Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
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Rules for General Chat
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I have noticed that post war Japan has been flooded in many many ways culturally with various levels of self hate.
Before Captain Perry sailed into Yokohama and terrorized Japan, Japanese had 250 years of isolationism (Sakoku) where they did very limited trade via the Portuguese and had no other contact with the rest of the world.
They were not blood thirsty, nor were they raving mad. They didnt attack any other country nor did they destroy any.
From the day Perry landed in Yokohama, before he forcefully opened up Japan to the world, there were number of mysterious occurences. Multiple shoguns passed away, multiple emperors passed way. Multiple palace fires. Even 2 major earthquakes and multiple large fires.
One way or another they forced Japan open, and replaced their rulers with Meiji bloodline.
Then Japan was forced on 3 bloodthirsty wars and when they won them all, had nothing to show for it. They realised all the wars were for Americans/British to take control of opium in Manchuria, so they could continue the opium wars in China to balance their books. Their gold and silver went off and disappeared into banks in London.
No one ever questions why Japan, that had been so faithful to Americans and British for more than 6 decades, suddenly turned against them in WW2.
The reason they had to be destroyed and nuked (amongst many other strategic reason) was to ensure they would never be able to claim the debts owed to them.
Only thing Japanese wanted before they would surrender was to ensure that the emperor would not be treated with indignity. That was the only "condition" they insisted on, and were not promised that purely because nukes were very much part of the strategy.
Lot of countries carried out atrocities during WW2 on all sides. A famous American general once was quoted as saying that if they lost the war, they would all be hung for being war criminals and hence losing was not an option. Once they nuked Japan, suddenly all the focus was only on the Japanese atrocities, so their guilty conscience can be assuaged.
Thats. a very long winded way of saying - no people in the world, and especially not Japanese, deserve to get nuked.
Huh. I wish I'd known all this a long time ago. Saved for future reference. Thanks.
I want to add just one more bit you might find interesting. History books paint Japan's isolationism as some kind of backward thing and most Japanese accept it as a fact as well.
However, just one example of just how far beyond the Western world that Japanese were during that time - when Americans finally opened up Japan and started trading, they found out that even the cheapest penny coins were so exquisitely done with craftsmanship that was unmatchable, that they started buying up these penny coins for hundreds of times their value, sometimes in actual gold.
Villagers were lining up to exchange their pennies for gold! So much so that soon the country ran out of small coins for day to day usage.
If you are interested in this stuff I would suggest the book "Before the Dawn" by Shimazaki Toson. However, I cannot vouch for the English translation. But the Japanese original is an incredible book.