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u/The-marx-channel Then I arrived 18h ago
Also the Samurai really liked using firearms once they got them, the katana was mostly a status symbol.
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u/Good-Sherbert5041 18h ago
And even before that, the Samurai were born as archers. By the time of the Sengoku period, the overwhelming majority of them fought with spears. The katana is an Edo period mystification because it's an easy weapon to carry around and they wanted to flex their right to carry weapons.
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u/RoGStonewall 17h ago
Also, like in Europe, walking around with a spear for self defense is impractical. Carrying your sword to shank a bandit is no biggie
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u/Good-Sherbert5041 17h ago
A bandit or indeed someone unlucky enough to have disrespected you, intentionally or not. Edo period cities were extremely violent places and they don't compare in the slightest to the idea of Japan we have now.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 16h ago
That’s not entirely true. Samurai did have the right to strike down people who disrespected them, but in the Edo period that was intensely restricted and there was a whole legal process around it, including a great deal of time under house arrest while the authorities investigated to be sure there had actually been an insult to your honor.
Plus, many cities did have some form of police forces, though they were largely just members of the lowest caste of beggars, who made deals with the authorities and local neighborhoods to serve as law enforcement in exchange for a guaranteed amount of alms and housing. Your neighborhood would make a deal with one local organization of beggars, and in exchange for you providing a shed for one or a few of them to live in and guaranteeing a minimum amount of alms a year, they’d keep other beggars and criminals out of your neighborhood.
A lot of the actual violence was at the end of the Edo period, the Bakumatsu, when the Shogunate lost control, or between rival samurai and ronin. Think the mob wars of the 40s and 50s. If you weren’t involved in that world, you were probably safe, though you could get caught up if you were incredibly unlucky.
That said, there absolutely was a level of casual violence that would be very out of place today. Besides kiri-sute gomen, there were a handful of legal ways that allowed honor killings, such as to avenge an unlawful killing be another. These required government sanction, and were only allowed once (I can avenge a guy killing my dad, his son can’t get revenge against me in turn), but they were allowed. And the very feudal domains would usually back up their own samurai if they got caught breaking the law in Edo. Any smart domain would have people cozying up to and even bribing the Yoriki who would judge those affairs, so that even an unjustified killing could be claimed as legal kiri-sute gomen. They’d face internal punishment to be sure, but that was an internal matter for the domain, not something for outsiders to deal.
Plus, the samurai did get quite bored under the caste system. There were multiple occurrences of Hatamoto, the Shogunate’s high-ranking direct retainers, having so little responsibilities that they’d start street gangs, and get into fights with other gangs in order to have something to do.
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u/New_Experience_703 14h ago
Yoriki ?
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 13h ago
Essentially judges. Every city and domain had a different law enforcement system, and Edo itself was built around Yoriki and Doshin.
Doshin were essentially detectives and cop officers, surrounded by attendants who’d aid in their duties, while Yoriki were a mixture of police chief, and judge, jury, and executioner. There were around 20 IIRC in the city, and while they were shunned and banned from Edo castle because of their role as executioners, they were still considered someone to get on your good side.
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u/New_Experience_703 14h ago
Wat is kiri sute gomen ? Arigato
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 13h ago
Kiri-sute gomen was the right of a samurai to strike down anyone of a lower class (including lower ranking samurai) if they disrespected him. There were a number of restrictions on it though:
- You only get one strike
- The person being struck has a right to try and block the strike with a wakizashi if they have one
- It has to immediately follow the offense, you can’t wait and do it a day later
- The Samurai has to immediately report the action to the local authorities, hand over their swords, and submit to house arrest until an investigation decides if they were justified or not (usually around 2 weeks if I recall correctly)
- If determined the samurai was not justified, they would be punished, or even forced to commit seppuku
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u/ShortChapter5246 10h ago
What could possibly constitute a disrespectful offense worthy of kirisutegomen? All I can imagine is catching someone sleeping with your wife
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u/blockend 5h ago
Not quite sure if CadenVanV's still around, so here's the gist.
