This article is quite consciously modelled on and inspired by the excellent City Journal article by Theodore Dalrymple entitled "The Specters Haunting Dresden" (as an aside I wonder if the original title was inspired by this?). That article should, in my opinion, be read by all and sundry, I make no such claims about the general applicability of this one. However I do believe that the similarities and differences between Japan and Germany after the second world war are instructive and certainly worth considering, especially as the actions of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are still resonating 60 years on.
Hiroshima, like Dresden, was totally destroyed by allied bombing, although in Hiroshima's case the vast majority of the destruction was caused by one bomb rather than the waves of bombing that the former suffered, however the result was at least as bad. In Japan one has the unique opportunity to compare the effects of conventional firebombing (e.g. Tokyo) with that of nuclear destruction. It is not clear to me which is worse although psychologically I suspect the latter seems worse since the lingering radiation effects mean that it causes deaths for a far longer time. On the other hand the majority of the victims died nearly instantly whereas with conventional bombing they tended to slowly burn or boil to death. One thing that I am very sure of is that anyone who intends any sort of widespread indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets should visit the Hiroshima bomb museum. My favoured punishment for people convicted of genocide would be to have them tied up in a pen at a museum like that with photos of their victims surrounding them.
On the other hand the shock of Hiroshima has contributed to a feeling that the Japanese were themselves victims. Unlike (Western) Germany where one legacy of the Nazi regime is a severe lack of confidence in the idea of pride in Germany even today, the second world war in Japan is far more something that is considered to be a bad thing that happened to everyone. The fact that the rape on Nanjing and other vile events occured essentially unprovoked is lost in the clamour that the bombs were worse than anything else. On the other hand there is still in Japan a widespread feeling that Japan should not involve itself in a military fashion in any respect at all. If Germans have a fear of patriotism, Japanese seem to have a fear of militarism or even of getting involved. Germany has faced its demons by trying to integrate itself within a larger Europe, Japan has tended to isolate itself from its negihbours. However in many ways because Japan has such a rich unified history the second world war period has far less influence on Japan that it has on Germany.
Japanese do not seem to dwell much on the past. Although there are some extremely old things in Japan, the reverence for the past which we see in Europe is generally lacking. I would say the Japan has adopted a postive forward looking and generally optimistic attitude. It would be plausible to say that this was adopted from the Americans during the post war years but I thinkt that would be at best simplistic if not totally wrong. After all, unlike Germany which had regular external contact during the previous centuries, Japan was essentially a closed feudal country until the 1860s. Thereafter it adopted modern ways at a rate which none of its immediate neighbours did and managed in half a centruy to convert itself from being a potential colony of a European power to being a great power itself with its own colonies. There is I think a decent argument that Japan merely sought to emulate the great powers of the latter nineteenth century and failed to identify the cultural and structural weaknesses inherent in the Imperial model.
On the other hand a large part of what the rest of the world sees as callous brutality does still echo in today's Japan. Japan as a society is still remarkably callous and uncaring about the suffering of others. Japanese tend to be pretty self reliant and to depend on family, friends and the local community to help out when in trouble and they seem to feel that others should do likewise. This is a clear difference from the German viewpoint which tends to look to the state to provide a safety net and to be more generous about the misfortunes of others. Although both Japan and Germany have experienced remarkable post-war economic growth their fortunes have somewhat diverged over time. In the fifties and sixties both had successful heavy industry with all the surrounding trappings from car manufacturers to washing machine makers, but somehow the Japanese managed to adopt to the electronic age while the Germans didn't. Despite the popping of the Japanese bubble in the early 1990s Japan has managed to remain innovative and to adopt to new markets in a way that Germany mostly has not. Japanese companies are still globally competitive in most areas of the electronic age and entrepreneus such as the founder of Softbank still flourish. Economically Japan is very much a free market economy while Germany isn't. This is the big difference between Dresden and Hiroshima. The former has an unemployment rate of 30% or more while Hiroshima, even if you add in all sorts of part time or underemployed workers, has a rate under 10%. Dresden and Hiroshima were both destroyed 60 years ago. Hiroshima shows no sign of it with its Tokugawa era Castle and apparently timeless gardens completely rebuilt and with even its most ugly modern blocks of flats in good repair and flashing neon signs into the night. Dresden by contrast has smart bits and slums, a legacy not so much of the second world war as the communist regime installed afterwards and which 15 years of West German subsidy has failed to erradicate.
The problem with Hiroshima and its bomb is that it permits Japan to excuse its past. To its neighbours, who suffered from Japan's efforts to imitate the worst parts of European imperialism, this is not a valid excuse or even sufficient punishment. Although I believe that Japan has, perhaps accidentally, more than repaid the harm it caused by its exporting of its economy, it has consistently failed to show the sort of true remorse and contrition that it should. There is certainly a good argument to be made that Japan could never show sufficient remorse for some people, and another related one that in its deeds it has redeemed itself for its previous misdeeds, yet Japan still manages to cause offence by failing to acknowledge the suffering it caused or even, sometimes, to realise why it should feel remorse. Yet having said that, the governments who make the biggest fuss are the ones who show the same callousness with the communist PRC being absolutely tops. To be sure Japan should grovel for Nanjing and other atrocities, but the communists should also admit and apologise for the far greater deaths caused by Chairman Mao.
The prodding of recent American regimes to try and force Japan to involve its citizens in international missions and the recent lunacy of N Korea are slowly eroding Japan's half century of pacifism and detachment from the hardships of the world but this remains a slow process. I do believe that Japan could offer a useful military as well as economic counterweight to China and I do believe that gradually the nations of South East Asia will appreciate Japan acting in such a role, but it is going to be a slow process and one which the Japanese will have to work harder to build trust than they need have.
Dalrymple ends his piece with the following:
As I walked through Dresden, I lamented the loss of an incomparable city, while thinking how difficult it must be to be a German, for whom neither memory nor amnesia can provide consolation.
It is rather different in Hiroshima where a combination of amnesia and selective memory has permitted the inhabitants to look more optimistically on the future and thus have less fear of looking back to the past. The spectre haunting Hiroshima is the bomb and while it has far less material effect on its current residents it has I suspect left them emotionally scarred and the scars are only now coming off. Japan acts like a severely introverted child and like many such it takes a while for it to be accepted in the community at large.