Japan Reverts To Fascism (op/ed)

[TithonusSyndrome]

National Review

This week, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partners won a two-thirds majority in the legislature’s upper house, to go along with their two-thirds majority in the lower house. A two-thirds majority is required in each house to begin the process of amending Japan’s constitution. And amending the constitution is one of the central planks in the LDP’s platform.

The constitution was imposed on Japan by the United States after the Second World War; it has never been amended. Why should it be amended now? As Bloomberg reports, the LDP has pointed out that “several of the current constitutional provisions are based on the Western European theory of natural human rights; such provisions therefore [need] to be changed.”

What has the LDP got against the “Western European theory of natural human rights”? you might ask. Well, dozens of LDP legislators and ministers — including Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe — are members of a radical nationalist organization called Nippon Kaigi, which believes (according to one of its members, Hakubun Shimomura, who until recently was Japan’s education minister) that Japan should abandon a “masochistic view of history” wherein it accepts that it committed crimes during the Second World War. In fact, in Nippon Kaigi’s view, Japan was the wronged party in the war.

According to the Congressional Research Service, Nippon Kaigi believes that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia” during WW2, that the “Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate,” and that the rape of Nanking was either “exaggerated or fabricated.” It denies the forced prostitution of Chinese and Korean “comfort women” by the Imperial Japanese Army, believes Japan should have an army again — something outlawed by Japan’s current constitution — and believes that it should return to worshipping the emperor.

When, in the wake of Nazi-level war crimes, the U.S. forced Japan to become a liberal democracy, it also forced Japan’s emperor to issue the following statement denying his divinity: “The ties between us and our people have always stood upon mutual trust and affection. They do not depend upon legend and myths. They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine, and that the Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.”

And members of Nippon Kaigi are still mad.

In 2013, at a Nippon Kaigi party celebrating Shinzo Abe’s new appointments to his cabinet — 15 of whose 18 members were Nippon Kaigi-niks — the old imperial “Rising Sun” flag was flown, pledges to “break away from the postwar regime” were made, and the (very short and controversial) imperial national anthem was sung. The lyrics are addressed to the emperor:

“May your reign
Continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations,
Until the pebbles grow into boulders
Lush with moss.”

The LDP’s draft for an amended constitution would eliminate the prohibition on imbuing religious organizations with “political authority,” clearing the way for the return of state Shintoism and emperor worship.

The draft would also repeal the provision that the “Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes,” along with the provision that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” (Not that Japan has, hitherto, been too strict about this particular rule: According to the Credit Suisse Military Strength Index, Japan currently has the fourth-strongest military in the world, behind only the U.S., Russia, and China.)

The new constitution also repeals the right to free speech, adding a clause stating that the government can restrict speech and expression that it sees as “interfering [with] public interest and public order.”

(In fact, Japan’s current government has been working on the free-speech problem for a few years now: According to the Japan Times, in 2014, the internal affairs and communications minister warned that broadcasters could be shut down if they aired programming that the government deemed was “politically biased.” The director of Japan’s public broadcasting corporation — a friend of Prime Minister Abe — has said publicly that it was his policy that the NHK (Japan’s BBC) “should not deviate from the government’s position in its reporting.”

In just the last five years, Japan’s press freedom — as ranked by Reporters without Borders — has fallen from 11th globally to 72nd.

The new draft constitution adds a warning that “the people must be conscious of the fact that there are responsibilities and obligations in compensation for freedom and rights.” These “obligations” include the mandate to “uphold the [new] constitution” and “respect the national anthem” quoted above. Also that “the people must comply with the public interest and public order,” and “the people must obey commands from the state” in times of “emergency.”

But not everyone is bound by these obligations: The Emperor is exempt from the requirement to uphold the constitution. Likewise, the Emperor is required, under the new constitution, to seek “advice” from the cabinet — but not, as he is currently required, to seek “advice and approval.”

Who can say if 51 percent of Japanese voters would vote against their own civil rights? If the new constitution is approved by two-thirds of each house of the Japanese legislature, its adoption will be voted on in a national referendum requiring a simple majority. Who can say if 51 percent of Japanese voters would vote against their own civil rights? On the one hand, it seems absurd; on the other, they did give the LDP’s coalition a two-thirds majority in both legislative chambers.

