12 Japanese War Crimes during World War II dynamics for what happened. They may not even discuss guilt per se, which usually leads to conflicts among families if members of the following genera- tions ask about their parents’ roles during the war.92 As such, it is dangerous to leave out the perpetrators’ perspectives when discussing vio­lence. When public memory only focuses on victims of a given tragedy, it detaches the events from the perpetrators this distance can become solidified in history and create a self-­image that is less problematic and mor- ally superior.93 It is therefore unsurprising that vio­lence committed by one’s own identity group is considered ­legal, whereas that of ­others is considered cruel and despicable.94 Hannah Arendt, however, made it clear that intellect does not protect us from crime.95 She continued her theoretical discussion of pure evil by emphasizing that unlimited and extreme evil is only pos­si­ble when limitations to such evil are non­ex­is­tent.96 It is particularly the loss of the self within a group identity, which is determined by the society to be vio- lent against another group identity, that is supposed to be a legitimate victim of vio­lence that creates the pure evil. This pure evil eventually becomes so endemic in a specifically created space-­time continuum that it is considered normal, even banal.97 Simply put, “What somebody does relies upon who somebody is.”98 The pres­ent book’s goal is to find out who the Japa­nese per- petrators ­ were and what specific space-­time continuum allowed them to be as violent as they ­ were. The aim is therefore not to write an apol­ o ­ getic account what the Japa­nese soldiers did was horrible, and so, too, is it horrible that the Japa­nese government cannot express guilt for the past. Yet it would help to understand how such cruelties come into existence and condemn them in the ­ future. The first chapter ­will continue the discussion about vio­lence and perpetra- tors and form a theoretical framework for the discussion about Japa­nese war crimes related to ­these categories. Chapter 2 ­ will analyze the space-­time con- tinuum of the Rape of Nanjing to find out what triggered the im­mense erup- tion of vio­lence in late 1937 and early 1938. ­After that, another theoretical chapter ­will deal with sociobiological theories on rape before the fourth chap- ter discusses the sexual abuse of the “comfort ­ women” to see how victim-­ perpetrator identities affected the cruel sexual exploitation of so many young ­ women in Asia. Chapter 5 ­ will analyze the Bataan Death March and the interrelationship between the specific group identities of the Japa­nese soldiers and the Ameri- can and Filipino POWs. The subsequent chapter ­ will continue this analy­sis about the POW camps by the Japa­nese and the building of the Burma-­Thailand Railway. The last chapter ­ will then deal with the war crimes related to Unit 731 and the Japa­nese Biological Warfare Program that caused several plagues to spread in China, exploiting mostly Chinese ­ human beings as guinea pigs in deadly experiments. All of the named chapters ­ will deal with extremely cruel ­ human be­hav­ior, and it is not easy to explain why ­ human beings could
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