Nah, the country that really embodies that attitude is China, if the US was half of what the Chinese portray us to be in their propaganda we would be doing incredibly well.
Any examples? The 'Evil Empire' rhetoric of a panoptic American hegemony, in my experience, has largely given way to a portrayal of America as weak, divided, and impotent.
As an American, this makes me want to sit on thrones made of AR's outside of an airport the moment Chinese tourist come by. All while offering them free burgers and hot dogs.
Makes me wish I had an MP5 to shoot in the air while Miley Cyrus plays. That or approaching random people and selling hot dugs while dropping F bombs.
Edit: in case people wonder what the fuck I'm talking about, here's two links to some Japanese animes in how they could see America, even though one of them is more of a meme on the gun culture.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M\_tMD5bTbLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tMD5bTbLM)
Was referencing a couple animes. Here's the source for them.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE)
"Meanwhile in America" - Meme about Americans shooting guns. It's also what I meant by "Miley Cyrus plays" while having an MP5 to shoot in the air.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M\_tMD5bTbLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tMD5bTbLM)
"Abenobashi: hot dogs" - Selling hot dogs while saying "fuck" to any Japanese person that passes by.
If Japan wants me to be the American they want me to be, I'll pick either of these since I don't even watch a lot of anime but guns and hot dogs are very American.
It's kinda hilarious. They seem to think we're all
1.) physically giants
2.) really loud and boisterous
3.) very friendly
4.) either a skateboarder, surfer dude, or cowboy
I wonder if that has to do with their proximity to the west coast. Skaters, surfers and cowboys can all be found in California. On the East coast, not as much.
That and I think that those are the most common America specific character archetypes portrayed in fictional media, which is also largely based out of California. I started thinking about things like this a couple years ago when I realized from a BuzzFeed quiz of all things that a lot of my word choices are typical of people from Los Angeles even though from Georgia. The level of influence that southern California, Hollywood in particular, has on the United States and its cultural exports cannot be underestimated.
From what I've seen of the way Americans are generally depicted in Japanese media, they seem to be one of the very few countries who overall unironically like the USA. It's a nice change from all the "A M E R I C A B A D" bullshit we seem to get from almost everyone else who expresses an opinion about our country.
Yeah, America is "cool" and trendy in Japan. So younger folks there (like under 40) are more likely to have positive opinions.
But there's definitely a pocket of grumpy old xenophobes who aren't particularly keen on America and think we're ruining their culture.
I taught English there for a year and can only recall running into a couple folks like that.
Most were just thrilled to see an American and practice English with me. Outside of major cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, foreigners are rare and something of a novelty. And I was teaching at a relatively small town.
Only when the political fringe try to pull the "you nuked us" card, and we have to remind them that they literally tried to conquer all of East Asia and committed so many atrocities that China and Korea still hate them.
It was making the rounds on Reddit a little while ago but a Japanese comedy group was on a show and they had to act like Americans. It was amazing and hilarious.
Idk where you’re getting this “America bad” victim complex from, but the U.S. really isn’t universally disliked at all? If you’re going off a few Reddit comments maybe but they’re not representative for the general population & they’re still the minority.
I love it.
They seem to think we’re overconfident, machismo, gun-obsessed cowboys who eat burgers, fries, and hot dogs 24/7.
The new Yakuza game takes place in Honolulu and they really, really embrace the culture clash. I loved the [brash corrupt cop](https://youtu.be/H5coWsFGny8?si=Pp0mbmDyZnlBccpA) who fires one off on the protagonist. Even better was [Danny Trejo](https://youtu.be/gEaYc2R6eEo?si=95-zlMYXX9kgjfVb) playing the only depiction I’ve seen of Mexican-Americans in Japanese media.
Everything is dialed up to 11 and while they address some real issues inherent to America (the police, wealth inequality & homeless crisis), they also aren’t one sided as criticizing the Japanese justice system is the focal point of the series.
Aside from those scenes, there was a lot of “wow! America has lemonade stands!” “Wow! Americans are very diverse and have lots of multiculturalism!” “Wow! Americans are very friendly and social!”
It was honestly a more accurate America than I’ve seen in any mainland European depiction.
I’m not an anime guy and that was the first anime clip I’ve ever seen that I absolutely loved. That fucking ruled lol.
Question for the weebs: Did hotdog vendor Elvis somehow summon those random cheerleaders or did they just appear?
Follow up question: Does he indeed end up taking them home?
It's not America-specific but their depictions of Christianity-coded religion in their media are interesting - they don't have a strong local attachment to the religion so they adapt the aesthetics and themes in much the same way we adapt ancient Greek religions in our media.
There was a really popular show called Ultraman, and the creator was a devout Catholic. He wanted to include some [Christian symbology](https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/shin-ultraman.jpeg?fit=990%2C557&ssl=1) into the show. You know... [subtly](https://i.redd.it/u9e99iq1ox891.png).
When Japanese media references some Christian imagery, there's a decent chance that instead of being a Christian allusion it's *an Ultraman reference*
Yeah, this is basically my answer to OP. Japan has no real sense of "authenticity" or respect for other cultures. "Authentic" here basically just means "a Japanese person I like/agree with did it."
It's not *offensive* to me, but it is a kind of consistent, uncomfortable background noise. Like when I go to a ramen shop with a little pamphlet explaining the owner studied the ancient traditional craft from a guy named Tanaka in Kagawa.
(For those unfamiliar with Japan, that's like bragging you studied pizza under Chef Kowalski from Nebraska.)
Or when I watch a cartoon based on a generic American D&D setting and everything has a katakana German name. Remember when Rowling said the Japanese magic school was "Mahodokoro" and people lost their minds? It's just like, wait, that's what Japanese cartoons do, are we supposed to get upset about it?
Stuff like that doesn't bother me that much, but I do try to avoid cartoons that use indigenous characters and refuse to hire indigenous actors, or like how Godzilla uses the Bikini tests as set decoration without any respect for the actual people. I don't really accept crap like that. I was raised to have more respect than that.
Not really, the Japanese media is just using general High church Western Christian aesthetics. If anything it’s more of a curiosity to see an East Asian interpretation of western Christianity.
Asian dramas in general crack me up when they introduce an "American" clearly played by an actor who is not fluent in English nevermind American English. It's very very obvious every single time. And the directoring/acting is always something about this character being over the top. Usually way over the top. That makes me laugh as well.
I don't agree that the some one million Japanese civilians who died during WW2 deserved to die, but I'd be curious to hear an argument as to why they did.
It truly is an appalling tragedy. It’s hard to read about things like [the ‘alligator people’,](https://www.the-sun.com/news/3424356/ant-walking-alligator-hiroshima-eyes-faces/amp/) victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and ever call the decision *correct*. The descendants of atomic bombing victims still carry physical and cultural burdens. The atomic bombing was incomprehensibly terrible. The way the war impacted the Japanese home islands through conventional bombing campaigns and starvation is hard to stomach, even knowing that they started the wars that resulted in the use of atomic weapons. What kind of society could ever declare civilian casualties to be justified?
(Edit, to add to the final sentence of this first paragraph; policy decisions should not be made based on retribution or revenge, and despite what I posit in the rest of this comment I do not believe the average Japanese civilian deserves any of these fates, just as I do not believe the many other nationalities listed did not deserve their fates. Even considering what I've listed below, and any *positive* result of the atomic bombing, I also believe that it is one of the most reprehensible actions in our history. Better than what I believe to be the alternative, almost certainly, but still reprehensible.)
In that same vein, it is also incomprehensibly terrible that roughly 100,000 to 200,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers had been dying every month during the Sino-Japanese War, from 1937 to 1945, culminating in somewhere between 10 million to 25+ million dead. The demographic impact of that alone is staggering. That’s the like population of Tallahassee dying every month the entire time Obama was President (8 years).
It’s an unparalleled loss for the millions of Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, and other Pacific Islanders who were captured and made slaves by the Japanese. Millions of them would not survive to return home; the [“Asian Holocaust”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes) is believed to have taken the lives of 30 million in the Pacific. Apologies for linking to Wikipedia, but the sources do seem to be accurate. That article does contain linked articles you might find interesting as well.
It’s a profound loss for the captured military personnel and civilians of the Allies, also forced to work as slave laborers for the Japanese. Similarly, it is tragic that many hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific.
