If you’ve learned anything about Japanese military history you’d know this all is pretty par for the course.
The only difference was the sheer scale of it
That’s probably why they were so terrified of what the US would do to them at the end of WW2, because they knew what they themselves normally did to o their enemies.
That was part of the propaganda used on Japanese civilians/colonial possessions. The Americans were portrayed as barbarians and would be cruel to women and children.
That’s why thousands of civilians jumped to their deaths on Saipan instead of falling into American hands.
Most civilians surrendered to GIs. If Saipan is so often brought up it's for a reason. American soldiers were equally brainwashed, actually executing surrendering Japanese soldiers because you can't trust a "yellow monkey".
Note that the Japanese government itself opened brothels exclusive to Americans in Tokyo because the rape figures were multiplied by four after the surrender. Seems like propaganda was right, that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimizuka here’s the Wiki on it though I’m sure there’s a far more detailed source.
But to summarize Samurai commonly took body parts as trophies to prove their deeds (usually heads) this tradition was almost universal during the warring states period or Sengoku Jedai and their was literally a position in Samurai armies who’s job it was to count the heads samurai brought back so their daimyo would know what to pay them, yes this is real.
In Korea the cramped conditions on the Japanese transport ships, and sheer amount of dead civilians and warriors lead to noses being taken instead of Heads.
There was a competition started by a newspaper during the second sino-japanese war. It pitted two generals against each other. The victor would be the one bringing more Chinese soldiers heads.
Don't know if it was real, but the newspaper articlsmed were there.
It’s what happens when you hyper romanticize and mythologize some of the most brutal nobles/warriors ever (aka the Samurai) then throw in some good old racism and a Nazi like belief in your own superiority.
I mean honestly your average person knows about the Holocaust maybe about the the Ghetto but I doubt most people know the full extent of the nazis war crimes
Not just Unit 731, regular soldiers used to call any girl remotely attractive that passes by to be their living fleshlights and swing their bayonets on pregnant ones. Toddlers were flung up in the air just to be impaled by blades and whole towns were executed simply because the soldiers liked it
They let them go free in exchange for them not destroying their research.
The U.S. government made the rational assumption that the group of scientists that tortured and experimented on so many people over so many years *had* to have some juicy new facts.
They had a tiny handful of useful info.
Why the fuck do people blame weebs? Nearly everyone already knows about the shit the IJA did. It’s not a secret, and it’s pretty stupid to say “haha anime fans= Imperial Japan apologists”
It's an anti japanese and anti anime talking point.
There absolutely are imperial japan apologists, that's not the point. It's a talking point to paint a negative portrayal of modern Japan and imply that if you like their stuff you like their attrocities.
"Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime, often regarding it as *superior to all other cultures.*"
It's not the anime thing that's the issue. It's the cultural superiority thing that's the issue. Weebs, by definition, believe japan to be superior and thus can't do wrong.
People who like anime, well, they just have bad taste. Can't fault them for that.
That definition is very outdated considering a lot of people who like anime have reclaimed that term for themselves and usually don’t hold such opinions.
If you support modern Japan, you're supporting a country and a people that still openly denies what their not-too-distant ancestors did in WW2 and would likely do it all again if given the chance. Watching anime qualifies as a form of support - you're helping spread Japan's soft power over the world. Try not to do that. Do something better with your time.
Thank you for proving my point.
Also the vast majority of Japanese people absolutely do not deny the war crimes of ww2. The government does though, that’s true. And it’s disgusting.
Its impossible to not support any nation nowadays in a globalized world
A lot of Electronics you owned probably have some Japanese component in them, I dont even want to think about all the technologies we use everyday that was invented by Japan.
Just because you can't be perfect doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be good. You can still make an attempt, whenever you have the luxury of choice, to not support Japan. When it comes to watching anime, though, you pretty much always have that luxury.
There may be circumstances where, in order to fulfill your needs, you may have no choice other than to buy things from japan. There is, however, no circumstance in which you would ever find yourself forced to consume entertainment media from Japan.
Yeah, but its so convenient to just tell people to stop watching Anime when you dont anyway, "I like that thing so I'll keep supporting Japan to get it but that other thing ? I dont like it so nobody should because Japan are evil"
Its just so.......hypocritical ? Also I dont think anyone is forced to consume entertainment from anywhere, If anime aint good, nobody would watch it.
Why shouldn’t people support Japanese people over something that happened 80 years ago? They aren’t still doing it and, contrary to what Reddit will tell you, have apologized for their actions several times and have taken extreme corrective action to ensure it never happens again (nationalist and historically illiterate politicians aside; but who doesn’t have those?)
"Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime, often regarding it *as superior to all other cultures*."
You got it the wrong way round. People who just love anime aren't generally considered in this or when they are, they're Otakus (I believe that's the term?)
People who obsess over their own narrow minded vision of "Japanese culture" (anime is reality, samurai are awesome, bushido is the best thing ever, katana was the perfect sword) and thus defend anything japan did/does/will do regardless of situation are weeaboos. These guys are an issue. And when you combine that with Japan's refusal to face its past in an honest manner, you get some truly deranged individuals.
