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China and Japan have been facing each other by the sea and have had exchanges with each other for more than 2,000 years. Until the middle of the 19th century, China and Japan had been coexisting, exchanging and developing for a long time in the political, economic and cultural circles of East Asia centered on Chinese civilization. Without the "Western shock" of the mid-19th century, the traditional social forms of China and Japan, and their development process, would certainly have maintained a certain historical period.
However, after Perry's fleet opened the door to Japan, the situation quickly changed. Japan soon recognized the gap with the West, began to open its doors, learn from the West, and rose rapidly after the Meiji Restoration, becoming one of the great powers and beginning to covet China's Asian leadership. In 1894, he defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War and won the leadership of Asia. More than thirty years later, with the continuous expansion of ambitions, ambitions began to emerge to annex China, and in 1937, the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out in full swing.
The fierceness of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was an eternal pain in the history of the Chinese nation, and the third time in China's history, the capital was invaded by foreign nationalities occurred during this period. The Chinese nation has paid a huge sacrifice and a heavy price for the victory of this national struggle.
However, at 10:00 a.m. on August 15, 1945, after Japan announced its unconditional surrender, Chiang Kai-shek delivered a victory speech in Chongqing in his thick Fenghua accent. One of the contents of the speech was to declare that After the victory, China's policy toward Japan was to "repay grievances with virtue."
The general meaning is that "not remembering the old evils" and "being kind to others" are the fine and precious traditions of our Chinese nation, and it is the Japanese militarists, not the Japanese people, whom we should hate. We are the teachers of benevolence and righteousness, do not retaliate, otherwise the retribution for wrongs will never end.
It is said that this speech was drafted by Chiang Kai-shek himself, so it should be his heartfelt words. This speech was later called by the Japanese media as the Chinese government's "revenge with virtue," and the Nationalist government's policy toward Japan after World War II, including the subsequent abandonment of war claims, was also classified as the policy of "repaying grievances with virtue" in that year.
Later, we all know the outcome of Chiang Kai-shek's regime, and what is particularly worth exploring is why the Kuomintang lost the entire vast mainland so quickly after the victory of the War of Resistance, and millions of powerful Nationalist troops were wiped out in only three years after facing the communist army that was far weaker than itself at that time, and finally driven to Taiwan. This is a rare phenomenon throughout human history.
A scene of celebration at the time of the victory of the War of Resistance
It should be known that at the moment when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was just victorious, the National Government was not only the only legitimate government recognized by the world at that time, but Also Chiang Kai-shek reached the highest peak of his life because he was the leader of this life-and-death war of the Chinese nation against foreign aggression, and his prestige in the eyes of the people of the whole country reached the highest point of his life. Some people may remember that when Chongqing was celebrating the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the huge portrait of Chiang Kai-shek, which was a strong expression of people from all walks of life who supported Chiang Kai-shek from the bottom of their hearts.
But only three years later, this regime was abandoned by the people of the whole country, and we can explain the fundamental reason that the key is to lose the people's hearts, and the people's backs finally determine the fate of the failure of this regime. What is certain today is that after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Kuomintang lost the hearts and minds of the people in many ways, such as corruption, soaring prices, the people's lack of livelihood, and the use of military force.
But when did it start? I believe that there are still many opinions. Personally, I have always believed that the first important reason for losing the people's hearts and minds is Chiang Kai-shek's so-called "revenge with virtue" policy. Let's explore this issue from the content of Chiang Kai-shek's speech.
First, yes, the traditional morality of our Chinese nation is not to remember the old evil and to be good to others. However, at this point, Jiang's speech is a bit of a sneaky concept, not remembering the old evil from the "Analects of Gongyechang", and being kind to people from "Mencius Gongsun Ugly", both of which are classic Confucian philosophical ideas and the essence of the spirit of our Chinese national culture. But one thing to say is that the premise of these ideas is used in dealing with people with normal human nature, and it is not applicable to dealing with bandits who are as brutal as beasts, which will only suffer from them.
