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The second world war ended 75 years ago. There aren't that many people still alive who actually _fought directly_ in that war. Not even in notoriously long-live

• deleted 5y ago
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• derefr 5y ago
  To clarify, by "directly fighting against" I meant "there were battles in which Japanese forces actually engaged [other country]'s forces" rather than just "Japan was in one big alliance and [other country] was in an opposed big alliance." That's the specific set of countries Japan holds higher levels of lingering xenophobia toward. You're right, in that the people holding grudges today aren't likely to have directly experienced these events, but more likely are those who saw their fathers/brothers shipped to the front and never return, and so who hold a vague-but-strong grudge against whatever nebulous enemy the Japanese propaganda machine represented as being on the other side of those particular battles. (Sadly, this can be a stronger foundation for xenophobia than actually having fought an enemy corps-a-corps, as these folks have never actually been exposed to the experience of seeing enemy soldiers hurting/dying, grieving, wishing they weren't at the front, and just generally being human.)
• oblio 5y ago
  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/09/18/national/number-people-aged-90-older-tops-2-million-first-time-japan/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/09/18/national/number... You were saying? 2+ million 90 year olds in Japan. Maybe not old enough to have fought in the war, but definitely old enough to remember the bombings, for example.
  • freeopinion 5y ago
    > Those same elderly Japanese people now form the inaka's governments. Not impossible, but quite unlikely.