go back to using Aussies for bayonet practice?
The long answer to this is found in the book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which for all its flaws presents a pretty good idea of what it was like to be Japanese in the early 20th century. The short answer is twofold: yes, any society can be turned into a group of monsters in one generation, and no, the Japanese are almost certainly never again going to be the bastards they were in WWII, barring some massive change in world culture.
As I see it, there are two reasons the Japanese balk at apologizing.
Navy Hawaii Mars crashes
Fascinating.
Apologizing for alleged errors of PC is the contemporary equivalent of communist show trials. The person apologizing is never forgiven, unless and until s/he becomes One Of Us, meaning a 100% agree-with-everything-progressive liberal, as in what Winston does in 1984. The purpose of the apology is not the expiation of the sins of the apologist, but as a lesson to the rest of society, that the rest of society does not want to have happen to them what is happening to the apologist.
I've read articles which argue back and forth about the various factors that produced the barbarity you describe, and why it seems to have materialized for a short period of time, then vanished.
First off, the Japanese may have been more restrained in earlier conflicts (first Sino-Japanese war, Russo-Japanese War) solely to gain the approval of the International community. It was apparent even in those conflicts that the Japanese preferred to kill the enemy instead of capturing and imprisoning them; the latter was viewed as a drain on Japanese supplies and military capability.
By the late 1930s, Japan had become a great international martial power, much less concerned about retaliation by foreign powers for their treatment of POWs.
The reasons for varied treatment of enemy combatants and prisoners is sometimes described as a corruption of the warrior Bushido Code, but in truth the Japanese seem to have side-stepped that code entirely and embraced something much older: the Confucian view of "Just Warfare", inherited from the Chinese (which contains a "means justify the ends" flexibility.
You mean MormonISM; right?
I have nothing but prayers for those caught up in it's deception.
Well; prayers and INFORMATION that most Mormons won't find on their own...
I’m only about 30 miles away from the USS Indianapolis Memorial.
http://www.ussindianapolis.org/monument.htm
Chanted “we want king, we want king”, and then booed him. I don’t get it. Something lost in translation.
A great loss of life; but a GREATER loss of life would have occurred without it.
Speaking about lives lost; the Book of Mormon has recorded the LARGEST battle ever in it's pages.
We have all kinds of data about Hiroshima and Nagasaki; but ZERO about the great battle found in ....
Millions of the Jaredites are slain in battle—Shiz and Coriantumr assemble all the people to mortal combat—The Spirit of the Lord ceases to strive with them—The Jaredite nation is utterly destroyed—Only Coriantumr remains.
1 And it came to pass when Coriantumr had recovered of his wounds, he began to remember the awords which Ether had spoken unto him.
2 He saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly atwo millions of his people, and he began to sorrow in his heart; yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children.
3 He began to repent of the evil which he had done; he began to remember the words which had been spoken by the mouth of all the prophets, and he saw them that they were fulfilled thus far, every whit; and his soul amourned and refused to be bcomforted.
4 And it came to pass that he wrote an epistle unto Shiz, desiring him that he would spare the people, and he would give up the kingdom for the sake of the lives of the people.
5 And it came to pass that when Shiz had received his epistle he wrote an epistle unto Coriantumr, that if he would give himself up, that he might slay him with his own sword, that he would spare the lives of the people.
6 And it came to pass that the people repented not of their iniquity; and the people of Coriantumr were stirred up to anger against the people of Shiz; and the people of Shiz were stirred up to anger against the people of Coriantumr; wherefore, the people of Shiz did give battle unto the people of Coriantumr.
7 And when Coriantumr saw that he was about to fall he fled again before the people of Shiz.
8 And it came to pass that he came to the waters of Ripliancum, which, by interpretation, is large, or to exceed all; wherefore, when they came to these waters they pitched their tents; and Shiz also pitched his tents near unto them; and therefore on the morrow they did come to battle.
9 And it came to pass that they fought an exceedingly sore battle, in which Coriantumr was wounded again, and he fainted with the loss of blood.
10 And it came to pass that the armies of Coriantumr did press upon the armies of Shiz that they beat them, that they caused them to flee before them; and they did flee southward, and did pitch their tents in a place which was called Ogath.
11 And it came to pass that the army of Coriantumr did pitch their tents by the hill Ramah; and it was that same hill where my father Mormon did ahide up the records unto the Lord, which were sacred.
12 And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was Ether.
13 And it came to pass that Ether did abehold all the doings of the people; and he beheld that the people who were for Coriantumr were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and the people who were for Shiz were gathered together to the army of Shiz.
14 Wherefore, they were for the space of four years gathering together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face of the land, and that they might receive all the strength which it was possible that they could receive.
15 And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children—both men, women and children being armed with aweapons of war, having shields, and bbreastplates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war—they did march forth one against another to battle; and they fought all that day, and conquered not.
16 And it came to pass that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after they had retired to their camps they took up a howling and a alamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that they did rend the air exceedingly.
17 And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless, they conquered not, and when the night came again they did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people.
18 And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto Shiz, desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he would take the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people.
19 But behold, the aSpirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and bSatan had full power over the chearts of the people; for they were given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of their minds that they might be destroyed; wherefore they went again to battle.
20 And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their swords.
21 And on the morrow they fought even until the night came.
22 And when the night came they were adrunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords.
23 And on the morrow they fought again; and when the night came they had all fallen by the sword save it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and sixty and nine of the people of Shiz.
24 And it came to pass that they slept upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again, and they contended in their might with their swords and with their shields, all that day.
25 And when the night came there were thirty and two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of Coriantumr.
26 And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for death on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men as to the strength of men.
27 And it came to pass that they fought for the space of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood.
28 And it came to pass that when the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient strength that they could walk, they were about to flee for their lives; but behold, Shiz arose, and also his men, and he swore in his wrath that he would slay Coriantumr or he would perish by the sword.
29 Wherefore, he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to pass that when they had aall fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood.
30 And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz.
31 And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and afell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died.
32 And it came to pass that aCoriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life.
33 And the Lord spake unto Ether, and said unto him: Go forth. And he went forth, and beheld that the words of the Lord had all been fulfilled; and he afinished his brecord; (and the chundredth part I have not written) and he hid them in a manner that the people of Limhi did find them.
34 Now the last words which are written by aEther are these: Whether the Lord will that I be translated, or that I suffer the will of the Lord in the flesh, it mattereth not, if it so be that I am bsaved in the kingdom of God. Amen.
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/ether/15
And yet the BOOK says...
Ether 14:22
And so swift and speedy was the war that there was none left to bury the dead, but they did march forth from the shedding of blood to the shedding of blood, leaving the bodies of both men, women, and children strewed upon the face of the land, to become a prey to the worms of the flesh.
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