Five years ago, President Obama called for a foreign-policy “pivot to Asia.” With China seizing and militarizing the South China Sea, and North Korea testing delivery systems for its new nuclear weapons, it would probably be a good idea — “pivot to Asia”–wise — not to stand idly by while our most important Asian ally, and the second-richest democracy in the world, reverts to fascism.

Well, with all the necessary caveats about the National Review, I think I wouldn't be alone in saying that my fascism radar has been so intently trained on Europe and America and the outsider upstarts threatening fascism there that I completely missed that there's a segment of mainstream establishment political culture in Japan that doesn't need to resort to populism and rallies to achieve it's ends. That's not to say that I was unaware of worrisome trends in the country, but it looks like they may no longer be long-term anxieties at this point and have very concrete roots taking shape.

[Sea Skimmer]

Saying Japan might revert to nationalism would be a lot more accurate of a title, though I do not think this will pass anyway. Many of these clauses are either functionally irrelevant, merely make existing law part of the consitution or are simply nothing radical. Like the people must obey the government in time of emergency? OH HORRORS sounds like the United States! Sure some are bad, but welcome to life, most of the supposed erosion of rights is far more paper then real, and all countries worth living in highly restrict what citizens can do.

That said, modern Japan is basically a failure of a society and it is not surprising that after several decades of reform failure support would emerge for a major reshaping of the social contract. When such things happen it is only natural that the most radical voices gain attention and further support.

But you know, let me know when they vote to recreate the Army and Navy Ministries (its lame if they can't wage economic war on each other) , Quadruple the Size of the Overt Offense Force and ban free speech. Because short of that I mean, honestly, Japan literally does not have enough young people to launch another war of conquest and Abe at his worst is like...trying to keep China from stealing islands that are blatantly Japanese possessions. And while I know this forum is half overrun with lonely childless atheists who would claim they don't care or even that it's a good thing, I think a world without kids is a bleak abyss, and that's what Japan is really worried about.

[mr friendly guy]

Japan's economy has gone down the toilet for some time. The glory days of the 1980s and the optimism in the early 90s which thought Japan would overtake the US GDP in the mid 2000s and allowed the Japan Bears to proclaim that "the cold war is over, and Japan won," are long gone. Its economy shrank dramatically since 2011 with the depreciation of the yen, but even if we focus on a longer time frame, its economy in 2015 is smaller than it was in 2005 in both its national currency and nominal terms (ie when converted to us dollars) according to the IMF. It literally has not grown overall in 10 years, and this was the country that already experienced a "lost decade," beginning in the 90s.

Meanwhile increasing numbers of "working poor" in a country once known for egalitarianism, and the aging population issue and Japan's long term prospects aren't good no matter what Abe does to make his country great again, whether via the failed Abenomics or pro nationalist dick waving. The goddamn Batman can't save Japan.

[Tribble]

From Japan Times:

For Abe, it will always be about the Constitution

by Debito Arudou

Jul 31, 2016
Article history

Nobody here on the Community page has weighed in on Japan’s Upper House election last July 10, so JBC will have a go.

The conclusion first: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe scored a hat trick this election, and it reaffirmed his mandate to do whatever he likes. And you’re probably not going to like what that is.

Of those three victories, the first election in December 2012 was a rout of the leftist Democratic Party of Japan and it thrust the more powerful Lower House of Parliament firmly into the hands of the long-incumbent Liberal Democratic Party under Abe. The second election in December 2014 further normalized Japan’s lurch to the far right, giving the ruling coalition a supermajority of 2/3 of the seats in the Lower House.

July’s election delivered the Upper House to Abe. And how. Although a few protest votes found their way to small fringe leftist parties, the LDP and parties simpatico with Abe’s policies picked up even more seats. And with the recent defection of Diet member Tatsuo Hirano from the opposition, the LDP alone has a parliamentary majority for the first time in 27 years, and a supermajority of simpaticos. Once again the biggest loser was the leftist Democratic Party, whose fall from power three years ago has even accelerated.

So that’s it then: Abe has achieved his goals. And with that momentum he’s going to change the Japanese Constitution.

