Emperor Akihito himself was crowned pretty late in life too, he's only been emperor since 1990.
At least Prince Naruhito--I think--is not as unpopular in Japan as Prince Charles is in some circles in the UK.
Well there is a bit of a cultural difference there although I think perhaps that's been being eroded since WW2.
It used to be the Emperor was a literal God on Earth as little ago as well, WW2. I don't think there has ever been a civil war in Japan that wanted to replace the Emperor, which is a significant difference from basically everywhere else in the world I think.
Think of the Emperor's of War/Byzantine and the number of civil wars to replace -those- Emperors for comparison.
Emperor Akihito himself was crowned pretty late in life too, he's only been emperor since 1990.
At least Prince Naruhito--I think--is not as unpopular in Japan as Prince Charles is in some circles in the UK.
Well there is a bit of a cultural difference there although I think perhaps that's been being eroded since WW2.
It used to be the Emperor was a literal God on Earth as little ago as well, WW2. I don't think there has ever been a civil war in Japan that wanted to replace the Emperor, which is a significant difference from basically everywhere else in the world I think.
Think of the Emperor's of War/Byzantine and the number of civil wars to replace -those- Emperors for comparison.
I think there were Heian-era conflicts (or prior to that) where the objective, however remote, was in fact to replace the emperor (and the whole Imperial household) with another candidate.
But those were an exceptionally long time ago. I was thinking of it in purely late 20th century, 21st century monarchies, where long life spans versus the symbol of power/institution of throne has led to a comparatively high number of monarchs resigning (versus how few still exist).
There was also the entire Northern and Southern Courts Period, when there were two rivals courts fighting each other for a few generations in the 14th century. But there generally wasn't much reason to fight over a position that was not only powerless but also impoverished for most of the last thousand years.
I'd attribute most of the difference in perception between the imperial family and the British royals to be as much a product of tight image control as anything else. The members of the imperial family have nowhere near the freedom, which means no scandals (the Emperor isn't even allowed to make a phone call without approval from the government.)
There was also the entire Northern and Southern Courts Period, when there were two rivals courts fighting each other for a few generations in the 14th century. But there generally wasn't much reason to fight over a position that was not only powerless but also impoverished for most of the last thousand years.
I'd attribute most of the difference in perception between the imperial family and the British royals to be as much a product of tight image control as anything else. The members of the imperial family have nowhere near the freedom, which means no scandals (the Emperor isn't even allowed to make a phone call without approval from the government.)
The Imperial Household Agency gets a lot of scorn for that (and not without reason), sort of a whole "power behind the power" thing combined with how tightly controlled the Imperial family is.
On the other hand, yeah, you do avoid the litany of scandals that were particularly bad in the UK during the 60s, 70s and 80s (and to be fair, a bunch of them before and after those decades). Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine, but he's probably not going to show up at a costume party dressed as a Nazi Brownshirt or a IJA war criminal.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
I stand corrected then. I was probably confusing it with another public figure I read about years ago.
And I still stand by my point: no controversial shenanigans.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I seem to recall Japanese politicians being the ones more likely to visit controversial shrines then any members of the imperial family, but I could be wrong.
And I can imagine that some shrines are more controversial then others, and any time China wants to get under Japan's skin over the matter they have only to chastise Abe for giving offerings at a shrine that maybe might have a few people from the war buried there and drum up the nationalist fervor.
Lee Teng-Hui (first Taiwanese president of the R.O.C.) got into a lot of controversy visiting the controversy shrine, since his brother Lee Teng-chin was enshrined at Yasukuni.
Also Yasukuni is not the only shrine dedicated to the war dead of Japan.
It is the shrine specifically dedicated to those who have died since the Meiji Restoration fighting for Japan. It is a weird mix of say an Arlington National Cemetery/Vietnam Memorial that is heavily mixed in with a lot of pro-Imperial/far right folks along with some militarism and nationalism.
Also fun fact, Japanese parliamentarians have been brought up on charges for using government funds (like we are talking small change/bills here) as offerings at the shrine due to the explicit clause of separation of church and state. The Japanese do not mess around on that shit.
Yeah, when the Lee Teng-Hui visit controversy broke in 2007, a common point of argument in Taiwan was that he could've visited a less controversy shrine (Lee served in the Imperial Japanese Army during the war, as a second lieutenant in the air defense forces). Problem was Lee's brother was enshrined at Yasukuni, and there's not really any changing that.
Many people, not just in China but in Taiwan as well, were extremely critical of the whole thing, but it blew over eventually. Lee's also done many other controversial things in the meantime.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
I stand corrected then. I was probably confusing it with another public figure I read about years ago.
And I still stand by my point: no controversial shenanigans.
