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Evil Men
Presented with accounts of genocide and torture, we ask how people could bring themselves to commit such horrendous acts. A searching meditation on our all-too-human capacity for inhumanity, Evil Men confronts atrocity head-on―how it looks and feels, what motivates it, how it can be stopped.
Drawing on firsthand interviews with convicted war criminals from the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), James Dawes leads us into the frightening territory where soldiers perpetrated some of the worst crimes murder, torture, rape, medical experimentation on living subjects. Transcending conventional reporting and commentary, Dawes’s narrative weaves together unforgettable segments from the interviews with consideration of the troubling issues they raise. Telling the personal story of his journey to Japan, Dawes also lays bare the cultural misunderstandings and ethical compromises that at times called the legitimacy of his entire project into question. For this book is not just about the things war criminals do. It is about what it is like, and what it means, to befriend them.
Do our stories of evil deeds make a difference? Can we depict atrocity without sensational curiosity? Anguished and unflinchingly honest, as eloquent as it is raw and painful, Evil Men asks hard questions about the most disturbing capabilities human beings possess, and acknowledges that these questions may have no comforting answers.
Drawing on firsthand interviews with convicted war criminals from the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), James Dawes leads us into the frightening territory where soldiers perpetrated some of the worst crimes murder, torture, rape, medical experimentation on living subjects. Transcending conventional reporting and commentary, Dawes’s narrative weaves together unforgettable segments from the interviews with consideration of the troubling issues they raise. Telling the personal story of his journey to Japan, Dawes also lays bare the cultural misunderstandings and ethical compromises that at times called the legitimacy of his entire project into question. For this book is not just about the things war criminals do. It is about what it is like, and what it means, to befriend them.
Do our stories of evil deeds make a difference? Can we depict atrocity without sensational curiosity? Anguished and unflinchingly honest, as eloquent as it is raw and painful, Evil Men asks hard questions about the most disturbing capabilities human beings possess, and acknowledges that these questions may have no comforting answers.
280 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2013
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September 8, 2023
Unfortunately, I found this book quite difficult to relate to. Published in 2013, it was prompted by the author travelling to Japan to interview former Japanese soldiers who had committed atrocities during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. The book itself turns out to be a sort of meditation on the ethics of publicising atrocity stories, and questions the purpose of re-telling such stories as well as our motives for reading about them. It also examines why atrocities happen and, to an extent, what might be done to lessen the likelihood of them in future. Personally though I thought the discussion wandered back and forth too much, and much of it was couched in the sort of abstruse language academics use when writing papers and books for each other. I’ve said in other reviews that I enjoy books that make me stop and think about the implications of what has been said, but that’s a different thing from having to stop and think about the meaning of what’s been said. Many of the most egregious examples were included as quotes from other academics, but then the author chose to include the quotes. Actually, as a general observation, I thought there was too much reliance on quotes in this book, and throughout the book I couldn’t help comparing the writing unfavourably with some other writers on this subject, whom I admire for their clarity of expression.
Mention of other writers leads me to the observation that some of my issues with this book may have been of my own making. I’ve read a few books on this subject, and am starting to encounter the law of diminishing returns. A few fairly tired old nags were brought out of the stable by this author. The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment were both given a trot round the paddock, and the author also rehearses the old theological debate about why God allows suffering. He presents both sides of the argument, and I can’t exactly blame him for including it, but the argument has of course gone on for centuries, and I’ve personally read of it dozens of times.
The author is very partial to highlighting paradoxes. He asks himself “So how can you tell the story that must and cannot be told?” In discussing perpetrators, he says that “We must and must not demonize them.” The book is chock-full of similar examples.
I did think the author posed some interesting questions, for example in discussing the role of forgiveness from victims, and also whether it is right to hate the perpetrators of atrocities. The perpetrators that Dawes interviewed were frail old men who were honest about the past and very remorseful. It was easy to view them sympathetically, but that raised the risk of over-identifying with them. Generally, the author’s technique in considering these questions was simply to throw in lots of contradictory quotes from different people.
In defence of the author though, I will highlight that at the time of writing the book has an average GR rating of 4.06, and that 80% of the ratings are 4 or 5-star. My view is clearly a minority one, but it reflects my personal enjoyment of the book.
Mention of other writers leads me to the observation that some of my issues with this book may have been of my own making. I’ve read a few books on this subject, and am starting to encounter the law of diminishing returns. A few fairly tired old nags were brought out of the stable by this author. The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment were both given a trot round the paddock, and the author also rehearses the old theological debate about why God allows suffering. He presents both sides of the argument, and I can’t exactly blame him for including it, but the argument has of course gone on for centuries, and I’ve personally read of it dozens of times.
The author is very partial to highlighting paradoxes. He asks himself “So how can you tell the story that must and cannot be told?” In discussing perpetrators, he says that “We must and must not demonize them.” The book is chock-full of similar examples.
I did think the author posed some interesting questions, for example in discussing the role of forgiveness from victims, and also whether it is right to hate the perpetrators of atrocities. The perpetrators that Dawes interviewed were frail old men who were honest about the past and very remorseful. It was easy to view them sympathetically, but that raised the risk of over-identifying with them. Generally, the author’s technique in considering these questions was simply to throw in lots of contradictory quotes from different people.
In defence of the author though, I will highlight that at the time of writing the book has an average GR rating of 4.06, and that 80% of the ratings are 4 or 5-star. My view is clearly a minority one, but it reflects my personal enjoyment of the book.
March 2, 2018
The author of this would-be study of the causes and meaning of war crimes is a literary critic who conducted interviews with perpetrators of horrific atrocities, primarily Japanese Army soldiers who committed bestial crimes against Chinese during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). The moral imperatives that drive research into war crimes and perpetrator motivations are pressing. This is not the book to read if you are interested in any of that. A merely literary and overtly personal presentation takes center stage on nearly every page, pushing aside the perpetrators, the victims, and the meaning of what happened in this hugely pretentious failed book.