Let's take a closer look at the tragic history:
From the September 18 Incident in 1931, when the Japanese army occupied the three eastern provinces within three months, burned and looted, and killed and injured countless civilians. By 1933, the 731 Bacteriological Unit had been established to conduct live experiments with bacteria such as plague, cholera, and syphilis, as well as poison gas and gunshots, with Chinese. And a large number of plague, cholera and other bacteria, with aircraft spread throughout China, harming countless people.
Then, in 1934, the Japanese used aircraft to bomb Ilan County, Jilin Province, killing more than 20,000 civilians. The Nanjing Massacre, which began on December 13, 1937, was even more tragic, killing more than 300,000 unarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians in 6 weeks, which is an eternal tragic memory in the history of the Chinese nation.
From September 1938 to October 1940, the North China Sweep began, and under the "three-light policy" of killing, burning, and robbing the light, more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians on the mainland were killed and injured. At the same time, during 1940, Chongqing was bombed for more than 20 days, killing and injuring countless people. During this period, it caused the "Chongqing Great Tunnel Massacre" that shocked China and foreign countries.
In January 1941, in the village of Panjiayu in Fengrun County, Jidong Province, the Japanese Kou burned all houses and slaughtered more than 1,340 villagers. Similar massacres abound in base areas everywhere. In August 1941 alone, the Japanese army killed more than 20,000 of our compatriots. In the spring of 1942, the Japanese army created no man's land in 9 counties such as Chengde, Miyun and Qian'an. There are so many things to list, and here can only be hung up a little bit of the blood debt owed by the Japanese Kou that year.
From 1937 to August 15, 1945 alone, the Japanese invaded all areas of China except Tibet, Xinjiang, Xikang, and Qingdao, with more than 35 million Chinese military and civilian casualties and more than 62 billion U.S. dollars in direct and indirect property losses. In the war of aggression, the Chinese who became refugees, the deaths of frostbite, hunger, and illness could not be counted, causing profound disasters to the Chinese nation.
Second, Chiang Kai-shek divided the Japanese people into two parts: the Japanese warlords and the innocent Japanese people who were fooled. This is also a false concept. If you see the heartfelt support of the Japanese people for the Japanese invading army from top to bottom, you will definitely not agree with this class division.
The fact is that every battle and victory won by the Japanese army in World War II is inseparable from the full support of the entire Japanese nation and society.
We can also see in the war that every time the Japanese army suffers setbacks, defeats, or even final surrenders in the invaded country and its homeland, you can feel that the entire Japanese nation, not a few people or a small number of high-level people, is filled with anxiety, solemnity, frustration and despair.
In this war, the whole of Japan was completely a whole, except for a very small number of Japanese Communists who voiced anti-war voices, but in the end they were persecuted, imprisoned, and spurned and despised by the whole society. The whole of Japan, from top to bottom, fell into a frenzied frenzy for this war of aggression.
During the war of that year, it was common in Japan to see old mothers asking for "thousand needles" sewn on the streets for their sons who went on expeditions, and wives committed suicide to avoid the worries of their husbands who went out on expeditions. Children have donated the money in their piggy bank to the government. Women at the door who recruited comfort women enthusiastically signed up, and even many young girls went to Nanyang to prostitute themselves to earn money to support the government. Many young men who joined the army and failed to be elected committed suicide. In this war, this is already a nation that has fallen into the frenzy of war.
Someone once said: There is no wronged soul under the atomic bomb. Although this statement is somewhat absolute, it does make sense from a certain point of view.
During the war, Japanese street women were making "thousand needles" for soldiers.
As the biggest victim of that war, the Nationalist government, in order to show its tolerance and desire for peace, only limited the guilt of the war to the minimum within the scope of the few war criminals against the Japanese military and the Japanese government. However, they are ashamed to hold accountable the broad social base of Japan, which fully supported the decision-making of the war, and to give up war reparations, and to distinguish between a small number of war initiators and the broad masses of the Japanese people. In fact, in the pyramid of society, there has never been an insurmountable gap between the government and the people.
