China Megathread - Their navy can be taken seriously or taken littorally

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > China Megathread - Their navy can be taken seriously or taken littorally

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Barto: Dec 27, 2004

VideoTapir posted:

Japan isn't one person.

Germany was worse to its neighbors than Japan was, but doesn't suffer nearly the same lingering resentment, because they made it taboo to pretend that they did nothing wrong. They ran the offenders out of office and never let the worst ones back. They made it illegal to openly celebrate that part of their past. Japan did not. (Or the occupation did not, however you want to look at it.) They've got rallies of morons almost every day that would make international headlines if they happened in Germany.

So a government or specific parties in Japan can apologize until they're blue in the face but there will always be someone else undoing that apology, or some nationalist rear end to kiss in a way that gives the finger to the mainland.

Actually all the nazi officials from WWII slipt back into power quite easily after the war- that led to a huge crisis of conscience for Germany's young people in the 60's/70's didn't it? (And still the ex-nazis remained)

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:45

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# ? May 21, 2024 19:58

Suntory BOSS: Apr 17, 2006

Without disputing that the Japanese government certainly could (and probably should) offer more explicit apologies, Japan-bashing is far too politically lucrative for ROK/PRC politicians to ignore. No expression of regret will ever be good enough; even the most elaborate apology will be met with accusations of "obviously they didn't mean it because they are still trying to steal our beautiful territory of Dokdo/Diayou". There is no magical combination of words that Japan can say that would make Chinese/Korean animosity suddenly evaporate.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:46

NaanViolence: Mar 1, 2010; by Nyc_Tattoo

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

US supported Pol Pot directly as well.

Certain right-wing elements did, but mostly in small ways. China was a direct and open ally of the Khmer Rouge, trading guns for food that should have gone into the mouths of starving Cambodians. In any case this is a red herring at best, and support for my argument at worst: every country has done terrible things that they haven't apologized for.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:47

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

Japan's got war records, make a laundry list of all the horrible poo poo they did that was not "normal war" stuff. Apologize specifically for it.

Here is the problem - Unlike Germany, Japan doesn't have records.

They didn't keep them in the detail that Germany did and everything that they did keep was burnt in the two weeks or so between the announcement of Japan's surrender by the Emperor and when allied troops began to occupy Japan.

Basically the only records of Japan's crimes are from the victim's word of mouth and well as sad as it is, it just doesn't cut it in courts of law that determine reparation payments and whatnot. This is why the Japanese government only issues blanket statements of apology and doesn't get into the gritty details and prefers instead to give economic aid as a form of war reparation instead of creating specific funds for event X, Y, and Z.

And finally - and this is controversial and I'm sure people are going to get mad about what I'm going to say here - The PRC and KMT governments have never shied from straight up making poo poo up about Japanese war crimes in their wartime and post war propaganda. Making them out to be many times worse than they actually were. Unfortunately, a few extreme right wingers in Japan interpret Chinese lies about Japanese war crimes as evidence that they never happened at all. Which is sad because those people get all the media attention in China when the vast majority of Japanese society has already taken and continues to take responsibility for the crimes in question.

PrezCamachoo fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:48

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

Suntory BOSS posted:

Without disputing that the Japanese government certainly could (and probably should) offer more explicit apologies, Japan-bashing is far too politically lucrative for ROK/PRC politicians to ignore. No expression of regret will ever be good enough; even the most elaborate apology will be met with accusations of "obviously they didn't mean it because they are still trying to steal our beautiful territory of Dokdo/Diayou". There is no magical combination of words that Japan can say that would make Chinese/Korean animosity suddenly evaporate.

Let's just face it all this is just the usual passive aggressive Asian cultural stuff that happens whenever every country in that region has problems with each other over something. Japan doesn't want to lose face over history. China doesn't want to back down. So it'll be a historical impasse for a long time with plenty of doublespeak thrown in.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:50

NaanViolence: Mar 1, 2010; by Nyc_Tattoo

PrezCamachoo posted:

And finally - and this is controversial and I'm sure people are going to get mad about what I'm going to say here - The PRC and KMT governments have never shied from straight up making poo poo up about Japanese war crimes in their wartime and post war propaganda. Making them out to be many times worse than they actually were. Unfortunately, a few extreme right wingers in Japan interpret Chinese lies about Japanese war crimes as evidence that they never happened at all. Which is sad because those people get all the media attention in China when the vast majority of Japanese society has already taken responsibility for the crimes in question.

This is pretty accurate. I wonder how many of the people bashing Japan in this thread have actually, you know, been to Japan and asked the average person about it? They are generally pacifists these days. One woman cried as she told me that her government gave some small help to the United States' war effort in the Middle East.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:52

NewtGoongrich: Jan 21, 2012; I am a shit stain on the face of humanity, I have no compassion, only hatred, bile and lust.

PROUD SHIT STAIN

VideoTapir posted:

Japan isn't one person.

Germany was worse to its neighbors than Japan was, but doesn't suffer nearly the same lingering resentment, because they made it taboo to pretend that they did nothing wrong. They ran the offenders out of office and never let the worst ones back. They made it illegal to openly celebrate that part of their past. Japan did not. (Or the occupation did not, however you want to look at it.) They've got rallies of morons almost every day that would make international headlines if they happened in Germany.

You might want to double check both of these points. Saying either Germany or Japan was better to its neighbours than the other is ridiculous. Japan killed well over 20 million Chinese alone.

To the second point, these rallies of crazies in Japan get international news headlines in areas that were impacted by the Japanese occupation. Conversely, not many people in China would be too excited by headline news about some Neo-Nazi idiots visiting the site of Spandau prison.

PrezCamachoo posted:

And finally - and this is controversial and I'm sure people are going to get mad about what I'm going to say here - The PRC and KMT governments have never shied from straight up making poo poo up about Japanese war crimes in their wartime and post war propaganda. Making them out to be many times worse than they actually were. Unfortunately, a few extreme right wingers in Japan interpret Chinese lies about Japanese war crimes as evidence that they never happened at all. Which is sad because those people get all the media attention in China when the vast majority of Japanese society has already taken and continues to take responsibility for the crimes in question.

No one doubts that the Japanese occupation killed at least 20 million Chinese civilians. Take your genocide apologetics elsewhere. :fuckoff:

NewtGoongrich fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:52

GuestBob: Nov 27, 2005

Warcabbit posted:

Do they tell the story of the Flying Tigers in Chinese schools?

Yes they do.

Here's something I remembered the other day. There is a touring display of the work of a major Chinese artist - its has been doing the rounds of the museums and is out west just now. There are a whole bunch of sugary canvases showing old people, young children and women reading letters from soldiers. In the middle of all of this sentimental crap there is a massive painting (about 16 feet square) of the rape of Nanjing: twisted corpses seeping blood, grinning Japanese officers, the works. It didn't click at the time, but the incongruity of this is extraordinary.

GuestBob fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:55

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

PrezCamachoo posted:

And finally - and this is controversial and I'm sure people are going to get mad about what I'm going to say here - The PRC and KMT governments have never shied from straight up making poo poo up about Japanese war crimes in their wartime and post war propaganda. Making them out to be many times worse than they actually were.

Such as...?

Here we go folks. :allears:

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:55

shrike82: Jun 11, 2005

It's funny but I get the impression that the China goons and the Japan goons are defending their respective resident countries.

It's 2 orthogonal issues to me -
1) Japan did a lot of terrible poo poo in WW2 which it still has a moral obligation to apologize and to educate its population. China baiters like Ishihara aren't helping.
2) China likes to pull poo poo like the Diaoyu islands up whenever they want to distract their citizens from poo poo going on at home. Notice how most of those currently rioting against the Japanese are young and unemployed? poo poo, they'd probably have to go back to their grandparents' generation to have anyone directly involved in the war.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 02:59

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Longanimitas posted:

This is pretty accurate. I wonder how many of the people bashing Japan in this thread have actually, you know, been to Japan and asked the average person about it? They are generally pacifists these days. One woman cried as she told me that her government gave some small help to the United States' war effort in the Middle East.

Well I can guarantee that no one in this thread has ever read a Japanese textbook. Pick any, even the one or two that China and Korea go apeshit over (that no schools even use), and you'll immediately see that they are loaded with anti-militarism and how war is the absolutely worse thing ever and only leads to nuclear bombs and how Japan is so perfectly pacifist with the anti-war constitution and all that.

They even manage to throw in random tear-jerking antiwar messages and stories into every single one of their English textbooks too.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:02

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Ha where did the new thread title come from?

Equivalency arguments mean nothing. China did bad things A B and C, Japan did bad things X Y and Z. This isn't an argument about moral superiority and I don't know how it became one. Seriously cut it out with the arguments from equivalency.

I have a feeling that 1,000 ship fleet report was a mistake considering that we've heard nothing about it in the following day. Anyone have any information?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:05

Jerry Manderbilt: May 31, 2012; No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.

PrezCamachoo posted:

Well I can guarantee that no one in this thread has ever read a Japanese textbook. Pick any, even the one or two that China and Korea go apeshit over (that no schools even use), and you'll immediately see that they are loaded with anti-militarism and how war is the absolutely worse thing ever and only leads to nuclear bombs and how Japan is so perfectly pacifist with the anti-war constitution and all that.

They even manage to throw in random tear-jerking antiwar messages and stories into every single one of their English textbooks too.

I'll drop this passage from John Nathan's Japan Unbound, in which he talked with people involved in the writing of the New History textbooks which sparked protests in China and South Korea, and I read a translation of the New History's WWII section for a university research project.

quote:

On the day following the appearance of Oe's article, I met one of the five members of the Tokyo board. Kunio Yonenaga[...]"First of all, we chose the New History for special schools because those were the only schools we control," he opened. "If we had the authority we would have put it in all of Tokyo's middle schools because it's the best of the eight."
I asked him what he meant.
"Are you a Christian?"
[...]
"To me, the New History is like the Bible.[...]Our children have been taught they mustn't love our flag, our rising sun. They are taught to think of themselves as the grandchildren of the devil. What good can that do us? And is that an objective account of history? I don't think it is."
[...]
In its first two months on the market, the New History was among the ten best-selling titles in Japan, and it had sold 720,000 copies as of February 2002, a figure that cannot be explained away as a function of mere curiosity inflamed by the controversy.
More significant, all but one of the seven textbooks in circulation since 1997 had muted their own accounts of the war in the revised editions they submitted to the Education Ministry for approval in advance of the August 2001 school board meetings. Two editions had substituted "comfort facilities" for "comfort women," one had removed the phrase "attached to the military," one had reported that "many Korean women were sent to the front" without explaining for what purpose, and the remaining three had deleted their accounts entirely. Descriptions of Japanese military atrocities were similarly tempered or, in some cases, deleted. Four of the seven texts removed any reference to Japan's use of poison gas in China and to the notorious Unit 731[...] Accounts of the Nanking Massacre were maintained, but in five of the six editions the estimated number of victims was deleted.
When the figures were released in September, they confirmed the trend that Yonenaga and members of the society had predicted: the "least masochistic text," published by Tokyo Shoseki, had jumped from 40,4 percent to a majority share of 51.2 percent. Appraised of having taken "a neutral position," Tokyo Shoseki had deleted references to comfort women and revised "200,000 Chinese, including women and children" to read "a large number of Chinese, including women and children." On the other hand, the text published by Nihon Shoseki, the only publisher that had sharpened its emphasis on Japan as an aggressor, adding even more vivid accounts of Japanese military atrocities, dropped from 14 percent to 5 percent of the total. The Nippon Bunkyo edition, which retained drawings of Japanese soldiers beating prisoners and torturing Chinese women, dropped to last place from 3.3 percent to 2.3 percent. "These figures are reassuring," Nobukatsu Fujioka told me. "They are evidence that more and more people share our opposition to instilling self-hatred in our children."

Your precious loving Glorious Nippon certainly doesn't make it any harder for the Chinese and Koreans to claim that the Japanese government is insincere with its apologies when they pour salt over old wounds with poo poo like this, Yasukuni, respected shitheads like Yoshinori Kobayashi claiming that comfort women and Nanjing were propaganda meant to extort reparations out of Japan, etc. How would you like it if someone killed one of your family members and spat in your face while apologizing?

Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:12

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

PrezCamachoo posted:

Well I can guarantee that no one in this thread has ever read a Japanese textbook. Pick any, even the one or two that China and Korea go apeshit over (that no schools even use), and you'll immediately see that they are loaded with anti-militarism and how war is the absolutely worse thing ever and only leads to nuclear bombs and how Japan is so perfectly pacifist with the anti-war constitution and all that.

They even manage to throw in random tear-jerking antiwar messages and stories into every single one of their English textbooks too.

Please answer the question PrezCmachoo

Which part of Japan's WW2 history do you believe is fabricated by the KMT and CCP politicians?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:15

Wibbleman: Apr 19, 2006; Fluffy doesn't want to be sacrificed

(quick edit) this is in response to stuff further up the page, sourcing things takes time.

Except Japan has made sincere apologies and have been rebuffed at pretty much every point. China waved the right for reparations (Note 1), but Japan still provided huge amounts of soft loans and technology transfers (through the Japanese ODA department (Note 2)).

The steps that seem to keep on being demanded are outright impossible due to the Japanese constitution which basically bans the government intervening in religious issues (article 20 & SCAPIN 448 (note 3)). So they can't do poo poo about the Yasukuni shrine which is run by right wing shitheads who are pretty much reviled in the general population, and also to the point that the Emperor refuses to visit the shine because of the enshrinement of the Class A war criminals, (remember it is a shrine to commemorate those who have died defending the Emperor). Some Japanese politicians will continue to be shitheads, and some japanese people will also be shitheads, but thats not unique to japan and hardly seems justified to drat the whole population as a whole.

Note 1 - Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/joint72.html

Note 2
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FB12Ad07.html
Japan's ODA to China: An analysis of Chinese attitudes towards Japan
http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/14543
ODA Disbursements to China
https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/data/01ap_ea01.html

Note 3
SCAPIN 448 contents (links to PDF)
(wrong url)http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/jjrs/pdf/CRJ-193.pdf(wrong url)

Sorry above link is not SCAPIN 448, its very hard to find. easy url is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto_Directive Hate to use wiki, but the real stuff is quite hard to find at times. Leaving in incorrect link to avoid looking like editing out stuff that doesn't support my statements.

Wibbleman fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:18

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Modus Operandi posted:

Such as...?

Here we go folks.

Pick any serious historical study of the massacre and it will cover the details. Especially interesting are the historical studies of the evolving perception of the massacre rather than the massacre itself.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:19

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

PrezCamachoo posted:

Pick any serious historical study of the massacre and it will cover the details. Especially interesting are the historical studies of the evolving perception of the massacre rather than the massacre itself.

Which historical studies or websites are you referring to which specifically say that the CCP and KMT are "making poo poo up" as you put it?

Provide links please.

Also, what possible reason would two different political parties from two very different countries have in maintaining the same conspiracy to lie about Japan's WW2 atrocities. What about Korea are they in on this conspiracy too?

Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:20

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

BRShooter posted:

I'll drop this passage from John Nathan's Japan Unbound, in which he talked with people involved in the writing of the New History textbooks which sparked protests in China and South Korea, and I read a translation of the New History's WWII section for a university research project.

Your precious loving Glorious Nippon certainly doesn't make it any harder for the Chinese and Koreans to claim that the Japanese government is insincere with its apologies when they pour salt over old wounds with poo poo like this, Yasukuni, respected shitheads like Yoshinori Kobayashi claiming that comfort women and Nanjing were propaganda meant to extort reparations out of Japan, etc. How would you like it if someone killed one of your family members and spat in your face while apologizing?

So you read one very small translated section of a history textbook covering thousands of years of world history that was used in a grand total of less than 10 of Japan's 5,000+ schools?

Have you ever read a Japanese government textbook? An ethics textbook? Modern society textbook? An English textbook?

Read those books and combine them all together in the context of the overall curriculum in Japanese schools and come back here and say with a straight face that Japan whitewashes its responsibility for the war.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:26

NewtGoongrich: Jan 21, 2012; I am a shit stain on the face of humanity, I have no compassion, only hatred, bile and lust.