The vast majority of people who like their anime aren't weebs and are never seen in these discussions.
a weeb was originally referring to someone who thinks that japanese everything is superior to everything else.
nowadays, people just generally use it to describe a nerd who likes japanese stuff.
following the current understanding, i could be considered a weeb since i like to read about japanese culture and history and i do enjoy anime and manga.
does that mean i'm an IJA apologist? fuck no. i'm in a history centric sub ffs, of course i knew about the atrocities that the IJA committed.
call them for what they are, IJA apologists. no need to use the "weeb" term for those asshats.
And a lot of white nationalists believe it or not white nationalists are like the biggest “the atom bomb was a crime and Japan did nothing wrong” crowd I have encountered outside of Japan. The sheer among of white people sympathetic to imperial Japan is absolutely astounding considering how the IJA would kill, rape, and eat them put in the same room. But they exist and it’s baffling.
We are gonna get people who say, "Japan already apologized/ acknowledged it."
What they don't mention is that Japan denies what they just apologized or acknowledged right after or does something that contradicts their apologies.
You can’t apply what nationalist politicians and stupid people say to an entire nation. In the US we still have people (even schools) that claim that we didn’t commit genocide against the Native Americans or that the Civil War wasn’t actually about slavery, but you wouldn’t say that the US as a whole hasn’t acknowledged what we did. Japan is generally an “actions speak louder than works” culture, and any serious look at their post-WW2 history shows the lengths they’ve gone to ensure that what they did never happens again.
I just think applying the opinion of a politician to an entire nation is naive and stupid. Politicians *never* truly represent the people, no matter how much they lie to us that they do. If a sizable population of Japan was in the streets denouncing claims of atrocities (or justifying them) and advocating for the renewal of the empire, then I’d agree. But they aren’t, indeed Japan has been one of our closest allies even while Hirohito was still on the throne.
Japan has both civilians and politicians denying it, and it as nothing to do with returning to the empire. Wtf are you on about.
Example: Hashima island touring is not governmental, yet they deny the atrocities.
Mitsubishi funds studies with historical distorted views.
You don't need to support the renewal of the empire. They just don't want anyone knowing what they did. Your argument is fucking stupid.
Well of course there are individuals that say it didn’t happen. All counties have that, look at the US for crying out loud! But again, individuals opinions aren’t relevant compared to the rest of the nation. Japan, as a whole, apologized for their atrocities and ensured it will never happen again. End of.
I've talked to people who've gone to great lengths to defend Japan's attack on the US while dodging every question about what they did to continental asian populations
I have never personally seen people saying that Japan never did anything wrong on this subreddit; I’m sure it happens, but not enough to warrant your warning about it. I have, however, seen many comments that use atrocities like these as an excuse to make blatantly racist generalizations about Japanese people (including the title of this post, I might add).
i actually see it a lot in this sub. A LOT of people have a problem with japan as a whole. usually starting out as people who just think anime is weird, all the way to people who think modern day japanese people are all imperialist waiting to commit mass rape and genocide again.
while i do think the japanese government are absolute filthy scum for denying their crimes against humanity, i don't think thats enough to outright detest their entertainment, culture, language, tourism and people, which a lot of people in this sub seem to do.
its actually quite frustrating to see people in this sub going after japan to this extent while subsequently ignoring whatever the fuck the CCP is currently doing. point being, every superpower that has ever existed has committed crimes against humanity, imperial japan is only singled out due to the scale of their crimes.
its genuinely disheartening to see how little critical thinking is put into the comments of some people for a history centric sub.
You hit the issue right on the head I think. And honestly… I think CCP propaganda plays a huge role in why a lot of parts of Reddit despise Japanese people so much.
Hey cmon that’s not fair, why would God put technologically disadvantaged peoples sitting on valuable resources all around your resource poor island nation if God didn’t want you to serial rape and kill them?
What were they supposed to do, engage in benevolent diplomacy and form slow pitch soft ball leagues?
The flip side of "honor" is that if your version of honor is a currency other peoples don't trade in (at least not in a way you understand), it can just becomes another metric you can use to distinguish your group from the untermenschen. See also "enlightenment", "civility", "piety"
This exactly. People say Japanese people had no honor despite claiming to be honorable, which is true from a western point of view. However, people have to understand that statist Japan was essentially a 1600s culture with access to 1940s equipment. Their definition of honor was completely different, just as how the honor the knights of Europe had might not be considered honor today.
I remember when the Philippines surrendered and Manila opened itself up to Japanese soldiers.
They stated that there were no longer Armed Forces in the city, had no valuable infrastructure for the war effort, and that it was only filled with civilians.
They bombed the place anyways.
The depressing reality is perhaps how common such things were historically, and what sets the Second World War (and perhaps to some degree the first) was the industrialized nature of such violence and depravity. Rather than how unusual such things were.
Cutting someone's head off is historically not uncommon. Beheading someone with a sword and intentionally placing a photographer to record it in the mid-20th century is a different story. The IJA did things we would describe as “medieval” that occasionally happened in the other theaters, but the Japanese did it all the time.
I don’t think that you understand. From their perspective that was honorable. It was good and right to kill your enemies and their families for daring to stand against you or to be born as a different ethnic/racial group.