You're thinking of the Diet Cabinet members and Prime Ministers who visited, like Junichiro Koizumi whom attended annually from 2001 to 2006. I recall something blowing up about it last year as well, but I don't remember whom was involved.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
I stand corrected then. I was probably confusing it with another public figure I read about years ago.
And I still stand by my point: no controversial shenanigans.
You're thinking of the Diet Cabinet members and Prime Ministers who visited, like Junichiro Koizumi whom attended annually from 2001 to 2006. I recall something blowing up about it last year as well, but I don't remember whom was involved.
What is interesting, though Abe is kind of the face man for the right, he has not visited in the last few years.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
I stand corrected then. I was probably confusing it with another public figure I read about years ago.
And I still stand by my point: no controversial shenanigans.
You're thinking of the Diet Cabinet members and Prime Ministers who visited, like Junichiro Koizumi whom attended annually from 2001 to 2006. I recall something blowing up about it last year as well, but I don't remember whom was involved.
A big group of Diet members still visits every year. That's probably what you're thinking of.
Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
I stand corrected then. I was probably confusing it with another public figure I read about years ago.
And I still stand by my point: no controversial shenanigans.
You're thinking of the Diet Cabinet members and Prime Ministers who visited, like Junichiro Koizumi whom attended annually from 2001 to 2006. I recall something blowing up about it last year as well, but I don't remember whom was involved.
A big group of Diet members still visits every year. That's probably what you're thinking of.
It was a news article I read years ago still living in Yokohama. I think they were authors that the article focused on, but I wouldn't rule out MPs.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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simonwolfi can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered Userregular
So here's an interesting twist: the Imperial Household Agency (the incredibly controlling caretakers of the Imperial family) are now denying NHK's report on the Emperor's abdication. Article is in Japanese, but here: http://www.asahi.com/sp/articles/ASJ7F6W4MJ7FUTIL04G.html
With the Emperor at the heart of the story, I find it very unlikely that NHK would have jumped the gun. So what in the name of Amaterasu is going on in the IHA?
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely complex. Especially against the background of the current US bases, and the experiences of Japanese and Japanese Okinawans during the occupation (not to mention how difficult prosecuting these sort of things ends up being).
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women rose to public awareness again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely comlex.
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women came to ahead again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely comlex.
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women came to ahead again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
True. Political demonstrations against Japan was pretty much unheard of in China prior to the 1990s, no doubt owed to government suppression of undesirable political thought as Sino-Japanese relations normalized. And South Korean-Chinese relations have vastly improved along with trade ties (Chinese trade in South Korea is almost equal to the United States and Japan combined).
Now today, the Spratley Islands have demonstrated there are a few rare issues Taiwan will consistently side with China on, regardless of Japanese, American or Filipino dismay over the fact. The one thing that means is that the iron triangle America could previously count upon to oppose China has basically collapsed.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely comlex.
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women came to ahead again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
True. Political demonstrations against Japan was pretty much unheard of in China prior to the 1990s, no doubt owed to government suppression of undesirable political thought as Sino-Japanese relations normalized. And South Korean-Chinese relations have vastly improved along with trade ties (Chinese trade in South Korea is almost equal to the United States and Japan combined).
Now today, the Spratley Islands have demonstrated there are a few rare issues Taiwan will consistently side with China on, regardless of Japanese, American or Filipino dismay over the fact. The one thing that means is that the iron triangle America could previously count upon to oppose China has basically collapsed.
Actually that 1990's timing is tied to a huge shift in the CCP pillars of legitimacy. Before it was communism, growth, and stability. But Tienanmen showed that was no longer tenable. So there was a shift of those pillars the education to Nationalism, Growth, and Stability. This changed the education and CCP propaganda especially towards Japan and to a lesser extent the West. You start seeing the Century of Shame being a big thing in the educational system. The Opium Wars through the Japanese Occupation/WW2. Nanjing becomes more a rallying cry. A stronger push to maintain "territorial sovereignty" over last lands to Imperial powers thus the Senkaku become an issue that is no longer "for 100 years away." For the CCP to maintain power they changed the Japanese people from, "proletariat tricked by imperialist masters" to "co-conspirators in the rape and exploitation of China." And the fruits of 20 years of this type of media and education are now bearing fruit on the mainland. Nationalism plus tenuous authoritarian power systems never really combine for anything good. Because the CCP is leaning more and on this leg of legitimacy as stability has broken down in some areas and as the economic growth is now longer moving at neck breaking speeds and the nasty foundations of a lot of that growth in the late aughts is no showing it was a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The shift in China actually for the rallying around a oligarch system with rabid urbanization and economic growth actually isn't much different Japan itself in the late 1800's. Especially that nationalistic foundation. Just instead of the Emperor they focused on the Party.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Yeah, the RAA. IIRC, one of the major reasons it was shut down was that the chaplains in Japan were threatening to let the American public know what was going on.