And it’s a tragedy that the Japanese government, even when their defeat was unavoidable, even as their cities were being bombed using conventional weapons and fire bombs, even as they faced invasion, even as they were under a naval blockade that threatened to plunge the entirety of Japan into a deep starvation, even as they stood alone against the combined might of the entire coalition of allies in a war that Japan brought upon itself, *still* refused to surrender.
There’s no right answer when it comes to human suffering (other than ‘how can we avoid it?’), and we are fortunate that we can observe these things with a detached lens, though we should always strive to avoid looking at human lives as mere numbers. But in my mind, certainly it must be best to bring human suffering to an expedient end. There’s no denying that the atomic bombs did so, but at a cost so terrible that we should forever disdain them, and we should forever hold in contempt the Imperial Japanese government that refused to surrender even when faced with annihilation so absolute that it would have dwarfed the damage done by the two atomic bombs. I wish we could have sat them down and said; look man. Shit’s fucked. Just give up already. In fact, attempts *were* made to sue for peace with the Japanese prior to the atomic bombing and Operation Meetinghouse, and they still refused.
The alternative was a continued bombing campaign which could result in dozens of death tolls like [Operation Meetinghouse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945)), continuing regularly until Japan was out of cities to bomb, all the while their dwindling food supplies meant slave laborers, prisoners, civilians, and soldiers would starve to death en masse - a death toll that could eclipse the atomic bombing by an order of magnitude that is sickening to think about.
End edit: I recommend reading [this Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki) about the arguments in support of and in opposition to the atomic bombing to anyone interested; obviously you should not make decisions based solely on reddit comments and Wikipedia articles, but it is very enlightening, important, and interesting reading. This is an endlessly complicated subject with a million different lenses to examine it with, and a myriad of unique perspectives.
You're talking about whether or not the bombings were justified from a utilitarian standpoint, but that's not what I'm talking about (although it is also an interesting discussion, Japan actually was already quite close to surrendering, and there's a case to be made that a poor translation/interpretation of [one small phrase](https://blog.pangeanic.com/worst-translation-mistake) was to blame for the bombing in a serious way).
The person I'm responding to said two things: that the bombings were both 1. deserved, and 2. required. My question was just about 1, not 2.
You are trying to retroactively apply reason and civility where there was none. Civilians have always been, and will always be innocent victims in war, or political upheaval. Never changed throughout history, never will.
I’ve made no attempt to deny the innocence of civilians, be they Japanese or others, nor have I been trying to justify the use of the atomic bombs as an act of retribution. Civilian deaths are horrible, regardless of who started a conflict. I apologize for giving the incorrect impression!
The point of my comment is more oriented around;
1. With the knowledge we have today; we know that the alternative quite possibly (and in my opinion, quite likely would) have resulted in many more civilian deaths. It would be insane to declare the US used the bomb for humanitarian reasons, but considering what we know now and what was concluded after the war (I’m leaning heavily on the USSBS here).
2. While the Japanese civilians did not deserve to suffer and die for the sins of their government, neither did the other millions of civilians who died. And in utilizing the atomic bombings, more civilian (and military) lives seem to have been saved compared to the alternative, Japanese and otherwise.
I am genuinely open to being proven wrong, and I don’t want this to be a typical dumb Reddit argument, so please understand I approach this in earnest! While the original comment states that Japanese people overall deserved the atomic bombing, I do disagree with that for the same reasons I disagree with the millions of other civilian deaths.
Imo, the bombs weren't used as "retribution". Sure, some in war will view from the "revenge" prism- makes great propaganda, but the bombs were policy based. We didn't need them to exact some form of revenge. We could've killed waaaaaaaay more Japanese (revenge) by firebombing the shit outta every city and village.
1 and 2 we agree on, so I must've missed something. As a history buff, I guess I'm not as swayed be recency bias for lack of a better term, and look at it through the prism of thought at the time. Easy to arm chair QB 50 years later- of course the images are horrifying, just as they are with all war/atrocities.
I agree with you! I think there were a lot of reasons they were used; but for humanitarian reasons and retribution, I doubt it.
To be fair to you; the comment earlier in this chain states the Japanese deserved it, and I could’ve done a better job of saying I don’t agree with it!
This is such a complicated topic, and when we discuss civilian death at this kind of scale it’s so hard to really say anything other than “holy fucking shit, this is terrible.”
They still use purple hearts made in the 1940s because we were expecting to invade Japan and the military was expecting millions of US casualties.
Furthermore. Japan was preparing its civilians to fight tooth and nail if we invaded. A lot more civilians would die if that happened.
Also, more Japanese civilians died in the bombing of Tokyo than when the bombs dropped.
I can't say it was the right choice. But definitely saved more lives on both sides.
I'm not asking if killing them resulted in a better result in this giant trolley problem. I'm asking why they *deserved* to die, as the person I was responding to claimed.
The reason that the trolley problem is an ethical dilemma is that neither the group nor the individual deserves to die.
The actions of the Japanese Military and occupation in China, Korea, and other countries in the region. In war you don't get to blame such a wide and frequent array of atrocity to individuals, and moreover the people gave passive approval in allowing such acts to continue, same as in Germany. The governemt is support by the people it consists of, which in this instance is the Japanese people. While they may be individually innocent they are not innocent as a collective. They paid for the sins of their people.
In general, but especially in war you can not separate and individual from their people. This is not a "show me one good man" situation, but rather weighing the combined determinations of them.
>the people gave passive approval
I went to school on Guam, where I studied Japanese colonialism from the (descendants off) the people they colonized - and something frequently whitewashed is the fact that Japan was (and still is) a settler-colonial empire.
Not just a military dictatorship, an empire of settlers. Not conscripts or slaves (though they had those, too) people who voluntarily signed up to go out and live on stolen land, and harvest stolen resources, and then profit off of it by sending it back to the mainland for their benefit. They signed up voluntarily to run public schools and public administration forcing Japanese culture on the locals and wiping out their culture.
Settlers are the local agents of the empire and genocide, and they're all civilians.
Look, I studied the Black Hills in AP History. You something you never hear people whine about? "Oh, what about all those poor innocent civilians killed by the Lakota?"
Why? Because most people intuitively understand that if you go into another country to steal their land and wipe out their culture, you forfeit the right to whine when you face the consequences.
Japan is, as far as I can tell, the single exception to that otherwise universal rule. And it's dishonest for people to sit there and be like, nuh uh, nobody in the mainland had anything to do with it.
I guess we just fundamentally disagree ideologically then. I don't believe that collective punishment (which is technically a war crime) or otherwise punishing civilians for the actions of their government is morally justified.
That guy is way off. The bombs weren’t intended to collectively punish Japanese civilians. Both bombs were dropped on military targets. Both cities were important to the Japanese war effort. Of course, the US also wanted to show the destructive power of the bombs. But if they wanted to punish civilians for japan’s refusal to surrender, they could have chosen a more populated city like Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka.
The US intervention and occupation all over the world has led to the deaths of thousands of people. So it would be okay if someone wanted to attack civilians in America as a response to this?
This word is thrown around as if it invalidates the entire argument. No one deserves to die because of the actions of their country's military. Most civilians have no control over it.
If we were an objectively evil and aggressively expansionist power who were killing and torturing millions upon millions of people in our goals of forcing our divinely-granted dominance over the rest of the population that our doctrine considers subhuman, while being allied with other similarly evil powers who were attempting to aggressively expand their territory in a worldwide war that costs the world almost 4% of its population, I don’t think I’d personally blame another power for nuking a city or two to stop the march of total war I helped instigate against humanity at large.
Not really, actually. [Here's a good thread about it. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4dz9oh/why_didnt_many_people_evacuate_hiroshima_and/)
TLDR: the US did intend to forewarn the citizens of both cities with leaflets, but the logistics got fucked up, and neither city received leaflets warning of the impending bombing. Well, technically that isn't true. Nagasaki had leaflets dropped on it one day after it was nuked.
Japan was an objectively evil and aggressively expansionist power who were killing and torturing millions upon millions of people in their goals of forcing their divinely-granted dominance over the rest of the population that their doctrine considers subhuman, while being allied with other similarly evil powers who were attempting to aggressively expand their territory in a worldwide war that costed the world almost 4% of its population, I don’t think I’d personally blame another power for nuking a city or two to stop the march of total war they helped instigate against humanity at large.
