Comparing Japanese and German invasions...


It is tempting to view the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia through the prism of European history in the same period. The Japanese are seen as analogous to the Germans; the Kempeitai to the Gestapo; Asian nationalists who made deals with the Japanese to Quisling like collaborators; and the mainly Chinese guerrillas to the resistance. These analogies have some validity. The Japanese state that emerged after the Meiji Restoration was consciously modelled on Prussia. Japan was as nationalist, imperialist and aggressive as Imperial Germany. Its fledgling democracy was vulnerable to military cliques. Excessive reverence for the Emperor sanctioned  a multitude of imperialist atrocities. The Japanese rationalised conquest of other Asian nations as a right granted by their own racial superiority. Japan was the natural leader of all Asiatic peoples. These analogies become less convincing for one very significant reason. German occupiers deceitfully appealed to the nationalist sentiments of chauvinist Europeans whose nations had been occupied by the Soviet Union (by agreement with Germany) and who shared their vile hatred of Jews. To be sure, the Japanese regarded all Chinese civilians in Southeast Asia as ‘hostiles’ and used violence to neutralise this purported threat. The difference with the Shoah is that the Japanese committed barbaric atrocities for a limited period of time and had no intention of completely liquidating ‘the Chinese’. There is another reason to distinguish between German and Japanese occupation strategy and ideology. The architects of Japanese expansionism could reasonably claim that they made war not on other Asians but on their imperial masters, the British, the Americans and the Dutch. They invaded China not to destroy but reform a decayed civilisation. A Japanese nationalist put it like this: ‘America and Britain had been colonising China for many years. We felt Japan should go there… to make China a better country.’ Like the European imperialists, Japan would ruthlessly plunder and exploit the territories it conquered. But for many Asian nationalists, the shaming expulsion of the old colonial powers by an Asian nation smashed open a door on a new and unexpected political landscape. In the medium term, they were surely right.