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Comment by halpert | Hacker News Reader

Weren’t Japanese soldiers in WWII instructed to kill themselves instead of being captured to “preserve honor?” That doesn’t sound like the acceptance of failure to me.

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It's far too much to go in to in the HN comments section from a phone, but removing the key military leadership who pushed this mindset, a new government structure, and the rejuvenation of business under e.g., Deming caused a significant shift in Japanese culture following the war.

Edit: This is not necessarily in support of the grandparent comment; rather, a caution against judging a culture based on historical anecdotes.

That sounds like saying that the ongoing US war crimes at Guantanamo are important for understanding Google app engine service contracts. Just because Japan is far away doesn't mean that everything that happened there happened in the same place at the same time.

Only certain classes of officers if I remember correctly, and it more likely was motivated by preventing the leaking of intelligence under interrogation by the enemy, rather than really being about preserving honor. Of course it's probably easier to carry out seppuku if you convince yourself its honorable, rather than to just do it based on rationality.

Not all failure results in capture, so one particular failure scenario does not speak of the general view on failure.

A captured solider in war doesn't get to go home and try again after apologizing.

Also, going to war is inherently already a massive corruption of culture.

There were misunderstandings that there will not be good chances of dying painlessly if one was to be captured alive, based on Japanese norms and very scarce knowledge on American cultures. Better to pull the pin while you can than having to beg them for days to stab just an inch towards arteries, that's what "preserve honor" ultimately means.

They were instructed to avoid capture by any means because they had been indoctrinated by propaganda that indicated horrific treatment by Allied POW personnel. While this was obviously false, it's interesting to note that Japanese knowledge of America's history with slavery, segregation, and Indian removal would have made this assumption not unreasonable, and further, may have influenced Japanese treatment of American POWs. After all, a major consideration in Japan's decision to go to war in the first place was the leadership's understanding that their lack of status as a white power would hamper their colonial ambitions. They were only a few decades removed from being excluded from the Berlin Conference, for example.

> they had been indoctrinated by propaganda that indicated horrific treatment by Allied POW personnel.

Sources? I have never heard of that yet.

I can't remember where I initially read it, but it's mentioned on both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_prisoners_of_war_in_W... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Japan_during_the... and presumably in the associated citations.

Can I ask where your disbelief is sourced?

Not true, there are lots of sources of information that gives the entire picture: it is a tradition from the ages of samurai.

That's an oversimplification. Pre-existing notions about warrior conduct certainly played a role, but "samurai" were a class (bordering on caste); attitudes descending from bushido were a top-down mandate, enforced by the officer class, not something widespread in common civilian life (save for knowledge of how one is supposed to act towards high-ranking personnel).

If you think that the domestic propaganda machine wasn't running at mach speed in order to shape public perceptions to what would be most beneficial to the Imperial Army and Navy, I don't know what to say. They definitely were, and they definitely pushed, from multiple angles, the idea that surrendering would result in a worse spiritual, material, physical, and psychological outcome than the alternatives (take your pick of whichever motivates you most effectively).

That's exactly what acceptance of failure sounds like to me. E.g. you abandon a chess game when you accept you'll lose. To just keep pushing for a situation you know is irredeemable is to deny you've failed.

When you learned about that, you did not read the entire paragraph: being captured was traditionally considered a dishonor (for the past 500 years, at least), it is a huge failure for a soldier (or samurai). Ritual suicide is the solution to that dishonor.

There are degrees of failure, some is considered to be beyond fixing.

Citizens were also instructed to kill themselves.

But at least you won't end up in court.

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