Many nuggets can be unearthed from the Spanish Period, and an archetypal appraisal follows. "The Japanese are the most warlike people in this part of the world. They have artillery and many arquebuses and lances. They use defensive armor for the body." [Letter from Peñalosa to Felipe II, The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583, Edited and annotated by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson]

Impressions of Japan as pugnacious have been more long-standing than its reputation as an economic dynamo. Its first confrontation with the behemoth of East Asia brought both imprints to the fore as a rude awakening. "Japan, with a marvelous rapidity, in a few years modified her industries, adopted mechanical tools and appliances, accomplished a political revolution, introduced a feudal militia an attenuated copy of the Parliamentary régime, organized, equipped, and armed in a European fashion her army and fleet. Without a shadow of doubt the engineers, the literati, the industrial organizers, and the officials who had participated in this sudden transformation, understood the situation; but Europe, on the whole, was in ignorance of these singular events which were passing in Japan." [Paul Lafargue, "The Chino-Japanese War," Justice, 1 June 1895]

"The appearance of Japan as a strong ambitious state, resting on solid political and military foundations, but which scarcely has reached yet a condition of equilibrium in international standing, has fairly startled the world." [Captain A.T. Mahan, D.C.L., LL.D., United States Navy. The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, Limited, 1897]

A second war (1904-05), this time with a European power (Czarist Russia), magnified the mien of menace. "To-day, equipped with the finest machines and systems of destruction the Caucasian mind has devised, handling machines and systems with remarkable and deadly accuracy, this rejuvenescent Japanese race has embarked on a course of conquest, the goal of which no man knows. The headmen of Japan are dreaming ambitiously, and the people are dreaming blindly, a Napoleonic dream. And to this dream the Japanese clings and will cling with bulldog tenacity. The soldier shouting ‘Nippon, Banzai!’ on the walls of Wiju, the widow at home in her paper house committing suicide so that her only son, her sole support, may go to the front, are both expressing the unanimity of the dream." [Jack London, "The Yellow Peril," Feng-Wang-Cheng, Manchuria, June 1904]

Highlighted, moreover, was its theocratic essence.

"The religion of Japan is practically a worship of the State itself. Patriotism is the expression of this worship. The Japanese mind does not split hairs as to whether the Emperor is Heaven incarnate or the State incarnate. So far as the Japanese are concerned, the Emperor lives, is himself deity. The Emperor is the object to live for and to die for."

"The Japanese is not an individualist. He has developed national consciousness instead of moral consciousness. He is not interested in his own moral welfare except in so far as it is the welfare of the State. The honor of the individual, per se, does not exist. Only exists the honor of the State, which is his honor. He does not look upon himself as a free agent, working out his own personal salvation. Spiritual agonizing is unknown to him. He has a ‘sense of calm trust in fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, a stoic composure in sight of danger or calamity, a disdain of life and friendliness with death.’ He relates himself to the State as, amongst bees, the worker is related to the hive; himself nothing, the State everything; his reasons for existence the exaltation and glorification of the State." [Jack London, "The Yellow Peril," Feng-Wang-Cheng, Manchuria, June 1904]

From East and North Asia, the hazard hovered to the Pacific. "If Japan gets the Philippines she’ll have to fight a thousand tribes and the monkeys in the trees! She’ll have to fight also the crocodiles in the brooks." [Scout Master G. Harvey Ralphson. Boy Scouts in the Philippines. Or The Key to the Treaty Box. M. A. Donohue & Company, 1911]

After World War I, which Japan joined on the winning Allied side, the predictions of peril did not subside. Yet there was hope and pleas. "Japanese politics are determined not by the people, or even by Parliament, but by capitalistic and bureaucratic naval and military cliques. This system will only be overthrown by universal suffrage." [Sen Katayama, "Foreign Policy of Japan," November 18, 1922]

The pleadings indicted the armed corporate elites but absolved the working people. "The Japanese proletariat is powerless under the present imperialism. It is itself the victim of imperialism and capitalism, to be pitied but not despised and hated. It is Japanese imperialism and capitalism that they, as well as we, should despise and hate." [Sen Katayama, "Japan’s Position in the Coming World Social Revolution," October 1922]

Sadly, the logic of plunder held sway and Japan’s occupation of Korea, China and Taiwan became World War Two when it invaded Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Due to outrages like the Bataan Death March and the Rape of Manila, Japan was bound for defeat and disparagement. "The evil done by the Japanese war lords can never be repaired or forgotten." [U.S. Harry President Truman’s broadcasted message on the Japanese surrender, September 1, 1945]

To forestall the resuscitation of Japanese militarism, various tools have been ordered, including its own postwar Constitution. So far so good. "Article 9 has served as a brake to check Japanese behavior." [Toru Hayano, "Interpretational Constitutional Revision: Protecting or Revising the Constitution?" Asahi Shimbun, 2004/11/19]