How far can or should Cultural and Moral Relativism be strentched when examining history?

[Jotari]

Hot take. Every single Fire Emblem protagonist is a horrible person because they all reinforce a system of absolute authority of a dictator (except for Ike, but he kills people for money). I think most, if not all, of you will find that to be an absurd statement, and I honestly don't believe it myself. But it's true. All of them believe in the power of a monarch with the inherent absolute authority. But we give them a pass because they don't live in our real world, they live in a fantasy medieval world where that is the standard. But we have our own medieval world and this is something that crops up when we do analyze history. And it's a bit inconsistent and steeped in bias as to how we apply it. Here are some examples of how I think things are perceived by general western modern culture.

-To start with, a group who definitely does not receive is the Nazis. We see them as the absolute standard for evil and just abhorrent people all round. Yet we know the actions of the Nazis didn't occur because an inordinate number of evil people just happened to be born. They were a product of their time created from their culture. Now do not mistake this as me trying to defend the Nazis, obviously I think they are absolutely monstrous in idea and action. I'm just trying to demonstrate there are other pretty dang evil groups which we do not view the same was as we view the Nazis. So because we see them as the standard of evil, I want to set that standard first and measure it against the following).

-Aztecs. Few to none are going to praise the Aztecs as a model of society, but it seems the fact that they're a few centuries old dilutes our view of them a lot. Like, they freaking ate people as a cultural practice. And not just as some small tribe, it was a sophisticated state institutionalized mass ritualistic cannibalism. That is ridiculous. To the extent that if the Aztecs didn't exist and someone wrote a fantasy novel about a culture like that, it would be seen as too over the top to be taken seriously.

--On the subject of ritual, human sacrifice in general. We view straight up murdering people for religion as more ignorant than evil fundamentalism. They thought the crops would grow if they killed some dude. But, imagine if a conspiracy theorist killed someone today, we would judge them way more harshly for it even if they genuinely and earnestly believe they were saving the world from the Illuminati or lizard people or something. We expect them to be capable of knowing better, and honestly, shouldn't we expect ancient societies to know better than to kill people at random to appeal to an imaginary force? The people of the past were not idiots, they should have been capable of realizing human sacrifice was doing nothing to help them after the first time it failed to do anything.

-Colonialism. I think we view colonialism as bad, but not Nazi bad because it was mostly our western countries doing it. But entire continents were almost wiped out as a result of colonialism, both culturally and genetically. When the Nazis conquered Belgium we do not see it as them fighting against the people responsible for the massacres in the Congo, even though the Congo was literally still a Belgian colony during World War II, though the regime had cleaned up considerably by the late 30s, the Leopold era of Congo genocide had been just thirty years earlier, but modern Belgians don't have nearly as much baggage as modern Germans when it comes to past atrocities. I would say it's because we can just lump the blame all on Leopold himself, but Belgians genuinely view him as a decent king with a few skeletons in his closet rather than Hitler 0.1

-The American Confederacy. These guys get no sympathy at all despite being pretty far back in history by now. And something of that might have to do with America being the strongest and most influential power in our modern day. But what I find particularly interesting with that conflict and era is the double standard that would apply to the people on the other side. Lincoln is hailed as just the best guy ever, but he was more of a moderate when it came to slavery, appeasing the Confederate states a lot, and if asked his opinion on race, he'd likely say the African Americans are best shipped off to Liberia. These views we would think of as racist today are given a pass for being a man of his time. But that same pass is not given to the people who were raised at the same time in the culture of chattel slavery and were brought up to see it as normal.

--I suppose this brings up the idea of relativism relativism. That, we can be relative about people from a certain era in comparison to us, but if they are bad relative to a comparable group from the same time or place then we can judge them more harshly. Like, people say we can declare Columbus as evil because he was arrested for his crimes in his own life time, as if the suffering of his victims would have been any less if the Spanish monarchy didn't care about how he treated the natives.

