@on the cusp

Peasant Nationalism Revisited: The Biography of a Book

Chalmers Johnson

It is now 15 years since Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power
was first published and became known as a controversial book.
However, when in the autumn of 1960 I began writing my doctoral
dissertation in political science at Berkeley, it never once crossed my
mind that I was writing something controversial or even publishable.
For the previous two years I had been reading Japanese Government
archives concerned with the Japanese war in China, 1937X5, archives
that had been obtained for the Berkeley libraries by Professor Robert
Scalapino from Hatano Ken'ichi, one of Japan's leading specialists
on China and a Japanese governmental adviser during the so-called
" China Incident." These archives impressed me with a point that I
thought was already widely accepted among scholars interested in
the Chinese Revolution - namely, that the Japanese army had
created conditions of such savagery in the Chinese countryside that
the peasantry in overwhelming numbers had given their allegiance
to the Chinese Communist Party as the only true leader of anti-
Japanese guerrilla resistance. Because the Communist Party had
openly championed resistance to Japan, it had won the " hearts and
minds" of a significant proportion of the rural population, an
achievement that guaranteed that in the postwar world it could no
longer be regarded by the Kuomintang (KMT) as merely a " rebel
faction." W

I first became familiar with the "Three Alls" reading a free excerpt of Chalmers Johnson's book on peasant nationalism in China. The three alls, kill all, burn all, loot all, was an extermination campaign by the Japanese Imperial Army against the civilian population of rural China. This history is deliberately concealed, omitted, covered up and denied by the US and Japan. The three alls campaign in China has been contended to be the model for the strategic hamlet program by the US in Vietnam. Typically, the focus of Japanese war crimes in China is limited to the horrendous Japanese massacre in Nanjing. This because the records of this crime against humanity is undeniable. The only dispute is over how many civilians did the Japanese massacre in Nanjing, thirty thousand or three hundred thousand. At the time, Japanese controlled media bragged about the killing contests among Japanese military officers to see who could murder the most civilians in beheading contests. I remember as a child seeing a picture of hundreds of Chinese corpses piled high in a Life Magazine history of the war, depicting that massacre.

Three Alls policy

Depending on the source the death toll from Japanese military campaigns in China, 1931-1937, vary from 20 to 35 million. Many of the civilian deaths are attributed to "cross fire" and "non-military" deaths, these expressions are misleading I think. Civilians were deliberately killed by the Japanese Imperial Army, their crops and food sources stolen or burned, their homes burned, villages burned etc., in anti-guerilla campaigns. So civilians dying from "non-military" events includes starvation, exposure, etc.

The US participated in the cover up of Japanese war crimes, because Japan was needed for its fascist anti communist orientation. The leadership of the new government of Japan after WWII was financed and supported by the US occupation government, and the CIA. War criminals such as Kishi, Sasakawa, and Kodama were released from confinement although they were charged with with war crimes, without trial, and emerged as leadership of post war Japan. The LDP, the ruling party in Japan, was founded by these war criminals and is still the basis for government in Japan. Abe was Kishi's grandson, Sasakawa was revered as a philanthropist in the US and internationally, and Kodama's role as the organized crime director, drug dealer, and looter of Asia is ignored. Needless to say Japan is still actively engaged in policies that deny their history of war crimes, the need to compensate the victims, and actively suppress any discussion of it, in their own education system, or the public media sources of their own or other countries. Japan patronizes scholars internationally to deny this history. This is how one could grow up in the US to hear little of it. I'm aware of the nature of the war with Japan because my uncle fought the Japanese in hand to hand combat, tunnel warfare, etc. during the island campaigns of WWII. I became aware of the Japanese policy of active suppression of their history of crimes against humanity from learning the Korean language, and watching South Korean history documentaries, and reading old Korean newspaper articles from the WWII era.

Of course there is racial discrimination in Japan, and Korea. Much of Japanese discrimination is against their own Korean minority, who are second class citizens. Despite this I would note that many ordinary Koreans admire Japanese culture and visit Japan often. Ms. So and her friends have visited Japan several times and enjoy it. This is not unusual. But there is a difference between admiring the cultural aspects of Japan, and attitudes toward their politics, although the two are subtly linked. I don't care much to engage in the culture wars about this and that. I was trained in undergrad as a historian, and I also had an interest in the legal and political ramifications of Japan's history of crimes against humanity, and not being fully held accountable after WWII, in contrast to treatment of war criminals in Germany, and their collaborators such as those in Vichy France. Frankly, it isn't easy to learn about this.