Everything is set behind personal, literary and cultural filters, presented as dilemmas of a paradox of evil that means nothing ever really means anything, unless it also means everything. Or something like that. For example: “We are morally obligated to represent trauma, but we are also morally obligated not to ... Evil is demonic and other; it is also banal and common to us all ... We are free and self-determining; we are also the products of circumstance ... To find our meaning we must face our meaninglessness.” (xii-xiii) And so on, for most of 224 pages of a cloyingly self-indulgent, even narcissistic essay in which moral issues are always paradoxes: “the paradox of trauma, the paradox of evil, the paradox of narcissism, and the paradox of writing.” (28) Except that it is only the last one that seems to interest the author: the great moral adventure of an enlightened professor encountering the darkling world and wrestling its daemons to the floor of his college study, stabbing them with footnotes and grand allusions.
It is not an ad hominem attack to point out this theme of literature professor as world-changing moral hero. It is ever present and explicitly argued, part of a “deep history of human rights and the arts.” We are told that the rationale for the oddly disordered style of the narrative flows from an understanding that literature changes the world more than activism, in particular, by advancing new conceptions of human rights (187). Yet the book is not really a study of atrocity in history or of human rights. It is a defense of poetry and professors of literature as having swollen ethical consequences. Thus we are told about the author’s Prufrockian doings, down to menus of daring meals eaten right after interviews with perpetrators. The interviews themselves hardly make an appearance. They are used as garnish to professorial self-indulgence. I am not making this up. We are told that what actually happened and why doesn’t matter. Stories and the writer’s quest are far more interesting and much more important: “Human motivation in a deep sense is not only unknowable but also, quite possibly, unimportant. What matters is what these stories do.” (209) Dawes thus inserts himself in the most trivial ways into every interview, and the far longer passages between them, so that reading the text is like thumbing through a typical New Yorker article: all fawning fascination with the self, masquerading as a troubled and thoughtful and cultured foray into the difficult relativism of truth about good and evil in the world. It’s all a paradox, don’t you know? But wait, let’s stop for a side dish of one intellectual’s cross-cultural and gastronomic experiences. Isn’t it all just darling?
Remarkably, this passage was not excised by editors at Harvard University Press: “My friend Barb read the previous section before publication and chided me for its despair ... Idealists shatter, I argue —realists trudge on. But Barb is making me rethink this. Around the time of her remarks, I was reading Terry Eagleton’s On Evil, which....” (112) Or this Vive Moi! moment: “Commenting on an early draft of the previous section, a friend scribbled a note in the margins to me: ‘You were in a dark place when you wrote this, Jim!’” (213) The irony of the following not-quite-Augustinian confession is lost on the confessor: “In what approached neurotic comedy, I spent time apologizing for apologizing —because, it seemed to me, apologizing is a way of putting the self and its motivations at center stage, and it felt wrong to put my little internal dramas at center stage amid such epochal horrors.” Then a paragraph later, the truest words in the book: “The ‘I’ remains here in this book, as do the apologies —even if now they are disguised as analysis.” (38) What does not appear, or hardly ever, are the moral evils of the IJA in China and what that means for history and the human condition.
Few interested in military history or the atrocities attending the Second Sino-Japanese War will find much to hold their interest in these pages. Or be impressed by sudden, sweeping conclusions on the general nature of war that appear ex nihilo, such as: “Wars are made possible, sustained, and won or lost through deceit and the confusion of reference.” (Say what? p.169) But then, you’re not supposed to want to understand the past in outmoded, traditional ways. This is all about therapy for writers, not history or atrocity or actual human suffering on a Unit 731 vivisection slab. Dawes is quite explicit about that: “Scholars today are developing a new kind of affect toward the real.... They seek less to touch the real than to recover from it.... The critical study of human rights .... allows therapeutic displacement. It allows one to experience self-preoccupation as an aspect of a purportedly universalizing institutional structure. It also allows one to perform one’s private anxieties and needs as an aspect of orientation to the other.” (221) It is hard to imagine a less morally enlightened conclusion drawn about the evil that men did, and still do, than to reduce it to solipsism, a bit of performance art of “one’s private anxieties.” But whatever. I think I’ll write another check to Médecins Sans Frontières. It’ll make me feel better.
Everything is set behind personal, literary and cultural filters, presented as dilemmas of a paradox of evil that means nothing ever really means anything, unless it also means everything. Or something like that. For example: “We are morally obligated to represent trauma, but we are also morally obligated not to ... Evil is demonic and other; it is also banal and common to us all ... We are free and self-determining; we are also the products of circumstance ... To find our meaning we must face our meaninglessness.” (xii-xiii) And so on, for most of 224 pages of a cloyingly self-indulgent, even narcissistic essay in which moral issues are always paradoxes: “the paradox of trauma, the paradox of evil, the paradox of narcissism, and the paradox of writing.” (28) Except that it is only the last one that seems to interest the author: the great moral adventure of an enlightened professor encountering the darkling world and wrestling its daemons to the floor of his college study, stabbing them with footnotes and grand allusions.
It is not an ad hominem attack to point out this theme of literature professor as world-changing moral hero. It is ever present and explicitly argued, part of a “deep history of human rights and the arts.” We are told that the rationale for the oddly disordered style of the narrative flows from an understanding that literature changes the world more than activism, in particular, by advancing new conceptions of human rights (187). Yet the book is not really a study of atrocity in history or of human rights. It is a defense of poetry and professors of literature as having swollen ethical consequences. Thus we are told about the author’s Prufrockian doings, down to menus of daring meals eaten right after interviews with perpetrators. The interviews themselves hardly make an appearance. They are used as garnish to professorial self-indulgence. I am not making this up. We are told that what actually happened and why doesn’t matter. Stories and the writer’s quest are far more interesting and much more important: “Human motivation in a deep sense is not only unknowable but also, quite possibly, unimportant. What matters is what these stories do.” (209) Dawes thus inserts himself in the most trivial ways into every interview, and the far longer passages between them, so that reading the text is like thumbing through a typical New Yorker article: all fawning fascination with the self, masquerading as a troubled and thoughtful and cultured foray into the difficult relativism of truth about good and evil in the world. It’s all a paradox, don’t you know? But wait, let’s stop for a side dish of one intellectual’s cross-cultural and gastronomic experiences. Isn’t it all just darling?
