Re: Japan may give troops to help rebuild Iraq

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (shuji matsuda) wrote:

> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 
> Thomas Billings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> :If we base it on the behaviors of the ashigaru-style IJA of WW II, we 
> 
> reason to believe that they will be like the ashigaru. They may yet turn 
> 
> Do you know the meaning of "ashigaru."?
> I doubt it.

I have relied for my knowledge of the medieval ashigaru on Sansom's 
3-volume history of Japan that runs up to 1869.

I have termed the WW II Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) as an ashigaru-like 
force because they acted with many of the same characteristics that 
japanese commentators of the middle ages denounced in the ashigaru 
troops that had been raised then, from the peasant farmers of Japan, to 
fight as light infantry. They were non-samurai. They had none of the 
training in restraint that was traditional in the samurai caste. They 
were eventually excellent forces, and certainly decisive, even against 
cavalry, under Oda Nubunaga, and Hideyoshi, when armed with 
arquebuses.  They were the majority of late 16th Century Japan's 
national army, to the extent it had one by 1590.

They also had a reputation for rape, theivery, murder outside of combat,  
and burning what they couldn't steal, to cover their crimes. They were 
the major portion of the troops Hideyoshi used in the invasions of Korea 
at the end of the 16th Century. Their lack of restraint there was deemed 
to be the major cause of the horrific effects those invasions had on 
Korea. Some have speculated that the invasion of the mainland was a good 
way to get the ashigaru outside of Japan, since they were then raping 
burning, and pillaging someone else's lands. Hideyoshi knew Japan needed 
some peace on its own soil. It is notable that after the invasions of 
the mainland ultimately failed, and the Shogunate succession was finally 
taken up by Ieyasu Tokugawa, that the ashigaru had to be suppressed by 
the Tokugawa with a heavy hand and considerable crafty political 
maneuvering, as well as combat.

During the 20 years before WW II, the IJA saw the percentage of samurai 
caste officers drop precipitously, and the large national army came to 
be mostly manned and officered by the same social groups that had 
composed the ashigaru troops of the 16th Century. The IJA of WW II was 
trained, for the most part, as excellent light infantry, but with 
substantial brutality coarsening their perceptions. They had even 
greater technical advantages than their 16th Century counterparts did 
over Chinese troops, and they acted in similar fashion, but were 
campaigning successfully for longer because of their greater advantages. 
Thus, they had an even greater destructive effect, over far more 
territory, killing far more people, than their 16th Century predecessors.

The WW II  IJA was eventually suppressed, as the ashigaru were, though 
it took a great deal of effort from outside Japan to do so.

As I noted in my previous posts in this thread, I do not expect today's 
JSDF troops to behave in any way like the IJA of WW II, since they are 
not from the same environment (isolated farming communities), nor 
trained in the brutal fashion the IJA of WWII was. Nor, to my knowledge, 
have they shown any interest in the politicization of the armed forces 
that so distorted Japanese politics between 1922 and 1937.

Regards,

Tom Billings

-- 
Oregon L-5 Society

http://www.oregonl5.org/