I agree with most of what Shawn says, but it might be oversimplifying to say that everyone in Japan is either a workaholic or a cockroach. Most of the people I know are far from either extreme.

I also think there’s something to be said for the rigor of Japanese education – it’s a cost/balance between discipline and innovation. Is America’s innovation really worth the shamefully low academic achievement of most of the population?

The same group also gripes considerably about the school system saying that they actually prefer the US model. (I couldn’t believe it when I heard that one!) I asked them why and they thought their own schools were too antiquated, emphasised memorization over analytical thinking, and were highly inflexible. No doubt once they put their kids in public schools here, they’ll change their mind!

They have a real problem in Japan in that the older generation suffered in their work to such an extent that the younger one, spoiled from the riches derived from that work, doesn’t want to follow in their parents’ footsteps. It’s sort of an extreme view – either one completely dedicates their life to their work, or they become a cockroach living at home until they’re 40. Many take the cockroach approach, and don’t make themselves useful. As a result, you get a very low birth rate and declining prosperity in a society that is racially homogenious and very reluctant to allow non-Japanese immigration. They need a social revolution beyond the Otaku one that has taken hold of the youth now.

I agree that Japan gets of lightly by comparison. Perhaps fortunately, perhaps unfortunately, Japan’s crimes were not deeply looked into, and were often covered up by the American Occupation, to the great chagrin of Japanese leftists and those who blamed the Japanese government for the war.

On the other hand, Japanese relocation camps housed mostly American citizens and there were no convictions for treason, aiding and abetting the JIA, or terrorist-lie actions. The US absolutely should have apologized, as it did. It’s a bit late now, but reparations to survivors would be very much in order.

There’s no denying that Japanese war crimes were atrocious. Personally I’m a bit miffed (as a Korean) that Americans have no problem demonzing Nazi Germany and the Jewish holocaust, but they’re reluctant to dicuss the Japanese empire who committed similar crimes even before WWII. In fact, most Americans are often apologetic for the Japanese relocation camp.

Still, sensible people should recognize that it was more than 50 years ago. Japan isn’t a war mongering nation any more. Compared to the United States violent crimes where lunatics kill 6,7 people are rare. I read Japanese manga and listen to their music all the time. I’d love to visit Tokyo one of these days.

Japan is often a target of INTENSE hatred from Koreans and Chinese who refuse to let of of the past. The criticisms of Japanese war crimes expressed here are downright mild by comparison.

Besides, how do wartime atrocities by Japanese soldiers justify even one assault on a young woman in Japan?

Balloonn bombs? Balloon bombs were a huge failure, the desperate action of a desperate military in a losing war. They were confirmed to have killed two people.

Vivisection? It was SCAP and GHQ that covered that up. It was the US that decided 731 was not fair game for prosecution as long as their notes were turned over to the US.

If you’re going to get into moral equivalency, you’re very quickly going to get into “my country right or wrong” territory, in which you can justify any crime by naming another crime.

Ranking Japanese war crimes, Nazi war crimes, the crimes of Communist governments, the crimes of the agents of democratic governments – it all leads to not seeing the forest for the trees and can be done by all sides. It’s a fruitless, no-win proposition.

Xanthippe, as many as 300,000. In other words, there were 300,000 accusations or suspicions. Rape statistics are very difficult to pin down as false accusations occur, as do unreported rapes. Then you have rapes that occurred, but were falsely attributed to Occupation troops. Then there are gray areas: if sex is demanded from a starving or destitute woman in exchange for food or other “gifts,” what is that?
So, to be perfectly clear here, there might have been up to 300,000 rapes, but the actual number of verifiable, criminal rapes was surely far lower than that.

When sanctioned brothels for American troops were opened in late 1946, the number of rapes fell off sharply.

Another complicating factor is that Occupation troops were initially very rarely prosecuted or punished for crimes against Japanese civilians. This changed when GHQ realized the extent to which the lack of discipline was hampering rebuilding efforts and efforts to cultivate Japan as an ally (hearts and minds, we’d now say.)

Xanthippe, I think you and I are pretty much on the same page. I absolutely agree with your central tenet that every society, every culture is capable of violence. I think what makes random violence so surprising in Japan is that, for many years, the same hierarchical, communal aspect of the culture that allowed or led to crimes such as the atrocities of WWII is, ironically, the stricture that kept some of people’s worse impulses in check within the society.
Obviously, though, Japan is capable of producing mass murderers, serial killers, and the like.