Third, is it feasible for the Japanese to reflect on their own mistakes and extricate themselves from their sins?
In the years that followed, we can see that, unlike post-war Germany, Japan not only did not reflect on its crimes, but also revised its textbooks and declared aggression as "entry." Not acknowledging the Nanjing Massacre and saying that our numbers are fictitious. Some right-wing extremist forces have also whitewashed this war of aggression as an attempt to establish a "greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere" and for the rise of the yellow race. Even later, some civil society groups tried to dress themselves as "victims" of war because they had suffered atomic bombs.
As we can see, the answer is self-evident. This road is not open. If we look at today's German attitude toward the war, all this is the result of the historical evil left over from the incomplete liquidation of that year.
Fourth, in Chiang Kai-shek's speech, he said: If we reply to the enemy's previous atrocities with atrocities, and if we reply to their former erroneous sense of superiority with enslavement, it will become retribution for wrongs and will never end, and it will never be the purpose of our benevolent teachers. The logic of this is also very problematic.
Do not punish the murderers who have caused at least 173 tragic deaths and injuries of more than 800 Chinese people, do not punish the butchers who create indiscriminate bombing, do not punish the animals that carry out germ warfare and chemical warfare that break through the bottom line of mankind, and how to face the countless fathers and villagers who have died in vain.
I believe that countless dead souls must have countless words to say underground!!!
So in the end, from the beginning of Chiang Kai-shek's broadcast to the time he easily released the Japanese prisoners of war who had committed heinous crimes in China, and even the Japanese war criminals he called Okamura Ningji were protected, he had lost most of the hearts and minds of the People. His downfall on the mainland was already doomed.
In his speech, Chiang Kai-shek divided the Japanese into "Japanese warlords" and "innocent Japanese people fooled by Nazi warlords." And the scope of "innocent Japanese people" will be expanded indefinitely. At the end of the war, Japan deployed 1.28 million troops in the Chinese theater (excluding the three northeastern provinces) and in Taiwan, Penghu, and northern Vietnam.
Coupled with Japanese overseas Chinese, the total is more than 2 million. In addition, there are about 1.1 million Japanese overseas Chinese waiting to be repatriated in northeast China, bringing the total number of Japanese prisoners of war and expatriates awaiting repatriation to more than 3.1 million. Although there are some not-so-innocent Japanese people, there are definitely many Japanese war criminals whose hands are stained with the blood of Chinese people. But in the end, they were all released back to Japan. Even it includes Junji Tanaka, who killed more than 300 civilians in the Nanjing Massacre, and Takeshi Noda and Toshiaki Xiangjing, who played the "Hundred Man Chop" competition.
The punishment of war criminals is an international practice and a historical practice of human society. Chiang Kai-shek's revenge with virtue and his disregard for the legitimate demands of the forty-fifty million Chinese people are risking the world.plausible. Jiang proceeded from his own point of view and did not care at all about the wishes and demands of the majority of the Chinese people. He did not understand the will of the people, nor did he want to understand; his failure thus laid the groundwork, that is, it was inevitable.
The process of Tanaka Junji's capture that year was to be honestly very lucky. One day, at noon, a quarrel came from a fish ball shop on Akasaka Road in Tokyo. A middle-aged man named Junji Tanaka ate the Overlord meal without paying for it, and slapped the shop owner. After the international gendarmes arrived, Tanaka Junji was still shouting: "Lao Tzu killed more than 100 People in Zhina on that day, and he dared to ask me for money." "
After hearing this, the gendarmes immediately took Tanaka Junji away. Officer Richard Watson of the U.S. Army conducted a surprise interrogation of Tanaka Junji. After interrogation, it was learned from Tanaka Junji that Takeshi Noda and Toshiaki Xiangjing were in Kagoshima Prefecture. So the three were arrested and extradited back to China. At 12:00 noon on January 28, 1948, three animals were shot at Yuhuatai in Nanjing.
