While the quarrels of memory between Japan and China regularly occupy the extreme-oriental scene, the book by Jean-Louis Margolin (Augustin-Thierry 2007 Prize) returns to the brutalization and militarization processes that led Japan to the worst violence between 1937 and 1945.
In our present where the history of XXe century has become that of continuous violence which obsesses us in the form of precedents permanently used in political action, where the requirement of memory, repentance and repair is permanently mobilized, the book by Jean-Louis Margolin is a model of writing of history that is both ruthless and moderate. Porityable since immediately the costing of the Asian-Pacific wars amounts to several tens of millions of deaths, for their greatest part of Chinese civilians. The order of magnitude would be 27 million including 3 million Japanese. The weekly number of deaths (Japanese included) can be estimated at 57,000 in 1942, 97,000 in 1944 and 149,000 in 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent only losses equivalent to ten days of war …
This terrifying violence, even if it knows emblematic episodes, does not focus on an event, like the Shoah in Europe, but on a war violence which is self-causing itself and which is radicalized. The principal is an institution, the Japanese army and the political-ideological system that it carries as much as it controls it. All his actions were performed in the name of a man, or rather a misty divinity: the emperor.
The young and fragile Japanese parliamentary democracy is the victim of the crisis of the 1930s. Nationalo-imperial mysticism is first in power and then on society. There is no real resistance or dissent. Even the vast majority of executives and communist activists rally and support the militarist regime. The Grand Kurosawa was first an apologist of the ideology in power …
We are faced with a process of cumulative radicalization linked to the China War. The mobilization of the economy and the militarization of society are constantly increasing. The war causes war. The brutalization of soldiers by the military institution has repercussions by an outburst of violence against civilians, especially in China.
The author objective analyzes some famous episodes such as the Nankin bag in 1937 (less than 100,000 victims and not 300,000 as the Chinese authorities now claim), the license to kill to soldiers in China, the Manila massacre in 1944 (equivalent to that of Nankin), the experiences of biological war, the martyrdom of war prisoners, the fate of war, overexploitation and slavery in the conquered territories, “ comfort women », Daily oppression.
The last part is devoted to the memory of these events. Even if the Americans set aside the emperor, the trials of the international military court were on the right whole. The proceedings were well documented, the fate of Asians was recognized worse than that of Western prisoners. The convictions were graduated. On the other hand, due to the Cold War, the purification was incomplete and many criminals were rehabilitated and had a career. If there is a particularly active revisionism or negationism in Japan today, the debates have always been free. In the era of contemporary victimization, the requirement of Japanese repentance in victims refers to questions of generational succession, construction of national identity (against Japan or not) and cynical instrumentalization (popular China).
This book is an essential contribution to reflection on extreme violence, on their relations with the nature of the political system, on their methods of application (banality of evil, ordinary men), on the relationship with the colonial phenomenon, but also on the way of leaving it. As in Europe, even if the debate on memory and repentance continues, extreme violence has been banished and East Asia has become a peace area.
To conclude, this book is first of all a big history book.
This text is also published by theLiterary Orient. We salute the quality of the work carried out by this weekly.