-Genghis Kahn. Whoa boy. This guy served genocide for breakfast! His death toll might very well be higher than Stalin's! And unlike Stalin who mostly gets his kill count via unintentional famine, Genghis Kahn was out there explicitly slaughtering people on mass by the sword. Yet a thousand years ago is so long in the past that its considered just an interesting point of study as a historical figure and not an absolute monster. In fact, he's glorified in Mongolia with giant statues. Will Germans feel the same way about Hitler in a thousand years time? Probably not, but I'd say it's down to the fact that Hitler failed while Genghis Kahn succeeded in all his pursuits rather than one being a better person than the other. What probably helps here is that we have some good things we can point to what his rein did in terms of religious freedom and stuff, but it kind of pales in comparison to the sheer amount of people wiped out.

-The Ancient Romans. These guys were blood thirsty conquerors. Their entire system depended on constant expansion. Yet we view them very positively for their architecture and organization skills instead of seeing them as fascists out to bleed everyone else dry to maintain their empire. Our perspective might be aided by their strangely high level of cultural respect for the time, laying down the foundation of Roman society on existing cultures and incorporating the cultural elite of their own ranks, but if you actually think about it that Roman citizen idea was really just a caste based society and only the elites of the conquered peoples really benefited from it.

-Fire Bombings in World War II. Such indiscriminate targeting of enemy civilians for the war effort feels like it should be considered way more heinous than we treat it. The justification is both "They deemed it the most effective way to win the war" and "Everyone else was doing it." But, aren't they horrible arguments? This really bad thing is actually okay because a huge number of people are doing it. And this bad thing is okay because it's pragmatic. It's logic than can be used to justify pretty much anything if we were to seriously try to apply it to most other things. Not that I have a better solution to what the allies should have done instead.

-Modern day enemies. If we are more forgiving of bad things for peoples of the past, then why do we not apply the same thing to people of the present? The Jihadi suicide bombing a super market is just as much a product of his culture and time as the Mongol wiping out an entire city that refused to submit. But there's the crux of the issue. You can't stretch this idea too far in either direction. Because we are all products of our cultures. Culture is unavoidable. Even counter culture reactionaries and rebels are a consequence of their culture. Too much culture relativism and you'll find yourself unable to judge any action taken by someone who isn't in the exact same life circumstances as yourself. Too little cultural relativism and you're just going to be a sanctimonious prick espousing every culture that isn't your own is flawed because they  were all sexists and racist, or, alternatively, if you judge your own culture harshly too, just become a massive misanthrope writing off humanity in its entirety as horrendous.

Well, those were my disparate thoughts on the matter. I'm not expecting any of you to sit here and nod in agreement with everything I've said here. I don't agree with everything I've said. I've just been trying to list examples of things I think are the commonly expected normal view points in our own broader societies and the hypocrisy that comes with them. What do you think? Do you think their is hypocrisy in how our collective view of cultural relativism? Do you think your own opinions are without hypocrisy? Is it okay that we're hypocritical about some stuff? Is it possible to not be hypocritical while also not becoming an extremist in terms of values?

Edited December 1, 2023 by Jotari

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I studied history in college and this was the first question they hit you with. What is the "duty" of history, how have generations of historians approached it differently. The gradual shift from Biographies of Great Men to "Just the facts" to editorializing and Thesis Statements. Is it the job of the historian to moralize the historic actors? There's no consensus, you just do whatever history you think is appropriate for the subject matter.

The truth is that facts don't "speak for themselves". Everything has its own framing regardless of the presence of any bias. Let me add another bullet point: The Industrial Revolution. Just an awful, depressing time in human history. But the result is the cities we live in today. Advancements in technology that would never have been dreamed of. Was their sacrifice worth it? Building societies that are now destroying the planet. In fifty years when a lot of us are underwater and throwing blame around, will they also be villains?

Also, let me be the first to wish Henry Kissinger a happy stay in Hell, if we're going to be talking about atrocities.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

this looks like a prelude to a bannin

 

I read through all of this twice and i still can´t tell what it´s about.

[Hrothgar777]

I would argue that the institution of monarchy wasn't the worst option back then, and that democracy/republic wasn't necessarily the best. And since Fire Emblem is loosely modeled off our world, this same assumption could rightly apply to them.

 

Historically, democracies/republics came about as a result of urbanization and high literacy. On the first point, Fire Emblem does have its fair share of cities, but at best they're about renaissance-era. In our world, the UN estimates that a majority of people lived outside of cities until roughly 2007. Even with a continent like Europe we can probably assume most people were farmers or whatnot by the end of the Middle Ages, since the Industrial Revolution is what made such heavy urbanization possible in the first place.

