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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
I think the one thing everyone in here can agree with (and most Japanese people can agree with) is that the Japanese government is a total joke. It has been in need of a giant overhaul for a while, but the Japanese government is one of the most corrupt in the developed world (money and connections plays a huge, possibly the biggest, role).
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On September 16 2012 12:14 Souma wrote:
I think the one thing everyone in here can agree with (and most Japanese people can agree with) is that the Japanese government is a total joke. It has been in need of a giant overhaul for a while, but the Japanese government is one of the most corrupt (money and connections plays a huge (possibly the biggest) role) in the developed world.
Yep, the common joke among some of the Chinese high officials I've spoken to is that when Japan invaded China and then lost, they guaranteed 50 years of domination by both the Japanese LDP and the Chinese CCP.
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This is pretty much the Chinese government wanting to divert attention from themselves and onto something else.
If you want to talk about war criminals in the shrine, I will explain.
The Japanese faith and people's feelings in general about war criminals is that they were tried, they were executed but their souls don't need to be punished for all eternity. They were punished for the crimes they committed, that's it.
I've lived here for almost 10 years now and I can tell you 100% that Japanese people feel shame and embarrassment over what happened during ww2 but they believe they are a different country now with a conviction to never EVER go to war again.
Japan and the Japanese government have apologised over and over and over again, and have paid HUGE sums of money to the people they treated so badly.
For example, Japan gave the Korean government money to pass on to the "comfort women" to this day, these women claim they haven't received a penny, well the facts of the matter are that the money was given to Korea but what happened after that nobody knows.
In times of trouble, when Chinese or Korean goverments feel under pressure, these anti-Japan protests ALWAYS come back up, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
It won't be long before the events of ww2 and before will have happened over 100 years ago, Japan has apologized many times and the money has been paid. It's time the world was made aware that what Chinese and Korean governments are saying about Japan isn't true.
Personally, as a peace loving person, I think the world should be VERY worried about China right now, it's not only Japan they are threatening, it's EVERY country in this region.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On September 16 2012 12:02 Souma wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 11:47 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:04 KwarK wrote:
Never have two nations created empires for more entirely opposite purposes, maintained them in such different ways, treated the native populations so differently and lost them in such contrasting fashions. ^^This. This isn't to say one Empire was better than the other, however. The very act of imperialism is an abrogation of the sovereignty of subject peoples; a mass deprivation of agency. This is what makes it deplorable; an original sin no amount of benevolent paternalism can ameliorate. The British Empire was created over hundreds of years through an extended fit of absent-mindedness, to paraphrase historian Sir John Seeley. Mercantile interests lay at its heart, and every new fit of expansion was usually driven first by commercial factors and then by military factors. By contrast, the Japanese Empire was created over a few short decades with an expressed purpose of ensuring that Japan would forever be the "leading crane in the formation of Asian nations". The point was not only to create an "Asia for the Asians" but also make sure that no Asian nation could ever develop the industrial base to challenge Japanese supremacy in her home region. A good case can be seen in why both nations went to war against China, and how both nations prosecuted said wars. The British went to war to protect the right of their traders to sell opium. The Japanese went to war because Chiang Kai-shek's industrialization plans meant China would surpass Japan economically, and also turn Manchuria into a resource area for the Chinese coastal strip rather than the Japanese home islands. The British wanted to get free trade and extraterritoriality rights out of the war. The Japanese wanted to get all of China as a colony. The British invaded with 20,000 men, got their political fait accompli, and then left with the exception of gaining a barren island with an excellent deep-water harbor. (But they didn't turn HK into the booming trade entrepot it is today--that distinction goes to the Chinese Communist Party, whose closing of Shanghai forced the China trade to go through HK for 50 years.) The Japanese invaded with 1,500,000 men, did not get a fait accompli, tried and failed to install a puppet government, slaughtered 20 million Chinese through starvation, cold blooded massacres of noncombatants, biological warfare, and burning entire cities, and