Remarkably, this passage was not excised by editors at Harvard University Press: “My friend Barb read the previous section before publication and chided me for its despair ... Idealists shatter, I argue —realists trudge on. But Barb is making me rethink this. Around the time of her remarks, I was reading Terry Eagleton’s On Evil, which....” (112) Or this Vive Moi! moment: “Commenting on an early draft of the previous section, a friend scribbled a note in the margins to me: ‘You were in a dark place when you wrote this, Jim!’” (213) The irony of the following not-quite-Augustinian confession is lost on the confessor: “In what approached neurotic comedy, I spent time apologizing for apologizing —because, it seemed to me, apologizing is a way of putting the self and its motivations at center stage, and it felt wrong to put my little internal dramas at center stage amid such epochal horrors.” Then a paragraph later, the truest words in the book: “The ‘I’ remains here in this book, as do the apologies —even if now they are disguised as analysis.” (38) What does not appear, or hardly ever, are the moral evils of the IJA in China and what that means for history and the human condition.
Few interested in military history or the atrocities attending the Second Sino-Japanese War will find much to hold their interest in these pages. Or be impressed by sudden, sweeping conclusions on the general nature of war that appear ex nihilo, such as: “Wars are made possible, sustained, and won or lost through deceit and the confusion of reference.” (Say what? p.169) But then, you’re not supposed to want to understand the past in outmoded, traditional ways. This is all about therapy for writers, not history or atrocity or actual human suffering on a Unit 731 vivisection slab. Dawes is quite explicit about that: “Scholars today are developing a new kind of affect toward the real.... They seek less to touch the real than to recover from it.... The critical study of human rights .... allows therapeutic displacement. It allows one to experience self-preoccupation as an aspect of a purportedly universalizing institutional structure. It also allows one to perform one’s private anxieties and needs as an aspect of orientation to the other.” (221) It is hard to imagine a less morally enlightened conclusion drawn about the evil that men did, and still do, than to reduce it to solipsism, a bit of performance art of “one’s private anxieties.” But whatever. I think I’ll write another check to Médecins Sans Frontières. It’ll make me feel better.
November 30, 2015
This book is amazing and impacted how I think about ethics in the world. If I had to describe what this book covers I would say war crimes, ethics, human rights, and the state of scholarship and society relating to these topics.
I've been on a non-fiction stint lately regarding generally dark topics and war crimes. This book may have completed my stint for a while because it actually reflects on the nature of peoples' attractions to horror and/or violence in media. Dawes made me reflect on the issue of feeling empathy for characters (real or not) and experiencing emotional responses to whatever work I might be reading without taking action or applying what I learned/felt to the real world. Not to say these works are not valuable, quite the contrary. Rather, I think the common response even to good and informative books is passive when an active response is what the world really needs. I just want to do more now, and it's rare that one reads a book like that.
I think Dawes is very candid and honest in the book about his thoughts and emotions as he meets these war criminals while also adding his academic perspective. The scholarship in this book is thorough, and I really enjoyed the combined nature of narrative + academic work.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone looking to broaden their perspective on people and ethics.
I've been on a non-fiction stint lately regarding generally dark topics and war crimes. This book may have completed my stint for a while because it actually reflects on the nature of peoples' attractions to horror and/or violence in media. Dawes made me reflect on the issue of feeling empathy for characters (real or not) and experiencing emotional responses to whatever work I might be reading without taking action or applying what I learned/felt to the real world. Not to say these works are not valuable, quite the contrary. Rather, I think the common response even to good and informative books is passive when an active response is what the world really needs. I just want to do more now, and it's rare that one reads a book like that.
I think Dawes is very candid and honest in the book about his thoughts and emotions as he meets these war criminals while also adding his academic perspective. The scholarship in this book is thorough, and I really enjoyed the combined nature of narrative + academic work.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone looking to broaden their perspective on people and ethics.
August 6, 2013
Man's inhumanity to man, the nature of evil and war are the heavy subjects of this slim volume. Dawes travels to Japan to interview some of the most infamous war criminals of the Sino-Japanese War, now fragile, elderly--and haunted. In between the interviews, Dawes tries to make sense of what he has heard from these men he grows to consider friends. Meanwhile, he weaves in meditations on our modern wars in the Middle East.
Evil Men once again brought home to me the interconnectedness of violence in our world, and I would strongly suggest that all animal and environmental advocates study human rights. Midway through the book, we read about the "rush" violence offers its perpetrators, and a man who discovered this love of power as a child when he abused a dog. (He has since turned from violence and joined up with Amnesty International.) More telling was this quote from one of the war criminals Dawes interviewed:
"[W]hen the people of Japan joined the army and went to the front, no matter how many Chinese they killed, they didn't think of it as being much different than killing a dog or a cat."
One ponders the trajectory of these young men who felt nothing while killing a dog or cat, and how this cruelty progressed upon the battlefield.
Evil Men once again brought home to me the interconnectedness of violence in our world, and I would strongly suggest that all animal and environmental advocates study human rights. Midway through the book, we read about the "rush" violence offers its perpetrators, and a man who discovered this love of power as a child when he abused a dog. (He has since turned from violence and joined up with Amnesty International.) More telling was this quote from one of the war criminals Dawes interviewed:
"[W]hen the people of Japan joined the army and went to the front, no matter how many Chinese they killed, they didn't think of it as being much different than killing a dog or a cat."
One ponders the trajectory of these young men who felt nothing while killing a dog or cat, and how this cruelty progressed upon the battlefield.
January 18, 2021
While it started off as an intriguing case study in genocide and those who perpetrate it, his lofty literary reviews on normative political philosophy make it feel more like a PhD thesis. I was hoping to hear more of the authors voice and the context/circumstances that drove him to this project.
It presented some great questions to the reader but the middle/end of the book appeared to be geared more for academic conferences than readers hoping to get a glimpse of what leads people:nations to commit unspeakable acts of violence.
It presented some great questions to the reader but the middle/end of the book appeared to be geared more for academic conferences than readers hoping to get a glimpse of what leads people:nations to commit unspeakable acts of violence.