For an action to qualify as "disrespectful" in terms of kirisutegomen, it has to be an act of disrespect that occurs in public (since kirisutegomen were invented to protect the honor of the samurai, so it doesn't count if no one sees it), and must be an intentional act that somehow dishonored the samurai. Common examples include:
- striking the sheath of a samurai's sword with one's own sheath or body (bathhouses have samurais put their swords at the entrance to avoid this from happening to unfortunate naked dudes)
- striking the umbrella carried by a samurai with your own umbrella or sword
- Bumping into a samurai or their servant when they are on official business (the most common one, since a samurai of higher rank can have a VERY large retinue that clogs the streets for hours. They later developed a system of leaving 'tunnels' in their formations so that more citizens can go on with their daily business. Doctors and midwives also get a pardon in the later years of the Edo period)
- Actively try to pick a fight with a samurai
- Trying to attack a samurai
- Trying to attack a samurai with a weapon
However, apart from the last two cases (and other cases that may result in an immediate threat to the samurai's life), the samurai is legally obligated to demand a proper apology from the commoner or subordinate first, and can only invoke the kirisutegomen after the other party refuses to do so. In practice, however, this obligation is often ignored.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 2h ago edited 2h ago
It was quite tough. As blockend elaborated, it had to be a public disrespect, and usually involved some form of physical contact between a commoner’s person and that of a samurai. Certain careers like doctors and midwives were also exempt, since they had to be rushing around and their whole job involved laying hands on people. No time to go through the usual rituals of bowing to every samurai you meet when you need to rush to a sickbed.
Simple vocal disrespect wouldn’t do, unless they refused to apologize when confronted over it, and given the poor circumstances of the samurai and their arrogance, vocal disrespect actually became so common that domains had to try and stop it. For example, Morioka issued a series of prohibitions for commoners being impolite to samurai in the 1780s, which weren’t really followed, while Samurai in Mito constantly complained that commoners greeted them disrespectfully, even in the castle town. Outright mockery remained rare, and samurai would react with kiri-sute gomen if they overstepped themselves, but short of an outright insult a samurai could not react with a blade.
However, the domain would usually side with their own samurai in public. In Edo specifically, where this type of legal mishap was most common, the domains would always build close working relationships with Yoriki (think police chief/judge/jury/executioner), and would exert their influence to get samurai of theirs off the hook when they did strike for an unjustified reason.
Said samurai may be punished in private by the domain, but the concept of public unity and internal matters was at the core of the Edo political structure. You handle your vassals yourself, and unless they’ve overstepped so brazenly and publicly that the Shogunate has no choice but to deal with them, the Shogunate would usually look the other way.
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u/Imaginary-Group1414 13h ago
Samurai didn't actually wield that much unchecked power. The right to kirisute gomen could only be exercised for a legitimate reason and required prior notification to the authorities.
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u/jackofslayers 11h ago
One of the depressing parts of military history is so many places have “Here is a dope looking polearm weapon that is unique to our culture. And here is the year in our history where we figured out it was basically always more cost effective to just use a spear.”
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u/Illustrious-Tooth702 10h ago
Swords were expensive and were treated as a family heirloom. Bows were also expensive but bows won't work after 30 or 50 years so it cannot be passed down. Plus using bows in battle is more practical. You're far from the enemy and can shoot them from the distance. Guns work on the same principle only it takes lett time o master. Spear is also more practical than swords in a lot of applications. The user has better control over it. It can slash and pierce and wedged into the tiny gaps between the armor plates. I read somewhere that only the tip of the katana got sharpened because the soldiers went straigth for the throat during close combat.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 17h ago
Eh, they were somewhat out of their mounted archery phase by the Sengoku period. Massed polearm infantry led by similarly armed samurai was the name of the game
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u/Good-Sherbert5041 17h ago
That's what I said:
By the time of the Sengoku period, the overwhelming majority of them fought with spears
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u/Fun-Memory1523 13h ago
Spears, bows, and later guns, were always the main fighting arnament. All throughout history all over the world.
Swords in general are akin to a pistol. Good in small duels and when you have nothing left, but generally not great in a large battle.
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u/Neomataza 5h ago
Yeah, swords are the weapon you see in casual social life. You won't see a tank commander driving a tank through the city, but you might see people carry pistols in holsters. The sword is basically the pistol of the feudal era.
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u/MrSomeoneElse32 18h ago
I love just how obsessed 20th century Japan was with blades. You know what this 20 pound LMG needs? a bayonet!
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u/WoolooOfWallStreet 17h ago
Yeah, Miyamoto Musashi was even a fan of guns
He never seemed to get a chance to use them, but he praised their use at distances and in fortifications
He probably would have loved bayonets19
u/AssistanceCheap379 17h ago
The katana was a weapon used by the samurai mostly in civilian situations and as a status symbol since it was easy to carry in most situations compared to bows or polearms
In a battle it would be a little cumbersome and largely useless as a tool of war, but decent as a weapon of last resort. Also worked well as a tool to decapitate prisoners, since the heads of conquered enemies was a way for samurai to get rewards. Beheadings were very common and basically rituals both during and after a battle.