still didn't end up getting what they wanted. Both wars were deplorable. China deserves restitution for both conflicts. The British gave restitution when they handed over Hong Kong. You don't see many Chinese running up and down the street screaming at the British embassy, do you? But Japan never really gave China any restitution. Japan handed over billions of dollars in soft loans, sure, but after excluding the amounts that China had to pay back, Japan has basically compensated China an average of $477 for every person they killed during the Sino-Japanese war. Dafuq? What's more is that Britain, today, has forever turned its back on imperialism. Sure, there are occasionally imperialist tendencies that come out of certain Anglo-Australian institutions: News Corp.; BHP Billiton; De Beers. But by and large, Britain does not threaten or seek to curb China's welfare and prosperity. By contrast, look at Japan. Japan has the second-largest navy in the world, outfitted with hundreds of long-range strike platforms that are capable of completely shutting down the naval lifelines upon which China's economy depends for survival and inflicting grievous damage on the coastal strip of China that is its commercial heartland. And what's more, unlike the US Navy which actually has global interests to uphold, there is literally no reason for Japan to maintain forces of that size. No one is going to invade Japan anytime soon since Japan is not a profitable country to invade. What does an occupying power gain from holding the Home Islands? Debt-laden golf courses? Old people? Sushi? The broadcast rights to Tokyo TV's upcoming fall season of anime? Sora Aoi? There are no natural resources to speak of, nothing that cannot be gained already via trade. And yet Japan still huffs and puffs like China's rise threatens its very existence, and constantly tries to form coalitions against China with other Asian nations. From the above, you can see how it would be a trivial matter for Chinese politicians to conflate the past sins of the Japanese Empire with the current antagonistic policies of the Japanese government and redirect healthy Chinese nationalism into vitriol against the nation of Japan. You misunderstand Japanese intentions on a couple of aspects. The reason Japan believed in imperialism was because they wanted to create a "Greater East Asian Sphere" to remain independent from the West. With the West colonizing most of the known world, the Japanese did not want to get caught up in it (they were already forced to many unfair treaties along with China and Korea) and wanted to make sure the whole of Asia (well, more specifically Japan) did not lose their independence and right to self-realization to Western imperialists (read more on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsu-A_Ron).
What a load of bs. They didn't want the west to colonize the rest of asia because they want to colonize it themselves. While humiliating defeats to westerners were bad. It was preferred to Japanese occupation by far. Look at the experiences of Hong Kong and Singapore. People were like thank god the British were back.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On September 16 2012 11:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 11:46 Souma wrote:How many times do the Japanese have to apologize? At the moment, the only thing left to apologize for is the treatment of Comfort Women and their denial of its happenings. The Japanese have apologized 55 times for their atrocities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_JapanRead that laundry list. If the Japanese government steps up to apologize for the Comfort Women, will the rest of East Asia finally get off their backs? I already said that the textbook revision is almost a non-factor (read previous posts). The visit to Yasukuni Shrine is something the Japanese public have condemned (this is why the Prime Minister has not visited the shrine in over a decade). The Japanese cannot control what a handful of rogue politicians do (as residents of democracies, we should all be able to empathize with that). Exhume the war criminals and throw the remains in the sea and then you can honour the war dead without any controversy. Of course, considering the complicity of the entire Japanese army in the war crimes in a way that no civilised nation has been (including the German army in WWII) you might just have to exhume the lot of them. Then ask yourself why you're doing this and you'll realise that the root of the problem was Japanese nationalism and the diseased sense of entitlement that made it permissible to rape, murder and pillage as a national doctrine. The atomic bomb debate aside, it left Japan with a strange sense of self pity and wounded pride. What I would like Japan to realise is that their defeat in World War II was a good thing, for humanity, for civilisation, for the basic moral foundations of every society and for the soul of the Japanese people. That they should be utterly appalled by Imperial Japan and frankly grateful that there existed powers in the world sufficiently strong and sufficiently noble to stop them before they did even more damage. It's hard for a patriotic people to understand that they're the bad guys and harder still if their reason for being the bad guys was rooted in national pride but until they get over that they'll keep pissing people off.