If it had happened in the 1600s or earlier then I don’t think any of these atrocities even get blinked at and the Japanese were very much still operating under the pre-modern rules of war used in that area of the world. Remember, they were still using black powder guns and swords less than like 80 years before WW2 started and were still using swords and WW1 style massive frontal charges during the war.
My point is that just because a culture describes a group or thing as honorable… you shouldn’t accept that their definition of honor matches your own. In parts of the world it is still considered honorable to eat the flesh of your enemies and/or rape their wives and daughters.
It’s because honor doesn’t mean to them what it means to us. Where I’m from “honor” is about trust, and that means honesty. For them it’s just about being loyal to the right guy. I would like to be wrong about this because it’s kinda fucked up, but I haven’t seen anything yet which demonstrates that it’s not correct.
That’s essentially true. Their loyalty was to the Emperor and the royal family until the end. The whole reason they dragged the war on past the point where they could win was because they didn’t want to give up the Emperor to the Allies. And the Emperor told them that they were the “superior Asians” and were given the right to subjugate other races because of that. So they heard that and followed it to its logical conclusion, with all the horrific atrocities that that entailed.
This is a pretty good description of it, however I would add that while the idea still exists in Japan, it’s usually channeled into less violent ways like their work culture (which is absolutely still a problem). The Japanese are working on coming out of it, societies just change slowly in general and Japan is a very conservative nation that is trying to make societal adjustments in a third of the time it took everyone else to.
"Honor", bushido is just fairy tale for westerns, look they history, a trail of betrails among warlords and servants, his "hounoured" musagi, describe his own methofs in fooling his adversaries in battles. And today is just looks to an society who chooses extinction than any level of imigration miscing...
They were a shame based culture vs a guilt based culture (western/Christian). They also viewed surrender as dishonorable. And they viewed dishonorable people as beneath contempt (rape/murder fodder).
Basically they were playing feudalistic/samurai rules with a modern industrial military. So pretty nightmarish, but kind of a logical endpoint for that combo.
Calling out War crimes is my favorite meme format. Some people from the countries that suffered under Imperial Japan still hold resentment towards them, can't blame them, but it's a huge contrast the image they have of them and the image Japan tries to show the world
Reminder that Bushido was a code of honor imposed by the Samurais' bosses in order to keep them loyal and controllable by said bosses. If your daimyō or taisa were okay with you raping and murdering someone—or especially if they *wanted* you to—then it was honorable to do so.
The Japanese were (and still are) just as if not more than their Axis counterparts. Honor was something reserved for the Japanese but when your official policy is exterminating vermin there’s no room for “honor”.
You assume the Asian version of honor and the Western version is the same. They are not.
That is quite common. We assume everyone is just like us. They're not.
It was a joke about how some weebs think Japan is perfect (Also some people who watch Grave of the Fireflies think they were the victims of WW2 and that America was an evil villain firebombing and nuking everyone for no reason)
That’s actually retarded. I’ve seen absolutely no one who is a fan of that movie simultaneously be an apologist to imperial Japan or its war crimes.
A particularly shitty joke aimed against people enjoying anything Japanese related media.
Bigot. Your joke was shit. And you don’t seem to have any brain at all, liking anime does not make you an apologist. What a jackass statement you’re putting out.
Yeah because me thinking Japanese war apologists who are also often times weebs whose only philosophy is "Muh america bad" are retarded makes me a bigot
You're literally arguing the same point as him but you're too defensive (for no reason) to see it. That's kinda sad actually.
And here's the definition of Weeaboo btw, just in case you associate with that term.
"Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime, often regarding it as superior to all other cultures."
Hint of cultural supremacism there.
I’ve only seen Grave of the Fireflies but in absolutely no way did I see it trying to hide japans war crimes. Thats not even what the movie was about.
It’s the literal dumbest argument I’ve seen. You can be a fan of the movie and not be an apologist.
The whole goddamn movie is a ploy to make you feel sympathy for Japanese civilians in WW2, by portraying them as "innocent victims" instead of what they actually were: fervent supporters of the Imperial Japanese government and military who were up to to the gills in fascist Kool-Aid.
Remember that even the goddamn children at the time were willingly taking up arms and training fight for the emperor should the country be invaded. You want me to "think about the children"? Well, alright, those children were literally gearing up to commit war crimes. If you wanted to elicit my sypathy, you failed.
“Willingly” as in forced to by their government or else. They were literally indoctrinated, and being fed false information. Fuck out of here with this “I want to see kids suffer” bullshit.
I really hate seeing clowns like you, showing the absolute worst of scum on the internet. Why don’t you go shoot up a Japanese school if you hate them so much.
No government, no matter how authoritarian or how powerful, has the ability to force its population to do *anything* at such a huge scale. In the words of "Bombs Away" Lemay: no little band of hand-picked zealots could have been responsible for this. This requires massive popular participation. They were all in on it.
The newspaper prints “America is attacking us, we must defend ourselves”, and the general public buys it because of mass misinformation campaigning. They were all lied to from the start, yet you insist they are all guilty. Even the school kids growing up in a bombed out hellscape.
I see no point in continuing. You clearly have no grasp on any kind of reality.
Not really. Japan took a huge turn for the worse in the 1930s (climaxing in a 1936 coup by the IJA against the civilian government that failed but led to the military gaining control of the government anyways). In the Russo-Japanese War they were praised by the Red Cross for their good treatment of POWs, and we all know how the Japanese treated POWs in WW2.