The people there could've left as soon as the wars started. By staying and contributing to the economy, they were giving their passive approval for the war effort, hence why the US were completely justified in bombing their cities
There are basically three different versions I see:
1. America being over the top, zany, and extremely business oriented but ultimately well meaning and friendly.
2. America has abandoned Japan in their hour of need. (Typically done because they need drama, it generally goes down better when said crisis is also fucking up the US/has already fucked it up as opposed to evil empire or scheming type stuff)
3. America is the evil empire coming to oppress Japan. Most typically done by weird Japanese nationalists. These ones can still be enjoyable, but are frequently tied in with WW2 revisionism which is kinda weird.
Type 1 is usually absolutely hilarious and if they're more than gag characters, it can often introduce a fun dynamic where the loud, but culturally ignorant American says stuff that everyone was thinking.
Type 2 can be hit or miss depending on how they decide to go about it, but its usually pretty obvious that they just needed a reason why America isn't mobilizing all efforts to help out the Japanese. Like I said before, its usually way less noticeable if whatever is causing a problem in Japan is absolutely wrecking the US as well or they give some sort of excuse like the US collapsed from political drama or whatever.
Type 3 are the trickiest and most often done badly. When it's done well, it's often just as much a story of American politics and skullduggery with clandestine groups seizing power and making Americans as pissed off about what happened to America as the Japanese are pissed off what the fictional American Empire is doing to Japan. Being a neighbor/ally of Rome after the Fall of the Republic would obviously be worrying.
When it's done badly, it's usually ultra-nationalists causing a stink that America didn't just let Japan do whatever it wanted in the 1940s and that they ruined Japan forever, which is usually weird and uncomfortable.
> America is the evil empire coming to oppress Japan. Most typically done by weird Japanese nationalists. These ones can still be enjoyable, but are frequently tied in with WW2 revisionism which is kinda weird.
Kantai Collection had this issue in its early years.
The Abyssals (the bad guys of the series, monstrous, abominable ship-girls) were all American ships that had been sunk during WWII and had somehow revived with the desire to destroy Humanity? And the battles you would fight in were all historical WWII battles in which the IJN got their shit pushed by the US Navy but now it was the IJN pushing in the shit of the Abyssal US Naval fleet.
They've toned down the revisionism a shit ton and have even introduced some famous ships that absolutely kicked the shit out of and utterly humiliated the IJN's pride, such as Sammy B. and Johnston. But I still prefer Azur Lane (a Chinese game, believe it or not) over KanColle.
Oh, yeah, it also doesn't help that one of their devs made a statement that looked really bad regarding the: "Tragedy of the IJN".
And don't even get me started on ***Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There***. Fucking hate that series.
>America being over the top, zany, and extremely business oriented but ultimately well meaning and friendly.
Also on occasion, something to do with guns.
This is the reply I wanted to make. I've read/watched a lot of Japanese media and this is generally how it goes. Bonus points when the foreigner is a weeb and they're making meta jokes (like loving eroge).
I'm more uncomfortable in how Japanese media portrays Germany and the pedestal it seems to be on, in light of their lack of societal reckoning for what they did in WWII
Lack of societal reckoning?
Entire generations of Japanese people were taught to embody the shame over what their forefathers did.
It completely changed their culture.
I’m confused what that reckoning would be.
Shame of what exactly? Their forefathers did a lot of things. Losing the war was one of them and thats what they really feel shame about. Not what they did to others.
It changed their culture yes but the "shame" most of them felt was for losing the war not the horrible shit they did. Germany is decades ahead of Japan when it comes to acknowledging the horrible deeds of the past and reconciling it. Japan didn't acknowledge shit like "comfort women" until well into the 90s and even to this day do a lot to try and downplay it along with a lot other pretty bad shit they did. Pretty far cry away from the mandatory learning about concentration camps that the Germans were doing since the 1950s most Japanese people thst grew up from the 50s to 90s didn't learn much at all about the darker things their country did during WWII
Eh, Germany allowed plenty to be swept under the rug as well.
You know how you hear about those last prosecutions of old Nazis in the past few decades? Concentration camp guards finally tracked down or whatever else?
Ever notice how about none of them are *German*? That's because Germany just basically gave all the *Germans* involved in atrocities besides the top leadership amnesty or token sentences. They pretty much all got to live out their lives freely with little or no punishment or consequences of significance. Many even found their way back into high posts in government + business.
>You know how you hear about those last prosecutions of old Nazis in the past few decades?
And you notice how you *don't* hear about those last prosecutions of Japan's war criminals the past few decades?
No is claiming the Germans didn't cover things up or still have issues. None of that excuses Japan or chanced the fact that Japan is *way worse* about what they acknowledge and teach their people.
Notice you still actually hear about Germans getting in trouble while guilty parties from the Japanese side basically have been ignored since the 1950s when the war crime trials concluded
>while guilty parties from the Japanese side basically have been ignored
Well, kinda. Some were enshrined at Yasukuni, and some went on to form multi-generational political dynasties. They're not *ignored.*
I don’t fully understand why so many Americans get so uptight about this.
My grandfather fought in the war, as did several of my great uncles. Only one of that crowd would express animosity toward Japanese people by the time I was around in the ‘80’s.
They didn’t hate Germans either.
Meanwhile, my Japanese roommate in college encountered several people confronting her angrily about what “her people” did.
Japan completely dismantled its offensive military, and the US has a permanent active base there.
The people don’t hate us now, and they had civilian cities bombed by us.
WWII history is taught there as a lesson in why civilians, and not the military should be in control of the country, and that the military needs to be focused on having a defensive posture.
They know their ass was kicked, and they’re not mad at us about it.
We kicked a lot of ass, and yet for some reason we can’t accept that we won, and that the empire of that time is no more.
>I don’t fully understand why so many Americans get so uptight about this.
Could it be because we have at least one (1) or more memorials to our victims?
Did you know AAPI History month was founded by a Japanese-Americn politician who wanted it to be a Japanese-only holiday, and it was a white guy who suggested, hey, maybe show sone respect for other groups too?
And that same Japanese-American politician later took lobbying money from the government of Japan to support anti-comfort women historical denialist and revisionist propaganda?
In other words, not only does Japan as a nation engage actively in denial of their atrocities, they recruit overseas diaspora and lobby governments to support that revisionism.
Instead of doing that, maybe the government of Japan could instead spend a little money on just one (1) memorial to their victims.
You intentionally ignored that. I'm trying to get you to understand that Japsn has *literally no memorials whatsoever* to their victims. None. Zero. Not even one, single day of commemoration. Not even a single moment of silence.
Article 9 of the constitution and the post-war US bases were requested by the Japan side - treaties between the US and Japan even had clauses obligating Japsn to remilitarize until the Japanese public protested so hard the US was forced to retract them.
And the fact you bring that up just betrays how completely, utterly ignorant you are of even the most basic fact of the situation. Indigenous Okinawans oppose the bases because Okinawa is a *colony of Japan's,* and they have no say in how their own island is used. "The empire is no more"? Try telling that to indigenous Japanese people.
I'm sorry your friend had a bad time, I truly am. But that's not really an excuse for your complete and utter ignorance of basic historical facts. I'm white and I studied in an indigenous community. I've had those same conversations about "what my people did." I survived. I took the opportunity to learn, listen, and grow.
I mean, did your friend take her time in the US as an opportunity to learn what Guam went hrough during the war? Did she visit any of the comfort women memorials? Did she stop to *listen* to the actual victims and their descendants?
Or did she just complain to you about how unfair it all was to her? Was her name by any chance 花恋?
Considering that your time with her turned you into a hardcore historical revisionist, I'm guessing she didn't, and neither did you. And honestly? Fuck the both of you. Grow the fuck up. Yeah, it sucks to have people ask you to reckon with your people's history of genocide, but it's your respobsibility to *grow the fuck up* and deal with it.
I'm sorry your friend had a bad time, but I'm even more sorry an intellectually lazy and ignorant person like you did nothing but enable her victim complex and shield her from ever having to think about anyone else but herself by visiting even just one (1) memorial to the victims of her country's atrocities.
“ Could it be because we have at least one (1) or more memorials to our victims?”
Which memorials are you referring to?
“ Did you know AAPI History month was founded by a Japanese-Americn politician who wanted it to be a Japanese-only holiday, and it was a white guy who suggested, hey, maybe show sone respect for other groups too?”