Amazingly, this isn’t obvious to some observers. The Wall Street Journal, The Economist (London), and Abe insiders still cheerfully opined that Abe’s primary concern remains the economy — that constitutional reform will remain on the backburner.

But some media made similar optimistic predictions after Abe’s past electoral victories. For example, Abe wouldn’t change Japan’s security laws punishing the release of “state secrets” (whatever that meant — for what fully qualifies as “secret” is a state secret) because it would chill Japan’s media and hurt Japan’s democracy. Again, Japan’s economy was Abe’s main focus. But guess what: Abe changed that — and more.

Abe even circumvented Japan’s constitutional issues of self-defense by simply ignoring them through reinterpre- tation. And despite all the wan hope that Abe would let loose “three arrows” — empowering women, reforming Japan’s immigration policies and generally enabling the disenfranchised to make structural inroads — three years later the Pollyanna pundits were wrong again. Abe abandoned “womenomics” after he switched slogans to “100 million active people,” and his imported labor policies remained the same revolving-door foreign “trainee” programs to service the 2020 Olympics.

For decades Abe and his minions at the ultranationalist Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference) lobby group (of which most of Abe’s Cabinet are members) have made no secret that their primary goal is to make Japan “autonomous.” To restore Japan to an imagined state of glory based upon blood nationalism, returning power to a bred elite, reviving Japan’s military political power with a seat at the civilian policymaking table, and putting the duty on the people to follow the state, not the other way around.

That has always meant getting rid of that pesky American-written and “imposed” postwar “peace Constitution” that enshrines allegedly “Western” values of human rights and empowerment of the individual. No longer content to ignore the Constitution, Abe wants to scrap it.

And it has been no secret of what he wants in its place. The LDP has put up a draft constitution for public view since 2012 (see it at ⤢www.jimin.jp/activity/colum/116667.html) For the lowbrow reader, they even put out a comic book last year (see Colin P.A. Jones, “The LDP’s comic appeal for constitutional change falls flat,” July 15, 2015).

If you think my concerns are overblown, let’s have a constitutional scholar analyze where this is going: In his 2013 Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus article, Lawrence Repeta, a law professor at Meiji University, listed up the “ten most dangerous proposals for constitutional change” that put “Japan’s democracy at risk” by “ripping the imposed constitution out by its philosophical roots.”

These proposals include rejecting the universality of human rights, elevating the maintenance of “public order” over all individual rights (including freedom of speech and press), deleting the comprehensive guarantee of all constitutional rights, suspending the Constitution during “states of emergency,” lowering standards for making future constitutional amendments, and, of course, scrapping Article 9 limiting Japan’s military power. All of this, incidentally, benefits those in power by giving them more of it.

What is Abe’s motive (I mean, aside from grabbing more power for his ruling class)? It’s seemingly intensely personal. Need I remind readers that Abe is the grandson of suspected Class-A war criminal Nobusuke Kishi who nevertheless became a prime minister? And given that Abe’s ilk see the family unit (not the individual) as the “natural and basic unit of society,” Abe views this as a matter of clearing his family name of “victor’s justice.” He won’t rest until he does.

And he can do it. Unlike any other modern prime minister, he has been granted a second chance, a third mandate and two supermajorities.

So despite what pundits keep saying about Abe’s economics focus, don’t be fooled. This past election was a referendum on whether people are scared of Abe scrapping the Constitution.

Clearly they’re not. Despite public opinion polls opposing constitutional reform, convictions were not serious enough to vote for someone else last month. It wasn’t even a tie. Abe and his lot still gained seats.

So what more does Abe need? He’s more successful than the LDP’s template PM, Junichiro Koizumi. He’s got an electorate becoming more geriatric, and thus more conservative. He’s even bandwagoned Japan’s youth, the newly-enfranchised voters aged between 18 and 20 who generally voted for him too. (Understandably; Japan’s electorate doesn’t usually favor underdogs — why waste your vote on losers?)

That’s why JBC predicts that Abe will now redouble his efforts to amend the Constitution. Why not? Voters just keep giving him green lights.

And if (more likely at this writing, when) that happens, beware — for Japan’s right-wing swing toward fascism then becomes permanent.

