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Originally posted by TheCommodoreAfro+Aug 24 2005, 07:23 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (TheCommodoreAfro @ Aug 24 2005, 07:23 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
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Originally posted by Hack&Lube@Aug 25 2005, 09:56 AM
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@Aug 24 2005, 05:18 PM
Can you really buy square watermelons over there?
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That's Japan. Please stop confusing us. Japan is really not very popular in Asia for their refusal to admit and atone for wartime attrocities (and also plenty of non-wartime attrocities commited by Imperialist Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries).
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List of Japanese Apologies to Asian countries to attone for war crimes
Most of the Asian backlash against Japan has to do with the fact that the governments of Korea and China took reparation money from Japan after the war, and invested it on infrastructure. It never made it down to the people directly affected by the wars, and in the case of Korea, was managed irresponsibly.
War Reparation Payouts
It happened, it was horrible, but to what extent can you blame the current generation of Japanese for something that happened before their parents and grandparents were born? I think it's time for the region to move on. [/b][/quote]
I have no problem with the Japanese. I love Japan. I have many friends there actually. I don't know how else to demonstrate my love for Japan. I eat Pocky and Ramen everyday? I spend my evenings reading manga? Now I sound like some sick otaku. Anyway...
But it does irritate me to see how the war is sometimes portrayed in Japanese textbooks and I recently read a translated article from a Japanese paper during the anniversary where the author pushed the blame onto the allies for the war and claimed that such attrocities were exaggerated.
It's just frustrating that such a mindset still exists and I fear that education is not properly demonstrating the true horror of what happened (to many of my relatives indeed) in that period. You know over here in North America, it would be immediately be disgraced or at least intense scrutiny if something similar occured, such as teaching that the holocaust never happened, etc.
I don't particularily take offense that Koizumi visits the shrine that supposedly has war criminals or soldiers that commited attrocities but I'm certain that Vietnam wall in Washington is also full of names that commited horrors in Vietnam.