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.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Same with West Germany.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago

All of Western Europe, really. Gabriel Rockhill: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How different was East Germany in your opinion?

Their 4 "allowed" political parties included 1 moderately Nazi.

Also USSR supported the so-called Socialist Imperial Party in West Germany, until it was banned there. Well, that's only few years, so.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar tbh. I just learned about how lots of Nazis remained or were placed in politically powerful positions by the west, often out of a desire to suppress communism.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, that thing was particular to West Germany.

East Germany had lots of the same in its bureaucratic and generally not very "political" parts. Its politicians, yes, didn't include that kind of people. But unlike mother USSR it had a facade of pluralism, where one of the allowed parties was, again, very close to moderate Nazis.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. I could only imagine this as a kind of controlled opposition, but I'd be interested in learning more about it.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

Of course it was controlled. Now, I don't know much of GDR, so this is basically "I've read something and I repeat that", but seems valid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany_(East_Germany)

[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] LeroyJenkins@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] nekandro@lemmy.ml 45 points 9 months ago

This would be valid if Japan didn't continue to deny their role in atrocities. The Japanese people of today are entirely responsible for the lack of recognition of their role in the atrocities of yesterday.

[–] rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml 36 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think the person you're responding to already knows that and the implication of "the bad things they've done" is that they mean "the bad things their nation has done." It's a problem that Japan (or more specifically, Japan's government throughout the years) seems to have more than other nations because it's historically made a big show of its status as the only nation to ever suffer the use of nuclear weapons, and has plenty of memorials and museums to remember the event, while militantly denying, internally and externally, its own history of incredible violence and cruelty towards neighboring countries.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 26 points 9 months ago

You're over analysing things for no reasons as my choice of word is perfectly appropriate when you take half a second to figure out the context.

[–] artaxthehappyhorse@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Japanese people as a whole are severely lacking when it comes to acknowledging the atrocities committed by their country

And when educating people, we need to change the way the message is delivered to start taking collective responsibility for the bad things, the "bad people" and acknowledge that everybody of every culture or ideology is capable of being evil, and has been before, and will be in the future, that Nazi Germany wasn't a "them" issue, it's an "us" issue, and we need to do way less elitist finger wagging from some implicit position of detached moral purity.

When we teach that "X culture did Y thing to Z culture N decades ago", we need to stop focusing on the X and Z part.

No, we don't need to seek revenge, we don't need to "right the wrongs", because every action has consequences and trying to "undo" one bad thing will make more bad things. Just learn and move on, trying not to make the same mistakes. That's the best we can do.

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Id agree except that I think you can and should try to rectify historic wrongs where the descendants of the victims are still materially suffering.

[–] artaxthehappyhorse@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Depends what you mean. If you're talking about reparations I don't agree. In this world, there are a lot of people materially suffering and we shouldn't be picking and choosing who gets free gift cards and who doesn't based on race. Unfortunate things happened in the past that set the current stage. There's a lot of suffering out there and everyone seems to think they have an inalienable right to reproduce despite the consequences. So reparations to me is scooping water out with a coffee cup from a sinking ship. It's also the quickest way to lose elections. Nobody will go for it when we've all seen our material conditions worsen over our lifetimes, even in the debt-ridden "rich nations".

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

They "think they have an inalienable right to reproduce?" Jesus. We are not going to agree on anything so I'll just duck out of this conversation now