On the second point, one graph I'm looking at now suggests that about half the population of France was illiterate as late as 1830. Since France at this time was among the most developed places in all of Europe, and since we're talking 300+ years after the end of the Middle Ages, we can safely assume your average Medieval peasant or burgher was illiterate.

 

So the question becomes: could a bunch of illiterate peasants run a large country? I don't think so. Consider Option A: representative democracy. Being distributed across such a vast area in a time when travel was on cart and horse, and unable to keep up with complicated issues even if permitted to listen in on legislative debates, they could hardly keep tabs on what their elected representatives were up to. This would surely devolve into an oligarchy; if from there, one guy came along and replaced them with himself as king, I could hardly call this a monstrous crime, since either way the average person had no voice so he's not doing them any particular disfavor.

Option B: direct democracy. All governments would have to be local. Like, really local. With so many rival governments I assume there would be constant warfare, banditry, tolls, tariffs, and blockades. If you don't believe me, I'll testify that my own bloody local government, in bloody 2023, has an insatiable appetite for that sweet, sweet nectar which is speeding ticket revenue. Imagine if you could collect as much as you wanted by force.

And of course, all of these would eventually be conquered by whoever was smart enough to consolidate into a bigger government. A supporter of monarchy, when hearing somebody propose said radical decentralization, would say "No thanks bro, it'd soon revert to how it currently is anyhow, but with tons and tons of unnecessary bloodshed we could easily avoid by doing nothing." And they'd probably be right.

 

Finally, assuming this ideal government successfully came into existence, I'm skeptical of that too. No doubt life would get better for the average citizen immediately, but that's not to say the best future would ensue.

Because as bad as the predominant political and economic system in Europe was at this time, we know that it eventually gave way to advanced economies and modern republics with ironclad rule of law. Which is to say it was oppressive but stable in such a way that allowed for very incremental progress. To assume that taking another road would result in the same destination a thousand years later is ultimately an unproven assumption, as intuitive as that assumption might feel to modern audiences.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Hrothgar777

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I studied history in college and this was the first question they hit you with. What is the "duty" of history, how have generations of historians approached it differently. The gradual shift from Biographies of Great Men to "Just the facts" to editorializing and Thesis Statements. Is it the job of the historian to moralize the historic actors? There's no consensus, you just do whatever history you think is appropriate for the subject matter.

I guess one thing I'm trying to ask here is, when does "history" become an excuse and a difference between modern day feelings? For example,

8 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Also, let me be the first to wish Henry Kissinger a happy stay in Hell, if we're going to be talking about atrocities.

 

^This guy right here did his famous stuff fifty years ago. Which is kind of super weird to think about given he died just yesterday. At what point should he be viewed as "the facts as they happened" and at what point should it be viewed as "that criminal who deserves scorn and condemnation"?

8 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

The Industrial Revolution. Just an awful, depressing time in human history. But the result is the cities we live in today. Advancements in technology that would never have been dreamed of. Was their sacrifice worth it? Building societies that are now destroying the planet. In fifty years when a lot of us are underwater and throwing blame around, will they also be villains?

I reckon in that future we might be seen more as the villains than the ones who started the industrial revolution, and I fear that the future generations might be right to judge us on such a point.

[Etrurian emperor]

In general when judging historical events I think context is king.

Take the Confederacy for instance. Their way to preserve slavery can not really be defended by an appeal to the times they lived in because in those very times slavery was already going out of fashion fast. Most of the civilized world already outlawed it when the confederacy started a war to keep it. And as a whole the US being the only country in the world that had to go wave a war over it reflects terribly on the place. 

With the Romans there are some context too. While they could be utterly ruthless they also offered so much perks to conquered territory that Roman citizenship was actually greatly desired by many of the people they were conquering. 

[Jotari]

11 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

In general when judging historical events I think context is king.

Take the Confederacy for instance. Their way to preserve slavery can not really be defended by an appeal to the times they lived in because in those very times slavery was already going out of fashion fast. Most of the civilized world already outlawed it when the confederacy started a war to keep it. And as a whole the US being the only country in the world that had to go wave a war over it reflects terribly on the place. 

With the Romans there are some context too. While they could be utterly ruthless they also offered so much perks to conquered territory that Roman citizenship was actually greatly desired by many of the people they were conquering. 