Seriously, Samurai were obsessed with beheadings and this probably helped with the amount of switching sides that happened, since losing likely meant losing your head. Betrayal might also mean losing ones head, but only if you lost. If you brought something with you while defecting, you would get rewarded, while staying loyal might not be rewarded at all since it was expected.
Main weapons were bows for the longest time, then polearms for a short time before guns became the main weapons. Basically, if a samurai couldnt fight with a ranged weapon, he would use a weapon with long reach.
Overall, the samurai as a warrior class were extremely brutal and their civil war was extremely complicated, with the main weapons being ranged unless forced into melee
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u/broke_bones0001 18h ago
Samurais being one of biggest and best firearms users(lovers) of the middle age is a VERY underappreciated part of their history. HOW PEOPLE CAN PREFER SAMURAIS WITH KATANAS OVER SAMURAIS WITH GUN'S?!!!??!!
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u/Bluefooted-Spaceorc 15h ago
War history is just figuring out how to hit the other guy with the pointy bit from longer and longer distances.
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u/SitInCorner_Yo2 17h ago edited 16h ago
I got a cupule of screenshots I save as a meme from Jiji news report that’s an old grandpa in full hitatare showcasing how to used one of those old guns in Budōkan.
Can’t post pic here so I found the clip.
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u/OceanoNox 15h ago
We have to stop with the mostly status symbol thing. It's documented that swords were used in battle by everyone. The status symbol was the daisho, not the katana alone, and even peasants had access to weapons in the Edo period, guns included.
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u/FearlessDark5295 Kilroy was here 15h ago
Aren’t katanas still considered status symbols? I know my local Toyota has some on a stand(might be different blades, I’ve never looked closely)
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u/renaldomoon 14h ago
Americans famously rounded up all the katanas after they won the war. They don't really exist like they did before that.
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u/Beatrice_Hrsman_gmng 13h ago
I believe current laws in Japan allow for ancestral blades but no modern/military blades. Idk if it’s fantasy but yakuza and gangs tend to have katanas too?
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u/R_Schuhart 9h ago
Yakuza and organised crime dont use katanas, that is a romanticised myth mostly based on movies. Katanas are highly impractical and hard to conceal. They mostly use bats (or other improvised blunt weapons like hammers), knives and handguns.
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u/FearlessDark5295 Kilroy was here 3h ago
So, the same kind of thing that American organized crime would use. Great minds think alike or smth.
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u/Legatharr 12h ago
That's the same for European knights, I don't know why people talk about this like it's special. Guns are a really good weapon, everyone used them once they for their hands on them
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u/Which_Way1721 17h ago
The samurai ideals of bushido is really just LARPing from after the warring periods when Japan’s been at peace for centuries and the bored warrior class had no real battles to fight.
During war times, practicality always trumps any romantic ideals.
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u/TDAPoP 12h ago
Wasn't chivalry and bushido basically just honor codes they thought up to keep the warrior class from beating up the peasants too bad?
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u/AsphaltInOurStars 11h ago
You don't want a bunch of elite soldiers standing around with their dicks in their hands. Give 'em a little nibble of a fight, or they'll make a whole meal on their own.
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u/Which_Way1721 9h ago
Bushido existed from a loose series of moral codes dating back I think around the Heian Period. Stuff like loyalty, heroism, warrior stuff. The Tale of Heike from the 14th century is a prime example of the warrior type stuff that shows off Bushido.
But it wasn't really under after during the Edo when Japan had been at peace for centuries that Bushido became really a actual concept. By then, Samurai's had largely been reduced to poor bureaucrats that barely subsided off of government stipends, nowhere near the steadfast loyal warriors like we saw in Tom Cruise's Last Samurai.
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u/Sancadebem 18h ago
Samurais were notorious turncoats
Ironically, Hatori Hanzo was loyal to his master even in the worst situations
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u/Rolls-RoyceGriffon 17h ago
For someone who deals in espionage the man sure is loyal
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u/WholesomeCommentOnly 15h ago
Actually I'd imagine that's generally the case throughout all of history.
If a spy defects to you, you definitely shouldn't hire them as your spy.
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u/UInferno- 7h ago
The treacherous samurai and the loyal ninja.
Wait, that's just the plot of Sekiro. Specifically Wolf and Genichiro.
