Conclusion
As discussed above, much of the violence that the Japanese empire inflicted was associated with imperialism, militarism, racism and sexism. These ideologies, fuelled by the social and political contexts of the time, led the empire to become the perpetrator of atrocities and war crimes.
Victims of such violence were not limited to non-Japanese, but included a wide variety of nationalities and ethnicities as well as both sexes. In many cases, however, this fact is dismissed as if the empire's mass violence had been aimed exclusively at its colonial subjects and foreign nationals. From the birth of the empire in 1868 until the birth of the new Constitution in 1947, imperialism and militarism were unleashed. They tended to be galvanised by racism and sexism, and mobilised in the name of national interests.The same society that waged aggressive wars and brought destruction in Asia and the Pacific has embraced pacifism since the end of the empire. Defeat and despair obliterated the cultures of war, and a new Japan outlawed any aggressive war under Article Nine of the Constitution. Nationalism certainly survived in the new nation, but society has been able to contain it successfully. Japan's case demonstrates that any society can perpetrate mass violence and that imperialism, militarism, racism and sexism provoke this violence.