September 12, 2016
I find the book rather disappointing. It's more about the author's own thoughts and discomfort. The book is full of philosophical and academic chatter but doesn't really offer what students of genocide and human rights would expect. If you want a well-written book on a very similar subject, I recommend "Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others" by David Livingstone Smith.
September 23, 2021
As a history student this is not at all what I expected, as a student minoring in English and and an individual who loves philosophy I absolutely love the direction it took.
If you thought this book was going to be about the war crimes perpetrated by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War, you are mistaken; perhaps gladly so. Or, as some reviews suggest, you angrily realize that the touted subject was but a facade for deeper questions.
While I would have preferred more of the stories of the people Dawes interviewed (perhaps indeed due to voyeurism of the obscene as he suggest in opening paragraphs), I found that this book was not really supposed to be about these stories at all; but rather about how we as audiences, and those telling the stories, perceive it.
Is it pompous? Certainly. A self-indulgent piece of free writing? At times. It is not a book about history but rather historiography. And we cannot understand the past without also trying to understand HOW we view the past. And in this case of war and genocide and attrition it would be foolish to assume (as Dawes points out) that any book could properly package such a heavy subject into a neatly folded and easily digested narrative.
This book is certainly heavy on philosophy, you may hate it for that. Or you may love it (as I did) for the approach that it took in this way.
If you thought this book was going to be about the war crimes perpetrated by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War, you are mistaken; perhaps gladly so. Or, as some reviews suggest, you angrily realize that the touted subject was but a facade for deeper questions.
While I would have preferred more of the stories of the people Dawes interviewed (perhaps indeed due to voyeurism of the obscene as he suggest in opening paragraphs), I found that this book was not really supposed to be about these stories at all; but rather about how we as audiences, and those telling the stories, perceive it.
Is it pompous? Certainly. A self-indulgent piece of free writing? At times. It is not a book about history but rather historiography. And we cannot understand the past without also trying to understand HOW we view the past. And in this case of war and genocide and attrition it would be foolish to assume (as Dawes points out) that any book could properly package such a heavy subject into a neatly folded and easily digested narrative.
This book is certainly heavy on philosophy, you may hate it for that. Or you may love it (as I did) for the approach that it took in this way.
December 18, 2014
The subject matter of Japan's war atrocities committed in China in the 1930s and 40s is very important, and the interviews the author made to those old Japanese soldiers are important historical materials. Even some of the author's arguments are insightful. But he, as an English professor, could use a better editor for his manuscript. I was very surprised that the Harvard University Press would publish this book that makes reading it such a torturous experience, to the point that I, regretfully, need to give it up mid-point.
October 6, 2023
this would have been exponentially better if the author presented his findings as transcripts devoid of personal reflection.
January 3, 2020
First of all, I can't rate this book highly enough.
The author, Dawes, tells us that this work is not meant to be a description of what happened between Japanese soldiers and Chinese civilians around the time of the Second World War. His purpose, he says bluntly, is to make us reflect, to feel and to think about the entire topic of evil, especially as it relates to state-sponsored violence, of which the Japanese invasion of China was only one example.
The author begins by telling how uncertain he is about his topic, and this seems to have frustrated some of the reviewers on this site but, to me, this is just the treatment that an increasingly arrogant and judgemental culture needs to really consider. The equivocation here never really does get sorted out, and I find that so very refreshing in today's world of "you and us", where people crow about our wonderful country while ignoring our sins, both past and present. As one of the soldiers points out, this type of blind "patriotism" just furnishes the framework that allows us to depise people who are not of our tribe.
Evil Men came to me at just the right time: I've been reading about genocide and military imperialism for several books now, so the actrocities of Rwanda, the Congo, and Sudan, along with Viet Nam, Turkey, and Poland have provided more than enough incidents of horror. But this book is a deep, deep look at what evil really is with only such examples as are absolutely necessary to provide context. It examines many aspects of the subject: why people perform evil acts, the morality of reading about it in your cozy armchair, how or even if it should be punished, how leaders create cultures for genocide and war, how monstrous acts can be cold-bloodedly orchestrated, topics covering both cultural and individual responsibilites and consequences. Throughout it all, Dawes withholds judgement, trying instead to understand how to control or eradicate as much destruction and horror as possible.
I often make notes when I read something that's weighty but, after twenty pages of Evil Men, I just started marking the margins (with pencil) because there was so much profound insight. Dawes hangs his thoughts on the atrocities of Japanese soldiers upon Chinese civilians during the 1930s and 40s but he's obviously not interested in the gory details of this particular issue, unless it's how the now octogenarians see their monstrous selves of so long ago. Interviewing these very different men decades later, he uses slivers of their memories to focus his own observations, all the while wondering if even thse brief descriptions of (often pointless) violence are destroying human disgnity.
Two unflinching examples of Dawes' many insights: on page 6, he leaves a bare statement about one Japanese soldier who "experienced his own crimes as trauma"; I found this so in contrast to a world which seems to think that perpetrators revel in their victims' pain or terror, and where so many people demonize others who really need less judgement and more understanding. Then, on page 81, Dawes describes how soldiers in Vietnam, shooting at fleeing children, took defensive positions as if they were being attacked. Dawes observes simply that he feels that America has been in that mindset as a country for a number of years now.
Many fascinating, horrific, profound insights.
The author, Dawes, tells us that this work is not meant to be a description of what happened between Japanese soldiers and Chinese civilians around the time of the Second World War. His purpose, he says bluntly, is to make us reflect, to feel and to think about the entire topic of evil, especially as it relates to state-sponsored violence, of which the Japanese invasion of China was only one example.
The author begins by telling how uncertain he is about his topic, and this seems to have frustrated some of the reviewers on this site but, to me, this is just the treatment that an increasingly arrogant and judgemental culture needs to really consider. The equivocation here never really does get sorted out, and I find that so very refreshing in today's world of "you and us", where people crow about our wonderful country while ignoring our sins, both past and present. As one of the soldiers points out, this type of blind "patriotism" just furnishes the framework that allows us to depise people who are not of our tribe.