In addition to the above mentioned changes, you can add removing the constitutional guarantee clause and lowering the constitutional amendment requirements (I read another article which stated he wants to be able to amend it via simple majority in both houses but I can't find it atm) to the list.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2 ... 6HLVo-cFMs

[Zixinus]

So another populist grabs what he needs to entrench himself and his ideals. If it will happen in any way like it did here, this will mean that his current ideas are only the start. The question is how far they will go, how competent will they be at it and how far the populace will let them before their opinion becomes irrelevant.

[Simon_Jester]

Japan has been in a very strange position ever since they started modernizing in the mid-19th century. They've adopted every modern technology as it came out. But when it came to adapting to that technology with social change, they've taken a variety of deeply counterproductive turns. This has contributed to the particularly severe case of demographic collapse Skimmer refers to, for instance. They're suffering from massive rises in mental illness, a desperately overworked labor force, and no clear model for how to force their economy to start using its own people's time and man-years efficiently.

With all that feeding into things, and with basically no immigration and no infrastructure to welcome it, and with a birth rate of 1.3 to 1.4 children per woman, Japan is utterly screwed if current trends continue for another generation or two.

...And I'm honestly not sure mainstream Japanese society even begins to contain the right memes to permit them to cope. It's hard enough in a situation where a significant fraction of the population supports the reforms that would actually fix things, but has trouble getting reform past the elites in power. Much worse in a situation where the overall political discourse simply does not allow for serious discussion of the problem.

Situations like this are, however, the times when a society is likely to realize that it literally MUST change- because if the future just ends up looking like a logical extrapolation of the past, then the result will be total disaster. Nationalist authoritarianism is almost certainly the wrong solution to Japan's problems, but some kind of a solution must be found, so it is unsurprising that Japan is trying to revive values that at least remind it of when it was a country with a future.

[Flagg]

To be fair, our battleships did get in the way of their bombs and torpedoes.

Seriously, I'm not all that surprised about this. I don't follow Japanese politics but I do know that they've seemingly successfully played the blame game in their education system by teaching all about how hard the war was on Japan and giving lip service to, or totally ignoring Japan's true role in the war.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

Basically, they're just a deeply screwed up society in a lot of ways; they went from feudalism to the Industrial Age without passing through the Enlightenment, then followed a completely different trajectory through the Industrial Age as a result. While you can make a case that some Enlightenment-vintage ideas were wrong or misguided, there's a lot of important concepts in there that are pretty much required to live in a modern society where people can, on the whole, cope.

[Flagg]

You also have to remember that Japan was kind of isolated due to racism. They were with the allies in WWI and got nothing, to the point where they got up, left, and went home. And Italy used gas against the Epiothians, yet Japan got embargo' by the US not long after they invaded China.

Of course absolutely none of that is an excuse for the many atrocities they deny or give lip service to. And I don't give a fuck about Pearl Harbor, sneak attacks have been used since time immemorial and we knew they were planning to attack us, just never dreamed it would be that Far East.

[Simon_Jester]

And yet, their own racism is one of the ways they're screwed up. It's a significant part of why they do not, for example, solve their labor deficit and population shrinkage by, say, hiring millions of Filipinos and Chinese and so on. They do accept SOME immigration, but it'd be an obvious solution to their problem except that they can't get over the idea of the immigrants having their own culture and not being of Japanese blood and so on.

As to the World Wars...

1) Japan was starting to demand massive colonial concessions right around the time that started going out of style in Europe, in that while people were still racist there were a growing number of people thinking "hey, even if we think that people in other countries are racially inferior, that doesn't make it cool to conquer them, brutally exploit them, and ruin their lives for the sake of making our lives a bit richer and more comfortable." This is one reason Japan didn't "get" much of anything from World War One; the main thing they wanted was the right to carve big slices out of China and use them as they saw fit. There were enough people in the Allied nations who were starting to get the notion of 'maybe what happens to China should be up to China' that this did not go over well.

2) The really objectionable thing about Pearl Harbor is that the Japanese carried it out while still pretending to negotiate in good faith, but it is honestly so low on the list of "rotten things done by Japan" that it hardly matters.