I mentioned it before, but the government did not want those souls enshrined - it was the dealings of a backdoor fundamentalist organization that got the Shinto priests to enshrine those souls in the first place. In respect to Shinto, it's impossible to remove the souls from the shrine at this point.
And trust me when I say, the vast majority of the Japanese acknowledge the wrong-doings of their Empire. You will be hard-pressed to find a country as pacifist as they are. It would be easy enough for them to repeal Article 9 of the constitution and take up arms again (the U.S. virtually pressed for it). There's a good reason why they don't - they are more averse to war than almost any other nation in the world (only nation I think that's more pacifist is Iceland). They did not want to take part in the Cold War, but the U.S. forced them to. They did not want to send troops to the Middle East, but international criticism forced them to. The vast majority of Japanese citizens just want to be left alone. It's a shame their government is what it is.
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On September 16 2012 12:19 robjapan wrote:
Personally, as a peace loving person, I think the world should be VERY worried about China right now, it's not only Japan they are threatening, it's EVERY country in this region.
China isn't actually going to invade Japan. I believe that the CCP is everything but suicidal. They have demonstrated a very pragmatic stance so far.
This little island that should have been returned to Taiwan/China by the US isn't really a telltale sign of Chinese imperialism to me.
Other than Taiwan, I don't think China plans to take over anything really, and Taiwan is just for "re-unification" and not territorial expansion.
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On September 16 2012 12:06 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 11:58 AngryMag wrote:On September 16 2012 11:52 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:46 Souma wrote:How many times do the Japanese have to apologize? At the moment, the only thing left to apologize for is the treatment of Comfort Women and their denial of its happenings. The Japanese have apologized 55 times for their atrocities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_JapanRead that laundry list. If the Japanese government steps up to apologize for the Comfort Women, will the rest of East Asia finally get off their backs? I already said that the textbook revision is almost a non-factor (read previous posts). The visit to Yasukuni Shrine is something the Japanese public have condemned (this is why the Prime Minister has not visited the shrine in over a decade). The Japanese cannot control what a handful of rogue politicians do (as residents of democracies, we should all be able to empathize with that). Souma, the main issue here isn't the apologies. Japan could apologize a thousand times, but the fact is Japan never dismantled the political institutions by which Japan decided to go to war. When Germany was conquered and split, the country went through an extensive period of de-Nazification where the entire governing apparatus was dismantled and rebuilt. Japan never had its Kokutai similarly rearranged--MacArthur's attempt to do that got rudely interrupted by the Korean War and never continued afterwards. That's what galls Chinese people. Nobody from China holds the Japanese people at fault--they hold the institutions at fault, and so long as certain Japanese institutions (most notably the Imperial family) are still allowed to hold their exalted status within Japanese society, they will always think that Japanese contrition is insincere. Denazification of the political apparatus in post war germany is basically a myth. The first political elites in the federal republic were formed by former second tier nazis. The link I will post will show active members of political parties in the first years of the federal republic of Germany who were former nazi party members or part of other nazi organisations like the SS. The link is only in german but it will show you that the list is pretty long. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ehemaliger_NSDAP-Mitglieder,_die_nach_Mai_1945_politisch_tätig_waren Right--it wasn't the fact that former Nazis were disallowed from holding office, but the all-pervading influence of a single political party was removed from Germany politics. You did not see Gauleiters running provinces after 1945, for example, or a nationwide paramilitary organization anymore. Japan never dismantled its highest warmaking institution: the Japanese Imperial Family. The very fact that Japan still has a Chrysanthemum Throne in Tokyo is, to many people in China, as deeply offensive as a German NSDAP fuhrer still sitting in Berlin would be to a Jewish person, even if said fuhrer was purely ceremonial.
