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Azran posted:That reminds me: in "Nothing to envy" I noticed how in numerous times the author uses the term "asian culture". I thought that term was a big no no in modern times, alongside others like the concept of biological race (instead of sociocultural) when talking about stuff like North Koreans eating rice or sleeping in the floor. Some other times she says "confucian tradition" which makes more sense I think? I am wrong? Confucian tradition is a very heavy influence on Asian culture (East Asian culture?) to themodern day. The authoritarian nature of those cultures basically derives from "Respect your elders" and all that other stuff.
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Dec 20, 2014 06:44
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Eej posted:Confucian tradition is a very heavy influence on Asian culture (East Asian culture?) to themodern day. The authoritarian nature of those cultures basically derives from "Respect your elders" and all that other stuff. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:38
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the JJ posted:Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. Interesting explanation. Thanks.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:41
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Interesting explanation. Thanks.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:44
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P-Mack posted:Yeah, both sides were a clusterfuck compared to late war US carrier operations. Japan would probably have hosed up US carriers just as bad if they had gotten their strikes out. Okay. So. Like a few pages ago someone put out an internal Japanese document diagnosing US tactics as horribly inflexible, subordinates as terrified of disobeying orders, etc. etc. So the exact opposite of what you're saying. I'm not saying that that document is right, I'm saying that it's really easy to let lazy stereotypes guide your thinking. Japanese military doctrine emphasized the individual commander's ability to make their own calls and take their own initiative. It's a little chicken and egg as far as that guiding/being guided by the other conditions of the war, but that was sort of a big deal. In fact, Japan had a problem with junior officers cliqueing together and deciding, 'hey, gently caress it, let's invade Manchuria' and everyone sort of rolling with it. Hell, when the Emperor tried to surrender someone broke into the radio station and demanded that the master recording of his speech be destroyed. People are people and culture is way more malleable than you think it is. Argh. Basically all your [National Enemies] are [Too Hidebound/Lazy and Unorganized] while true blue [Our Boys] are [Goldilocks]. And that's just a thing that happens. When you think this is a thing that only happens to [Them] but not to [Us] then, yeah, it's Orientalist as poo poo.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:47
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HEY GAL posted:dude, what he was responding to was some bullshit, as bad as the people who try to blame nazism on the 30 years' war or duerer or something Well obviously, but I'd still prefer a nice long-winded denunciation complete with footnotes.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:54
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Well obviously, but I'd still prefer a nice long-winded denunciation complete with footnotes. gently caress Jesus I sort of got around to it.  There's a War in the Pacific LP going on and I'm arguing that the Decisive Battle doctrine wasn't as stupid as it seems so I'm sort of out of gas.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:02
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So when did the US first start implementing carrier operations in a more organized manner? I have to assume by the timing that it had to be during the Guadalcanal campaign, even if they only had 1-2 carriers for most part until Nov 1943.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:19
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HEY GAL posted:dude, what he was responding to was some bullshit, as bad as the people who try to blame nazism on the 30 years' war or duerer or something are you trying to say the term "asian culture" is in fact inappropriate to use or something
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Dec 20, 2014 08:23
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Eej posted:are you trying to say the term "asian culture" is in fact inappropriate to use or something Yeah pretty much. To refer to 1940's Japan? Very much so.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:28
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Eej posted:are you trying to say the term "asian culture" is in fact inappropriate to use or something Ed: the JJ posted:Yeah pretty much. To refer to 1940's Japan? Very much so.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:29
