Last time, I mentioned that the Ming Dynasty sent spies into the Japanese archipelago to collect intelligence before launching a full-scale attack on Japan, including the history of Japan's name change.

In another time and space, when it comes to Japan, the vast majority of people in later countries will have a mixed feeling of joy and hatred for it, especially the Chinese who once called themselves "the upper state of the Celestial Empire". Why? He replied: "China and Japan are 'historical enemies' and cannot coexist in the world by nature!" ”

On the one hand, in China's history of humiliation in modern times, Japan is the neighboring country that has invaded China the most times and committed the most crimes, and since the beginning of the "First Sino-Japanese Naval War", China has been ravaged by Japan for half a century.

On the other hand, at that time, the Japanese had high cultural quality, excellent business skills, and Japan, as a small geographical country, made such extraordinary achievements in the world, which made the Chinese admire and envy!

In addition to joy and hatred, many Chinese can't help but ask: "What kind of nation are the Japanese?" In fact, in the later stage of World War II, after the United States and Japan went to war, in order to understand the opponent and defeat Japan completely, the US government set out to set up a group of experts to conduct an in-depth study of the national character of the Japanese. Among them, the most influential is a book written by the American scholar Ruth Benedict - "The Chrysanthemum and the Knife".

In the book, Ruth Benedict says of the Japanese: "The Japanese are aggressive by nature and gentle and modest; It is both reckless and advocating beauty; both arrogant and polite; It is both stubborn and unrelenting, but can stretch and bend; tame but unwilling to be manipulated; Loyal and rebellious; both brave and cowardly; Both conservative and receptive to a new way of life. The beautiful name is "gentlemen are harmonious but different, villains are the same but not harmonious." ”

These evaluations show that the national character of the Japanese people is a hybrid of all kinds of extremist ideas! The Japanese have such a contradictory personality that it seems difficult for outsiders to understand. However, if we understand the history of Japan and its national conditions, we may not think that the Japanese national character is so strange.

The complex character of the Japanese people stems from the environment in which they live, because of the small size of the country, the lack of resources, and the frequent occurrence of natural disasters. The Japanese living under such conditions naturally have a strong sense of crisis, which has permeated the entire history of Japan, and has prompted the Japanese to develop a sense of necessity to invade other countries and obtain materials from other countries for their own use in order to survive and continue. This is in line with the principle of the "Law of the Dark Forest".

As early as Japan's "Warring States Period", Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan, and when Japan's national power was a little stronger, Toyotomi Hideyoshi began to plan to annex Korea first, and then attack China, in a strategy to dominate the world.

At that time, China was in the era of the Ming Dynasty, just imagine, a small island country that had just ended its internal division, and in the blink of an eye, it planned to invade a big country, what kind of ambition was this?

Although Japan's war against China ended in a complete defeat, the aggressive mentality that the Japanese developed under the sense of crisis has not changed. As long as they have the opportunity and strength, they will actively expand in order to win again. Therefore, in modern times, because Japan took the lead in embarking on the road of "capitalist" development, its national strength was ahead of China and North Korea, resulting in the disaster of Korea becoming a Japanese colony and China suffering a crushing defeat in the "First Sino-Japanese War."

The character of the Japanese also determines the nature of their culture, because in history, Japan has always been a student of China, from the Warring States period to the end of the Qin Dynasty, there are tens of thousands of people who immigrated to Japan from China, especially "Xu Fu crossed the sea to seek immortals", and a large part of these people became the "messengers" of Chinese culture.

At the end of the 3rd century, Baekje physician Wang Ren transmitted the Chinese Confucian classics "Analects" in 10 volumes and 1 volume of "Thousand Character Texts" to Japan. In the 5th century, the Japanese aristocracy was already able to write in kanji.

In the 7th year of the reign of Emperor Wa (513), he established a "doctor's confession system" for the Five Classics (Yi, Li, Poems, Shu, and Spring and Autumn), and required Baekje to regularly send "sinologists" who were familiar with Confucian classics to Japan, and later added doctors of medicine, doctors, astronomy, geography, and the five elements of yin and yang.

By the time of Prince Shotoku (593-621), the Wa Kingdom sent students directly to China to fully absorb the civilization system of the Sui and Tang dynasties in China, laying the foundation for the development of Japanese culture. After the "Taika Reform", Japan further vigorously absorbed Chinese culture.

Between 630 and 894, Japan sent more than a dozen envoys to the Tang Dynasty, accompanied by many students, monks, and beautiful women. The first two contributed to the development of Japanese culture to a large extent, and the latter tried to seduce the taller Chinese men to breed them.

At that time, on the basis of absorbing Chinese Confucianism and Buddhism theories, Japan gradually formed a characteristic "spiritual culture", which had a great influence after its formation, and became the basic norms of Japanese values and morals, which was "bushido".

"Bushido" originated in the "Kamakura Shogunate" era in Japan. Originally, it advocated loyalty, faithfulness, honesty, martial arts, and honor. However, as a "political product" of the feudal shogunate era, "bushido" absorbed some superficial things from Confucianism and Buddhism, rather than its true meaning.

In the ideas of Confucianism and Buddhism, those things that cannot satisfy "bushido" are fully provided by "Shintoism", which is inherent in the Japanese nation. And the belief of "Shintoism" is based on "no distinction between right and wrong, only thick black". As a result, "bushido" tends to lead to extreme duality in personality formation:

self-agnostic, inferior; Believe in Buddhism and love to kill; Etiquette and brutality; the pursuit of science and the insistence on superstition; oppress the weak and obey the strong, and so on. This is exactly the same as the Western theory of "the law of the dark forest", and it is also in line with the "thick black theory" produced under the centralized power of Chinese absolutism!

Japan's "bushido" can be summed up in only eight words, that is: "righteousness", "bravery", "benevolence", "courtesy", "sincerity", "name", "loyalty", and "ke".

In the past, "bushido" was based on the promotion of goodness, but after Japan embarked on the path of militarism and militarism, "bushido" underwent an aberration. After that, "bushido", as the "spiritual norm" of the traditional feudal system, found a place to settle down in the increasingly "fascist" national army, and finally became a "propaganda tool" and "ideological program" for the "great Japanese imperialism" to carry out aggression and expansion after the Ming and Qing dynasties.

There is a closing ritual in "Bushido", and there is "seppuku" over there. "Seppuku" is the most "Japanese" form of suicide. In ancient times, the Japanese had to apologize for their losses in battle, and they had to disembowelment when they failed to complete the tasks assigned by the monarch. Even in modern times, "seppuku death" has an extraordinary meaning for Japanese people. "Seppuku" is noble because of its excruciating suffering, and in the hearts of the Japanese, it is the most powerful way to commit suicide.

From another point of view, it can be said that "the spirit of bushido is to see through death and sacrifice one's life unreservedly for the lord in order to be 'not afraid of death'." This kind of thinking is also a kind of reaction and falsification of the traditional Confucian "Shidao", because the Confucian "Shidao" emphasizes the righteousness of the monarch and the minister, and has the humanistic concepts of "the righteousness of the monarch and the minister" and "the harmony of father and son". However, Japan's "bushido" is based on the realization that the lord must not be afraid of death and do not want to die.

The noble spirit of "bushido" has been abused in modern times, because the Japanese government has taken advantage of the Japanese people's worship of the "bushido spirit" to cultivate a large number of soldiers who are not afraid of death and have the courage to sacrifice themselves for the country and war. The reason why Japan is so rampant in modern times is, to a large extent, because there is such a group of soldiers who are not afraid of death, such as the "kamikaze" who dares to fly planes to hit US aircraft carriers, and the "Kwantung Army" who dare to use sabers to chop Soviet tanks.

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Haha, thank you for your attention, collection, recommendation, subscription and review of this book! As an author, I am very happy and honored to provide readers with a novel that meets the needs of the general public. As the saying goes, "Life is short, but the tip of the pen is slender." "Therefore, the road to cultivation is long, where to find immortality? There is nowhere to go for troubles, and read the people in the book! I hope that the novel "Heaven and Earth Let Me Go" series can bring happiness and insight to everyone!

This story is pure fiction, if there are similarities, it is a coincidence! Friends, the part-time job is hard, the time is urgent, the creation is not easy, like the collection, by the way, forward, want to know the plot? Next time I break it down! ("The book has its own golden house?") There are thousands of bells in the book? There is Yan Ruyu in the book"? Welcome to my book)