Well this seems to have drifted far from your original (seeming) point of explaining the plausibility of the Japanese giving fearsome to names to Allied a/c due to their culture. Some of your statements now seem to pretty directly contradict that as in 3, which IMO means you've moved further torward the truth, because it was in fact particularly unlikely that the Japanese would do something like call an Allied plane by a name implying it was to be feared, even compared to other air arms, who probably wouldn't do it either
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Read my post concerning the term "whispering death". i never said there waas any evidence to support it. My exact words were that it was
unlikely that the term came from a japanese source. Dont try and attribute things I never said or implied to justify your obvious and overt pro-japanese bias
Anyway on a few other points,
1. and 2. Every modern nation has a national myth of its past, not 'myth' is sense of the 'air myths' we're speaking of here, but some semi-true story that expresses what that nation thinks it is or wants to be. It never exactly coincides with the real past. Just the fact that typical Japanese officers, commoners, would ape the habits of Samurai gives you a hint about that. That belief 'they were like the Samurai' came from the national myth created in the Meiji period, which was no aberration whatsoever, but the basis of a new society created not all that long before those 1940's men were born. Their actual ancestors weren't Samurai, they were peasants who counted for nothing, by and large. Their idea of what the Samurai was and how he should act was a mixture of history and national myth of the Meiji period, as modified (or mutated perhaps) by particular social developments between then and WWII. It's somewhat like Americans speaking of 'our traditions of the Old West', which had no actual place in the direct family lineage of the vast majority of Americans. But that's part of our national myth: the *story* of the Old West does have an impact
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Th myth about the japanese military being the descendants came from a number of sources, the influence of the meiji was about the least important influence. The rise of japanese militarism was not a random incidental event....it permeated every aspect of military traning, and the militarists exploited japans medieval military traditions down to and including training regimes for its personnel. if you are imbued with a miltary doctrine, which we call the code of the bushido, it is a certainty that the organization as a whol, including its aviators, and its military strategists are going to have their thinking, their problem solving approaches, coloured by that thinking.
its intersting that you raise the myth of the old west. I agree that its a part of the American national psyche, but it seems to escape you that this psyche is essentially rooted in the very thing i am talking about. the myths of the old west for their time are essentially technocratic in comparison to the older, more medieval thinking of the japanese self image
Japan was inward looking from around the 1620's to 1850's, which isn't just to nitpick but to recognize that attitudes ca. 1550 were quite different again; Japan a major trading country at that time. And an expanisionist culture and a hermit culture are not the same thing at all; that was a real change. As far as brutality the English in the 16th century still half hung, castrated and mutilated to death live victims, and put down rebellions with mass killings. Once you go back a few centuries that was pretty much universal behavior when rulers thought it necessary
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You are right about the period 1550 to 1620, however you fail to acknowledge that during that period the japanese fought a series of wars that progressively decreased the outward looking, progressive attitudes, and reinforced the inward looking shogunates. The ultimate outcome of that period (1550-1620) was the adoption of the isolationist policies thast we are talking about. It is therefore entirely valid for me to include 150
I think this discussion also gets back to leftover Allied WWII propaganda (which doesn't mean 'false', but just simplified story to get across and have adopted by the audiecne the 'necessary' POV). 'The Japanese were just like that via their culture', when in fact the 16th century culture of Japan had no more really direct impact on 20th century behavior than in the West.
sorry but this has nothing to do with post war propaganda. The japanese as a society were far more conservative and militaristic than anything seen in the west, arguably even moreso than the germans. It was (and is) an inherently conservative society, and its behaviour in the 20th century is entirely consistent with that.
because of that ultra societal conservatism, ther was and is amuch greater affinity to their medieval past than anythig we have experienced. There is nothing proagandist about that. There is, however an agenda behind trying to dress up japanese socitey as 'progressive" and "just like us"....in fact they were neither.
There were real events in Japanese history which caused the social/political changes which manifested in Japanese policy and behavior in the 30's-40
Of course some also had roots much further back, but it's way oversimplified to characterize as just a resumption of 'normal' after an 'aberration', which also logically implies that current Japanese society is another 'aberration', IMO a very hard to support thesis in the face of any facts or direct experience in modern Japan
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There are plenty of sociological theses to support that very notion...suggest you do some basic research and come back to earth before making statements like that
4. Actually Japanese airmen were mostly enlisted men, as opposed to mostly (and eventually almost exclusively) officers in Western air arms and had less prestige if anything
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true that they were mostly enlisted. I would also reinforce that by saying that the military leaders that used them viewed them as 'cheap and expendable". Apart from that, almost everything else in your statement is sheer fabrication, designed i believe to achive a specific purpose and outcome. The prewar aircrews were imbued with a psyche of invincibility and indoctrinated to amuch greater extent of the military virues of their 'system" to a far greater extent than anything in the west.
also, it is true that ASW and commerce defense generally were a blind spot in Japanese naval thinking for a long time before WWII. But besides being a completely different issue than whether the outlook was 'romantic' or 'technical', the IJN's theory of beating the USN in a decisive naval action in a short war, while ultimately unsuccessful and perhaps unrealistic, was more realistic than the idea of winning a war of attrition v the US by successfully defending Japanese commerce for a long time.
It was also a strategic blind spot for both the RN and USN. However, whereas both the western navies recognized that defincy and reacted appropriately (some initiatives like convoying not costing a penny inrresources), the japanese displayed a marked resistance to such thinking. Almost certainly this sterms from the more authoritarian system within the IJN, japanese officers were simply not trained to think outside the square 9or circle0, wester officers were (well, generally)