I wrote years ago an essay on the relationship of the Japanese Imperial Occupation of Korea, with contemporary post WWII Korea. This discussion still rings true today, because both Koreas' relationship with Japan, is influenced in profound ways, by Japanese historical brutality, efforts to wipe out Korean culture and Korean resistance, whether communists in the North or the independence movement revered in the South to this day. There was a failure in South Korea especially, to ever hold Korean collaborators with the Japanese occupiers accountable for their crimes, mostly due to the political pressure to stitch together dictatorships that would support the US occupation of the South. The US inherited this legacy as the replacement for the Japanese Empire in the South Korea and the far east generally. The people who support Japan today in South Korean politics are those whose families prospered by being the treasonous tools of the Japanese oppressors or the dictatorships that followed "liberation." Either that or they and their families have otherwise received or are receiving Japanese patronage. Japan, like the US, actively seeks out people of influence and civic organizations and heavily patronizes them to obtain their political loyalty and favorable views of Japan.

Coming to Terms with Japanese Imperialism- Then and Now

There is a deep fault line in modern Korean history beginning in the late 19th Century with the collapse of the Chosun dynasty. Japan exploited late Chosun weakness invading the peninsula on various pretexts and subjecting Korea to Japan's military dominance for economic exploitation. This commenced in earnest in 1894, not 1910, as is often alleged in western sources. The fundamental fault line that developed and exists to this day is the divide between those Koreans who resisted Japanese military, political and economic domination of the peninsula, and those Koreans who facilitated and profited from it.

I scan Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus periodically for discussions on the legacy of this history in Korea. In ordinary discussions of culture some Japanese artists, intellectuals, journalists and scholars admit to many of these aspects of contemporary Japan and denialism of their history.

It is however, often treated in oblique, tactful, and abstract rather than blunt ways, that tend to defuse the historical "embarrassment" of Japan's denial of their history.

Mio Okido in conversation with Asato Ikeda:

There are better articles buried in the APJJF archives, I don't have time to dig them up. Buried in this discussion linked above, some of the basic admissions are there:

While art from other non-Western regions is often contextualized within narratives of European imperialism and colonialism, Japan’s imperialist history is less acknowledged.

The paintings were displayed in Berlin in 1931 as part of Japan-German cultural diplomacy and served as national propaganda, shortly before the Manchurian Incident took place. These works were intended to portray Japan as a nation of art and beauty, even as its militaristic ambitions grew. Through my work, I aimed to bring attention to the collection history of these paintings.

In this exhibition, I contemplated the dangers of the ‘beauty of Japanese art’ and its modern history.”

And of course, these works were received through a white Orientalist lens that would reinforce and reconfirm Japan’s self-Orientalizing presentation.

Self-critical thinking is encouraged in some cultures. Being self-critical has been a very important part of German culture, especially after the Second World War and during the student protest movement in the 1960s. In Japan, independent thinking is generally not encouraged.

In principle, if we are touched by the experiences of victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we should be able to renounce violence in general regardless of nationality or ethnicity, and we should not have any problem empathizing with the Asian victims of Japanese militarism. There is a movement by activists in Hiroshima to address this point, but this is not the kind of perspective shared on a national level in Japan.

Not shared but actively suppressed.

This appears to be a good article on the CIA and cooperation with former Class A war criminals in Japan. I didn't finish it yet.

The Imperial Ghost in the Neoliberal Machine (Figuring the CIA)

Thanks for your comment and good wishes OntheCusp. My dog bite wounds look worse than ever, but I'm fairly sure I'm recovering well.

#13.2 I need to know much more about Japan killing Chinese. Gotta say that part of history never came across my radar.
I want to know more about Asian on Asian animosity. The only time I saw it was when in Shanghai, I witnessed a Chinese businessman trying to check in two drunk women into the hotel where I was staying.
The doorman said they were drunk Filipino prostitutes, as usual. It caused a ruckus.
Asian on Asian discrimination. I had no idea up until that first night on my tour of China.
Glad you enjoyed Wolfe.
I will watch the video you posted now.
Heal quickly, no complications, ok? Ok?
Enjoy your weekend and your life, my friend!