This essay examines the cruelty of the U.S. military and the Chinese, the atrocities faced by Japan from the Sino-Japanese War onward, and the Japanese military’s view of war as expressed in Yamagata Aritomo’s instruction.
Through the spirit of refusing to imitate the enemy’s brutality, not killing those who surrendered, and not competing in cruelty, it argues that Japan’s view of war was fundamentally different from that of other nations.

2019-06-15
It instructs soldiers not to compete with the enemy in cruelty, and not to commit atrocities.
With this spirit, the Japanese military also fought the even more cruel American military.
There is no other army that would make such a declaration.

All those who purchased the following book in response to my recommendation must surely have been struck by his immense learning, his discernment, the excellence of his verification, and the high quality of his reporting ability.
At the same time, they will surely agree that my assessment of him as the one and only journalist in the postwar world is exactly right.
The cruelty of the American military and the Chinese.
For Japanese people, the mentality of those who so eagerly line up such lies is simply incomprehensible.
The conduct shown by the American military in the earlier-mentioned colonization of the Philippines was truly the very extreme of cruelty.
Their tactics took as a model those of Union General William Sherman during the American Civil War.
War meant not only defeating the enemy’s army but also striking down the wives and children of the soldiers who protected the rear, and destroying the enemy people themselves.
This was carried out in the campaign to cleanse America of the Indians, who had numbered about ten million, and 95 percent of them were eliminated.
The tens of millions of bison with whom they had lived were also almost exterminated in order to cut off their food supply.
The pacification of the Philippines was the same.
General Aguinaldo’s independence volunteers who resisted American colonization numbered eighteen thousand, but the number killed by the American military was officially two hundred thousand, and in reality reached several hundred thousand, many of them the families of Aguinaldo’s soldiers.
The cruelty of the American military was overwhelming.
That nation, whose cruelty is recognized by the world, then modestly strings together lies saying, “No, the Japanese were worse.”
I cannot understand that.
China is not inferior in that respect either.
The first time Japanese encountered their cruelty was in the Sino-Japanese War.
When the Chinese army, defeated at Seonghwan, began to flee, the French Figaro correspondent Calesco, who had been moving with the Japanese army, recorded that “while fleeing, they forced their way into Korean homes and indulged in plunder, rape, and massacre.”
He said Japanese soldiers were shocked by Chinese brutality.
At Jinzhou Fortress, a Chinese force three times the size of the Japanese army attacked, but after being repelled, they fled leaving dead and wounded behind.
Then Chinese peasants appeared as though replacing them, stripped the dead of their clothing, killed those still alive, and robbed them of their possessions.
At the Battle of Tuchengzi, Chinese soldiers who captured a Japanese scout “cut off the Japanese soldier’s ears, cut off his nose, then peeled the skin from his face, cut off his genitals, and finally cut off his head with a dull blade,” according to the report of Akiyama Yoshifuru’s adjutant.
Those same Chinese then, without evidence, conspired with the Americans to say that “the Japanese are cruel.”
When their enemy used cruel methods, they answered with still more cruel methods.
General Sherman, in retaliation for the destruction of his cavalry, had the wives and children of the Indians killed without exception.
Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong too answered cruelty with greater cruelty, but Japan alone was different.
A good example is the instruction issued in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War by Yamagata Aritomo, commander of the First Army.
“Even if they are enemy soldiers, those who surrender must not be killed.
However, do not fall for their trickery, such as pretending to surrender.
Moreover, the enemy country, China, has since ancient times possessed an extremely cruel nature.
If by misfortune you are taken alive, it is inevitable that you will be subjected to cruelty, to suffering worse than death, and in the end be killed by savage and brutal means.
Never allow yourself to be taken alive.
Rather, die nobly and thereby preserve the honor of a Japanese man.”
This instruction is said later to have become the phrase in Tojo Hideki’s Field Service Code, “Do not live to suffer the shame of being taken prisoner,” but it is not merely telling soldiers to die meaninglessly.
Even against a people of abnormal cruelty like the Chinese, it says that the Japanese side must fight honorably and fairly, and because the enemy is such an enemy, not to raise one’s hands and surrender, but rather to fight until death.
It instructs soldiers not to compete with the enemy in cruelty, and not to commit atrocities.
With this spirit, the Japanese military also fought the even more cruel American military.
There is no other army that would make such a declaration.
It is proof that Japan’s view of war was completely different from that of any other country.
This installment continues.