General Discussion

Leaving aside whether the bombings were ethically justifiable, Japan attacked the US before the US attacked Japan. Yes the US may have to apologize for these bombings, but Japan, being the initiator, is the first in line to do so.

Oh I'm not saying the allies or other Western nations never did bad stuff. Plenty of it. I'm also not saying Japan is the only country that denies certain atrocities. Another example is Turkey and their denial of the Armenian genocide.

The fact that Japan treated the people who resisted the occupation the way they did, was beyond disgusting. People had to kill their own loved ones, they were used for crazy and unethical experiments, they were starved to death, beaten to death, etc... That's no way to treat any human, ever. And let's say I do see these people as insurgants, which I don't really think is fair, you still can't subject people to torture like that. It's more than inhumane.

But you're absolutely right, war is never 1 side of a story. It's easy to paint the allies as the brave freedom fighters and the axis as the evil fascists, but of course the truth is a little more difficult than that. Obviously it's also the tales of the victors that we'll hear more.
But that's doesn't take away that all countries need to recognise their wrongdoings. Japan, the US, the UK, Germany, Turkey, all of them. Trying to deny a country's past mistake and deliberately putting out propaganda twisting the facts is bullshit no matter who's side it comes from. Why I think that that's important is, like I said before, because that'll provoke more (extreme) nationalism and xenophobia in a country. ''He, they did all the bad stuff and never had to pay for it. My people never did anything wrong! We're superior!''
Not saying all the Japanese think like that, of course not, but it's not hard to see how such an attitude would be more common if that's what's happening in that country. Again, not trying to offend anyone, and I think everyone should be treated the same. If the Netherlands did the things Japan did (which it has also done in its history) they should refrain from twisting the truth just as much. I'm not responsible for, for example, slavery (just like the Japanese of today are not for the ww2 stuff), but I should know that it happened.

all points wel made, but the reason for japan striking first is simple, since the impending -we're next- scenario hang over their heads they had to strike first before their country was supposedly invaded, like europe did with all the other asian countries.
it's a very basic strategy that, if you know you are going to be attacked, you attack first to prevent the enemy from getting a foothold in your territory.

I'll honestly admit that the knowledge I have on that particular area might be too little for me to talk about it. I thought that it was around this time (or actually little after ww2) that the big DEcolonization started. Was there a threat for Japan that they would be invaded by the emperialists (mainly European powers and their colonies) if they didn't act? I honestly don't know, so I'll read up on it. Which can only increase my knowledge, so thanks! =)

Anyway, if that really was a serious threat I suppose that would be a wise strategy for such a country to make? Although why then attack China and do such terrible things to its citizens? China (republic of China at the time) wasn't under the direct control of any nation. I guess from that point of view it would make sense to attack for example Signapore (British) and Indonesia (Dutch) though.

The primary reason for invasion, or liberation as they called it, was to kick out the european power in asia. AS for the warcrimes? Dibshits basicly major perpetrators were punished, the govornment just refuses to take responsibility for actions of it's dibshit military personal (which I can understand).
The eventiual plan was to leave all the liberated countries as protectorates under the Japanese Empire, offer them protection and a +/-5% tax on their BNP, which is much more lenient that the European Imperialists, because hey they are still looking to strengthen their nation and cover the costs of all these military endeavours

I'll just post it here, unfortunately interrupting a very interesting discussion, because I'm not sure if I should make a new topic where we can discuss the Free Play.

But,

Quote :

It is a rainy day, so the Sendo class is soaked.

JAY! Awesome!

Why is the rainy day awesome?   

Because it will allow me to use a quote I've wanted to use.

Though I find it hard to believe that the Japanese were the pure and the great liberators from the pure evil west rather than it also or even more so being a big power grab (as has happened countless times in the human history in ALL of the world), I will research this subject some more, so thanks! I do however not think the issue should be seen as a simple right and wrong dichotomy for either side, as war is always more complicated than that, but we both know that.

Warning: This is much longer than I expected. Mainly directed at Hatake Houtarou on the various topic he is discussing about.

As an asian that did a fair amount of research on the culture here and also has a solid grasp of it based on daily access of it and so on, I will start with nationalism and xenophobia. One major factor of their nationalism is the tactic and approach of the government(with some influence of tradition and culture-from-the-past). I will focus on China, South Korea(don't really know much about North Korea aside from it's a dictatorship) and Japan. All three countries are egotastical in their own way and national pride is something they embraced himself in. From my observation, many Asian countries is huge on nationalism and egaliterian is nowhere near them. The government here just love to control and mind manipulate their citizen through whatever media they have. They always emphasize on their superiority and just keep saying that their country is good, the citizen should be patriotic and united together for the country, bla bla bla and they especially liked shows with a "their country vs other country" theme.

