Nobusuke Kishi (Abe's grandfather) has an extremely interesting backstory:
> As a self-described "playboy of the Eastern world", Kishi was known during his four years in Manchukuo for his lavish spending amid much drinking, gambling, and womanizing.[34] Kishi spent almost all of his time in Manchukuo's capital, Hsinking (modern Changchun, China) with the exception of monthly trips to Dalian on the world famous Asia Express railroad line, where he indulged in his passion for women in alcohol- and sex-drenched weekends.[29] When not visiting the brothels of Manchuria, Kishi was demanding sex from the waitresses who served him at the expensive restaurants he patronized. When he was locked up in Sugamo prison in 1946 awaiting trial, he reminisced about his Manchukuo years: “I came so much, it was hard to clean it all up”.[29] According to Driscoll, "photographs and written descriptions of Kishi during this period never fail to depict a giddy exuberance: laughing and joking while doling out money during the day and looking forward to drinking and fornicating at night."[35] Kishi was able to afford his hedonistic, free-spending lifestyle as he had control over millions of yen with virtually no oversight, alongside being deeply involved in and profiting from the opium trade.[30] Before returning to Japan in October 1939, Kishi is reported to have advised his colleagues in the Manchukuo government about corruption: "Political funds should be accepted only after they have passed through a 'filter' and been 'cleansed'. If a problem arises, the 'filter' itself will then become the center of the affair, while the politician, who has consumed the 'clean water', will not be implicated. Political funds become the basis of corruption scandals only when they have not been sufficiently 'filtered.'"[4]
> At the same time, Kishi repeatedly expressed a disdain for Chinese people as impure and unclean.[32] One of Kishi's closest friends and business partners, the yakuza gangster Yoshio Kodama, summed up his boss's thinking about the Chinese as follows: "We Japanese are like pure water in a bucket; different from the Chinese who are like the filthy Yangtze river. But be careful. If even the smallest amount of shit gets into our bucket, we become totally polluted. Since all the toilets in China empty into the Yangtze, the Chinese are soiled forever. We, however, must maintain our purity".[33]
"extremely interesting backstory" is definitely one way to describe Nobusuke Kishi's time as the army officer who was in charge of Manchukuo. "Vile history" is the phrase I'd personally use.
I read the Unit 731 Wikipedia page recently and almost wished I hadn’t. Im surprised I’d never heard about it and neither had any of my friends. Not that it’s a competition, but some of the atrocities I read about on that page were worse than any other World War atrocity I know and it seems like it’s just been swept under the rug.
> During the final months of World War II, codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan of Unit 731 was to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. The plan was scheduled to launch on 22 September 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.
It's swept under the rug because the US pardoned many of the the perpetrators (such as Shiro Ishii) in exchange for data about their experiments, which were then continued under the US biological weapons program, and projects like MKULTRA.
I was aware of the crimes of Unit 731 and how the U.S. granted immunity to the worst perpetrators in exchange for data, but never read about the details. I did that just now; what a horrifying rabbit hole that was. One disgusting bit:
> Although the Soviet authorities wished the prosecutions to take place, the United States objected after the reports of the investigating US microbiologists. Among these was Edwin Hill, the Chief of Fort Detrick, whose report stated that the information was "absolutely invaluable;" it "could never have been obtained in the United States because of scruples attached to experiments on humans" and "the information was obtained fairly cheaply."[7] On May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington, D.C., that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."[10]
Basically, everywhere you look you can find these absolute monsters at the helm who drool at “cheaply obtained” and “absolutely invaluable” data from gruesome live human experimentation. Some were just given the opportunity to carry out more of it.
Its almost like when conditions are right, even people we consider normally on the moral side, end up flushing down down the toilet any bit of humanity, because of some 'benefits'. Justification can be as weak as general threat, terrorism, preparing for future 'if something happens'.
