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Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 Whether or not the Japanese peasants were as fanatical as the military-hardliners would have become irrelevant very quickly. The other characteristic of the peasantry of Japan was the propensity to take what the Emperor and the ruling class told them to do as Gospel-truth and right (so to speak.) Japan's poor were not accustommed to thinking for themselves in the larger political scheme of things. It wouldn't have taken all that much for the Japanese military to whip them up into a terrified frenzy against the "American demons." Even after Japan surrendered, her people still had a lot of racist based hatred of Americans throughout their culture. |
Your comment about the peasant class is fairly well on-point ... you have to remember though that the Emperor was viewed as a God and
ANY program which had his blessing was viewed as an edict from on high ... the blood bath at the shoreline of mainland Japan, would have been devastating both for the allied forces as well as the Japanese.
The passage of time has somewhat moderated the hatred of the "White Devils" ... but ... there is still a rather large segment of Japanese society that still don't like "Ugly Americans". Some of these feelings come across in their dealings with American businesses which wish to ply their trades within the borders of Japan. Some Americans call these actions protectionism ... what it really amounts to though are the true feelings of dislike of Americans surfacing within the business field.