The Nanking Massacre
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Course: | HIST362: Modern Revolutions |
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Date: | Friday, December 8, 2023, 5:44 PM |
Description
Japan began to embark on its own imperialistic endeavors in Asia. First, Japan took over the southern part of the Korean Peninsula during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). In 1905, Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and gained control of Manchuria. Defeating a European nation empowered Japan to renegotiate its trade treaties with the United States and Europe as equals. Japan took over southern Manchuria, legitimized its control of Korea, and absorbed the southern half of Sakhalin Island. By 1910, Japan had colonized the entire Korean Peninsula.
During World War I, Japan joined the Allied Powers and sent ships to fight Germany. In 1914, while the European powers were embroiled in conflicts at home, Japan became an industrial power. In 1931, the Mukden Incident ceded Manchuria to Japan. In 1937, Japan invaded China during the second Sino-Japanese War. By 1940 it had consolidated its control of Vietnam. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to draw the United States into World War II. By 1942, Japan controlled the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines.
Several of these events remain controversial. Many Japanese historians believe Japan was responding to U.S. and European hostility during this period. Meanwhile, Chinese, European, and American historians accused the Japanese Imperial Army of massacring 50,000 to 300,000 civilizations and raping 20,000 women during the Nanking Massacre, also called the Rape of Nanking. Many Japanese historians deny this massacre occurred or believe the number of casualties has been exaggerated.
Read this article to examine arguments for and against the validity of the Nanking Massacre.
Abstract
Japan was supposed to obey the law during the second world war. However, the Nanjing Massacre still happened. Hirohito, the Japanese emperor, deliberately avoided mentioning the International Treaties in the imperial rescript of the Great East Asia War in 1937. The Nanking Massacre was carried out according to the Japanese army's interpretation of the imperial rescript. Such a legal interpretation was rooted in the idea that Japan had to educate the Chinese and transform China by killing its people in order to pursue a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere led by Japan. In the film Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (1995), we can see both a justification of and an opposition to killing. In this paper I am going to show how the imperial rescript is used to justify this mass killing is and how opposing arguments are used to show its cruelty and absurdity, which is taken as a means to achieve a greater good.
Source: Lung-Lung Hu, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11196-020-09791-w
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Introduction
Did the Nanking Massacre really happen in 1937?
Chinese people, with a plethora of concrete evidence, believe that such
tragedy did happen, and many crimes have been trialled, sentenced, and
many criminals have been punished, as shown in some researches, such as
Documents of Nanking Massacre which was published in 2014 and
accepted by Memory of the World in 2015, and Research Japanese War
Crimes Records - Introductory Essays (2006). Aside from other
atrocities during the second Sino-Japan war, such as raping, plundering,
and human experimentation at Unit 731, at least 30,000 Chinese
civilians were brutally murdered in the Nanking Massacre. However, some
extreme right-wing Japanese nationalists are convinced that the Nanking
Massacre was fictitious which was a hideous conspiracy trying to make
Japan an international enemy. Such as Naoki Hyakuta, a governor of
Japan's public broadcaster, NHK, said in a speech on February 3rd 2014
that "In 1938, Chiang Kai-shek tried to publicize Japan's responsibility
for the Nanking Massacre, but the nations of the world ignored him.
Why? Because it never happened".1 Some other Japanese may
admit that some incident really happened in Nanking; however, it was not
a massacre but an unavoidable casualty, such as Tanaka Masaki's book
What Really Happened in Nanking - The Refutation of a Common Myth. I
do not intend to verify the authenticity or the scale of the Nanking
Massacre in this paper. My purpose is to illustrate two conflicting
discourses, the justification of and opposition to the mass killing as
represented in the film Black Sun - The Nanking Massacre, sometimes
called Black Sun IV (1995),2 directed by Mou Tunfei.
There
have been other films made about the Nanking Massacre, such as Zhang
Yimou's The Flowers of War (2011) and Lu Chuan's City of
Life and Death! (2009), but Black Sun - The Nanking Massacre is
the most controversial because of its cult character and graphic violent
scenes. However, the reason I chose this film is not only because Black
Sun IV bluntly shows Japanese soldiers' brutality, but also because it
discusses, maybe not intentionally, the reasons for such inhumanity.
In
this paper, first, I will explain why the Nanking Massacre occurred
from a legal point of view. In history, Hirohito, the Japanese emperor
at the time, deliberately avoided mentioning Japan's commitment to
International humanitarian law Treaties in the imperial rescript in 1941
in order to justify the Great East Asia War. In the film, the imperial
rescript, which is used as a cinematic design that did not exist in 1937
in reality, indirectly offers the Japanese army a legal ground, or an
excuse, to ignore the legally binding international agreements which the
Japanese government has signed and which regulates states' conduct in
war.
