The war of aggression against China launched by Japan in the 30s of the last century was wrong and criminal, and the global community has already reached a conclusion through the Tokyo Trial.
Today, I would like to talk to you about an interesting question: How do the current Japanese view the war of aggression against China that broke out 84 years ago?
This question, in fact, is very interesting.
In the 15 years from 2004 to 2019, Lao Feng has been working for multinational companies, and happens to be in charge of the business in Japan, flying to Japan several times a year, staying in Japan for at least a week each time, and thus coming into contact with a large number of Japanese people.
Therefore, Lao Feng and many Japanese people have discussed this issue.
Interestingly, most of the Japanese people I asked did not shy away from this question, but expressed their opinions directly.
Based on my experience and perception, I will make an imprecise estimate, as shown in the following table:
Lao Feng's Evaluation: Contemporary Japanese Views on the War of Aggression against China
Yes, that's a rough visual summary of mine.
At this point, please note that 60% and 30% of the data here are not accurate, but this is my judgment based on my experience with Japanese people.
However, here's a small video of interviewing Japanese people on the street, you can check it out:
Below, I will expand on these three types of people a little.
The first type of Japanese do not care about history, think that the war of aggression against China is a long time ago, have nothing to do with themselves, do not understand, have no interest in understanding, let alone evaluation.
The attitude of this kind of Japanese toward the war of aggression against China that broke out 84 years ago is that they are not familiar with it, they do not pay attention to it, they do not pay attention, they do not care, they think that it has nothing to do with them, and they have no opinion on it. What percentage of the population are Japanese? No one has counted them, but at least 60 percent or more. This is actually reasonable. This is because ordinary people don't care about things that have no direct interest in them, and this is true of any country and any nation, and the Japanese are no exception.
The second group of Japanese: They believe that the war of aggression against China is Japan's mistake and sin.
Such Japanese people often read newspapers, watch television, and sometimes read some books, and under the influence of mainstream public opinion, they believe that Japan's war of aggression against China was a mistake and a sin. However, even such Japanese do not think that the war of aggression against China in history has anything to do with them, let alone that they have any responsibility to history as future generations of Japanese. Therefore, they only think that "the war of aggression against China is wrong", but they do not think that the war has anything to do with them, nor do they plan to do anything for that embarrassing history.
The third group of Japanese: Japanese military actions that are considered to be defensive, retaliatory, and punitive, and actions to "liberate Asia."
This type of person is a typical Japanese person who is influenced by right-wing ideas. They believe that Japan is not wrong, that this is a typical "imperial view of history", and that such people make up a small part of the Japanese population.
Speaking of which, you may say: Lao Feng, this is your estimate, and it is not accurate.
Yes. You're right. Not exactly.
Good. Let's take a look at the polling data from Japan.
First, let's take a look at the Yomiuri Shimbun data from Japan.
The Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's largest newspapers, conducted a poll in Japan in October 2006, and the results of the poll were as follows:
Yomiuri Shimbun, 2006
Opinion poll on how the Japanese view the war of aggression against China
We can see from the Yomiuri Shimbun poll that 68 percent of Japanese respondents believe that the war of aggression against China was a war of aggression.
The 2006 polls may be too long.
Okay, let's look at the 2015 data.
In July 2015, Japan's "Kyodo News" also conducted a poll on the same theme.
Note: Kyodo News is a large news organization in Japan.
Kyodo News polled the following results:
Japan "Kyodosha" 2015
Opinion poll on how the Japanese view the war of aggression against China
Kyodo News poll results are simple and intuitive, and I don't need to comment on them.
Also in 2015, on August 8 and 9 of that year, Japan's "Mainichi Shimbun" also conducted a poll, and the theme was the same.
This time, the Mainichi Shimbun conducted a telephone survey, and a total of 1,015 Japanese people were surveyed by the Mainichi Shimbun. The results of the survey are as follows:
Mainichi Shimbun 2015
Opinion poll on how the Japanese view the war of aggression against China
We can see from the poll of the "Mainichi Shimbun" that the Japanese who deny the war of aggression against China still account for the main proportion.
Let's dig into this matter a little bit and find that the following two things are basically certain:
One of the phenomena: In Japan, there are far more people who don't care about history than people who care about history.
Phenomenon 2: Among the Japanese who care about history, the number of people who think that the war of aggression against China is wrong far exceeds the number of people who think that the war of aggression against China is not wrong.
In other words, in fact, in today's Japan, there are far more people who deny the war of aggression against China 84 years ago than there are people who affirm it.