Without this unexpected clash after Tanaka Junji was drunk, I am afraid that this just trial would never come, and these three beasts would probably have escaped this punishment and enjoyed their old age in peace. The grievances of the hundreds of civilian souls who died tragically under the knives of these beasts and beasts will never be justified. If so, then how can "Heavenly Reason Show" !!! All this has to be attributed to Chiang Kai-shek's policy of "repaying grievances with virtue."
From the beginning of Japan's invasion of China in 1874, the heinous crimes of the Japanese Kou were written off because of Chiang Kai-shek's phrase "do not remember the old evils." So where is the heavenly justice of "good is rewarded with good, and evil is rewarded with evil"?
In the minds of the Japanese people at that time, in fact, these Japanese soldiers represented by Ninji Okamura had actually died themselves. According to their ideas, the Japanese killed so many Chinese. After the defeat, Chinese kill the Japanese again. It was a very normal thing, and that was the end of it. Just like Tanaka Junji and others, they only messed around during the trial, but they did not complain about the verdict, and in the minds of these people, they thought it was abnormal to return to Japan. But the vast majority of people not only did not die, but they were not tortured. He also successfully returned to Japan to spend his old age.
Let's take another look at the normal psychological analysis of the Japanese.
Mr. Ma Sanli's cross-talk "Take Off Your Boots" is the best analogy. An old man lives alone in a small two-story building, lonely and lonely. So the second floor was rented out to a young man. The old man sleeps lightly and is most afraid of being woken up. The young man wore leather boots and came back late in the evening. It rattled all the way upstairs. Go upstairs, take off your boots and throw them on the floor. After the old man was woken up, it was very uncomfortable.
The next morning, the young man was reminded. The next night, the young man still came back late, and forgot the old man's reminder in the morning. After going upstairs, after throwing the first boot. Remembered. Place the second boot lightly on the floor. As a result, the old man let the young man move the next morning. Because after the young man threw away his boots on the first night, the old man could still sleep for a while. The next night, the old man and the other young man threw the second boot and waited all night without sleep. The old man couldn't stand it anymore.
The same is true of the Japanese, who are extremely crisis-conscious, waiting for the second boot for three generations. Always prepared in fear, how tired do you say they are? And in the face of such a mentality, do you say that they can be close and good to us?
In World War II, the Americans killed the Japanese the most, and in order to reduce the casualties of their own soldiers, they directly gave Japan two atomic bombs. It's like throwing two boots down together and solving the problem once and for all. According to the old Chiang Kai-shek: "If we reply to the enemy's previous atrocities with atrocities, and if we reply to their former sense of superiority with enslavement, we will become retribution for wrongs and will never end."
However, there has been no retribution between the United States and Japan. MacArthur was the American general who slaughtered the most Japanese, and there was no one. Instead, a million Japanese said goodbye after MacArthur was fired. At the farewell ceremony, the Japanese cried and shouted heartily: "Long live the Grand Marshal." The truth is revealed, and the scene is touching.
Sometimes, in dealing with the enemy, it is really necessary to treat the same people as the United States and Israel, with clear grievances and thunderous means to fundamentally solve the problem and truly win peace.
Let's analyze the real purpose behind Chiang Kai-shek's policy.
In fact, Lao Jiang has always been a person who does not believe in the people's will, and there is an ulterior motive behind his policy. In order to maximize the interests, he can disregard the people's will.
Because at that time, when Japan announced its surrender, the Japanese army invading China still occupied a large area of occupied areas; concentrated in the northeast, north China, east China and other places. Chiang Kai-shek has always had no confidence in relying on his own strength to defeat the Japanese army. He feared that if the Nationalist troops went to take over the occupied areas, they would be met with deadly resistance from the Japanese army, causing heavy casualties. And these armies were all in preparation for the civil war that followed.