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Well obviously, but I'd still prefer a nice long-winded denunciation complete with footnotes. I'm not really knowledgable in Asian culture so I'm not going to attack the statement's factuality but you can see how ridiculous it becomes if you switch some words due to its vagueness. quote:Christian tradition is a very heavy influence on Western culture to the modern day. The peace loving nature of those cultures basically derives from "do unto others" and all that other stuff.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:30
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the JJ posted:There's a War in the Pacific LP going on and I'm arguing that the Decisive Battle doctrine wasn't as stupid as it seems so I'm sort of out of gas. Good luck with that. I mean it. And yeah the Japanese Navy's hope for a decisive battle wasn't as stupid as it seems but it was still wildly unrealistic considering the industrial disparities between the US and Japan. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 08:31
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Raskolnikov38 posted:I'm not really knowledgable in Asian culture so I'm not going to attack the statement's factuality but you can see how ridiculous it becomes if you switch some words ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Good luck with that. I mean it. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 08:33
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the JJ posted:Yeah pretty much. To refer to 1940's Japan? Very much so. I've been reading a whole bunch of journal articles on counselling and psychotherapy taking into account east asian cultural norms (conformity, deference to authority etc) and they seem to be fine using that term all over the place.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:37
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HEY GAL posted:You know what Japanese military thinkers of the time loved, besides war crimes and exterminating the subject races? 18th century Prussia. The idea is that if you're a small nation facing one or two big ones, you move fast, gently caress them up before they can react, and then end the war. They weren't wrong about that, and in fact a quick and decisive victory at the outset of the war was probably Japan's only hope in hell against the US (and that was because of the perceived effects of a decisive naval defeat on American public morale, the ships and men could be replaced, as indeed they were after December 7th). Of course, the US Navy knew that too so they did their best to make sure such a thing didn't happen (being disciples of Mahan, they wanted a decisive battle too, but knew they should delay it until they had the overwhelming force available through the mobilization of American industry on their side). Basically the only sane strategy for Japan would've been "don't go to war with America" but that kind of sanity was in short supply among the leaders of Japan in the 1930s and 40s.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:38
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:And yeah the Japanese Navy's hope for a decisive battle wasn't as stupid as it seems but it was still wildly unrealistic considering the industrial disparities between the US and Japan. That's the whole point though. They were never going to win an attritional fight with the US. Going all in and peacing out was the only way to win. We know and they knew that their moment of greatest relative strength was at the beginning of the war, and it would get only worse as things ground on unless they could la in some hammer blows to win a (oh so very temporary) moment of upper handedness.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:40
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From an US Department of the Army pamphlet:quote:The characteristics of this semi-Asiatic are strange and contradictory. They are subject to moods which to a westerner are incomprehensible; he acts by instinct. As a soldier, he is primitive and unassuming, innately brave but morosely passive when in a group. His emotions drive him into the herd, which gives him strength and courage. It is no exaggeration to say that he is unaffected by season and terrain. He requires only very few provisions for his own use. They are talking about the Russians, circa 1947 So yeah, glad to see my instinct was kind of right.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:44
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Eej posted:I've been reading a whole bunch of journal articles on counselling and psychotherapy taking into account east asian cultural norms (conformity, deference to authority etc) and they seem to be fine using that term all over the place. Okay, well, it's woo and it's dumb and it's horrifically broad. It's trying to lump, what, ~3 billion people under one broad sweep? How is that not so generalized to as useless as the term 'human culture.' I'm working with a bunch of Chinese high school students right now I loving wish they were more deferent to authority.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:44
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the JJ posted:I'm working with a bunch of Chinese high school students right now I loving wish they were more deferent to authority. You can't have their families sent to the mobile organ-harvesting vans like their government, so of course they aren't deferent towards you. 