But I think, and you might very well disagree with me here, that context applies to literally everything. All societies, good and bad, existed in the way they did because they were shaped by what became before and what the norm was seen as. The Confederates didn't maintain slavery because of any unique traits to them, they did it because their context made it the best thing for their ruling class (and it's always the ruling class making these decisions). And, conversely, the rest of the world didn't begin outlawing slavery because they were uniquely good. It was their context that made it prudent for them (or to put a more optimistic spin on it, the development of better technology allowed us to become more moral...at least in this regard; there was a lot of really bad shit still happening in the mid 1800s).

Edited December 1, 2023 by Jotari

[Sunwoo]

OP is a bit of a wall of text and I should be in bed, so I might not be super coherent here. Apologies for that.

There will always be a lot of nuance in history. A lot of the reasons as to why things happened, and what was considered acceptable for the times, and how we should view those things now ... there's really no satisfactory answer to any of it. The straightforward answer is that no nation, no culture no people is free from wrongdoing in their past (or present) and the sooner we acknowledge that the sooner we can actually work together rather than bitching about who had it worse or why certain groups are more acceptable targets.

Indeed, it's kind of mind-boggling to me how many people don't seem to realize that humanity is opportunistic in general. Especially back in the old days when as a civilization people's moral compasses were ... uh, worse off than today.

Honestly, my take on the situation falls into one of two thoughts:
1) The further back in the past something is from us, the more distanced we feel from it, and the more we forget or disregard the horrors that were felt back then. We are biased by the present and some people tend to believe that if they don't experience it and can't empathize with it, then it doesn't matter;
2) People want to take sides and don't like to admit they're wrong. Rather than realizing that things in life and things as complicated as history and geopolitics are not simple good vs. bad takes, they want to pick a side they identify with and ignore everything to the contrary. A not-insignificant number of people can't see past themselves and their own biases.

I think I'm gonna cut it off short here. Apologies if it didn't answer your concerns @Jotari but I'm getting sleepy.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Sunwoo said:

I think I'm gonna cut it off short here. Apologies if it didn't answer your concerns @Jotari but I'm getting sleepy.

I wouldn't say I have concerns so much. In the most genuine sense of the word I was aiming to start a conversation. Might have over done it with the wall of text at the start though. I was having a boring hour at work and just came up with a load of examples.

1 minute ago, Sunwoo said:

The straightforward answer is that no nation, no culture no people is free from wrongdoing in their past (or present) and the sooner we acknowledge that the sooner we can actually work together rather than bitching about who had it worse or why certain groups are more acceptable targets.

I think there's a lot of truth in the present part than most would be comfortable admitting. I think even in the modern day all countries (with the possible exception of some of those really, really small ones) do a lot of shady shit we either don't know about, don't care about (but should) or give a pass but judge harshly when other countries do the same thing. Plus, as mentioned earlier, the environment. We are seriously screwing the pooch on that one (that's an idiom right?).

[Hrothgar777]

10 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

In general when judging historical events I think context is king.

Take the Confederacy for instance. Their way to preserve slavery can not really be defended by an appeal to the times they lived in because in those very times slavery was already going out of fashion fast. Most of the civilized world already outlawed it when the confederacy started a war to keep it. And as a whole the US being the only country in the world that had to go wave a war over it reflects terribly on the place. 

With the Romans there are some context too. While they could be utterly ruthless they also offered so much perks to conquered territory that Roman citizenship was actually greatly desired by many of the people they were conquering. 

I'd argue it didn't matter to the Confederates what people in England or France, or even their compatriots north of the Mason-Dixon line, had come to think about slavery. What mattered to them was what their immediate peers thought. A world with legalized slavery was the world as they'd experienced it their entire lives. It had always been normal to them. It was very much still "the times" in that corner of the world.