It’s pretty well known that the Japanese Empire did some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. Their number of victims is roughly in line with that of the Nazi. I will hasard that the USA doesn’t like to talk about Unit 731 because they gave immunity to the researchers in exchange for the results of their research on chemical weapons in an operation mirroring Paper Clip for rockets.
There's a horror movie about Unit 731 called "Men Behind the Sun"[1]... It's not high art or anything, but it is super disturbing... one of the most horrific things I've ever seen.
He wasn't an army officer. He was a lawyer/bureaucrat in charge of the forced industrialization of Manchukuo after studying the economic systems of places like Wiemar Germany, and was given total authority by the army to run this vertical as he saw fit.
There's definitely a culture of brothels that still exists thats pretty foreign to the West. You won't really hear about it because Japanese people don't just offer there stories up to foreigners... but I've had sources inform me of places where people can go for orgies (in a way Americans may casually visit a strip club which is a toned down version of this) and I believe in some cases can even be expensed to the business as entertainment.
Yeah the orgy places are one of the worst kept secrets here. Everyone knows they exists, but it's not really spoken of. I had a friend (Japanese) that was invited and he just explained it as being weird. The place he went to just had glass rooms full of naked folks doing things naked people tend to do together. It was a combination of an orgy and a voyeur event.
Underground life in Japan can get pretty extreme. Typically foreigners aren't privy or allowed in such environments. Not saying it doesn't happen, though.
I'm not sure how much that reflects general attitudes. That show is also set in Shinjuku which I believe houses a lot of strip clubs and other similar activites.
Today I've learned about Asia Express, which had air conditioned cars in the 30s and ran on what looks like a branch of Russian-built China Eastern Raiway.
China is a source of, a threat of and competitor of china. It has tried to invade japan (and japan to Korea plus the whole china). This geo-political game will be played out in the coming decades, with Taiwan, Korea and USA all in.
Individual… some of the grands of his as prime minister important.
Sex part not that much. The founder of modern china has a few Japanese women and even had a daughter there. Not to mention his well known name is actually adopted from his Japanese name.
> As a self-described "playboy of the Eastern world", Kishi was known during his four years in Manchukuo for his lavish spending amid much drinking, gambling, and womanizing.[34] Kishi spent almost all of his time in Manchukuo's capital, Hsinking (modern Changchun, China) with the exception of monthly trips to Dalian on the world famous Asia Express railroad line, where he indulged in his passion for women in alcohol- and sex-drenched weekends.[29] When not visiting the brothels of Manchuria, Kishi was demanding sex from the waitresses who served him at the expensive restaurants he patronized. When he was locked up in Sugamo prison in 1946 awaiting trial, he reminisced about his Manchukuo years: “I came so much, it was hard to clean it all up”.[29] According to Driscoll, "photographs and written descriptions of Kishi during this period never fail to depict a giddy exuberance: laughing and joking while doling out money during the day and looking forward to drinking and fornicating at night."[35] Kishi was able to afford his hedonistic, free-spending lifestyle as he had control over millions of yen with virtually no oversight, alongside being deeply involved in and profiting from the opium trade.[30] Before returning to Japan in October 1939, Kishi is reported to have advised his colleagues in the Manchukuo government about corruption: "Political funds should be accepted only after they have passed through a 'filter' and been 'cleansed'. If a problem arises, the 'filter' itself will then become the center of the affair, while the politician, who has consumed the 'clean water', will not be implicated. Political funds become the basis of corruption scandals only when they have not been sufficiently 'filtered.'"[4]
> At the same time, Kishi repeatedly expressed a disdain for Chinese people as impure and unclean.[32] One of Kishi's closest friends and business partners, the yakuza gangster Yoshio Kodama, summed up his boss's thinking about the Chinese as follows: "We Japanese are like pure water in a bucket; different from the Chinese who are like the filthy Yangtze river. But be careful. If even the smallest amount of shit gets into our bucket, we become totally polluted. Since all the toilets in China empty into the Yangtze, the Chinese are soiled forever. We, however, must maintain our purity".[33]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi