real-egal...cornoner, rblh, micheon...... one thing to say to yall.... LOSE THE CHIP ON THE SHOULDER guys! This is debate and discussion. Drop the nationalism, don't take a criticism of China to be a criticism of you. If you get angry when someone criticises China, then you're guilty of nationalism....and nationalism is what you detest in Japan. Wake up! Smell the green tea! Don't take every critique of your country of origin so personally!
Look in the mirror and you will see what you are trying to project on me. You really think that I am upset because you criticised China. Damn, HISD really have done a job on your spelling as well as your reading comprehensive skill.
Look, there is a simple distinction that needs to be made. On PRINCIPLE, Koizumi's visits to the shrine aren't wrong. He can do whatever he wants and as stupid as it may be, its his right and his prerogative. However, in terms of REALITY and COMMON SENSE, it's flat out stupid. He knows that it brings up some terrible memories of violent and degrading treatment of several other nations and peoples at the hands of the Japanese army and he knows that it only fuels many of the calls you see on this board and throughout the world about Japanese remilitarization and Japanese nationalism. Point being, the world doesn't always work based on principle. That's why the war in Iraq, while being a nice idea in principle (creating democracy, freedom, yada yada in the Middle East) was and is a stupid idea because principle doesn't translate in reality. Humans ARE NOT perfect and do carry memories of genocide and violence and base their thoughts on those ideas. It should take a little maturity and common sense on the part of the japanese to realize that instead of continually pissing off a group of people that have memories of some awful stuff the Japanese did during and before WWII.
What all asians understand but american don't is this: German believe what they did was wrong; Japanese, at least those in power, do not believe what they did was wrong. Shrine visit is just the surface of this bigger problem. That IMO, should not be forgiven. Japan is being isolated by all its past victims. If you argue that Japanese have the right to do what they want, then all these neighboring countries also have the right to react however they like. To be frank, although I am upset with the shrine visit, I am not upset at all with where it has led to. Japan is paying the price for its stupidity.
I'm speaking from humble ignorance, but is their really such a divide among Chinese and Japenese people? This is surprising to me...I would think both of these folks have such a proud background and a commonality due to general area and such...ex. honor, an impressive warrior mentality...
Warrior mentality? What are you talking about? If you mean cutting up oneself for "hornor", only Japanese do that.
Korea, China, and Japan have been at it with each other for centuries for various reasons. World War II certainly cemented the distrust among those three nations after Japan went in and wrecked both of those countries. If honor references some sort of samurai honor code and warrior mentality refers to martial arts then I suppose there's some commonality but even a modest look at their history would indicate otherwise.
Think about how much the French and Germans, or Germans and Russians, or French and British, or English and Irish have been at each other's throats over the course of European history. Closeness only means there is more chance for friction.
Other than the short skirmish in 1962 along their border, China and India have been friendly neighbours for ages.
Geez what do you think we are Klingons? No offense Roxran but your statement reads like someone who mainly knows about China and Japn through Kung Fu and Samurai movies. Our comonality has much more to do with language ties, the Japanese language incorporates Chinese characters, cultural artisitic ties and religious ties. Like all cultures China and Japan has great warriors and times of upheavel there has been a warrior culture but historically Chinese culture hasn't placed warriors above philosophers and artists while in there have been periods in Japan where they have since they had long periods of rule by a military class but even the Japanese culture has place a great emphasis on appreciation of the arts. In fact classical Japanese poetry and art harks back to classical T'ang Dynasty poetry and art. Also figures like the great Tea Master Sennorikyu and the monk Jian Jian are probably more revered in Japan than Samurai like Musashi Murano, who himself gave up sword fighting for philosophy.
Agreed hatred is a bad thing and personally I think the more Chinese people and Japanese people know each the better things will be. That said this situation is a two way street and the Japanese are the ones who are honoring war criminals and revising their history and its the rest of Asia that is upset by it. I would suggest that your advice would be better directed at the Japanese right wing who can't seem to let go of celebrating their militarist past. Frankly I feel that your comments are coming off the way they are because there are very few Japanese posters and I'm not aware of one posting on this board. I think if you were debating Japanese nationalist posters instead of Chinese your opinion might be different.
You would probably know better that I, but with all the English turning everybody into slaves and the preponderance of different Indian states before that and perhaps not the most populous border has this really been that much of an actual 'border' for that long? This is a genuine (not rhetorical) question. If you have something to addthat would help my understanding I would like to hear it. Also, didn’t the Japanese in the 1500’s or so pass a whole bunch of laws trying to imitate China? I would think Japan, given their relative isolation, would probably owe a lot culturally to China and Korea, though the reverse might not be so true.
Japan certainly owes a lot culturally to China. During the Nara period Japan culturally and politically was a virtual clone of T'ang Dynasty China. So much so that China art and architectural historians often study Japanese art and architecture that copied Chinese pieces as many of the Chinese originals were destroyed. Japanese culture didn't have much of an impact on its neighbors until the late 19th and 20th C. In Korea and Taiwan there is a lot of Japanese influence on the cuisine and culture due to the long occupation of by Japan.
I'd say the unique geographical characteristics, i.e., the high Tibetan plateau, definitely played a role on the lack of (military) confrontations between China and India. There is another important reason IMO that historically Chinese never considered Indians their enemies. In the minds of most Chinese, India is the birthplace of Buddhism, it'd be blasphemy to fight war over where Buddhas "live". I am not familiar with the 1500's Japanese laws in particular. But I think not even Japanese themselves would deny that their culture was heavily influenced by the Chinese.
I don't know the Japanese nationalist perspective, but I can guess that their main motivation is to find respect and redemption in their own culture. Is it fair to be born Japanese and to learn how horrible the Japanese are, and then see how peaceful of a culture you are a part of and see a country like China that is rising in power and beligerance? I think there is something going on there - what's the root cause for Japan rewriting their history. Why is Japan doing this but not Germany....that's a critical question no one has answered or really thought about.
Japanese nationalists tend to glorify the past when Japan was a dominant regional power that generally held sway over much of East Asia. Today, it has a large economy that isn't growing and a society that is in a period of transition in terms of culture. There are those that revel in the past and as a result tend to push that vision onto the rest of Japan. As for whether it's "fair" to learn about the past, of course it's fair. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The brutal Japanese occupation of China and Korea are something that shouldn't be forgotten just as Nazi crimes shouldn't be either. They are everything that is dispicable and everything that should be rejected. As for "peaceful" culture, they're not any more "peaceful" than its neighbors. The difference is that the US made them write in several provisions about war into the constitution at gunpoint. (Very similar in this sense to the Treaty of Versailles minus the absurd reperations that Germany had to pay) The only difference this time is that we didn't leave Japan to rot like Germany did and instead gave them security guarantees and aid. The World War II generation of Japan that is still around is probably still staunchly opposed to nuclear weapons and to military intervention abroad. But that generation is slowly disappearing and by every indication the current generation is very different in its perception of international relations. There is still a stigma surrounding international intervention and the use of its military but that stigma is nowhere near what it once was. Unlike Germany's government, Japan was never proactive in terms of educating its citizens about its past. Practically any reference to the Nazis in Germany is considered criminal. Hitler's Mein Kampf is illegal and the government went out of its way to reject Hitler. Plus West Germany was controlled by the US, UK, and France and as a result it was much easier to inject and maintain a disdain for Germany's nazi past. In East Germany, the Communists even criticized the Nazis by saying that it was the righteous East German and Soviet Communists that brought down Hitler. Governments in Germany used anti-Nazi/Fascist rhetoric as a way to rally its populations. On the flip side, Japan never had a chance for this type of change. There were no real Nuremberg Trials (as bad as those were in some cases) to humiliate and take down Japanese war criminals. There was never any real accountability for those criminals. After the war, Japan was just left on its own and as a result, when we had the best shot to kill off this type of historical revisionism, we didn't. The schools continued to half-ass the truth (unlike Germany where American and Soviet curriculums each spoke harshly of the Nazi past), books continued to glorify the past, and the leaders of the old Japanese regime continued to throw out its propoganda. There's probably even more to this than what I said, but that's some of the reason for the distinction between Germany and Japan.
^ Great answers geeimsobored and once again you've taken a lot of my response away from me. The one thing I would disagree on is that there were Tokyo war crime trials that were conducted under similar rules as the Nuremberg trials. That's where those class A war criminals who are interned in the Yasakuni shrine were convicted. Back to your issue though. One problem I see regarding New Yorker's posts and others it they seem to have the opinion that somehow Japan is the victim here and its the big bad PRC that is denying the Japanese to take pride in their history. The thing that is missed here is that Japan was the aggressor in WWII and that the history the Japanese right wing is glorifying is a history of brutality and oppression. Its not a history of noble struggle but a history of supreme arrogance where the Japanese believed it was their divine right to subjugate all other people. I will say it again there is a lot to be proud of for the Japanese. The Japanese have a great history, the Japanese should be very proud how they resisted becoming another colonized country by western powers. The Japanese should be proud of how they rebuilt after WWII to become the world's second most powerful economy. The Japanese should be proud of their great art, poetry and martial arts but why take pride in a period of barbarity and oppression. Do we Americans take pride in slavery and destroying the native Americans? Do the Germans take pride in the systematic exterminations of Jews, gypsys and gays? No one is saying the Japanese shouldn't take pride in their history but taking pride in the worst part of your history is perverse and if those of you who can't understand why that so offensive to the rest of Asia and to even US Pacific War Vets then there is no understanding. You might as well say that its fine for Neo-Nazis to celebrate Hitler or for the Klan to celebrate slavery.
As far as I know nothing like the large scale denazification process ever took place in Japan. There were a whole lot of small scale fines and it seems to have been a lot like the "Truth & Reconciliation" courts in South Africa. I forget who it was but I remember some big SS guy got a small fine; something on the order of 50DM. He appealed the sentence and ended up with like 2 years in prison and a 1,000DM fine. In any case there were many small symbolic sentences handed out.
