What if Japan continued its "hearts and minds" campaign it attempted pre-Sino War into WWII?

Griffith, could you please expand on what exactly you do that constitutes "research" on the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese history, Japanese history, interwar Sino-Japanese relations, or WWII military history? You literally opened this thread by citing a manga as a historical source, and since then, you have not made any assertions backed by good evidence of any kind (pasting links to an entire book as "source" for an anecdote does not count).

This topic is of great breadth but there are some fairly questionable assertions that you made which jump out immediately.

1) Your claim that Chinese-Japanese relations were good in the 20s and 30s or that Japan had some kind of "hearts and minds" campaign before the outbreak of war is entirely unsupported by any kind of historical fact. After Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan and China were for all purposes in a state of undeclared war, consisting of brief skirmishes and uneasy truces, usually unfavorable to China. Hostility was mutual, particularly on the Chinese side, for obvious reasons. Even in the 20s, however, there was very little evidence of any sort of rapprochement or "hearts and minds" campaign, since Sino-Japanese relations were dominated by hostile events including but not limited to the Shandong problem, the Jinan Incident, the first Shanghai incident, and the assassination of general Zhang Zuolin. This does not suggest a policy of rapprochement or healthy relations at all.

2) You spend a lot of time dwelling on individual anecdotes like that one time a Japanese soldier married a Chinese local of how the Japanese colonized Mongolia with Han (colonizing Manchuria with Koreans would have been a better example btw). As Little Red Bean (as an aside, that is a very unusual username, I am not convinced it is not some kind of sexual innuendo) points out, this is a silly way to study history, because it is literally missing the forest for the trees. Deciding whether to colonize with Japanese or Han has basically zero relevance to historical trends. What affects who holds the levers of power does (a fact which is true of essentially all history btw), and the point of colonization is to transfer levels of power from indigenous control to colonizer control. Japanese colonization with Han migrants is not functionally different from Japanese colonization with Japanese migrants. Most of East Asia history between 1895-1945, btw, examined in this context, revolves around power, which is to say, Japanese struggles to upset American/British dominance of the economic levers of power, Chinese/Japanese battles with the West over sovereignty, literally all colonial conflict, anywhere, the list goes on.

3) Your usage of Chiang Kai-shek and other Chinese leaders desire to emulate and learn from Japan as evidence of a desire for a rapprochement with Japan reveals ignorance of Chinese political dynamics and the reasons for Japanophilia in Chinese leaders at the time. After 1916, albeit, really after 1895, the attitude towards Japan by Chinese leaders was one of admiration and fear, both because Japan, especially post-WWI, had raised her status to that of the premier military and industrial power in East Asia. Frankly, your usage of Chiang's frequent visits to Japan as evidence of pro-Japanese sentiment makes as much sense as claiming that monarchist German officers in the Weimar era were closer communists due to their cooperation with the USSR under Rapallo.

4) Your use of COIN and "hearts and minds" in relation to Japanese occupation policy is wholly anachronistic because it misunderstands the fundamental differences between implementation of COIN/hearts and minds respectively. Both COIN and hearts and minds are premised on the assumption that the ultimate goal is to win popular support from the local population to legitimize a military occupation; in a colonial war such as the SSJW, that is entirely redundant. This is also why counterfactuals such as "what if Imperial Japan less brutal" are poorly posed, they ignore historical context and essentially demand magical changes that hold all other factors equal. This is a fairly widespread phenomenon on this forum, to be clear. In the case of Japan, it not only ignores a decades long pattern of hostile behavior, but also betrays considerable ignorance of the manifold social factors in domestic Japan which strongly encouraged militarism (including but not limited to military influence on civilian government, victory disease, the rise of spiritual-ultranationalist cults within the military, a grotesque failure by Japanese general officers to grasp fundamental principles of diplomacy and economics, and the undermining of traditional authorities by fanaticism).

Frankly, the more I read, the more I question whether you have done any reading or research at all on this subject.
 
The problem is that the Bushido mentality is prone to create easy brutality. In the Meiji restoration this brutality was easily viewed between both sides, the shogunate and imperial sides treated their counterpart populations without mercy many times. But after its consolidation this brutality was turned to outsiders.

