First off, Chauism and Chinaowneverthing, will you two pls remove the picture in your posts? It is downright offensive to the dead and to us readers !!!
Thank you.
You got it.
2. some here are right to point out that Japan's new generation has barely anything to do with WWII. Without telling me
his/her nationality, many young Japanese I know could well be mistaken as Chinese or Korean. The three eastern Asain countries should make friends.
Totally agree.
3. The notion that Japanese is superior, peddled by some of its ultra right wingers and repeated by some media and posters, is neither the representative of what common Japanese think nor as per DNA reality. Accroding to NDA study of Japanese ( i posted this before in another thread about new Japanese PM several months ago) conducted by a Japanese reaseach institute:
More than 25% , the largest share, of Japanese Mitochondrial DNA is related to Han Chinese, less than 24% of which is related to Korean, the rest smaller percentages are related to many diverse indigenous tribes of many places. All in all, Japanese is a mixed-race, with largest dominant DNA being Han Chinese indeed. Where is that "racial" supeority crap?
It indeed is crap.
The point is the Japanese contemporary culture also has its influences on many other east Asian cultures as its culture had been influenced by Chinese culture in the past.4. The notion that many modern Chinese words come from Japan ( listed by Chauism) is as valid as most "Japanese Characters" originally came from Chinese anyway. What's the point?
5. In spite of the temporal fact that Japan is way ahead in general techonogies and human development Index compared with China and Korea due to its > 100 years headstart, personally I believe that China can more or less catch up, on an individual level, within 2 generations for most of its areas if move along the right direction.
China had the same opportunities as Japan for its modernizations at the same time, but two countries took a completely different path. 50 years later when Japan defeated China in the first Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government yet still continued on with its conservative path. If history can repeat itself again, I think it will be the same result as the mentalities of both nations were set quite differently at that time. It was not a coincidence that Japan emerged as a world power and China remained backward. So the head start argument is not that valid. China actually had longer history of contacts with western powers than Japan had. So it was a story of "race between rabbit and turtle". As for HDI as concerned, even when China can reach the same level of GDP per capita and HDI, it will still take longer for China to match Japanese people's display of their discipline.
During WW II, even though there were level of racial motivated mistreatment of Korean and Chinese, however in general if one accepted Japanese's rule and agreed to be a subject of the Empire, they were not treated badly as you would think. In China, there were large fraction of Koreans in Japanese army fighting and working for the Japanese voluntarily against Chinese. Taiwan was also a good example of that.6. Japanese-German analogy is inadequate:
During WWII, Germans have almost NEVER racially descriminated other non-German white Europeans, at least not to fellow French and Brits, to the same extent that Japanese did to Chinese and Koreans.
How ironic is that when both Hitler and Hermann Göring ( the "supposed" superior Aryan race) who treated both Chinese and Japanese as equals to Germans ( refer to Hitler's very own remarks) , but trusted Chinese more than Japanese as their allies in the first part of WWII?
Post WWII, Germans, both its govts and civilians, did (and have been doing so) a heck of jobs in apologising to fellow Europeans, from their hearts, by words and in deeds. Japanese govts however, largely didn't.
As for the attitude of apologizing, as I said in my other post, it was the American to blame. There is a big difference between composition of governments between Japan and Germany.
See, that you really got to blame the Americans. Because right after the WW II, many of the Japanese War Criminals including Taro Aso's grandfather Shigeru Yoshida were brought back into politics from imprisonment by the Americans because no one else left in Japan has the power to fight politically with the communist party of Japan. It is much easier for Germany to blame everything on and apologize for the previous government where as for Japan it is different. They did apologize for what they did in WW II, but I guess not as sincere as others has demanded. Give it time, they will face that period of history with better attitude. It happens with all the countries with their incumbent government. How long it took US to apologize for its government's wrong doings?
So here is the thick line:
Until Japan does it to China and Korea, and from the heart, it would have no qualification what-so-ever to lead Asia.
I have no problem insisting on Japan apologizing as long as same can be said by the others who had done more atrocities to the Chinese like European in the 19th century, Manchurian in the 17th century, and Mongolians 12th century. Even the mistreatment of Chinese POW by USA during the Korean War should be added to that list. That was only what they did to China, and that did not disqualify some of the countries mentioned above to become leaders of the world today.
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