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The Japanese

31 Dec 2005
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Ok, so my uncle (81 years old) is currently sitting here telling me how evil the Japanese race are. He on about how 60% of the Japanese were violent, evil people in WW2, and how the majority thought westerners were ****. Yes, maybe this was the belief back then, but he's trying to assure me that this is the belief now, just supressed, he thinks that most Japanese people still have a supressed violent streak in them.

Personally I think he's speaking ignorent bollocks, hell, he doesn't know any Japanese people and he's never been to Japan.

How can you judge a whole race of people on one governments orders and it's army?

What do you think?
 
So, are we basically talking about the Nanking massacre here or other factors that make japan an evil country or whatever? I dont believe that all the japanese are evil or anything, every country has its fair share of cruelty and barbaric actions, but that doesn't change that fact that those things were done, wether by the japanese or the chinese or the germans etc etc...

I believe any human has the ability to commit evil, i dont believe that any particular race of people is more likely/capable of committing evil actions- i believe that all people have a suppressed evil streak in them, even if it is almost always an unconscious one.
I think you have to remember that your grandpa actually lived in an age of many horrifc events- it was alot more real to him that what it may seem to us, because it never happend in our generation. But if say your undefended home town was invaded by japanese tommorrow and during the following weeks/months, over 20,000 women were brutally raped and killed, and hundreds of thousands more people slaughtered in the most cruel and horrific ways imaginable, the rivers clogged up with dead rottting bodys, i think you find it a hard time looking at the japanese in the same way you did before if that happened even if it didn't directly effect you.

There are plenty of countrys in this world that have committed very evil actions, you cant expect every person to let go to what they saw/heard and move on, just as much as you cant expect every murderer in this world to be forgiven.
ps: i having nothing against the japanese, i think there are loads of great things about them otherwise i wouldn't be here, but i still know they did some pretty horrific things in the past and i would never congratualate them on that.
 
My grandfather isn't wild about the Japanese either. But that's because he fought against them in WWII and had to watch his buddies die at their hands. Also, racism was a bit more common in his day. But old people have a lot of crazy, outdated ways of thinking, so I just ignore it.
 
Yes, what you both say is 100% correct and I agree, but by the way he spoke, he was giving the impression that the Westerners were perfect in WW2, yes, Japan did to a lot of evil things to the British and Americans in Burma and he reckons that the Americans and British didn't, it seems unlikely they didn't, but obviously, I can't comment.
 
There's still some residual resentment against Japan in the U.S. by people who lost a family member during World War II (more so with native West Coast people). We had next-door neighbors who lost a son in the Pacific and they never forgave the Japanese to their dying days. I think the resentment is lessening as that generation dies off.
 
My mother is Japanese-American. Nisei with both parent from Yamaguchi and cousins still in Japan. She was in the Navy and had several brothers in the US Army during WWII.

My dad is European-American and he and his brother were in the US Army during WWII. My dad fought in Europe, but my uncle was an engineer in the Pacific. He saw firsthand the brutality and viciousness of the Japanese Imperial Army and soon developed a very deep hatred of not only the soldiers he was tasked at killing, but of an entire nation and race. He has no problems talking about how he poured jerry cans of gasoline into caves and burned Japs alive. War it seems is ugly that way, and the ugliness is difficult to shake.

After the war he worked in rebuilding Japan, and his racism (which I find out of character) softened. He married a Japanese woman and brought her back to the US. She died thirty years later. His second wife is also from Japan. Seven of his ten nieces and nephews are half Japanese. He travels frequently to Japan and has developed a deep love and respect for the country and its people and he speaks Japanese better than my mother does.
 
Very informative and emotionally nice story there sabro san !! Thanks for sharing that with us.

I think, thepainneverends san, that your uncle is wrong on that matter. I don't think you can judge a whole race of people on one government and/or its army--or even some certain event in the course of its past history.

I have live here in Japan for some 21 years now, and have only felt any real prejudice directly towards me maybe twice at tops, and towards non-Japanese seldom. There are some nationalities that are less respected than those of the West, sadly, but again, on the very up close and personal level, they are not all that bad. :)
 
@thepainneverends...
Your uncle is probably not the best resourse for information on the subject. He's 81 years old and grew up in a completely different time. He's going to have a rather one-sided view on the subject. If you want to learn the truth, you should do some research on your own. But surely both sides did horrible things in WWII, that's the nature of war.
 
Brooker said:
@thepainneverends...
Your uncle is probably not the best resourse for information on the subject. He's 81 years old and grew up in a completely different time. He's going to have a rather one-sided view on the subject. If you want to learn the truth, you should do some research on your own. But surely both sides did horrible things in WWII, that's the nature of war.

Absolutely!

To add to Brooker's comment; most assuredly your uncle was exposed to wartime propaganda when he was at a a most impressionable age ( he would have been 20 in 1945 ... right?)

