Guest post: Westerners refuse to recognise their own atrocities
Originally a comment by Tim Harris on What has made it fester.
In the early nineties of the last century, Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro made formal apologies to a variety of Asian nations for Japan’s having conducted wars of aggression in East and Southeast Asia, and for the brutal manner in which these wars were waged.
There are, however, strong nationalist forces in Japan, and in particular the influence of families of soldiers who died in that war is strong over the Liberal-Democratic Party, which won back power after Hosokawa’s coalition, which was difficult to hold together, and fell.
I am in no way seeking to excuse the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese, which were appalling, but, all too often, Westerners refuse to recognise the atrocities that they themselves perpetrated in their colonial wars. The Dutch take over of Bali is a case in point, as well as its attempt to take back Indonesia after the Japanese defeat; British behaviour after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and, subsequently, the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, not to mention the destruction of the economy of India as a whole and the numerous famines under British rule; the genocide perpetrated by the Germans in Namibia, Belgian behaviour in the Congo, American behaviour in the Philippines (about which Mark Twain was so eloquent) and American behaviour towards the indigenous people of North America… one could go and on.
Japan’s proposal to abolish racial discrimination at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was not accepted, and this led to increasingly racist ideas about the virtues of the Japanese race within Japan – ideas that certainly persist in certain quarters (as of course they persist elsewhere, as we may see from the activities of the Trump regime). There is a lot of bad faith in Western attitudes towards Japan, and this derives from the fact that the Japanese were the first non-white people to challenge and defeat “white” powers, beginning with Russia (although, of course, they were ultimately defeated in World War II). And, as Omar rightly points out, the Japanese broke the “mystique” of the white powers.
Since Omar mentions kamikaze pilots and gives us a very good story, here is a true story from my first days in Japan, oh, hundreds of years ago, before I could speak Japanese. My wife & I were in a taxi in Tokyo, and the driver asked my wife where her husband was from. From Britain, my wife replied. “Oh,” exclaimed the taxi-driver, “I love the British! You see, I was a kamikaze pilot and we were attacking a British ship and I got shot down. The British fished me out of the ocean and looked after me. I love the British. Driving a taxi in Tokyo is far more dangerous than being a kamikaze pilot!” Indeed, in those days, taxis really did scoot around in Tokyo. They are rather more careful these days, though, still, in the southern city of Fukuoka, taxis dash madly about.
As ‘racism’ is a word increasingly in popular use in these Trumpian times, (commenters on this blog excepted of course) I have found it useful at times to point out that it is not ‘racist’ to refer to the races of humankind, based on their verifiably distinct physical features. It is only ‘racist’ to suggest that they fall into a scale of inferiority-superiority. Nor is it ‘racist’ or wrong to suggest that some cultures are superior to others in certain respects.
Knowing a little bit about Japanese culture, and in awe of some aspects of it, I am continually amazed by the barbarities the Japanese have been guilty of in the history of their hostile interactions with peoples of other races and cultures.
Although apparently the Japanese had been noted for how well they treated POWs in the Russo-Japanese War, and the extreme brutality of the military junta in the 30s and onward wasn’t something anyone else had really anticipated.
I shall only say, Omar, that I am continually amazed by the barbarities human beings of all kinds, or races, if you prefer, have been guilty of throughout history & prehistory. The “hostile interactions” of the Japanese “with peoples of other races and cultures” were in fact rather few and far between before the late 19th and 20th centuries. I should also say that nowhere have I suggested that is “racist” or “wrong” to say that some cultures are superior to others (I spent some years in the seventies and eighties of the last century publicly attacking “nihonjinron” — theories of the uniqueness of the Japanese people and culture, which were popular in those years), and should like to point out that “cultures” also have histories — they are not things that have existed unchanged from the beginning of time — and unless you are willing to specify in what respects certain particular cultures are superior to other particular cultures, you really are saying nothing. And, no, it is not necessarily “racist” or “wrong” to point out that there are people who differ from us in physical appearance, but since I grew up with friends and acquaintances from various parts of the world, am married to a Japanese pianist, and have now lived in Japan for over fifty years, working throughout for Japanese institutions, I really do not care about people’s “verifiably distinct” physical features. I care about what kind of person they are.
