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Katanas of the Rising Sun: Difference between revisions
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The army led Japan into an invasion of China, which was initially successful but ultimately proved an open-ended manpower sump: China was simply too large and had too many people to conquer outright. Japan could not find enough manpower to do more than take and hold several major cities and the roads that linked them. However, the invasion in turn committed Japan to a dangerous clash of interests and sentiments with America and Britain. The US in particular felt a somewhat paternal attitude towards the Chinese and embargoed strategic goods, such as oil, in response to continued Japanese aggression in China, while Japan was heavily relying on America to fuel its industrial progress.
Japan, running out of options, believed it had to take and hold new sources of oil and strategic minerals. It also believed (quite possibly wrongly) that it would have to fight America if it tried to take the Dutch and British possessions that had the things it needed. Thus, Japan launched a surprise assault on Pearl Harbor, home of the US Pacific Fleet, to buy themselves enough time to take and fortify the areas they thought they needed. But America understandably took this ''very'' [[
In the aftermath of the first atomic bombing (on Hiroshima), the government continued its refusal to surrender unconditionally, while in private, the emperor prepared for the inevitable. One A-bomb later, and Japan declared its surrender on 15 August, 1945 (mostly at the behest of the emperor, over the heads of military brass who ''still'' wanted to keep fighting). This was fortunate for the US, because they had no more atomic bombs left. The military complex of Imperial Japan was forcibly dismantled, governmental power was effectively handed over to the US military (with General [[Mac Arthur]] having the final say on anything the Diet did), and land and economic reforms were made to break the power of the ''zaibatsu'' ([[Mega Corp|big industrial corporations]]), who had formed a core part of the military-industrial complex. While democratic reforms had their intended effect, many of the economic ones were rolled back in the face of the Korean War, and it was ramping up industrial production to help out the US in this conflict that started Japan's economic recovery in earnest. Control of the country was handed back to the Japanese in 1952, and at the same time, a National Safety Force (later renamed the [[Kaiju Defense Force|Self-Defence Force]]) was formed. This was born out of the rise of hostile Communist governments in East Asia (including China, who had a score to settle with Japan) and the realization that Japan would be effectively helpless with Occupation troops increasingly called upon to fight elsewhere. Its creation was bitterly contested well into even the 1980s, despite assurances of civilian control and non-belligerence, and its naming (which borders on [[Most Definitely Not a Villain|Most Definitely Not a Military]]) reflects this; even so, politicians continue to battle over just what the Japanese military's role should be in modern world affairs.
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** Averted in China, where those tactics were very effective against Chinese armies disorganized by warlordism and civil war.
*** Also averted in the Philippines where General Homma was conservative with his troops, to the point of being criticized by other officers.
* [[Cold
** A common favorite of Japanese soldiers was to force bayonet blades or katanas into the vaginas of non-Japanese Asian women.
** Also notorious is when Japanese soldiers in trucks held bayonets and katanas off the side as they drove past the [[PO Ws]] of the Bataan Death March.
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** Six months after the empire declared war on Britian and the US, every battle turned into this in favor of the Allies. Iwo Jima, Saipan, The (land) Battle of Leyte, the Phillipines Campaign, etc. The latter had 14,000 American and Australian soldiers killed, and ''340,000'' Japanese soldiers killed. Though in some battles, usually between the Japanese and British (the Burma and Boreno campaigns come to mind), the losses were about even. Which is the closest the Japanese came to winning.
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria The Soviet invasion of Manchuria.] It makes sense, since Japan had pulled back its best and most loyal soldiers to the island, their marines, navy, and airforce had been wiped out, and the majority of the forces in Manchuria were poorly equipped and low-morale conscripts, but ''damn''.
* [[Cycle of Revenge]]: While in the beginning there was sometimes a feeling that it was [[Nothing Personal|just business]], later the mutual racial prejudice that they started with and the atrocities committed made it [[
** Europe, at least in the Western theaters, had more of the [[Just Business]] attitude toward it then the Pacific. Oddly enough it may be reversed now and less resentment may remain toward the Japanese then the Germans. [[Your Mileage May Vary]].
*** The Eastern Front of Europe (the "Great Patriotic War") was pretty bloody and now East Asian countries hate the Japanese, though the hate is mutual in the main light-skinned 'Sinosphere' nations (China, Korea and Japan).
* [[Determinator]]: Do we really need examples?
** Because of the nature of ocean warfare, the entire conflict between Japan and the U.S. boiled down to a contest of who could [[Buffy
** Some holdouts continued fighting the war for up to ''thirty years after it was over''. In a few cases, they had to actually locate the former commanding officers of those units and bring them to the remnant soldiers to convince them to surrender.
* [[David Versus Goliath]]: In all of its major campaigns, Japan (and later, their small empire of Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Manchuria) was out of its weight classification. This was modified by the fact that the Russian Empire was a [[Vestigial Empire]] at the time, wracked with financial problems and having to fight Japan halfway across the globe, the Dutch East Indies were in disarray following the Netherland's defeat in Europe and taken my surprise, and China was a poor and low tech nation in the middle of a civil war. But the last time around was a very different matter; Japan could never have mustered the economic and logistical power to defeat the United States, the richest nation on the planet, and one of the most high tech. The best it could have hoped for ''(and indeed, it was the grand strategy for the war)'' was to press the U.S. and inflict such damage that they would deem it not worth the trouble and expense to rebuild and recapture their conquered territories. At their most mouth-frothingly optimistic, there were plans to capture Hawaii, perhaps after a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] at Midway wiped away most of the surviving American forces, but those never made it off the drawing board.