PROUD SHIT STAIN

PrezCamachoo posted:

So you read one very small translated section of a history textbook covering thousands of years of world history that was used in a grand total of less than 10 of Japan's 5,000+ schools?

Have you ever read a Japanese government textbook? An ethics textbook? Modern society textbook? An English textbook?

Read those books and combine them all together in the context of the overall curriculum in Japanese schools and come back here and say with a straight face that Japan whitewashes its responsibility for the war.

What historical facts did the KMT and the CCP make up PrezCamchoo. Answer the question.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:31

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

PrezCamachoo posted:

Read those books and combine them all together in the context of the overall curriculum in Japanese schools and come back here and say with a straight face that Japan whitewashes its responsibility for the war.

Why would Japan need to whitewash anything when it was obviously all lies written by the Chinamen and their Hangook co-conspirators to defame glorious Nippon?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:33

Jeek: Feb 15, 2012

Dammit you guys are more passionate arguing WWII issues than actual Chinese on actual Chinese boards.

To get onto another topic, I am quite surprised that September 18 didn't turn out to be a riot fest. Credit for efficient governmental suppression, I suppose?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:39

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Modus Operandi posted:

Which historical studies or websites are you referring to which specifically say that the CCP and KMT are "making poo poo up" as you put it?

Provide links please.

Also, what possible reason would two different political parties from two very different countries have in maintaining the same conspiracy to lie about Japan's WW2 atrocities. What about Korea are they in on this conspiracy too?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Rape-Nanking-Weatherhead/dp/0195180968

The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.)

A good start.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:41

chird: Sep 26, 2004

I'm in China and I agree it is being used as a distraction by both countries, and most people on the forum think its silly to be arguing over some 'rocks'. But who do you actually think it should belong to? International law seems to suggest Japan. But here is the Chinese/Taiwan claim to the islands, also sounds logical when not being yelled by a car-burning loony, right? Where's the rub?

China Daily posted:

Before the middle of the 19th century, various maps published in Japan used the same color to mark China and the Diaoyu Islands.

At the same time, related documents and maps of Britain, France, United States and Spain also showed the Diaoyu Islands belonging to China.

One noticeable example is a map made by the British Navy in 1877 - China East Coast: Hong Kong to Gulf of Liau-Tung, which marked the Diaoyu Islands as subsidiary islands of Taiwan Island, and separated them from the islands of Japan. Thereafter this map was used as reference for the signing of Treaty of Shimonoseki.

In January 1895, three months before the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed between Japan and China, after the latter was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan illegally took over the Diaoyu Islands and included them in its Okinawa Prefecture. It cannot be denied that the Diaoyu Islands were ceded to Japan as subsidiary islands of Taiwan in 1895 after the Treaty was signed.

However, in December 1943, leaders of the United States, Britain and China signed the Cairo Declaration, declaring that all the territories that Japan had seized from China should be returned. The Potsdam Proclamation signed by China, the United States and Britain in July 1945 (later adhered to by the Soviet Union) stipulated that: "The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out".

In August 1945, Japan accepted the Potsdam Proclamation and surrendered unconditionally, which means both documents came into effect.

After World War II ended, China took back its territories stolen by Japan, including Taiwan Island and its subsidiary islands. Therefore as part of the Taiwan Islands, the Diaoyu Islands were returned to China under international law.
However, in September 1951, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with the US and other allied powers, and single-handedly surrendered the Diaoyu Islands, along with Okinawa, to the administration of Washington.

In response, Zhou Enlai, the then premier and foreign minister of China, sternly declared that a San Francisco treaty signed without the People's Republic of China's participation is unlawful and illegitimate.

In June 1971, Washington and Tokyo signed the "Okinawa Reversion Agreement", parceling up the "administrative rights" of Diaoyu Islands to Japan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry in response issued a statement in December later that year, which said "the agreement is a blatant infringement on China's territorial sovereignty that is intolerable for the Chinese people. The US and Japan list China's Diaoyu and other islands into the agreement's 'reversion area' is completely unlawful. It cannot change the People's Republic of China's sovereignty right on those islands." link

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:44

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

PrezCamachoo posted:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Rape-Nanking-Weatherhead/dp/0195180968

The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.)