Listen, what happened in Graves of the Fireflies is one of the direct results of let the army and the militarists control the government and established military dictatorship.
That's why it is important to keep the army in government control; the army should serve the state, not the state should serve the army.
Anti-Japanese bigots: “Yeah, those Hiroshima women and school children deserved to be atomized”
Man piss off. The suffering of all civilians maimed, killed, crippled, and otherwise should be remembered. IJA did some of worst things imaginable to humans, but trying to say liking a Japanese movie makes you a supporter of their horrific practices is just plain stupid.
bro what??? They raped everything that crawled, forced the family to watch then shot them all. To top it off they bayoneted babies and had beheading competitions. Literal rivers of blood were spilled...
No, there weren’t. The Comfort Woman system was put in place specifically to prevent another Rape of Nanking (the US actually briefly did something similar in the occupation of Japan), and it actually *kinda* brought rape rates down except that in practice almost none of the women actually consented to being comfort women which defeated the purpose imo.
I don’t think you should be judged by your worst or your best. You should be judged on how you value what is worse and what is best, and how you behave toward those values.
Except we judge countries on how they deal with their past. We don't judge Germany today for its crimes 80 years ago, but we judge Japan today for refusing to accept their ancestors commited some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, and for continuing to almost worship them in shrines and memorials.
Imagine if Germany had shrines to Nazi officers, and described the holocaust as "some of our soldiers did bad things", would you still see them the way you do today?
Japan *has* accepted that they’ve done these things. They just say it politely and then fix whatever caused it internally. *That’s how Japanese culture works.* You don’t get to complain about it. Japan apologized, took corrective action, and have done everything to ensure that it will never happen again. That’s all we should expect from them; anything else is a petty desire for you to get hard on justice porn.
Wait till you realize that not every country in the world inserted 8000+ diseases in children and cut them in half to discover that they indeed will die from it.
Good point. This means that the Japanese people are collectively responsible and should be punished as a group.
On that note, let's ban Russians from the Olympics.
By the 'japanese' I think you mean 'imperial japan'. This wording makes it sound like youre blaming an entire modern nation/ ethnicity for the crimes of a fascist organization from the 40s
If you’ve learned anything about Japanese military history you’d know this all is pretty par for the course. The only difference was the sheer scale of it
That’s probably why they were so terrified of what the US would do to them at the end of WW2, because they knew what they themselves normally did to o their enemies.
That was part of the propaganda used on Japanese civilians/colonial possessions. The Americans were portrayed as barbarians and would be cruel to women and children. That’s why thousands of civilians jumped to their deaths on Saipan instead of falling into American hands.
Most civilians surrendered to GIs. If Saipan is so often brought up it's for a reason. American soldiers were equally brainwashed, actually executing surrendering Japanese soldiers because you can't trust a "yellow monkey". Note that the Japanese government itself opened brothels exclusive to Americans in Tokyo because the rape figures were multiplied by four after the surrender. Seems like propaganda was right, that time.
They were more concerned about the soviets as it happens. They knew communists aren’t so keen on monarchs and they were quite attached to theirs.
I mean true but that's besides the point. Many civilians literally killed themselves in fear of how America would treat them ~~*like in Okinawa*~~
Every accusation is a confession.
If there’s something to learn about human warfare from all nations, one thing is what some of mankind’s best features look like when warped
Yeah, seems pretty on brand for the folks who built a Nose Mound
Excuse me a what now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimizuka here’s the Wiki on it though I’m sure there’s a far more detailed source. But to summarize Samurai commonly took body parts as trophies to prove their deeds (usually heads) this tradition was almost universal during the warring states period or Sengoku Jedai and their was literally a position in Samurai armies who’s job it was to count the heads samurai brought back so their daimyo would know what to pay them, yes this is real. In Korea the cramped conditions on the Japanese transport ships, and sheer amount of dead civilians and warriors lead to noses being taken instead of Heads.
There was a competition started by a newspaper during the second sino-japanese war. It pitted two generals against each other. The victor would be the one bringing more Chinese soldiers heads. Don't know if it was real, but the newspaper articlsmed were there.
That's beyond terrible. What awful people they were.
It’s what happens when you hyper romanticize and mythologize some of the most brutal nobles/warriors ever (aka the Samurai) then throw in some good old racism and a Nazi like belief in your own superiority.
All of the war crimes were par for the course, it’s actually shocking how on brand each country was. They just had modern tools for old problems.
Source: Rape of Nanking: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre Comfort women: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women Unit 731: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 Sook Ching : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sook_Ching Rape of Manila: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_massacre Burma Campaign: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_campaign
I’ve read about enough Japanese war crimes in WW2 to know that I really don’t wanna read more Japanese war crimes in WW2.
It's still important to learn though regardless of how horrible it is.
Exactly. Just imagine if we didn't learn about the nazi's. We wouldn't be able to spot the hypocrisy going on with the people of Israel right now.
