All the ways that the Japanese violate the western war practices are the embodiment of their outlook on life and their view of full responsibility for people. In order to systematically study Japanese culture and behavior, it is no longer necessary to pay attention to whether their deviation from our orthodox creed is important militarily. Everything about them may be important, because they have raised all kinds of questions about the Japanese character that we need to answer.
Japan's real premise of defending the justice of its war is exactly the opposite of that of the United States. The Japanese define the international situation differently from us. The United States blamed the war on the aggression of the Axis Powers. Japan, Italy and Germany destroyed international peace through illegal conquest. The places where the Axis powers seized power, whether Manchukuo, Ethiopia or Poland, proved that they pursued an evil policy of oppressing the weak and weak nations. They trampled on the international norms of "survival and honor", or at least violated the international principle of "opening the door to free enterprise". Japan believes that there are other reasons for this war. The Japanese believe that as long as every country has absolute sovereignty, the world will be in anarchy. Japan is bound to fight for the establishment of hierarchical order. Of course, this order must be under the leadership of Japan, because only Japan is the only country that has established a top-down hierarchical system and knows best the necessity of "each has his own place". Japan achieved a unified peace, put down bandits and chaos, and created highways, electricity and steel industries. According to official data, 99.5% of Japanese teenagers are educated in public schools. Therefore, according to the principle of Japanese hierarchical order, China, a backward brotherly bond, should be helped.
The countries in "Greater East Asia" are the same race, so Japan should expel the United States, followed by Britain and Russia from this part of the world and make it "in its proper position". All countries in the world should determine their position in the international hierarchical order. In the next chapter, we will discuss the significance of this highly praised hierarchical order in Japanese culture. This is the most acceptable fantasy created by the Japanese nation. But for Japan, the biggest misfortune is that the countries occupied by Japan do not look at this fantasy with the same eyes. But even after Japan's defeat, the Japanese could not morally reject the fantasy of "Greater East Asia". Even among Japanese prisoners of war, even the most combative people rarely accuse Japan of its intentions towards the mainland and the southwest Pacific. For a long time, Japan must maintain some inherent attitudes, the most important of which is loyalty and confidence in the hierarchy. This attitude is incompatible with Americans who love equality. But it is still necessary for us to understand what the hierarchy means in Japan and the benefits associated with it.
Japan bases its hope of victory on a completely different point of view from the United States, and believes that Japan will definitely win the spiritual confrontation with material things. They think: the United States is a big country, and its armaments are indeed superior, but this is nothing! These have long been foreseen. The Japanese read a passage in the Daily News, one of their major newspapers: "If we are afraid of numbers, we will not go to war. The huge resources of the enemy were not created by this war. "
Even if Japan won the battle, Japanese politicians, strongholds and soldiers repeatedly stressed that this war is not an arms race, but a war between the spirit of Japanese trust and the material that Americans trust. When we won the battle, they said over and over again that in this war, material forces would fail. This belief undoubtedly became a convenient excuse when Saipan and Iwo Jima were defeated, but it was not an excuse specially made for failure. In the months of Japanese victory, it has been playing the role of marching into the horn, and it has become a popular war slogan long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1930s, General Araki, a former army minister and fanatical militarist, wrote in a pamphlet entitled "A Letter to Japanese Nationals": Japan's "real mission" lies in "carrying forward the Imperial Way in the four seas, and the disparity in strength is not enough, so why be afraid of material things!"
Of course, like other countries actively preparing for war, Japan is actually very worried. Throughout the 1930s, the proportion of Japan's national income spent on armaments rose alarmingly. In the year of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, nearly half of the national income was spent on Lu Haijun's armaments, while the administrative expenditure related to civil affairs only accounted for 17% of the total government expenditure. The difference between Japan and western countries is not that Japan is indifferent to material armaments. However, warships and cannons are only external symbols of the eternal Japanese spirit, just as the samurai's sabre is a symbol of his moral quality.
Japan attaches great importance to intangible resources, just as the United States believes in the strong. Japan, like the United States, has also launched a nationwide campaign to increase production, but the starting point of Japan's campaign to increase production is based on its unique premise. The Japanese say that spirit is everything and is immortal. Matter is of course necessary, but it is secondary and will disappear. Japanese radio stations often publicize that "material resources are limited, and no material will last for thousands of years." This is the eternal truth. " This spiritual trust is completely applied to the daily affairs of war. In their war manual, there is such a slogan: "Use my training against the enemy's numerical superiority, and use my flesh and blood against the enemy's steel." This is a traditional slogan of Japan, not specially formulated for this war. At the beginning of their war manual, the words "must read and win" are printed in bold. Their pilot committed suicide by flying a small plane and attacked our warship, which is one of countless examples of the triumph of spirit over matter. They named such a flying team "Kamikaze Special Attack Team". "Kamikaze" refers to the sacred wind. In13rd century, when Genghis Khan marched eastward to Japan, Kamikaze destroyed his fleet, thus saving Japan.
Even in people's lives, the Japanese authorities have carried out the concept that spirit is superior to material conditions. Didn't people work in the factory for 12 hours and were exhausted by the bombing? They said, "The more tired our bodies are, the higher our will and spirit will be" and "The more tired we are, the more effective our training will be". Isn't it cold in the air raid shelter in winter? On the radio, the Great Japan Sports Culture Association called for warm-up exercise, saying that it can not only replace heating equipment and bedding, but also replace food that can maintain normal physical strength. They said: "Of course, some people will say that under the current situation of food shortage, we should not consider doing gymnastics. Don't! The more food is scarce, the more you need to strengthen your physical strength in other ways. " In other words, we must use more physical exertion methods to enhance our physical strength. Americans' view of physical strength always depends on whether they slept for eight or five hours last night, whether they ate regularly, and whether they felt cold, so as to determine how much physical strength they consumed. This is just the opposite of the Japanese, who do not calculate physical strength by storing energy, if that is materialism.
In the war, Japanese broadcasting is even more extreme, even saying that in the battle, the spirit can overcome the material reality of death. A radio station once played the myth that a hero pilot overcame death:
After the air battle, the Japanese plane flew back to the base with three or four planes. After getting off the first planes, a captain stood on the ground and stared at the sky with binoculars. When his men came back, he counted them frame by frame. He is pale, but very calm. When he saw that the last plane had returned, he wrote a report and walked to the headquarters. He reports to the commander at headquarters. However, as soon as the report was over, he fell to the ground. The police present rushed to the rescue, but he was already dead. During the examination, he found that his body was cold and there was a gunshot wound in his chest, which was fatal after the examination. But a dead man's body can't be cold, while the captain's body is as cold as ice. The captain must have died long ago. It was his spirit that supported him to finish the report. The late captain created such a miracle with his strong sense of responsibility.