Why did the Japanese never come to terms with the war?

Question

Today, long after the second world war, many contempary Germans would not like what the Nazis had done. Many of them felt ashamed to be living with this history. Many Germans also feel insulted if anyone tries associate Nazism with them. Many noble Germans have also publicly denounced Nazism.

However, it seems the same cannot be said of the Japanese. It seems many Japanese today have not come to terms with what the Japanese military did in the second world war. The Japanese government has yet to issue a sincere apology to the countries they invaded. Neither have they paid compensation to their victims. The remains of some convicted war criminals were even enshrined in the Yasukuni war shine which led to the international furore currently in place.

Why is it the Japanese did not come to terms with the past misdeeds their forefathers had committed? Why is it most of them even deny holocasts such as the Rape of Nanjing existed? What caused them to take such an attitude?

Some even felt they were victimised!

Answer 1

I spent two years stationed in Japan while in the navy. I think it may be next to impossible for westerners to fully understand the Japanese culture. They find it extremely difficult to admit fault as this causes a loss of face, and this is of upmost importance to them. You have to remember, this is a culture that celebrates suicide as an honorable way to die.

Answer 2

Because the united states did not mandate that as a policy right from the start. We immediately went to work on rebuilding there nation and forming a democracy. The united nations did not expose the crimes that had been committed against the american soldiers, Australians, chines, Philippines and koreans Unlike the atrocities that took place in germany were the whole world and all of europe saw the evil. And they paid dearly but then so did the Japanese. Lets hope that type of punishment never take place again. But I fear this is inevitable.

Answer 3

Your understanding of what the Japanese have done in the way of apologies made by Japan falls far short of the facts,
They have repeatedly done so, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan

and more recently, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-08/2005-08-15-voa6.cfm

After World War II ended, neither Germany nor Japan were in a position to make reparations to anyone, their countries had been decimated, including their populations. The USA put in a provisional government to guide Japan back into a position of being able to exist. Much the same happened in West Germany.

It has been more than 60 years since the war ended, Enough already, it's over and nothing can be gained as the last soldiers and military personnel are nearly all gone.

Answer 4

Any Japanese will tell you that all the Korean comfort girls were volunteers, and most will qualify that with a caveat to the effect that even if they were not, Korean girls are sluts anyway. Whatever apologies have been made for that or Nanking have been insincere and politically motivated.

Japan is an openly xenophobic and raciist society. A friend of mine was a diplomat there. She has two Phds and an MBA. Her experience was, she said, typical: the Japanese she dealt with could or would not take her seriously, and always addressed her male subordinate. White women are for sex and abuse, not actually doing business with.

Japanese refer to us all, collectively, as gaijin. We are told this means foreigners, but we are not told it is like calling a black man a ******. Do these people regret anything about their unsuccessful attack? You bet!

They are sorry they lost.

Answer 5

I believe a lot of the young have no idea about the war they don't learn it in their schools but as they get older and travel I think they start to realize and when I went to the War Memorial in Melbourne I was surprised at the amount of Japanese paying their respects to our fallen soldiers.

Answer 6

gasoline demands little air bypass and a centred group of human beings to be smart. Gusty winds merely blows the gasoline off the battlefield and if the folk are not clusters, it merely would not kill sufficient human beings.

Answer 7

You could also ask why the situation in Germany is not as in Japan. I'm German and I'll write about Germany now, this should also show why the situation in Japan is as it is. The way things have developed in Germany now didn't come as a matter of course and they are not as good as it should be. I'm German and many things are still denied by many people. Just like the role of the German army in the war, there are still people who claim it would have remained "clean" and somehow "innocent" and "honorable" and that only the SS would have been responsible for atrocities, while this is a plain lie and there were many atrocities committed by the regular army, and also the whole war of aggression as such was criminal. It took until 1995 that German WW2 deserters were rehabilitated and honored for refusing to fight for Hitler.
Another issue is the genocide of the Romanies (Gypsies) that wasn't recognized as genocide by Germany until the 80s, and Romani Holocaust survivors didn't even get any financial support for a long time. They could only get their cause recognized when they started a civil rights movement in Germany and demanded their rights.
I have seen a German history textbook from the 50s and it hardly mentions the Holocaust, actually it only speaks of "an attempt (!) to kill millions of Jews" in a very short paragraph written in smaller fonts while there were about 100 pages about WW2 in that textbook and German sufferings were described in detail, and there was a feeling expressed that Hitler had cheated these poor Germans who had believed in him and then turned out not be such superior invincible people as Hitler had told them. I really got angry when I read all that, it was written as if the Germans had been the real innocent victims of WW2 and the Holocaust had been some minor event. Other victims of Nazis were not even mentioned at all in that textbook, not one word about Romanies, Slavs, the handicapped etc. This has changed now, my textbooks in the 90s where not like this anymore at all, but in the 50s it was really a shame.
I have also read in a German encyclopedia from the 50s that states that "6 million Jews died during World War II" without any mention that they were murdered, and other victims of Nazism weren't mentioned there either. But now still there are Germans who don't know, for example, that about 10-15 million Russian civilians were killed by Germans in WW2.

