Forum - View topicNEWS: Japan Balances Moe, Military
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I have to admit that Japanese directors and stylists are really excellent. If you have watched his performances in those crappy military comedy movies directed by THE worst Taiwanese director you'd never think he'll become a superstar. (For those uninformed, Kaneshiro is half Taiwanese and started his showbiz career in Taiwan.)
Well, Yasukuni Shrine promptly removed some of its anti-American items in exhibition after the US ambassador visited the Shrine and gave some "personal opinions." |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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What they should have done is mention AX. However, Japan's military movement has noticeably changed since post 9/11 and Koizumi being at the head of Parliament.
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Richard J.
 Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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Am I misremembering or did they ammend their constitution not too long ago in some major way regarding their ability to deploy military forces? Anyway, interesting albeit too brief article. Great title for it too. 
I wonder just how much of an affect anime, manga, and games have on mainstream America's (and everybody else's) view of Japan and Japanese culture. Japan's become a great ally and, considering some of the things the Chinese military is working on, I'm really glad to have them on our side. We might need them someday. Or they might need us. The way the world is going, you wonder where the next global war will start. Not if, just when and where. |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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As far as I know the Japanese cannot use their military offensively like we can. Their military is only for defence, hence, the Jieitai.
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Roundly criticized by whom? Perhaps only someone completely unfamiliar with their constitution?
Seen as too timid by whom? By the remnants of the pro-war factions that have been working their blindly nationalistic angles for the last few decades?
Japan's growing pro-offensive military goals are neither worthy or deserving of a Security Council seat. Routinely visiting a shrine that pays tribute to convicted war criminals isn't called a "tangle"; it's called a national disgrace. The fact that CNN chooses to gloss over these issues with a childishly pathetic editorial isn't anything new in my view, it's simply the fact that no American ever calls them on it that surprises me.
It might take more than one amendment to fully open up all their options for offensive attacks, but rest assured that even if it takes a dozen amendments the folks involved will see it through. North Korea's is quite possibly the best thing to happen for nationalistic Japanese interests since the end of WWII.
The Chinese eh? The US has been repeatedly voted the largest single threat to global peace by Europeans during the Bush years. Look how far we've come from a former beacon of liberty and justice to a beacon of blind arrogance in only a few short years. Having a president that firmly believes that the whole world is going to eventually be decimated by his imaginary friend anyway certainly doesn't make me feel any safer. How about you? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5077984.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4185205.stm |
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ChichiriMuyo
Posts: 201 |
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People have been fearing that for over 55 years. It hasn't happened yet, and it won't happen any time soon either. |
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varmintx
 Posts: 1235 Location: Covington, KY |
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What about The Global War on Terrorism? Oh yeah, that officially ended a little over a year ago. It's now the Global Struggle Against Violent Extemism. Maybe the talking points and slogan have changed again, the Daily Show has been off for the past two weeks, so I'm a little behind.
The article was poorly researched even for a fluff piece; the fact that it takes a turn for the political makes it that much worse. |
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angel_lover
 Posts: 645 Location: UK |
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I think I'd agree there. Having read it several times, I still can't see what it's getting at either. The ability to project culture and the ability to project military force are, and always have been, unrelated. Wars are fought by soldiers, not cosplayers. And what does it matter if the culture you projected is adopted by nations throughout the world, but your cities are destroyed and your population enslaved? Just ask the Ancient Greeks. |
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 799 |
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And yet we still praise the Ancient Greeks for all their contributions even today, and are still discovering many of their achievements.
The point is that there's more than one way to take over the world. Someone questioned what effect Japanese entertainment has on the mainstream. The answer is, more each year, as old people die and young people grow up. Think about it: how many of us grew up playing video games made in Japan? How many of us are influenced in some way by the Japanese aesthetic in manga (seeping into our comics) and anime (seeping into our cartoons)? More each year. I, for one, welcome the day when Japan achieves world domination, headed by its armies of maids, robots, and robotic maids. |
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Dax20798
Posts: 7 |
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Well, the Chinese government has killed around 70 million people, mostly its own citizens, over the past 40 years, as well as occasionally supporting totalitarian states around the world, from North Korea to Vietnam to Cuba. Currently it's helping to prop up the genocidal Sudanese government, which has murdered 2 million Black Africans in a psychotic anti-Christian, anti-animist, pro-Islamist campaign. And yet the United States is the greatest threat to world peace?
Apparently "peace" in fashionable jargon means ignoring daily repression in backwards nations like Iran and Syria. As long as there is no "war", the killing will stop. Try telling that to the millions of dead Eastern Europeans after WWII, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese boat people who died at sea at the hands of pirates, drowning or starvation. The truth is that Europeans are as ignorant and nationalistic as much as any "Red State" Republican, on the whole. I don't really support the Bush administration's actions a lot of the time, but they did in fact call a spade a spade in regards to the Sudan, as well as pulling their support for the Uzbekistani government after the recent murders of anti-government protestors. The USA is a fashionable target not because of its human rights record (which is hardly perfect, but angelic compared to China, Russia and of course many Third World dictatorships), but because it's currently the world's only superpower, both militarily and economically. I don't know a whole lot about the Yasukuni shrine. Does it hold regular Japanese WWII soldiers as well as the infamous war criminals? If so, then that might be a justification for Prime Ministers refusing to stop visiting it. Just keep in mind that while China's horrific human rights violations are an everyday occurrence, Japan is TODAY, by and large, a non-violent nation. Of course, things can always change. |
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Iritscen
Subscriber Posts: 799 |
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To the above, I say hear, hear.
