What went wrong?

speaking objectively, it wasn't an 'evil' empire. At the end however, it was largely controlled and hijacked by very militaristic and idealistic officials.

The Japanese empire was actually great allies with the British initially and even sided with the allies during World War I. This alliance also allowed Japan to model their navy after the British, hence becoming a great naval superpower within a very short time. But this alliance also largely influenced the Japanese on British colonialism and Japan soon started to see that it as an empire, was starting to lack materials that it as an empire needed to modernize.

What the Europeans were doing in China wasn't exactly helping either. The Japanese who participated, further emphasized their point that there were only aggressors and victims in this world in that period.

So Japan set out to heavily militarized and put a great emphasis on their military. Military matters soon started to govern civil matters. This emphasis soon started to lead to ballooning of two branches, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese Army. In fact, each had their own separate ground forces and air forces. They both believed in different areas to expand too with the army wanting to go north and the navy wanting to go south. My point is that Japan at that point lacked cohesion and their command was almost schizophrenic.

But like how there were many different bad people (or I would say, heavily brainwashed and militant), there were also many good men who wanted truly good things. For example, Iwane Matsui feevously wanted an independent Asia and was distraught when he realized Prince Asaka's hikacking of his troops to commit atrocities like this in Nanjing.

I currently am in Japan and talked to a few older folks who maintained that was what they wanted, hoped for too - an independent Asia. What the militaristic leaders might have wanted could have been different.

On my phone. Sorry about typos.

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China? Really? Fighting China? Nice job fuckos you had everything you needed to be a sweet ass country forever, Sweet bushido and samurai traditions, a mostly safe island homeland, homogenous population with little internal strife, westernization going well.

Colonialism ruined everything for Japan, and every other 19th century power to some extent. Colonialism is too short term a policy unless you settle the land America style, and even then it still usually ends up poorly.

I mean fuck, Japan is still pretty sweet, but its Nintendo, anime, porn sweet, when I should be samurai and yamato sweet.

>>2115920
>muh samurai muh bushido

All gone after the meji restoration. Those concepts were literally resurrected during world war period solely because of propaganda reasons, don't be a retard.

>>2115853

>we just want Asia to be independent
>proceeds to put harsher regimes onto the peoples they supposedly "liberate"

Such a noble race of people.

>>2115853
>I currently am in Japan and talked to a few older folks who maintained that was what they wanted, hoped for too - an independent Asia
Denial is a national policy in Japan. It's not even up for discussion when the official story is "Never happened"

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>>2115962

>All gone

ok desu i appologize for my retardation

>>2115983

Im not that guy but I am posting from Tokyo right now. I visited their war museum at the Yasakuni Shrine and their representation of history is warped. They literally say that the Sino-Japanese War was not a war but a series of "incidents". They say that the Nanking Massacre was because Chinese troops were pretending to dress like civilians, no joke, and they had to be punished for it.

Japanese are the most autistic people Ive met and their denial that they did anything wrong is astounding.

Pearl Harbour was a mistake. War with the US was nowhere near as inevitable as it is made out to be. They would have done far better to obtain oil and nickel diplomatically, from the Dutch or ever the Soviets, making whatever concessions necessary, than starting that clusterfuck. Roosevelt would have found it very difficult to convince the American public that it is necessary to invade some Asian country because they did bad things in some other Asian country.

>>2115795
(((Allied powers)))

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>>2116011
Yeah, it's better to be a self-loathing german, amirite?

They should have stopped at Manchukuo. Invading China accomplished nothing but tying up manpower and earning international ire.

>>2115853
>Those warcrimes and atrocities were committed with good intentions!
And you believed them? I guess the imperial propaganda machine is already working.

>>2116046
Its weird how the Nazis had to develop more detached means of executing innocents yet the Japs had no issue just slicing them up by the thousand

Really gets your noggin joggin

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>>2115962
>Being this retarded
What most people today would call 'bushido' did not exist for all of the Sengoku and the vast majority of the Edo period to any formal, codified degree.

For the vast majority of the samurais reign, Confucianism (and to a lesser degree, Buddhism) was the primary source of ethical code.

It was not until the latter half of the Edo period (when samurai had mostly become an administrative nobility), that what we would recognize today as 'bushido' started gaining traction within Japan.

A number of samurai within Japan in the late Edo period lamented the role that samurai had fallen into, and looked back (with rose-tinted glasses) at the samurai of war-torn Sengoku period.
It is from these Edo period writings that 'bushido' took shape.

During the Meji restoration, 'bushido' was revisited and contextualized as a code of ethics to be used by the citizenry of Japan.
Emphasizing its correct practice as the best way to help the sate of Japan and display patriotism.

It is during the Shōwa that 'bushido' became primarily about service to the Emperor and Empire.

All of this is to say that 'bushido' in regards to the samurai was never something that the Sengoku era samurai lived by (or had a formal conception of).
Nor was it 'gone by the meji restoration'.
It was originally a form of nostalgic idealism, born from bored noble administrators; That morphed into a nationalist code of ethics that survived until the end of WW2.

Start shit, get hit; Senpai.

>>2116048
oy vey are you implying that the rollercoasters of death and bear pits were are a mere fabrication?

>What went wrong?
Something something, tenno heika banzai.