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Dec 20, 2014 08:47
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How was Japan supposed to "peace out"? Hawaii wasn't even a state yet, it's not like they just laid the smack down on Washington D.C. All it could ever accomplish was piss the US off.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:48
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Mustang posted:How was Japan supposed to "peace out"? Hawaii wasn't even a state yet, it's not like they just laid the smack down on Washington D.C. All it could ever accomplish was piss the US off. It wasn't a good plan, or even a remotely realistic one, but it was the best they had once they actually decided to go to war with the US. Again, ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Basically the only sane strategy for Japan would've been "don't go to war with America" but that kind of sanity was in short supply among the leaders of Japan in the 1930s and 40s.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:53
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Eej posted:Confucian tradition is a very heavy influence on Asian culture (East Asian culture?) to themodern day. The authoritarian nature of those cultures basically derives from "Respect your elders" and all that other stuff. As a brief and wholly amateur aside, I actually read the Analects a little while ago, and the impression I got was that most of Confucius's disciples had no loving clue what he was talking about half the time because Confucius apparently believed in letting his students figure things out for themselves instead of explicitly telling them what his conclusions were. Seemed like the traditional view of Confucius had more to do with the interpretations of his disciples than his own actual philosophies. The focus didn't seem to be so much on the "respect authority" thing that most people think about when they think about Confucius - it felt more like his focus was on how to be a decent human being, with respect for authority being a small part of the whole. That said, it was only the Analects and it was just a one-time surface reading (and in a translation, too). Maybe a re-reading alongside more context like the Spring and Autumn Annals makes his hierarchical tendencies more clear.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:04
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Mustang posted:How was Japan supposed to "peace out"? Hawaii wasn't even a state yet, it's not like they just laid the smack down on Washington D.C. All it could ever accomplish was piss the US off. That's the point though. Hawaii was just a pissant colony in the Pacific mostly important in that it was a staging ground for our other, pissant restless colonies in the Pacific. I think in Tojo's Magical Christmasland it goes something like "Look, we sunk your toy boats, we've already gone and hung our flags up over the DEI and Singapore, we'll shoot those Filipino's for you, we'll let you have Wake and Guam back, and we pinky promise to make mean faces at the Soviets. P.S. stop by Hong Kong anytime, we'll have cheap exploitable sex workers there around the clock, don't worry." It's not like they needed to march on Moscow to win the war. Hell, the Allies didn't even get any boots into Japan proper (Okinawa was about as Japanese as Hawaii was American) and they still had sprawling territories in Korean and China by the time they surrendered. What I'm saying is most wars don't go 'line up my guys, you line up your guys, who ever's left standing keeps all the marbles' then you peace out. It's quite possible for a smaller power to go "look, you could beat the absolute poo poo out of us if you put yourself on 100% war footing and dug us out of these holdings inch by inch, beach by beach, but we just beat the piss out of our navy and/or we're perfectly willing to bleed you for every victory." and if side a, even if they 'can't win' cares to bleed more than side b, then side b might just say 'sod it.' It's not, 'I can beat you up so gently caress off' it's 'I can make this more trouble than it's worth and you have other poo poo to do so let's just agree to this, okay?' Sort of the nation-state equivalent of the Fleet-in-Being. It doesn't need to be big enough to win, it needs to be big enough to make winning painful for you.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:13
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the JJ posted:Hell, the Allies didn't even get any boots into Japan proper (Okinawa was about as Japanese as Hawaii was American) and they still had sprawling territories in Korean and China by the time they surrendered. And by that point we had the atomic bomb, which removed the last advantage the Japanese still had. You don't need to suffer horrendous casualties on the beachhead when you can scour the land clean of life with the power of the atom. OK, so we didn't have anything like enough bombs to actually do anything like that, but the Japanese didn't know that.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:25
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A while back we talked about the ACW, which is pretty much a similar situation as the whole Japan thing. Looking at it now (I really hate you, Paul Kennedy) we compare industrial strength and manpower and go "ok so there was no way to win for them" but at the time, other factors did speak for the possibility of winning, and in other wars, these sorts of things happened. In general, wars don't end up being fights to the death. That sort of simplistic analysis of strength rather logically leads to the analysis that says that the UK should have made peace with the Nazis in 1940, because they had no way of actually winning the war.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:29