And, thank you, Piglet. One of the great problems, one that was very much behind Japanese bellicosity, was the Meiji Constitution, which made the military answerable only to the Emperor, and not to the government, so that the military, in particular the army, were able to bypass the government and force through their demands, which grew worse as time went on, as did their attitudes.
One thing I would like to note is that failure to recognize their own atrocities is not a condition everyone in western cultures practices, nor is it unique to western cultures. It is difficult to recognize things you (or your loved ones) have done wrong. I was shocked when I was at school in Texas when one of my friends, a liberal, defended slavery by saying that they were often treated like members of the family, and were treated better than many workers in industry. I was less shocked when I discovered his great-grandfather had owned slaves.
As for recognizing atrocities, my teachers in grade school through college were quite eager that we recognize the atrocities committed. They didn’t pull any punches in describing Japanese internment camps, bad behavior by soldiers in wars, etc etc etc. They were especially forceful on the atrocities committed against the native populations, not only in the US but in other countries, such as Australia. They didn’t really discuss Vietnam, but I was in school while Vietnam was still going on, and they might not even have known the full extent of the atrocities, but they also never got that far. It wasn’t really considered history; it was covered in a current events class I took.
I suppose that wouldn’t be enough for today’s woke, though. My teachers did not attempt to make us feel guilty for things our country did way back in the past; they differentiated between what happened then, and didn’t claim it was our fault. They did, however, note that atrocities continued, and needed to be addressed, and we needed to feel bad that atrocities happened so we would act against them in the present and future. We were responsible for the actions of society now; we might need to work to compensate for actions of society in the past which put us in a preferred position over other people.
For the woke of today, you must feel intensely guilty about anything done by people who weren’t related to you, you didn’t gain anything from their actions, and you couldn’t have done anything about it before you were born, as long as your skin is the same color as theirs. Yes, we are responsible for the current actions of our government, and many of them are atrocious. We need to do our best to ensure against such atrocities.
I admit I am somewhat of a pessimist. I do not believe we are able to do much about the atrocities, because our voices are too quite amongst the massive wave of inertia. We can shout ourselves hoarse, sign every petition, and be met with a big yawn. I do not think that means we shouldn’t try. I just think it means we shouldn’t expect anything to happen soon. History shows that eventually action can make a difference (abolitionists and feminists were both around for decades, even centuries, before either had an impact), but it might not be something we will live to witness. That is a hard sell. Work your ass off for something you’ll never even see happen? For most people, that’s count me out time.
I do not feel guilty about those things I had no control over. I do feel guilty about times when I might have made a difference and didn’t try, whether through ignorance or apathy. Those times are more than I like to think about, but the best way to face up to that is to redouble my efforts in the remaining years I have left, and try to overcome my own shortcomings. I will not end racism. I will not end sexism. I will not end Trumpian authoritarianism. But by god, I can certainly try.
iknklast:
My sentiments exactly. Well said.
And that has been said, one way or another, many times and often before today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which_Side_Are_You_On%3F
Tim @ #3:
Noted.
Omar, #1 :
But what are these?
I agree that different groups of humans will have some different physical features. But what kind of features constitute a race? It’s a not term that’s used in a very consistent way – for instance, I’m not really clear on what “the races of humankind” would be according to you. Often enough nowadays, we’re essentially using “race” as a synonym for skin color, but then that’s just one physical feature that doesn’t always usefully connote others, and it seems to me the word would suggest something more complicated and specific although I’m not sure what. And of course if we make the word “race” refer to too many different physical features, we end up with something that’s either too specific or too fuzzy to be useful. (Actually, even skin color-based categorization is rather fuzzy.)
Mosnae, that’s a good point. I notice ethnicity seems to be the term today, and that makes more sense, since ethnicity includes your culture, which shapes you probably more than the color of your skin does.
Omar: don’t quote a fraction of what someone says and then react to that misleading fraction. It’s both silly and rude.
There’s more to race than skin color, and to pretend otherwise is painfully obtuse.
The most common sentiment heard from Irish-Americans upon their first visit to Ireland is that almost everyone looks like family—close family. They don’t mean just pasty white. Myriad physical traits, both gross and minute, that they’ve unconsciously associated with family are actually just broadly Irish, and the experience of being suddenly surrounded by crowds of strangers who all trigger your familial response is often surreal. That’s a shared heritage. A shared racial heritage.