A good start.

Haha are you serious? That book has 5 reviews 2 of which call it out on being historical revisionism. I can't even find the author of that book referenced in any other scholarly study.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:47

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Arglebargle III posted:

I have a feeling that 1,000 ship fleet report was a mistake considering that we've heard nothing about it in the following day. Anyone have any information?

Yes, I'm still wondering exactly how smug I should be! (My guess? Very)

chird posted:

I'm in China and I agree it is being used as a distraction by both countries, and most people on the forum think its silly to be arguing over some 'rocks'. But who do you actually think it should belong to? International law seems to suggest Japan. But here is the Chinese/Taiwan claim to the islands, also sounds logical when not being yelled by a car-burning loony, right? Where's the rub?

The rub is that international convention in these matters tends to be a matter of finders, keepers; losers weepers. Much as (IMHO) I feel that China has a point about the unfairness of the situation forced upon it, which I think is mostly a result of the San Francisco treaty being negotiated in its, and Korea's absence, the pro-Japan argument is that Japan has administered the island for over 100 years at this point, and the precedent in such cases is usually to say, you've owned it for long enough, it's yours.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Sep 19, 2012

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:47

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

NewtGoongrich posted:

What historical facts did the KMT and the CCP make up PrezCamchoo. Answer the question.

The number of dead as well as forging of photos and other documentation. Read any serious historical book about the subject.

Also to make it clear here - I'm not saying that the massacre didn't happen. Only that the KMT and succeeding communist government had no problem with taking a horrible event and then blowing it up to make it even more horrible for the purposes of propaganda.

I'm not defending the Japanese right wing either - they make some serious distortions themselves and seem to think that Chinese making things up for propaganda effects = the entire thing didn't happen and is a massive conspiracy.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:55

VideoTapir: Oct 18, 2005; He'll tire eventually.

PrezCamachoo posted:

The number of dead as well as forging of photos and other documentation. Read any serious historical book about the subject.

Name one.

"Read any..." is like Glenn Beck saying "look at history." If you've done what you are admonishing others to do you should be able to name one, or at least come up with enough information to find one of the ones you have in mind. This isn't to say you're necessarily wrong, but this kind of response is some serious bullshit.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 03:59

NewtGoongrich: Jan 21, 2012; I am a shit stain on the face of humanity, I have no compassion, only hatred, bile and lust.

PROUD SHIT STAIN

PrezCamachoo posted:

The number of dead as well as forging of photos and other documentation. Read any serious historical book about the subject.

Also to make it clear here - I'm not saying that the massacre didn't happen. Only that the KMT and succeeding communist government had no problem with taking a horrible event and then blowing it up to make it even more horrible for the purposes of propaganda.

I'm not defending the Japanese right wing either - they make some serious distortions themselves and seem to think that Chinese making things up for propaganda effects = the entire thing didn't happen and is a massive conspiracy.

I eagerly await a thread on the Holocaust where you cite books by Ernst Zundel as "serious historical books" on the subject. Anyway, I'm sure you think the Japanese were "real victims" in WW2.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:00

Starks: Sep 24, 2006

chird posted:

I'm in China and I agree it is being used as a distraction by both countries, and most people on the forum think its silly to be arguing over some 'rocks'. But who do you actually think it should belong to? International law seems to suggest Japan. But here is the Chinese/Taiwan claim to the islands, also sounds logical when not being yelled by a car-burning loony, right? Where's the rub?

The Cairo Document explicitly says that the Japanese only had to give back the islands acquired since 1914 - the quote in your post states that they were ceded to Japan in 1895, well before then. It was really easy to find this which makes me kind of raise my eyebrows at whoever wrote up that article.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:01

PrezCamachoo: Jan 21, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

VideoTapir posted:

Name one.

"Read any..." is like Glenn Beck saying "look at history." If you've done what you are admonishing others to do you should be able to name one, or at least come up with enough information to find one of the ones you have in mind. This isn't to say you're necessarily wrong, but this kind of response is some serious bullshit.

