Japanese really don’t like to be reminded of the bad things they’ve done huh?
Fascist Japan never really ended. If you look at who the US allowed into positions of power after Japan’s unconditional surrender, you’ll see it was largely the same government, but as a US client state.
Japan never really had an uprising though. It’s weird that they went from American enemy number one to super friendly in like 30 years. But I’m not very educated on this subject so feel free to correct me here.
You’re right, they had no uprising. The US wanted a client state in the region, so in the reconstruction it installed a bourgeois democracy that was and is subservient to it. We still have dozens of military bases there, despite the complaints & protests of Japanese residents.
for those who don’t want to go through wiki articles, what he means is essentially after wwii, the US was like o shit communism. better be friends with Japan so we can install a bunch of army bases so we can have control in that area. Japan, ravaged by war, was just like… ok. which is why they get a lot of passes in western society for the shit they pulled in history. the end.
I think these kinds of comments are harmful to the discourse because there a good deal of nuance missing.
For one, it’s pretty reductive to call them ‘Japanese who’ve done bad things’ when who you’re talking about is dead or on their death beds. That’s not who the monument is for or about.
Historical monuments aren’t for attributing the sins of grandparents to their grandchildren. It’s about humanzing the victims and teaching people of this generation what was allowed to happen in the past. It’s about teaching them the dangers of complacency and the complicit nature of being a bystander.
If it’s worth anything, 4,300 people signed a petition against the removal and many protested in person.
Yes, Japanese people as a whole are severely lacking when it comes to acknowledging the atrocities committed by their country. No, Japanese people today are not personally responsible for them. The better we are at separating acknowledgement from responsibility, the easier time we will have convincing people to remember them.