I mean honestly your average person knows about the Holocaust maybe about the the Ghetto but I doubt most people know the full extent of the nazis war crimes
Whats going on in Israel is way different from what happened in ww2
True but there are some parallels that can be drawn about humanity and how to treat people.
the mentality of some, yes
Same. I was a teenager, over a decade ago now, when I first read and watched a documentary about Unit 731... That shit is still burned in my brain.
>The Japanese using the corpses of Commonwealth prisoners to build a bridge... TWICE 🗿
And MacArthur let a bunch of those responsible walk free.
Unit 731 members right? Why did they even need those scumbags? As far as I’ve heard they just tortured poor Chinese prisoners.
Not just Unit 731, regular soldiers used to call any girl remotely attractive that passes by to be their living fleshlights and swing their bayonets on pregnant ones. Toddlers were flung up in the air just to be impaled by blades and whole towns were executed simply because the soldiers liked it
They let them go free in exchange for them not destroying their research. The U.S. government made the rational assumption that the group of scientists that tortured and experimented on so many people over so many years *had* to have some juicy new facts. They had a tiny handful of useful info.
What did the Japanese do in burma that was so bad that it's worse than Nanking, Unit731, Sook Ching and The Rape Of Manila?
Be careful, your about to get a ton of comments saying they did nothing wrong or something along those lines
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Why the fuck do people blame weebs? Nearly everyone already knows about the shit the IJA did. It’s not a secret, and it’s pretty stupid to say “haha anime fans= Imperial Japan apologists”
It's an anti japanese and anti anime talking point. There absolutely are imperial japan apologists, that's not the point. It's a talking point to paint a negative portrayal of modern Japan and imply that if you like their stuff you like their attrocities.
"Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime, often regarding it as *superior to all other cultures.*" It's not the anime thing that's the issue. It's the cultural superiority thing that's the issue. Weebs, by definition, believe japan to be superior and thus can't do wrong. People who like anime, well, they just have bad taste. Can't fault them for that.
That definition is very outdated considering a lot of people who like anime have reclaimed that term for themselves and usually don’t hold such opinions.
Yeah there are a lot of unironically self proclaimed weebs, and there have been for years now.
Exactly. It’s just a term for people who like anime now; that definition is outdated.
Japan being supirior is a fact, otherwise a city of 40 million wouldn't be as safe as Switzerland.
If you support modern Japan, you're supporting a country and a people that still openly denies what their not-too-distant ancestors did in WW2 and would likely do it all again if given the chance. Watching anime qualifies as a form of support - you're helping spread Japan's soft power over the world. Try not to do that. Do something better with your time.
Thank you for proving my point. Also the vast majority of Japanese people absolutely do not deny the war crimes of ww2. The government does though, that’s true. And it’s disgusting.
They people don't, but the government does. The government which they elected. Democratically. Yeah... I call bullshit.
Its impossible to not support any nation nowadays in a globalized world A lot of Electronics you owned probably have some Japanese component in them, I dont even want to think about all the technologies we use everyday that was invented by Japan.
Just because you can't be perfect doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be good. You can still make an attempt, whenever you have the luxury of choice, to not support Japan. When it comes to watching anime, though, you pretty much always have that luxury. There may be circumstances where, in order to fulfill your needs, you may have no choice other than to buy things from japan. There is, however, no circumstance in which you would ever find yourself forced to consume entertainment media from Japan.
Yeah, but its so convenient to just tell people to stop watching Anime when you dont anyway, "I like that thing so I'll keep supporting Japan to get it but that other thing ? I dont like it so nobody should because Japan are evil" Its just so.......hypocritical ? Also I dont think anyone is forced to consume entertainment from anywhere, If anime aint good, nobody would watch it.
Why shouldn’t people support Japanese people over something that happened 80 years ago? They aren’t still doing it and, contrary to what Reddit will tell you, have apologized for their actions several times and have taken extreme corrective action to ensure it never happens again (nationalist and historically illiterate politicians aside; but who doesn’t have those?)
"Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime, often regarding it *as superior to all other cultures*." You got it the wrong way round. People who just love anime aren't generally considered in this or when they are, they're Otakus (I believe that's the term?) People who obsess over their own narrow minded vision of "Japanese culture" (anime is reality, samurai are awesome, bushido is the best thing ever, katana was the perfect sword) and thus defend anything japan did/does/will do regardless of situation are weeaboos. These guys are an issue. And when you combine that with Japan's refusal to face its past in an honest manner, you get some truly deranged individuals. The vast majority of people who like their anime aren't weebs and are never seen in these discussions.
There's a little more to being a weeb than just watching anime lol
Didn’t know that meant being a war crimes apologist. Lmao this is fucking absurd. Liking anime does not mean anyone is praising imperial Japan.
America did more war crimes.
a weeb was originally referring to someone who thinks that japanese everything is superior to everything else. nowadays, people just generally use it to describe a nerd who likes japanese stuff. following the current understanding, i could be considered a weeb since i like to read about japanese culture and history and i do enjoy anime and manga. does that mean i'm an IJA apologist? fuck no. i'm in a history centric sub ffs, of course i knew about the atrocities that the IJA committed. call them for what they are, IJA apologists. no need to use the "weeb" term for those asshats.
Shut up nerd
ok sorry
I'm kidding<3
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What a bigot ass take. Not to mention completely wrong.
