Over at the Marmot’s Hole the proprietor wrote a couple of interesting articles about Japan’s imperialism and how it can be compared with the imperialism of the European powers etc etc. I wrote a couple of comments to the second one and I think I pro…

Your calculations are incorrect. You have forgotten quite memorable moments of history.

Why don’t you include “victims” of the Imjin war, “victims” of the “Wako” or “victims” of the ancient war between the Yamato dynasty and Shilla?

My figure of 30 million killed by the Japanese includes all the victims killed (civilian and military) in: Japanese colonies, the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and World War II — each incident was a continuation of Japanese imperialism throughout Asia.

I’ll include two other observations. One, that perhaps the Korean War deaths ought to be included in this figure since the Japanese were directly responsible for the ensuing conflict and misery. And two, in actuality, the real number could be as high as 100,000,000 killed by the Japanese in their wicked imperialistic endeavors.

Here’s something rather odd about the German colonial experience, at least in Tanzania. Now, the Germans were by-and-large hated as colonial rulers—their administrative methods were a bit rough around the edges, to put it mildly. Yet they were the only colonial power to employ an indigenous language as their language of administration—Swahili in Tanganyika. One might consider this rather progressive, although the joke runs (at least I think it’s a joke) that the Germans decided to go with Swahili because they were so racist they believed the Africans couldn’t learn German.

Guessing that many numbers cited here are overestimated, unproofed or controversial, I can only give a first hand experience of Germany’s history education about their colonial
policy.

The Prussian-led German Empire, being a status-driven latecomer in the dirty buisness of colonialism, acquired the rest of the world what their European competitors had left over, mainly nowadays Namibia, Togo, Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi and parts of Tanzania and Kenya. Besides some unimportant islands like Western Samoa,parts of Papua-New Guinea and Kiao-Chau (protectorate) with Tsingtao (leasehold) in China.

Alongside the typical colonial policy of that time like forced labor and forced Christianization for the natives, generally viewing them as uncivilized and underdeveloped tribes at best or as worthless babaric sub-humans. Nonetheless the Germans had their fair share of building modern infrastructure in their overseas territories and recruitment of native administration aides through modern schooling.

The worst part of the colonial history was the genocide of the Hereros during the Herero Insurgence starting 1904 in Namibia. Ten-thousands of Hereros, later the Nama were systematically “dried up” through mercilessly forced expulsion into waterless regions and cutting them off from water resources. With no exception for women, children or elderly.

The nowadays Herero organization claiming compensation from the German government (even in front of US courts) are denied any money in diplomatic acquiesence of Germany and the Namibian government.
Even during the left-led governance of Chancelor Schröder and Foreign Minister Fischer the representatives of the German state were restricted and keen to avoid any offcial compensation-triggering wording of apology for the genocide. Only expressions of abstract “regret” could be heard, with the exception of the German Minister of Development Cooperation, who was bitch-slapped for officially talking about guilt and responisbility for the genocide.

Comparing with the almost Pavlovian-conditioned political correct stance of Germany towards the Holocaust and the sins of World War II, you can see the striking difference of their handling and attitude towards their colonial past. The short-lived imperial German period is quite non-existent in the history curriculum at schools and in the collective memory of the Germans.

Overwhelmingly most of modern history education hovers around 1st World War, 12 years of Nazi-rule, Holocaust and the 2nd Wolrd War, Cold War and the re-unification. That’s it.
Today the average Hans on the street does know few to nil, that Germany even had overseas colonies in the past. And nobody cares about the Herero (who?) or about dark parts of history that happened before the heaviest burden for their historical record: the industrialized annihilation of over 6 million European Jews during Nazi-rule.

Japanese held their colonies for approximately 50 years, killing 30 million people — this is just a quarter of the time, with 10 million more people killed.

I don’t think you’ve ever cited a source for your “30 million killed” figure. Are you suggesting that Japan killed 30 million in its colonies—Korea, Taiwan and Manchukuo (and a number of Pacific territories)? Or does that number include casualties resulting from the Sino-Japanese Wars? Heck, even if it did take into consider WWII deaths, I still fail to see how you arrive at 30 million:

WWII casualties.

Thank you for the citation.

Are you claiming that the British killed 20 million people in India, or that the flu (disease in general) and famine/starvation was responsible for their death?

To put things into perspective, assuming your claim is true that the British killed 20 million in India, the British colonization of India lasted for nearly 200 years. The Japanese held their colonies for approximately 50 years, killing 30 million people — this is just a quarter of the time, with 10 million more people killed.

Can you cite any sources for this claim of 20 million Indians killed by the British to backup your claim of this so called “decent evidence”?

Davis, Mike (2002), Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. First chapter should do the trick.

Do your own research on Africa.

Yep, you’re right on the money. In Japan, the yakuza controls political campaigns, love hotels, soaplands, pachinko parlors, gambling (horse racing, sports betting, mah-jong), drugs, and of course everyone’s favorite — Japanese porn. Their roots run too deeply in the fabric of Japan’s society for them to be removed.