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Japanese war crimes was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
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Current status: Delisted good article |
Types of torture used in the Japanese occupation of Singapore was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 25 May 2010 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Japanese war crimes. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
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I physically vomited after skimming this article. Can a warning banner be placed on it please?
In this article the hyperlink 'Japanese imperialism' in the opening para redirects to 'Japanese Militarism'. The two are different and nor does the article on the latter claims to use the terms synonymously. Please make the necessary changes.
The source for the upper limit of the fatalities count, 30,000,000 , in the fatalities section of the key info box is a Mark Felton YouTube video. This video doesn’t contain any source for that number. The number is sourced later from an interview by Mark Felton and a book. The mark felton interview also does not include any source for the claim. Can the source Felton uses to ce come to that number be found? Removed the interview citation since there is already a second citation anyway Dogsrcool420 ( talk) 17:25, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
American Museum of Asian Holocaust WWII (1931-1945). Chinese American Forum. 2002;18(2):42. Accessed July 1, 2023. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=8632131&site=eds-live&scope=site -- IronMaidenRocks ( talk) 20:55, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't think we're going to find more information on the 30 million. I think consensus here is that the claim is dubious. We know a few people have said that figure, but we don't know why they said it. Considering that the casualty rate puts the Asian Holocaust into a comparison with the Jewish Holocaust, and potentially many other reasons related to pov or article interpretation, we could safely call the casualty figure "over 3 million" in the infobox. Although, I think casualty rates in infoboxes enables users to scroll to a figure and move on, rather than reading and gaining some nuance from the article. I think articles about genocide should limit themselves from a reliance on statistics to show the gravity of crimes against humanity, because even numerically small genocides are terrible. They should not be statistically compared for which is "worse," although doing so is human nature. -- IronMaidenRocks ( talk) 20:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
cite it or live without it. Elinruby ( talk) 04:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Until the 1970s, Japanese war crimes were considered a fringe topic in the media. In the Japanese media, the opinions of the political center and left tend to dominate the editorials of newspapers, while the right tend to dominate magazines.
clarification needed Debates regarding war crimes were confined largely to the editorials of
tabloid magazines where calls for the overthrow of "
Imperialist America" and revived veneration of the Emperor coexisted with pornography.
In 1972, to commemorate the normalisation of relationship with China, Asahi Shimbun, a major liberal newspaper, ran a series on Japanese war crimes in China including the Nanjing massacre. This opened the floodgates to debates which have continued ever since. The 1990s are generally considered to be the period in which such issues become truly mainstream, and incidents such as the Nanjing Massacre, Yasukuni Shrine, comfort women, the accuracy of school history textbooks, and the validity of the Tokyo Trials were debated, even on television.
As the consensus of Japanese jurists is that Japanese forces did not technically commit violations of international law, many right wing elements in Japan have taken this to mean that war crimes trials were examples of victor's justice. They see those convicted of war crimes as "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者, Shōwa Junnansha), Shōwa being the name given to the rule of Hirohito.
This interpretation is vigorously contested by Japanese peace groups and the political left. In the past, these groups have tended to argue that the trials hold some validity, either under the Geneva Convention (although Japan had not signed it), or under a general concept of international law or consensus. Alternatively, they have argued that, although the trials may not have been technically valid, they were still just, somewhat in line with popular opinion in the West and in the rest of Asia. citation needed
By the early 21st century, the revived interest in Japan's imperial past had brought new interpretations from a group which has been labelled both "new right" and "new left". This group points out that many acts committed by Japanese forces, including the Nanjing Incident, were violations of the Japanese military code. It is suggested that had war crimes tribunals been conducted by the post-war Japanese government, in strict accordance with Japanese military law, many of those who were accused would still have been convicted and executed. Therefore, the moral and legal failures in question were the fault of the Japanese military and the government, for not executing their constitutionally defined duty.
The new right/new left also takes the view that the Allies committed no war crimes against Japan, because Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and as a victors, the Allies had every right to demand some form of retribution, to which Japan consented in various treaties.
Under the same logic, the new right/new left considers the killing of Chinese who were suspected of guerrilla activity to be perfectly legal and valid, including some of those killed at Nanjing, for example. They also take the view that many Chinese civilian casualties resulted from the scorched earth tactics of the Chinese nationalists. Though such tactics are arguably legal, the new right/new left takes the position that some of the civilian deaths caused by these scorched earth tactics are wrongly attributed to the Japanese military.
Similarly, they take the position that those who have attempted to sue the Japanese government for compensation have no legal or moral case.
The new right and new left also take a less sympathetic view of Korean claims of victimhood, because prior to annexation by Japan, Korea was a tributary of the Qing dynasty and, according to them, the Japanese colonisation, though undoubtedly harsh, was "better" than the previous rule in terms of human rights and economic development.
They also argue that the Kantōgun (also known as the Kwantung Army) was at least partly culpable. Although the Kantōgun was nominally subordinate to the Japanese high command at the time, its leadership demonstrated significant self-determination, as shown by its involvement in the plot to assassinate Zhang Zuolin in 1928, and the Manchurian Incident of 1931, which led to the foundation of Manchukuo in 1932. Moreover, at that time, it was the official policy of the Japanese high command to confine the conflict to Manchuria. But in defiance of the high command, the Kantōgun invaded China proper, under the pretext of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The Japanese government not only failed to court martial the officers responsible for these incidents, but it also accepted the war against China, and many of those who were involved were even promoted. (Some of the officers involved in the Nanjing Massacre were also promoted.)
Whether or not Hirohito himself bears any responsibility for such failures is a sticking point between the new right and new left. Officially, the imperial constitution, adopted under Emperor Meiji, gave full powers to the Emperor. Article 4 prescribed that "The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution" and article 11 prescribed that "The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and the Navy".
For historian Akira Fujiwara, the thesis that the emperor as an organ of responsibility could not reverse cabinet decisions is a myth (shinwa) fabricated after the war. [1] Others argue that Hirohito deliberately styled his rule in the manner of the British constitutional monarchy, and he always accepted the decisions and consensus reached by the high command. According to this position, the moral and political failure rests primarily with the Japanese High Command and the Cabinet, most of whom were later convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as class-A war criminals, absolving all members of the imperial family such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, Prince Higashikuni, Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi and Prince Takeda.
Correction, the section has one reference right at the end. I will come back to that paragraph to see if I can re-integrate it. Elinruby ( talk) 04:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
The reference is only for one sentence of the last paragraph. This sentence is only relevant when discussing whether Hirohito had involvement in war crimes. Akira Fujiwara is cited in the article elsewhere and there's no mention in the (current) article that Hirohito didn't have authority so it's inclusion isn't needed.
Also putting the Japanese translation of myth as in a lie or false story reeks of Orientalism. Traumnovelle ( talk) 05:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
References
Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Japanese war crimes article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6Auto-archiving period: 180 days |
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
Japanese war crimes was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
Types of torture used in the Japanese occupation of Singapore was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 25 May 2010 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Japanese war crimes. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
This
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I physically vomited after skimming this article. Can a warning banner be placed on it please?
In this article the hyperlink 'Japanese imperialism' in the opening para redirects to 'Japanese Militarism'. The two are different and nor does the article on the latter claims to use the terms synonymously. Please make the necessary changes.
The source for the upper limit of the fatalities count, 30,000,000 , in the fatalities section of the key info box is a Mark Felton YouTube video. This video doesn’t contain any source for that number. The number is sourced later from an interview by Mark Felton and a book. The mark felton interview also does not include any source for the claim. Can the source Felton uses to ce come to that number be found? Removed the interview citation since there is already a second citation anyway Dogsrcool420 ( talk) 17:25, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
American Museum of Asian Holocaust WWII (1931-1945). Chinese American Forum. 2002;18(2):42. Accessed July 1, 2023. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=8632131&site=eds-live&scope=site -- IronMaidenRocks ( talk) 20:55, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't think we're going to find more information on the 30 million. I think consensus here is that the claim is dubious. We know a few people have said that figure, but we don't know why they said it. Considering that the casualty rate puts the Asian Holocaust into a comparison with the Jewish Holocaust, and potentially many other reasons related to pov or article interpretation, we could safely call the casualty figure "over 3 million" in the infobox. Although, I think casualty rates in infoboxes enables users to scroll to a figure and move on, rather than reading and gaining some nuance from the article. I think articles about genocide should limit themselves from a reliance on statistics to show the gravity of crimes against humanity, because even numerically small genocides are terrible. They should not be statistically compared for which is "worse," although doing so is human nature. -- IronMaidenRocks ( talk) 20:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
cite it or live without it. Elinruby ( talk) 04:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Until the 1970s, Japanese war crimes were considered a fringe topic in the media. In the Japanese media, the opinions of the political center and left tend to dominate the editorials of newspapers, while the right tend to dominate magazines.
clarification needed Debates regarding war crimes were confined largely to the editorials of
tabloid magazines where calls for the overthrow of "
Imperialist America" and revived veneration of the Emperor coexisted with pornography.
