Originally posted on May 4, 2019.
Drawing on a column from Shukan Shincho’s “Henken Jizai,” this passage discusses Shibasaburō Kitasato’s achievement during the Hong Kong plague, the discipline displayed by the Japanese army in the Sino-Japanese War, and the contrast with both Western societies and Chinese forces that had long treated looting, rape, and massacre as commonplace.
It presents the view that the Japanese people’s sense of beauty, intelligence, courage, and tolerance shocked the international community.

2019-05-04
Indeed, in the Boxer Rebellion that broke out a few years later, Waldersee, the German commander who entered Beijing, ordered his soldiers to carry out six days of looting and rape.

The chapter posted on 2018-08-09 under the title “Both Christian peoples and the Chinese, who knew nothing of it, naturally carried out looting, rape, and massacre” is now in the real-time top ten in search count.
The following is a continuation from this week’s “Henken Jizai” in Shukan Shincho.
The emphasis in the text is mine.
Around the same time, Hong Kong was struck by the plague.
Since the Black Death of the fourteenth century, the true nature of this calamity, which had repeatedly threatened white societies, could not be clarified even with Western medical knowledge.
Yet the Hong Kong authorities announced that “as soon as Kitasato Shibasaburō arrived, he discovered the plague bacillus and also determined that rats were the carriers.”
They said, “When the rats were exterminated, the plague disaster subsided.”
A mystery that white people had been unable to solve for five hundred years was solved by the intelligence of one yellow man.
It was a shock.
And the third event was the Sino-Japanese War, which began in the same year as the Hong Kong plague disaster.
The Japanese army was brave.
By contrast, the Chinese army was despicable.
In the battle that began at Seonghwan, the Chinese troops simply fled, and when they occasionally captured Japanese soldiers, they gouged out their eyes, sliced off their noses, and killed them.
But the Japanese army did not even retaliate.
Above all, what astonished the white military observers was that the Japanese army neither looted nor raped on the battlefield.
In the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament, Moses said, “Plunder.
Kill the males down to the infants.
Kill the married women as well.
Virgins are a gift from God.
Let them live and enjoy them.”
Both Christian peoples and the Chinese, who knew nothing of that, naturally carried out looting, rape, and massacre.
Indeed, in the Boxer Rebellion that broke out a few years later, Waldersee, the German commander who entered Beijing, ordered his soldiers to carry out six days of looting and rape.
The Japanese army, which fought cleanly, won magnificent victories over China, feared as the “sleeping lion,” both at sea and on land.
Westerners were astonished by the Japanese, who possessed a deep sense of beauty, intelligence, courage, and a tolerance beyond even that of Christians.
This installment will continue.