The purpose of the imperial rescript in the film is to
exempt Japanese soldiers, as well as the government and the emperor
himself, from the legal consequences of such an atrocity. However, the
cruelty and severity of this mass killing cannot be easily sanctioned,
even if the Japanese soldiers are seen as fallible human beings. As my
second point, using the theories of Philip Zimbardo and Dan Ariely, I
will explain how it is possible for Japanese soldiers to break, through a
mass murder, the moral and psychological barrier and cause a mass
murder.
Not only does the film explain why Japanese soldiers
could cross the last line of human decency to cause such a catastrophe,
it also challenges the justification and rationalization of mass killing
by using three fictional narratives: (1) a meeting of high ranking
officers that takes place after the Nanking massacre and an informal
conversation between some of them after this meeting, (2) a monologue by
the Commander General Matsui Iwane, and (3) a discussion about swords
between the samurai Takayama and Nakajima Kesago. I will analyse these
three narratives to show the absurdity of the, legal, moral, and
psychological reasons for mass killing and other inhumane acts in war in
the film. In the next section, I will first demonstrate the laws, which
also are the laws as a historical and legal fact shown in the film,
that regulate the acts of Japanese soldiers in war. Even though Japanese
soldiers carried out many atrocities during the second Sino-Japanese
War, such as devastating the property of non-combatants and conducting
biological experiments, I will only focus on the laws regarding mass
killing and inhumane treatment of civilians and Chinese soldiers during
the Nanking Massacre.
International Law
The second Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan started in 1937 and the Nanking Massacre, when Japanese troops allegedly killed over 30,000 Chinese civilians, took place between December 1937 and January 1938. Since this was a war when the armies of both parties should have followed the international humanitarian treaties, such as the 1907 Hague Convention which established the legal framework for the ‘humane treatment' of prisoners of war (POWs). The Nanking Massacre should never have happened because the regulations protect civilians and soldiers who have already surrendered.3 However, the Japanese army did not follow this Code. The Japanese government had not ratified the Geneva Convention of 1929, which stated, in the reply to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after the attacks on Pearl Harbour and Southeast Asia in 1941, that it was:
not in fact bound by the said Convention. Nevertheless,
as far as is possible, it intends to apply the Convention, mutatis
mutandis, to all prisoners falling into its hands, while at the same
time respecting the customs of each nation and people in relation to the
food and clothing of prisoners.
This reply shows that the Japanese government's attitude was that its army did not need to sign the convention because any prisoners of war were likely to be treated humanely anyway. However, the prisoners of war were not guaranteed to be treated according to the signed convention, since the 1929 Geneva Convention was not ratified by the Japanese government. That said, as an involved party in the second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government had signed up to other international treaties regarding humane treatment in war. Both the 1899 and the 1907 Hague Conventions included clauses covering the treatment of prisoners of war. For example:
Hague II Art. 4. Prisoners of war are in the
power of the hostile Government, but not in that of the individuals or
corps who captured them. They must be humanely treated. All their
personal belongings, except arms, horses, and military papers remain
their property.
Other parts of the Hague Convention had similar humane injunctions, such as:
Hague IV Art. 23. In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden
a. To employ poison or poisoned weapons;
b. To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
c. To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no
longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion….
Since
the treatment of prisoners of war has clearly stated that prisoners are
not in the hand of those who capture them but still belong to their
home country, prisoners cannot be wounded or killed at will and should
be humanely treated by the individuals or corps who captured them.
Japanese soldiers were supposed to follow the treaty during the second
Sino-Japan war, because the Japanese government has signed and ratified
the treaty.
Even if existing legal agreements could theoretically
be overridden or annulled by a new unratified or unsigned agreement -
the 1929 Geneva Convention, Japanese soldiers would have behaved
properly if Emperor Hirohito, who to the Japanese was a god,4
and whose words presumptively have the same effect in the film, had
restrained their conduct.
However, in the film, Emperor Hirohito
does not mention humane treatment to Chinese people in his imperial
rescript, or, as is fairer, his rescript is not intended to declare war
on the Republic of China.5 As mentioned before, the imperial
rescript in reality did not even exist in 1937, although Black Sun IV
mentions it during a conference scene involving Japanese military
leaders. Led by General Matsui Iwane, this conference is held after the
fall of Nanking to discuss Japanese soldiers' misconduct, which the high
ranking officers present all agree had taken. Iwane argues that
"Although killing is unavoidable in warfare, we still must observe
international law". Other officers refute this claim, saying:
Tani Hisao: From the Emperor's directive,6 no mention was made of International law this time.
Matsui Iwane: It's unnecessary to point that out.
Tani Hisao: In the Emperor's Directives for the Japanese–Russian and Ching Dynasty wars…. They all mentioned observing International law. But in this conflict, its absence is not accidental.
Nakajima Kesago: Calling it a conflict rather than a war already makes it different. There are complex reasons behind this.