My stance is that it's much less inexcusable to preserve a bad thing you've been raised to think is okay than to make an existing situation worse. To give another example, the Bolsheviks who violently overthrow the 1917 republic, Lenin included, were heinous criminals. But most people wouldn't say this of the generation of communists who were around by the very end of the Soviet Union. Though communism's overall record was no less bloody and oppressive than far-right totalitarianism, we would give a pass to your average 25 year old Muscovite party member in 1990 who was never taught to entertain any alternative to the status quo.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

My stance is that it's much less inexcusable to preserve a bad thing you've been raised to think is okay than to make an existing situation worse. To give another example, the Bolsheviks who violently overthrow the 1917 republic, Lenin included, were heinous criminals. But most people wouldn't say this of the generation of communists who were around by the very end of the Soviet Union. Though communism's overall record was no less bloody and oppressive than far-right totalitarianism, we would give a pass to your average 25 year old Muscovite party member in 1990 who was never taught to entertain any alternative to the status quo.

A devil's advocate argument to this; the early communists were better than the later communists because they earnestly believed they were making the world a better place. The US Founding Fathers did the same thing in the name of some pretty radical, largely, untested idea at the time, and they managed to luck out in that their untested ideas actually could make a functioning state. If communism was really possible in the way Lenin envisioned it then they would not be viewed the same way in later history even if the actions they took during their life time remained the same (I'm going to quietly ignore Stalin as a founding member here because...uh....yeah twenty million people is hard to argue around even as a devil's advocate, a utopia would have to be really freaking amazing to justify that!).

Edited December 1, 2023 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Not much to add, other than that I can't stand the all-too-frequent rejoinder of "we need to judge historical figures by the standards of their times". It's never really justified, and generally just stated as some kind of morally obvious axiom. So, do I judge Harriet Tubman as a radical criminal who was wrong for subverting her rightful place as a slave? Surely, Thic Quang Duc should've abandoned his regressive religion, and certainly not lit himself on fire! And what's this carpenter from Galilee, preaching against retributive justice and plural marriages?

...Bit of a rant there. But the point is, people who "judge them by the standards of their time" generally aren't consistent about it, and it's just turned into a shield against criticism. Ultimately, there's not a "uniform moral standard" in any given time and place, even though there are ones more powerful than others. And the only reason we have the moral understanding we have today, is because people in the past held themselves to a different (higher?) standard than their contemporaries.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

Hot take. Every single Fire Emblem protagonist is a horrible person because they all reinforce a system of absolute authority of a dictator (except for Ike, but he kills people for money). I think most, if not all, of you will find that to be an absurd statement, and I honestly don't believe it myself. But it's true. All of them believe in the power of a monarch with the inherent absolute authority. But we give them a pass because they don't live in our real world, they live in a fantasy medieval world where that is the standard. But we have our own medieval world and this is something that crops up when we do analyze history. And it's a bit inconsistent and steeped in bias as to how we apply it. Here are some examples of how I think things are perceived by general western modern culture.

A monarchy is a monarchy. It is not inherently evil and the possibility of a benevolent monarch/dictator is as existent as the capability for humans to do good and bad. Monarchies have just been plentiful throughout history and probably seen as simpler for storytelling purposes.

As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and even if there are people that understood that the atrocities they were committing at the time were evil, unfortunately popularity and self-preservation do have to come in to play because a man that may try to protect others from being burned because they're considered witches would likely just end up burning alongside them as they may not have the backing of others. Here, it's a gamble of your life to throw in your support. Similar thing with the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel camps today.

As for why some are perceived differently or why people defend it with "it was a product of our time", it often comes from identity protective cognition. If you're someone who's detached, you won't care much when someone says horrible truths like George Washington was a slave owner, many of our previous presidents were jerkbag politicians just like Trump, our most successful 3rd party candidate ran on Segregation.

Whereas your typical American will play defense because being American is a part of their identity and like with most people, if you attack something that's a part of their identity, chances are that it will be backfire or be ignored to protect themselves.

I'm for history just being delivered raw and factual, not just telling the good parts and leaving out the bad, it's why I detest the pro-confederate American history.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

I guess one thing I'm trying to ask here is, when does "history" become an excuse and a difference between modern day feelings? For example,

^This guy right here did his famous stuff fifty years ago. Which is kind of super weird to think about given he died just yesterday. At what point should he be viewed as "the facts as they happened" and at what point should it be viewed as "that criminal who deserves scorn and condemnation"?

There's no time limit. You're free to feel any way about today's Actors just like Yesterday's Actors. The reason why historians moved on from Biographies of Great Men was because they gradually discovered conflicting accounts from primary sources. Turns out the Great Men of any era are always controversial figures. Even if for as mundane a reason as People reject Change. History is written by the Victor, as they say. So it engenders us to believe that the Great Men of our past were always in the right.

