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| City of Life and Death (Source) |
I've watched this film before, it is harrowing.
Set in 1937, when the Japanese Army seized Nanjing from the Chinese they lost all control. Insanity on a massive scale.
I had to watch the film again, doing so left me incapable of writing anything meaningful.
The horror ...
Minor point, the Japanese didn't "go crazy", they carried out policy. Tokyo had come to understand that they simply didn't have the manpower to physically occupy all of China. They decided to make an example of "what happens if you get uppity with us" and terrorize the rest of China into aquiesence. It worked, for a while. The "go crazy" excuse was invented after they lost the war.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't an isolated incident, just look at the "revenge" slaughter of Chinese people in the area where the Doolittle raiders landed.
DeleteWF - No they didn't simply "go crazy," there was policy to support and expect that. Troops, if not kept under tight control, will lose themselves in atrocity and commit crimes beyond what policy might expect.
DeleteA - No, not an isolated incident.
DeleteWas just speaking of this today; it was NOT a lapse in discipline or control, it was intentional and sanctioned.
DeleteThe question from earlier today was why were the Japanese almost universally brutal. All people have some element of the beast in us, but Imperial Japan nurtured and fostered such behavior, rooted in racism. The Chinese, Korean and Filipino peoples were seen as subhuman; "Co-Prosperity Sphere" be damned.
It's not all "troops" either; while there are lapses and anomalies in every military; our troops in WWII did nothing remotely like the Japanese did in the areas they controlled
Boat Guy
Well ...
DeleteLike the horrors of Unit 731.
DeleteAnother example.
DeleteSo over the top that the young Chinese woman who researched and wrote " The Rape of Nanking" eventually committed suicide from the horror of it all.
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
DeleteIris Chang. "The Rape of Nanking." I read it in the way-back, and it's on one of my bookshelves.... It's a horrific tale she tells -- don't think I could stand to see a movie about it.
DeleteSame here.
DeleteThere is a book, "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, written by Ruth Benedict about Japanese culture and how it compared to American culture. Written about the time of the end of the war it is an excellent source for understanding the Japanese people for Westerners. I read it years ago and really learned a great deal. It is in print and available on the Zon.
ReplyDeleteI've read that book. Understanding Japanese culture is not an easy task for a Westerner.
DeleteYeah, one of the hardest things for any of us is to realize just how alien cultures are to each other. We have a lot of "of course this is how rational people think" stuck in our heads and to other groups our thought processes and morals are inexplicable. Hell, I've had that problem with most of the women I know.
DeleteExcellent observation.
DeleteRead the book in college. Still on the shelf in my library
DeleteBG
👍
DeleteJapan has a military culture (from where I'm sitting) right up until they were occupied in 1945. The new rules that were written for them (by McArthur) has kept them in check (mostly) since then.
ReplyDeleteThe new world reality has pushed them towards the old ways, but you have to do what you have to do to stay alive. No way to guess how the world will look when the technological powerhouse Japan goes back to it's old militaristic ways.
Another question about modern Japan, what have they been teaching the kids about history and WW2?
Interesting times I'm afraid.. (actually more interesting times :-).
That "military culture" derived from an older, samurai culture. Those who created the new regime perverted bushido.
DeletePerverted or evolved? I guess it doesn't matter really...
DeletePerverted is the correct word.
DeleteFrom what I've seen on anime, both series and in movies, they are taught the correct things. That Imperial Japan stepped on a landmine and woke up in the hospital a better place, though severely injured.
DeleteThough the warrior spirit is still there.
Communist China, Communist North Korea, and Russia have no one to blame but themselves for Modern Japan rearming and changing their constitution.
Heck, even Singapore and South Korea have talked to Japan about mutual defense treaties and such. That right there shows how much Red China and the Hermit Kingdom have screwed things up.
Hhmm ...
DeleteSarge, I was not familiar with this film (although it appears to have gotten very good reviews, if you can call them that for such a subject). It sounds like the sort of thing that would leave me unable to write as well.
ReplyDeleteIt is very well made (I thought). It's available, in full, no ads, on regular YouTube. A clear copy, not the usual crappy copy filmed off someone's TV.
DeleteA brutal film that only captured part of what happened in China.
ReplyDeleteA very small part. There is much hatred of Japan in Asia based on WWII. They have long memories in that part of the world.
DeleteThere's still.plenty in this country of those few folks remaining who fought them in the Pacific
DeleteBG
Fewer each day. But how could they ever forget?