China is even bringing this sort of "mind control" to another level with an "isolation" strategy or censorship on the media. The China government attempts to deny all the "outside" information by hugely limiting the access to them and at the same time, create their own "China" version of said thing. For instance, you cannot access Youtube on China, they give you Youku(优酷，"elegant &　cool"); you cannot access Facebook, they give you Renren(人人，　"Everyone"). You need to proxy your way out of the wall just to check out some of the world's most popular websites.

This sort of control pretty much lower the amount of people that can really see the world neutrally on their own and that's why it's hard to achieve egalitarianism here and I doubt people here would like that over nationalism. Another factor that makes the population rather easy to manipulate is the Eastern way of education. The main difference between Eastern vs Western way or approach of education is that the Eastern countries has a rather "systematic" way of approach and they lean on the logic side way too much than needed. Eastern's teaching is rather robotic at times, they just teach what is on the book and doesn't really teach the students about things outside the book which produces a ton of bookworms that can score 95%-100% on every subject but is a retard when it comes to other knowledge and some even lack everything else to be successful in the real world. They are the typical example of booksmart. On the home education side, children here are taught that the real way of success is to study, study and study. Fuck clubs & activities, fuck your love on violin, fuck anime for wasting your time, they are all not helpful to you and will only hinder your result. This kind of home education plus school education produces a huge batch of automaton that can only be employee to someone else and lacks individual thinking. Most industry here also works like a "factory". You want to be a K-Pop star? Cool. I will put you into this training "factory" and then I will pair you with A, B and C, who you barely know and now, you are a group together. Now, I am going to throw you to this show and that show, have fun. Even when you are a star, you are like an employee or a product of the company which you have no right to oppose. It's much different from the Western countries where friends form band together and trying to get their name out there. While they have company and agent too, I believe they are given more freedom than in S.Korea.

Innovation, creativity and the gut to chase one's own dream is something that is hugely lacking on the Eastern side of the world, some countries(China, Singapore, most of the weaker/poorer/in-development countries) more than others(S.Korea and Japan are hugely creative). I think the Eastern country should try to encourage more on doing what they really want to do instead of just following others. Parents should encourage their children to develop their own hobby and eventually, their own path of life, instead of just be an accountant(those that love accounting are excepted) like everybody else because it's risk-free and it's a "good job".

The rather android-like population plus media control of the government ensures that there will always be a huge amount of blind patriot that think their country is the best and other countries are below them or something like that. I would say that there's a long way to go to truly achieve egalitarianism. I would also argue that patriotism and egalitarianism can co-exist, someone can always support and love their country but blind nationalist that just support their countries regardless of whatever in front of them is just bad. Sometime I feel bad for the less educated population though as they don't really have much of a choice as their own information and media are government-based. They don't really have an individual choice because they are educated and fed bullshit information forever.

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This sort of government's control on the population is not much different from history tweaking, they just want to show that they are good(by victimizing themselves or hiding some bad things that they did) so the population will think so. I am not sure why they think this is good actually, since the smarter civilian will eventually find out the truth and might not like the government as much by then but that's another topic. I would argue that many countries tweak their history to help themselves. I am not so sure about other countries though so I can't really say anything about that but I am pretty sure Malaysia(my country) did a fair share of them, alternating history to their favor.

I will also say that the history book of each country is biased on one side. As I am living in a Eastern country, I don't really know much about Hitler and Nazi(I learn about them from western shows, movies and games). My history book doesn't really cover that much about that and instead have huge emphasis on the Japan's war crime in WW2. It's hard to blame solely on Japan for alternating their history(although they still shouldn't do so) when history book of every country seems to be picky on their content as well. Most books are biased, we can't just say Japan's book is biased.