Okay I'll name a few

I already mentioned The Making of the "Rape of Nanking" by Yoshida

But you can add

The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography by Joshua Fogel

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:11

Warcabbit: Apr 26, 2008; Wedge Regret

BRShooter posted:

I'll drop this passage from John Nathan's Japan Unbound, in which he talked with people involved in the writing of the New History textbooks which sparked protests in China and South Korea, and I read a translation of the New History's WWII section for a university research project.

I believe this is part of what I was referring to when I mentioned that they do not admit the events of WWII to themselves, yes.

I admit, I have seen them only in translation. But I do believe the anti-war message is written into the books. Combined, sadly, with a 'war is awesome' message.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:15

Pro-PRC Laowai: Sep 30, 2004; by toby

Starks posted:

The Cairo Document explicitly says that the Japanese only had to give back the islands acquired since 1914 - the quote in your post states that they were ceded to Japan in 1895, well before then. It was really easy to find this which makes me kind of raise my eyebrows at whoever wrote up that article.

"and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be resotred to the Republic of China."

Whoops, seeing as it was ruled in 1931 that the islands were under Taiwan Prefecture administration and they were territories that Japan stole from China, that kinda blows that out of the water dunnit?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:16

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

As a complete anecdote, I used to teach Chinese students at my university and several wrote papers about the Rape of Nanking. Every single one of them had a ridiculous number for the victims--my favorite was the one that said Japan killed five billion Chinese people in WW2. I assumed she just didn't know what billion meant but the most I was able to talk her down to was two hundred million. The lowest number I was able to ever get anyone down to for the massacre itself was two million people.

I assume they must be getting that from school but I don't know. Korea exaggerates Japanese crimes against them, I wouldn't be surprised if China does too. I think it cheapens them--Japan did legitimately do massive amounts of awful poo poo and killed millions of people, there's no reason to lie about it to try to make it look worse. All it does is make the victims look dishonest.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:20

Throatwarbler: Nov 17, 2008; by vyelkin

Grand Fromage posted:

As a complete anecdote, I used to teach Chinese students at my university and several wrote papers about the Rape of Nanking. Every single one of them had a ridiculous number for the victims--my favorite was the one that said Japan killed five billion Chinese people in WW2. I assumed she just didn't know what billion meant but the most I was able to talk her down to was two hundred million. The lowest number I was able to ever get anyone down to for the massacre itself was two million people.

I assume they must be getting that from school but I don't know. Korea exaggerates Japanese crimes against them, I wouldn't be surprised if China does too. I think it cheapens them--Japan did legitimately do massive amounts of awful poo poo and killed millions of people, there's no reason to lie about it to try to make it look worse. All it does is make the victims look dishonest.

How about this theory: Ordinary people just don't know a whole lot about history and sometimes say incorrect things without the need for a big government conspiracy? I bet there are Americans who had quaint ideas about certain facts from the history of the United States too?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:24

Pro-PRC Laowai: Sep 30, 2004; by toby

Grand Fromage posted:

As a complete anecdote, I used to teach Chinese students at my university and several wrote papers about the Rape of Nanking. Every single one of them had a ridiculous number for the victims--my favorite was the one that said Japan killed five billion Chinese people in WW2. I assumed she just didn't know what billion meant but the most I was able to talk her down to was two hundred million. The lowest number I was able to ever get anyone down to for the massacre itself was two million people.

I assume they must be getting that from school but I don't know. Korea exaggerates Japanese crimes against them, I wouldn't be surprised if China does too. I think it cheapens them--Japan did legitimately do massive amounts of awful poo poo and killed millions of people, there's no reason to lie about it to try to make it look worse. All it does is make the victims look dishonest.

I have a better theory - lazy students.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:29

Radbot: Aug 12, 2009; Can't post for 3 years!

Throatwarbler posted:

How about this theory: Ordinary people just don't know a whole lot about history and sometimes say incorrect things without the need for a big government conspiracy? I bet there are Americans who had quaint ideas about certain facts from the history of the United States too?

All of the countries involved have been implicated in documented cases of making historical events look better/worse than they actually were, in textbooks and the like. I don't think the poster was insistent about a government conspiracy, just relating personal experience to documented history - are you projecting a bit?