DeleteHey Old AFSarge
ReplyDeleteAnd with China getting froggy in the far East, they are forcing the Japanese to retool and rearm. Same with the South Koreans and the Philippines to keep them in check. especially since they don't have faith in the U.S. any more. The Rape of Nanking was horrid by western standards, but was used by the Japanese as an extreme example.
The Rape of Nanking was horrid by any standard.
DeleteUnder our current administration, I wouldn't trust the US either.
DeleteNope.
DeleteNot just China, but any area occupied by Japan. Maybe not as brutal as Nanking, but the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was not exactly benevolent.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet you find Koreans who remember the Japanese.
DeleteA - No, not just China.
DeleteRob - I don't know about the younger generation of Koreans, but my wife's generation remembers.
DeleteWhen I was in high school, we watched a documentary of the Rape of Nanking. Decapitations were shown (not the actual stroke) and the act of burying Chinese prisoners alive. Apparently, it is Japanese doctrine, to this day, that they were not the aggressors in WW2 and that they were the true victims of the war.
ReplyDeleteThey are deluded.
DeleteSomeone once remarked that the Japanese history of WWII in total is "One day, for no particular reason , the Americans dropped atomic bombs on us"
DeleteBoat Guy
Like I said, deluded.
DeleteMy history reading leads me to Comrade Misfit's conclusion as well. They seem to have written their own version of the war and didn't use ours.
ReplyDeleteAn old member of a friend's church passed on back in the 90's. His widow gave my friend a 7.7mm rifle, WW2 bring back from one of the island campaigns. The old member had sporterized it and used it for hunting deer. My friend let me see it. I figured it had a safety on it, but I couldn't figure it out. I was watching a documentary a few weeks later when I saw a grizzly old Jap soldier climb over a berm, and use the heel of his hand to twist on the back of the bolt. There is a chrysanthemum engraved there. THAT is the safety. The light bulb over my head was pretty bright. Not just history to be learned watching those old movies. If your are attentive, you can learn a lot more.
I have one of those, not sporterized.
DeleteInexplicable brutality, with enthusiasm, is not unique to WW2 Japan.
ReplyDeleteRussia is doing a pretty good imitation in Ukraine, (and earlier I am sure....).
The Mexican cartel thugs are pretty much the same as other Mexican thugs seizing power from one or another for a century or more.
Americans are almost unique in the infrequency of being brutal towards human beings, and the extremes to which Americans will go to help other humans.
Our Anglo cousins are very much in our end of the spectrum.
At least that is my opinion and observation.
John Blackshoe
Rings true.
DeleteJaps were pikers. They never understood brutality until we brought it. We went straight to extermination and the japs learned our way. We simply killed everyone.
ReplyDeleteTo lose sight of this and play pretend
Loses the entire point, war is brutal beyond measure
Are you saying that the Japanese were gentle and innocent until the nasty Americans taught them not to be? I've spent some time studying Japanese history and there must have been some time machines involved to sent American brutality trainers back a few hundred years. The way the Japanese treated conquered peoples is quite a contrast to how the Allies treated the Japanese after the war.
DeleteA#1 - We redefined the concept of total war by industrializing it.
DeleteA#2 - (different A), nope, you missed the point.
DeleteOkay, what point did I miss?
DeleteWe showed Japan what war is - brutal, violent, unforgiving.
DeleteYes and we and the British showed the German civilians we could match them in brutality. The Japanese did this on a far more personal scale.
DeleteVery personal.
DeleteSomething broke, anom is me hms
ReplyDeleteRoger that.
DeleteYou almost seem to postulate a nice way of making war. What we and nato are doing to ukraine is nothing but a war crime. Stop rolling up the border states is pretty simple and ancient beyond belief. Who made Russian show just what happens if old mores are abandoned by idiots? Ukraine destroyed by artillery alone. People in Europe used to understand this thing.
ReplyDeleteThere is no nice way to make war.
Delete(A belated post back to China). Martin Caiden in "The Ragged Rugged Warriers" tells of Tommy Walker of the International Squadron (he was killed flying the plane in the movie 'Flight of the Phoenix'). [paraphrased] He changed after seeing more than a hundred women and young girls who had been raped, tortured, and murdered being buried in a small village. After that, he would go on solo missions, taking off in the first faint morning twilight flying very low seeking Japanese troops marching or crammed into barges. A single strafing pass, his approaching plane almost invisible in the glare of the rising sun on the horizon. He had learned to hate.
ReplyDeleteWar does that.
DeleteTo me, nothing shows the horror of war like the history of the Thirty Years War that so devastated central Europe that it took over a century to recover.
DeleteGood example!
Delete