Have you ever asked why this was the case? It's not as simple as "Germany was repentant but Japan wasn't". But countries became occupied territories after the Second World War but they were run very differently by the Allied Powers. In fact you should trace it back to the failure of the Tokyo War Trials to properly and thoroughly assign blame for the War. Who was it that effectively ran Occupied Japan and also insisted that Hirohito not be trialed as a war criminal? MacArthur. And that's not even to say that there haven't been reformist groups in Japan who were in favour of textbook revisions and the removal of the imperial institution in Japan. But why was the move towards reform pushed back during the 1950s and 1960s? Because of the Reverse Course. The effects of which we are continuing to see today.
However, the current state of relations between China and Japan do not simply stem from what took place from the Pacific War onwards. Tensions between China and Japan go back centuries. They have always had an uneasy and often acrimonious relationship because of the history of conquests and invasions on the part of both countries.
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UN and USA are not ganna lift a finger if bombs start flying over there, since usa been supply TW with weapons, USA will make more money from this too.
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I'm not sure how any of you can call these "protests" at this point.
Right now, it's no different from a riot. Not sure how history justifies a racist government motivated riot. The real funny thing is that most of the business and property being damaged belong to Chinese people. Destroying your own property helps to stop people how?
Some bad timing involved as well. Every time China undergoes a power change, the island row flares up. Why? New government is trying to distract the people, get them to vent their current frustrations on a foreign power, etc. This time the power transition is in pieces. Bo Xilai got expose as a fraud and removed. Hu Jintao fires on the people thought to have a claim to be the boss, then the heir apparent is now missing for 3 months. Not good.
Also, despite what China may look like on the outside, problems like income inequality, inflation, and sinking industrial profits are turning into a huge problem.
Unfortunately, Japan also does some posturing whenever they have an election as well.
This time the dates have coincided and it's a mess.
On September 16 2012 11:52 Bagration wrote:
How are the Japanese in Japan reacting to these events. We know the Chinese be mad as hell, but how about the Japanese? Anyone got some insights?
As for Japan, most of the people don't really give a damn. Just a travel advisory to China. Some far right nationalist groups are making some noise, but for the most part it's like oh look it happened again.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On September 16 2012 12:29 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 12:02 Souma wrote:On September 16 2012 11:47 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:04 KwarK wrote:
Never have two nations created empires for more entirely opposite purposes, maintained them in such different ways, treated the native populations so differently and lost them in such contrasting fashions. ^^This. This isn't to say one Empire was better than the other, however. The very act of imperialism is an abrogation of the sovereignty of subject peoples; a mass deprivation of agency. This is what makes it deplorable; an original sin no amount of benevolent paternalism can ameliorate. The British Empire was created over hundreds of years through an extended fit of absent-mindedness, to paraphrase historian Sir John Seeley. Mercantile interests lay at its heart, and every new fit of expansion was usually driven first by commercial factors and then by military factors. By contrast, the Japanese Empire was created over a few short decades with an expressed purpose of ensuring that Japan would forever be the "leading crane in the formation of Asian nations". The point was not only to create an "Asia for the Asians" but also make sure that no Asian nation could ever develop the industrial base to challenge Japanese supremacy in her home region. A good case can be seen in why both nations went to war against China, and how both nations prosecuted said wars. The British went to war to protect the right of their traders to sell opium. The Japanese went to war because Chiang Kai-shek's industrialization plans meant China would surpass Japan economically, and also turn Manchuria into a resource area for the Chinese coastal strip rather than the Japanese home islands. The British wanted to get free trade and extraterritoriality rights out of the war. The Japanese