Is he a WWII vet? Did he serve in the Pacific? Did he see and experience things you, possibly, can't even imagine ... ?

Follow Brooker's advice ... do your own research ... form your own opinions.

... Neither the Japanese or Germans (.... or Italians) have two heads or horns today. (They didn't then, either - they just had just rotten leaders!).

... and the average young Japanese 'Honda-driving-J-Rock-fan" of 2006 .... didn't bomb Pearl Harbor!

Ask the old boy about his memories and experiences ... he might appreciate it and love talking about his memories of those times .... and you might learn something, too!

Take care.

ニ淡ニ停?。ニ停?
 
I think, thepainneverends san, that your uncle is wrong on that matter. I don't think you can judge a whole race of people on one government and/or its army--or even some certain event in the course of its past history.

I think that is true but, Japan is one of a few countries where the 'them versus us' is strongly reinforced by their culture. One aspect of this is a strong current of xenophobia held by some/quite a few Japanese.ツ This is reinforced by a combination of naivety and possibly plain ignorance on what goes on in other countries. A commonly heard expression about not wanting to live outside of Japan is that "Japan is a safety country, and that other countries are dangerous (and have high levels of racism)"

Of course, every country has streaks of racism and xenophobia, but I would say that a combination of lack of laws concerning discrimination and an ignorance of what it is (oftenly heard remark, "but we are all Japanese, so there is no discrimination" seems to forget and not include the Koreans, Chinese, Okinawans, and Ainu who were born and live here) fuels it here. It is subtle, not a violent racism, but you do see it in attempted foreign parental custody of children, foreign employment (especially in the university sector), applying for housing, store service, a whitewashing of the past in history books, no apologies issued to individual Asian countries ravaged during the war, etc..

I have live here in Japan for some 21 years now, and have only felt any real prejudice directly towards me maybe twice at tops, and towards non-Japanese seldom. There are some nationalities that are less respected than those of the West, sadly, but again, on the very up close and personal level, they are not all that bad.

Of course, I have met many Japanese that are kind, but the government itself does little to tackle some of the perceptions that are commonly fostered in Japan concerning their uniqueness, which I think further fuels the aforementioned xenophobia. I generally like living in Japan, but I don't like the often felt feeling that I am not treated as a person, but rather as a foreign vistor, even though I have been living here for 8 years, have a Japanese wife, etc..

So in a sense, painneverends, your uncle is wrong, as the Japanese are generally anything but aggressive, yet I have different misgivings concerning any real appreciation by the Japanese of the many things they have borrowed from around the world, and then they convince themselves that they invented it!

So there is a suppression of sorts, but I realize it is not violent. It is an odd mixture of inferiority/superiority complex to anything/anyone who is not Japanese. So in that sense, they fear and dislike anything that reminds them of the world outside Japan. Whether this is something to worry about depends on how idealistic you are concerning human relations in this increasingly more globalized world.
 
My point was that my Uncle (who also is 81- go figure) had the worst of the worst experiences. He got past all of that- the hatred, the prejudice. It is quite possible to get past the past. (Forgiving without forgetting.)
 
There is a lot of sense written here on this thread. ^^

When I was growing up, I was friends with an old man who had been a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp. He had been very badly treated (and seen his friends badly treated too), and nearly died of starvation. He was left with health problems for the rest of his life because of this.

He was very prejudiced against the Japanese people because of the cruel treatment he had received. I didn't agree with his prejudiced view of Japanese people in general, but at the same time I could understand why he felt that way. Maybe if I had been through the same terrible experiences, I might feel like that, who knows?

But, as has already been said, each country has done things that are cruel and shameful, and it's senseless to be prejudiced in that way. I find you can only learn about people as individuals, as how they are, without being blinkered by views of race and culture. Of course, race and culture contribute to part of that person, but to take them as the starting point is misguided. If you learn about the person, knowledge about how their race and culture are part of them and make them tick will follow on naturally from that.

Whether there are such things as 'national characteristics', and what these are, though... well, that's a complete anthropological study, isn't it!
 
thepainneverends

It is quite possible to get past the past. (Forgiving without forgetting.)

Actually, I am still working on gettting past the present!
 
gaijinalways said:
It is quite possible to get past the past. (Forgiving without forgetting.)
Actually, I am still working on gettting past the present!

As you know well, the US opened Japanese ports for the first time in over 250yrs, and the US was the first country that abolished the unequal treaties with Japan.
 
I think you always have to consider carefully the history and conditions within a country which create such a will to destroy as the Nazis in Germany and their copycat "brothers" (different ethnicity) the Imperial Family (Army,Navy,Airforce) in Nippon. What is inexcusable is that they copied almost everything the Germans did, down to the Human testing on Chinese and Koreans. The Japanese convenient memory tries to deny (always the same boring technique!) that they did this. Retarded or what?

And don't forget they were on the side of the Allies in WWI. A confused nation??
 
