Tell the truest history in the simplest words.
The main body of Japanese culture is the imported Chinese culture and the Indian culture with a Chinese flavor imported through China. However, Japan selectively "Japaneseizes" it. What originated from Chinese and Indian culture is "Wen", but "Wu" is produced under Japanese culture?
Chinese culture takes "benevolence" as the core, and Japanese culture mostly takes "loyalty" as the core. There is still a slight difference between "loyalty" in Japanese culture and "loyalty" in Chinese culture, and the "loyalty" advocated by Japan lies in loyalty, which is a relationship between superiors and subordinates; while the "loyalty" of Chinese culture is not so one-sided.
Loyalty/Benevolence
When studying Chinese culture, Japan has taken the name of "righteousness, wisdom, faithfulness, and filial piety", and we can clearly see that only the "benevolence" headed by Chinese Bongzhi has been ignored. Therefore, in ancient times, although the social order of China and Japan was "scholars, peasants, industrialists and merchants", China was mostly "literati and scholars", while Japan was more "samurai".
What does "Bushido" embody?
"Bushido" is the japanese national spirit, I think everyone knows, I will not dwell on it here, let's analyze it through some examples, what kind of existence is the bushido spirit?
There is a Dragon Boat Festival in China and Japan. In ancient times, Chinese parents locked their long lives on their babies and sprinkled them with male yellow wine to ward off evil spirits, which was an act influenced by feudal ideas; Japanese adults would put carp and samurai puppets in the hope that their children would become samurai who bravely rushed to kill on the battlefield. Children will be taught the ballad: "I love the soldier the most, and now I hope to grow up soon; with a medal, a knife, riding a horse."
Japanese children
In Japan, the spirit of Bushido as a thought has reached the height of religion, and it originated in the Middle Ages of absolute loyalty to lords and lords of the domain. The ancient samurai, like the modern Japanese soldiers, were infinitely loyal to their superiors and absolutely obedient. Pay attention to the three principles of faith, righteousness and courage, advocate force and adventure, and highly deepen the spirit of fearless dedication and collective concept.
This kind of thinking is still deeply infiltrated into the management of Japanese companies, becoming a two-way "annual work sequence" and loyalty to the owners. In this way, Bushido created a terrible nation, a japanese army that was daunting, inhuman, and impersonal.
Bushido ruled Japan for more than 1,000 years from the very beginning of its development, and its masterpiece," the Book of Toto, has a very clear theme: honor, generosity to death, loyalty to the lord of the domain, and self-cultivation. The idea of dying runs through the book like a red thread. It teaches Japanese soldiers to always think about how to die without regrets, not to think about how to save their lives in dangerous situations, but to go forward bravely and face death with a smile.
Bushido spirit
Therefore, Bushido is also known as the "Way of the Warrior". On the eve of World War II, a Japanese writer, Kikuchi Hiroshi, claimed that the earlier Bushido, although referring to the "way of warriors", had become the way of the whole nation. Kikuchi emphasized: "It can be said with complete certainty that all men from the ages of 20 to 40 are warriors".
In order to cultivate the spirit of Bushido, many things should be learned, but the main thing to learn is patience and risk-taking. Therefore, when Japanese rulers educate the younger generation, the most fundamental thing is to teach them to be patient and dare to take risks. In order to learn to endure all kinds of hardships, boys often walked barefoot in the snow, practiced fencing and judo, and went to the cemetery in the middle of the night, where they were tested like barbarism.
It is worth mentioning that some kindergarten children in Japan have been wiped with snow since they were young. The result of this indoctrination and edification is that the Japanese nation becomes a warrior and the whole of Japan becomes a military camp. Either rule the world with a saber in hand, or commit suicide with a saber to meet defeat. No wonder one scholar once said, "Japanese militarism with bushido is crueler and inhumane than any other militarism."
At this point, it can be roughly seen that the spirit of Japanese Bushido is a militarism with oriental overtones, and it is militaristic more militaristic than any militarism that originated in Europe. In my hometown, there is a saying that "the mighty one is afraid of death", which can be interpreted for this purpose.
Why is it that Japan's "inhumanity" is unmatched by European countries?
Let's focus on the near-end of world war II. Japan's defeat was a foregone conclusion, and the Japanese rulers were not thinking about how to minimize losses as much as possible, but to name the young death squad members after "kamikaze" in a vain attempt to rely on them to turn the tide of the war.
These people learned how to strike air fortresses, aircraft carriers or other important targets head-on, or to hold long poles and put high explosives on top of them to meet local landing ships or attacking tanks.
Kamikaze
The root of the kamikaze team's emergence is Bushido, and the necessary decoration for kamikaze team members is the samurai sword. The kamikaze team members all had white bands wrapped around their heads, exactly the same straps that samurai had tied before they went into battle. Japanese youth enthusiastically joined the kamikaze, and by the end of the war, there were hundreds of such detachments in the Japanese army, some of which numbered more than a thousand.
A letter from 22-year-old Warrant Officer Hayashi Ichiro to his loved ones read: "Dear mother, please don't miss me. Sacrificing in battle is a great joy! I had the privilege of dying for Japan. ”
Anyone who is slightly familiar with history may know the concept of the Japanese sacrificing their lives for the country in the war and swearing to die for the emperor's allegiance. During the war, the Chinese army killed 1.3 million Japanese troops and captured only a few thousand people.
When the US military captured Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, the Japanese army's "whole island jade fragmentation" strategy spared none of the 100,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians on Iwo Jima, and the Okinawan soldiers and civilians were almost killed and wounded. This terrible thought is really daunting.
What has sustained these young men in their devotion to war is the Bushido that has been deeply rooted in the Japanese national soul for thousands of years. Bushido itself is in the same vein as militarism, and it has not been completely thrown into the dustbin of history, and it still exists in Japanese culture in the present day of peace.
Japan's ruling class all advocated Bushido, and in the form of Japanese folk, it took the form of Bushido concepts such as social harmony, the dignity of the elderly and the young, and the sacrifice of personal interests for the sake of the community. This form has made the Japanese economy popular with many large countries since 1945, and few small countries can match it.
In fact, Japan's success was self-created. They modernized according to the Bushido model, adapting themselves in a way that the samurai were satisfied with, blending the needs of the present and the future, while also trying to maintain the past Bushido traditions.
At first, the modernization of the Japanese was only an economic or industrial modernization; later, Japanese people hesitated to engage in social and political modernization. The Japanese have "cleverly" preserved the Bushido tradition and applied it to the modern workplace. Japan is a completely modern, yet very feudal society. After World War II, the Japanese seemed to work perfectly together in terms of personal and national goals, and they were able to evoke the sacrificial dedication of Bushido nationalism that was only found in wartime.
Japan, a country completely devoid of natural resources, has achieved extraordinary economic success through Bushido education that has increased the productivity of its citizens. In Japan, Bushido education is key. Education is an extremely important part of the spectrum, as is the case in East Asian societies influenced by Confucianism.
But Bushido not only emphasizes education, but also emphasizes the training of the devil in Bushido. Japan discourages individual performance and tries to equip every student with the necessary language and math skills. The newly graduated graduates are well-trained and willing to "cooperate" with their employers, forming a disciplined and talented workforce, each with the mission of improving the company's productivity. How could Japan's economy not develop rapidly in such an environment?
Although they are proud of Japan's glorious economic achievements, in fact, the entire society has paid a very high price. Japanese society prides itself on harmony because of the bushido consequences of overemphasizing obedience and collective unity. Individuals are extremely repressed, and these Bushido habits brought to the factory can only give birth to a special class of great privileges.