Since the Europeans were seen as too powerful still this treatment was turned on its easier and earlier conquests: Korea and China. While its naval arm had more contact with foreign elements and ended up with a more cosmopolitan outlook, its army had ended up with a defacto viceroyalty to administer. They probably had their soft period to see if they could elevate the locals to their way of life as servitors if nothing else, something the Europeans tried to do in Africa and Asia as well.

But after the fall of the Taiho democracy, the raise of a militarist dictatorial government and the endless wars and guerrilla attacks in China they went full "kill them all" mode that made them infamous across East Asia.
 
So I'd question why they'd see Malaysians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Burmese, Cambodians, and Laotions as subhumans you can rape for fun without remorse well in fact they portrayed opposite patterns in Vietnam, Thailand, and parts of India.

I hate to get in the way of your apologism for war criminals, but the reason is that the Vietnamese, Indian nationalists, and Indonesian nationalists were happy to align themselves with the Japanese against their colonial overlords, and the Thais were willing to essentially become vassals.

You seem to assume that seeing someone as inferior precludes treating them relatively well- it doesn't. The Japanese were happy to treat cooperative occupied people as good dogs if they behaved themselves. This just meant a lower level of casual brutality

They consistently singled out the SE Asian chinese, eurasians, the Filipinos and other groups with active links to enemy states (the ROC, colonial powers and the US) as bad dogs and thus raised their brutality to truly horrific levels.

We now return you to your apologism for a criminal regime.
 

CalBear

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In addition to my recommendation that you try to read my above post, you might want to research Japanese and Chinese interaction in the 20s and 30s among military and politics and later the attitudes of non-Japanese military personal. Not only were Japanese living side by side in parts of China in the 20s with enough respect to realize the Chinese were at least civilized, even into the war there were Koreans who Japanised their culture and accepted as Japanese by native citizens of Japan. Mas Oyama being one such example and I even recall reading a PDF about a Korean comfort women who escaped and was later given refuge by a Japanese woman and they quickly became such friends that he Japanese woman offered to take her along as she was heading back home before the war started going bad for Japan (though the Korean refuse and isntead chose a ship back home to Korea).

Also there are incidents of Korean soldiers in relationship with pure blooded Japanese women and marrying them mid war.

So I don't buy the claim of "racist imperial japan on equal level of Nazi vileness" as proof of why they could not adopt a COIN like strategy considering Koreans could intermarry with Japanese and pre-war, even Chinese people were allowed to marry Japanese (though this tended to be leaning towards Japanese soldiers marrying Chinese women).

Just to add even Chiang Kai Shek attended a college in Japan before his rise to Generalissimo

It is truly appalling to see someone attempt to whitewash the war crime driven practices of Imperial Japan. As last as August of 1945 ten of thousands (some sources indicate 100,000+) of civilians in occupied territories were being killed by Japanese policies and brutality. You dared to tell someone to do some research. Research Nanking. Research the institutionalized wholesale rape and murder that was the Comfort Women. Research Unit 731.

31 posts total.

This will be your second kick, this one for war crime apologia.

You have used every micron of your rope here. Look crooked even once when you return and you are on the 5:46 to Coventry.

Kicked for a week.
 
Well that was a nice recap of the various tactics Japanese war crime deniers use to minimalize, deny, and/or glorify genocidal rape, torture, and murder. Good to see they remain as myopic and clueless as always.
 
Some never learn or want to learn.

Because Nazis are more blatant some folks just to not want to acknowledge the terrible crap Japan committed.
 

Wendigo

Banned
Well that was a nice recap of the various tactics Japanese war crime deniers use to minimalize, deny, and/or glorify genocidal rape, torture, and murder. Good to see they remain as myopic and clueless as always.

"Oh I know the IJA raped young girls by the thousands, bayoneted infants and killed people out of sheer boredom but you know..... what if they DIDN'T?"
 
"Oh I know the IJA raped young girls by the thousands, bayoneted infants and killed people out of sheer boredom but you know..... what if they DIDN'T?"
"Sure there might have been the teeny little war crime every now and again but I hear Chiang Kai-shek really enjoyed his time at a Japanese university and I read in a manga that one of the japanese army's sex slaves (who totally didnt exist and if they did it wasn't THAT bad) totes became BFFs with a Japanese lady so ya know...all evens out. Also targeting innocent civilians for rape, torture, and murder solely because you consider their race inferior totally isnt racist and you are silly to think so."
 
