Your Microsoft wants Nintendo

[A Black Falcon]

A lot of it? Japan is one of those countries where all they'd ever done is do what the person above them in the ladder told them... it's still to a very large extent like that, actually. Us defeating them can do some things, but it can't totally change their society in every way. So when the government was run by a militarist/expansionist/indulstrialist group, which it was a lot from the 1860s on, the people mostly follow along. Sure there are a few dissidents but when the government decides to crack down, like they did in the '30s, they can be very effective.

Anyway, the Americans sure noticed their total lack of common sense when the Japanese would fight to the last man standing (no intelligent army would do that, it's pointless).

Okay, think about this... from a most basic sense, the point of war is to defeat the enemy. Does it make sense to not kill the enemy, but to take them prisoner? That's something that comes up from the side of the human mind that is more enlightened, but in some senses you can see how 'don't take prisoners' is something that makes sense in a way we would consider twisted. As for no surrender, that's simpler. It's a way for the people in charge to get their people to fight really hard. If you think that if you surrender not only are you shaming yourself, but you are also shaming your whole family... your whole village... and, most important, the Emperor himself... you will fight very hard to the last. Why fight to the last and not surrender? Well, what advantage is surrender to the government? Seriously. What advantage is it to the government if their people surrender? If they die they can talk about noble sacrifices to defend the homeland from the evil westerners, after all... that's harder if your people are merely captured. I know it sounds cold, but you cannot be in a position like that and value human life, even of your own people, above what you consider to be your ideals (especially when said ideals include many ways that human lives should be ended). The government wasn't immune to the warrior spirit, after all... remember this. Japan always has been and still is a very, very racist country. They considered themselves a superior race to everyone else in the world. Their soldiers went out to the field essentially brainwashed to kill the enemy or be killed... and they cared not at all for other Asians either -- witness the horrific things they did to the Chinese, the Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesians... everywhere they went they left a trail of corpses of the locals as well as themselves and their enemies...

So, when you look at their tactic of never surrendering and fighting to the death, it does look from a objective viewpoint to not be a one that will lead to great success in war, even when you consider the realities of an island-based campaign like the one against the West mostly was. But when you look at how they had been taught, and how they had taught their people, it was the most logical choice. Not the best choice, but the one that you could most likely predict that they would follow, I believe. It's a whole lot harder to say 'wait, I think that we should have some respect for the lives of our new subjects in [name conquered nation here]' than it is to merely say nothing and let them do as they wish...