Ask an enthusiast on Japanese history

To what extent do modern Japanese feel war guilt over the invasions of China and WWII? Has Japan ever issued a formal apology to China, the Koreas, Singapore, Vietnam, and all the rest of East Asia and Oceania?
 
Sure, Japan has apologized to all of the above. Kishi Nobusuke started the ball rolling in the mid-50s. The issue isn't that Japan hasn't apologized so much as Japanese apologies tend to come off as being half-arsed, grudging and light on the apologizing part. Having said that, most countries are happy with the apologies they've gotten e.g. Australia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia. The countries that still aren't happy mostly the PRC (but not ROC) and both Korea's tend to be those that have the most baggage for various reasons. Indonesia is an outlier in the sense that it suffered a hell of a lot during the war on a level comparable with say China but which despite all that has accepted Japanese reparations and apologies made in the past and now seldom gives much thought to the issue. I suspect that has something to do with Indonesian nationalists having generally positive views of Japan, Indonesia being distant from Japan and not having territorial issues with it and Indonesia being a Western ally during the Cold War. The ROC is another interesting example. The ROC has tended to have quite positive views of Japan going back to the fact that the Taiwanese experience of Japan was rather different to the mainland. A lot of older Taiwanese spoke Japanese, owing to their schooling which was conducted in Japanese, and were exposed to Japanese culture at an early age. Lee Teng-hui who was President of the Republic of China is the standout example. He speaks fluent Japanese, attended Kyoto Imperial University, had a brother who was killed fighting for the IJN and served himself in the IJA where he rose to officer rank. Taiwan as an American ally also had ample reason to become friendly with a defanged, pro-American Japan. A lot of Taiwanese industrial equipment and technical expertise in the early days came from Japan.
 
Is there any info on the Emishi people? Any books on them out there?

From what I've gathered, they were probably related to the Ainu, fought the Yamato with guerrilla tactics and horse archers, and were ultimately conquered and assimilated after the Thirty-Eight Years' War. Some became part of the aristocracy in the north for a while. I think they also had their own written script which nobody can decipher.

It's just kind of odd that despite their influence info is so sparse on them. They owned a lot of modern Japan for a long time, they were the enemies that the office of shogun was created to fight, and they seem to have inspired the Japanese to adopt horse archery, yet so little is known about them.
 
To elaborate, a lot of the complexity of the Korean-Japanese problem comes from the fact that previous Japanese apologies, and reparations were made with the ROK government rather than with Civil Society.

Now, because of the repressive nature of the ROK government until fairly recently, this was done as a total disconnect from the actual Korean people. The Park regime signed an agreement with the Japanese government that basically assured the Japanese that it settled any and all reparations between Korea and Japan. This was mainly in the form of industrial assistance and loans that helped fuel the ROK's industrialization. Really important for Korea, but not really much of reparations for people who were actually hurt by the Japanese.

All of this got really changed up by the democratization of the ROK, and the emergence of a vibrant civil society in Korea. This started kicking up a discourse that the Japanese were not ready for, and didn't want to have.

And that, I think is the real problem. It's not that they don't take their apologies seriously, but they seem to come with the condition that the topic is closed thereafter. As Masada put it, Japan is very happy with it's apologies to Australia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia, specifically because it has closed the book on the matter. They thought they had a similar arrangement with Korea.

The emergence of this as a serious issue in modern Korea then, came across as an extra problem. One that's also gotten more complicated by the North and the relative sympathy the Korean community in Japan has for the DPRK, which of course has received no such reparations.
 
I keep hearing about how all the individual Japanese military in WW2 'would never surrender' because of all their 'sacred honor' or whatever but I want to know the actual statistics of Japanese troops surrendering to allied forces. It may have even been less common for them to surrender but somehow I doubt it was 'never'.
 
If I remember the statistics correctly, before the wholesale surrender of all of Japan's forces after Hiroshima, less than 60000 Japanese prisoners of war had been taken. Of course that is simply by the Allies.
 
Sure, Japan has apologized to all of the above. Kishi Nobusuke started the ball rolling in the mid-50s. The issue isn't that Japan hasn't apologized so much as Japanese apologies tend to come off as being half-arsed, grudging and light on the apologizing part. Having said that, most countries are happy with the apologies they've gotten e.g. Australia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia. The countries that still aren't happy mostly the PRC (but not ROC) and both Korea's tend to be those that have the most baggage for various reasons. Indonesia is an outlier in the sense that it suffered a hell of a lot during the war on a level comparable with say China but which despite all that has accepted Japanese reparations and apologies made in the past and now seldom gives much thought to the issue. I suspect that has something to do with Indonesian nationalists having generally positive views of Japan, Indonesia being distant from Japan and not having territorial issues with it and Indonesia being a Western ally during the Cold War. The ROC is another interesting example. The ROC has tended to have quite positive views of Japan going back to the fact that the Taiwanese experience of Japan was rather different to the mainland. A lot of older Taiwanese spoke Japanese, owing to their schooling which was conducted in Japanese, and were exposed to Japanese culture at an early age. Lee Teng-hui who was President of the Republic of China is the standout example. He speaks fluent Japanese, attended Kyoto Imperial University, had a brother who was killed fighting for the IJN and served himself in the IJA where he rose to officer rank. Taiwan as an American ally also had ample reason to become friendly with a defanged, pro-American Japan. A lot of Taiwanese industrial equipment and technical expertise in the early days came from Japan.

as usual a very insightful post from you Masada

I have a question regarding Japanese history, the Japanese abandon shield as a weapon, and they were isolated from other for a very long time, their fortress and castle fortification are guarded with low wall, and they don't have any city wall, and not learn battle formation until they been introduced with gun.

The things that confuse me is, how they battle China and Korea during the medieval time? how they stand against the archer without shield? how they siege and occupy the city that is well fortify without any experienced on city and fortress fortification and how to siege it? I discuss this with my Japanese he also confuse himself. Maybe someone here know the answer.
 
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