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Tomn posted:As a brief and wholly amateur aside, I actually read the Analects a little while ago, and the impression I got was that most of Confucius's disciples had no loving clue what he was talking about half the time because Confucius apparently believed in letting his students figure things out for themselves instead of explicitly telling them what his conclusions were. Seemed like the traditional view of Confucius had more to do with the interpretations of his disciples than his own actual philosophies. The focus didn't seem to be so much on the "respect authority" thing that most people think about when they think about Confucius - it felt more like his focus was on how to be a decent human being, with respect for authority being a small part of the whole. I think that for the purposes of this thread, the more important facet of Confucianism is that until the beginning of the 20th century mastery of Confucian teachings was a mandatory condition for getting employed in bureaucracy. And even after the fall of the empire, the classically trained elites remained in power. In that sense it's probably no more controversial to say that Chinese politics of the time were influenced by Confucian ideals than it is to say that Austro-Hungarian politics, as well as the political systems of its post-WWI orphan nations, were influenced by the Catechism of the Roman church. However, the problems are magnified when its carried over to the revolutionary regimes currently in place in China and Korea. In China, the main Confucian movement, the New Confucianism (which was itself a reaction on anti-traditionalist nationalism of the republican era), became eradicated as Mao came to power, and Confucian scholars fled abroad. In Korea, I imagine, traditional influences also must have waned drastically with arrival of a marxist totalitarian regime. Even though Confucianism is more influential nowadays than it was during Mao's reign, it makes no sense to talk about maoism or juche, both of which are modern ideologies with universal aspirations, as having some essential oriental qualities.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:41
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Kemper Boyd posted:That sort of simplistic analysis of strength rather logically leads to the analysis that says that the UK should have made peace with the Nazis in 1940, because they had no way of actually winning the war. The Nazis had no way of actually winning the war either. For all of the landmass they had conquered by June 21, 1941, they were facing a Britain that was still on "sun never sets" mode if I'm not mistaken. As for the comparison to the ACW, I think that a key difference is that the South actually could strike at the continental United States (such as it was defined at the time). Antietam and Gettysburg were both battles during campaigns to attack or siege or threaten Washington DC, whereas nothing that Japan conquered even actually increased their industrial capacity.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:55
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Blah. Multiple windows open.
Slavvy fucked around with this message at 10:05 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 10:03
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:And by that point we had the atomic bomb, which removed the last advantage the Japanese still had. You don't need to suffer horrendous casualties on the beachhead when you can scour the land clean of life with the power of the atom. Sure but until that point the idea of 'keep fighting, they might gently caress off and let us keep Vietnam/China/Korea/the Emperor' remained alive and well and was not totally irrational. A lot of people call it irrational and rah rah Japanese obsession with elan and the word fanaticism comes up a lot in a way that makes the whole thing sort of uncomfortable. It was dumb, but it wasn't 'gently caress yeah we can totally make it to Moscow dumb.' It was more of a 'look, are they really going to give a poo poo about some skirmish in Hawaii? They'll be busy in Europe, a little luck and we can have ourselves another colonial war.' steinrokkan posted:I think that for the purposes of this thread, the more important facet of Confucianism is that until the beginning of the 20th century mastery of Confucian teachings was a mandatory condition for getting employed in bureaucracy. And even after the fall of the empire, the classically trained elites remained in power. In that sense it's probably no more controversial to say that Chinese politics of the time were influenced by Confucian ideals than it is to say that Austro-Hungarian politics, as well as the political systems of its post-WWI orphan nations, were influenced by the Catechism of the Roman church. Sure but that's a. the specifically Chinese and sort of Korean elites and so necessarily pretty limited, and then b. you run into a huge chicken and egg thing with regards to Confucian ergo elite or elite ergo properly Confucian (since they have to past the test but they also get to grade it!) and so Confucianism is as much alive and mobile as any other ideology. This is a nice, condensed version of a dude's life journal. He passed a few tests and became something of a local authority on Confucianism. I think it's pretty telling that he spends good portion of the book bitching about how all his neighbors aren't Confucian at all. poo poo's complicated yo.