VD during WW II was also a driving force for outlawing prostitution in the US. None of that morality bullshit, it's keeping guys out of the fight!
A surprising amount of federal public assistance, education and health efforts dates back to the WWI draft, when the government started looking at the condition of its fighting age population and realizing they were largely illiterate, malnourished, and disease-ridden. There was genuine panic in Washington when they realized just what the "regular American" looked like in 1916.
VD during WW II was also a driving force for outlawing prostitution in the US. None of that morality bullshit, it's keeping guys out of the fight!
A surprising amount of federal public assistance, education and health efforts dates back to the WWI draft, when the government started looking at the condition of its fighting age population and realizing they were largely illiterate, malnourished, and disease-ridden. There was genuine panic in Washington when they realized just what the "regular American" looked like in 1916.
In the USSR, the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs (the precursor to the Soviet M.O.D.) had a panic, along with the rest of the government, over how much damage had been done to nationwide literacy by the civil war, combined with how inadequate public education had been in the Russian Empire (around 1900, it had probably been around 25 to 30% total, and well below 20% for women).
Aside from the desperate need to industrialize at any cost, both military and civilian life required education to function (written propaganda is a lot less effective when people can't read it; this was a problem in the church too). As problematically, a substantial portion of the literate population spoke one of dozens of different languages aside from Russian, a huge problem for a national military. By the 1930s, the government as whole had spent amounts of money to raise the literacy rate of over 90%--the height of the propaganda campaign during the Purges.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely comlex.
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women came to ahead again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
True. Political demonstrations against Japan was pretty much unheard of in China prior to the 1990s, no doubt owed to government suppression of undesirable political thought as Sino-Japanese relations normalized. And South Korean-Chinese relations have vastly improved along with trade ties (Chinese trade in South Korea is almost equal to the United States and Japan combined).
Now today, the Spratley Islands have demonstrated there are a few rare issues Taiwan will consistently side with China on, regardless of Japanese, American or Filipino dismay over the fact. The one thing that means is that the iron triangle America could previously count upon to oppose China has basically collapsed.
Actually that 1990's timing is tied to a huge shift in the CCP pillars of legitimacy. Before it was communism, growth, and stability. But Tienanmen showed that was no longer tenable. So there was a shift of those pillars the education to Nationalism, Growth, and Stability. This changed the education and CCP propaganda especially towards Japan and to a lesser extent the West. You start seeing the Century of Shame being a big thing in the educational system. The Opium Wars through the Japanese Occupation/WW2. Nanjing becomes more a rallying cry. A stronger push to maintain "territorial sovereignty" over last lands to Imperial powers thus the Senkaku become an issue that is no longer "for 100 years away." For the CCP to maintain power they changed the Japanese people from, "proletariat tricked by imperialist masters" to "co-conspirators in the rape and exploitation of China." And the fruits of 20 years of this type of media and education are now bearing fruit on the mainland. Nationalism plus tenuous authoritarian power systems never really combine for anything good. Because the CCP is leaning more and on this leg of legitimacy as stability has broken down in some areas and as the economic growth is now longer moving at neck breaking speeds and the nasty foundations of a lot of that growth in the late aughts is no showing it was a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The shift in China actually for the rallying around a oligarch system with rabid urbanization and economic growth actually isn't much different Japan itself in the late 1800's. Especially that nationalistic foundation. Just instead of the Emperor they focused on the Party.
Weren't the Mao and Deng era Communists mildly pro-Japanese because the Japanese were the ones who weakened the KMT enough that the CCP could knock them over?
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely comlex.
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women came to ahead again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
True. Political demonstrations against Japan was pretty much unheard of in China prior to the 1990s, no doubt owed to government suppression of undesirable political thought as Sino-Japanese relations normalized. And South Korean-Chinese relations have vastly improved along with trade ties (Chinese trade in South Korea is almost equal to the United States and Japan combined).
Now today, the Spratley Islands have demonstrated there are a few rare issues Taiwan will consistently side with China on, regardless of Japanese, American or Filipino dismay over the fact. The one thing that means is that the iron triangle America could previously count upon to oppose China has basically collapsed.