When History moved on to Just the Facts (and just to be clear, we're talking a 19th century shift, not something that happened in our lifetimes) it was focused on a scientific / causational framework. And sometimes when you search for those individual answers (X happened because of Y), the context gets buried. Which brings us to Modern History. By now, most of the timeline of world events has been constructed, so now it's time for us to interpret and contextualize the past in ways that they feel brings nuance to the conversation. 

So in Kissinger's case, an early historian would tout his accomplishments as an American hero, a 19th century historian wouldn't glamorize, but would be remiss not to mention he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace, and a modern historian would dive into Vietnam, Cambodian, etc histories to argue how much of a monster he was. And those hot takes were published while he was still living, mind you. Be prepared for some more now that his death reminds us of his existence.

[Jotari]

35 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

There's no time limit. You're free to feel any way about today's Actors just like Yesterday's Actors. The reason why historians moved on from Biographies of Great Men was because they gradually discovered conflicting accounts from primary sources. Turns out the Great Men of any era are always controversial figures. Even if for as mundane a reason as People reject Change. History is written by the Victor, as they say. So it engenders us to believe that the Great Men of our past were always in the right.

When History moved on to Just the Facts (and just to be clear, we're talking a 19th century shift, not something that happened in our lifetimes) it was focused on a scientific / causational framework. And sometimes when you search for those individual answers (X happened because of Y), the context gets buried. Which brings us to Modern History. By now, most of the timeline of world events has been constructed, so now it's time for us to interpret and contextualize the past in ways that they feel brings nuance to the conversation. 

So in Kissinger's case, an early historian would tout his accomplishments as an American hero, a 19th century historian wouldn't glamorize, but would be remiss not to mention he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace, and a modern historian would dive into Vietnam, Cambodian, etc histories to argue how much of a monster he was. And those hot takes were published while he was still living, mind you. Be prepared for some more now that his death reminds us of his existence.

Oh of course we're free to feel any way we want about anyone. My point was more that we don't feel that way, when if you try to think of things objectively, we sort of should. Excuse was poor wording on that part.

[Shoblongoo]

Human history makes a lot more sense when you remember how many of the major decisions were historically made by 19 year olds who drank wine for breakfast. 

[henrymidfields]

I think with the Mongol Conquest there are several factors:

• war and pillaging was still the norm everywhere else, and the only difference would be the no of people killed. That would make Genghis Kahn or his successors not that much worse to his peers. At least we should also recognize the Vikings, Eastern Rome, Crusaders, or the Ottomans for their own conquests too.
• Actually, even with the numbers a quick Google suggested that the death toll is probably exaggerated, with the purported death toll being conflated with the spread of the Black Plague; and there's also the question of whether that was intentionally caused by the Mongols, or just an unfortunate side effect. There's also that the killings were mainly done against local nobles who opposed the takeover (as opposed to "every single one of them!"). It's also possible that propaganda and rumors were at play considering lack of communication technology.
• There's also that the supposed 30-60 million killed was over a period of 100 years, during the Mongol Conquests, or less than a million per year average. Still bloody, but nowhere near the intensity of WW2 and its 70 or so million deaths over a much shorter period of time - and I'm not even sure if the numbers include those predating 1939 (such as the 2nd Sino-Japanese War).
• I think there's also that the conquest also predates the concept of genocide in the modern sense. In turn because of the concept of, say, race (and especially race tied with the nation-state) wasn't really a thing until 18th/19th Century, maybe 17th at the earliest. Genocide itself wasn't a term until 1944. Applying modern concepts to pre-modern events are problematic for that reason. 

Hitler (and I have to admit, the Kwantung Army) are worse as their acts were done at a time when they were starting to be disapproved/disavowed - though it should also be noted that we shouldn't ignore the human toll and hardships imposed by other colonial powers, ie UK, France, Belgium. It also didn't help that thanks to advances in governance and military tech, it is far easier to destroy multiple lives all at once. There's also that they had a clearly racially motivated agenda to enslave or exterminate the other race(s) as opposed to simply conquer them, and there are more paper trails (and until recently, survivor accounts) to prove as such. 

Edited February 16 by henrymidfields