wanted to get all of China as a colony. The British invaded with 20,000 men, got their political fait accompli, and then left with the exception of gaining a barren island with an excellent deep-water harbor. (But they didn't turn HK into the booming trade entrepot it is today--that distinction goes to the Chinese Communist Party, whose closing of Shanghai forced the China trade to go through HK for 50 years.) The Japanese invaded with 1,500,000 men, did not get a fait accompli, tried and failed to install a puppet government, slaughtered 20 million Chinese through starvation, cold blooded massacres of noncombatants, biological warfare, and burning entire cities, and still didn't end up getting what they wanted. Both wars were deplorable. China deserves restitution for both conflicts. The British gave restitution when they handed over Hong Kong. You don't see many Chinese running up and down the street screaming at the British embassy, do you? But Japan never really gave China any restitution. Japan handed over billions of dollars in soft loans, sure, but after excluding the amounts that China had to pay back, Japan has basically compensated China an average of $477 for every person they killed during the Sino-Japanese war. Dafuq? What's more is that Britain, today, has forever turned its back on imperialism. Sure, there are occasionally imperialist tendencies that come out of certain Anglo-Australian institutions: News Corp.; BHP Billiton; De Beers. But by and large, Britain does not threaten or seek to curb China's welfare and prosperity. By contrast, look at Japan. Japan has the second-largest navy in the world, outfitted with hundreds of long-range strike platforms that are capable of completely shutting down the naval lifelines upon which China's economy depends for survival and inflicting grievous damage on the coastal strip of China that is its commercial heartland. And what's more, unlike the US Navy which actually has global interests to uphold, there is literally no reason for Japan to maintain forces of that size. No one is going to invade Japan anytime soon since Japan is not a profitable country to invade. What does an occupying power gain from holding the Home Islands? Debt-laden golf courses? Old people? Sushi? The broadcast rights to Tokyo TV's upcoming fall season of anime? Sora Aoi? There are no natural resources to speak of, nothing that cannot be gained already via trade. And yet Japan still huffs and puffs like China's rise threatens its very existence, and constantly tries to form coalitions against China with other Asian nations. From the above, you can see how it would be a trivial matter for Chinese politicians to conflate the past sins of the Japanese Empire with the current antagonistic policies of the Japanese government and redirect healthy Chinese nationalism into vitriol against the nation of Japan. You misunderstand Japanese intentions on a couple of aspects. The reason Japan believed in imperialism was because they wanted to create a "Greater East Asian Sphere" to remain independent from the West. With the West colonizing most of the known world, the Japanese did not want to get caught up in it (they were already forced to many unfair treaties along with China and Korea) and wanted to make sure the whole of Asia (well, more specifically Japan) did not lose their independence and right to self-realization to Western imperialists (read more on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsu-A_Ron). What a load of bs. They didn't want the west to colonize the rest of asia because they want to colonize it themselves. While humiliating defeats to westerners were bad. It was preferred to Japanese occupation by far. Look at the experiences of Hong Kong and Singapore. People were like thank god the British were back.
Well, it's why I said 'more specifically Japan.' The only way Japan felt they'd have a chance against Western imperialism was to strengthen their power (expand their empire). If you realize what was going on before Japan stood up to become a dominant power in East Asia, it's no wonder they felt their independence was threatened.
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On September 16 2012 12:19 robjapan wrote:
It won't be long before the events of ww2 and before will have happened over 100 years ago, Japan has apologized many times and the money has been paid. It's time the world was made aware that what Chinese and Korean governments are saying about Japan isn't true.
There's a big difference between almost 70 and over 100 years... You can't just pay people off and say it's almost a long time ago and expect them to suddenly be ok with war crimes. Recognising the full extent of the crimes rather than massively downplaying the statistics and revising history would be a good start.