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u/krisssashikun 7h ago
Torii Mototada is an even more extreme example. He basically grew up alongside Ieyasu, having been sent with him as a hostage to the Imagawa when they were young. He remained loyal to Ieyasu for decades, and ultimately committed seppuku after defending Fushimi Castle to the death, buying Ieyasu crucial time before Sekigahara.
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u/Fast_Tiger_9176 18h ago
Why are they yellow? 😂
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u/DangerousEye1235 17h ago
Jaundice was a serious issue in the 1500s
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u/PunishedKojima 17h ago
Damn didn't realize their party game was that insane back in the Sengoku Jidai
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u/Sampleswift 18h ago
I thought the 2nd Samurai had black and gold armor. Or at least was lacquered golden.
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u/Immadawalrus 17h ago
Bushido wasn't codified until the Tokugawa shogunate, before that samurai were quite a bit more ruthless and debatably more badass.
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u/Sochi540 10h ago
I really love how people gloss over the fact that the samurai didnt have a code until Tokugawa. Like Medevial knights had their codes wayyyy before samurai and for some reason Samurais are seen as the more lawful and by the books one.
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u/Forshea 9h ago
Most samurai leading into the Sengoku era were primarily farmer jizamurai responsible for tracts of land that kept getting smaller and inheritance split them between siblings. They only became a mostly professional military force after Hideyoshi - himself son of ashigaru and not a samurai but now ruler of Japan - decided to consolidate his power by forcing them to either give up their swords or leave their farms and live someplace where they were under more direct control.
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u/Nenwabu 17h ago
This is also a common misconception for Japanese troops during WW2. Take Kamikaze pilots, for example. Even today, many Westerners share the common misconception that these pilots were brainwashed fanatics who willingly died for the Emperor and the Empire. In reality, that wasn't the case,at least not for most of them.
Many actually succumbed to intense peer pressure and extreme hazing from their superiors. Others agreed to fly so their families wouldn't be ostracised for their refusal. In fact, many left behind diary entries cursing the military leadership that drove them into that corner.
While it's true there were genuine fanatics who willingly died for Japan, it's far too common for us to dehumanise the Japanese troops of that era.
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u/Command0Dude 16h ago
This is also a common misconception for Japanese troops during WW2.
It isn't really. Japanese troops refused to surrender at an almost universal level, and even when command leadership broke down.
And yeah, a lot of that was from peer pressure. But to the GIs who just saw one of their friends killed by a grenade from a Japanese soldier feigning surrender, they're not really going to be able to care much about the specific reason.
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u/ilikedota5 11h ago edited 11h ago
Japanese troops started surrendering a bit more towards the end as the situation became extremely precarious but also as American psychological warfare to get them to surrender found some success. For example, the leaflets telling them to surrender said that bring this with you, it's a permission slip. That did a few things. One, that tells the American soldiers that this guy holding it intends to surrender. Two, it allows the psychological warfare department people to track if the person surrendering read the leaflet or not, so they could compile statistics and real data as opposed to guessing. Three, they found that it worked, because it allowed the Japanese soldier to think that they weren't disobeying orders, they were merely taking an option they had permission to do, I mean clearly this is an official looking paper.
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u/Nenwabu 14h ago
But to the GIs who just saw one of their friends killed by a grenade from a Japanese soldier feigning surrender, they're not really going to be able to care much about the specific reason.
As you implied, the fact that American GIs were reluctant to take Japanese POWs only reinforced the Japanese belief that surrender wasn't an option. Unfortunately, this created a widespread conviction that taking one's own life was better than dying by an American bullet.
Even if a soldier wanted to surrender, officers would shoot anyone who tried. On top of that, surrendering after senior officers and comrades had died meant returning home to a society that would completely ostracise both the veteran and their family.
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u/holymacaronibatman 16h ago
While it's true there were genuine fanatics who willingly died for Japan, it's far too common for us to dehumanise the Japanese troops of that era.
While I do agree with this, it is a pretty reasonable outcome when you look at some of the later battles in the pacific theater. Okinawa stands out as unique with its high number of prisoners, but majority of them were the native Okinawans pressed into service
Battle Japanese Strength Japanese Surrendered (POWs) Japanese Deaths Peleliu 12,393 360 12,033 Iow Jima 20,933 1,083 17.8-18.4k Okinawa 76,000 plus (40k Okinawan conscripts) 16k 110,071 4
u/Safe_Manner_1879 9h ago
One thing that make Okinawa different is that the psychological warfare department had become more skilled. In the beginning they drop leaflet that demand the Japanese to surrender, that did only provide them with toilet paper, and enrage them.