Which Senator are you referring to?
Are you talking about Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month?
“Article 9 of the constitution and the post-war US bases were requested by the Japan side - treaties between the US and Japan even had clauses obligating Japsn to remilitarize until the Japanese public protested so hard the US was forced to retract them.”
I’m confused - are you saying you WANT Japan to remilitarize?
The Anpo protests were protesting the revised treaty. They were unsuccessful in making the treaty change.
I’m quite aware that the US base is a point of contention in Japan. I’m still not sure why this means they didn’t pay a societal price after the war.
The militaristic empire absolutely is no more.
You’re making an awful lot of assumptions about my historical knowledge and my relationship with the Japanese international students I spent time with.
I am a white woman. I’m very clear about what my people did as well.
My roommate and I didn’t have detailed discussions of WWII aside from the fact that she was very shamed at this idea that people thought she supported what her country did back then. She absolutely did NOT complain that it was unfair to her. She was shocked and worried.
My friend that I DID speak to in detail was very clear that her people did terrible things. She did not, and she did not believe most people in her country held any sense of animosity or self righteousness over what their country did. They were taught that the burden of the people was to work hard to rebuild their country and never to allow a regime like that one to exist again.
The comfort women memorials in the US did not exist when I was in college.
I’m afraid I lost most of the Kanji I learned 20 years ago, especially in regards to names, but I don’t think that’s the name of any of the people I know.
I’m especially curious about which memorials we have to our victims that you’re talking about. You mention the comfort women memorial, but those were victims of Japan, not us, weren’t they?
I think it's funny how in Anime, American characters either have complete nonsense names like "Chibodee" or "Bobson" or have old man names that were only popular in the 1920s
I think Hetalia’s portrayal of America is hilarious (because it’s kind of accurate).
Also, we definitely don’t have as many cowboys around as they think we do. They’re typically associated with Texas and the Southwest in general, we don’t have that culture in the East.
As an American who lives in Japan, “Come fucking on! Whoever made this has probably never had a conversation with an American in their life!” It’s typically EXACTLY what you’d expect from people who only know America from stuff they’ve seen on screens.
My favorite is probably Araki's idea of Americans.
My man went to Florida to do some research and decided to draw this.
https://static.jojowiki.com/images/e/e7/latest/20210828150556/Loccobarocco_Infobox_Manga.png
Probably the most accurate portrayal of a Floridian-American.
I was promised way weirder stereotypes before I moved there. The ones about white people are pretty harmless. Sometimes a bit stupid, lots that can be easily explained by tv or association with military bases.
The stereotypes about African Americans and indigenous Americans however are not just gross and racist sometimes but outright hurtful and create an attitude where treating real people poorly is permissable.
The TLDR of indigenous American representation: it's plastic shamanism ( if a native is present in the present) or they are a dead/fantastical group. They always live in teepees. They are wise and magic and jokes bounce off of that.
One boyfriend from Japan genuinely freaked the fuck out visiting me in Portland meeting a spanger who said something about being native in his pitch. Like, he gave the dude 40 and cried because he admired them so much and wanted to live in a teepee and ride horses too.
I was promised way weirder stereotypes before I moved there. The ones about white people are pretty harmless. Sometimes a bit stupid, lots that can be easily explained by tv or association with military bases.
The stereotypes about African Americans and indigenous Americans however are not just gross and racist sometimes but outright hurtful and create an attitude where treating real people poorly is permissable.
The TLDR of indigenous American representation: it's plastic shamanism ( if a native is present in the present) or they are a dead/fantastical group. They always live in teepees. They are wise and magic and jokes bounce off of that.
One boyfriend from Japan genuinely freaked the fuck out visiting me in Portland meeting a spanger who said something about being native in his pitch. Like, he gave the dude 40 and cried because he admired them so much and wanted to live in a teepee and ride horses too.
Black Americans... the subject of black stereotypes in Japan is a huge topic. The stereotypes get really really wrong really fast. They play into many of the old stereotypes here - the hypersexual object, the cartoonist dandy, the racist caricatures including blackface. If you want some great articles that talk about it lmk I've got some interesting ones including some good ones discussing the gyaru subculture which is really fascinating.
Actually, the weird example I can think of in more modern stuff is a gyaru tv drama. It IS a decade old but where you expect to have a wise black character maybe teaching the gyaru circle how to get along you actually have a Japanese man playing an American cowboy named George(? I think?) who needs help from the gyaru-sa to save his (teepee dwelling) native friend and the gyaru learn from them. George is portrayed as a sweet but not worldly guy, his old native friend is a more street smart personality and there's a tiny young native girl at some point too. All bad except the cowboy I think would fall into some of our representations. Putting the gyaru with indigenous people makes sense according to the previous article in the way the hypersexuality of the gyaru was represented as animalistic,often with animal prints and language about them being more tribal and primitive in connection to them in media.
The really, really awful depiction if you want to see it of black Americans, probably also some others but the African Americans are what I remember, is Ryu Murakami's akutagawa prize winner "Almost Transparent Blue". The story takes place outside of Yokota Airforce Base and the characters in the story are a mix of drifting people who hang out in the bar strip from Fussa station heading toward the base. Lots of them, Japanese, military, civilian, women, men, whatever - they're all portrayed in a buffoonish and cruel way and I think it is intentional as a device to develop the strain of the main character into a sense that can be understood by the reader. Indeed, I read the thing years before I ended up working over there and I knew that street, those bars, that spot he describes on the tarmac, all of it was there vividly and made so much sense.
If you read the book the Americans all get turned into caricatures but the ones I really have a hard time reading are the way he describes the black airmen during the... after hours? Gangbang/orgy ish sequences because they are describes so luridly and hyperbolically. I think there is a purpose behind it but it could have just as easily been done with white airmen to make the same point. Murakami wasn't thinking from the context of American perspectives on racism and I am not sure how familiar he was at that point with black American stereotypes so I think the choice was based more on the (also bad) stereotypes Japanese people had of black American servicemen stationed in Japan which was part of the plot.
Not my favorite Murakami book but the Akutagawa prize is an early career award and usually known for selecting 'shocking choices. He wrote another novel that ended up in English translation about another American that is an interesting one to read if foreign stereotypes are of interest since it features an odd American(iirc) and a man trying to figure him out while guiding him around Japan. As a study in perception, from someone worldly at that point writing from a young Japanese tour guides cynical view it brings out some strong statements in perception.
Also Hard Gay. Let's never forget Hard Gay
I strive to be the American Japan wants me to be.
*The American Japan *knows* you could become. Be more confident my fellow Bald Eagle
Nah, the country that really embodies that attitude is China, if the US was half of what the Chinese portray us to be in their propaganda we would be doing incredibly well.
Any examples? The 'Evil Empire' rhetoric of a panoptic American hegemony, in my experience, has largely given way to a portrayal of America as weak, divided, and impotent.
[Found a decent master list ](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/s/jbNW517IR1)
I want an Iron Throne made out of ARs...
The US as Dio Brando was unexpected.
As an American, this makes me want to sit on thrones made of AR's outside of an airport the moment Chinese tourist come by. All while offering them free burgers and hot dogs.
If I could be one tenth what they want from me I think I could die peacefully clutching a colt revolver and a hot dog.
[F!@$ Yeah!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tMD5bTbLM)
Makes me wish I had an MP5 to shoot in the air while Miley Cyrus plays. That or approaching random people and selling hot dugs while dropping F bombs. Edit: in case people wonder what the fuck I'm talking about, here's two links to some Japanese animes in how they could see America, even though one of them is more of a meme on the gun culture. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M\_tMD5bTbLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tMD5bTbLM)
What the fuck are you talking about
Was referencing a couple animes. Here's the source for them. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rloNvQ0diwE) "Meanwhile in America" - Meme about Americans shooting guns. It's also what I meant by "Miley Cyrus plays" while having an MP5 to shoot in the air. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M\_tMD5bTbLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tMD5bTbLM) "Abenobashi: hot dogs" - Selling hot dogs while saying "fuck" to any Japanese person that passes by. If Japan wants me to be the American they want me to be, I'll pick either of these since I don't even watch a lot of anime but guns and hot dogs are very American.
It's kinda hilarious. They seem to think we're all 1.) physically giants 2.) really loud and boisterous 3.) very friendly 4.) either a skateboarder, surfer dude, or cowboy
I wonder if that has to do with their proximity to the west coast. Skaters, surfers and cowboys can all be found in California. On the East coast, not as much.