Wikipedia says: Yasukuni Shrine (靖國神社 Yasukuni Jinja) (literally "peaceful nation shrine") is a controversial Shinto shrine located in Tokyo, Japan, dedicated to the spirits of soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Japanese emperor. In October 2004, its Book of Souls listed the names of 2,466,532 men and women, including 27,863 Taiwanese and 21,181 Koreans, whose lives were dedicated to the service of Japan, particularly to those killed in wartime. This includes a total of 1,068 convicted of war crimes by a post WWII court, including 14 convicted of Class A war crimes ("Crime Against Peace"). So just a fraction of the total. Mountain out of a mole hill if you ask me. |
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angel_lover
Posts: 645 Location: UK |
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Yes, we do, but my point was that having achieved cultural domination surely counts for nothing to a conquered people. |
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Iritscen
Subscriber Posts: 799 |
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Well, Greece was the world power for a time; don't forget Alexander the Great.
Later they declined and were absorbed. The same thing happened to every nation that rose to power, eventually, aside from Rome, which died out but was never conquered. |
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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This article would have suited the Entertainment section of CNN better than the World section.
In the World section its a C-, while at the Ent/Art section it would be a standard A. See in the Ent/Art section it is safe to editorialize. One thing though:
It's official we are all nerds. I know, I know, its been official for a long time. Did learn a new word though. |
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MJP
Posts: 126 |
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OK, first addressing Japan's military: in 2002, I believe, the Diet passed a law specifically allowing the deployment of the SDF in a non-peacekeeping force (PKF) role to Iraq for an unspecified duration. The SDF was deployed to Samawah, Iraq in February of 2003 to engage in non-combat missions, but the troops were armed. They were shelled a few times by mortars and small arms fire, but I don't think a Japanese soldier fired a weapon in anger. They're supposed to be pulled out shortly.
A parallel is often drawn to Yasukuni that requires clarification. Yasukuni is consecrated to all soldiers who fought and died for Japan as a nation-state, which includes all members of the military up to the command level. That does include the fourteen class-A war criminals. No effort has been made by the shrine authority to separate these war criminals, and since the Japanese government is constitutionally seperate from the Shinto religious organizations that govern these things, there's little that the government can do. However, the fact that Prime Minister Koizumi has been visiting the shrine under these pretexts is what's really the issue here. What would it look like to you if the Prime Minister of Germany visited a Catholic church for Easter mass/vigil that was dedicated to all who served in the military of Germany since its founding as a unified and independent nation? What if they admitted that included people like Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Dr. Mengele? What if the Prime Minister kept visiting that church despite protests from Israel, France, and Poland, the B'nai B'rith Organization, and the United Jewish Appeal? Of course, Germany would be ostracized from the international community, despite its efforts to apologize and make reparations for the Holocaust. Regardless of what the Chinese government has done in the past to its own people, the people of other countries, and what their foreign policy and economic situations are, Chinese citizens (not to mention Taiwanese citizens; remember that Taiwan didn't really exist until the Communists kicked the Nationalists off the mainland and that the Nationalists did a great deal of the fighting against Japan during the Pacific War), Koreans, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Filipinos, etc. all suffered under the occupation that Japan inflicted upon them. These are individual citizens, either conscripts or volunteers, and a lot of what Japan did was inflicted upon citizens (the Rape of Nanking, the occupation of Korea) and not just to captured soldiers and POWs (Let's exclude the Bataan Death March and the biological/chemical warfare experimentations of Unit 731) during the earlier and middle phases of the Pacific War, before American involvement. The issue here is that the shrine is consecrated to soldiers who did horrible things, as well as their commanders who ordered them. The government cannot force the religious authorities to change the consecration of the shrine. Prime Minister Koizumi instead visits the shrine regularly, "as a private citizen" being the catchphrase when he attends. The political dimension here is obvious: he is visiting to honor the military forces of Japan, but he is doing so in a manner that appears to be deliberately targeted at stating that Japan will not be influenced by their neighbors. The Korean and Chinese governments have continuously voiced protests over this. While the Holocaust parallel is a bit overblown, it draws the same point: if this was Germany, who ran a deliberate campaign of genocide, well-publicized by the international press and discussed in schools openly with students, there would be hell to pay. However, Japan does not attract the same attention. The whole Yasukuni issue and East Asian IR was my senior thesis. I argued, and still do argue, that Japan has attempted to use its cultural standpoint, as well as its security treaty during the post-war period, to evade international attention. Since the Pacific became a significant strategic nuclear theatre for the US during the Cold War, it managed to keep its cultural issues flying under the radar as it rebuilt and as China and the Soviet Union rose in military importance. The same security treaty that allows Japan to spend less on its military (Article 9 notwithstanding) allowed it to fly under the radar for so many years, not to mention its lack of organized genocide (merely imposing cultural and ethnic racism against its occupied countries). Since there hasn't really been a documented history of the persecution of a nation-state of people in East Asia (not to mention anti-Asian bias in most Westerners during the World War era and the immediate post-war period) Japan basically gets away with Yasukuni not through an enforcement of "soft power," but widespread ignorance and write-offs as "cultural uniqueness." That's all academic. In summary, Japan is sliding by on a cultural parallel that should equate to honoring the executors of Hitler's genocides simply because they're playing the "we're Japan, we're unique" card. This is governmental policy at work, not the flexing of military power. Fortunately, the interrelationship of Chinese and Japanese assets guarantees China and Japan probably won't go to war over Yasukuni. North Korea is a different story altogether, though. |
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