Evil Men came to me at just the right time: I've been reading about genocide and military imperialism for several books now, so the actrocities of Rwanda, the Congo, and Sudan, along with Viet Nam, Turkey, and Poland have provided more than enough incidents of horror. But this book is a deep, deep look at what evil really is with only such examples as are absolutely necessary to provide context. It examines many aspects of the subject: why people perform evil acts, the morality of reading about it in your cozy armchair, how or even if it should be punished, how leaders create cultures for genocide and war, how monstrous acts can be cold-bloodedly orchestrated, topics covering both cultural and individual responsibilites and consequences. Throughout it all, Dawes withholds judgement, trying instead to understand how to control or eradicate as much destruction and horror as possible.
I often make notes when I read something that's weighty but, after twenty pages of Evil Men, I just started marking the margins (with pencil) because there was so much profound insight. Dawes hangs his thoughts on the atrocities of Japanese soldiers upon Chinese civilians during the 1930s and 40s but he's obviously not interested in the gory details of this particular issue, unless it's how the now octogenarians see their monstrous selves of so long ago. Interviewing these very different men decades later, he uses slivers of their memories to focus his own observations, all the while wondering if even thse brief descriptions of (often pointless) violence are destroying human disgnity.
Two unflinching examples of Dawes' many insights: on page 6, he leaves a bare statement about one Japanese soldier who "experienced his own crimes as trauma"; I found this so in contrast to a world which seems to think that perpetrators revel in their victims' pain or terror, and where so many people demonize others who really need less judgement and more understanding. Then, on page 81, Dawes describes how soldiers in Vietnam, shooting at fleeing children, took defensive positions as if they were being attacked. Dawes observes simply that he feels that America has been in that mindset as a country for a number of years now.
Many fascinating, horrific, profound insights.
September 18, 2019
I discovered this book in a list of books on evil, made by author Paul Bloom. I had no idea what to expect except for my assumption that it would document the terrible things done by Japanese soldiers during the occupation of China before and during World War II. Well, there is some of that, but the book soon starts going beyond it, as the author is confronted with competing facts and reactions. The very aged Japanese men are nice guys. They are trying to publicize the crimes they were forced to commit, against a concerted government attempt to deny them. They are trying to do good. Yet they are monsters! The things they did are unbelievable. How can you like or have sympathy with such people? The contradictions in these both very reasonable reactions lead to some painful and rewarding discussions.
The author turns the spotlight on the readers by asking just why there is an interest in reading about atrocities. Are we trying to feel better about ourselves by reading about the horrible things others have done? Are we wallowing in our revulsion in such a way that we actually get pleasure from reading about atrocities? The danger of “atrocity porn” is real. Because victims often cannot provide their own feelings (having been killed), should we give a microphone to the perpetrators? But if we don’t how will the world know about these acts?
The author doesn’t try to give easy answers. I have to say that I was not expecting these kinds of discussions when I started the book. In retrospect, they were just as important as reading another book about evil men and their horrors. I learned a lot, which I frankly did not expect. The author is to be commended for challenging me and other readers rather than just giving us what we (thought we) wanted.
The author turns the spotlight on the readers by asking just why there is an interest in reading about atrocities. Are we trying to feel better about ourselves by reading about the horrible things others have done? Are we wallowing in our revulsion in such a way that we actually get pleasure from reading about atrocities? The danger of “atrocity porn” is real. Because victims often cannot provide their own feelings (having been killed), should we give a microphone to the perpetrators? But if we don’t how will the world know about these acts?
The author doesn’t try to give easy answers. I have to say that I was not expecting these kinds of discussions when I started the book. In retrospect, they were just as important as reading another book about evil men and their horrors. I learned a lot, which I frankly did not expect. The author is to be commended for challenging me and other readers rather than just giving us what we (thought we) wanted.
January 9, 2020
This is a powerful book, based on interviewing ww2 Japanese soldiers who, among other things, killed children. I was expecting a narrative a bit like 'Ordinary men' but the author used the interviews to try to understand the questions of wider morality and the reporting of evil. Huge referencing of other works. Bit disappointing because I kinda like to make my own mind up about human motivations and so I wanted much more of the interviews but I got a lot from the authors effort. Title is misplaced imo.
November 8, 2017
I don’t know what to say about this book. It made me cringe, cry, reflect, and question my conception of the world. “When it comes down to it, evil is committed by those who never decided to be good or bad” and also, what is the use of the concept of evil? How do normal people commit atrocity and how do they live with themselves after? So many thoughts, it will take a couple of years for me to understand all this book had to offer.
September 24, 2025
Possibly one of the saddest and most reflective books I have and will ever read. A truly necessary read and discussion so we can hopefully avoid these mistakes again.
But as I write this note, the IDF has killed 600,000 innocent people in Gaza.
I'm not entirely sure we can collectively annihilate this human desire to commit genocide. I'm so tired of it all.
But as I write this note, the IDF has killed 600,000 innocent people in Gaza.
I'm not entirely sure we can collectively annihilate this human desire to commit genocide. I'm so tired of it all.
October 8, 2019
Lots of good in the interviews. But the book wanders too much and by the end you lose what the author was intending to do.
January 13, 2020
This is a treasure trove of knowledge and insight that will stick with you. However, I think it should have been 1/4 shorter because it felt like a long research paper at times.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
December 20, 2021
An excellent scholarly study of wartime atrocities examined through a wide-variety of academic lenses (literature, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology).
March 27, 2024
A very haunting book of the evil deeds done by war criminals during WW2
July 8, 2013
I’ve just closed the back cover on possibly the most important book I’ve ever read. I’m tempted to go buy a carton of copies to give out. It easily evil menand immediately takes a place in my top five favorite books. Although, “favorite” doesn’t quite fit. It’s a hard book.
In the interest of full disclosure, James Dawes, the author of EVIL MEN, was the valedictorian of my high school class. But make no mistake; this isn’t a pal hawking a cohort’s book. Jim and I aren’t friends. Not to say that we’re enemies. We just don’t really know each other. I saw notice of the book on our school’s alumni Facebook page and, being curious, thought I’d have a look.