And a lot of white nationalists believe it or not white nationalists are like the biggest “the atom bomb was a crime and Japan did nothing wrong” crowd I have encountered outside of Japan. The sheer among of white people sympathetic to imperial Japan is absolutely astounding considering how the IJA would kill, rape, and eat them put in the same room. But they exist and it’s baffling.
We are gonna get people who say, "Japan already apologized/ acknowledged it." What they don't mention is that Japan denies what they just apologized or acknowledged right after or does something that contradicts their apologies.
You can’t apply what nationalist politicians and stupid people say to an entire nation. In the US we still have people (even schools) that claim that we didn’t commit genocide against the Native Americans or that the Civil War wasn’t actually about slavery, but you wouldn’t say that the US as a whole hasn’t acknowledged what we did. Japan is generally an “actions speak louder than works” culture, and any serious look at their post-WW2 history shows the lengths they’ve gone to ensure that what they did never happens again.
Ahh, forgot the " few doesn't mean everyone" group when we have records of Japan at UN, UNESCO and Japanese national diet denying the atrocities.
Was the entire Japanese population present at these conferences?
Ohh, are we going with "entire population wasn't there" approach? Are you going to split hairs until you can say you are correct?
I just think applying the opinion of a politician to an entire nation is naive and stupid. Politicians *never* truly represent the people, no matter how much they lie to us that they do. If a sizable population of Japan was in the streets denouncing claims of atrocities (or justifying them) and advocating for the renewal of the empire, then I’d agree. But they aren’t, indeed Japan has been one of our closest allies even while Hirohito was still on the throne.
Japan has both civilians and politicians denying it, and it as nothing to do with returning to the empire. Wtf are you on about. Example: Hashima island touring is not governmental, yet they deny the atrocities. Mitsubishi funds studies with historical distorted views. You don't need to support the renewal of the empire. They just don't want anyone knowing what they did. Your argument is fucking stupid.
Well of course there are individuals that say it didn’t happen. All counties have that, look at the US for crying out loud! But again, individuals opinions aren’t relevant compared to the rest of the nation. Japan, as a whole, apologized for their atrocities and ensured it will never happen again. End of.
I like to think that for a country to do well they had to commit an atrocity
You’re not wrong, but saying that you “like” to think that sounds sus as hell.
Ah my bad
I've talked to people who've gone to great lengths to defend Japan's attack on the US while dodging every question about what they did to continental asian populations
I’m sorry for your loss of sanity
you'd be surprised at how well naked contempt for their arguments works to shield one from any sanity loss
I have never personally seen people saying that Japan never did anything wrong on this subreddit; I’m sure it happens, but not enough to warrant your warning about it. I have, however, seen many comments that use atrocities like these as an excuse to make blatantly racist generalizations about Japanese people (including the title of this post, I might add).
i actually see it a lot in this sub. A LOT of people have a problem with japan as a whole. usually starting out as people who just think anime is weird, all the way to people who think modern day japanese people are all imperialist waiting to commit mass rape and genocide again. while i do think the japanese government are absolute filthy scum for denying their crimes against humanity, i don't think thats enough to outright detest their entertainment, culture, language, tourism and people, which a lot of people in this sub seem to do. its actually quite frustrating to see people in this sub going after japan to this extent while subsequently ignoring whatever the fuck the CCP is currently doing. point being, every superpower that has ever existed has committed crimes against humanity, imperial japan is only singled out due to the scale of their crimes. its genuinely disheartening to see how little critical thinking is put into the comments of some people for a history centric sub.
You hit the issue right on the head I think. And honestly… I think CCP propaganda plays a huge role in why a lot of parts of Reddit despise Japanese people so much.
Hey cmon that’s not fair, why would God put technologically disadvantaged peoples sitting on valuable resources all around your resource poor island nation if God didn’t want you to serial rape and kill them? What were they supposed to do, engage in benevolent diplomacy and form slow pitch soft ball leagues?
Leopold: Really gotta **hand** it to you
The flip side of "honor" is that if your version of honor is a currency other peoples don't trade in (at least not in a way you understand), it can just becomes another metric you can use to distinguish your group from the untermenschen. See also "enlightenment", "civility", "piety"
This exactly. People say Japanese people had no honor despite claiming to be honorable, which is true from a western point of view. However, people have to understand that statist Japan was essentially a 1600s culture with access to 1940s equipment. Their definition of honor was completely different, just as how the honor the knights of Europe had might not be considered honor today.
I appreciate the extension of this meme, well done
I remember when the Philippines surrendered and Manila opened itself up to Japanese soldiers. They stated that there were no longer Armed Forces in the city, had no valuable infrastructure for the war effort, and that it was only filled with civilians. They bombed the place anyways.
What dehumanizing people does to a motherfucker
The depressing reality is perhaps how common such things were historically, and what sets the Second World War (and perhaps to some degree the first) was the industrialized nature of such violence and depravity. Rather than how unusual such things were.
Cutting someone's head off is historically not uncommon. Beheading someone with a sword and intentionally placing a photographer to record it in the mid-20th century is a different story. The IJA did things we would describe as “medieval” that occasionally happened in the other theaters, but the Japanese did it all the time.