The difficulty of simply defining “race” such that it properly captures border cases doesn’t entail that the term is meaningless, useless, or entirely arbitrary. Unless you, like the TRAs, think the Sorites fallacy isn’t a fallacy, of course.
Well, perhaps we could have some clear and detailed definitions from those who like talking about “race”, “culture” & “heritage” in broad and vague terms as to what “race” actually consists in, and also what “culture” and “heritage” actually consist in.
After over fifty years in Japan (which means that I have not shared, by being there, the recent history that British people have gone through, but have nevertheless observed it carefully from my East Asian vantage-point), I do not now have a warm and fuzzy feeling on my very infrequent returns to Britain, but am chiefly angered by the massive damage that has been to done to the nations that make up those islands by successive British governments, notably the Tory ones. There are of course things, important things, that give me a nostalgic feeling of being at “home”, in particular the northern light and the northern landscapes, some of which are near sacred places for me, since I wandered over them alone in my youth, and, naturally, the people, their accents, languages, and attitudes. But when I return to Japan, I know that my home is here, and has to be now.
A shared “racial heritage” — or is it a shared “cultural heritage”? My “racial heritage” is English, Welsh, German, Scots-Irish and Scottish. I find it difficult to take seriously this bandying about of loose terms like “race” and “culture”.
iknklast #5: No, of course a “failure to recognize their own atrocities” is not something that is peculiar to western countries, and nor is it peculiar to anywhere else. I was certainly not suggesting that! The militarists shut down through terror the “left” and those who opposed war in Japan in the 20s & 30s of the last century, but I can assure every commenter here that there are plenty of Japanese people who abhor Japan’s behaviour in the last century and they speak out against it.
Mosnae @ #8:
As you would know, the 19th C anthropologists generally agreed that there were four major ‘races’ of humanity: in alphabetical order, these were the Australoids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids and Negroids, with defining physical characteristics for each. This term has commonly been replaced with ‘ethnicity,’ which to my mind means exactly the same thing, but without the unfortunate historical connotations of ‘race.’ Empire-builders and defenders, from the earliest recorded historical times right up to this present we live in have imposed their own hierarchies of superiority on this perceived reality, with periodic massacres and enslavements of those they deemed ‘inferiors.’ Arguably, the most ruthless practitioner of this was a bloke called Genghis Khan, (c. 1162 – August 18, 1227) who conquered and slaughtered his way across the Eurasian mainland, stopping only when he got to what is now modern Austria. (He apparently did not have any qualifications or confidence as a mountaineer-warrior.)
Then in due course, along came an Austrian, by the name of Adolf Hitler, who built his whole political philosophy around the concept of ‘race,’ and tapped into a large mass of resentment and righteous indignation in the German population over the fact that they had lost in WW1, and had been deprived of their rightful place in the imperial scheme of things. Thereafter, people who had no trouble with assigning the ‘racial’ concept to domestic animals, with the different ‘breeds’ of dogs, cats, cattle and so on, raised a lot of eyebrows if the same concept was applied to humans. Added to that, black slavery in America made ‘breed’ a term of derision (eg ‘half-breed’) there. African-Americans in pre-Civil War and Jim Crow times were prisoners of colour inside their own easily recognisable bodies, making the task of recapturing runaway slaves easier for the professional ‘slave catchers.’
The Australoids and Negroids have skins rich in melanin, protecting the basal layers from solar radiation: a definite asset, given that here in Australia we have the highest rates of skin cancer (in our mainly Caucasoid population) of any country in the world. The Mongoloids, as you would know, are characterised by their ‘mongolian folds’ of facial skin, which protect the eyelids and eyes from sunburn and damage in their summer environments and from bright sunlight enhanced by reflection off snow and ice. And as the Earth is on course to enter the next glaciation of the Pleistocene series after the present phase of anthropogenic warming is past (say in 1,000 years’ time) such anatomical features will likely come in very handy for those not forced to become climate refugees of the ‘ice age’ persuasion.)
Time alone will tell. (I once got to know a rather rare man, whose ancestry was Mongoloid-Australoid; he was of exclusive Chinese and Australian Aboriginal ancestry.)
Time also will possibly bring a considerable amount of genetic exchange right across humanity, assisted by ever-improving transport and communications. Including of course, blogging. IMHO.