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On September 16 2012 12:30 Ryo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 12:06 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:58 AngryMag wrote:On September 16 2012 11:52 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:46 Souma wrote:How many times do the Japanese have to apologize? At the moment, the only thing left to apologize for is the treatment of Comfort Women and their denial of its happenings. The Japanese have apologized 55 times for their atrocities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_JapanRead that laundry list. If the Japanese government steps up to apologize for the Comfort Women, will the rest of East Asia finally get off their backs? I already said that the textbook revision is almost a non-factor (read previous posts). The visit to Yasukuni Shrine is something the Japanese public have condemned (this is why the Prime Minister has not visited the shrine in over a decade). The Japanese cannot control what a handful of rogue politicians do (as residents of democracies, we should all be able to empathize with that). Souma, the main issue here isn't the apologies. Japan could apologize a thousand times, but the fact is Japan never dismantled the political institutions by which Japan decided to go to war. When Germany was conquered and split, the country went through an extensive period of de-Nazification where the entire governing apparatus was dismantled and rebuilt. Japan never had its Kokutai similarly rearranged--MacArthur's attempt to do that got rudely interrupted by the Korean War and never continued afterwards. That's what galls Chinese people. Nobody from China holds the Japanese people at fault--they hold the institutions at fault, and so long as certain Japanese institutions (most notably the Imperial family) are still allowed to hold their exalted status within Japanese society, they will always think that Japanese contrition is insincere. Denazification of the political apparatus in post war germany is basically a myth. The first political elites in the federal republic were formed by former second tier nazis. The link I will post will show active members of political parties in the first years of the federal republic of Germany who were former nazi party members or part of other nazi organisations like the SS. The link is only in german but it will show you that the list is pretty long. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ehemaliger_NSDAP-Mitglieder,_die_nach_Mai_1945_politisch_tätig_waren Right--it wasn't the fact that former Nazis were disallowed from holding office, but the all-pervading influence of a single political party was removed from Germany politics. You did not see Gauleiters running provinces after 1945, for example, or a nationwide paramilitary organization anymore. Japan never dismantled its highest warmaking institution: the Japanese Imperial Family. The very fact that Japan still has a Chrysanthemum Throne in Tokyo is, to many people in China, as deeply offensive as a German NSDAP fuhrer still sitting in Berlin would be to a Jewish person, even if said fuhrer was purely ceremonial. However, the current state of relations between China and Japan do not simply stem from what took place from the Pacific War onwards. Tensions between China and Japan go back centuries. They have always had an uneasy and often acrimonious relationship because of the history of conquests and invasions on the part of both countries.
Other than the pirate problems Ming had, I don't think there was any problem if you don't count Kublai Khan (who was not Chinese jeez).
AFAIK neither Korea or China had ever took an inch of Japanese territory, the opposite has always been true.
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On September 16 2012 12:19 robjapan wrote:
This is pretty much the Chinese government wanting to divert attention from themselves and onto something else.
If you want to talk about war criminals in the shrine, I will explain.
The Japanese faith and people's feelings in general about war criminals is that they were tried, they were executed but their souls don't need to be punished for all eternity. They were punished for the crimes they committed, that's it.
I've lived here for almost 10 years now and I can tell you 100% that Japanese people feel shame and embarrassment over what happened during ww2 but they believe they are a different country now with a conviction to never EVER go to war again.
Well Japan is apparently a democracy and the government is supposedly chosen by the people. So, you'll have to excuse people not taking the separation of people and government argument very seriously. Of course the reality is different but that's the perception...
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The point about Chinese destroying Japanese cars and Japanese related businesses... ALL of those things are owned by Chinese people.
The trade in cars, raw materials etc etc is VERY VERY important for the Chinese economy and vice versa for the Japanese economy.
All of this shit is being started by nationalists/racists (ON BOTH SIDES I SHOULD ADD) who have no idea about the economic implications.
