Japanese Cultural Aggression Against China: The Cultural War of Scholars and Intellectuals on China

Author: Wang Xiangyuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: The series attempts to examine and reflect on the Japanese invasion of China from a deep cultural perspective, combining historical analysis and theoretical research to study how Japanese right-wing scholars and cultural figures collaborated with the Japanese invasion forces in China to implement various "cultural wars": ideological propaganda warfare, academic intelligence warfare, brainwashing education warfare, news and public opinion warfare, language and cultural warfare, religious and cultural warfare, literary and artistic warfare, etc. The series reveals through a large number of primary materials the cultural aggression that preceded and complemented military and economic aggression, which was actually Japan's "second battlefield" in China. The goal was to promote the "Imperial State ideology" and destroy the national concept and ethnic consciousness of the Chinese nation. Their various "cultural wars" in different cultural fields, as well as some specific practices in their arguments, planning, organization, and implementation, are not only shocking but also leave much to reflect upon. When "culture" is used to serve military aggression—such as manufacturing ideological public opinion to invade other countries in advance, researching and proving the necessity and possibility of invading other countries with force, conducting propaganda and incitement during invasion wars, aiming to enslave the people of the invaded countries, deliberately discriminating against, defaming, damaging, or destroying the culture of the target countries, or forcibly imposing one's own ideas, religious beliefs, cultural facilities, and language and literature on the target countries—these "cultural" actions constitute "cultural aggression." In the history of Japan's invasion of China, cultural aggression was one of the three fundamental forms of aggression alongside military and economic aggression, but academic research on cultural aggression has been relatively weak. As a comprehensive monograph on the systematic study of Japan's cultural aggression against China, this book uses a large number of primary Japanese materials to fully reveal the plans, strategies, implementation methods, and harms of cultural aggression, pointing out that the designers of Japan's ideological and strategic plans for invading China were mostly independent scholars and cultural figures rather than government officials in power. During the invasion war, these scholars and cultural figures became the specific implementers of cultural aggression against China, making it possible to call Japan's cultural aggression against China a "war of scholars and cultural figures."