Speakers:

• Sandra Wilson (Professor of History at Murdoch University)
• Robert Cribb (Emeritus Professor of Asian History at Australian National University)
• Ōkubo Yūta (PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology in the Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo)

Moderator:

• Kyle Cleveland, ICAS Co-Director

Overview

Japanese soldiers committed many acts of brutality and neglect against Asian and Allied prisoners-of-war and civilians during the Pacific War of 1941-45. Thousands of perpetrators were brought to account for these crimes in Allied tribunals after the conflict and hundreds were sentenced to death. The scholars who comprise this panel focus on the question: why did the Japanese military commit war crimes in the Pacific region on such a scale? Many observers blame the atrocities on supposedly enduring aspects of Japanese culture such as bushido or Shinto-based notions of Japanese superiority. The most compelling explanations for war crimes, however, lie elsewhere: in the circumstances of the war itself and in the culture and pattern of deployment of the Japanese military during the hostilities. These presentations examine key aspects of the Japanese military in the 1930s and 1940s which facilitated the commission of war crimes, including factional conflict and an official tolerance of individual initiative that flouted military discipline. They then investigate two categories of war crime committed by the Japanese military in territories it had occupied, seeking to explain the circumstances of the crimes and suggest why they were perpetrated. This analysis examines first the phenomenon of routine violence against civilians living under occupation, and then the atrocities committed against suspected guerrillas and spies during counter-insurgency operations.

Speakers:

Sandra Wilson

Professor of History at Murdoch University

Sandra Wilson is Professor of History at Murdoch University and is a historian of modern Japan. She is author of The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931-33 (2002) and, with Robert Cribb, Beatrice Trefalt and Dean Aszkielowicz, of Japanese War Criminals: the Politics of Justice After the Second World War (2017). She is editor of Nation and Nationalism in Japan (2002), and, with Robert Cribb and Christina Twomey, of Detention Camps in Asia: the Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History (2022).

Robert Cribb

Emeritus Professor of Asian History at Australian National University

Robert Cribb is Emeritus Professor of Asian History at Australian National University. His research focusses on national identity, mass violence, historical geography and environmental politics, especially in Indonesia. He is author (with Sandra Wilson, Beatrice Trefalt and Dean Aszkielowicz) of Japanese War Criminals: the Politics of Justice After the Second World War (2017) and editor, with Christina Twomey and Sandra Wilson, of Detention Camps in Asia: the Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History (2022).

Ōkubo Yūta

PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology in the Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo

Ōkubo Yūta is a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology in the Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo, whose research focusses on the Japanese army in the interwar period. He is the author of 「日本陸軍と対国際連盟政策」『史学雑誌』第130編第10号、2021年 (‘The Japanese Army and its Policy towards the League of Nations’, Shigaku zasshi, Vol. 130, no. 10, 2021).