AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

and establish dai-to-a? Because Japan had to prove itself as the
new China. Being the cultural offspring of China, but having left
China behind economically, a pattern of rank discordance/45/ would
predict aggression. If Japan were to substitute for China as the
East Asian power capable of defending East Asian/Chinese culture
against the West, there should be no doubt not only that Japan was
strong but that China was weak, not even able to defend herself.
The "rape of Nanking" is a very correct term: rape is about power,
not only about sex. In addition rape is about impregnating women
with the genetic code of the rapist; the ultimate power,
controlling not only her but the offspring. Japanization followed
the massacre, implanting the Japan code.
This kind of thinking filled the Japanese collective
subconscious, and not only at the top level of society, but all
over, through school textbooks, etc. The failure to reject this
culture today and be frank about Nanking is a negative indicator
rightly taken seriously by Korea and China. There is no closure.
Of course it is problematic to attribute guilt to a culture
legitimizing a massacre: that culture is a source of identity.
Wherever actors are found guilty others are by definition found
innocent: the Tribunal, the rest of society, future generations.
In the Occident other actors are exculpated by such mechanisms.
In Buddhism that does not work, hence a shared bad karma as
alternative theory. But the culture is in us, internalized, and
we are in the structure. Any guilt-attribution to structure and
culture, particularly the latter, is a self-accusation; and an
other-accusation of similar structures/cultures. Guilt-
attribution to actors is limited, to them, in space and time./46/