Actually that 1990's timing is tied to a huge shift in the CCP pillars of legitimacy. Before it was communism, growth, and stability. But Tienanmen showed that was no longer tenable. So there was a shift of those pillars the education to Nationalism, Growth, and Stability. This changed the education and CCP propaganda especially towards Japan and to a lesser extent the West. You start seeing the Century of Shame being a big thing in the educational system. The Opium Wars through the Japanese Occupation/WW2. Nanjing becomes more a rallying cry. A stronger push to maintain "territorial sovereignty" over last lands to Imperial powers thus the Senkaku become an issue that is no longer "for 100 years away." For the CCP to maintain power they changed the Japanese people from, "proletariat tricked by imperialist masters" to "co-conspirators in the rape and exploitation of China." And the fruits of 20 years of this type of media and education are now bearing fruit on the mainland. Nationalism plus tenuous authoritarian power systems never really combine for anything good. Because the CCP is leaning more and on this leg of legitimacy as stability has broken down in some areas and as the economic growth is now longer moving at neck breaking speeds and the nasty foundations of a lot of that growth in the late aughts is no showing it was a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The shift in China actually for the rallying around a oligarch system with rabid urbanization and economic growth actually isn't much different Japan itself in the late 1800's. Especially that nationalistic foundation. Just instead of the Emperor they focused on the Party.
Weren't the Mao and Deng era Communists mildly pro-Japanese because the Japanese were the ones who weakened the KMT enough that the CCP could knock them over?
Ehh, not really.
Deng was pro-Japanese because Japan was giving a ton of development loans with low interest to China.
Check out stuff on the Yen Loans, it was a huge part of the rapid development in the 80's.
I wouldn't claim that they're not genuine, but there is definitely a sort of domestic political expediency for a lot of east asian countries to keep their rhetoric focused on certain specific Japanese war crimes, since especially in the Japanese colonies like Taiwan and Korea relationships with Japan were quite complex, and the leadership class in both countries were often active in the maintenance of the colonial system (and sometimes resisting it. And sometimes both).
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely comlex.
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women came to ahead again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
True. Political demonstrations against Japan was pretty much unheard of in China prior to the 1990s, no doubt owed to government suppression of undesirable political thought as Sino-Japanese relations normalized. And South Korean-Chinese relations have vastly improved along with trade ties (Chinese trade in South Korea is almost equal to the United States and Japan combined).
Now today, the Spratley Islands have demonstrated there are a few rare issues Taiwan will consistently side with China on, regardless of Japanese, American or Filipino dismay over the fact. The one thing that means is that the iron triangle America could previously count upon to oppose China has basically collapsed.
Actually that 1990's timing is tied to a huge shift in the CCP pillars of legitimacy. Before it was communism, growth, and stability. But Tienanmen showed that was no longer tenable. So there was a shift of those pillars the education to Nationalism, Growth, and Stability. This changed the education and CCP propaganda especially towards Japan and to a lesser extent the West. You start seeing the Century of Shame being a big thing in the educational system. The Opium Wars through the Japanese Occupation/WW2. Nanjing becomes more a rallying cry. A stronger push to maintain "territorial sovereignty" over last lands to Imperial powers thus the Senkaku become an issue that is no longer "for 100 years away." For the CCP to maintain power they changed the Japanese people from, "proletariat tricked by imperialist masters" to "co-conspirators in the rape and exploitation of China." And the fruits of 20 years of this type of media and education are now bearing fruit on the mainland. Nationalism plus tenuous authoritarian power systems never really combine for anything good. Because the CCP is leaning more and on this leg of legitimacy as stability has broken down in some areas and as the economic growth is now longer moving at neck breaking speeds and the nasty foundations of a lot of that growth in the late aughts is no showing it was a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The shift in China actually for the rallying around a oligarch system with rabid urbanization and economic growth actually isn't much different Japan itself in the late 1800's. Especially that nationalistic foundation. Just instead of the Emperor they focused on the Party.
Weren't the Mao and Deng era Communists mildly pro-Japanese because the Japanese were the ones who weakened the KMT enough that the CCP could knock them over?
You may be thinking of the early years of the Kuomintang, who were actually pro-Japanese in the sense that they were, compared to their opposition in the Qing dynasty, hyper-modernist--Japan housed almost all of the proto-Kuomintang leadership, including Sun and Chiang (though Chiang's role in the time is widely overstated, not unlike Stalin's) for a few years prior to Xinhai. It didn't change the fact that Japan was very unpopular for its role in the Allies in the First World War and thus, benefiting from treaty terms favorable to Japan and unfavorable to China with enemy holdings in Asia, even before the Pacific War.
That would have to be the very early years of the KMT, then, since i know the Japanese straight-up fought them when they were trying to build a functioning state in the country in the 20s.
Maybe what i'm thinking of is directives from Moscow to downplay anti-Japanese rhetoric in the Communist ranks during WWII proper to help maintain their neutrality in the Asia-Pacific theater.
It's the reason why all our military rank insignia is, as far as I can tell, copied from Japan, even though the military dress of the time was copied from Germany. Except we used triangles rather than stars. Why triangles? No idea.
Except some time around when I was born, and all insignia was copied from the United States military.
So, the typical back-and-forth between Chinese and Taiwanese netizens has taken a somewhat ugly turn with the freeway bus crash that killed 24 Chinese tourists (and the two Taiwanese employees of the tour company). Traditionally, as Chinese netizens gained access to Taiwanese websites to voice complaints about rhetoric from Taiwanese leaders or beat the nationalist drum about various issues, the Taiwanese netizen response is snarky humor (and occasional nationalist rhetoric of the same variety, though people like to pretend that doesn't happen and people on the net are bloody poets).
In the wake of the bus disaster, and general ill feelings across the strait, two parody campaigns emerged. First, the Apologies to China spoof campaign, a sort of twist on the political row resulting from K-pop singer Chou Tzuyu's company-required apology back in January over displaying a Taiwanese flag in a press event, which are pretty self-explanatory. Next is the "Taiwan without Chinese toursists" tourism campaign spoof, which was mocking the sharp decline in Chinese tourists in Taiwan as an inviting quality for Taiwanese tourism.
The first has produced some pretty funny, if increasingly heavyhanded videos. The second, unsurprisingly, has pretty quickly spawn its own subsect of blatantly racist internet drivel, including the connection to the bus fire ("Come to Taiwan! Now actively eradicating Chinese for a better vacation experience!"), which pretty much everyone predicted would happen unless they believed, somehow, people in Taiwan were uniquely immune to racism, and been condemned by the Taiwanese Tourism Bureau and other groups. Also predictably, Chinese netizens on Taiwanese boards have rallied against the ads with their own variety of drivel. There was a similar backlash back in June when a "citizen journalist" Hung Su-chu started harassing elderly veterans of the Chinese Civil War as parasites and arguing they should return to China.
So, the usual pointless back and forth between netizens on either side of the strait that we've had for the last decade or so. Also, in weirder news, a number of Lithuanian and Estonian nationals were arrested in the ATM skimming scheme in Taiwan.
I had no idea about this, but on the other hand, I'm not really surprised. I'm fairly certain Scientology, and a lot of new religious movements/cults/whatever, are pretty stiffly banned in China, especially does of foreign origins. Meanwhile in Taiwan, there's pretty much zero constraints to religious movements. The Falun Gong own a television channel on cable TV, the New Tang Dynasty TV Channel, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to broadcast anti-Chinese propaganda of widely varying degrees of historical accuracy accompanied by scary music (their turn around on the USSR--from hatred of Moscow as a Chinese ally, then their fond embrace of the Soviets as a Chinese enemy, is frankly hilarious). These new groups can do pretty much whatever they like in Taiwan, so it's not that surprising that Scientology would find it an attractive recruiting ground.
I had no idea about this, but on the other hand, I'm not really surprised. I'm fairly certain Scientology, and a lot of new religious movements/cults/whatever, are pretty stiffly banned in China, especially does of foreign origins. Meanwhile in Taiwan, there's pretty much zero constraints to religious movements. The Falun Gong own a television channel on cable TV, the New Tang Dynasty TV Channel, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to broadcast anti-Chinese propaganda of widely varying degrees of historical accuracy accompanied by scary music (their turn around on the USSR--from hatred of Moscow as a Chinese ally, then their fond embrace of the Soviets as a Chinese enemy, is frankly hilarious). These new groups can do pretty much whatever they like in Taiwan, so it's not that surprising that Scientology would find it an attractive recruiting ground.
There's still free Scientology papers for distribution around subways in Washington DC. Its creepy that Scientology has fled to Asia like a tobacco company.
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I had no idea about this, but on the other hand, I'm not really surprised. I'm fairly certain Scientology, and a lot of new religious movements/cults/whatever, are pretty stiffly banned in China, especially does of foreign origins. Meanwhile in Taiwan, there's pretty much zero constraints to religious movements. The Falun Gong own a television channel on cable TV, the New Tang Dynasty TV Channel, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to broadcast anti-Chinese propaganda of widely varying degrees of historical accuracy accompanied by scary music (their turn around on the USSR--from hatred of Moscow as a Chinese ally, then their fond embrace of the Soviets as a Chinese enemy, is frankly hilarious). These new groups can do pretty much whatever they like in Taiwan, so it's not that surprising that Scientology would find it an attractive recruiting ground.
There's still free Scientology papers for distribution around subways in Washington DC. Its creepy that Scientology has fled to Asia like a tobacco company.
If there's money to be made elsewhere, they will find a way to hold on and rebrand in a new cultural setting. It works for other religious groups and smaller Christian sects in Asia after all.
