ABSTRACT
The portrayal of the Japanese soldier of the Second World War as a fanatic is one of the more enduring images of the war in Asia and the Pacific. It has become embedded in popular memories of that war in the nations that suffered Japanese aggression and fought Japan in Asia. Fanaticism has continued to provide a staple explanation for the behaviour of Japanese soldiers whenever atrocities such as the 1937 massacre at Nanking, the 1945 massacre at Manila, or the treatment of Allied prisoners of war are revisited. Fanaticism also provides a readily accessible reason for the fact that until the mid-1970s Japanese soldiers were regularly found hiding in former battlefields, unwilling to accept that the war was over.1 During the war, fanaticism also provided for many the only reasonable explanation for behaviour that seemed irrational: Japanese troops, again and again, engaged in hopeless and doomed attacks against a much better armed enemy, and suffered staggering losses. Their readiness to die rather than surrender became as notorious as their brutality towards their captured enemies: such crazed behaviour, it was thought, stemmed from devotion to the emperor and to the ancient code of the warrior, the bushido. Actual experiences on the battlefield or in areas under Japanese occupation meshed easily with propaganda that dehumanised the Japanese enemy, and shaped an image of Japanese soldiers as fanatics that continues to have strong and often emotional resonance in the countries that fought Japan.2