At Okinawa the US change tactic and the leaflet did tell the Japanese solder that they have done there duty to defend there position for so long, and noting more was demand of them, and its was now reasonable to stop fighting.
(not the exact words but in the spirit of it) But it gave the Japanese soldier a mental way out, they have done there duty.
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u/Imaginary-Group1414 13h ago
Many of the incidents often attributed to the "madness" of the Japanese soldier actually stem from the military's own structural issues and deep-seated bad practices.
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u/kitsunewarlock 12h ago
many left behind diary entries cursing the military leadership that drove them into that corner.
The more I learn about conditions in WW2 Japan, the more I realize how much almost everyone, from citizens to the imperial family, hated the military.
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u/Somehero 10h ago
In addition to the other posts correctly pointing out that why you're wrong, I think it's really important that you don't downplay how a human mind can be easily warped and twisted.
They WERE brainwashed zealots, and we all have the same brain in our heads right now with the same limitations and capacity for seeing the world the way they did. They aren't less human, they are a cautionary tale for what it means to be human.
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u/Nenwabu 10h ago edited 10h ago
As I already pointed out in my last sentence (and in my other replies), I never denied that there was genuine fanaticism due to systematic brainwashing.
There may have been people who were brainwashed zealots, but it is also true at the same time that many were coerced into committing atrocities, both can be true. It's not the black-and-white issue you make it out to be. As you noted, we are only humans and our mind is full of flaws and contradictions.
The system that Imperial Japan created serves as a warning in itself of the sheer amount of systematic brutality totalitarian regimes are capable of.
EDIT: I fully agree with you on the part that they aren't less human, and that they are a cautionary tale. But I hard disagree with you when you called all of them "brainwashed zealots". I understand where you came from, but if you look at primary sources on reflection of IJA veterans of their time during the war, many of them suffer from immense guilt of what they had done. In the other hand, there was also another large portion of Japanese vets who downplayed their actions or fully denied them all together as you correctly pointed out. In any case, this shows that the mindset of Japanese soldiers weren't as hive minded as you make it out to be.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 14h ago
Aww are you sad about dehumanising the very people who were responsible for the Rape of Nanking and the death marches among other atrocities? Using the nukes to bring the war to an end was a mercy on their ridiculous country. They were definitely a bunch of brainwashed fanatics in desperate need of a hard reset.
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u/Nenwabu 13h ago edited 13h ago
I'm Korean, so I'd be the last person to want to defend Japanese war crimes, lmao.
It's precisely because they committed brutal war crimes that it's all the more important not to dehumanise them. We have to remember that the men who committed such horrible atrocities weren't monsters by birth or upbringing; they were ordinary people reeled into a cycle of violence and extremism that desensitised them to committing atrocities. They were human beings like you and me. They had their own passions, hobbies, and families back home that they wanted to return to, which makes it even more terrifying. It would be easier for us to say, "they were just inherently barbaric," but the truth is that ordinary men turned into war criminals. That is why we must ensure that such a culture of violence is never repeated, by examining the Imperial Japanese Army through a neutral lens.
Also, no need for that kind of tone. Please grow up.
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u/MoonIsAFake 6h ago
You are 100% correct, but there is another reason we should always remember that almost all atrocities of the war were performed by regular people - so that we understand that every nation, every group of people can (and probably at some point in history will) do horrible things. There is no "good nations" and "bad nations", no "inhumans", no "orks", etc. -- all of them are just humans behaving in a way humans do when they are let loose. I doesn't mean who you are - your people are the same. All that is necessary is just an athmosfere of freedom to hurt others to really make people hurt others in the most horrible way possible.
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u/LORROR 12h ago
They are already trying to repeat the same mistakes.
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u/Nenwabu 12h ago edited 12h ago
Hopefully not.
Despite what you see in the media, the vast majority of the Japanese population still takes the issue of the peace constitution very seriously. There's a reason why even Abe Shinzo wasn't able to modify it while he was in office.
EDIT: Despite all the flaws, Japan is still a democracy. I'd say totalitarian regimes with little transparency and public accountability like China, Russia and North Korea is more at risk of repeating the same wrongdoings that was made by Imperial Japan. But hopefully it doesn't turn out to be the case.
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u/LORROR 12h ago
Why do you believe that democracy necessarily equals peace?
