Japanese Ronin is widely familiar to us, originating from a large number of film and television dramas. They often wear traditional Japanese kimonos, pedal a pair of wooden clogs, a saber hanging from their waists at any time, have strange hairstyles, and have a fierce look in their eyes, wandering around all corners all day. This kind of person likes to be brave and fierce, cause trouble, find people everywhere to test their martial arts, and have a face that is the first in the world and never accepts defeat.
(Japanese Ronin stills)
1. How did the Japanese Ronin come about?
The predecessor of the Japanese ronin was the Samurai of Japan. During the Tokugawa shogunate period, the Japanese ruling class divided the Japanese into four classes: "soldiers, farmers, workers, and merchants." This is the same as in China, but the explanation is different. Among them, "shi" refers to the samurai class, which belonged to the ruling group of Japan at that time, and the other three classes were the ruled groups.
In 1868, after emperor Muhito ascended the throne, he embarked on a series of reforms aimed at strengthening the capitalist process in Japan, known as the Meiji Restoration. The hardest hit by this massive reform was the samurai class, which was stripped of their titles, confiscated land, and stripped of a series of privileges.
A part of the upper aristocracy of this group relied on the capital of the early stages to become landlords, capitalists or banking magnates. Middle-class samurai became freelancers with extensive connections. However, most of the low-level samurai who had been raised for a long time lost their livelihood. Coupled with his lack of skills to make a living, he spends his days idle and achieves nothing, completely reduced to a "deserter" of society.
Thus, the Japanese ronin was born. This group peaked after the Meiji Restoration in Japan, where it is said to have nearly 100,000 people.
(Samurai of the Meiji Restoration)
2. The japanese ronin's crime of aggression against China.
During Japan's war of aggression against China, many Japanese ronin became the vanguard of the invasion of China, came to China one after another, and committed numerous crimes against the Chinese people.
After the Japanese occupation of Northeast China, a large number of Ronin came to Northeast with Japanese immigrants, and not only participated in the bloody suppression of anti-Japanese activities in Northeast China, but also brutally exploited and plundered the people of the occupied areas.
After Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo in the northeast, it hired many ronin and gave them titles such as "consultant" and "consultation" to help Japan rule the northeast. These people are originally hooligans, and once they have a little power in their hands, they will show off their might and power.
When the crops were harvested in late autumn, the group led a group of Japanese gendarmes to the fields of the Chinese people, forcibly plundered the fruits of the people's hard work for a year, and ordered the people to transport grain to the residences of the lang people. If there was resistance, the Japanese ronin would join hands with the gendarmes to arrest the rebels back to the gendarmerie, torturing them or killing them. There were several flesh-and-blood peasants who could not stand the exploitation of the Ronin, and in the middle of the night they united, infiltrated the Ronin's residence, and killed several Ronin. As a result, they were retaliated by the gendarmes, who actually used mountain cannons against the unarmed people, not only razing the entire village to the ground, but also killing all the young adults in the village.
(Japanese gendarmes during the War of Resistance Against Japan)
These Japanese ronin often set up clever names and wantonly collected the people's fat and people's ointment.
They often appear suddenly on occasions of people's weddings and funerals, and collect fees on the pretext of gathering crowds to cause trouble. The common people dared to be angry and did not dare to speak, so they had to pay money to send them to calm the people. There are many names in which the Ronin forced the people to pay money, such as "health fees", "public security fees", "demographic fees", "land lease fees" and so on.
In addition to these blatant plunders, the Japanese ronin also sold drugs on a large scale and made huge profits from them.
A large number of Japanese ronin opened tobacco houses in China, and through coercion, seduction and other means, they cultivated many "addicts". Not only did they squeeze their hard-earned money out of them, but they also forced these people to engage in drug trafficking, infiltrating drugs into the people and making them cash machines for the prodigals. Then, using these ill-gotten gains, they wantonly acquired and seized the land of the people, so that the people became their long-term workers, and they worked the ronin's farms to continue to create wealth for them.
The most heinous crime of the Japanese ronin is trafficking in Chinese women.
They formed a chain of trafficking in women in China, starting with ronin looking for young and beautiful Chinese women everywhere and forcibly selling them to women trafficking companies. It was then resold by the company to the brothels of major green buildings. Within a few years, thousands of women had been brutally abused by the Japanese ronin and reduced to prostitutes or comfort women.
In short, the Japanese ronin is a social tumor created under specific historical conditions, and the crimes committed by the Chinese are no less than those committed by the Japanese regular army. The deep disasters brought to the Chinese people are difficult to describe.
(Reference: "Records of the Scourge of Japan's Ronin")