- Incidentally, you find in the text from Spengler you just pointed (the antepenultimate chapter of "The hour of decision") an opinion which echoes Guenon's assertion about the Japanese that bothered you so much. Following Guénon writing in the late twenties (about the same time as Spengler's text, dating back to 1933), Japanese did not "truly" (meaning here "fully" or "purely", which does not exclude a partial or mixed belonging) belong to the "Yellow" race; Guenon indeed indicated that they had more to do with "Malayans", in the form of a mix (geographically he must suggest a mix with "Yellow" elements), in a suggestion about where the difference in mentality between Chinese and Japanese could come from.
"Mais, objectera-t-on, il n’y a pas que les Chinois, il y a aussi les Japonais, qui, eux, sont bien un peuple guerrier ; cela est vrai, mais d’abord les Japonais, issus d’un mélange où dominent les éléments malais, n’appartiennent pas véritablement à la race jaune, et par conséquent leur tradition a forcément un caractère différent."
Orient et Occident, René Guénon, éd. Guy Trédaniel, Éditions de la Maisnie, 1964, p.105
Spengler evidently shares a similar theory, as the following passage, from the antepenultimate chapter of "The Hour of decision" ( http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/07/the-colored-world-revolution-part-1/ ) can well show:
"Japan belongs to Asia only geographically. From the ethnographical point of view it undoubtedly stands closer to the eastern Malayans, the Polynesians, and certain Indian peoples on the west side of America."
Indeed, this view was typical of the epoch, as Valois mentioned it on several occasion in his small book on races (even if he considers it, in 1944, as unproven and unplausible): a remote colonization from Indonesia would have explained, for some anthropologists, the typical features of Japan, which were held to have been closer to the "Occidental" people (as well as, for some, the presence of the Ainous). And, strange as it may seem to us nowadays, the "Indonesian" (or "proto-Malayan") race was thought by some to be a remnant of the White race, and had even been linked to the mediterranean race, or, at least, had been considered a "very attenuated" yellow race.
"La situation anthropologique de cette race est discutée. Elle offre beaucoup de traits semblables à ceux des Européens, et certains l'ont incluse dans la race méditerranéenne.[...] Il est plus simple de la considérer comme une race jaune à caractères extrêmement atténués."
Henri Vallois. Les Races Humaines. Paris: PUF; 1944.
Of course, those theories don't stand in front of the modern genetic evidence that were unavailable in Spengler's and Guenon's times. But at least the these wasn't coming from nowhere, and it is only too easy to mock it now.
In the same way, if you're so interested in busting "preposterous claims", Evola has a good share of it -even if it can also be explained, and therefore partly excused, by some beliefs of the time: what do you think for instance of the idea we find on "Sintesi di dottrina della razza", third part, point 4 "Possono nascere razze nuove?" that a white woman can breed coloured children even if the father is white, sufficing she had had years ago a coloured partner who would have impressed her on the form of a subconscious "complex"? (p.89 of the French translation, p.46/105 of the Italian pdf I have:
"Una donna, i cui rapporti sessuali con un uomo di colore sono cessati da anni, può dare alla luce un figlio di colore nella sua unione con un uomo, come lei, di razza bianca: qui una idea confìttasi in condizioni speciali nella subcoscienza della madre in forma di un "complesso", anche dopo anni ha agito formativamente sulla nascita."
With regards -by the way, are you the "BK" who signed the presentation of "Synthèse de doctrine de la race"? -if so, thanks for the translation! This view on the racial origins of the Japanese was then in the air, and Spengler, with many other contemporaneous authors, made it his with no hidden agenda. In Guénon’s mind, on the other hand, the Yellow race was a contemplative race ; the Japanese were known to be a warlike people : as a result, the Yellows “n'appartiennent pas véritablement à la race jaune”. What is preposterous about this claim is the rationale behind it. In his ‘René Guénon’ (available at google.book), Pierre-Marie Sigaud has raised similar aberrations in the French author’s work.
Your English translation of our translation of ‘Sintesi di dottrina della razza’ is faulty: hence the wrong impression that the view is nonsensical. It actually reads : “A woman, who has not had sexual relations with a black man for years, can give birth to a coloured child, when sexually active with a man who, like her, is white: here, an idea, which was impressed under special conditions in the subconscious of the mother in the form of a ‘complex’, has had, even after years, a formative influence on the birth.” The genetics behind this phenomenon is still poorly understood.
In any case, it is worthwhile quoting the next sentence : “If all this is really possible, it may well be thought that a similar process could recur on a collective level.”
- Could the differentiated Japanese mentality - in comparison to that of the rest of the Asiatic race - be attributed to some extent to the fact that Japan knew several long, uninterrupted periods of war since the feodal times? The selection at every level resulting from these long wars might have had a positive impact on the development of the more virile character of the Japanese.However, if there were kamikaze pilots in 1945, there also had been rather gruesome things going on, which were not "aryan" (for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731, unless this "war crime" was made up by the victors, which I do not know).
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