Jim Dawes and I didn’t have overlapping social circles in school. I do remember him, but I imagine that most of the class of 1987 remembers him. He was like that. Brilliant, kind, and athletic, he rather had all of his ducks in a row back then, which is remarkable for any kid that age. But there was more gravity to Jim than there was to other socially and academically successful teenagers. He was prominent in an unusual way, even if that way is still difficult to articulate all these years later. It left an impression that has lasted decades and definitely had something to do with being able to relate comfortably to a gaggle of peers while thinking quite a bit beyond us.
Apparently that has carried over into a life of valuable research and singular eloquence.
And that’s probably all I’ll say about James Dawes, the person, because a) I still don’t know him personally and b) this isn’t really about James Dawes, it’s about the book, EVIL MEN, just out from Harvard University Press.
EVIL MEN is a dissection of atrocity and conceptual evil, inspired by a series of interviews with Japanese war criminals. These very old men recounted, through a translator, the horrors they had meted out in uniform during the Sino-Japanese wars. It broadens from there into a display of theory, ethics, scientific study, history, philosophy, and human rights advocacy, all tethered in a coherence that I would have to be incoherent to adequately express my admiration of. Let’s just say that you will be quite a bit smarter by ‘The End’ than you were on page one, but you’ll need to pay for the education in careful reading. This is by no means a one sit read. It demands (and rewards) deliberation.
There is no making sense of the things we do to each other, especially under the banner of military duty, but the value in this book is discovering that maybe there is a way to make sense of it not making sense. And if that sounds like a bit of intellectual tail-chasing, it isn’t. This is not an entertaining book. But having just written that, I have to say that, one step removed, it is vastly entertaining to unfold the map of our collective conscience and see the red dot proclaiming that YOU ARE HERE.
The most remarkable feat of EVIL MEN is in its balance. The moral paradoxes of relating these traumas are thoroughly addressed. Doing justice to the victims with mere words while evoking the necessary vividness to adequately represent the crimes is no easy task. Then avoiding catapulting the whole works into gratuitous carnival takes the utmost heartfelt precision, which he exhibits without faltering. James Dawes is exacting of himself as a researcher, as a writer, and as a moral human being. Following his lead through the nautilus of self-examination is effortless and, somehow, not terrifying. It’s not safe to go there, for certain, but it’s not safe not go there either, as he explains on the page.
Most importantly, for me, EVIL MEN left me with a notion. If the model of morality is in any way analogous to the model of physics, then this book inspires the hope that perhaps it all works in the same way quantum mechanics plays under the screen of our observable, Newtonian world. Maybe in the act of just examining our malleability and by measuring our own frailty, perhaps we change it.
Go get this challenging, wonderful book. Read it and discover what evil is (or isn’t) made of.
In the interest of full disclosure, James Dawes, the author of EVIL MEN, was the valedictorian of my high school class. But make no mistake; this isn’t a pal hawking a cohort’s book. Jim and I aren’t friends. Not to say that we’re enemies. We just don’t really know each other. I saw notice of the book on our school’s alumni Facebook page and, being curious, thought I’d have a look.
Jim Dawes and I didn’t have overlapping social circles in school. I do remember him, but I imagine that most of the class of 1987 remembers him. He was like that. Brilliant, kind, and athletic, he rather had all of his ducks in a row back then, which is remarkable for any kid that age. But there was more gravity to Jim than there was to other socially and academically successful teenagers. He was prominent in an unusual way, even if that way is still difficult to articulate all these years later. It left an impression that has lasted decades and definitely had something to do with being able to relate comfortably to a gaggle of peers while thinking quite a bit beyond us.
Apparently that has carried over into a life of valuable research and singular eloquence.
And that’s probably all I’ll say about James Dawes, the person, because a) I still don’t know him personally and b) this isn’t really about James Dawes, it’s about the book, EVIL MEN, just out from Harvard University Press.
EVIL MEN is a dissection of atrocity and conceptual evil, inspired by a series of interviews with Japanese war criminals. These very old men recounted, through a translator, the horrors they had meted out in uniform during the Sino-Japanese wars. It broadens from there into a display of theory, ethics, scientific study, history, philosophy, and human rights advocacy, all tethered in a coherence that I would have to be incoherent to adequately express my admiration of. Let’s just say that you will be quite a bit smarter by ‘The End’ than you were on page one, but you’ll need to pay for the education in careful reading. This is by no means a one sit read. It demands (and rewards) deliberation.
There is no making sense of the things we do to each other, especially under the banner of military duty, but the value in this book is discovering that maybe there is a way to make sense of it not making sense. And if that sounds like a bit of intellectual tail-chasing, it isn’t. This is not an entertaining book. But having just written that, I have to say that, one step removed, it is vastly entertaining to unfold the map of our collective conscience and see the red dot proclaiming that YOU ARE HERE.
The most remarkable feat of EVIL MEN is in its balance. The moral paradoxes of relating these traumas are thoroughly addressed. Doing justice to the victims with mere words while evoking the necessary vividness to adequately represent the crimes is no easy task. Then avoiding catapulting the whole works into gratuitous carnival takes the utmost heartfelt precision, which he exhibits without faltering. James Dawes is exacting of himself as a researcher, as a writer, and as a moral human being. Following his lead through the nautilus of self-examination is effortless and, somehow, not terrifying. It’s not safe to go there, for certain, but it’s not safe not go there either, as he explains on the page.
Most importantly, for me, EVIL MEN left me with a notion. If the model of morality is in any way analogous to the model of physics, then this book inspires the hope that perhaps it all works in the same way quantum mechanics plays under the screen of our observable, Newtonian world. Maybe in the act of just examining our malleability and by measuring our own frailty, perhaps we change it.
Go get this challenging, wonderful book. Read it and discover what evil is (or isn’t) made of.
April 30, 2013
James Dawes tackles the complicated subject of atrocity and, more specifically, is interested in analyzing and understanding the people who commit acts of violence. This is a constant curiosity for thinkers in all societies, but the writing and form of "Evil Men" is so unique and accessible that the book provides a lens into what is, for most readers, an unfamiliar world, but in a way that is both easy and thrilling to read.