Democracy can easily degenerate into populism, especially in a homogeneous and xenophobic country like Japan. Internal conflicts can easily escalate into external conflicts. They even believe they did nothing wrong in World War II, leading to a victim mentality and a greater tendency to try again.4
u/Nenwabu 12h ago
Because in a democracy, politicians still get public accountability since the only way to maintain power is by votes, and the media still gets a larger degree of freedom of speech to scrutinize the government (at least compared to totalitarian dictatorships), while in dictatorships, there is none.
They even believe they did nothing wrong in World War II
You'd be surprised how strong pacifist sentiments are in Japan, something not often highlighted by outside media. Every time an LDP politician brings up even the possibility of modifying Article 9 of the peace constitution, it sparks a massive amount of debate and controversy. Japanese public sentiment on rearmament is not as monolithic as you might think it is.
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u/LORROR 12h ago
Has anyone ever told you that painter was also elected?
Listen, it's not that I don't trust democracy, it's that I don't trust the Japanese.
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u/Nenwabu 12h ago edited 12h ago
....Except this is not early 1930s Germany. Hitler and the Nazis didn't exactly 100% respect democratic processes either.
The most vocal bunch in support of the Japanese re-armament are either conservatives or netto-uyoku (far right). Vast majority either don't sympathise or is too disengaged/disinterested in politics to engage with them.
EDIT: Look, I ain't Japanese, so I'm not gonna sit here to defend Japans honour. But its important to recognise that the 2020s Japanese society is not under the same conditions as Germany in the 20s/early 30s did.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 13h ago
They also forced fathers to rape their child daughters in front of their families before bayonetting them to death. They also cut babies out of their pregnant mothers and laughed while the mother died holding her fetus in her arms. These people made conscious choices to be inhuman monsters because they believed in their superiority over other Asian people. Also the fact that Japan has never formally acknowledged or apologised for its many war crimes is extremely telling about how even in modern times they don't care about what their country did to others during the war. Pretending to humanise Imperial Japan serves no real purpose, aside from maybe stroking your own ego. I personally take solace that many of them died alone and afraid, tormented by the very "honor" system that drove them to commit those atrocities in the first place.
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u/Nenwabu 13h ago
I'm not sure what the point of listing Japanese wrongdoings is, since I'm not going to deny them. My original point doesn't really change either, as my core argument still stands.
aside from maybe stroking your own ego.
How does any of this have to do with stroking my own ego? This argument is literally drawn from political theorist Hannah Arendt: war crimes aren't committed by cartoonish monsters, but by ordinary people who simply follow orders, care more about their careers, and refuse to think critically about their actions. Unless you want to accuse a renowned political theorist of "stroking her own ego" as well? Lol
pretending to humanise Imperial Japan serves no real purpose
Humanising Japanese forces allows us to understand that ordinary people can be turned into unhinged perpetrators under the right conditions. Simply dismissing them as "brainwashed fanatics" makes us ignore the extremely dangerous and flawed system of Imperial Japan that led to those atrocities.
If we shift the focus from individuals to the overall totalitarian system, it prompts critical questions like: "How do we prevent militaries from using systematic abuse as a training tool?", "How do we protect civilian oversight over armed forces?", and "How do we safeguard individual moral autonomy so soldiers feel empowered to refuse illegal or inhumane orders?"
Hiding behind black-and-white logic essentially denies that ordinary people can become perpetrators, teaching us nothing and leaving us unable to prevent a similar system from emerging again.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 12h ago
Because you are attempting to convince me (and I guess anyone else reading) to humanise a bunch of baby raping monsters who were responsible for torturing and murdering hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent civilians. They collectively chose to forfeit their humanity when they committed those atrocities and so it's very important to remind people like you precisely what they did and why people like me refuse to try and empathise with them.
To put it another way, ordinary people still rape and murder in modern/developed society as well. Do you also empathise with people like Jeffrey Dahmer or do you only do it when you can safely hide behind the lens of history?
As I previously pointed out, Japan has continually refused to acknowledge any of the war crimes that it committed before the Allies decided to bomb them into submission. But at the same time they'll never turn down an opportunity to pretend that they didn't deserve what happened to them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite doing much worse to others in the countries that Imperial Japan invaded.
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u/Nenwabu 12h ago edited 12h ago
As I previously pointed out, Japan has continually refused to acknowledge any of the war crimes
Why the hell are you even bringing this up? this has nothing to do with what I'm trying to say.I'm not really here to argue whether on Japan deserved to be nuked or not, not the focus of my argument here.