I had no idea about this, but on the other hand, I'm not really surprised. I'm fairly certain Scientology, and a lot of new religious movements/cults/whatever, are pretty stiffly banned in China, especially does of foreign origins. Meanwhile in Taiwan, there's pretty much zero constraints to religious movements. The Falun Gong own a television channel on cable TV, the New Tang Dynasty TV Channel, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to broadcast anti-Chinese propaganda of widely varying degrees of historical accuracy accompanied by scary music (their turn around on the USSR--from hatred of Moscow as a Chinese ally, then their fond embrace of the Soviets as a Chinese enemy, is frankly hilarious). These new groups can do pretty much whatever they like in Taiwan, so it's not that surprising that Scientology would find it an attractive recruiting ground.
There's still free Scientology papers for distribution around subways in Washington DC. Its creepy that Scientology has fled to Asia like a tobacco company.
If there's money to be made elsewhere, they will find a way to hold on and rebrand in a new cultural setting. It works for other religious groups and smaller Christian sects in Asia after all.
Almost the precise same thing happened in the new wave Christian churches around the time I was born--most of those fizzled out and ended up absorbed into the general Christian minority though.
I'm not really worried, so long as they don't buy their own television station.
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At least Prince Naruhito--I think--is not as unpopular in Japan as Prince Charles is in some circles in the UK.
Well there is a bit of a cultural difference there although I think perhaps that's been being eroded since WW2.
It used to be the Emperor was a literal God on Earth as little ago as well, WW2. I don't think there has ever been a civil war in Japan that wanted to replace the Emperor, which is a significant difference from basically everywhere else in the world I think.
Think of the Emperor's of War/Byzantine and the number of civil wars to replace -those- Emperors for comparison.
I think there were Heian-era conflicts (or prior to that) where the objective, however remote, was in fact to replace the emperor (and the whole Imperial household) with another candidate.
But those were an exceptionally long time ago. I was thinking of it in purely late 20th century, 21st century monarchies, where long life spans versus the symbol of power/institution of throne has led to a comparatively high number of monarchs resigning (versus how few still exist).
I'd attribute most of the difference in perception between the imperial family and the British royals to be as much a product of tight image control as anything else. The members of the imperial family have nowhere near the freedom, which means no scandals (the Emperor isn't even allowed to make a phone call without approval from the government.)
The Imperial Household Agency gets a lot of scorn for that (and not without reason), sort of a whole "power behind the power" thing combined with how tightly controlled the Imperial family is.
On the other hand, yeah, you do avoid the litany of scandals that were particularly bad in the UK during the 60s, 70s and 80s (and to be fair, a bunch of them before and after those decades). Prince Naruhito might visit a controversial shrine, but he's probably not going to show up at a costume party dressed as a Nazi Brownshirt or a IJA war criminal.
Is this just a hypothetical? I'd honestly be shocked if he ever visited Yasukuni.
Considering that Hirohito is the one who stopped visiting in the 70's after the inclusion of the class As it would be a major shift in Imperial household policy.
That's true. It's a very minor, unlikely might. That being said, I think there are other controversial shrines that members that others in the family have visited? I don't know.
The point was "No hilarious Prince Harry-style (Nazi) shenanigans."
Nope not really. Thing is the Imperial Household is the center of the Shinto religious structure if you would call it one. That line from Amaterasu thing. So the Emperor or a royal blood relative, which there aren't actually a huge amount, visiting a shrine is a big event for the shrine and also one of those, the Gods must be either really happy or need a lot of pleasing event.
I would have to do some research but I am not sure Akihito has visited any of the other war memorials in recent years or like since becoming Emperor outside of I think the Hiroshima peace park.
I stand corrected then. I was probably confusing it with another public figure I read about years ago.
And I still stand by my point: no controversial shenanigans.
And I can imagine that some shrines are more controversial then others, and any time China wants to get under Japan's skin over the matter they have only to chastise Abe for giving offerings at a shrine that maybe might have a few people from the war buried there and drum up the nationalist fervor.
It is the shrine specifically dedicated to those who have died since the Meiji Restoration fighting for Japan. It is a weird mix of say an Arlington National Cemetery/Vietnam Memorial that is heavily mixed in with a lot of pro-Imperial/far right folks along with some militarism and nationalism.
Also fun fact, Japanese parliamentarians have been brought up on charges for using government funds (like we are talking small change/bills here) as offerings at the shrine due to the explicit clause of separation of church and state. The Japanese do not mess around on that shit.
Many people, not just in China but in Taiwan as well, were extremely critical of the whole thing, but it blew over eventually. Lee's also done many other controversial things in the meantime.