Moreover, the main units of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army were far away in the southwest and northwest at that time, and he was afraid that the communist army that had been fighting behind enemy lines and near the occupied areas would be the first to win the moon. That's why he made this speech and gave the Invading Japanese Army a reassuring pill. This was also the case later, in chiang kai-shek's plan for the acquisition of 27 important strategic cities, except for 6 for the Soviet occupation. The Japanese troops in the other 21 cities actively cooperated with Chiang and said that they would only surrender to Chiang.
In hindsight, Chiang Kai-shek did gain great benefits in the short term and smoothly took over the rich and important cities. Suppressing our army in major rural areas and other backward areas, the difficult situation of our army in the early stage of the northeast battlefield was therefore therefore difficult. But what Lao Jiang did not expect was that although he gained some short-term benefits, his actions disappointed countless Chinese people who had suffered this deep disaster, and lost the people's hearts, which was an important factor in the long-term maintenance of the regime. The final defeat of this regime has sown the seeds at this moment.
Let's conclude by looking at the far-reaching influence of Chiang Kai-shek's policy of "repaying grievances with virtue" in Japan after its defeat in the war. Not only has Japan benefited me immensely, but it has also determined today's world pattern.
It was because of this policy that the Japanese state system and traditions were preserved, and the imperial system was preserved. Japan's inherent territory remained intact. Some people may say that this is caused by the Americans, but you have to believe that as one of the four major powers of World War II, China suffered the most from Japan, and if the attitude insists on punishing Japan, then the United States will definitely not risk breaking with important allies and insist on its own opinions, at least from a moral point of view, the Americans will also consider it again and again. Moreover, at that time, the signs of the Cold War had already appeared, and in the eyes of the Americans at that time, in the confrontation strategy with the former Soviet Union, Japan had been completely destroyed, and China's status could be much more important than Japan.
Post-war Japan
In this way, Chiang Kai-shek sent more than three million Japanese back to Japan, and all the repatriated Japanese troops and Japanese expatriates provided sufficient labor for Japan's economic rejuvenation and national strength leap forward. Japan was later exempted from war reparations, laying a solid foundation for its subsequent economic revival and national strength.
And because the United States was able to occupy Japan militarily alone, and the former Soviet Union could not intervene, Japan naturally supported the Camp of European and Western countries after the war, and did not have a situation in which the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR were divided and ruled, becoming a hardcore ally and military protector of the United States, that is, the so-called hardcore alliance between the United States and Japan.
Chiang Kai-shek's attitude objectively helped the United States, the largest power in the West after World War II, and Japan, the Eastern country, to establish a solid alliance and military alliance, and profoundly affected the international order in East Asia and across the Pacific. The United States still maintains a large military base and a large number of troops in Japan.
The black market in Osaka gradually recovered after the war
Moreover, there is a separate occupation and protection of the military superpower of the United States, and Japan's military expenditure in the national economy for a long time after the defeat in World War II is very low, which also provides conditions for the revival and development of Japan's economy and industry. Japan can peacefully develop the national economy under the us military presence, unnecessarily participate in military conflicts with neighboring countries, and can become a place for the United States to process and oem, such as during the Korean War, Japan received a large number of orders from the United States, and the rapid growth of economy and industry recovered
It can be said that after Japan's defeat in World War II, its national strength and economy were able to recover rapidly, and in one fell swoop it caught up with advanced European and Western countries such as Britain, Germany, and France.
And how much has this war hurt us? There is much more to it than just the numbers of destroyed belongings and deaths. For example, Professor Yu Yingshi believes that the most fundamental reason why China has not completed the goal of modernization is that it has been delayed by Japan. The first was China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, and the second was the delay of the War of Resistance. In the War of Japanese Aggression against China, the Japanese aggressors carried out the most ferocious massacre of Chinese, carried out frenzied plundering and destruction of China's materials and wealth, and carried out rare destruction and destruction of China's cultural heritage, which greatly delayed the process of China's social modernization.
The last thing I want to say is that the war between the peoples may be only a war for a few short years, but the damage to the feelings between the two peoples may take hundreds of years to repair!!!