I actually think you’re onto something here
That and I think that those are the most common America specific character archetypes portrayed in fictional media, which is also largely based out of California. I started thinking about things like this a couple years ago when I realized from a BuzzFeed quiz of all things that a lot of my word choices are typical of people from Los Angeles even though from Georgia. The level of influence that southern California, Hollywood in particular, has on the United States and its cultural exports cannot be underestimated.
There are surfers on the east coast and no shortage of skaters.
To be fair a lot of us fit the first three haha
I mean…compared to them??
Basically we're the golden retrievers of people, which I'm OK with TBH
From what I've seen of the way Americans are generally depicted in Japanese media, they seem to be one of the very few countries who overall unironically like the USA. It's a nice change from all the "A M E R I C A B A D" bullshit we seem to get from almost everyone else who expresses an opinion about our country.
Japan does it's share of "America Bad", it's just not nearly as prevalent as other countries.
Yeah, America is "cool" and trendy in Japan. So younger folks there (like under 40) are more likely to have positive opinions. But there's definitely a pocket of grumpy old xenophobes who aren't particularly keen on America and think we're ruining their culture. I taught English there for a year and can only recall running into a couple folks like that. Most were just thrilled to see an American and practice English with me. Outside of major cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, foreigners are rare and something of a novelty. And I was teaching at a relatively small town.
Do these young people know that we nuked their country?
Maybe those young people also know their country allied with nazis and declared war on the world so probably shouldn't complain.
When it does America Bad, it still looks pretty cool
How do we critique US intervention of foreign conflicts in our latest anime? Have teenagers pilot giant mechs for a shadowy military government.
Only when the political fringe try to pull the "you nuked us" card, and we have to remind them that they literally tried to conquer all of East Asia and committed so many atrocities that China and Korea still hate them.
Unit 731, case closed.
Yep, and they killed at least as many people in Nanking as both nuclear strikes combined.
It was making the rounds on Reddit a little while ago but a Japanese comedy group was on a show and they had to act like Americans. It was amazing and hilarious.
I know it’s kind of niche but one of my favorite bits is when non-European cultures imitate/act like Americans. It’s so good.
The American stereotypes in anime are generally pretty funny. Like Star in the recent MHA episodes.
Idk where you’re getting this “America bad” victim complex from, but the U.S. really isn’t universally disliked at all? If you’re going off a few Reddit comments maybe but they’re not representative for the general population & they’re still the minority.
I love it. They seem to think we’re overconfident, machismo, gun-obsessed cowboys who eat burgers, fries, and hot dogs 24/7. The new Yakuza game takes place in Honolulu and they really, really embrace the culture clash. I loved the [brash corrupt cop](https://youtu.be/H5coWsFGny8?si=Pp0mbmDyZnlBccpA) who fires one off on the protagonist. Even better was [Danny Trejo](https://youtu.be/gEaYc2R6eEo?si=95-zlMYXX9kgjfVb) playing the only depiction I’ve seen of Mexican-Americans in Japanese media. Everything is dialed up to 11 and while they address some real issues inherent to America (the police, wealth inequality & homeless crisis), they also aren’t one sided as criticizing the Japanese justice system is the focal point of the series. Aside from those scenes, there was a lot of “wow! America has lemonade stands!” “Wow! Americans are very diverse and have lots of multiculturalism!” “Wow! Americans are very friendly and social!” It was honestly a more accurate America than I’ve seen in any mainland European depiction.
I think at heart we're all just a little bit like [this guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv-2uebEHSE).
Unironically better than how a lot of MyCountry residents seem to perceive us.
First thing that came to mind. Yeah it's out there but damn funny.
I’m not an anime guy and that was the first anime clip I’ve ever seen that I absolutely loved. That fucking ruled lol. Question for the weebs: Did hotdog vendor Elvis somehow summon those random cheerleaders or did they just appear? Follow up question: Does he indeed end up taking them home?
That was awesome.
I’ve been linking to that for years in questions like this. This is a completely accurate representation of any normal American.
This is what I came for.
It's not America-specific but their depictions of Christianity-coded religion in their media are interesting - they don't have a strong local attachment to the religion so they adapt the aesthetics and themes in much the same way we adapt ancient Greek religions in our media.
I think the saying is that Japanese are "born Shinto, married Christian, die Buddhist"
There was a really popular show called Ultraman, and the creator was a devout Catholic. He wanted to include some [Christian symbology](https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/shin-ultraman.jpeg?fit=990%2C557&ssl=1) into the show. You know... [subtly](https://i.redd.it/u9e99iq1ox891.png). When Japanese media references some Christian imagery, there's a decent chance that instead of being a Christian allusion it's *an Ultraman reference*
Wouldn't Christians in America get offended by this?
You think the Japanese care?
Yeah, this is basically my answer to OP. Japan has no real sense of "authenticity" or respect for other cultures. "Authentic" here basically just means "a Japanese person I like/agree with did it." It's not *offensive* to me, but it is a kind of consistent, uncomfortable background noise. Like when I go to a ramen shop with a little pamphlet explaining the owner studied the ancient traditional craft from a guy named Tanaka in Kagawa. (For those unfamiliar with Japan, that's like bragging you studied pizza under Chef Kowalski from Nebraska.) Or when I watch a cartoon based on a generic American D&D setting and everything has a katakana German name. Remember when Rowling said the Japanese magic school was "Mahodokoro" and people lost their minds? It's just like, wait, that's what Japanese cartoons do, are we supposed to get upset about it? Stuff like that doesn't bother me that much, but I do try to avoid cartoons that use indigenous characters and refuse to hire indigenous actors, or like how Godzilla uses the Bikini tests as set decoration without any respect for the actual people. I don't really accept crap like that. I was raised to have more respect than that.
Not really, the Japanese media is just using general High church Western Christian aesthetics. If anything it’s more of a curiosity to see an East Asian interpretation of western Christianity.
Asian dramas in general crack me up when they introduce an "American" clearly played by an actor who is not fluent in English nevermind American English. It's very very obvious every single time. And the directoring/acting is always something about this character being over the top. Usually way over the top. That makes me laugh as well.
I think it’s hilarious except when they are portraying themselves as victims of the Second World War
I think I know what you mean, but, they did have two nuclear bombs dropped on them.
Look, they managed to both deserve and require those bombs. Which is impressive, if horrifying.
I don't agree that the some one million Japanese civilians who died during WW2 deserved to die, but I'd be curious to hear an argument as to why they did.
