How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

Mind you, Roosevelt was all about going to war with Germany.

It's just Pearl Harbor was the cassus belli which allowed it as he was previously "stuck" just delivering aid to the Allies due to the desire to avoid a Second World War with US participation.

One of the irritating things in LA noire the video game was the protagonist said, "What would we do if someone took away our oil?" (which the US had done to Japan). The reason, of course, we embargoed Japan for oil was because of their war crimes in Asia.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 14th 2018 at 5:55:28 AM

People always leave out one little, not-at-all-important detail when bringing up the Japanese offer to surrender: namely that they wanted to keep their colonies. In small, out of the way places like Korea, Manchuria, and oh yes, mainland China. Where they had killed millions and millions of people and planned to kill millions and millions more.

They went into the war because they were attacked. No, it wasn't a grand crusade against evil. But the fact remains that the whole reason the Allies went into the war was because they were defending themselves.

Not telling anyone anything they didn't know. Also irrelevant—stopping the Holocaust was still a byproduct of Allied action.

And here's the apologia I knew would emerge at some point from this post. The entire reason there were economic sanctions on Japan was because Japan kept invading its neighbours. And then there's the attempt at suggesting America was planning to go to war with Japan, which is just outright paranoia straight from Tojo's own propaganda.

This is the point at which I am no longer required to read the rest of your post, because you've invalidated it. Right here, in that last section of quote I've blocked and reproduced. You've DARVO'd there, which is a sign of bad faith, which means no one is obligated to take what you say seriously anymore.

To use such an example, I just finished reading Nemesis Games which is the 5th book of the The Expanse series. The premise of that book is that a pirate fleet of Outer Planet Alliance soldiers has decided they are going to launch a war of retaliation against Earth for the centuries of abuse they'd suffered from it.

Billions die in the process.

The captain of the Belter ship repeatedly defends his actions as viewing them as a necessary and legal action in order to both cripple the Earth in war as well as repay the treatment of Belters (who have been treated absolutely shitily by Earth).

The protagonists refuse to enterain the argument in the slightest and just view it as an act of mass murder.

In the series, a less overt moment of "revenge" happens when a Belter captain separates all the Mars and Earth citizens from the Belters in a refugee ship then spaces the former. Justifying it as revenge for all the horrors they've suffered over the years.

Collective punishment.

@Director JP Black: The thing is no one truly know the extent of what Mussolini and especially Hitler before the war started. Heck, even after the war started, a lot of people are still in the blind about it. It isn't until the Allied arrived, liberated all those concentration camps, and documented them all along with their other atrocities that the world truly know about it.

As for the economic sanction to Japan, unlike all those Japan ultra-nationalists claim, Japan didn't go to war because of the sanction. It already go to war before it received that sanction. Heck, it received sanction in the first place because it go to war and attacked China. Don't make it sounds like that Japan is forced to go to war.

To be honest, is the reason why the Allied fought the Axis is that important? Not to mention their reason is they are attacked and thus forced to defend themselves and it's a valid reason I think. I don't think there is anything shitty there. Seriously, what is up with all the Imperial Japan apologia here? Is there some sort of "let's appreciate Tojo day" now or something?

The really sad part to me about Imperial Japan's war crimes is that unlike Germany, Japan collectively hasn't really owned up to much of it. Its politics are full of war crime apologia or flat out denialism.

Actually, come to think of it (and to be more on topic) the lack of exposure to japanese war crimes in popular media might have slanted people's perception of the situation a bit. In comparison you see a lot of sympathy and lyrical reflection about the cultural implications of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, which is valid to an extent, but can obscure the truly heinous nature of the regime and why the bombings happened. Popular japanese media itself also seldom does any self-reflection or admittance to it, and given how widespread it is that ends up having an effect as well.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 14th 2018 at 9:21:31 AM

Random aside:

I got some hate mail for a bit in Esoterrorism (one of my novels) where I had the protagonist have serious issues with the Imperial Japanese as well as deal with a cursed Japanese sword that was used in war crimes. He was, notably, the descendant of two long lived veterans of the Pacific Theater (one being a Chinese sorceress).

They said I was being bigoted against the Japanese.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 14th 2018 at 6:33:24 AM

Confederate apologia, Nazi apologia, Imperial Japan apologia...

What next? Stalin and Mao apologia? Pol Pot apologia?

Stalin and Mao don't have apologia.

They have flat out, "They did nothing wrong" from their countries.

The apologia comes from people in other countries. Usually the idiots in college Communist clubs. Though they also engage in outright denialism.

So placing economic sanctions on an imperial power that had already invaded much of Asia and butchered hundreds of thousands of civilians, and would go on to butcher many more, is wrong. Alright.

Yep. The whole thing feels like a shoehorned and forced reference to the Iraq war, and makes Cole look like a clueless proto-weaboo. I'm surprised no other veterans smacked him in the face for saying that.

Edited by Alycus on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:02:42 AM

To be fair, Cole's men DO hate him for his Japan-o-philia (and later war crime against the Japanese when he accidentally incinerates a field hospital).

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:16:51 AM

Tojoboo. Weahboo is a obsession with Japanese culture in general, Mostly anime.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jul 14th 2018 at 9:16:10 AM

Personally, I never took this comment as apologia, but more as an explanation - "Well, we cut them off from resources, so of course they'd go to war with us".

There's a difference between excuses and explanations. Granted, it's also been a while since I last watched that cutscene, so I might misremember how he worded it.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jul 14th 2018 at 4:16:36 PM

Well Cole is meant to be someone who is completely unsuited to be a military officer. He's trying to treat the Imperial Japanese as a Worthy Opponent when all of America is baying for their blood, treats his men with disdain, and doesn't know a damn thing about tactics.