3) As for Italy in Ethiopia, honestly the Italians should not have been allowed to get away with the war at all, let alone using poison gas. However, this was also in an era where the ideal of pacifism and not being the one to start shit was extremely strong in the Western democracies. Basically, if a jerkass is willing to threaten war to keep on doing as they are doing, and you're not willing to say "then it's going to be war..." jerkass is going to get away with being jerkass. The same dynamic kicked in with Japan and China in the 1930s, when Japan caused massive horror and death in China and nobody stopped them.

[mr friendly guy]

You also have to remember that Japan was kind of isolated due to racism. They were with the allies in WWI and got nothing, to the point where they got up, left, and went home. And Italy used gas against the Epiothians, yet Japan got embargo' by the US not long after they invaded China.

Of course absolutely none of that is an excuse for the many atrocities they deny or give lip service to. And I don't give a fuck about Pearl Harbor, sneak attacks have been used since time immemorial and we knew they were planning to attack us, just never dreamed it would be that Far East.

They actually did get things in WWI. They got Shandong, which was a German concession in China. Essentially the US said "self determination, wah, wah," and people believed them. Unfortunately that did not include the British and French who said "fuck self determination, Japan helped us more than China did, so they get Shandong even though the people living there wants to be part of China."

Such an event led to protests in China and being more political, and another politically important event, the formation of the Chinese Communist party.

[Flagg]

I wasn't aware that Japan got anything out of WWI. So mea culpa, but I put the blame on Simon.

[Simon_Jester]

You also have to remember that Japan was kind of isolated due to racism. They were with the allies in WWI and got nothing, to the point where they got up, left, and went home. And Italy used gas against the Epiothians, yet Japan got embargo' by the US not long after they invaded China.

Of course absolutely none of that is an excuse for the many atrocities they deny or give lip service to. And I don't give a fuck about Pearl Harbor, sneak attacks have been used since time immemorial and we knew they were planning to attack us, just never dreamed it would be that Far East.

They actually did get things in WWI. They got Shandong, which was a German concession in China. Essentially the US said "self determination, wah, wah," and people believed them. Unfortunately that did not include the British and French who said "fuck self determination, Japan helped us more than China did, so they get Shandong even though the people living there wants to be part of China."

Such an event led to protests in China and being more political, and another politically important event, the formation of the Chinese Communist party.

The Japanese got more than nothing, but a lot less than they wanted. What they wanted was, more or less, the Twenty-One Demands:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-One_Demands

By that standard, Japan got very little in the way of rewards for the war- and frankly, nobody else got much in the way of truly desirable 'spoils' either, because the era of pure imperialist colonialism was starting to come to an end.

[Sea Skimmer]

You also have to remember that Japan was kind of isolated due to racism. They were with the allies in WWI and got nothing, to the point where they got up, left, and went home.

Japan didn't do much is the fact, and they got everything they put troops on. However its important that this came after the Sino-Chinese War of 1894, in which Japan utterly defeated China but was then denied most of its conquest by the intervention of European powers. That War in turn started in no small part because China was physically failing to control its own territory, and while Japan was looking for excuses it's simply a fact that its people were coming under attack. And indeed such attacks would only rise until the Boxer Rebellion broke out.

Thing is after the 1894 war the west blocked Japan, largely, but then Russia literally forced China to hand over some of the EXACT same ports to its own control, with all of Europe approving or at least not declaring war over it. That then caused the Russo-Japanese War in which Japan go a few things, but not what it thought it should. Though in hindsight we know japan was very lucky that war ended when it did, as Russia was only politically and not at all militarily defeated. A Russian counter offensive would have won the war.

So WW1 was round three of Europe treating Japan with contempt, but actually the time it was most justified, naked Imperialism or not.

And Italy used gas against the Epiothians, yet Japan got embargo' by the US not long after they invaded China.

That's false. The US imposed an embargo of select war materials on Italy. It also did so to Japan in 1937. The US and British did not embargo oil to Italy in 1935 specifically because it was expected that this could only lead to war. Other factors were also involved. But anyway this was also the reason not to embargo oil against Japan in 1937, though refined AVGAS (US was the only supply of high grades at the time) and scrap metal were embargoed. The US also restricted Japans ability to buy other stuff on credit, but buy it they still could. The credit limit was also applied to ALL foreign powers engaged in warfare, and actually was still enforced against the UK until 1940.