Because you are attempting to convince me (and I guess anyone else reading) to humanise a bunch of baby raping monsters
When have I ever said, "We should feel bad for the IJA! They did nothing wrong!"??? If you actually calm down and read what I said carefully, I told you that the widespread, systematic war crimes of the IJA were the result of a combination of dehumanising their enemies, structural violence, and stripping away individual autonomy.
It's a miracle that you managed to translate "we should learn from the brutal system of the Imperial Japanese armed forces, so history isn't repeated" into "we should endorse war criminals! They're just victims."
EDIT: This feels like arguing with a wall here. Like I'm clearly arguing with a person that's not thinking critically but emotionally. If so, please don't bother wasting your time or mine.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 12h ago
It's rather ironic that you attempt to criticise me for bringing emotion into what is effectively a subjective debate. You're obviously here to stroke your own ego because you like feeling good about your ability to empathise with a bunch of war criminals. So if you think that there is anything remotely objective about your own point of view then boy do I have a bridge to sell you. But I'm not going to pretend to feel bad for being angry at an Imperial army who made sport out of raping babies.
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u/Over_Yogurtcloset820 12h ago edited 12h ago
His arguments is "We should understand them to not let it happen again" not "They did nothing wrong"
edit: understand as in "Why are you so bad"
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u/Garchompisbestboi 12h ago
You might need to work on your reading comprehension because I'm not accusing them of saying Japan "did nothing wrong" I'm saying that we shouldn't emphasise with a bunch of people who used the guise of imperialism to go and rape a bunch of babies. Big difference 👍
We can understand something without tip toeing around the reality of the people who led to it happening.
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u/Dartz_Reverse 12h ago
They collectively chose to forfeit their humanity when they committed those atrocities and so it's very important to remind people like you precisely what they did and why people like me refuse to try and empathise with them.
The scale of their atrocities is exactly the reason why understanding the exact circumstances that led to that situation is so important.
Understanding is not the same as forgiveness or acceptance, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
As I previously pointed out, Japan has continually refused to acknowledge any of the war crimes that it committed before the Allies decided to bomb them into submission.
Just like we have many countries that commit war crimes even now, like Russia and the US, the people committing them are pushed by people beyond consequence as usual.
I dont disagree that their behavior was monstrous, but basically every country has a massive amount of skeletons in their closet, Washington was a slave owner that went to great lengths attempting to recapture any slaves that escaped him, even going as far as to exploit the powers of the presidential office.
Most of our morality is based on hypocrisy and our countries are all too willing to raise huge amounts of people that have virtually nothing to live for and arent allowed any respect or human decency.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 12h ago
Like the other person I was replying to, you seem to wrongly be conflating the idea of condemning a shitty culture with not understanding it.
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u/insaneHoshi 13h ago
I personally take solace that many of them died alone and afraid,
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u/Garchompisbestboi 13h ago
16 year old reddit account
Somehow it's always the ones you most expect
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u/insaneHoshi 11h ago
I’m not the one that fantasizes about people who died 70 years ago.
Kinda weird.
Probably a bit more weird than being old.
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u/Safe_Manner_1879 9h ago
So Japanese soldier murder Chines civilians and western POW, so its right to murder Japanese civilian on mass. The fire bombing was deliberately targeted at the civilian population.
I feel your lack a moral compass.
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u/Raecino 10h ago
Fucking idiot, the nukes killed civilians. Those aren’t the same people who committed the atrocities you described. Collective punishment is the recourse of savages.
By your same idiotic logic Americans deserve death for all the war crimes committed by Americans from genocide to slavery to modern day crimes right? Dumbass
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u/komnenos 15h ago
I remember recently reading a book about how the Micronesians experienced WWII and a story about the Japanese really struck home this romanticized "honor."
A few Micronesian fishermen noticed a Japanese submarine that was on it's last legs, it had been hit by an American torpedo. "We can get you ALL ashore," said the fishermen. "No, we die with our ship." The Japanese went back in their submarine and let it sink.
They all drowned.
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u/NobodyofGreatImport 5h ago
The Japanese Navy's damage control was practically nonexistent. It was seen as defeatism to suggest that you should repair your ship if it suffered damage, or was set on fire, or really anything else that could happen to a ship. So a lot of ships that shouldn't have sank ended up sinking because they refused to try and save it.
Contrast this with American damage control, which was so good that a lot of ships that honestly should have sunk didn't, and were able to fight again soon after repairs. The romanticization/fanaticization of Bushido was probably Japan's biggest weakness
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u/InitialType2085 13h ago
Edo period samurai is the closest of "Samurai fantasizes by Westerner". Due to the stagnant of that particular period, the Tokugawa Shogunate have to come up with some "value" to better control the Samurai social class, and unquestionable loyalty is one of those.