>>2116073
Don't forget eagle janitors and pumping up jews with a bycycle pump like some kind of demented balloon, Desu

I'm saying that even the historical super villain, the nazis, had more empathy and guilt that the japanese.

>>2116083
You've gone too far when the Nazis, your own allies, tell you you're fucked up.

>>2115795
I'm actually pretty curious about how they got so massively racist and cruel.

Encryption and bad luck.

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>>2115795

Hideki being made PM instead of Isoroku

>>2115853
>older folk in Japan

Warcrime denial is very common in Japan.

>>2115853
>older folks who maintained that was what they wanted, hoped for too - an independent Asia

Have they noticed the 55,000 white men raping their daughters and ordering their government around?

>>2116040
You can accept historical facts and face the truth without being a cuckold.

False dichotomy /pol/weeb

>>2115795

Turns out the emperor was not god after all.

>>2116171
Combine autism with island isolationism and Japan's tendency to copy anything Western, like 19th century nationalism, and you get Showa era Japan.

>>2116171
At least part of the horrendous mistreatment of POWs came from the fact Japanese soldiers were not treated all that much better. The Japanese struggled with logistics in the Pacific War due to mismanagement and production issues (and of course, direct American military action against their convoys). Several island garrisons got completely cut off to the point where they were reduced to full-time subsistence farming of root crops to survive - in an environment where your soldiers are only getting half-rations you're definitely not giving anything to the prisoners.

I'm the guy it living in Japan right now. But I've also lived for a longer time in Beijing and Shanghai so you can trust my perspective is quite unbiased.

Even neutral sources have stated that Chinese soldiers were indeed disguised as Chinese civilians in the supposedly 'Nanjing safety area'. This happened because Chiang Kai-Shek chose to invest heavily in the proceeding Battle of Shanghai that costed almost more than 70% of the effective fighting forces of China. As a result, the Chinese were demoralized and tired on their retreat to Nanjing.The Chinese counter-attack in Shanghai, the battle of Shanghai and the battle of Nanjing was looking to be a diasaster. Nonetheless Chiang Kai-Shek did not want to give up Nanjing without a fight and urged his men to fight to the death in the ancient capital. He left the command of KMT troops under the command of Tang Shengzi as he left the city. However during the battle, he ordered Tang to retreat his troops. As a result of bad communication, illiteracy and the fog of war, the Nanjing garrison received conflicting orders and went into panic. Chinese troops were killing other Chinese troops and Chinese civilians for retreating as they hadn't received the orders for retreat. There weren't enough boats to organize a hasty retreat either (Yangtze river). It was too late to tell the Japanese that the city was now an 'open-city'. So even foreign sources pointed out that Chinese soldiers disguised themselves as Chinese civilians and the streets were littered with uniforms, rifles and ammunition.

I'm not justifying or denying the Nanjing massacre, but in the pursuit to demonize the Japanese people tend to mix or warp up the facts. Im saying this even as a Chinese.

>>2119374
[citation badly needed]

>>2117553
He's still descended from a god though.

>>2119415

No one has posted any citations on this thread. You can verify them yourself.

>>2115795

stabbed in the back

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>>2119374
>But I've also lived for a longer time in Beijing and Shanghai so you can trust my perspective is quite unbiased.

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>>2119443

>probably has never travelled to China or Japan.
>believes to be an expert on Japanese/Chinese perspective and history.

>>2119456
>why yes I, anonymous, work at nintendo

>>2115795
>lets try to conquer china
>turns out there are a lot of people in China
>OH FUCK NO MATTER HOW MANY WE KILL IT DOESN'T"T MAKE A DENT!
>I know let go to war with the USA
They were fucking stupid

>>2119374
The KMT was a hilarious clusterfuck, that's for sure. Honestly, the Chinese should've just let the CCP take over the fighting and get some serious USSR support. The PLA probably would've pushed the IJA into Korea given enough munitions - that's really not an exaggeration. Both the KMT and IJA were horrendous at all levels of warfare.

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>>2119529
The KMT was certainly a clusterfuck but despite their ideological differences the USSR was already supplying them with various tank and aircraft models, including the latest twin engine bombers for offensive operations. About 900 aircraft were delivered from 1937 to 1941, a significant number without being directly involved in the conflict. The USSR knew that the communists couldn't feasibly maintain these.

While the communists were excellent at guerilla warfare and maintaining their organic strength, they had no serious capability nor intent for the logistics of mechanized weapons during this period. Until the actual civil war, their preferred strategy was to preserve their strength since they knew the KMT was going to win against Japan anyways. Most of their engagements against the IJA were deliberately chosen to be locally advantageous by exploiting ambushes and close range assault, unlike the pitched battle doctrine of the KMT. There was no need for anything other than organic firepower such as massed machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank rifles.

>>2119374
There is definitely a revisionist branch in Japanese society but it is not the official government stance. Yasukuni shrine is privately run, although there is support from members of the right wing group Nippon Kaigi, of which many members of the Japanese government are supporters, including Abe himself.

So, although the government's official stance is repentant, and there have been repeated apologies, there are still many who deny or glorify Japanese conduct in WW2.

Incidentally, this same group supports the revision of article 9 and the remilitarization of Japan, and the glorification of Japanese actions in WW2 provides helps to garner support for this idea.

>>2119526
What a naive understanding of history

>>2119456

>travelling to a country makes you an expert on history

Hmm I never knew!