On the torture side of thing, there's no doubt that Japan is on the wrong here but to isolate Japan to attack for torture and so on is just unfair to me. I am pretty sure many countries in the world has used torture techniques in the past, it's just part of history on its own. Japan apparently has a famous case of it with the Nanking Massacre but I find myself hard to support China 100% on this matter. For one, it's all politic, the civilians have different opinions than the government but the government has always been "the voice" so sometime, they don't represent the true intention of the civilians. Two, the Chinese are oppressive as hell which makes the apology not easy to do because Chinese might take the chance to get some leverage over some other disputes like the Shikaku Island, where China, Taiwan and Japan are fighting for. China, S.Korea and Japan all hate each others and they are always trying to get advantage over the others so it's not easy for Japan to apologize, when China is clearly being a hungry lion and is trying to squeeze whatever advantage they have over Japan. Shouldn't both side learn to forgive, if what they really want they is true peace and harmony? To me, both of them are just trying to get the upper hand on politic and both are bad anyway as they are just using every mistake of others to gain advantage of their own, it's not true forgiveness that way, merely an "optimized" move to win and dominate.


I would also argue that China might do the same shit to some other countries if they are actually the stronger forces of the past. Chinese isn't that good either, they torture the living crap out of their own civilians at times and Chinese aren't unfamilar with massacre(You can bing translate this page. Just the first half of it is about the torture method) anyway, as they are responsible of one of a massacre that surpass the amount of death of Nanking Massacre -- Yangzhou Massacre and they are massacring their own people there. (on the Chinese wiki page of said event, which is slightly longer than the English version,) The Qing dynasty(who is resposible for the Yangzhou Massacre) also impose literary inquisition of said event. It's hard to not see them doing similar things to other countries if they are the invaders of the past.

War is always a part of history and the winner always has the right to do whatever they want with the loser. It's inhumane but it's part of the history. Ever since ancient time, the winner has complete control over the loser, Gengkhis Khan and the Khanates have raped and massacred so much over their conquest and it seems excusable by now because they are of a more barbaric era. As we get more and more literal and civilized, it just seems that we are giving each other harder time over what we have been doing throughout the entire history of mankind. Of course, as we grow civilized, violence should be lessened to a degree but I always believe that there's a certain primal nature inside us that embraces violence and so it's not hard to see that our ancestors do such violence behavior. We should learn to forgive each other instead of trying to see who did what and gain something from it.

Opinions of countries toward each other: Clickie

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Now, WW2 and why Japan invade China. For one, they have been rivals since forever, you can wikiHistory of Sino-Japanese Relations. The Nanking invasion isn't the starting point of their relationship, it's the climax, as of now. They also massacre a fair amount of Filipino(look up Manila massacre) and others as well. Apparently, the one violent psycho general appears to be the one that invade China, it's just a chance-based thing. If said general is assigned to attack the Malaya island, it's likely that "Nanking Massacre" will not happen and instead, we will have "Malacca Massacre". This also brings up another point, you only need 1 psycho general(and a fair share of psycho soldiers, I guess) to cause mass destruction. You can't really blame the entire nation for that, most people are still innocent, especially the poor civilians.

As for Singapore and Indonesia, the Japan did invade them and the whole South East Asia and hold a fair share of them over the entire WW2.


Year 1942

I remember the strategy they used on Malaya Island. They basically bicycle-blitzed the living heck out of Malaysia(Malaya at that time), Brunei, part of Indonesia(a huge part of the East Malaya island is of Indonesia) and Singapore. I think they occupy S.E.Asia because of the resource here - tons of oil and nature gas - and also it's an important navy zone and chokepoint. It's one of the active theatre of WW2 anyway, feel free to look up further info if you are interested.

Hey guys,

I was asked to change my avatar since it was too much like the real Kiba, so I chose to use this one instead. I know this guy doesn't have red stripes on his face, but try finding a bloke who isn't Kiba that has those

So, I'll leave it to your wonderful imaginations to add them in your head.

Ciao!

I got a word with admin about having red hair instead of pink, after the next event it will be red again.
So no worries Just enjoy!

Maximum points for Ryo for adressing the sociopolitical enviorment of east asia. Japan, China and Korea have had a very subtle long lasting enmity towars each other. In the Taekwondo tools/kata's I practice full half of them are named after generals who won major battles or killed enemy generals from either China or Japan. I like to call this the Tri-force of Hate, something like scots and english, or french and english, or irish and english. Oppressive and harsh military events are kind of a thing in east asia -coughTIBETcough- and since Japan is notorious in lacking large amounts of certain natural resources, them invading the surrounding nations wasn't surprising. I never made out Japan to look like the good guys, just to explain their motivation and in retrospect to actions of all the other major nations, not that unusual.

if you ever want to learn more on the european side of WW2 Ryo, as a person who hangs out with fellow historical war nerds weekly I'll be happy to oblige

@ HAKABAKASHI
We have quite a few people who can easily edit that for you in photoshop. send my a HQ pic and I'll fix it for ya.

