I think the other thing to keep in mind is the cultural differences in how the West vs East think about government and the individual. After living in Asia for

I think the other thing to keep in mind is the cultural differences in how the West vs East think about government and the individual. After living in Asia for a while, having political discussions with the people who live there, and exploring the differences in governance there, it’s not surprising there was indifference. You see this spectrum of though across many Asian countries from the authoritarian ones like China to the more democratic like Singapore. Unlike the West which has a history of the relationship of the individual with the government and its leadership, Asia is much more influenced by Confucianism. While people like to describe it as “what is good for the group versus what is good for the individual” I think that’s not an accurate description. It’s much more of a belief that governance happens “up there” and isn’t relevant to a commoners life. The Eastern view of government is much more hierarchical and detached from the individual than in the West. There is strong sense that any one individual is not that important overall and that governance is a realm of the upper class, with the lower class on the receiving end rather than where power originates. So for someone in Japan, the decisions during the war and the consequences thereafter are not theirs to judge or influence, only theirs to endure. There is a sense of fate and inability to change what happens, so it’s not really worth spending time thinking about.