What makes this book not like any other on the subject is the intense personal nature of it. A great deal of the book recounts personal testimonies from war criminals, primarily former Japanese soldiers. These testimonies are powerful and intimate, stories that are at times surprisingly relatable. Personal stories where we can hear the voices of the "evil men" are rare, providing an insight otherwise unavailable to us.
Intermingled with these stories is the narrative of the Dawes, the author, interviewing and speaking with the men. The self-awareness of the research and analysis is apparent, and I for one greatly appreciated the transparency of the author, and found his story fascinating and personal, drawing connections to himself and his own life just like the reader. You can tell how deeply Dawes cares about this subject and handling it with care.
But the book isn't just a collection of experiences. Dawes expertly weaves in the works of other thinkers and academics on the subject, providing an analysis of violence and humanity. But this book never feels "academic," and is as much of a page-turner as any book I've read.
There is a great deal we can learn about ourselves in the process of understanding others, especially those who may seem so unlike us on the surface, but feel just like we do, everything from love to jealousy, friendship to hatred. Dawes navigates this territory masterfully, resulting in a book anyone can pick up and start reading, and that everyone will want to finish.
What makes this book not like any other on the subject is the intense personal nature of it. A great deal of the book recounts personal testimonies from war criminals, primarily former Japanese soldiers. These testimonies are powerful and intimate, stories that are at times surprisingly relatable. Personal stories where we can hear the voices of the "evil men" are rare, providing an insight otherwise unavailable to us.
Intermingled with these stories is the narrative of the Dawes, the author, interviewing and speaking with the men. The self-awareness of the research and analysis is apparent, and I for one greatly appreciated the transparency of the author, and found his story fascinating and personal, drawing connections to himself and his own life just like the reader. You can tell how deeply Dawes cares about this subject and handling it with care.
But the book isn't just a collection of experiences. Dawes expertly weaves in the works of other thinkers and academics on the subject, providing an analysis of violence and humanity. But this book never feels "academic," and is as much of a page-turner as any book I've read.
There is a great deal we can learn about ourselves in the process of understanding others, especially those who may seem so unlike us on the surface, but feel just like we do, everything from love to jealousy, friendship to hatred. Dawes navigates this territory masterfully, resulting in a book anyone can pick up and start reading, and that everyone will want to finish.
May 1, 2018
Evil Men is a unique work that seeks to plumb the depths of human capability, raising disturbing and difficult questions about what it means to be human, and offering no easy answers. In its narrative style, with no formal chapters or divisions, it bounces deftly between segments of first-hand interviews with convicted war criminals from the Asia-Pacific War, researched theory in psychology and sociology, philosophical musings, and personal admissions, with a pace more akin at times to stream-of-consciousness than structured academic argumentation.
Dawson wants his readers to understand that the people behind these atrocities are not monsters. While it may be comforting to demonize, to think that they are fundamentally different from us, he encourages us to acknowledge that they are every bit as human as we all are: humans are ultimately behind atrocities, and any human is susceptible to becoming a perpetrator or victim of war. He wants us to understand why such people make the choices they make but - importantly - to know that to understand is by no means to excuse.
Dawson uses his experience of interviewing war criminals to provide a set of considerations and meditations on much larger and more fundamental questions of human existence. In order to understand what it means to be good, we cannot avert our eyes from atrocity, nor the people who commit them. Only honestly about the paradoxes of humanity - a firm and stark acknowledgement of all the things of which we are capable, our depts and our heights - will provide us the moral, ethical, psychological and philosophical tools necessary to resist the pressure conform, to render others less-than-human, to obey even those who would have us destroy one another.
In the end, there is no resolution to the contradictions of being human in Evil Men, nor should there be.
Dawson wants his readers to understand that the people behind these atrocities are not monsters. While it may be comforting to demonize, to think that they are fundamentally different from us, he encourages us to acknowledge that they are every bit as human as we all are: humans are ultimately behind atrocities, and any human is susceptible to becoming a perpetrator or victim of war. He wants us to understand why such people make the choices they make but - importantly - to know that to understand is by no means to excuse.
Dawson uses his experience of interviewing war criminals to provide a set of considerations and meditations on much larger and more fundamental questions of human existence. In order to understand what it means to be good, we cannot avert our eyes from atrocity, nor the people who commit them. Only honestly about the paradoxes of humanity - a firm and stark acknowledgement of all the things of which we are capable, our depts and our heights - will provide us the moral, ethical, psychological and philosophical tools necessary to resist the pressure conform, to render others less-than-human, to obey even those who would have us destroy one another.
In the end, there is no resolution to the contradictions of being human in Evil Men, nor should there be.