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:29

GuestBob: Nov 27, 2005

Throatwarbler posted:

How about this theory: ordinary people just don't know a whole lot about history and sometimes say incorrect things without the need for a big government conspiracy?

In a state like China, the purpose of history in high school is to make the next generation more nationalistic and ensure that they have the necessary "buttons" which can be pushed should a little public hysteria be needed.

Most of this is acheived through a mixture of self censorship and laziness on the part of the people writing the textbooks. The practice of history in China is not the same as the practice of history in the west: from aims to outcomes it concerns itself with different issues.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:36

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Modus Operandi posted:

Haha are you serious? That book has 5 reviews 2 of which call it out on being historical revisionism. I can't even find the author of that book referenced in any other scholarly study.

And one of the other reviews note that they missed the point of the book, which was to look at how Nanking has been remembered in the public mind. In any case, here is the author:

http://www.wmich.edu/history/directory/faculty-profiles/yoshida.html

An associate professor at a mid-sized American public university. Clearly, Western Michigan University is a stronghold of Japanese ultranationalism. But hey, without a copy of the book, we can't say for sure. But I did find a Google books preview of one of his essays on the Massacre:

A big ugly link.

And it appears, from the handful of pages that are presented, to take the standard opinion of the Massacre (200-300,000 deaths) as given and examine the nature of opposition to it and why it has emerged. The only thing questionable is using quotes around "comfort women", but since that's an euphemism for forced prostitution already, I really, really doubt that the guy is as much of a grade-A rear end in a top hat as you're intimating.

GuestBob posted:

In a state like China, the purpose of history in high school is to make the next generation more nationalistic and ensure that they have the necessary "buttons" which can be pushed should a little public hysteria be needed.

Most of this is acheived through a mixture of self censorship and laziness on the part of the people writing the textbooks. The practice of history in China is not the same as the practice of history in the west: from aims to outcomes it concerns itself with different issues.

Actually, this is what history education boils down to in the American school system as well- it presents a jingoistic and nationalistic view of American actions in the past, treats history as an inevitable process to deny students any sense of agency or power, and a host of other sins. There's really very little difference between the two nations on this matter.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:42

Modus Operandi: Oct 5, 2010

Grand Fromage posted:

As a complete anecdote, I used to teach Chinese students at my university and several wrote papers about the Rape of Nanking. Every single one of them had a ridiculous number for the victims--my favorite was the one that said Japan killed five billion Chinese people in WW2. I assumed she just didn't know what billion meant but the most I was able to talk her down to was two hundred million. The lowest number I was able to ever get anyone down to for the massacre itself was two million people.

I assume they must be getting that from school but I don't know. Korea exaggerates Japanese crimes against them, I wouldn't be surprised if China does too. I think it cheapens them--Japan did legitimately do massive amounts of awful poo poo and killed millions of people, there's no reason to lie about it to try to make it look worse. All it does is make the victims look dishonest.

I'm not saying you're a revisionist or anything but do you realize a similar "exact numbers" argument is used by holocaust revisionists and the whole 6 million figure right? No one claims that your average ignorant man on the street is supposed to represent the official or academic account of history either.

People would be furious if similar doubtful claims were made about the Holocaust but yet it seems like it's ok to do it with Japan and WW2. I made a reference already as to why this seems to be alright with some people because China is viewed as a rival country viewed with a lot of ambivalence. However, this sort of thing is offensive to a lot of people that have nothing to do with the CCP either.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:43

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# ? May 21, 2024 19:58

BrotherAdso: May 22, 2008; stat rosa pristina nomine
nomina nuda tenemus

PrezCamachoo posted:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Rape-Nanking-Weatherhead/dp/0195180968

The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.)

A good start.

I have actually read this book (or some of the scholarly reviews of it?), in grad school so back in 2007-8. It's a serious and thoughtful work of history but it is about a specific topic in the modern discipline, that is, the study of historical memory and cultural consciousness.

That is, the book is not about the actual Nanjing Massacre itself any more than The Holocaust Industry is about the Shoah itself. The book examines how people have shaped their memory and the public perception and symbolism of the event since it happened, which is a really neat subject in its own right.

# ? Sep 19, 2012 04:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > China Megathread - Their navy can be taken seriously or taken littorally

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