In the end the sad truth is that 99.9% of Japanese and Chinese people don't give a shit and just want to live a peaceful happy life.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On September 16 2012 12:36 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 12:30 Ryo wrote:On September 16 2012 12:06 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:58 AngryMag wrote:On September 16 2012 11:52 Shady Sands wrote:On September 16 2012 11:46 Souma wrote:How many times do the Japanese have to apologize? At the moment, the only thing left to apologize for is the treatment of Comfort Women and their denial of its happenings. The Japanese have apologized 55 times for their atrocities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_JapanRead that laundry list. If the Japanese government steps up to apologize for the Comfort Women, will the rest of East Asia finally get off their backs? I already said that the textbook revision is almost a non-factor (read previous posts). The visit to Yasukuni Shrine is something the Japanese public have condemned (this is why the Prime Minister has not visited the shrine in over a decade). The Japanese cannot control what a handful of rogue politicians do (as residents of democracies, we should all be able to empathize with that). Souma, the main issue here isn't the apologies. Japan could apologize a thousand times, but the fact is Japan never dismantled the political institutions by which Japan decided to go to war. When Germany was conquered and split, the country went through an extensive period of de-Nazification where the entire governing apparatus was dismantled and rebuilt. Japan never had its Kokutai similarly rearranged--MacArthur's attempt to do that got rudely interrupted by the Korean War and never continued afterwards. That's what galls Chinese people. Nobody from China holds the Japanese people at fault--they hold the institutions at fault, and so long as certain Japanese institutions (most notably the Imperial family) are still allowed to hold their exalted status within Japanese society, they will always think that Japanese contrition is insincere. Denazification of the political apparatus in post war germany is basically a myth. The first political elites in the federal republic were formed by former second tier nazis. The link I will post will show active members of political parties in the first years of the federal republic of Germany who were former nazi party members or part of other nazi organisations like the SS. The link is only in german but it will show you that the list is pretty long. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ehemaliger_NSDAP-Mitglieder,_die_nach_Mai_1945_politisch_tätig_waren Right--it wasn't the fact that former Nazis were disallowed from holding office, but the all-pervading influence of a single political party was removed from Germany politics. You did not see Gauleiters running provinces after 1945, for example, or a nationwide paramilitary organization anymore. Japan never dismantled its highest warmaking institution: the Japanese Imperial Family. The very fact that Japan still has a Chrysanthemum Throne in Tokyo is, to many people in China, as deeply offensive as a German NSDAP fuhrer still sitting in Berlin would be to a Jewish person, even if said fuhrer was purely ceremonial. However, the current state of relations between China and Japan do not simply stem from what took place from the Pacific War onwards. Tensions between China and Japan go back centuries. They have always had an uneasy and often acrimonious relationship because of the history of conquests and invasions on the part of both countries. Other than the pirate problems Ming had, I don't think there was any problem if you don't count Kublai Khan (who was not Chinese jeez). AFAIK neither Korea or China had ever took an inch of Japanese territory, the opposite has always been true.
iirc the main problems China and Japan had before the Pacific War was over Korea.
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On September 16 2012 12:37 robjapan wrote:
In the end the sad truth is that 99.9% of Japanese and Chinese people don't give a shit and just want to live a peaceful happy life.
The animosity Japan is seeing from China is 100% real and genuinely from the people, don't kid yourself about that. Most aren't violent or that passionate about it but it's something definitely real in the national psyche. I mean, you don't need a textbook or teacher to influence the kids, all they have to do is hear about all the shit that went down from their grandparents.
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Well I've always been biased in favor of Japan so I have to say I'm on their side here. I've never liked China much at all...hence why I'm not in charge of relations. x-x Can not take an objective view but at least I admit it.