I think directly after WW2 Germany was like a criminal in court that only admits what is already proven, like if his lawyer tells him his situation will improve if he admits this or that, and Germany needed rehabilitation from the side of the Allies. So West Germans did what Americans and British wanted from them and East Germans did what the Soviets wanted from them. The genocide of the Jews wasn't remembered much in the GDR, in their historiography Nazism was all about the persecution of the "antifascists" (leftist political opponents of Nazis), other victims were hardly mentioned.

Most of the executioners of the Holocaust were never punished, in the 60s about 100 000 people were put to trial but only about 6000 (if I remember right) were convicted, although many others confessed their crimes. I have myself read examination protocols from these trials. In one of them a German policeman said he had shot about 100 Jews and then stopped because he couldn't stand all the blood anymore and had to vomit (he explicitely said that as the reason why he stopped, if killing had been "clean" he would have probably continued), the only consequence this had for him was that his disciplinarian called him a coward that he couldn't stand the blood. He considered himself a victim and said he still had nightmares because of the blood but didn't feel sorry for his victims. He was not convicted at all and officially kept a clean criminal record because the court decided he had only followed orders.

Actually the Jews have brought the Holocaust quite much to the world's attention making it totally impossible for Germans to deny it (and I think that's right so). All the new allies of Germany (NATO and EU) have also demanded from Germans to admit and regret everything. Now there are even Germans who complain that they were somehow "morally victimized" by the Jews or the rest of the world, that "the Jews should finally leave us alone with it", "it has to be enough now"..... I want to stress I do not agree with such people, I think that it must never be forgotten and that denial would make everything only worse, and I am not the only one in this, I think nowadays it is the majority of Germans that share my thinking in this regard but it was a long way. I'm glad I was born in 1981 and didn't have to experience the decades before that were so full of denials, relativations and concealment.

But I think basically that is the reason why the Japanese deal with it differently, their victims couldn't voice themselves as the Jews did, and they were not politically forced to admit it and to apologize for it in order to join a new political alliance. If the Chinese weren't under a communist regime anymore and Japan would seek good relation with them, or if the USA were seriously concerned about Japanese war crimes, they would certainly start to remember and apologize like the Germans, I mean if otherwise they would be isolated and shunned in the world. See same is with Turkey, they still deny the genocide of Armenians because nobody forces them to admit it. Another issue is Stalin, he killed millions, but when I was in Moscow in 1999 I saw his grave with his bust on it and fresh flowers. When I was in Russia in 2004 in a train somebody gave me a newspaper named "Hammer and Sickle" with Stalin's portrait on the front page and an article glorifying him. Somebody else told me that in Ukraine she saw cigarettes with the pictures of Lenin and Stalin on them.I know a woman from Georgia (I mean the former Soviet Republic) who openly told me she admires Stalin and thinks he was a great man. Mao too is still honored in Communist China although he was responsible for the death of millions of Chinese. Or think about China and Tibet, the Chinese not only don't apologize but even continue to violate human rights there. Unfortunately this seems to be the usual reaction. And people deny them because they know they are horrible crimes. Like any individual murderer, he mostly won't confess his crime unless he has to and he will not likely tell his children about what he did if not somebody else does.... The Japanese are not the only ones like this. Hope you aren't upset now that I wrote about Tibet.

Hey, I just realized you are the same guy who asked that question about "Heil Hitler"... and who wrote that you don't understand... okay, I try again, if you say "Heil Hitler" 1) it makes you look like a Nazi and 2) when you say that to a German it looks that you want to tell him that he is a Nazi and this is of course offensive.

Answer 8

...they don't have jews in Japan to stir up trouble of lies, hoax , exaggeration, steal, brain wash and take full credit for war ...... In Japan they always have a say "moving forward ".

by the way why are you asking this question ? your must be a jew ain't you ....!!!