In 1972, to commemorate the normalisation of relationship with China, Asahi Shimbun, a major liberal newspaper, ran a series on Japanese war crimes in China including the Nanjing massacre. This opened the floodgates to debates which have continued ever since. The 1990s are generally considered to be the period in which such issues become truly mainstream, and incidents such as the Nanjing Massacre, Yasukuni Shrine, comfort women, the accuracy of school history textbooks, and the validity of the Tokyo Trials were debated, even on television.
As the consensus of Japanese jurists is that Japanese forces did not technically commit violations of international law, many right wing elements in Japan have taken this to mean that war crimes trials were examples of victor's justice. They see those convicted of war crimes as "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者, Shōwa Junnansha), Shōwa being the name given to the rule of Hirohito.
This interpretation is vigorously contested by Japanese peace groups and the political left. In the past, these groups have tended to argue that the trials hold some validity, either under the Geneva Convention (although Japan had not signed it), or under a general concept of international law or consensus. Alternatively, they have argued that, although the trials may not have been technically valid, they were still just, somewhat in line with popular opinion in the West and in the rest of Asia. citation needed
By the early 21st century, the revived interest in Japan's imperial past had brought new interpretations from a group which has been labelled both "new right" and "new left". This group points out that many acts committed by Japanese forces, including the Nanjing Incident, were violations of the Japanese military code. It is suggested that had war crimes tribunals been conducted by the post-war Japanese government, in strict accordance with Japanese military law, many of those who were accused would still have been convicted and executed. Therefore, the moral and legal failures in question were the fault of the Japanese military and the government, for not executing their constitutionally defined duty.
The new right/new left also takes the view that the Allies committed no war crimes against Japan, because Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and as a victors, the Allies had every right to demand some form of retribution, to which Japan consented in various treaties.
Under the same logic, the new right/new left considers the killing of Chinese who were suspected of guerrilla activity to be perfectly legal and valid, including some of those killed at Nanjing, for example. They also take the view that many Chinese civilian casualties resulted from the scorched earth tactics of the Chinese nationalists. Though such tactics are arguably legal, the new right/new left takes the position that some of the civilian deaths caused by these scorched earth tactics are wrongly attributed to the Japanese military.
Similarly, they take the position that those who have attempted to sue the Japanese government for compensation have no legal or moral case.
The new right and new left also take a less sympathetic view of Korean claims of victimhood, because prior to annexation by Japan, Korea was a tributary of the Qing dynasty and, according to them, the Japanese colonisation, though undoubtedly harsh, was "better" than the previous rule in terms of human rights and economic development.
They also argue that the Kantōgun (also known as the Kwantung Army) was at least partly culpable. Although the Kantōgun was nominally subordinate to the Japanese high command at the time, its leadership demonstrated significant self-determination, as shown by its involvement in the plot to assassinate Zhang Zuolin in 1928, and the Manchurian Incident of 1931, which led to the foundation of Manchukuo in 1932. Moreover, at that time, it was the official policy of the Japanese high command to confine the conflict to Manchuria. But in defiance of the high command, the Kantōgun invaded China proper, under the pretext of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. The Japanese government not only failed to court martial the officers responsible for these incidents, but it also accepted the war against China, and many of those who were involved were even promoted. (Some of the officers involved in the Nanjing Massacre were also promoted.)
Whether or not Hirohito himself bears any responsibility for such failures is a sticking point between the new right and new left. Officially, the imperial constitution, adopted under Emperor Meiji, gave full powers to the Emperor. Article 4 prescribed that "The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution" and article 11 prescribed that "The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and the Navy".
For historian Akira Fujiwara, the thesis that the emperor as an organ of responsibility could not reverse cabinet decisions is a myth (shinwa) fabricated after the war. [1] Others argue that Hirohito deliberately styled his rule in the manner of the British constitutional monarchy, and he always accepted the decisions and consensus reached by the high command. According to this position, the moral and political failure rests primarily with the Japanese High Command and the Cabinet, most of whom were later convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as class-A war criminals, absolving all members of the imperial family such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, Prince Higashikuni, Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi and Prince Takeda.
Correction, the section has one reference right at the end. I will come back to that paragraph to see if I can re-integrate it. Elinruby ( talk) 04:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
The reference is only for one sentence of the last paragraph. This sentence is only relevant when discussing whether Hirohito had involvement in war crimes. Akira Fujiwara is cited in the article elsewhere and there's no mention in the (current) article that Hirohito didn't have authority so it's inclusion isn't needed.
Also putting the Japanese translation of myth as in a lie or false story reeks of Orientalism. Traumnovelle ( talk) 05:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
References
Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)