36 pages • 1 hour read
John W. DowerWar Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Japanese Superiority and One’s Proper Place
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was the English translation for a political entity designed to deal with the lands Japan conquered roughly between 1930-1945. The propaganda behind the name is that the Japanese were there to free the other Asian nations from the yoke of European servitude. The name is a euphemism, however, because all other nations were seen as being inferior to Japan. While the Japanese vowed to rid Asia of the Europeans, they still would maintain a colonial-type system, just under their own aegis, arguing that being led by an Asian nation is better than by a European one. Thus, any nation that fell under their sway would inevitably fall within a ranking system that always placed the Japanese on top. One of the chief roles of these other nations would then be to provide Japan with vital resources.
For the Japanese, social hierarchy was not, during the war years, a concept relegated solely to Japanese society. The plan was, in the conquered areas, to establish a strict autarkic system that would replace the old European colonial paradigm with the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere. The idea of proper place was also something divine, in that the Japanese viewed themselves as the purest race in the world based on the belief, among others, that they very first Japanese emperor, Emperor Jimmu, was a son of the goddess Amaterasu. Beyond that, the Japanese also viewed their society and culture as being morally superior to any other because they had transcended certain immoralities, especially individualism, through loyalty and filial piety by accepting the emperor as a god incarnate. It was seen as a blessing by the Japanese to liberate the other Asian nations from the decrepit nature of the West, but, even with Japanese leading the way, the other peoples could only "assume their 'proper place and 'appointed duties' under the canopy of Japanese virtue" (221).
Japanese Purity/Purification
The idea of purity was an important concept in pre-war and war-time Japan. Purity meant not only racial and biological superiority; like the Germans, the Japanese believed themselves to be of a superior and purer racial stock than others. They also believed themselves to be morally pure, and this idea of purity extended to the spiritual as well. In order to maintain this moral superiority, the Japanese people and nation needed to purify from time to time, and thus, strict purity rituals were established. The notion of purification extended to the extreme during WWII in that it came to be seen that the ultimate purification of the soul came about through death on the battlefield: "No one thought of the dead as having suffered a defeat, he [an unnamed Japanese officer] said; rather, it simply seemed 'as if their spirits had been further purified'" (232). The cherry blossom became an endearing symbol of this, and later of the kamikaze pilots. A term was also coined to summarize this idea: gyokusai, literally meaning "jewel smashed," but understood as the choice of dying heroically in battle rather than surrendering.
Race/Racism in the Early 20th Century
The idea of different races of human beings existed prior to the years leading up to the Second World War, but it was in the early half of the 20th century that the notion of racial purity came reached its zenith, supported by pseudo-science and social philosophies. It wasn't only relegated to the Nazis and their belief in the Superman (Übermensch), which was a concept developed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and bastardized by the Nazis. The belief in separate races, and thus, racism, was rampant throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia. The scope of Dower's book focuses on the racial prejudices that existed in the United States, mostly with regard to the Japanese and other Asians, but also briefly mentioning the treatment of African Americans in American society, something which the Japanese used as evidence of American racial discrimination. The Anglo-Americans had their prejudices and disparaging beliefs for the Japanese, and the Japanese had theirs for the Anglo-Americans. Most notably, the negative views of both sides oftentimes mirrored the other, the major themes being “hierarchy, arrogance, viciousness, atrocity, and death” (180).
