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The Japanese poured pointless sweat & blood into WW2. So much it destroyed the military dictatorship and turned the country practically pacifist for a few decad

The Japanese poured pointless sweat & blood into WW2. So much it destroyed the military dictatorship and turned the country practically pacifist for a few decades. Sometimes losing a war is actually winning. That's the positive message about WW2: it cured the losers of glorifying war. Maybe Afghanistan can do the same?

AYBABTME 5y ago
I'm not a pacifist in this manner, I think the current state of the world doesn't allow for NATO and aligned democratic countries to give up on military supremacy. Still, I'm perplexed and annoyed about Afghanistan.
capableweb 5y ago
> it cured the losers of glorifying war. Maybe Afghanistan can do the same? Afghanistan hasn't glorified any wars. Did you forget that the US invaded Afghanistan, not the other way around?
- wbl 5y ago
  Generally those who leave with refugees clinging desperately to their aircraft are the losers.
  - hobs 5y ago
    You can certainly argue the afghani's won against both the russians and the united states tactically, that being said you wouldn't argue that afghanistan is doing better than russia or the united states as a consequence of "winning" said wars.
- jointpdf 5y ago
  I think you may have misinterpreted this (subtle) comment. They likely meant to imply that the US lost the war (context: in the US, “Afghanistan” and “Vietnam” are essentially synonymous with the wars in those countries, sadly).
- jollybean 5y ago
  "Afghanistan hasn't glorified any wars" ? They glorify their wars, particularly suicide bombers, often children, often coerced into the act, who helped them to victory. Among other things.
spijdar 5y ago
> So much it destroyed the military dictatorship and turned the country practically pacifist for a few decades. So I'm not really familiar with the intricacies of, well, any period of Japanese history, but my understanding was that the US military kept a very strong presence in Japan for many years after the allied victory, and both directly and indirectly had its fingers in Japanese politics. I'm eager to hear the take of someone more familiar with the history. I know the US forced Japan to abandon/greatly downsize its military after the victory (not unusual) but due to the Korean War had to accelerate a plan to protect Japan, which ultimately resulted in the "Japanese Self-Defense Forces", that seems like it could be as much a result of pacifism as internal politics and US pressure against creating anything resembling an army.
- livueta 5y ago
  There's a fairly common argument that Germany and Japan are actually quite unlike in this regard; that Germany truly confronted its history of militarism and came out the other side a more mature polity, while Japan's percieved pacifism is actually closer to some kind of trauma-amnesia where the same lessons haven't really been learned. Part of that is explicitly historical: look at the rapid rehabilitation of arch-conservatives in American efforts to confront the USSR in Asia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course Japan never had a real Nuremburg moment, essentially. The "national psyche" side of things is fuzzier. I don't really trust myself to write on it, so have another ref. Sorry this reference is an archived version of a now-offline blog reposting an out-of-print newspaper's literary analysis of an obscure TV show (familiarity not required), but it's what comes to mind when I try to recall English-lang sources on this sort of thing: https://web.archive.org/web/20210820145247/https://sittingonanatomicbomb.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/the-true-brilliance-of-paranoia-agent-and-why-its-all-about-the-bomb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210820145247/https://sittingon...
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    Right, Japan is still sooo unable to admit to what it did that even today, it's happy to initiate trade wars with Korea over refusing to recognize and pay reparations to the victims of their war crimes. And it would really benefit from a strong and friendly relationship with Korea. It's really weird, childish and baffling. edit: aikinai is entirely correct that Japan did apologize, and made compensation in a treaty, and that it isn't as black or white as my comment above made it sound. In fact, my comment wasn't very good or useful. Still the situation between the two countries baffles me, and I don't understand why recent PMs continue to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, and maintain such an ambivalent stance... anyhow, an unfortunate situation.

AYBABTME 5y ago

I'm not a pacifist in this manner, I think the current state of the world doesn't allow for NATO and aligned democratic countries to give up on military supremacy. Still, I'm perplexed and annoyed about Afghanistan.

capableweb 5y ago

> it cured the losers of glorifying war. Maybe Afghanistan can do the same? Afghanistan hasn't glorified any wars. Did you forget that the US invaded Afghanistan, not the other way around?

wbl 5y ago
Generally those who leave with refugees clinging desperately to their aircraft are the losers.
- hobs 5y ago
  You can certainly argue the afghani's won against both the russians and the united states tactically, that being said you wouldn't argue that afghanistan is doing better than russia or the united states as a consequence of "winning" said wars.
jointpdf 5y ago
I think you may have misinterpreted this (subtle) comment. They likely meant to imply that the US lost the war (context: in the US, “Afghanistan” and “Vietnam” are essentially synonymous with the wars in those countries, sadly).
jollybean 5y ago
"Afghanistan hasn't glorified any wars" ? They glorify their wars, particularly suicide bombers, often children, often coerced into the act, who helped them to victory. Among other things.

spijdar 5y ago

> So much it destroyed the military dictatorship and turned the country practically pacifist for a few decades. So I'm not really familiar with the intricacies of, well, any period of Japanese history, but my understanding was that the US military kept a very strong presence in Japan for many years after the allied victory, and both directly and indirectly had its fingers in Japanese politics. I'm eager to hear the take of someone more familiar with the history. I know the US forced Japan to abandon/greatly downsize its military after the victory (not unusual) but due to the Korean War had to accelerate a plan to protect Japan, which ultimately resulted in the "Japanese Self-Defense Forces", that seems like it could be as much a result of pacifism as internal politics and US pressure against creating anything resembling an army.

livueta 5y ago
There's a fairly common argument that Germany and Japan are actually quite unlike in this regard; that Germany truly confronted its history of militarism and came out the other side a more mature polity, while Japan's percieved pacifism is actually closer to some kind of trauma-amnesia where the same lessons haven't really been learned. Part of that is explicitly historical: look at the rapid rehabilitation of arch-conservatives in American efforts to confront the USSR in Asia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course Japan never had a real Nuremburg moment, essentially. The "national psyche" side of things is fuzzier. I don't really trust myself to write on it, so have another ref. Sorry this reference is an archived version of a now-offline blog reposting an out-of-print newspaper's literary analysis of an obscure TV show (familiarity not required), but it's what comes to mind when I try to recall English-lang sources on this sort of thing: https://web.archive.org/web/20210820145247/https://sittingonanatomicbomb.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/the-true-brilliance-of-paranoia-agent-and-why-its-all-about-the-bomb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210820145247/https://sittingon...
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  Right, Japan is still sooo unable to admit to what it did that even today, it's happy to initiate trade wars with Korea over refusing to recognize and pay reparations to the victims of their war crimes. And it would really benefit from a strong and friendly relationship with Korea. It's really weird, childish and baffling. edit: aikinai is entirely correct that Japan did apologize, and made compensation in a treaty, and that it isn't as black or white as my comment above made it sound. In fact, my comment wasn't very good or useful. Still the situation between the two countries baffles me, and I don't understand why recent PMs continue to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, and maintain such an ambivalent stance... anyhow, an unfortunate situation.