Nullius @ 11 – Well that’s nice, but Ireland is Ireland. It’s very small and very homogeneous. It doesn’t translate to everywhere, and certainly not to a notoriously mongrel place like the US. “In this place people mostly look alike” isn’t really an explanation of “race”.
But, Ophelia, I find I am unable to distinguish, in portrait or photograph, W.B. Yeats from James Joyce, or either of them from Jonathan Swift, Richard Brinsley Sheridan or Antoine Ó Raifteirí, or the three of them from Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Sean O’Casey, Austin Clarke, Padraig Colm, James Stephens, Samuel Beckett, Claire Keegan (despite her being a woman), in addition to Yeats and Joyce et al ad infinitum (I also find I am wholly unable to distinguish between their writings, even though some of them wrote in Irish) — but I have gone on for too long about writers, so perhaps I should talk about my surprise, on going to County Donegal in my youth, that everybody was completely indistinguishable, from one another are well as from Yeats, Joyce, Swift, Sheridan, Ó Raifteirí, Heaney, Carson, O’Casey, Clarke, Colm, Stephens, Beckett, Keegan, Old Uncle Tom O’Cobley and all. Those family resemblances! They’re so striking you can’t tell one person from another! No wonder people feel so at home there.
And, ah, the great sweep of history! Genghis Khan & Hitler, and the four races of man (set in stone in the 19th century)! That explains all! I like universal history. One big thought that smothers everything! Sorry, I meant “covers”, not “smothers”. It is very comforting to learn all this. And in the future, we are told, these four races will be mixing more and more because of the ever greater speed and convenience of travel! Who’d a’ thunk it?
Sure. I totally said that all Irishmen might ss well be identical twins. That’s totally not a disingenuous misrepresentation. Thus, it’s totally fine to construct a snide reductio. Totally.
Tim H @ #16:
Wot? But you forgot to mention the blogging.! A terrible lapse on your part there.! IMHO!
Ah, forgive me my oversight regarding the blogging. Omar. I shall certainly remember to mention it next time. I recommend, Nullius, reading Flann O’Brien, a writer whom — at his best — I (very nearly) worship: he’s totally good for developing a sense of humour.
Nullius in Verba, #11:
I don’t think border cases render categories meaningless, useless, or entirely arbitrary. When writing #8, I did wonder whether I should make that clear. I’m doing so now: just because there isn’t a perfectly neat boundary between ice and water doesn’t mean we can’t have the categories of “solid” and “liquid.”
The foremost problem with “race” is, as I wrote earlier, that it’s not used very consistently. Various people associate it with fairly varied ideas and discourses, and it’s not always easy to know what is meant. For instance, you and Omar seem to understand it differently from each other, and neither of you back my claim that people often use it synonymously with skin color. In my experience, forms asking for your race can be a mess (I recall one where you could choose from options such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Black).
Sometimes it’s a fairly clear concept. I don’t think it’s fundamentally wrong to observe that different populations have different traits, classify them into some number of groups based on these traits, and call it “race.” Such classifications might not always be extremely useful. (Note this isn’t just because of border cases, but also because of variety within the races; you might object to the Irish just being Caucasoids rather than having their own distinct race.) However, that does not make these classifications entirely devoid of meaning. I would say it’s important to acknowledge they are social constructs that don’t reflect deeply meaningful biological differences, though. (Which, sadly, is no small part of the word’s baggage.)
It would be useful to have clearer words that aren’t as charged and muddled, just so we know what we’re talking about. To me, “ethnicity” includes culture, making it a suitable alternative to some uses of “race” but not others. Maybe people could agree on a word that means “a broad set of physical traits perceived as typical of some population that is more or less genetically separated from others,” which I personally think would be convenient.
By the way, the whole TRA sex-is-a-spectrum claim relies on conflating sex itself with various physical traits that correlate with sex. There isn’t really an equivalent to this with race. (I believe it was Dawkins who pointed out that according to TRA logic, transracialism ought to be acceptable?)
***
Omar, thank you for your kind and detailed reply.
***
Tim Harris, #16:
It looks as if all the famous Irish people you mentioned are writers of some sort. Do you have something against blind harpers?
Mosnae: The transracialism parallel was formally observed well before Dawkins finally spoke up, I believe.
The TRAs’ spectrum argument is so monumentally stupid that it can be applied to almost anything that involves variation. This is actually why the transracialism parallel is so rhetorically effective. The common arguments used by TRAs can be easily mapped to race, yet no one (or hardly anyone) accepts the validity of transracialism.