Japan started its full scale invasion of China in 1937, but had been doing it since 1931, and the US NEVER demanded Japan give up Manchuria in post 1937 negotiations. The US oil embargo on Japan only came into affect on Aug 1st 1941, with a total freeze on Japanese assets taking effect at about the same time. Japan was already preparing to atack the US at this point, though the sanctions had been announced earlier. The US was extremely generous with Japan, frankly to an irrational degree that only encouraged Japan, and our politicians certainly knew that Japan had taken moral offensive to its unequal treatment for decades. It was bad policy and the US should have declared war over Panay in 1937, which was a deliberate action carried out by Japanese field commanders to start a war, but the US population badly did not want a war (maybe they would have had they realized what it would do to the US economy). So FDR let the government in Tokyo brush it off.

Of course absolutely none of that is an excuse for the many atrocities they deny or give lip service to. And I don't give a fuck about Pearl Harbor, sneak attacks have been used since time immemorial and we knew they were planning to attack us, just never dreamed it would be that Far East.

I dunno on that one, sneak attacks while actively same day engaging in diplomacy are not so common. In fact it is a core part of modern civilization that we treat diplomacy as a special thing, something to be encouraged and allowed to exist. It used to be you had to send slaves to speak to the enemy camp because if you sent one of your own people they'd probably be murdered or thrown out a fifth story window. Japan's sneak attack was a direct and deliberate exploitation of this, an attack on modern civilization. But Japan was simply not modern, and events to that date had not given it a huge amount of reason to put faith in diplomacy. But that was only because it was ruled by blind warmongering morons incapable of seeing themselves as anything but a special race. They needed to be hit over the head to learn that, but they hadn't had the chance in three hundred years. If they'd had any real awarness of the world they'd have realized that diplomacy was the only reason they existed as a state, and that in a naked battle of force exact what did happen, always would have happened. Japan was too poor for it to be otherwise.

But that's the problem now. Japan is poor. It has almost no natural resources, it's location is only strategic in the context of isolating China, and only then as part of a chain of other countries, and otherwise it doesn't have much. An educated population sure, but one that is certain to undergo a steep decline. What is modern Japan supposed to be an do? Right now it looks like falling off a cliff is about right. That may be unavoidable, but it would be dumb if nobody tried to do something about it, radical or not.

But the fear that Japan's going to turn into some modern fascist state. I just don't see it, and even if they tried it would just be cartoonish entertainment for the rest of us. Its a country that presently produces four tanks per year, at a price you could pay for a used jet fighter apiece.

[Flagg]

Thanks for the information. I can only blame FL's public education system.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well its not like it has much day to day value. But no doubt, the world's dealings with Japan were fucked up, and while nothing is exactly going to justify the Rape of Nanjing, or the utterly forgotten ~4 million Indonesians Japan found time to kill, the sum of actions taken basically encouraged it. And foreign colonialism in Asia didn't do much to make the west look good at the time, nor did the US allowing the French back into Indochina work out in any way ever, though the US basically did support Indonesian independence behind closed doors. While Imperial Japan did formally annex large parts of the Dutch East indies directly into its Empire....at least it was willing to say so outright. And that suggests that its claims it would grand independence to the rest were probably true in the long term, if irrelevant in the short term. We know from internal Japanese documents that destroying colonialism really was a war aim.

Japan was acting like it was an earlier time, but in the scale of human history it wasn't that big a gap. Its just our rate of change keeps speeding up, and they'd already been left behind. Like say the idea of not murdering diplomats only appeared strongly in the west, as did the codified idea of a civilian, in the late 17th century. That isn't that long a timescale when you need major changes of culture. Considering that say, Rome, took about 300 years just to conquer mainland Italy and defeat Carthage.