July 16, 2016
我知道這本書應該不是讓中學生看的，可是好像也沒別的地方可以分享，既然這裡是我個人分享閱讀的頁面，那就請各位勉為其難的忍受一下吧！
其實我是因為好友在看中文版，因為譯文十分生硬難懂，而常常發出不滿意的訊息，引發了我的好奇心，才想來看看原文到底是有多難！大抵如果譯文不佳，其實都是和原文有關，很少數是和譯者的文筆有關的。
所以，我就忍不住上北市圖網站去查，一查竟然有這本！也太驚人了吧！當下就預約了！
話說書很快就拿到，但要看完並不是一件容易的事，不只是文字難澀，主題也是比較冷門的。
這本書的主幹是在敍述作者做口述歷史的過程，對象是日本在二戰後從中國遣返的戰犯，所謂"中國歸還者"(Chukiren)，他們是日本戰後非主流的聲音，因為他們說是因為自己的良知而醒悟也好，說是因為戰後那段在中國被再教育（洗腦）的經驗使他們改變也好，反正他們認為日本在二戰時期是犯了大罪的，而他們因為日本的邪惡也犯下了難以原諒的罪行，他們還組成協會，來倡導他們的想法！很特別吧！可以想像在日本戰後的社會裡，這樣的聲音是有多麼異類而不見容於世⋯⋯
整本書不分章節，想來應是作者的特意安排，因為他真的是以第一人稱來撰寫，讓焦點人物訪談，論述，以及他自己的許多感想及衝突交錯呈現，感覺有點想到那兒就寫到那兒，讓讀者有一種和作者一同陷入沈思的狀態，真的是很特別的！
作者似乎很喜愛一種自我內在衝突式的思考模式，不停的辯證再辯證，是很特別啦！不過看得我這個讀者好累啊！
有時他引用的文句還真是艱澀，我都懷疑到底有多少母語人士有辦法理解，也不禁想到這也是為何人文社會學科會在當代面臨危機，除了很難立即看到實用的價值之外，那種自視過高，好賣弄學問，把東西包裝得讓人看不透的學術傲慢，還堅持不這樣無法表達自己高深的思想於萬一的種種托詞，其實只是讓很多人離這些美好的人文學科愈來愈遠吧⋯⋯令人擔心啊！
不過看這本書時，就感覺像是走路時腳上綁了鉛塊，走得很勉強，看完的當下，第一個念頭就是，下一本書應該可以有凌波微步之感了吧！XDDD
其實我是因為好友在看中文版，因為譯文十分生硬難懂，而常常發出不滿意的訊息，引發了我的好奇心，才想來看看原文到底是有多難！大抵如果譯文不佳，其實都是和原文有關，很少數是和譯者的文筆有關的。
所以，我就忍不住上北市圖網站去查，一查竟然有這本！也太驚人了吧！當下就預約了！
話說書很快就拿到，但要看完並不是一件容易的事，不只是文字難澀，主題也是比較冷門的。
這本書的主幹是在敍述作者做口述歷史的過程，對象是日本在二戰後從中國遣返的戰犯，所謂"中國歸還者"(Chukiren)，他們是日本戰後非主流的聲音，因為他們說是因為自己的良知而醒悟也好，說是因為戰後那段在中國被再教育（洗腦）的經驗使他們改變也好，反正他們認為日本在二戰時期是犯了大罪的，而他們因為日本的邪惡也犯下了難以原諒的罪行，他們還組成協會，來倡導他們的想法！很特別吧！可以想像在日本戰後的社會裡，這樣的聲音是有多麼異類而不見容於世⋯⋯
整本書不分章節，想來應是作者的特意安排，因為他真的是以第一人稱來撰寫，讓焦點人物訪談，論述，以及他自己的許多感想及衝突交錯呈現，感覺有點想到那兒就寫到那兒，讓讀者有一種和作者一同陷入沈思的狀態，真的是很特別的！
作者似乎很喜愛一種自我內在衝突式的思考模式，不停的辯證再辯證，是很特別啦！不過看得我這個讀者好累啊！
有時他引用的文句還真是艱澀，我都懷疑到底有多少母語人士有辦法理解，也不禁想到這也是為何人文社會學科會在當代面臨危機，除了很難立即看到實用的價值之外，那種自視過高，好賣弄學問，把東西包裝得讓人看不透的學術傲慢，還堅持不這樣無法表達自己高深的思想於萬一的種種托詞，其實只是讓很多人離這些美好的人文學科愈來愈遠吧⋯⋯令人擔心啊！
不過看這本書時，就感覺像是走路時腳上綁了鉛塊，走得很勉強，看完的當下，第一個念頭就是，下一本書應該可以有凌波微步之感了吧！XDDD
June 8, 2013
I want to re-read it, but it struck me that it wasn't quite what it could have been. I think Dawes became a bit overwhelmed by his project and retreated, for safety's sake, into academic discussions--some that were interesting to me (a fine discussion of the philosophical problem of evil) and some that weren't (the last quarter of the book, which reads like lecture notes turned into text). Sometimes I wished Dawes would have just gotten out of the way and let the book flow, which it tries to do on several occasions. A better title might have been, "James Dawes' Reactions to Interviews with Evil Men". For all that, though, some passages are deeply affecting and resonate long after the book is closed.
September 7, 2015
An interesting book about what causes ordinary men to do evil things. I wasn't as affected by the stories of the Japanese War criminals, but that part of the book posed interesting questions about how one goes on living after committing acts of atrocity. I was interested in Dawes' discussion of the role of journalists when reporting on acts of atrocity. How do you remain respectful of the victims of these types of crimes while reporting? How do you report without it seeming archival and yet not dehumanize the victims?
September 29, 2013
Must-read for those who study mass atrocities and are curious about narrative responsibilities and trauma. I didn't entirely agree with the author's approach at times -- particularly in the passages concerning moral obligations in situations of mass atrocities -- but agreement is not the sign of a good book. I very much appreciated the difficulty of this project and the candor and personal touch with which Dawes wrote about this subject.
August 9, 2015
Dawes is writing a book about why we shouldn't write books about genocide. In all, it is a complete waste of time to read.
He is also a pompous, pretentious, upper-class White man proselytizing his ideas to people he considers dumber than him. (And I'm saying this as a privileged white man myself).
For those interested in the ethics of genocide, there are far better books. For those interested in learning more about genocide, this is not that book.
He is also a pompous, pretentious, upper-class White man proselytizing his ideas to people he considers dumber than him. (And I'm saying this as a privileged white man myself).
For those interested in the ethics of genocide, there are far better books. For those interested in learning more about genocide, this is not that book.
April 5, 2016
a brilliant translation of what Hannah Arendt on defining what makes evil become evil. must read..(the first time I do not write much comment about a book)...conditional environment comprising of inner and outer environment..what makes a school teacher Milosevic became a slaughterman during Bosnia War? we all have the evil seed inside of me..it is just depending on timing...(we are just primate in a suit)
February 15, 2014
For me, this was a tough read. Tons of references. At first I had the opinion that Dawes writes this book without the strong substance of his own opinion. However, throughout the book I realized that this book is greatly "biased" on his own feelings. That does not make it a bad book. It was a very cool read.
May 5, 2014
What a fascinating, if horrifying look at Japanese wee criminals, their motivations, the psychological and human rights aspects of these acts and their modern-day counterparts. Contemplate: could you be capable of committing such horrors?
May 29, 2013
I found it interesting though it was almost as much about the process of writing such a book as in discussing interviews with the "evil men."
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