As there’s variation within and between races (or whatever term you’d prefer for the concept), we can do exactly what the TRAs do and construct a spectrum from that variation. Where the TRA would point to things like genital size, we could instead point to something like nose shape, epicanthic folds, etc. These traits vary individually and continuously, and so we have our spectrum. Constructing a Sorites from here is trivial. We can even pull the same kind of appeal to genetic outliers that TRAs do when they play the Intersex Gambit. It’s even easier to do with race, because interracial coupling isn’t exactly unheard of.
No, I have nothing against Turlough O’Carolan, any more than I have anything against Takahashi Chikuzan (now long dead) , the great (blind) Tsugaru shamisen player, all of whose records I have and whom I heard in a live concert back in the 70s or 80s of the last century. You may find a fine essay, based on an interview with Chikuzan, by my closest friend Alan Booth, the author of The Roads to Sata (Penguin), in This Great Stage of Fools: an Anthology of Uncollected Writings by Alan Booth (Bright Wave Media, Yokohama), which I brought together and edited many years after his death from cancer at the age of 44. If I mention writers, it is because it is writers I am most acquainted with, something that doubtless was obvious to you even as you wrote your question. As I said in one of my earlier comments, I find it difficult to take seriously this bandying about of loose terms like “race” and “culture” — except, in the case of “race”, if we want to use that sullied word (as certain people seem to want to), where certain medical conditions are concerned.
“Interracial coupling”? Well, Nullius, it has been heard of since the dawn of time. Although it was, and has been, and is, often “interracial” rape (as, fairly recently, British soldiers in Kenya indulged in). But “coupling” is the word you choose, as though marriage with someone from a different and distant nation whom you love and who loves you can be reduced to that. I think you should learn to choose your words more carefully.
I chose my words deliberately to encompass both consensual and nonconsensual sex. You seem to be looking to take offense.
Yes, I am constantly reminded of the spectrum between a carrot and a chocolate bar. It’s very confusing when making stew or looking for something sweet…
Nullius:
Yes, I was thinking about Dawkins pointing out that race actually was a spectrum whereas sex was not. It turns out he didn’t say that in his original tweet, so I think I might have mixed him up with someone else.
Tim Harris:
I’m.. not entirely sure how you took it, so I’ll state for the record that my question wasn’t genuine. Maybe I should have added “For shame” to make the accusatory tone clearer. The joke being, of course, that this wasn’t a pertinent objection.
That anthology sounds interesting. I’ve been finding new books to read at a much higher rate than I actually manage to finish them, but I’ll try to keep it in mind.
Thank you, Mosnae. No, of course I was well aware that your question was meant as a joke — and I’m sorry if I sounded over-serious in my response. I should add that I liked very much your original thoughtful comment here.
Perhaps, Nullius, you might in future try choosing your words with rather more deliberation than you care to use at present. For example, a phrase such as “shared racial heritage”, with the “racial” carefully italicised, in reference to the Irish, hardly inspires confidence in your knowledge of Ireland, Irish history, the various peoples who came to create modern Ireland, and the differences and divisions between them. Like nations everywhere, the Irish people are not some sort of amorphous, gelatinous blob that is all subdued to some homogeneous “heritage”, and it is nonsensical and disrespectful to suggest that they are.
And if anyone here is genuinely interested in modern Ireland, as opposed to sentimental, ridiculous and dangerous slop about almost everybody looking like “close family” (“close” carefully italicised) and having a “shared racial heritage” (“racial” carefully italicised), I very strongly recommend Fintan O’Toole’s “We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland”. It is a truly excellent book. Fintan O’Toole is, by the way, Irish, just in case certain people here don’t know an Irish name when they see it.
Tim @ #29: Tristan O’Toole: The very name makes him as Irish as Paddy’s pig.
Actually it doesn’t, Omar, whichever “Tristan O’Toole” you are thinking of, since “Tristan” is in origin a Welsh name, with an Old French overlay — because of the Arthurian tales. In any event, considering all the Irish emigration over the years, there are obviously a great many people who are not from Ireland who have very Irish names. I was simply emphasising my objections to people who make broad generalisations about nations they clearly know virtually nothing about, and, I shall admit, in, that last sally, in an exaggerated way.