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* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Ironically enough, Imperial Japan was one of the friendliest nations to fleeing Jewish refugees, refusing to hand over its tiny Jewish population to the Nazis and not questioning the large number of exit visas issued by Chiune Sugihara, Japanese consul to Lithuania. Compare this to the relative indifference towards Jewish refugees exhibited by the US, UK, and other Allied powers at roughly the same time period.
** A possible explanation for some of this is that Japanese government officials in the late 19th and early 20th centuries read anti-Semitic literature about how Jews had supposedly grown rich by exploiting Christians, but not having the Christian background that such anti-Semitism was based on, interpreted it to mean that Jews had magical money powers or extremely good business sense.
** Some Nazis expressed this attitude towards [[Rape, Pillage and Burn|the Japanese campaign in China.]]
* [[Final Battle]]: The Battle of Iwo Jima.
** Iwo Jima and Okinawa were more like long sieges and were something of a [[Last Stand]] (not a [[Villain Last Stand]] as not all were villains though a number were). Leyte Gulf is more like this trope because it was more dramatic, and it was the final sea battle which in a predominately naval theater made it at least a good candidate, even though there was considerable land fighting afterwards. Leyte was also the last large fleet action ever to be fought - some say in all of time.
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* [[Insane Troll Logic]]: The Allies "forced" Japan to attack them by refusing to sell ''their own oil'' which Japan of course absolutely needed to sustain their brutal colonization of China.
** [[Insane Troll Logic]], or rather the realization of it, is the reason why the Japanese public grew to hate the military fairly quickly after the Battle of Saipan, when it became obvious even through the propaganda that Japan was in way over its head.
* [[God
** This had a political purpose as well. It represented an anchor in [[Good Old Ways|the past]] during the Meji Reformation.
** Post-War [[M Acarthur]] forced the Emperor to deny he was divine in a speech but it was not the best phrased and was ambiguous, apparently.
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** Kaiten, glorified torpedoes with room for a man to guide them. Evidence suggests that they were actually less effective than standard torpedoes.
* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]: The IJN officers had cheap, mass-produced katana that were used for torture and executions rather then fighting. Of course, fervent about the samurai spirit they did use these for combat but few if any were trained in their proper combat use, and often broke or chipped their swords.
** Indeed, the Katanas also caused said officers to have a [[Highly
* [[Useful Notes/The Laws and Customs of War|The Laws and Customs of War]]: Played straight and then subverted later. Interestingly the Japanese were complimented widely for their gracious adherence to this during the Russo-Japanese war. They did not have this reputation during [[World War II]].
* [[Last Stand]]: Banzai charges, which can be summed up as "there's no question that we're gonna die here, so let's [[Badass|do it awesomely]] [[Taking You With Me|and take down as many of them as we can too.]]"
** As a practical matter, however, they were silliness of the first order; a massed assault was WWI stuff (and the sort of propagandized insanity that got people worked up to them belonged to wars hundreds of years older than that), and artillery and the machine gun had grown both more numerous and deadlier since their days of breaking such assaults on the Somme. The results were... [[Kill
* [[Karmic Death]]: The architects of the US firebombing campaign considered it a justified response to Japanese atrocities. After the war Japan was essentially a pre-Industrial Age wasteland with almost no cities still standing and came very close to mass famine as their transport system was in ruins.
* [[Karma Houdini]]: Arguably many Japanese officers and grunts from the war. Particularly the ruling family.
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* [[Never Live It Down]]: In parts of East Asia, Japan's reputation can still come off like this and with some justifiable reason. [[Internet Backdraft|Let's just leave it at that.]]
* [[Off With His Head]]: Japanese soldiers used to have contests to see who could decapitate the most Chinese prisoners. This even made positive headlines in papers back in Tokyo.
* [[Older Than They Think]]: Japan's ambitions for a trans-Pacific empire date to 1798, when Honda Toshiaki, actually opposing British imperialism, said Japan should rule the entire Pacific Rim and relocate the capital to Kamchatka, because Kamchatka, being at the same latitude as London, [[What an Idiot!|would have the same climate]].
** 1798? Hah! Try *Two CENTURIES* earlier in 1592, when Hideyoshi [[First Sino Japanese War|first tried to force an alliance on]] [[Russo Japanese War|and then invaded Korea]] [[Second Sino Japanese War|in order to secure it as a staging ground for a wider assault on China in a bid for domination of the Far East.]] [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]?
*** Another way of looking at the latter instance is that after Hideyoshi brought an end to the Sengoku Jidai, he needed some way to occupy the attention of all of his samurai and allied warlords while he focused on rebuilding the country. The solution? Send them off on a hopeless war of conquest that will likely get them all killed.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Isoroku Yamamoto, mentioned above, seemed to be the only man in the country that thought an unprovoked attack on America might be a bad idea... at least in his diary. He's often portrayed as having openly protested or denounced it, but most of the quotes attributed to him may have actually been apocryphal. More recent scholarship suggests the Pearl Harbor attack may have actually originated with Yamamoto.
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** Raizo Tanaka, considered by many Americans the best destroyer commander in the IJN , was relieved of duty for playing the [[Only Sane Man]] by pointing out Imperial General Headquarters had set impossible objectives during the Guadalcanal campaign.
* [[Proud Warrior Race]]: The concept of ''Yamato damashii'', the spirit of the Japanese race, played a major role in the self-image of Japan's armed forces.
* [[Rape, Pillage and Burn]]: Often used as a reward to soldiers for winning battles. The IJA often gets compared to a barbarian horde for this very reason. This was especially prominent in China.
* [[Recycled in Space]]: [[Star Blazers]].
* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Remember Pearl Harbor!
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