8 Japanese War Crimes during World War II First of all, vio­lence is still pres­ent in modern socie­ties even if we tend to believe that so-­called postmodern nation-­states have been able to overcome vio­lence simply ­ because war has not affected them in the last seven de­cades.60 As Steven Pinker highlighted, vio­lence is of interest to anyone who seeks to learn about ­human nature.61 Although he also argues that we must take a closer look at the numbers to see if vio­lence is increasing or decreasing, he makes it clear that all suffering, ­whether it affects one person or many, deserves our sympathy.62 It consequently seems redundant to discuss numbers and dates it is far more impor­tant to discuss vio­lence itself, especially ­ because the history of war is the history of or­ ga ­ nized vio­lence meant to kill.63 War itself is often considered a form of ordered, or­ ga ­ nized, and collective vio­lence that re-­ establishes a space-­time continuum and creates a strug­gle for its control.64 Within a specific space-­time continuum, however, vio­lence can also take a form that is no longer bound by existing law and order and thus become indefinite. The possibility of other­wise criminal acts having no punishment in war creates a new space-­time continuum that imposes no limitations on the vio­lence used within it. Consequently, war also creates specific group identities: soldiers, men, Japa­nese ­people, ­ etc. Such group identities are often dichotomous among exist- ing ­ enemy groups and often seek to violently extinguish each other. Of course, we must accept that no theoretical approach ­toward vio­lence can explain its complexity,65 but it is impor­tant to understand the pro­cesses that enable the acts of common soldiers and ordinary men within con- flict. The question of why they act so violently can then be at least partially answered and help prevent similar violent scenarios in the ­ future. ­People in general seem to have three options during a violent conflict such as war: they can try to escape, they can suffer, or they can participate.66 Noncombatants are the victims in such circumstances ­ because they may not be able to escape war and be doomed to suffer this has been the case in many past wars, and it will most likely be in the ­ future as well. The question that remains, how- ever, is about the atrocities and cruelties that some wars are particularly well known for. The Rape of Nanjing, to name just one example, stands out ­ because its vio­lence was so indefinite that it exceeded all known and usually accepted limits of vio­lence, despite the conflict being part of a war. The Ger- man sociologist Trutz von Trotha (1946–2013) connected levels of extreme vio­lence or cruelty to the social preconditions of the perpetrators when he stated that [c]ruelty is a mirror of the living conditions and achievements of a society. It appears to be as old as humanity itself and crosses societal and cultural bound­aries. No society can say that it does not allow cruelty to exist, even if socie­ties differ to an extreme in the amount of space they give to cruelty and which forms are practiced in ­these par­tic­u­lar spaces.67
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