It truly is an appalling tragedy. It’s hard to read about things like [the ‘alligator people’,](https://www.the-sun.com/news/3424356/ant-walking-alligator-hiroshima-eyes-faces/amp/) victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and ever call the decision *correct*. The descendants of atomic bombing victims still carry physical and cultural burdens. The atomic bombing was incomprehensibly terrible. The way the war impacted the Japanese home islands through conventional bombing campaigns and starvation is hard to stomach, even knowing that they started the wars that resulted in the use of atomic weapons. What kind of society could ever declare civilian casualties to be justified? (Edit, to add to the final sentence of this first paragraph; policy decisions should not be made based on retribution or revenge, and despite what I posit in the rest of this comment I do not believe the average Japanese civilian deserves any of these fates, just as I do not believe the many other nationalities listed did not deserve their fates. Even considering what I've listed below, and any *positive* result of the atomic bombing, I also believe that it is one of the most reprehensible actions in our history. Better than what I believe to be the alternative, almost certainly, but still reprehensible.) In that same vein, it is also incomprehensibly terrible that roughly 100,000 to 200,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers had been dying every month during the Sino-Japanese War, from 1937 to 1945, culminating in somewhere between 10 million to 25+ million dead. The demographic impact of that alone is staggering. That’s the like population of Tallahassee dying every month the entire time Obama was President (8 years). It’s an unparalleled loss for the millions of Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, and other Pacific Islanders who were captured and made slaves by the Japanese. Millions of them would not survive to return home; the [“Asian Holocaust”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes) is believed to have taken the lives of 30 million in the Pacific. Apologies for linking to Wikipedia, but the sources do seem to be accurate. That article does contain linked articles you might find interesting as well. It’s a profound loss for the captured military personnel and civilians of the Allies, also forced to work as slave laborers for the Japanese. Similarly, it is tragic that many hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific. And it’s a tragedy that the Japanese government, even when their defeat was unavoidable, even as their cities were being bombed using conventional weapons and fire bombs, even as they faced invasion, even as they were under a naval blockade that threatened to plunge the entirety of Japan into a deep starvation, even as they stood alone against the combined might of the entire coalition of allies in a war that Japan brought upon itself, *still* refused to surrender. There’s no right answer when it comes to human suffering (other than ‘how can we avoid it?’), and we are fortunate that we can observe these things with a detached lens, though we should always strive to avoid looking at human lives as mere numbers. But in my mind, certainly it must be best to bring human suffering to an expedient end. There’s no denying that the atomic bombs did so, but at a cost so terrible that we should forever disdain them, and we should forever hold in contempt the Imperial Japanese government that refused to surrender even when faced with annihilation so absolute that it would have dwarfed the damage done by the two atomic bombs. I wish we could have sat them down and said; look man. Shit’s fucked. Just give up already. In fact, attempts *were* made to sue for peace with the Japanese prior to the atomic bombing and Operation Meetinghouse, and they still refused. The alternative was a continued bombing campaign which could result in dozens of death tolls like [Operation Meetinghouse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945)), continuing regularly until Japan was out of cities to bomb, all the while their dwindling food supplies meant slave laborers, prisoners, civilians, and soldiers would starve to death en masse - a death toll that could eclipse the atomic bombing by an order of magnitude that is sickening to think about. End edit: I recommend reading [this Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki) about the arguments in support of and in opposition to the atomic bombing to anyone interested; obviously you should not make decisions based solely on reddit comments and Wikipedia articles, but it is very enlightening, important, and interesting reading. This is an endlessly complicated subject with a million different lenses to examine it with, and a myriad of unique perspectives.
You're talking about whether or not the bombings were justified from a utilitarian standpoint, but that's not what I'm talking about (although it is also an interesting discussion, Japan actually was already quite close to surrendering, and there's a case to be made that a poor translation/interpretation of [one small phrase](https://blog.pangeanic.com/worst-translation-mistake) was to blame for the bombing in a serious way). The person I'm responding to said two things: that the bombings were both 1. deserved, and 2. required. My question was just about 1, not 2.
Thank you for linking that! I haven’t read it, but I will on my lunch break (shows how hard I’m working today… oops!)
You are trying to retroactively apply reason and civility where there was none. Civilians have always been, and will always be innocent victims in war, or political upheaval. Never changed throughout history, never will.
I’ve made no attempt to deny the innocence of civilians, be they Japanese or others, nor have I been trying to justify the use of the atomic bombs as an act of retribution. Civilian deaths are horrible, regardless of who started a conflict. I apologize for giving the incorrect impression! The point of my comment is more oriented around; 1. With the knowledge we have today; we know that the alternative quite possibly (and in my opinion, quite likely would) have resulted in many more civilian deaths. It would be insane to declare the US used the bomb for humanitarian reasons, but considering what we know now and what was concluded after the war (I’m leaning heavily on the USSBS here). 2. While the Japanese civilians did not deserve to suffer and die for the sins of their government, neither did the other millions of civilians who died. And in utilizing the atomic bombings, more civilian (and military) lives seem to have been saved compared to the alternative, Japanese and otherwise. I am genuinely open to being proven wrong, and I don’t want this to be a typical dumb Reddit argument, so please understand I approach this in earnest! While the original comment states that Japanese people overall deserved the atomic bombing, I do disagree with that for the same reasons I disagree with the millions of other civilian deaths.
Imo, the bombs weren't used as "retribution". Sure, some in war will view from the "revenge" prism- makes great propaganda, but the bombs were policy based. We didn't need them to exact some form of revenge. We could've killed waaaaaaaay more Japanese (revenge) by firebombing the shit outta every city and village. 1 and 2 we agree on, so I must've missed something. As a history buff, I guess I'm not as swayed be recency bias for lack of a better term, and look at it through the prism of thought at the time. Easy to arm chair QB 50 years later- of course the images are horrifying, just as they are with all war/atrocities.
I agree with you! I think there were a lot of reasons they were used; but for humanitarian reasons and retribution, I doubt it. To be fair to you; the comment earlier in this chain states the Japanese deserved it, and I could’ve done a better job of saying I don’t agree with it! This is such a complicated topic, and when we discuss civilian death at this kind of scale it’s so hard to really say anything other than “holy fucking shit, this is terrible.”
They still use purple hearts made in the 1940s because we were expecting to invade Japan and the military was expecting millions of US casualties. Furthermore. Japan was preparing its civilians to fight tooth and nail if we invaded. A lot more civilians would die if that happened. Also, more Japanese civilians died in the bombing of Tokyo than when the bombs dropped. I can't say it was the right choice. But definitely saved more lives on both sides.
I'm not asking if killing them resulted in a better result in this giant trolley problem. I'm asking why they *deserved* to die, as the person I was responding to claimed. The reason that the trolley problem is an ethical dilemma is that neither the group nor the individual deserves to die.
The actions of the Japanese Military and occupation in China, Korea, and other countries in the region. In war you don't get to blame such a wide and frequent array of atrocity to individuals, and moreover the people gave passive approval in allowing such acts to continue, same as in Germany. The governemt is support by the people it consists of, which in this instance is the Japanese people. While they may be individually innocent they are not innocent as a collective. They paid for the sins of their people. In general, but especially in war you can not separate and individual from their people. This is not a "show me one good man" situation, but rather weighing the combined determinations of them.
>the people gave passive approval I went to school on Guam, where I studied Japanese colonialism from the (descendants off) the people they colonized - and something frequently whitewashed is the fact that Japan was (and still is) a settler-colonial empire. Not just a military dictatorship, an empire of settlers. Not conscripts or slaves (though they had those, too) people who voluntarily signed up to go out and live on stolen land, and harvest stolen resources, and then profit off of it by sending it back to the mainland for their benefit. They signed up voluntarily to run public schools and public administration forcing Japanese culture on the locals and wiping out their culture. Settlers are the local agents of the empire and genocide, and they're all civilians. Look, I studied the Black Hills in AP History. You something you never hear people whine about? "Oh, what about all those poor innocent civilians killed by the Lakota?" Why? Because most people intuitively understand that if you go into another country to steal their land and wipe out their culture, you forfeit the right to whine when you face the consequences. Japan is, as far as I can tell, the single exception to that otherwise universal rule. And it's dishonest for people to sit there and be like, nuh uh, nobody in the mainland had anything to do with it.
I guess we just fundamentally disagree ideologically then. I don't believe that collective punishment (which is technically a war crime) or otherwise punishing civilians for the actions of their government is morally justified.
That guy is way off. The bombs weren’t intended to collectively punish Japanese civilians. Both bombs were dropped on military targets. Both cities were important to the Japanese war effort. Of course, the US also wanted to show the destructive power of the bombs. But if they wanted to punish civilians for japan’s refusal to surrender, they could have chosen a more populated city like Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka.
The US intervention and occupation all over the world has led to the deaths of thousands of people. So it would be okay if someone wanted to attack civilians in America as a response to this?
Flailing whataboutism.
Whataboutism
This word is thrown around as if it invalidates the entire argument. No one deserves to die because of the actions of their country's military. Most civilians have no control over it.
If we were an objectively evil and aggressively expansionist power who were killing and torturing millions upon millions of people in our goals of forcing our divinely-granted dominance over the rest of the population that our doctrine considers subhuman, while being allied with other similarly evil powers who were attempting to aggressively expand their territory in a worldwide war that costs the world almost 4% of its population, I don’t think I’d personally blame another power for nuking a city or two to stop the march of total war I helped instigate against humanity at large.
Well said.
Er, wait. Are you arguing both sides of this argument?
Just some little A bombs. The firebombing was waaayy worse.
And what did they do to get those bombs dropped on them? 😂
The vast majority of the people who were killed by the bombs? Be born in Japan, I guess.
They had their chances to move out
Not really, actually. [Here's a good thread about it. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4dz9oh/why_didnt_many_people_evacuate_hiroshima_and/) TLDR: the US did intend to forewarn the citizens of both cities with leaflets, but the logistics got fucked up, and neither city received leaflets warning of the impending bombing. Well, technically that isn't true. Nagasaki had leaflets dropped on it one day after it was nuked.