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Dec 20, 2014 10:06
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Eej posted:I've been reading a whole bunch of journal articles on counselling and psychotherapy taking into account east asian cultural norms (conformity, deference to authority etc) and they seem to be fine using that term all over the place. Culture is self-building, Confucius has as much influence over contemporary Chinese culture as much as Jesus does over Western culture. Which is none at all, both are dead. Attributing the aspects of any culture to a particular guy is troublesome. Confucius didn't live among a bunch of heathenly slobs who one day decided to adopt his teachings. Yamamoto doesn't pick up a telephone and call Confucius to figure out how to treat his subordinates. Using the term "asian culture" is just lazy shorthand for writers. From context, you can usually figure out they're excluding Indians or Filipinos or whatever, and it's only irresponsible on the writer's part. It's more pointless to trace all sorts of institutional tics or the rise of fascism in East Asian cultures to something as esoteric as "Confucian tradition". Why do the Imperial Japanese military and the Cold War Egyptian military share similar issues of unimaginative subordinates and inflexible command structure? Is "respect for elders" really a concept unique to East Asia when the average Western CEO is still 55 years old? There are stronger forces acting on any person or group's decision-making process than the words of a dead man.
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Dec 20, 2014 10:08
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white guys fascist like this, asian guys fascist like this
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Dec 20, 2014 10:24
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I'm pretty surprised that Zen At War by Brian Victoria hasn't come up yet in this conversation. That's a great book if you want to get involved in the specifically Japanese religious underpinnings to their militarism - a story that begins with Buddhism becoming less influential under the Meiji restoration because the Imperial Cult that was State Shintoism is becoming more and more influential with the re-invigoration of the Imperial power. Buddhism therefore has to become more statist to survive and eventually offers the religious underpinning to kamikaze attacks and so on. (This is very simplified, and the book has some rather dense technical discussion about the crazy turns you have to take in Buddhism to make this happen). Coupled with a lot of other books - more accessible ones might be Inventing Japan and The Wages of Guilt by Ian Buruma - you can start getting a picture of the short term influences on Japan before WW2. One thing that will immediately spring to mind when you read these texts is how unhelpful 'Asian culture' would be as a cipher for what is happening there (and, amusingly, Germany has its own small influence what is happening in Japan in the late 19th century).
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Dec 20, 2014 11:10
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the JJ posted:There's a War in the Pacific LP going on There has always been a War in the Pacific LP going on.
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Dec 20, 2014 11:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Nazis had no way of actually winning the war either. For all of the landmass they had conquered by June 21, 1941, they were facing a Britain that was still on "sun never sets" mode if I'm not mistaken. Not that taking Washington DC would have won the war, though, or America would have been a British colony again as of 1814.
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Dec 20, 2014 11:52
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quote:whereas nothing that Japan conquered even actually increased their industrial capacity. Their more immediate concern for Japan anyway is resources for the industry they've already got, which they do acquire in some places (Indochina, for example).
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Dec 20, 2014 12:03
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Suspect Bucket posted:
Seriously. I stood a little too close to a 24-pounder during a demonstration and my hearing will never fully recover. My stepfather fired them at Fortress Louisbourg for a season, and despite wearing layers of ear protection, his hearing has now badly deteriorated.
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Dec 20, 2014 12:15
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Chamale posted:Seriously. I stood a little too close to a 24-pounder during a demonstration and my hearing will never fully recover. My stepfather fired them at Fortress Louisbourg for a season, and despite wearing layers of ear protection, his hearing has now badly deteriorated. So... throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, was every artilleryman just completely deaf?
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Dec 20, 2014 12:22
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This isn't even a problem that has gone away. Modern tankers and artillerists tend to get hearing issues.
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Dec 20, 2014 12:25
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Suspect Bucket posted:
Chamale posted:Seriously. I stood a little too close to a 24-pounder during a demonstration and my hearing will never fully recover. My stepfather fired them at Fortress Louisbourg for a season, and despite wearing layers of ear protection, his hearing has now badly deteriorated. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 12:29
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