Calling it
a "conflict", or an "incident", (shibian or gange7)
implies that it is not a war (zhanzheng) and that it need not be
regulated by the international laws regarding war. Even if this conflict
is by definition a war, Japanese soldiers do not need to obey
international law because the Emperor's words, which are superior to
anything, do not mention the need to do so, like the declarations for
the Japanese-Russian and Japanese-Qing Dynasty wars did. However, in the
second Sino-Japanese war, Japanese soldiers were still subordinate, so
do the soldiers in the film, to the Japanese Army Criminal Codes. In the next section, I will explain
these codes and why, because of the interpretation of the Emperor's
rescript shown in the movie, they failed to regulate Japanese soldiers'
behaviour.
Criminal Codes and Senjinkun
Even if there was no Imperial rescript asking Japanese soldiers to follow international law, Japanese soldiers should still have obeyed the Japanese Army Criminal Codes, which are also the same laws that Japanese soldiers in the film should obey, especially chapter 9, Article 86-88, that specifically prohibits some acts, such as plundering and raping,8 as mentioned in Chapter 9, Article 86–88.
Article 86: The empire soldiers, who plunder the inhabitants' properties on the battlefield or on the land occupied by the imperial army, will be sentenced to an imprisonment of more than a year. If a soldier, who is guilty of the previous crime, rapes a woman, he will be sentenced to an imprisonment of more than 7 years, or to an imprisonment up to a lifetime.
Article 87: Soldiers, who plunders clothes and properties from the dead, or the wounded, or the sick on the battlefield, will be sentenced to an imprisonment of more than a year.
Article 88: If a soldier, who has committed the previous two crimes, hurts civilians, he will be sentenced to an imprisonment of more than 7 years, or to an imprisonment up to lifetime. If a soldier kills civilians, he will be sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment, or to the death penalty.
Article 88.2: The empire soldiers on the battlefield, who rape women on the occupied land, will be sentenced to an imprisonment of more than a year, or an imprisonment up to lifetime. If a soldier, who has committed the previous crime, hurts civilians, he will be sentenced to an imprisonment of more than 3 years, or to an imprisonment up to lifetime; If a soldier kills civilians, he will be sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, or to the death penalty or an imprisonment of more than 7 years.
Article 89: Attempts of the crimes under this chapter are punishable.9
Even
if the law might not be clear, severe, and effective enough to prevent
war crimes from happening, it was still the law that regulated Japanese
soldiers' behaviour. However, due to lapses in military disciplines and
the poor education and training of Japanese soldiers at the time, the
war crime rate was not under control. In order to prevent mischievous
and deteriorating behaviour from spreading, Hideki Tojo, the Minister of
the Imperial Japanese Army at the time, gave lectures about, Senjinkun
(1941), the Japanese Military Field Code, to reaffirm the
discipline of the Japanese army.
Lecture One, First, Imperial Army
Valour requires strictness, while benevolence must be universal. Should there be an enemy who dares to oppose the Imperial army, the army must resolutely resort to force of arms and deal him a crushing blow. However, even though force may compel the enemy to submit, should a lapse in virtue occur by striking of those who do not resist or by failure to show kindness to those who surrender, it cannot be said that such an army is perfect.
Modesty in its strength,
unostentatious in its kindness, the Imperial Army becomes the object of
admiration when it quietly displays its valour and benevolence. The
mission of the Imperial Army lies in making the Imperial virtues the
objects of universal admiration through the exercise of justice tempered
with mercy.
Lecture Three, First, Prohibitions on the battlefield…
6. Enemies' properties and materials should be protected carefully. All the expropriation, confiscation, and disposal should follow the rules and commander's orders.
7. Since the fact that loyalty and righteousness are the natures of the imperial army, innocent and reluctant civilians should be well protected with kindness and mercifulness.
8. In battles, the imperial army's discretion should never be affected by alcohol, or by the sexual act because it will damage the reverence for the imperial army and jeopardize their individual duty. The virtue of imperial warriors should never be contaminated.
Tojo's Senjinkun lectures aimed to
promote the idea that the Emperor is divine and merciful, and, to honour
him, the imperial army should be merciful and kind to the prisoners and
civilians of the occupied territory and should not commit crimes, such
as plundering, raping, and killing without a justification or approval.
Then the Chinese will respect the Japanese, love the Emperor and be
docile under the control of the Empire of Japan. As Tojo's lectures
suggest, Senjinkun is more like a regulation or guideline, which has
been applied in the army, than a law that specifies the punishment.
However, soldiers who violate this code of conduct will come under
pressure from their peers and be scolded by superior officers and
discipline committees.
The Senjinkun military field code was
published more than 3 years after the Nanking Massacre had taken place.
The absence of military provisions, Senjinkun, might help to explain
their extreme conduct during the time of the Nanking Massacre both in
reality and in the film. Many of the civilians in Nanking, as well as
the Chinese caught up in other battle zones during this time, must have
been deprived of their property, raped, and murdered. Of course, it is
possible that uncontrolled and immoral Japanese soldiers were the cause
of the Nanking Massacre. However, this would diminish the legal
responsibility for such atrocities being attributed to high ranking
officers, the Japanese government, and the Emperor, who were all put on
trial at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946.
In Black Sun IV, this debate about the responsibility of high ranking
officers for the Nanking Massacre take place in a fabricated
conversation between a few Japanese officers after the meeting held by
General Matsui Iwane. One of the officers says:
Tani Hisao:
He [General Matsui Iwane] doesn't know the meaning behind the Emperor's
directives…. It [occupying China] can only be done by a special method…
to stun and threaten them. Psychologically, we have to destroy the
Chinese completely. We must make the Chinese fear and respect Japanese….
It's [using a special method] to rule China in the future. We have to
take extreme measures. I suggest that we kill all people and burn all
houses in Nanking. This way all the Chinese will remember the penalty
for disobedience….
According to this conversation, the Emperor is
understood to have implicitly endorsed the use of extreme measures to
ensure the political advantage of the Japanese in their campaign against
China. Their interpretation of the imperial rescript is postulated as
being supported by the presence of the Emperor's uncle as the Emperor's
representative. This narrative indicates that the Emperor, high ranking
officers as well as soldiers, and low rank soldiers are all accomplices
and guilty of the Nanking Massacre. Since a famous Japanese feudal lord
Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) articulated the intention to conquer
China and colonize the whole Asia,11 mercilessly and cruelly
intimidating Chinese people and suppressing any resistance was a
rational method for the Japanese Empire.
Lucifer Effect
Some people initiate hatred and justify their
deeds using legal means, such as with the Nuremberg Laws12 that
seemed to give German soldiers a direct instruction that it was legally
permitted to humiliate or even kill Jewish people. In contrast, and how
interesting it is, that in other contexts, the omission of certain
words from a legal document, in this case the Imperial rescript, became a
silent endorsement for massacre. Both approaches should be treated as a
legalization process, meaning that every legal act, be it a positive
action or a deliberate omission, leads to war for which perpetrators
must held responsible. Soldiers and officers, who carried out war crimes
like rape and murder, cannot be exonerated on the grounds that they
were not instructed to obey international law. In addition, the Emperor,
who did not specifically command Japanese soldiers to uphold
international law, also cannot avoid accusations on the grounds that his
failure to mention international law was not meant to incite soldiers'
inhumane conduct.
Authority and ideology inform the law, the law
mandates obedience and obedience numbs our conscience. Unconscious minds
cease to question authority and ideology. Therefore, evil stems from
authority and ideology and the laws that represent them, although there
may be an evil part in all human nature. In 1971, Philip Zimbardo and
his team conducted a famous, and also notorious, experiment called the
Stanford prison experiment in which college students were divided into
two groups, guards and prisoners, in order to examine their performances
and the psychological transformations that took place based on their
roleplay activity. The experiment was conducted in a prison - a
punitive, restrictive and suppressive government institution. The
experiment came to an abrupt end 6 days after it began, because of the
many mishaps and conflicts that erupted between the guards, who were
convinced that they represented authority and were supposed to execute
the law, and the prisoners, who had been mistreated and wanted to stop
the experiment. Although the circumstances surrounding the Stanford
experiment are controversial, it reveals the psychological response that
human beings are vulnerable and susceptible to authority and power. As
Philip Zimbardo says:
Let's begin with a definition of evil.
Mine is a simple, psychologically based one: Evil consists in
intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or
destroy innocent others - or using one's authority and systemic power to
encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf. In short, it is
"knowing better but doing worse".
Evil, then, is wrong things done by people who know they are wrong but still intentionally do them because authority and systemic power creates a scenario in which they are no longer individuals but are simply part of a larger group.13 This group has the authority, or is authorized, and is legally justified to execute conduct that is normally considered malicious. Expressions like "I am just following the order that everyone else is following" and "I do not need to take responsibility for what I have done because the authority is the only one who is responsible" create the illusion that the individual is powerful and entitled to do whatever they wish to those who are defined as "others" since these others are not like us. A situation created by authority and the law, that makes individuals' behaviours deviate from social norms, disassociates individuals from their moral codes.
Mindlessly
taking the first small step. Dehumanization of others. De-individuation
of Self. Diffusion of personal responsibility. Blind obedience to
authority. Uncritical conformity to group norms. Passive tolerance to
evil through inaction or indifference. And it happens when you're in a
new or unfamiliar situation. Your habitual response patterns don't work.
Your personality and morality are disengaged.
According to
Philip Zimbardo's explanation, the reason why Japanese soldiers in Black
Sun IV are capable of such atrocities is because they are in the
unusual situation where their moral sense does not apply and where they
believe that they have been empowered by the authority, in this case the
Emperor and his non-elaborative rescript. The rescript in reality was
made to give the Emperor an alibi for the mass-killing in Nanking.
However, the rescript in the film, on the contrary, highlights the
Emperor's legal responsibility for the Nanking Massacre. The dialogue
between the Japanese officers mentioned above as a literary strategy is,
on the one hand, designed to hold the Emperor, and the Japanese
government, responsible for the Nanking Massacre, even though no clear
orders were issued to the soldiers. One the other hand, since the
Emperor did not specifically tell the soldiers not to follow
international law, the soldiers and the officers are responsible for
their own actions since they are rational and reasonable adults with
sound minds. It is also the way the Emperor writes the rescript, which
is intended to shift responsibility for the massacre to the officers and
soldiers.
Philip Zimbardo's experiment, if applied to Black Sun
IV, shows that good people - if the Japanese soldiers in the film are
assumed to be good in everyday life - will turn into evil if they are
trapped in a unprecedently bad situation and empowered by an authority.
However, this seems not to fully explain why Japanese soldiers can
cross, effortlessly or not, their moral boundaries. Even though the
Emperor's rescript can "instruct (the soldiers) without (saying the)
instruction", liberate the soldiers' sense of guilt and free them from
the fear of punishment, it is still difficult to explain how it is
possible for Japanese soldiers to totally abandon their conscience and
the moral codes they usually followed. Therefore, in the next sections, I
will use the theory about dishonesty in psychology and behavioural
economics, alongside the Emperor's rescript and the narratives in Black
Sun IV, to demonstrate another interpretation of the Nanking Massacre.
The Imperial Rescript
Hirohito's rescript was a declaration of war on the United States and Great Britain announced in 1941, 3 years after the second Sino-Japanese war and the Nanking Massacre. While it was not written until 1941, it does explain why the Japanese Empire and the Republic of China had a military conflict. There is a paragraph in the rescript that explains it was not Japan, but the Chinese government in Chungking led by Chiang Kai-shek who was responsible for the second Sino-Japan war.
More
than 4 years have passed since China, failing to comprehend the true
intentions of Our Empire, and recklessly courting trouble, disturbed the
peace of East Asia and compelled Our Empire to take up arms. Although
there has been re-established the National Government of China, with
which Japan had effected neighbourly intercourse and cooperation, the
regime which has survived in Chungking, relying upon American and
British protection, still continues its fratricidal opposition. Eager
for the realization of their inordinate ambition to dominate the Orient,
both America and Britain, giving support to the Chungking regime, have
aggravated the disturbances in East Asia.
The
rescript blames the Chinese for causing the second Sino-Japanese War.
According to it, the reason why Chiang started the war was because he
misunderstood Japan's true intentions and thought that it wanted to
conquer the whole of China. Even though the rescript views the war as
Chiang's fault, obliging Japan to fight back, it continues to present
the Japanese government and the Emperor as kind and generous refusing to
hate China because of their long mutual history. Although Chiang and
his government are "vermin" who have undermined the brotherhood between
the two nations, Japan has been able maintain its familiar relationship
with the rival National Government of China led by Wang Jingwei, who
they believe to be the only legitimate authority in the country. Since
Chiang and his government, along with the United States and Great
Britain, were responsible for the second Sino-Japanese War and the
Pacific War, Japan had good reasons to declare war on these enemies.
They also can justify being cruel to the Chinese people who follow
Chiang and his government's commands. As the propagandistic Japanese
media slogan declared "vicious China should be punished" bao zhi ying
cheng.
This document enables us to understand the attitude of the
Emperor and the Japanese government towards their relationship with
China and can be seen as an attempt to explain their actions between
1937 and 1941. The rescript was well written, not only completely
removing Japan's responsibilities as the perpetrator of both wars, but
also giving a perfect excuse for the cruelty it had inflicted on the
Chinese people. It suggests that the Chinese in fact deserved to be
treated inhumanely because it was China's fault for starting the war. In
Black Sun IV the rescript is issued in 1937 thus providing an implicit
order to the Japanese soldiers to carry out the atrocity in Nanking. In
the film, the rescript provides a handy excuse to explain Japanese
actions, to ease the soldiers' sense of guilt and give them a reason to
carry out acts of cruelty on innocent Chinese people. Moreover, in the
film the rescript acts like a psychological mechanism, turning off the
Japanese soldiers' consciences, activating their self-deception, and
justifying their sinister behaviour. In short, this rescript turns evil
deeds into benign favours.
In the rescript, the "true intention"
of the Japanese empire, from a psychological point of view, completely
converts Japan's ambition, its military invasion of China, and the
inhumane acts carried out by the Japanese soldiers at Nanking into
favours that will help China transform from an old and weak country to a
strong and modern country. What are their true intentions? General
Commander Matsui Iwane, after publicly scolding Nakajima Kesago and Tani
Hisao, two high-ranking Japanese officers, for events in Nanking, says:
Killing
is just a method. In this holy war, you kill the Chinese in order to
liberate them. This is absurd, but logical. Just like physical
punishment for students. It's for their future. They must make
sacrifices. In the long term, they will benefit from it. Sooner or
later, the Chinese will appreciate the Japanese and the Japanese
Emperor…. Each generation of Chinese is getting worse and worse. But the
Japanese are growing stronger year by year. So we have to help the
Chinese. Or Asia will be taken over by European and American powers.
Killing
the Chinese, becomes, in the words of Iwane in the film, a benign
action for the Chinese people's own benefit. If the war could transform
the Chinese people and government, China, an old country with a long
history and many great traditions, could become a strong and modern
country and take its rightful, yet subordinate place, as part of the
Japanese-led Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But how can mass
killing and war crimes be seen as merciful methods to help China?
Pan-Asianism, is the idea that Japan should help to make Asia strong and united
so that it can fight against the Western world. In 1885, Fukuzawa
Yukichi (1835–1901) wrote an article in Jiji Shimpo titled "Leaving Asia
Theory" (Datsu-A Ron) stating that China, along with Korea, is a
terrible neighbour who will only drag Japan down and make it look as
inferior to other Western countries as China really is. Japan did not
need to treat countries like China and Korea well, for as Fukuzawa
Yukichi says:
Similar
to the relations between our lips and teeth (that they exist in an
inseparable relationship), neighbouring countries shall assist each
other. Currently, China and Korea have not even offered a single drip of
assistance to my Japan…. we (the Japanese people) do not have the
luxury of time to wait for the enlightenment of our neighbouring
countries - China and Korea - to work together toward the development of
Asia. It is our best strategy to leave the ranks of Asian nations and
cast our lot with the civilized nations of the West. As for our approach
to the treating of China and Korea, there shall be no special treatment
just because they are our neighbouring countries. Simply adapting the
ways of the Westerners is sufficient. Those who cherish bad friends
cannot escape the fate of being branded as a bad person. My heart and
determination lie in the refusal of bad friends.
Yukichi's article affirms that only Japan knows how to improve, and that the Japanese are a superior species, both genetically and educationally, to the Chinese and the Korean. He says: "maybe it is due to the differences in racial origins (even though we share the same Asiatic teachings), there are differences in heredity and education," therefore, "no matter in an individual context or as a nation, the people of these two countries [China and Korea] do not know the way to progress". Since the Chinese are an inferior species, and not even human, the Japanese do not need to treat them equally. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is a lie that Japan uses as manipulation. Japan uses it to sugar-coat and to justify everything inhumane they do to Chinese. Therefore, the Nanking Massacre is nothing vicious but is merely a benevolent wake-up call to Chinese.
Dishonesty of Honest People
As Matsui Iwane says in Black Sun IV, killing the Chinese is absurd but logical. But, how is it logical? We may find the answers in behavioural psychology theory. According to Dan Ariely, there are two types of dishonesty. One is the type of dishonesty that is conducted by people who know that what they are doing is dishonest while they are doing it, such as running a red light, stealing, and trespassing on other people's property. When about to break the law, these people will calculate the risks of being caught and the potential punishment, and weight them up against the benefits. If the result is worth the risk based on cost-benefit calculation, they will carry out the criminal conduct; otherwise, they will stop if the risk and the punishment are greater than they can handle. In short, law and punishment are external restraints that keep human instincts, desires, and impulses from deviating from social norms. The second type of dishonesty is conducted by people who think they are honest and do not know they are doing something dishonest. They either convince themselves that a dishonest thing they have done is honest or not that dishonest, or they sincerely believe that something dishonest they have done is actually honest. As Mazar, Amir and Ariely say:
We hypothesize that
for certain types of actions and magnitudes of dishonesty, people can
categorize their actions into more compatible terms and find
rationalizations for their actions. As a consequence, people can cheat
while avoiding any negative self-signals that might affect their
self-concept and thus avoid negatively updating their self-concept
altogether.
Everyone has a moral standard. Things within this limit are undoubtedly considered to be honest. For example, waiting at a red light in the middle of the night when there is no traffic. However, not everything is within the limit. Sometimes our moral standard will be challenged. When this happens, in order not to damage our perception of ourselves as "honest" we will stretch our standard and make it malleable. For example, the self-perception required to take some money from your friend's wallet to buy a pencil is completely different from the self-perception required to take a pencil from your friend's pencil box. Equally there are many possible explanations for the malleability of our moral standard when applied to the scenario "my friend took a pencil from me once; this is what friends do". A moral code, moral standard, or self-perception is an internal examiner that checks if our behaviours are out of range. Ideally, our self-perception can regulate our behaviours every time since no one wants to be labelled as dishonest by others or by themselves. However, the same psychological mechanism also manipulates us to lie to ourselves because most people want to believe they are honest even they have done something dishonest. In other words, self-perception maintenance mechanism is meant to make us feel good about ourselves. Once our self-awareness of dishonesty gets lost and our self-perception maintenance mechanism takes control, it may induce self-deception, as Mazar and Ariely point out:
Other
researchers have shown how people can be led to believe false or biased
"facts" about their own past (see research on memory distortion and
suppression of unwanted memories; e.g., Anderson; Loftus 25;
Schachter and Dodson), and they can convince themselves of certain
motivations for their behaviour, thus hiding their true intentions.
Therefore, self-deception can be successful even in the most extreme
cases: For example, doctors who participated in genocide in Nazi Germany
managed to convince themselves of the rectitude of their actions.
Memory is flexible and docile. We may change the facts in our memories to hide our true intentions or justify our behaviours to persuade ourselves and others that we are good people. Sometimes you know you are lying when you are lying, but, sometimes, you are not even aware you are lying if you truly believe that you are doing something benevolent. Dan Ariely talks about an experiment to test if people will lie about the number on dice they toss in order to win the money. In an interview about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a company claiming it had created a machine that could test for every possible disease with a single drop of blood. Dan Ariely mentions that the polygraph can only detect your lies when you know you are lying. If, however, you sincerely believe that what you are saying is a truth, the lie detector cannot point you out.
In another version of the experiment, we do the same thing, but people pick a charity. And all the money that they're going to make today goes to that charity. Right? For a good cause. What do you think happened, people cheat more or less? People cheat more.
And the lie detector stops working. Why? Because what does the lie detector detect? The lie detector detects a tension. I want more money, but I think it's wrong. I want more money, but I think it's wrong, but if it's not wrong, why would you worry?
If it's for a good cause, you can still think of yourself as a good
person, and that's how things start, and then it becomes a slippery
slope.
In Black Sun IV, Matsui Iwane truly believes that Pan-Asianism is the only approach: for the Empire of Japan to become the leader of Asia, and for China to become a modern country through a painful, Japanese-led transformation. Therefore, for the sake of helping China transform, Matsui Iwane will sanction all the necessary means even though they are evil. It is not that Matsui Iwane does not know the atrocities done by Japanese soldiers are evil. It is that he believes that if evil deeds are done for good purposes, they should no longer be considered evil. Judging if an action is evil or not is determined by the nature of the action and what the action can achieve. The only difference between Iwane and the officers Nakajima Kesago and Tani Hisao is that Iwane pretends to believe Japanese soldiers' behaviours are indecent. Kyogo and Hisao, however, never try to hide their true intention of fulfilling the Emperor's idea through killing. They are examples of why people who do dishonest/evil things can still think they are honest/good people.
Opposition Against Justification
Black
Sun - The Nanking Massacre shows us how Japanese soldiers justify their
killing based on the idea that, if the evildoings are for good
purposes, they are not evil anymore. However, logical this may be, it is
still absurd. Human beings are the only species that has a moral sense
among all the living creatures on the planet. Something cruel can be
done by nature, or by God, or by wild animals, without attracting moral
criticism, but cannot be done by human beings, such as natural culling.
Like the idea of an 'act of God', insurance companies will not pay for
the damage caused by natural disasters. Compensations will only be made
for the damage caused by actions or accidents which can be predicted and
prevented by human minds. If someone or some country executes a culling
process, the individual or country will be sentenced by law as guilty
of mass killing even though it might be for a good cause. Therefore, the
Nanking Massacre and the Holocaust ought never to have happened no
matter what the reason was. "A good cause must be realized by a good
means" is a moral principle that we, as moral beings, are educated to
follow. It is also a legal principle on which all of the above-mentioned
international laws are based. Morals and laws are consistent on the
point that they cannot be overruled by any unratified international
agreement, even by a rescript from the divine Emperor.
In Black
Sun IV there is a conversation between a fictitious swordsman, the
samurai Takayama and the army officer Nakajima Kesago. They debate about
what methods should be used to defeat China and the Chinese people even
though they both agree that this so-called holy war, the second
Sino-Japanese war, is necessary. Nakajima thinks that Japan's military
force is like a sword held by Futomyoō (Aryaacalanatha, in
Sanskrit), able to destroy every obstacle on its way to the glory of the
Japanese Empire, the success of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere, and the ideal of reforming the world and saving humanity. On the
contrary, Takayama thinks that military force is only one way to win
the war and it is not the way to win people's hearts and convince them
that Japan is trying to free the whole of Asia from the control of the
Western world. If a sword is only used to destroy, it will become evil,
even though swords are made to protect oneself against evil and to fight
against it. Takayama uses a story of swords as an analogy to persuade
Nakajima to stop killing. Even though he fails, his story still acts as a
strong opposition against the justification of mass killing and other
inhumane behaviours.
Nakajima Kesago: But for sharpness, Masamune's swords are no match for those of his student, Mura Masa.
Takayama: But Masamune's sword is an expression of his character. It
has a stunning power to one's soul. It is said that to compare swords
for sharpness, put Mura Masa's sword in the middle of a river, and check
the fate of dry leaves floating down. The leaves passing through the
sword were all cut into halves. Then they put Masamune's sword to the
same test, but most astonishing is the dry leaves automatically avoided
his sword. Masamune had no interest in killing people. Because his
perspective is that a sword should no longer be a killing tool. So Mura
Masa's sword has not yet gone beyond the mere killing powers of a
sword…. Mura Masa's sword represents the threatening power of a
dictator. But because Masamune's sword is humanistic, it's superior.
Military force, then, is not made to kill but to stop
killing, as the Chinese character of military force wusuggests. The
true meaning of wu is to stop (zhi) using weapons (ge). Moreover, the
most powerful force is not military force, like Mura Masa's sword, that
can defeat the enemy. The most powerful force is the power of culture,
which is represented by the Masamune's sword, that can defeat enemies
without fighting a war. Besides, building a military force is like sword
forging, a process of self-cultivation. The purpose is to suppress the
killing desire that arises from the instinct of self-protection. Since
these ideas about military force exist in both Japanese and Chinese
culture, the Japanese ought not to have used mass killing as a method to
make the Chinese understand Japan's true intentions. Mass killing will
make the Chinese remember only the massacre; the true intention will
never be revealed. If one of the purposes of military force is to make
the Chinese accept Japanese culture, love the Japanese emperor, and
willingly follow the lead of the Japanese empire, a massacre ought never
to have been allowed. It is impossible for the Chinese to embrace the
beauty of Japanese culture when they are only fed with the evil part of
it.
Black Sun - The Nanking Massacre not only shows us the
cruelty of Japanese soldiers through its violent and graphic scenes. It
also tells its audience that a good purpose must be achieved by proper
and decent means. Although many war criminals from the second
Sino-Japanese and the Pacific wars have been punished by law, not all of
them realize that what they have done is not only legally wrong but is
also evil in a moral sense. The conversation between Takayama and
Nakajima in the film, therefore, is designed to refute the justification
of a mass killing, and to tell Japanese soldiers, who have done evil
things but still believe they are good, that they are actually deceiving
themselves. Only when they realize the fact that they are immoral, can
they really begin to repent their sins.
Notes
- Please see The Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/02/05/hyakuta-naoki-nanjing_n_4734704.html.
- There are three movies about unethical human experimentation conducted by Japanese before Black Sun: the Nanking Massacre was released: 1) Men Behind the Sun 731 (1988), 2) Laboratory of the Devil 731- (1992), 3) A Narrow Escape 731- (1994).
- According to Article I of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) signed by the Japanese government "The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another". War cannot be used as a solution for international controversies and the second Sino-Japanese War was not supposed to happen in the first place.
- George Godwin once said that: "the Japanese people are the race of races, the Herrenvolk of Herrenvolk; that they are of divine origin, and that their Emperor is god made manifest as man. The whole life of Japan centres about this anthropomorphic dogma, and it is probably true to say that Japan is the most united, the most homogeneous, nation on earth under the surface differences of her domestic political life".
- The Emperor's rescript about the declaration of war was announced on December 8th, 1941. This declaration of war was on the United States and Great Britain, not to the Republic of China.
- The direct English translation in the film is 'directive', however, it is the Imperial Rescript.
- The annotation of the Emperor's rescript, uses the term, Japan–China Incident. Compared with "invasion" the term China uses, these terms lessen Japan's responsibility and holds China also responsible.
- Soldiers who committed rape were usually punished according to the general criminal code as Japanese civilians. According to the law, the victim was responsible to press charges on the crime of rape. Since rape victims are mostly murdered, it will be impossible for them to press charges against their assailants. As a result, the criminal code against rape was not able to stop rape from happening, and the actual numbers of rape cases must be higher than reported rape cases during the second Sino-Japan War. See Sexual Violence of the Army.
- Author's translation. Thanks to my dear colleague Mrs. Rieko Hattori, lecturer in Japanese at Dalarna University, helped correcting my English translation of the Japanese Army Criminal codes in Japanese.
- Asakanomiya Hatohikoo, i.e. Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, was thought as the person who made an order to kill all people in Nanking. In the film he only shows up as the Emperor's representative.
- In 1929, a document called the Tanaka Memorial was published in Shishi Yuebao in Nanking. A Chinese translation of a Japanese original, Tanaka Memorial is said to reveal the Japanese Empire's intention of conquering China. However, many scholars contend that it is a forgery.
- Passed in 1935, the Nuremberg laws contained racist and anti-semitic regulations concerning the German flag, citizenship in the German Reich and the 'Protection of German Blood and German Honour'.
- As
Milgram experiment (1961) shows that when someone's moral senses are
taken out by the authority, and when someone is free from taking
responsibility for his behaviours, around 65% of volunteers would shock
the shock the victim with the highest level of 450 volts. Of course, the
results of different Milgram's experiments are subject to different
variation controls.