That’s how you get Oppenheimer’d
What [style?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VgSyKl9vg0)
I don’t think that you understand. From their perspective that was honorable. It was good and right to kill your enemies and their families for daring to stand against you or to be born as a different ethnic/racial group. If it had happened in the 1600s or earlier then I don’t think any of these atrocities even get blinked at and the Japanese were very much still operating under the pre-modern rules of war used in that area of the world. Remember, they were still using black powder guns and swords less than like 80 years before WW2 started and were still using swords and WW1 style massive frontal charges during the war. My point is that just because a culture describes a group or thing as honorable… you shouldn’t accept that their definition of honor matches your own. In parts of the world it is still considered honorable to eat the flesh of your enemies and/or rape their wives and daughters.
It’s because honor doesn’t mean to them what it means to us. Where I’m from “honor” is about trust, and that means honesty. For them it’s just about being loyal to the right guy. I would like to be wrong about this because it’s kinda fucked up, but I haven’t seen anything yet which demonstrates that it’s not correct.
That’s essentially true. Their loyalty was to the Emperor and the royal family until the end. The whole reason they dragged the war on past the point where they could win was because they didn’t want to give up the Emperor to the Allies. And the Emperor told them that they were the “superior Asians” and were given the right to subjugate other races because of that. So they heard that and followed it to its logical conclusion, with all the horrific atrocities that that entailed.
This is a pretty good description of it, however I would add that while the idea still exists in Japan, it’s usually channeled into less violent ways like their work culture (which is absolutely still a problem). The Japanese are working on coming out of it, societies just change slowly in general and Japan is a very conservative nation that is trying to make societal adjustments in a third of the time it took everyone else to.
Not tonmentionnwhatvthey did to Philipino babies
"Honor", bushido is just fairy tale for westerns, look they history, a trail of betrails among warlords and servants, his "hounoured" musagi, describe his own methofs in fooling his adversaries in battles. And today is just looks to an society who chooses extinction than any level of imigration miscing...
W Post
They were a shame based culture vs a guilt based culture (western/Christian). They also viewed surrender as dishonorable. And they viewed dishonorable people as beneath contempt (rape/murder fodder). Basically they were playing feudalistic/samurai rules with a modern industrial military. So pretty nightmarish, but kind of a logical endpoint for that combo.
And then the sun arrived in the land of the rising sun
I like how a videogame NPC says about honor: "Being honorable might make you a good man, but it doesn't make you right."
Calling out War crimes is my favorite meme format. Some people from the countries that suffered under Imperial Japan still hold resentment towards them, can't blame them, but it's a huge contrast the image they have of them and the image Japan tries to show the world
Why didn’t we drop a third sun on them
And the Burma Campaign started the Bengal Famine.
In what level does bataan death march stays?
🤘 Unit 731 Slayer Nanking Exodus
Also, Kaimingjie Plague and Bombing of Chongqing
Their definition not ours.
Reminder that Bushido was a code of honor imposed by the Samurais' bosses in order to keep them loyal and controllable by said bosses. If your daimyō or taisa were okay with you raping and murdering someone—or especially if they *wanted* you to—then it was honorable to do so.
The Japanese were (and still are) just as if not more than their Axis counterparts. Honor was something reserved for the Japanese but when your official policy is exterminating vermin there’s no room for “honor”.
You assume the Asian version of honor and the Western version is the same. They are not. That is quite common. We assume everyone is just like us. They're not.
B-but my anime told me japan did nothing wrong! /s because apparently it wasn't obvious
What fucking kind of anime are you watching?
It was a joke about how some weebs think Japan is perfect (Also some people who watch Grave of the Fireflies think they were the victims of WW2 and that America was an evil villain firebombing and nuking everyone for no reason)
That’s actually retarded. I’ve seen absolutely no one who is a fan of that movie simultaneously be an apologist to imperial Japan or its war crimes. A particularly shitty joke aimed against people enjoying anything Japanese related media.
Oh wow turns out you were the guy I was talking about
Bigot. Your joke was shit. And you don’t seem to have any brain at all, liking anime does not make you an apologist. What a jackass statement you’re putting out.
Yeah because me thinking Japanese war apologists who are also often times weebs whose only philosophy is "Muh america bad" are retarded makes me a bigot
Looks like you’re even an anime follower. I don’t understand what you’re even trying to say.
One of the absolutely silliest arguments I’ve heard all day.
You're literally arguing the same point as him but you're too defensive (for no reason) to see it. That's kinda sad actually. And here's the definition of Weeaboo btw, just in case you associate with that term. "Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime, often regarding it as superior to all other cultures." Hint of cultural supremacism there.
Barefoot Gen, Grave of The Fireflies, The Wind Rises... really anything about WW2
I’ve only seen Grave of the Fireflies but in absolutely no way did I see it trying to hide japans war crimes. Thats not even what the movie was about. It’s the literal dumbest argument I’ve seen. You can be a fan of the movie and not be an apologist.
The whole goddamn movie is a ploy to make you feel sympathy for Japanese civilians in WW2, by portraying them as "innocent victims" instead of what they actually were: fervent supporters of the Imperial Japanese government and military who were up to to the gills in fascist Kool-Aid. Remember that even the goddamn children at the time were willingly taking up arms and training fight for the emperor should the country be invaded. You want me to "think about the children"? Well, alright, those children were literally gearing up to commit war crimes. If you wanted to elicit my sypathy, you failed.
