Analysis Of World War Ii The Japanese Suicide Phenomenon

It is well known that the Japanese soldiers were intrepid and never surrendered during World Warâ…¡.Suicide attacks employed in battles include "the human bullet","suicide pilots", "suicide assault","dying in glory" and so on.Soldiers sent for these missions were almost doomed to die.Since no comprehensive discussion has been made on this problem so far,this author intends to do a tentative research on this issue.Firstly,aide by statistical and analytical methods,this article has counted the overall KIA rate of the Japanese soldiers,the death rates of different kind of suicide attacks as well as the surrendering rate,which helps to reproduce the craziness and universality of the suicides of the Japanese soldiers who would rather die than yield.Secondly,Japanese soldiers' different ways of committing suicide are presented.These suicide attacks can be divided into "the human bullet","suicide pilots","suicide parachute squad" "manned torpedo","suicide submarine","anti-tank close fighting","suicide germ warfare" and so son.Being defeated,Japanese soldiers tended to commit suicide by disemboweling,taking poison,biting the bullet,burning etc.In addition,there are also some suicide-oriented defensive programs called "a whole nation dying in honor".Then,causes of these suicide attacks are analyzed from the perspectives of rooted bushido spirit,the long-existed jingoism education,patriotic complex,religious mobilization,historical and cultural tradition and special geographic environment.All these led to the suicide actions of Japanese soldiers.Finally,the article summarizes the characteristics of Japanese suicide attacks.They were extremely cruel and volunteer;suicide soldiers had blind loyalty and they were greatly influenced by the principle of "spirit outweighing material".What people can learn from this is that bushido is the major reason leading to Japanese soldiers' committing suicide.Nowadays, bushido still exists,more or less,in Japanese culture.In other words,they still have the environment for bushido.Therefore,people all over the world should be alert to this in case Japanese would readopt jingoism.