He's great as a police officer where By-the-Book Cop Lawful Good works out much better but he's a terrible leader way past the Peter Principle in the Pacific Theater.

Edit:

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:23:13 AM

I engaged in apologia?

In general Imperial Japan gets pretty lenient treatment in media, especially when compared to the treatment of Nazis in media.

Yeah, you don't have a Wolfenstein equivalent in America for the Imperial Japanese.

The film version of Pearl Harbor ends with the Battle of Britain, against the Nazis, for example. Which...makes no damned sense on any conceivable level. It's not like there weren't any number of appropriate Pacific Theater dogfights for Ben Affleck to be involved with.

Also, in The Man in the High Castle the Imperial Japanese are played strongly as A Lighter Shade of Black if not verging on the Gray in a Black-and-Gray Morality take.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:33:05 AM

Yeah, it exists.

Also, some very lovely quotes I found from a Pol Pot supporter:

@Draghinazzo: I wish more exposure to Imperial Japan's war crime would stop or at least reduce this thing, but I don't think it's that easy. In my old forum, there is this discussion about a light novel (not web novel, so it's f*cking greenlighted and printed) about Imperial Japan found or invented (I forgot. I also forgot the name of that crap.) power armor that permits them to field super soldiers, win against the Allied force, and then guide all Asia to prosperity. The members of that forum in general like it at that time.

That shit is crazy. That is not even a lack of exposure or playing around with how you represent history. It's outright revisionism. The only good thing there is that crap didn't seem to catch on and thus forgotten like your standard shitty light novel. I think the lack of exposure alone isn't enough. There is a genuine adoration, and even fondness to Imperial Japan. I think it is just a misplaced adoration and fondness to Japanese pop-culture stuff that bleed through and become adoration and fondness to anything Japan.

Another crazy example, I've read an Indonesian comic magazine (i.e. Indonesian attempt to make their own tankoubon.) and it isn't some small, local stuff. It's a large project that got distributed in national level like Indonesian shounen Jump, where one of the stories there is about a young Indonesian boy during Dutch occupation, and his friends (i.e. racist representative of other Indonesian demographic.). We got a money-grubbing Chinese girl and a mute boy from Irian Jaya who is drawn like the caricature of African slave. I mean he only wear short and a chain-and-ball attached to his foot. At least he lacks the thick lips I guess.

Then, that boy and his two friends and a Japanese ronin (No, I'm serious.) that he met in Indonesia go on some sort of shenanigans to prove that Indonesians aren't inferior to the Dutch... And the author claimed that his story is a historical fiction. Reading that comic is a hellish torment, where I'm confused whether I should laugh, cringe, or just go plain mad at the madness in front of me. Not only this is Japan is awesome from an Indonesian (which is inappropriate considering the period of the setting). He treat other Indonesians like racist stereotypes.

In other words, I don't think the problem is less the lack of exposure, but more about the way it is being represented. I agree with M84 that Imperial Japan tend to get pretty lenient treatment in media.

There is that Call of Duty game about WW 2 in Asia, but it didn't catch up so the developer abandoned it. I'm not a FPS gamer, so I don't know anything about it more than that.

Edited by SteamKnight on Jul 14th 2018 at 9:40:14 PM

I did see an open Pol Pot supporter on Twitter once, they didn't deny what he did but openly supported it. Said account also self-identified as a Juche supporter.

I'm a member of several Leftbook meme groups that have open Juche supporters. They're actually fascinating people, in an intellectual Circus freak-show kind of way. Like, everything they say is bunk, but watching their minds contort themselves to come up with a sanitized justification for the economic deprivation and prison camps is a spectacle.

I mean that was the point wasn’t it? Japan was cut off from resources so that if I wanted to continue it’s warmongering imperialism it would have to attack the US so as to get resources, instead of buying the resources and attacking yet another nation that didn’t have the power to protect itself.

Oh and why the hell does Amber get a cohort? I’ve been here longer, I want minion dammit.

Oh and the cute comment about the US doesn’t work, people who tend to complain about war crimes by imperial Japan aren’t the same people who supported the US invasion of Iraq. If people had put sanctions on the US for the invasion of Iraq then I think many of us here would have been totally okay with it.

Likewise on the idea that Japanese civilians who actively worked to support Japan’s military (which basically all working ones did due to the state of total war) and supported it ideologically being partly to blame for the war crimes, yeah they were, and yes you can extrapolate that principle to give supporters of the Iraq War some blame for that war and supporters of US politicians that support torture some blame for the US war crimes of torture, that’s totally legit and I doubt you’ll get pushback here.

Edited by Silasw on Jul 14th 2018 at 2:54:55 PM

To make things worse. The actual expy of Imperial Japan, Zeon has been victim of constant Draco in Leather Pants in a attemp to paint it as a Jerkass Woobie nation instead of the irredeemable monsters that they are.

Some Latin American Right Wingers actually did both.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jul 14th 2018 at 10:04:47 AM

With Japan in WWII:

A major reason why they aren't as vilified as the Nazis is what I call "Guilty Hindsight". The US became very racist towards the Japanese. As a result, when America looks back on the Pacific War, America feels the need to apologize for its racist actions-and sometimes gets carried away and can make the situation a lot more morally ambiguous than it really was.

Also, the atomic bombings make Japan look very much like The Woobie, which is justified to some extent. I personally am staunchly of the opinion that it was the right call, but I can totally sympathize with anyone disagreeing-it was fucking horrifying. However, putting too much emphasis on this can undermine an understanding of how evil their regime actually was.

Come to think of it, it'd be interesting to see how public opinion would have been effected had the bomb been dropped on the Germans as originally planned.

T H I S

Mmm...I imagine a lot of german apology.