Atrocities

Rather than focus only on the good and the beautiful, on how scenic Japan is, and how rich its culture, I want to add one section of the history of Japan that reveals the depths of inhumanity into which Japan sank in the century following the forced end the U.S. brought to Japan's isolationism mid-Nineteenth Century. In becoming competitive, then growing into an imperial power, the Japanese government and military lost all sense of the humanity of those they conquered. As historian Chalmers Johnson put it:

"It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians (i.e. Soviet citizens); the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million  Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as (forced) prostitutes for front-line troops..."

There is a substantial and heart-breaking account of Japan's War Crimes at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes



Chinese to be buried alive by Japanese soldiers during Nanking Massacre.

In my view, the atrocities committed throughout history by most nations should be taught in all schools as being the result of  racism, over-zealous patriotism, and misguided dis-regard for the value of life and respect for others. In the case of Japan, these abuses are the complete opposite of the Buddhist values that are essential to Japanese culture.