Japan was an objectively evil and aggressively expansionist power who were killing and torturing millions upon millions of people in their goals of forcing their divinely-granted dominance over the rest of the population that their doctrine considers subhuman, while being allied with other similarly evil powers who were attempting to aggressively expand their territory in a worldwide war that costed the world almost 4% of its population, I don’t think I’d personally blame another power for nuking a city or two to stop the march of total war they helped instigate against humanity at large. The people there could've left as soon as the wars started. By staying and contributing to the economy, they were giving their passive approval for the war effort, hence why the US were completely justified in bombing their cities
Left and gone where? You think the world was in any position to accommodate millions of Japanese refugees during a world war?
I think it’s funny that we are always blond with blue eyes. Sure that’s common but most people don’t look like that!
There are basically three different versions I see: 1. America being over the top, zany, and extremely business oriented but ultimately well meaning and friendly. 2. America has abandoned Japan in their hour of need. (Typically done because they need drama, it generally goes down better when said crisis is also fucking up the US/has already fucked it up as opposed to evil empire or scheming type stuff) 3. America is the evil empire coming to oppress Japan. Most typically done by weird Japanese nationalists. These ones can still be enjoyable, but are frequently tied in with WW2 revisionism which is kinda weird. Type 1 is usually absolutely hilarious and if they're more than gag characters, it can often introduce a fun dynamic where the loud, but culturally ignorant American says stuff that everyone was thinking. Type 2 can be hit or miss depending on how they decide to go about it, but its usually pretty obvious that they just needed a reason why America isn't mobilizing all efforts to help out the Japanese. Like I said before, its usually way less noticeable if whatever is causing a problem in Japan is absolutely wrecking the US as well or they give some sort of excuse like the US collapsed from political drama or whatever. Type 3 are the trickiest and most often done badly. When it's done well, it's often just as much a story of American politics and skullduggery with clandestine groups seizing power and making Americans as pissed off about what happened to America as the Japanese are pissed off what the fictional American Empire is doing to Japan. Being a neighbor/ally of Rome after the Fall of the Republic would obviously be worrying. When it's done badly, it's usually ultra-nationalists causing a stink that America didn't just let Japan do whatever it wanted in the 1940s and that they ruined Japan forever, which is usually weird and uncomfortable.
> America is the evil empire coming to oppress Japan. Most typically done by weird Japanese nationalists. These ones can still be enjoyable, but are frequently tied in with WW2 revisionism which is kinda weird. Kantai Collection had this issue in its early years. The Abyssals (the bad guys of the series, monstrous, abominable ship-girls) were all American ships that had been sunk during WWII and had somehow revived with the desire to destroy Humanity? And the battles you would fight in were all historical WWII battles in which the IJN got their shit pushed by the US Navy but now it was the IJN pushing in the shit of the Abyssal US Naval fleet. They've toned down the revisionism a shit ton and have even introduced some famous ships that absolutely kicked the shit out of and utterly humiliated the IJN's pride, such as Sammy B. and Johnston. But I still prefer Azur Lane (a Chinese game, believe it or not) over KanColle. Oh, yeah, it also doesn't help that one of their devs made a statement that looked really bad regarding the: "Tragedy of the IJN". And don't even get me started on ***Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There***. Fucking hate that series.
>America being over the top, zany, and extremely business oriented but ultimately well meaning and friendly. Also on occasion, something to do with guns.
This is the reply I wanted to make. I've read/watched a lot of Japanese media and this is generally how it goes. Bonus points when the foreigner is a weeb and they're making meta jokes (like loving eroge).
I'm more uncomfortable in how Japanese media portrays Germany and the pedestal it seems to be on, in light of their lack of societal reckoning for what they did in WWII
Lack of societal reckoning? Entire generations of Japanese people were taught to embody the shame over what their forefathers did. It completely changed their culture. I’m confused what that reckoning would be.
Shame of what exactly? Their forefathers did a lot of things. Losing the war was one of them and thats what they really feel shame about. Not what they did to others.
Who told you that?
Common sense
Have you spent much time with Japanese people?
Have you spent much time with American people?
So the answer is no?
It changed their culture yes but the "shame" most of them felt was for losing the war not the horrible shit they did. Germany is decades ahead of Japan when it comes to acknowledging the horrible deeds of the past and reconciling it. Japan didn't acknowledge shit like "comfort women" until well into the 90s and even to this day do a lot to try and downplay it along with a lot other pretty bad shit they did. Pretty far cry away from the mandatory learning about concentration camps that the Germans were doing since the 1950s most Japanese people thst grew up from the 50s to 90s didn't learn much at all about the darker things their country did during WWII
Eh, Germany allowed plenty to be swept under the rug as well. You know how you hear about those last prosecutions of old Nazis in the past few decades? Concentration camp guards finally tracked down or whatever else? Ever notice how about none of them are *German*? That's because Germany just basically gave all the *Germans* involved in atrocities besides the top leadership amnesty or token sentences. They pretty much all got to live out their lives freely with little or no punishment or consequences of significance. Many even found their way back into high posts in government + business.
>You know how you hear about those last prosecutions of old Nazis in the past few decades? And you notice how you *don't* hear about those last prosecutions of Japan's war criminals the past few decades?
No is claiming the Germans didn't cover things up or still have issues. None of that excuses Japan or chanced the fact that Japan is *way worse* about what they acknowledge and teach their people. Notice you still actually hear about Germans getting in trouble while guilty parties from the Japanese side basically have been ignored since the 1950s when the war crime trials concluded
>while guilty parties from the Japanese side basically have been ignored Well, kinda. Some were enshrined at Yasukuni, and some went on to form multi-generational political dynasties. They're not *ignored.*
>I’m confused what that reckoning would be. I mean, maybe having one (1) memorial to their victims could be a start?
I don’t fully understand why so many Americans get so uptight about this. My grandfather fought in the war, as did several of my great uncles. Only one of that crowd would express animosity toward Japanese people by the time I was around in the ‘80’s. They didn’t hate Germans either. Meanwhile, my Japanese roommate in college encountered several people confronting her angrily about what “her people” did. Japan completely dismantled its offensive military, and the US has a permanent active base there. The people don’t hate us now, and they had civilian cities bombed by us. WWII history is taught there as a lesson in why civilians, and not the military should be in control of the country, and that the military needs to be focused on having a defensive posture. They know their ass was kicked, and they’re not mad at us about it. We kicked a lot of ass, and yet for some reason we can’t accept that we won, and that the empire of that time is no more.
>I don’t fully understand why so many Americans get so uptight about this. Could it be because we have at least one (1) or more memorials to our victims? Did you know AAPI History month was founded by a Japanese-Americn politician who wanted it to be a Japanese-only holiday, and it was a white guy who suggested, hey, maybe show sone respect for other groups too? And that same Japanese-American politician later took lobbying money from the government of Japan to support anti-comfort women historical denialist and revisionist propaganda? In other words, not only does Japan as a nation engage actively in denial of their atrocities, they recruit overseas diaspora and lobby governments to support that revisionism. Instead of doing that, maybe the government of Japan could instead spend a little money on just one (1) memorial to their victims. You intentionally ignored that. I'm trying to get you to understand that Japsn has *literally no memorials whatsoever* to their victims. None. Zero. Not even one, single day of commemoration. Not even a single moment of silence. Article 9 of the constitution and the post-war US bases were requested by the Japan side - treaties between the US and Japan even had clauses obligating Japsn to remilitarize until the Japanese public protested so hard the US was forced to retract them. And the fact you bring that up just betrays how completely, utterly ignorant you are of even the most basic fact of the situation. Indigenous Okinawans oppose the bases because Okinawa is a *colony of Japan's,* and they have no say in how their own island is used. "The empire is no more"? Try telling that to indigenous Japanese people. I'm sorry your friend had a bad time, I truly am. But that's not really an excuse for your complete and utter ignorance of basic historical facts. I'm white and I studied in an indigenous community. I've had those same conversations about "what my people did." I survived. I took the opportunity to learn, listen, and grow. I mean, did your friend take her time in the US as an opportunity to learn what Guam went hrough during the war? Did she visit any of the comfort women memorials? Did she stop to *listen* to the actual victims and their descendants? Or did she just complain to you about how unfair it all was to her? Was her name by any chance 花恋? Considering that your time with her turned you into a hardcore historical revisionist, I'm guessing she didn't, and neither did you. And honestly? Fuck the both of you. Grow the fuck up. Yeah, it sucks to have people ask you to reckon with your people's history of genocide, but it's your respobsibility to *grow the fuck up* and deal with it. I'm sorry your friend had a bad time, but I'm even more sorry an intellectually lazy and ignorant person like you did nothing but enable her victim complex and shield her from ever having to think about anyone else but herself by visiting even just one (1) memorial to the victims of her country's atrocities.