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robjapan, majority of the people are easily fool by their government, there won't be 99.9% after the bullets start to fly
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On September 16 2012 11:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 11:46 Souma wrote:How many times do the Japanese have to apologize? At the moment, the only thing left to apologize for is the treatment of Comfort Women and their denial of its happenings. The Japanese have apologized 55 times for their atrocities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_JapanRead that laundry list. If the Japanese government steps up to apologize for the Comfort Women, will the rest of East Asia finally get off their backs? I already said that the textbook revision is almost a non-factor (read previous posts). The visit to Yasukuni Shrine is something the Japanese public have condemned (this is why the Prime Minister has not visited the shrine in over a decade). The Japanese cannot control what a handful of rogue politicians do (as residents of democracies, we should all be able to empathize with that). Exhume the war criminals and throw the remains in the sea and then you can honour the war dead without any controversy. Of course, considering the complicity of the entire Japanese army in the war crimes in a way that no civilised nation has been (including the German army in WWII) you might just have to exhume the lot of them. Then ask yourself why you're doing this and you'll realise that the root of the problem was Japanese nationalism and the diseased sense of entitlement that made it permissible to rape, murder and pillage as a national doctrine. The atomic bomb debate aside, it left Japan with a strange sense of self pity and wounded pride. What I would like Japan to realise is that their defeat in World War II was a good thing, for humanity, for civilisation, for the basic moral foundations of every society and for the soul of the Japanese people. That they should be utterly appalled by Imperial Japan and frankly grateful that there existed powers in the world sufficiently strong and sufficiently noble to stop them before they did even more damage.
Let me see.
From a perspective of an aelien, that has no nationa affiliation, WW2 is a war between:
Axis:
Japan. Murderous nationalists, and supremacists, murdering civilian population of other countries for no reason.
Germany. Racist, supremacist, murdering races they do not like.
Italy. Same shit as Nazi.
Allies:
UK. The empire, that counquered ~1/5 of world, and was playing other countries to fight each other for their own gain for 2 centuries. Add the entire strategic carpet bombing of civilians. They were no better than Japanese or Nazi.
France: again, empire, though, lost pretty fast.
USA. Rasist, had segregation in the south. Arrested all Japanese-looking people and puted them into getto, something they didn`t do to Italians or Germans,
Then again, A-boms, and strategic bombing of enemy civilians.
And please, do not even start telling me, that troops killing civilians with rifles, is somehow different from troops killing civilians by dropping explosives on their heads.
Also, specilifcally tried to dismanle Western Germany`s industry, which led to slow starvation, fortunately, thoug, US dropped that policy before people started dieing.
Also, is widely speculated to be the force to ignite the war with it`s funding of Germany, to recover their economy by selling arms. While not proven, the theory is perfectly plausible.
SU. Country that exterminated it`s almost every person that was not of a poor familiy decent, used it`s own population for slave labour, occupied and supressed ~100millions behind it`s wall steel wall.
China: MAo, civil war, and Cultural revolution.
So far, no side looks in particular noble. So what is nobility? Smaller body count?
Out of 7, how many countries actually viev their past as problematic and condone thier war&civilian crimes?
Germany, at the barrel of a gun, SU has some strong inside dialog, and that would be about it.
US and UK generally tend to say their war crimes were perfectly fine, since their body count was lower.
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On September 16 2012 12:39 Taku wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 12:37 robjapan wrote:
In the end the sad truth is that 99.9% of Japanese and Chinese people don't give a shit and just want to live a peaceful happy life. The animosity Japan is seeing from China is 100% real and genuinely from the people, don't kid yourself about that. Most aren't violent or that passionate about it but it's something definitely real in the national psyche. I mean, you don't need a textbook or teacher to influence the kids, all they have to do is hear about all the shit that went down from their grandparents.
Generally, if you're brain washed and fed propaganda from a young that's kind of what happens.
I've seen super intelligent mainland Chinese people dissolve into a mumbling mess when it comes to discussing the glory of China. In their eyes, China can do no wrong. The protests are government motivated and encouraged.
If you want to look at a comparison, look at Hong Kong. Part of China for 15 years, free from the Chinese communist propaganda. For the most part, free of protests and riots. Remember, the invasion of Hong Kong was an extremely bloody event, where thousands of British people died for Hong Kong's sake, and the 4 years of Japanese occupation were extremely oppressive and brutal. But, no. Hong Kong people think rationally, enjoy the good parts of Japan, appreciate modern Japan for what it is, and have no interest in wrecking other people's businesses and lives.
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EPT
