Own Thoughts: Japan and the dealing with the 2nd Sino-Japanese War

Warning: The following post contains my opinion, based on my own thoughts and talks with many different people, most of them Japanese. I don't claim to be right, I just want to express my observation and opinion about it.

Okay, let's get started: Since some time, there is one observation in particular I wanted to write about. The dealing of the Japanese people with the Sino-Japanese wars, especially the second one (1937 - 1941). When I got to know some Japanese better, I asked some of them: "What did they teach you in school about the 2nd Sino-Japanese War?". The only source I had until then were primarily movies and articles which focused on the cruelties of Japanese during that time. Every medallion has (at least) two sides, so I wanted to know their point of view to get a better understanding.

But unfortunately, Japanese don't learn much about this war. It was often said to me that they just learn that this war happened and that was basically it. For me, this was the complete opposite to the German education about the Second World War and especially the Third Reich and its cruelties. To be fair, cruelties are usually the part which is left out of historical education, although this is the one things we can learn the most out of, in my opinion.

With my previous mindset, I thought that Japanese students also get educated about the cruelties during the Sino-Japanese war, because it is one of the more recent events. Also resulted the policy of this time in so much loss and pain for Japan, I thought they would be teached to prevent such a thing from ever happening again, like Germans are teached about the Third Reich.

In this moment, I recognized that I didn't know much about how other people learn about their countries history. Every nation deals different with it, which is probably also something which leads to many conflicts. How can you understand somebody really, when you learn from the past different? Or is this really a problem after all? To be honest, I cannot even say if it's better to forget or to be constantly reminded about things in the past you didn't do.

If anyone got offended by that, please accept my apologies. I think this is a difficult topic for everyone in which many sides play a major role. Overall, I think everybody should decide how strong the past influences the own perspective and opinion.