SONS OF NIPPON- BOWING TO GUARDS AND SOLDIERS

•Pre-war xenophobia[edit] Bowing

•Bowing in front of superiors was entirely normal for the Japanese. But the Dutch felt humiliated by the obligation to bow. Moreover, bowing was subjected to clearly defined rules. Those who did not follow the rules were punished.. In fact, bowing in front of a guard meant bowing in front of the emperor, in the eyes of the Japanese

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•Racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial Japan, having begun with the start of Japanese colonialism.[41] The Meiji era Japanese showed a contempt for other Asians. The Shōwa regime preached racial superiority and racialist theories, based on nature of Yamato-damashii. According to historian Kurakichi Shiratori, one of EmperorHirohito's teachers :«Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority.» [42]

•According to the An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a classified report in 1943 of theMinistry of Health and Welfare completed on July 1, 1943, just as a family has harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the Japanese, as a racially superior people, were destined to rule Asia “eternally” as the head of the family of Asian nations.[43] The most horrific xenophobia of the pre-Shōwa period was displayed after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, where in the confusion after a massive earthquake, Koreans were wrongly maligned as poisoning the water supply. A vicious pogrom resulted in the deaths of at least 3 000 Koreans, and the imprisonment of 26 000.

•Attacks against Western foreigners and their Japanese friends by nationalist citizens, rose in the 1930s under the influence of Japanese military-political doctrines in the Showa period, after a long build-up starting in the Meiji period when only a fewsamurai die-hards did not accept foreigners in Japan.[44] For an exception, see Jewish settlement in the Japanese Empire.

•Racism was omnipresent in the press during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Greater East Asia War and the media's descriptions of the superiority of the Yamato people was unwaveringly consistent.[45] The first major anti-foreigner publicity campaign, called Bōchō (Guard Against Espionage), was launched in 1940 alongside the proclamation of the Tōa shin Shitsujō (New Order in East Asia) and its first step, the Hakkō ichiu.[46]

Mostly after the launching of the Pacific War, Westerners were detained by official authorities, and on occasion were objects of violent assaults, sent to police jails or military detention centers or suffered bad treatment in the street. This applied particularly to Americans and British; in Manchukuo at the same period xenophobic attacks were carried out against Chinese and other non-Japanese.