You're thinking of the Diet Cabinet members and Prime Ministers who visited, like Junichiro Koizumi whom attended annually from 2001 to 2006. I recall something blowing up about it last year as well, but I don't remember whom was involved.
What is interesting, though Abe is kind of the face man for the right, he has not visited in the last few years.
A big group of Diet members still visits every year. That's probably what you're thinking of.
It was a news article I read years ago still living in Yokohama. I think they were authors that the article focused on, but I wouldn't rule out MPs.
That's not to say that issues like comfort women aren't real issues, but when all the oxygen in the room is spent focusing on that it does help distract from what otherwise could be some very messy internal recriminations.
With the Emperor at the heart of the story, I find it very unlikely that NHK would have jumped the gun. So what in the name of Amaterasu is going on in the IHA?
I have be re-reading Embracing Defeat though got side tracked by the 5th book in the Expanse series.
There is an entire article about the Japanese setting up comfort women for the Americans with Japanese women. And the main reason the US shut them down was the venereal disease issue they were having with their GIs.
Combined with the difficulty in prosecuting cases of rape, battery and general violence--rape was especially widespread very early on in the occupation--and you can easily see how it'd get extremely complex. Especially against the background of the current US bases, and the experiences of Japanese and Japanese Okinawans during the occupation (not to mention how difficult prosecuting these sort of things ends up being).
In Taiwan, a few months ago the issue of Comfort Women rose to public awareness again, in the wake of renegotiation of the Japanese-South Korean deal on the same topic I think. Of course, it has to get in line behind quite a few other issues: foremost, imprisonment (and murder and rape) during the White Terror as part of the Transitional Justice movement, then the failure of transitional justice to adequately address the suffering of indigenous men and women compared to the existing system of victims of the White Terror. Plus, every time the matter of Comfort Women is discussed, someone invariably (and very correctly) brings up the matter of Taiwanese complicity in Japanese warcrimes, and what to do with veterans of the Japanese military versus veterans of the Chinese military, and so forth. As with Comfort Women, there's a literal clock running out to address all these matters.
Then again, our relations with Japan are substantially better than those of South Korea and China--ironically, they've gone the opposite direction, as Seoul-Tokyo relations were probably smoother under capitalist dictatorship, whereas our relations have improved, rather than worsened, since the end of the dictatorship. So the issue isn't given the same public spotlight it is in South Korea, unfortunately.
I would say part of that is big looming Panda in the room when it comes to Taiwanese politics. Japan in is the Korean boogie man. Though the Park dictatorship did a lot to suppress it the democratic leaders, especially the right, use it to distract other major internal issues in the country. Something happening or going wrong? Bring up Japan. Make a trip to a disputed island. Rant about Yasukuni. China has been doing this a lot for the last decade as well.
True. Political demonstrations against Japan was pretty much unheard of in China prior to the 1990s, no doubt owed to government suppression of undesirable political thought as Sino-Japanese relations normalized. And South Korean-Chinese relations have vastly improved along with trade ties (Chinese trade in South Korea is almost equal to the United States and Japan combined).
Now today, the Spratley Islands have demonstrated there are a few rare issues Taiwan will consistently side with China on, regardless of Japanese, American or Filipino dismay over the fact. The one thing that means is that the iron triangle America could previously count upon to oppose China has basically collapsed.
Actually that 1990's timing is tied to a huge shift in the CCP pillars of legitimacy. Before it was communism, growth, and stability. But Tienanmen showed that was no longer tenable. So there was a shift of those pillars the education to Nationalism, Growth, and Stability. This changed the education and CCP propaganda especially towards Japan and to a lesser extent the West. You start seeing the Century of Shame being a big thing in the educational system. The Opium Wars through the Japanese Occupation/WW2. Nanjing becomes more a rallying cry. A stronger push to maintain "territorial sovereignty" over last lands to Imperial powers thus the Senkaku become an issue that is no longer "for 100 years away." For the CCP to maintain power they changed the Japanese people from, "proletariat tricked by imperialist masters" to "co-conspirators in the rape and exploitation of China." And the fruits of 20 years of this type of media and education are now bearing fruit on the mainland. Nationalism plus tenuous authoritarian power systems never really combine for anything good. Because the CCP is leaning more and on this leg of legitimacy as stability has broken down in some areas and as the economic growth is now longer moving at neck breaking speeds and the nasty foundations of a lot of that growth in the late aughts is no showing it was a lot of smoke and mirrors.
The shift in China actually for the rallying around a oligarch system with rabid urbanization and economic growth actually isn't much different Japan itself in the late 1800's. Especially that nationalistic foundation. Just instead of the Emperor they focused on the Party.
Yeah, the RAA. IIRC, one of the major reasons it was shut down was that the chaplains in Japan were threatening to let the American public know what was going on.
