Collège De France (général)

Anne ChengCollège de FranceHistoire intellectuelle de la ChineAnnée 2024-2025Conférence - Naoko Shimazu : Japanese War Diaries from the Russo-Japanese WarWar and Peace: A Global History of Japan, 1904-1943Naoko ShimazuProfessor and Deputy Director, Tokyo CollegeNaoko Shimazu est invitée par l'assemblée du Collège de France sur proposition de la Pr Anne Cheng.RésuméThe Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was the first modern warfare of the twentieth century. Japan won the war against Russia which had the largest land army in the world at the time. In this lecture, we focus on the personal war diaries of Japanese conscripts who had been conscripted from all over the country, and mobilised to fight against the Russians in the northeastern provinces of China. Contrary to the official narrative of 'honorable war death' where Japanese soldiers were supposed to have found honour in dying for the country, conscript diaries told entirely different stories. Many of the conscripts came from poor rural areas and were bread winn