It really doesn't help that Mac personally fucked up the war crimes trials in Tokyo to make his own life easier, and that some of the other trials were carried out in less then amazing manners. The Japanese shouldn't complain, but the fact is if one wants to make a big high and mighty idea about the rule of law ect... those trials are NOT something you want to examine closely. The Nazi ones were run a little better, but still deeply flawed, unequal and at times just retarded. Also the Soviet judges voted for 100% convictions and 100% death...totally legit! Meanwhile 600,000 Japanese were captured by the Soviets, and about 100 actual people ever came back. We still aren't sure just how Russia worked them to death.

Often I've felt that the formal Soviet proposal to simply shoot the 10,000 top Nazi party officials and left everyone else go would have been more just, and just less stupid. We ruled following orders was not a defense, and yet shot our own people for not following orders. In the case of Japan we could have made the Emperor behead Tojo or something, and then off himself.

[Simon_Jester]

Japan was acting like it was an earlier time, but in the scale of human history it wasn't that big a gap. Its just our rate of change keeps speeding up, and they'd already been left behind. Like say the idea of not murdering diplomats only appeared strongly in the west, as did the codified idea of a civilian, in the late 17th century...

Although interestingly when you go to times before that you get relatively bizarre stuff like Dutch merchants selling cannons to Spain that would predictably be used against the Dutch (who the Spanish viewed as rebels and fought against for decades).

Almost every concept of how we define war, peace, citizenship, and authority in modern Western civilization is in some way a creation of the era from around 1550 to 1800. Virtually no institutions exist intact from before that era, and virtually no institution that exists today existed in anything like a recognizable form before that time.

And Japan basically just skipped that entire time period, which helps explain why they interface so strangely with the rest of the developed world, and interacted even more strangely in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they'd been a basically feudal society living without industrial technology well within living memory.

It's an interesting example of how weird interactions in fiction with alien beings might be, purely because of the culture shock of encountering people who do things differently for reasons that make perfect sense to their own internal logic, but become stupid or weird in the context of a different situation.

[Guardsman Bass]

Japan's Total Fertility Rate has apparently been going upwards since 2005. Between that and all the young people in Japan moving to and concentrating in the Tokyo Metro Area, it might be enough so that they don't suffer too much economically from a major percentage drop in the overall population over the next couple of decades (assuming no significant increases in immigration). Of course, Japan would essentially be a collection of city-states with a countryside emptied of anything except farm robots after that.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem isn't just the aging population, it's the greying population. Japanese workers already tend to work insane hours, so if their population of infirm dependents gets much larger relative to their population of productive citizens, they're screwed. Either they wind up having to import five or ten million guest workers (which so far they've been reluctant to do), or they wind up having to sacrifice important sectors of their economy to free up manpower to take care of all the retirees born in 1950 or 1960 before the birth rate collapsed.

And total fertility rate going from 1.3 to 1.4 children per woman isn't going to fix that any time soon, because every Japanese person who's going to be joining the labor force between now and 2035 has already been born- and there aren't enough of them to offset all the Japanese people born between 1950 and 1965 or so, who are going to be retiring.

[K. A. Pital]

Meanwhile 600,000 Japanese were captured by the Soviets, and about 100 actual people ever came back. We still aren't sure just how Russia worked them to death.

Is that what they teach in your schools? 1 070 000 were taken prisoner by the USSR and 730 000 were repatriated (probably including the exile from Sakhalin - if excluded, the numbers would be around 650k POWs, of which ca. 10% died in captivity or otherwise went missing, and ca. 540k returned). "100 people"?

The German POWs had it worse, compared to the Japanese ones, but even they weren't wiped out in the manner you claim.

Often I've felt that the formal Soviet proposal to simply shoot the 10,000 top Nazi party officials and left everyone else go would have been more just, and just less stupid.

The Khabarovsk trials were at least a form of judgement. The complete escape of Unit 731 war criminals from punishment due to "usefulness" for the US was something else entirely.

[NecronLord]

The Khabarovsk trials were at least a form of judgement. The complete escape of Unit 731 war criminals from punishment due to "usefulness" for the US was something else entirely.

I had never heard of these. It's pleasing to know that at least someone was punished.

And hilarious to see that the USA branded these 'communist propaganda.'

[loomer]

I think Skimmer might be mixing up the figures and thinking it was Japanese POWs who died en masse, rather than POWS held by the Japanese. Being one of those was... Not good.