A surprising amount of federal public assistance, education and health efforts dates back to the WWI draft, when the government started looking at the condition of its fighting age population and realizing they were largely illiterate, malnourished, and disease-ridden. There was genuine panic in Washington when they realized just what the "regular American" looked like in 1916.
In the USSR, the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs (the precursor to the Soviet M.O.D.) had a panic, along with the rest of the government, over how much damage had been done to nationwide literacy by the civil war, combined with how inadequate public education had been in the Russian Empire (around 1900, it had probably been around 25 to 30% total, and well below 20% for women).
Aside from the desperate need to industrialize at any cost, both military and civilian life required education to function (written propaganda is a lot less effective when people can't read it; this was a problem in the church too). As problematically, a substantial portion of the literate population spoke one of dozens of different languages aside from Russian, a huge problem for a national military. By the 1930s, the government as whole had spent amounts of money to raise the literacy rate of over 90%--the height of the propaganda campaign during the Purges.
Weren't the Mao and Deng era Communists mildly pro-Japanese because the Japanese were the ones who weakened the KMT enough that the CCP could knock them over?
Ehh, not really.
Deng was pro-Japanese because Japan was giving a ton of development loans with low interest to China.
Check out stuff on the Yen Loans, it was a huge part of the rapid development in the 80's.
You may be thinking of the early years of the Kuomintang, who were actually pro-Japanese in the sense that they were, compared to their opposition in the Qing dynasty, hyper-modernist--Japan housed almost all of the proto-Kuomintang leadership, including Sun and Chiang (though Chiang's role in the time is widely overstated, not unlike Stalin's) for a few years prior to Xinhai. It didn't change the fact that Japan was very unpopular for its role in the Allies in the First World War and thus, benefiting from treaty terms favorable to Japan and unfavorable to China with enemy holdings in Asia, even before the Pacific War.
Maybe what i'm thinking of is directives from Moscow to downplay anti-Japanese rhetoric in the Communist ranks during WWII proper to help maintain their neutrality in the Asia-Pacific theater.
Except some time around when I was born, and all insignia was copied from the United States military.
In the wake of the bus disaster, and general ill feelings across the strait, two parody campaigns emerged. First, the Apologies to China spoof campaign, a sort of twist on the political row resulting from K-pop singer Chou Tzuyu's company-required apology back in January over displaying a Taiwanese flag in a press event, which are pretty self-explanatory. Next is the "Taiwan without Chinese toursists" tourism campaign spoof, which was mocking the sharp decline in Chinese tourists in Taiwan as an inviting quality for Taiwanese tourism.
The first has produced some pretty funny, if increasingly heavyhanded videos. The second, unsurprisingly, has pretty quickly spawn its own subsect of blatantly racist internet drivel, including the connection to the bus fire ("Come to Taiwan! Now actively eradicating Chinese for a better vacation experience!"), which pretty much everyone predicted would happen unless they believed, somehow, people in Taiwan were uniquely immune to racism, and been condemned by the Taiwanese Tourism Bureau and other groups. Also predictably, Chinese netizens on Taiwanese boards have rallied against the ads with their own variety of drivel. There was a similar backlash back in June when a "citizen journalist" Hung Su-chu started harassing elderly veterans of the Chinese Civil War as parasites and arguing they should return to China.
So, the usual pointless back and forth between netizens on either side of the strait that we've had for the last decade or so. Also, in weirder news, a number of Lithuanian and Estonian nationals were arrested in the ATM skimming scheme in Taiwan.
I had no idea about this, but on the other hand, I'm not really surprised. I'm fairly certain Scientology, and a lot of new religious movements/cults/whatever, are pretty stiffly banned in China, especially does of foreign origins. Meanwhile in Taiwan, there's pretty much zero constraints to religious movements. The Falun Gong own a television channel on cable TV, the New Tang Dynasty TV Channel, whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to broadcast anti-Chinese propaganda of widely varying degrees of historical accuracy accompanied by scary music (their turn around on the USSR--from hatred of Moscow as a Chinese ally, then their fond embrace of the Soviets as a Chinese enemy, is frankly hilarious). These new groups can do pretty much whatever they like in Taiwan, so it's not that surprising that Scientology would find it an attractive recruiting ground.
There's still free Scientology papers for distribution around subways in Washington DC. Its creepy that Scientology has fled to Asia like a tobacco company.
If there's money to be made elsewhere, they will find a way to hold on and rebrand in a new cultural setting. It works for other religious groups and smaller Christian sects in Asia after all.
Almost the precise same thing happened in the new wave Christian churches around the time I was born--most of those fizzled out and ended up absorbed into the general Christian minority though.
I'm not really worried, so long as they don't buy their own television station.