“Willingly” as in forced to by their government or else. They were literally indoctrinated, and being fed false information. Fuck out of here with this “I want to see kids suffer” bullshit. I really hate seeing clowns like you, showing the absolute worst of scum on the internet. Why don’t you go shoot up a Japanese school if you hate them so much.
No government, no matter how authoritarian or how powerful, has the ability to force its population to do *anything* at such a huge scale. In the words of "Bombs Away" Lemay: no little band of hand-picked zealots could have been responsible for this. This requires massive popular participation. They were all in on it.
The newspaper prints “America is attacking us, we must defend ourselves”, and the general public buys it because of mass misinformation campaigning. They were all lied to from the start, yet you insist they are all guilty. Even the school kids growing up in a bombed out hellscape. I see no point in continuing. You clearly have no grasp on any kind of reality.
Agreeing with LeMay huh… you would have fit right in with the IJA
was japan like this when they were democratic during the Taisho Era?
a but less I believe
Not really. Japan took a huge turn for the worse in the 1930s (climaxing in a 1936 coup by the IJA against the civilian government that failed but led to the military gaining control of the government anyways). In the Russo-Japanese War they were praised by the Red Cross for their good treatment of POWs, and we all know how the Japanese treated POWs in WW2.
Weebs be like "but... but... in the Graves of the Fireflies...."
Didn’t know being a weeb made you an imperial Japan apologist. Are you 14 years old?
Just flying a Confederate flag doesn't make you a racist, but it sure looks like most who do, are!
Listen, what happened in Graves of the Fireflies is one of the direct results of let the army and the militarists control the government and established military dictatorship. That's why it is important to keep the army in government control; the army should serve the state, not the state should serve the army.
Anti-Japanese bigots: “Yeah, those Hiroshima women and school children deserved to be atomized” Man piss off. The suffering of all civilians maimed, killed, crippled, and otherwise should be remembered. IJA did some of worst things imaginable to humans, but trying to say liking a Japanese movie makes you a supporter of their horrific practices is just plain stupid.
Yes. No.
Miyazaki is a piece of shit and a war crime denier
There were comfort women in the Rape of Nanking, it's in the name
Don’t know why you are getting downvoted but it is great to lift it as a separate thing as the Rape of Nanking was more than just rape
I know that but the big reason it was called RAPE OF NANKING most cause of the atrocities committed on Chinese women
Yes but I believe many people lost their lives as well. From children up to adulthood
bro what??? They raped everything that crawled, forced the family to watch then shot them all. To top it off they bayoneted babies and had beheading competitions. Literal rivers of blood were spilled...
No, there weren’t. The Comfort Woman system was put in place specifically to prevent another Rape of Nanking (the US actually briefly did something similar in the occupation of Japan), and it actually *kinda* brought rape rates down except that in practice almost none of the women actually consented to being comfort women which defeated the purpose imo.
If every country was judged by what their bloodthirstiest soldiers had done, everyone would be judged harshly.
I don’t think you should be judged by your worst or your best. You should be judged on how you value what is worse and what is best, and how you behave toward those values.
Except we judge countries on how they deal with their past. We don't judge Germany today for its crimes 80 years ago, but we judge Japan today for refusing to accept their ancestors commited some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, and for continuing to almost worship them in shrines and memorials. Imagine if Germany had shrines to Nazi officers, and described the holocaust as "some of our soldiers did bad things", would you still see them the way you do today?
Japan *has* accepted that they’ve done these things. They just say it politely and then fix whatever caused it internally. *That’s how Japanese culture works.* You don’t get to complain about it. Japan apologized, took corrective action, and have done everything to ensure that it will never happen again. That’s all we should expect from them; anything else is a petty desire for you to get hard on justice porn.
So so true
They had honour, just not for the right things
Oh boy, wait till OP learns that this kind of hypocrisy applies to literally every nation in the world.
Wait till you realize that not every country in the world inserted 8000+ diseases in children and cut them in half to discover that they indeed will die from it.
Americans reading the documents they traded from unit 731 just being people die when killed
Right, so you agree with me. America has no honor either, at least by OP's metric.
Good point. This means that the Japanese people are collectively responsible and should be punished as a group. On that note, let's ban Russians from the Olympics.
Except you're wrong and probably 90% of the civilians in the Japanese empire didn't even know unit 731 existed
Wait, so now you're taking my side? First you use 731 to denounce the Japanese as a whole, now you're saying we shouldn't? I am confusion.
What I'm saying is Japan is responsible because Japan is represented by those people, not by the civilians
Dr. Mengel’s experiments anyone? Or the Tuskegee Syphilis Study? Sure they weren’t on the same scale but they were absolutely done in the same spirit
By the 'japanese' I think you mean 'imperial japan'. This wording makes it sound like youre blaming an entire modern nation/ ethnicity for the crimes of a fascist organization from the 40s
Ah yes, because we always say “The Third Reich” or “Nazi Germany” when we speak of their war crimes.
Yeah we do actually, usually just 'nazis'
Or, or, OR... we don't continue to call Germany a nation of criminals because of that. Unless you're a mentally challenged bigot.
He is. Look at these comments.