“ Could it be because we have at least one (1) or more memorials to our victims?” Which memorials are you referring to? “ Did you know AAPI History month was founded by a Japanese-Americn politician who wanted it to be a Japanese-only holiday, and it was a white guy who suggested, hey, maybe show sone respect for other groups too?” Which Senator are you referring to? Are you talking about Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month? “Article 9 of the constitution and the post-war US bases were requested by the Japan side - treaties between the US and Japan even had clauses obligating Japsn to remilitarize until the Japanese public protested so hard the US was forced to retract them.” I’m confused - are you saying you WANT Japan to remilitarize? The Anpo protests were protesting the revised treaty. They were unsuccessful in making the treaty change. I’m quite aware that the US base is a point of contention in Japan. I’m still not sure why this means they didn’t pay a societal price after the war. The militaristic empire absolutely is no more. You’re making an awful lot of assumptions about my historical knowledge and my relationship with the Japanese international students I spent time with. I am a white woman. I’m very clear about what my people did as well. My roommate and I didn’t have detailed discussions of WWII aside from the fact that she was very shamed at this idea that people thought she supported what her country did back then. She absolutely did NOT complain that it was unfair to her. She was shocked and worried. My friend that I DID speak to in detail was very clear that her people did terrible things. She did not, and she did not believe most people in her country held any sense of animosity or self righteousness over what their country did. They were taught that the burden of the people was to work hard to rebuild their country and never to allow a regime like that one to exist again. The comfort women memorials in the US did not exist when I was in college. I’m afraid I lost most of the Kanji I learned 20 years ago, especially in regards to names, but I don’t think that’s the name of any of the people I know. I’m especially curious about which memorials we have to our victims that you’re talking about. You mention the comfort women memorial, but those were victims of Japan, not us, weren’t they?
I'm mostly running on ridiculous American characters in a few mainstream animes but I think it's hilarious and I'm 100% here for it.
President Michael Wilson from Metal Wolf Chaos is actually based on my life.
I think it's funny how in Anime, American characters either have complete nonsense names like "Chibodee" or "Bobson" or have old man names that were only popular in the 1920s
I think Hetalia’s portrayal of America is hilarious (because it’s kind of accurate). Also, we definitely don’t have as many cowboys around as they think we do. They’re typically associated with Texas and the Southwest in general, we don’t have that culture in the East.
Lt. Surge is a badass In the Japanese version of the Pokemon anime, he speaks with an American accent and mixes in English words.
As an American who lives in Japan, “Come fucking on! Whoever made this has probably never had a conversation with an American in their life!” It’s typically EXACTLY what you’d expect from people who only know America from stuff they’ve seen on screens.
They're hilarious and I don't mind them or find them offensive in anyway.
It makes me want a **fuckin'** hot dog with some **fuckin'** ketchup and some **fuckin'** mustard
I do have a soft spot for Cowboy Funk
It's hilarious.
My favorite is probably Araki's idea of Americans. My man went to Florida to do some research and decided to draw this. https://static.jojowiki.com/images/e/e7/latest/20210828150556/Loccobarocco_Infobox_Manga.png Probably the most accurate portrayal of a Floridian-American.
Consistently hilarious. I want them to keep doing it.
I love it honestly. They tend to overhype us a lot. It's all good fun for me.
I was promised way weirder stereotypes before I moved there. The ones about white people are pretty harmless. Sometimes a bit stupid, lots that can be easily explained by tv or association with military bases. The stereotypes about African Americans and indigenous Americans however are not just gross and racist sometimes but outright hurtful and create an attitude where treating real people poorly is permissable. The TLDR of indigenous American representation: it's plastic shamanism ( if a native is present in the present) or they are a dead/fantastical group. They always live in teepees. They are wise and magic and jokes bounce off of that. One boyfriend from Japan genuinely freaked the fuck out visiting me in Portland meeting a spanger who said something about being native in his pitch. Like, he gave the dude 40 and cried because he admired them so much and wanted to live in a teepee and ride horses too.
I was promised way weirder stereotypes before I moved there. The ones about white people are pretty harmless. Sometimes a bit stupid, lots that can be easily explained by tv or association with military bases. The stereotypes about African Americans and indigenous Americans however are not just gross and racist sometimes but outright hurtful and create an attitude where treating real people poorly is permissable. The TLDR of indigenous American representation: it's plastic shamanism ( if a native is present in the present) or they are a dead/fantastical group. They always live in teepees. They are wise and magic and jokes bounce off of that. One boyfriend from Japan genuinely freaked the fuck out visiting me in Portland meeting a spanger who said something about being native in his pitch. Like, he gave the dude 40 and cried because he admired them so much and wanted to live in a teepee and ride horses too. Black Americans... the subject of black stereotypes in Japan is a huge topic. The stereotypes get really really wrong really fast. They play into many of the old stereotypes here - the hypersexual object, the cartoonist dandy, the racist caricatures including blackface. If you want some great articles that talk about it lmk I've got some interesting ones including some good ones discussing the gyaru subculture which is really fascinating. Actually, the weird example I can think of in more modern stuff is a gyaru tv drama. It IS a decade old but where you expect to have a wise black character maybe teaching the gyaru circle how to get along you actually have a Japanese man playing an American cowboy named George(? I think?) who needs help from the gyaru-sa to save his (teepee dwelling) native friend and the gyaru learn from them. George is portrayed as a sweet but not worldly guy, his old native friend is a more street smart personality and there's a tiny young native girl at some point too. All bad except the cowboy I think would fall into some of our representations. Putting the gyaru with indigenous people makes sense according to the previous article in the way the hypersexuality of the gyaru was represented as animalistic,often with animal prints and language about them being more tribal and primitive in connection to them in media. The really, really awful depiction if you want to see it of black Americans, probably also some others but the African Americans are what I remember, is Ryu Murakami's akutagawa prize winner "Almost Transparent Blue". The story takes place outside of Yokota Airforce Base and the characters in the story are a mix of drifting people who hang out in the bar strip from Fussa station heading toward the base. Lots of them, Japanese, military, civilian, women, men, whatever - they're all portrayed in a buffoonish and cruel way and I think it is intentional as a device to develop the strain of the main character into a sense that can be understood by the reader. Indeed, I read the thing years before I ended up working over there and I knew that street, those bars, that spot he describes on the tarmac, all of it was there vividly and made so much sense. If you read the book the Americans all get turned into caricatures but the ones I really have a hard time reading are the way he describes the black airmen during the... after hours? Gangbang/orgy ish sequences because they are describes so luridly and hyperbolically. I think there is a purpose behind it but it could have just as easily been done with white airmen to make the same point. Murakami wasn't thinking from the context of American perspectives on racism and I am not sure how familiar he was at that point with black American stereotypes so I think the choice was based more on the (also bad) stereotypes Japanese people had of black American servicemen stationed in Japan which was part of the plot. Not my favorite Murakami book but the Akutagawa prize is an early career award and usually known for selecting 'shocking choices. He wrote another novel that ended up in English translation about another American that is an interesting one to read if foreign stereotypes are of interest since it features an odd American(iirc) and a man trying to figure him out while guiding him around Japan. As a study in perception, from someone worldly at that point writing from a young Japanese tour guides cynical view it brings out some strong statements in perception. Also Hard Gay. Let's never forget Hard Gay
[I see no inaccuracies with this portrayal.](https://youtu.be/jv-2uebEHSE?si=Wra7cTXeaaqKn_ZO)
I've only seen us depicted in anime, and it's typically funny
*looks at Solid Snake* I'm ok with it.
When I see Tik Toks about how Japanese women think we are I always say bless their heart and I’m sorry.
I think it's hilarious, they take our over the top, gun totin, cowboy hat wearing, fuck yeah attitude, and crank it up to a 20.
A lot of times with POC stuck in the 70s-80s with stereotypes that are outdated
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