Even within the military, there were assassination between the ranks based on political affiliation and class stratification (I'm offended you a farmer worse above me a descendant of a Samurai so I'm gonna get into my daddy's contacts to get rid of you).
Sorry but assassination in the army and in politics during the 30s where not about rank but about political point of view and objectives.

Still if that is true how come in Vietnam the Japanese army was generally so restraint?
Because during the first years of occupation the where not really trying to control Indochina. It changed in 1945, but the main targets were french peoples/soldiers and indochineses who supported them.

Don't get me started on Thailand where theere was never a single incident of abusing a Thai citizen as they were moving through the region.
Because Japanese troops were NOT in Thailand, but transiting trough Thailand. And the country was an "allied" (more a vassal). Not occupied or concquered territorry.

Well that was a nice recap of the various tactics Japanese war crime deniers use to minimalize, deny, and/or glorify genocidal rape, torture, and murder. Good to see they remain as myopic and clueless as always.
Agreed.
 
Now now. We all know the Chinese were the agressors against the peace loving Japanese. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident was a conspiracy the troops who took commands by CKS. Their planned to take over Manchuko away from its lawful Emperor.

Get your facts right folks.




:rolleyes: Yeah right. Well deniers will be what they will be.
 
Of course when the freedom-loving people of the U S of A come to conquer and kill Asians in the late 19th century, less than 30 years before Japan all was fine and dandy, no?

Please, if you want to indict a whole nation and people for genocide then do it with everyone else that did it in East Asia as well.
 
I was stating the extreme that some deniers might take. I do not believe in anything I posted and I do not deny that the US have done several disgusting things in the past. As well as continue to do in current times.

Please do not paint me in some dark corner. I do not appreciate that.
 
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Of course when the freedom-loving people of the U S of A come to conquer and kill Asians in the late 19th century, less than 30 years before Japan all was fine and dandy, no?

Please, if you want to indict a whole nation and people for genocide then do it with everyone else that did it in East Asia as well.

Where did anyone in this thread excuse the US for it's behavior in the PH war?

The shocking thing is that even in a region that was comprehensively exploited by the West the Imperial Japanese Army was able to reach greater depths of atrocity.
 
Where did anyone in this thread excuse the US for it's behavior in the PH war?

The shocking thing is that even in a region that was comprehensively exploited by the West the Imperial Japanese Army was able to reach greater depths of atrocity.

Which is why any and all comparisons to Nazi germany are justified. In a region that had seen oppression and atrocity for centuries, the Japanese decided "Right lads, time to show these untermensch pussies how the REAL master race does oppression and atrocity" just like the nazis did in europe. And like the nazis they justified it all with "the lives of these subhuman peasants dont matter, only their use as a resource. Anyway they should be grateful that we honor them with our rule against the evil Jewish-Bolshevic/Western-imperialist oppressors" which allowed them to think of themselves as "heroic liberators" even while they were raping and slaughtering millions of civilians.
 
In East Asia during WW2 (so that no one will musunderstand my point-#32), the Japanese were by far the worst in their actions and beliefs committing war crimes. Many countries did them and I make no excuse for anyone.
 
LeX said:
It's probably because the occupied populations gave resistance. If there was no resistance to speak of then the Japanese probably didn't see a reason to kill and rape. IIRC Vietnam was taken mostly without fighting.

Occupation still took its tolls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_Famine_of_1945

That's also my answer to any "heart and mind" campaigns people conceived for Nazi Germany in Europe (particularly Ukraine) and Imperial Japan in Asia (Particularly Southeast Asia). The occupiers might be as nice and honorable as you want to believe, but he still had to steal the last grain from you lest he wants to starve.
 
Hearts & Minds? A Taisho or earlier POD will be needed to get a government willing and able to muzzle the IJA while using soft power to turn Manchuria and any coastal warlords wanting the KMT/CCP out of their hair into economic satellites. Of course that means no Pacific War as we know it
 
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