Warriors Of The Rising Sun

A penetrating history of how the Japanese army, once admired for its chivalry, became a legion of brutality and atrocity. During World War II, many of Japan's soldiers committed such crimes against humanity that the world recoiled in horror. During the notorious six-week-long "rape of Nanking" in 1937, Japanese forces murdered at least 200,000 men, women, and children.

Throughout the Pacific War, Allied prisoners were often starved, tortured, beheaded, even cannibalized. Although Japan's military men fought bravely and with resolve against overwhelming numbers again and again, their astonishing brutality made them a loathsome, unforgivable enemy. While this chapter of Japanese history is well known, few realize that earlier in this century the Japanese were celebrated throughout the West for chivalry in warfare.

During the Boxer Rebellion in China and the savage Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the Western press lauded the Japanese for their kindness to the enemy wounded and imprisoned. Warriors of the Rising Sun chronicles the Japanese military's transformation from honorable "knights of Bushido" into men of historic cruelty.
In the Boxer Rebellion and Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese military rightly earned a reputation for chivalry in combat, showing generosity to their defeated foes.

In both of those conflicts, conversely, European forces committed numerous acts of savagery that, were they repeated today, would be subject to international censure. Only a few decades later, the Japanese military was behaving barbarously to enemy soldiers and civilians alike, committing acts of murder, torture, and even cannibalism.

Anthropologist Robert Edgerton examines this sudden reversal, locating it in changes in Japanese military culture. One Japanese general, following surrender in 1945, attributed those changes to a cult of young warriors who sought to recapture ancient--and largely imagined--martial virtues. Fascinating at turns, this book illuminates much of contemporary discussions regarding Japan's defense role in East Asia.