I think if any one country commits war attrocities, then those attrocities should be examined, judged by an interenational court, and thus punished. Japan never went through what is essentially seen by nation builders as a 'healing process', or legitimizing process in the new government, as for two examples, the doctors who did biological warfare testing on human beings were given amnesty in exchange for the information which the U.S. wanted to keep from the Soviets.

The Soviets however, who also suffered losses along with the Chinese and Koreans, persued their own agendas in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. they however let the accused off with a fairly light sentence, perhaps in exchange for the information gathered at the camps. The majority of the others went on to lucrative positions within the Japanese medical society.

The second example is the unwillingness of MacCarthur to levy any war crimes charges against Emperor Hirohito, who would have willingly subjected to them as a responsibility to the nation.

It probably made rebuilding Japan easier, but perhaps the process of healing could have better been served by examining the country's crimes, and punishing and or exonerating them in some form of a trial.

[...]Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions until after World War II. The Japanese government, therefore, takes the position that Japan violated no international law.

Conversely, Japan also does not claim there are any violations of the Geneva act by Allies against the Japanese during war time.

Coincidentally, there was say, a 30% or more chance of death inside a Japanese concentration camp, comparitively to a 4% chance (unless you were a Soviet) inside a Nazi concentration camp--- this gives you some idea of the ferocity of the Japanese during WWII, exclusive of even officer rank, all prisoners met similar fates.

Jokingly my girlfriend told me how during the occupation the Japanese would shout "yankee go home"... (Which I'm not even certain they DID shout...)... Without any sort of acknowledgement of why, and under what circumstances the U.S. were in Japan to begin with. I think this sort of nationalism breeds similar beliefs she has such that Japan is a "safe" country for Asians, that people outside of Japan are generally predudiced against Asians, that Asians traveling outside of Japan are in danger because they are seen as affluent and subject to attack, etc...

Right now, I know that there are these similar types of feelings in Japan, and similar ignorance of what goes on outside of Japan, even for those Japanese who have visited other nations. There is a prevalent US and THEM attitude that is difficult in a relationship with someone, it's something that people need to work together to try to combat.

I don't have enough experience to say for certain, but I feel strongly that Japan may never rid itself of the nationalism that treats resident Koreans as 'gaijin', despite the fact that they were born in Japan, and causes people to create manga such as Hating the Korean Wave to become popular by disenfranchised youth.

However--- the reason why many youths are disenfranchised is due to the lack of available options they have in the current economy for finding jobs, going to a good school, earning a living wage that affords them the luxury goods which are seemlessly advertised to the poor and wealthy alike for lack of acknowledement of an invibile but existant upper and lower class base, and specifically classing everyone as 'middle'---

This is the primary reason that crime will continue to be a problem for youths unable to obtain what they want in an increasingly polarized society of 'haves' and 'have nots'.
 
celtician said:
And don't forget they were on the side of the Allies in WWI. A confused nation??

More likely a confused poster whose overly simplistic view of things has been influenced by watching too much professional wrestling.
 
You can certainly understand where the deep seated prejudice, hatred and distrust comes from at least in this last century. Attaching it to the current generation who not only are not responsible for those actions but for some darn reason, may be entirely ignorant of those actions is miguided at best.

It is like trying to understand the Filipino resentment toward Americans without knowing our history in their islands.
 
yukio_michael said:
...
This is the primary reason that crime will continue to be a problem for youths unable to obtain what they want in an increasingly polarized society of 'haves' and 'have nots'.
I don't reply you much about your post above, for I'm afraid my post'll be off-topic and be deleted here.
The juvenile crime here is not more serious/worse than used to or the competent authority trumpets.
But the safer, the better.
 
gaijinalways said:
It is quite possible to get past the past. (Forgiving without forgetting.)
Actually, I am still working on gettting past the present!
its hard for some people to forget the past, some countries still hold grudges, look at North Korea they hate Americans.

But we must not let our past, no matter how glorious get in the way of our future.
 
jack2 said:
its hard for some people to forget the past, some countries still hold grudges, look at North Korea they hate Americans.
But we must not let our past, no matter how glorious get in the way of our future.
Well most of the known world hates the USA so thats not such a good example.
But still I think ,that the Japanese are intitled to have national pride just as much as any other country.It's no question of what happened in the past but whats happening right now.
Besides at the moment Japan is a very peacefull nation on the other hand America and England........😊
 
moffeltoff said:
Well most of the known world hates the USA so thats not such a good example.
But still I think ,that the Japanese are intitled to have national pride just as much as any other country.It's no question of what happened in the past but whats happening right now.
Besides at the moment Japan is a very peacefull nation on the other hand America and England........😊
Let me guess your referring to the war on terrorism, which we are winning.
 
moffeltoff said:
on the other hand America and England........

".....had to rescue continental Europe from Germany, though in hindsight it may have been as well to let them all rot"

Finish your sentences.
 
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