I’ll try to get back to you soon with sources for rape stats during the Occupation – hopefully on line. If not, I’ll give you the names of books.

Thats a long way from feeding thousands of Chinese children anthrax candy and later performing live vivisections on them, to name one many war crimes.

The main thing about understanding the vast amount of Japanese war crimes, and other events such as balloon bombs and experiments into anthrax and other WMD(which were eventually to be used together) help explain the decision to use nuclear weapons. These atrocities have been overlooked by modern history making the US look worse and worse with each generation for the reasoning behind the bombs. Not to mention MacArthur was obsessed with becoming president much of this was censored from the American public to make the ‘rebuilding of Japan’ as allies go as smoothly as possible.

Thank you for your response (as well as your very interesting post).

You said: “It’s telling, though, that an article about a present-day individual crime so quickly led to WWII and multiple indictments of an entire nationality based on incidents from WWII. The young men in question now are young enough that even their grandparents are often too young to have fought in WWII. It really is the equivalent of trying to explain Columbine through the prism of WWII. Not the most fruitful strategy if you really want to understand what’s going on two, even three generations after the end of the war.”

The reason that I brought up the Japanese wartime atrocities is to illustrate the incongruity of Japanese culture and violence – yet there it was. Just as today, these violent young mens’ behavior is incongruous with Japanese culture.

I’m not equating them other than to say that both are puzzling – and both illustrate that even in Japanese society, violence exists.

These things happen all over. That they happen also in Japan is not particularly surprising to me.

On another note, you said earlier: “During the first year of the Occupation, US forces in Japan committed as many as 300,000 rapes.”

Do you have a cite for this? My understanding is that there were 350,000 American servicemen in Japan the first year of occupation (with the number decreasing every year after). That is an incredibly high rate of rape.

A decade prior to Chang’s book came a series of magazine articles by a Japanese reporter who received death threats from some uyoku (extremist right-wing groups, often tied to organized crime). At this point, while there are still deniers, the debate over WWII atrocities by the JIA usually focuses on scale, relative importance, and what constitutes apology or reparations.

There was no legal prohibition against publication of The Rape of Nanking – it was more a situation of publishers not wanting to get involved in that kind of controversy.

That said, I think Xanthippe was referring to the censorship inherent in the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Technology’s (MEXT) textbook selection process. On numerous occasions, the chosen junior high school textbooks have downplayed, glossed over, or omitted Japanese wartime atrocities. Every couple of years there’s a highly public row between textbook publishers and the textbook selection committee.

Surveys that “show” that people in Japan know little about what happened in WWII tend to have to flaws: 1. Random calling or stopping random people on the street is likely to garner whatever response will end the exchange most quickly, and that response is usually, “I don’t know.” 2. Wartime atrocities are, obviously, sensitive, controversial issues. Japan is somewhat old-fashioned in terms of there being “things not to be discussed in polite company.”
Granted, this is often used as a way of avoiding unpleasantness, and, yes, people here are as influenced by what they hear or read as anywhere else, which can warp perceptions. However, there isn’t a vast conspiracy to pretend that WWII never happened.

Most countries are the same.

It’s telling, though, that an article about a present-day individual crime so quickly led to WWII and multiple indictments of an entire nationality based on incidents from WWII. The young men in question now are young enough that even their grandparents are often too young to have fought in WWII. It really is the equivalent of trying to explain Columbine through the prism of WWII. Not the most fruitful strategy if you really want to understand what’s going on two, even three generations after the end of the war.

Garrett DeOrio:

“Beyond the broad, sweeping, unsupportable generalization of the entire population, if the Japanese are “inclined toward violence,” they hide it very, very well.”

One thing that has confounded me – (I was born 12 years after WWII ended) — is the scope and brutality of the Japanese people. It seems at odds with the public face of Japanese culture.

The Rape of Nanking, the Manila Massacre, the Bataan Death March, the way the Japanese treated POWs during WWII … there are more examples but these should suffice to show that the Japanese, as a culture, are not non-violent.

I’m still searching for an explanation.

(Does Japan still censor their history books with regard to their part in WWII?)”

Yes they do. The release of several books like ‘the rape of Nanking’ or Unit 761 came to much outrage about 10 years ago as many of the nation’s youth had no knowledge it ever happened-almost as in the dark as our youth. Oddly enough, wikipedia has a fairly broad list of the atrocities here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes