Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
This perhaps may go to explain the brutality of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific war as they fought in a style that most other civilized nations had stopped doing so some three to four hundred years earlier.
Just goes to show that isolationism - not always a good thing.  |
Under traditional Japanese bushido, captives were to be treated with mercy. Surrender was common during the 1868-1869 Boshin Civil War that established the modern Japanese Empire. Japanese conduct during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and the First World War was also fairly honorable and professional.
It was not until after the First World War that the Japanese Army started to twist Bushido into a more brutal code. Apparently, seeing itself as disrespected by the Allied Powers in terms of territory awarded, and in the post-war naval disarmament treaties it was thought that more martial spiritual values would be needed to make up for material deficiencies. However, it was the often guerilla like nature of the endless war in China that really starting warping Japanese sensibilities. Often heavily outnumbered, the Japanese turned to ever higher levels of brutality to win territory and keep it won.