Japanese beliefs regarding race and gender differed tremendously from the other cultures which they encountered in the Pacific and Asia prior to and during the Second World War. Prior to the war the Japanese nation, under the guidance of an extremely right wing military, reaffirmed their belief in two central ideas: the first, according to John Morrow in a lecture for Norwich University, that the Japanese were the chosen people of God; and second, as stated by in the compilation edited by Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch titled The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness During World War II, that the Japanese were a racially pure people. Added to these ideas of racial supremacy and purity was the role which gender played in Japan’s society and culture.
Japanese Society
In Japanese society the men were taught that honor was everything. Life was literally not worth living without honor, and honor for the military man was found in dying a glorious death for the Emperor, as stated by John A. Lynn in his work Battle. Iris Chang in her book The Rape of Nanking, relates howJapanese women, in turn, were expected to remain pure and faithful, the women themselves kept out of public view in a society which praised the masculine, and which was dominated by the same.
These ideas and beliefs surrounding divine rights and racial purity, coupled with a rigid structure for the behavior of both men and women in Japanese culture, set the stage for brutal confrontations with other cultures. The Japanese, as recorded in The War in American Culture, sought to establish what they saw as a natural position of dominance over the rest of the Asian world. By being the dominant race the Japanese saw no issue with teaching their concept of racial supremacy to their children in order to prepare for war, and Chang states that it is this theory which would allow the Japanese to rationalize the committing of atrocities upon both soldiers and civilians in occupied territories. This idea of dominance and racial purity would grow stronger, and more terrifying, as the war effort expanded first into China and then into the Pacific.
Japanese Ideas of Masculinity
Japanese ideas concerning masculinity would become abundantly apparent to American troops in the Pacific theater. The Japanese abhorrence of surrender, preferring death to the dishonor of being a prisoner, would be the most notable masculine idea impressed upon American troops, according to Lynn. Japanese reactions to prisoners, then, was one powered by both race and gender. Japanese soldiers judged American troops by Japanese standards of masculinity. Men who allowed themselves to be taken prisoner did not have the right to be treated as men.
In fact the Japanese no longer saw the prisoners as human, and being near such men was an emotionally disturbing experience. The Japanese also believed that the Americans presented a direct threat to their racial purity, and to themselves as the chosen people of God. Combining a desire to protect the divine race with a masculine ideal which climaxed in death for the Emperor was a recipe for brutal warfare, especially between Japanese Imperial Troops and American Marines.
Neither the Japanese Imperial Troops nor the American Marines saw the other as human once the opponent failed to live up to the racial and gender expectations of the other. Lynn writes that the Japanese fully expected the Americans, as men, to die before surrendering. The Americans, Lynn also says, came from a culture which accepted the idea that a soldier had the ability to surrender with honor intact.
Thus Japanese cultural ideals centered upon race and gender were vastly different than their opponents. These differences would lead to atrocities committed by all sides, making the fighting in the Pacific especially bitter and horrific.
Sources
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998.
Erenberg, Lewis A. and Susan E. Hirsch, eds. The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness During World War II. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Lynn, John A. Battle: A History of Combat and Culture from Ancient Greece to Modern America. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2004.
Morrow, John. Lecture for Norwich University’s Military History Program. 2008.
Nicholas Efstathiou - My name is Nicholas E. Efstathiou and I have a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature and a Master's in Military History. I have had a ...
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