A lot of western people, especially Americans, believe Japanese respected Americans, even after being defeated in WWII is because Americans are humanitarians and had treated Japanese people well.
That is a very romanticized, self-indulgent line of thinking. It fits very well with America’s own self-image of the “champian of humanity”.
First of all, Americans had dropped 2 fucking nukes on Japanese soil, killing millions of civilians. CIVILIANS. It left a long last emotional scare on the Japanese collective psyche.
Sure, some Americans might be nice to some Japanese. But other Americans also exploited the Japanese after the world.
And did I mention nukes?
The fact that so many answers just simply brush it off with words like “despite” or “even after”, means you guys seriously didn’t know what it means to have your cities annihilated, your people slaughtered in the millions. You guys went through one 911, and you went on two wars, disrupted 2 countries for the past 20 years. What? Are American lives worth more than other lives?
But, the observation is correct. Japan had indeed struck a very cozy relationship with Americans after their cities were blown, their people murdered, and their emperor surrounded.
I myself wonder the same thing for a long time. I don’t have the rosy imagination about how Japanese people simply forgive the Americans because a few Americans were nice to a few Japanese.
It is perplexing.
Until I read an answer on Quora about this exact question (yes, this isn’t the first time this question is being asked). I couldn’t find the original answer, couldn’t remember the original author, but the content stuck with me.
The answer explained that Japanese culture worships the strong. They don’t consider Chinese (or people from other conquered nations) as people, because we lost. Because we lost, we deserved to be treated as chattels being slaughtered. We, the conquered nations, should accept our fate being beaten fair and square by a stronger opponent. There’s shouldn’t be any shame or resentment.
Now Japan was defeated fair and square by a stronger opponent. America defeated Japan with overwhelming force. There’s no shame, no resentment, if anything, there’s admiration. Japan admired America. They want to learn from the US, perhaps one day beat the US fair and square.
That’s why Japan ended up becoming the US’ lackey in Asia.
It has nothing to do with Americans' humanity, imaginary or not. It has everything to do with Japan’s fucked up social Darwinism.
I’m not Japanese, obviously. But this theory stuck with me all these years because it explained so much about Japan, its culture, why it associate itself with Germany during WWII, and how it could rise fast after having two nukes dropped on their land, or how they just seemingly forget about all that and cozy up with the people who murdered their people without any visible resentment. It even explained the reason why their movies and TV shows about WWII seemed to focus more on the symbolic evil of the war itself, instead of against the people actually doing the killing.
Sure, you could argue that China also established a relatively civil relationship with Japan, but we never forget about Nanjing Massacre and other atrocities. And we have never stopped asking the Japanese government for an apology and or asking them to stop visiting their war crime shrine. Our attitudes are not the same.
Again, it’s not my theory. I don’t know Japan enough to come up with something like this. Smarter and more intuitive people wrote it and I remembered it because the theory explained something I’ve long since wondered myself. I don’t know how much of this mentality is part of the modern Japanese culture, or how it might (or might not) impact regular Japanese people nowadays. But, this particular mentality worries me. Because if it is prevalent, it means Japan never changed after WWII. Given the opportunity, Japan will do it all over again.
[ 本帖最后由 sdlyfxnxt 于 2022-3-28 13:50(GMT0) 编辑 ]