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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2870 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 8, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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China doesn’t really have the ability to offer much prosperity

What do you mean? Much of America's prosperity of the past few decades has been thanks to the low cost of labor in China. There are 1.4 billion consumers in China today, surely they have plenty of prosperity to offer in theory. Whether they'd be willing to give it to Japan or whether Japan is interested is another question.

Japans [...] public mood aligns with the USA.

Does it? Japan is an insular, isolationist, pacifist country deeply anxious of foreigners with an extreme respect for tradition (manifesting in everything from shrines that haven't changed in centuries to cafes that haven't changed since the early 60s.) This is so far from the US today that the alignment almost seems incoherent. The influence of Confucianism on Japanese society is so great that they are culturally closer to China than the USA on the global scale of things. Though I suppose it is common throughout history for national neighbors to be similar while hating each other and fawning to foreign allies for sympathy.

The influence of Confucianism on Japanese society is so great that they are culturally closer to China than the USA on the global scale of things. Though I suppose it is common throughout history for national neighbors to be similar while hating each other

From the sacred texts:

So what makes an outgroup? Proximity plus small differences. If you want to know who someone in former Yugoslavia hates, don’t look at the Indonesians or the Zulus or the Tibetans or anyone else distant and exotic. Find the Yugoslavian ethnicity that lives closely intermingled with them and is most conspicuously similar to them, and chances are you’ll find the one who they have eight hundred years of seething hatred toward.

What makes an unexpected in-group? The answer with Germans and Japanese is obvious – a strategic alliance. In fact, the World Wars forged a lot of unexpected temporary pseudo-friendships. A recent article from War Nerd points out that the British, after spending centuries subjugating and despising the Irish and Sikhs, suddenly needed Irish and Sikh soldiers for World Wars I and II respectively. “Crush them beneath our boots” quickly changed to fawning songs about how “there never was a coward where the shamrock grows” and endless paeans to Sikh military prowess.

Sure, scratch the paeans even a little bit and you find condescension as strong as ever. But eight hundred years of the British committing genocide against the Irish and considering them literally subhuman turned into smiles and songs about shamrocks once the Irish started looking like useful cannon fodder for a larger fight. And the Sikhs, dark-skinned people with turbans and beards who pretty much exemplify the European stereotype of “scary foreigner”, were lauded by everyone from the news media all the way up to Winston Churchill.

In other words, outgroups may be the people who look exactly like you, and scary foreigner types can become the in-group on a moment’s notice when it seems convenient.

Evaluate for example the love of white progressive they/thems for Palestinians, and their absolute seething hatred for Trump voters.

Ok, I do think the logic checks out, I don't doubt the Japanese hatred for China etc. etc.. But what I'm curious to know is if the Japanese people and especially right wing/nationalist types in the country harbor any resentment toward the US or regret their close alignment or resent American interference/influence in the postwar period until today. I am looking for firsthand sources on the topic rather than western theorizing or projecting their values on Japanese sentiments though I imagine it'll be difficult to find outside of the Japanese language.

I agree that'd be interesting to find out. And I also think you might be right, and if you're looking for firsthand accounts from xenophobic Japanese... you're going to have to read Japanese.

A good starting point might be to look into the controversies surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine, which Hirohito and his successors have boycotted because it enshrined some Japanese leaders convicted of war crimes. Politicians who visit the shrine signal affiliation with more nationalistic and far-right elements in Japanese society -- for example, Abe, and Kishida (who asked Germany to take down its statue commemorating Korean comfort women). I'm no expert, but really what you want to look into is Nippon Kaigi, which has as its mission to "change the postwar national consciousness based on the Tokyo Tribunal's view of history as a fundamental problem"... i.e. to not apologize for historical atrocities. If they don't hold a great deal of anti-Americanism... safe to say nobody in Japanese leadership does.

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