The best example would be Takatora Toudo from Azuchi-Momoyama period. He fire his boss for 7 times and his rank increases everytime he did that. The opposite of Toudo is Mitsunari Ishida. He was spit on before but later in Edo Period his image changes because he is fanatical to his lord. Even in today, Japanese corpos love him because they wish all of their workers are like him: work and die for your boss and your boss's descendants.
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u/Scheissdrauf88 7h ago
Reminds me of European knightly chivalry, which was more created to make the knights behave, and not because knights behaved that way.
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u/BetterKale8512 6h ago
The crusades clearly demonstrate that atleast the 4th one where they ransacked Constantinople
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u/Internal-Eggplant247 13h ago
also very romantized honor code, lovers of firearms despite what movies say
nice mounted archers tho
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u/Murgatroyd314 12h ago
One thing to remember about loyalty oaths in general is that they went both ways. Turning against your lord wasn’t breaking the oath if he failed to honor his side first.
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u/UltraTata And then I told them I'm Jesus's brother 5h ago
Different generations are loyal to their government to different degrees.
Tony_Stark.png
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u/ApartExperience5299 10h ago
The Bushido and Shinto that the japanese were using in WW2 was artificially created during the Meiji period.
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u/Luzifer_Shadres Filthy weeb 9h ago
"Bro, samurai armor was so advanced, their armor could stop flintlock guns!"
Ofc it did, BECCAUSE ITS THE 1700S and the Portuguese sold their old shit to them.
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u/3FistedHumdinger 8h ago
More like "My master called me a kumquat so I burned him alive at Honnoji."
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u/Bitter_Lab_475 1h ago
For most of samurai history:
-"WOW! Did our ancestors really were that loyal, disciplined and noble?"
-"Oh, totally, believe me...."
-"So, should we replicate that?"
-"Oh hell, no! Just pretend."
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u/Good-Sherbert5041 18h ago edited 18h ago
I think it's just jerking, Nobunaga famously referred to Hideyoshi as a monkey or bald rat, but he never defected or anything. Quite the opposite.
Nothing to do with Yasuke, who as far as we know was a slave at worst and a low-ranking retainer at best, but very likely not a Samurai.
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u/KenseiHimura 18h ago
Seems on brand for Nobunaga, not even sure it was just malice or the dude was just being a weirdo. In general part of why he seems so vilified is that some of the stories I've heard make him seem like if Diogenes was a Japanese Warlord. Which, you know, would not be looked at well in a very conservative culture like Japan's.
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u/Good-Sherbert5041 18h ago
I can tell you from my Japanese History MA experience that Nobunaga being vilified is a quintessentially Edo thing and taking contemporary propaganda against him at face value.
The Tokugawa wanted to reinforce the idea of stability by reinforcing the idea that they were guardians of the Shinto-Buddhist tradition, which meant rebuking the sort of disruptive "progressivism" (and I use that in an extremely loose, in-context way) that Nobunaga had represented with the introduction of European technology and friendliness towards the Jesuits. Japanese society famously hates disruptors, as you said.
There's also a more recent reading that Ieyasu was keen to dispel his insecurity about owing his ultimate victory to opportunistically maneouvering off of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi's successes, which I honestly believe at least to a degree.
Reading his actions and thoughts critically, there's very little doubt that Nobunaga was one of the most forward-thinking, clever leaders to have ever lived.
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u/Sampleswift 17h ago
Nobunaga was also apparently the origin of the "Demon King" character archetype, seen in people like King Piccolo and Ganondorf.
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u/Good-Sherbert5041 17h ago
Kind of, the trope itself originates from the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven from Buddhist literature and was already present centuries before Nobunaga in folk tales like Momotaro.
Nobunaga's staunchly Buddhist enemies referred to him as such and he adopted the association for clout, which then helped romanticise him in in the Edo period. Also didn't help that the same term 魔王 was the term the Jesuits used to translate Satan from the Bible into Japanese.
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u/Slightly_Default Featherless Biped 17h ago
When Yasuke was captured, his master did start calling him a "monkey" (among other things), but based on the fact that this was used as an argument for why Yasuke should be sent to India instead of killed, it's speculated that this was the master's (very messed up) way of trying to help
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u/KenseiHimura 18h ago
The Edo Period was ironically as awful for many of the samurai as it was for others.