VENUE: HYBRID

IN-PERSON: Seminar Room, China in the World, Building 188, Fellows Lane, ANU

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Japanese war crimes: An assessment

Japanese military personnel committed many war crimes in the course of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and after Pearl Harbor (1941–1945). Some crimes resulted from the initiative of individuals, some were conducted by groups, still others were ordered by Japanese commanders. Many observers have assumed that Japanese war crimes were of a different—more atrocious—order than those of any of Japan’s contemporaries, except perhaps Nazi Germany. The perception of Japanese exceptionalism has underpinned a search for sinister elements in Japanese history and culture that might explain its apparent exceptionalism. In view of our growing knowledge of atrocities committed in the colonial wars and civil wars that drenched the middle decades of the 20th century in blood, the idea of Japanese exceptionalism is open to serious challenge.

This paper reviews the record of Japanese atrocity, identifying what has been invented or exaggerated, what is distressingly similar to the actions of other belligerents in the decades 1930–1960, and what remains as exceptional or unique. I suggest that we can best account for Japanese war crimes by looking at the extraordinary historical circumstances of the Second World War in Asia, and of Japan’s war effort.

Speaker

Sandra Wilson is a historian of modern Japan and is professor of History at Murdoch University. With Robert Cribb, Beatrice Trefalt and Dean Aszkielowicz, she is author of Japanese War Criminals: the Politics of Guilt after the Second World War (Columbia University Press, 2017). She has also written on politics and society in 1930s Japan and on the history of Japanese nationalism.

The seminar is followed by light refreshments.

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The ANU Japan Institute Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Japan Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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