If I am not wrong, an Inuzuka has to earn the red paint on their face. Perhaps you can start without red paint and eventually earning the red fang, just a suggestion.

And noted, Green.

Doesn't Kiba as a quite young child already have these?
(Found this image)
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091028143757/naruto/images/d/d8/Kiba_as_a_little_child.JPG

We have always treated the red marks as belonging to the Ritual the hidden society does on it's offspring to make them compatible for the clan techniques, so all Inuzuka have them at birth.

O.o I almost began to wonder why the Inuzuka tattoo their babies.

Wow, Ryochoku! That was an amazing read, thanks for your effort! Agreed with everything you said. Doesn't really make sense to me to reply to everything because of that so I won't, haha. Anything, you have my gratitude! =)

Oh btw, agree with your point that patriotism and egaliterianism can go hand in hand. Patriotism is just loyalty/love for one's country. Nationalism often implies that one's country's people are superior to those of other countries (although there are more definitions). Patriotism seems harmless to me, but implying one people are inherintly superior to another is in contradiction with the egaliterian philosophy (all people deserve equal opportunity and treatment regardless from their race/nationality/skin color/sexuality, etc...)

Like Green said already, if you want some more info on the Western front (which we know a lot more about as that's obviously where the focus lies here. Building up to the war, Hitler's rise to power, Germany and how they rolled over a lot of European countries in the beginning, the US and Soviet involvement, etc...), don't hesistate to ask us. =)

Oh, and Green, never meant to imply you were defending Japan, so sorry if I came over like that! You know, I think all 3 of us are kinda thinking the same thing. War sucks. It happens everywhere. All countries do/have done wrong. War isn't a simple dichotomy. All people are equal under the law and deserve equal opportunity, regardless of race and stuff. Centralization of too much power will inevitably cause corruption.

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Guess this Orwell quote makes a lot of sense in this context. Read 3 books of him, enjoyed them (1984 (yeah I know cliche), animal farm (yeah I know cliche), homage to Catalonia (not quite as cliche. Interesting book however)).

Oh, and Hakabakashii (that's hard to spell right!), awesome picture! Shows the bond the Inuzuka clan people have with their dogs. =)

Sakurai Akira wrote:

O.o I almost began to wonder why the Inuzuka tattoo their babies.

The Inuzuka seems to have awesome ink technology. Otherwise, the babies would have died of ink poisoning.

War paint on the face reminds me of a wild tribe, which fits the rather primal way of the Inuzuka clan.

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No doubt that patriotism is harmless. It's like everyone in the same country views each other as their family member. Nothing wrong with liking your family members as long as you don't look down on others. I am not sure if I can submit to the whole egaliterian philosophy as I can be biased on occassion but I support gender equality truthfully, mainly due to a strong stand of masculism in where I live. I blame tradition for that, there's so much changes to do when it comes to "evolving" the thinking of human.

I am not a big fan of the WW2. More of an ancient warfare fan than modern or futuristic sci-fi, probably thanks to my childhood love of kung fu and wuxia/martial hero stories. While I am seeing more of other things now space-themed sci-fi is starting to grow on me, ancient warfare and martial art will always have a special place in my heart. That and I will choose fantasy over sci-fi all night long. Advanced weaponry, robots and other high-tech stuffs just don't turn me on as much as other stereotypical males; magic, swords, myth and perhaps folklore do.

Oh, this might come in handy for those who don't know Naruto that good. Been using it to get around Konoha

http://nartutoplayerslive.wikia.com/wiki/War_with_konohagakure

Haruno Tenshi wrote:

Oh, this might come in handy for those who don't know Naruto that good. Been using it to get around Konoha

http://nartutoplayerslive.wikia.com/wiki/War_with_konohagakure

It says the link is dead...

Nice map, Tenshi. I think we could definitely try and use that on the forum. Is my opinion, anyway.
But I thought there was a river running through the Uchiha compound? But I guess there are more than one river in Konoha. (Should be, anyway.)

that aapears to be an edited version since there are clans on it that we don't have

BETTER VERSION

Awesome! (Brownie points for Green.) Who's up for a bath after school?! (It's on the way home anyway, and everyone is soaked, we could use a good warm-up.)

I wonder... should non-clan-peoples put up tiny dots where they live?

Also, why does the Hyuuga clan have two compounds? Doesn't everyone live together?

The Hyuuga clan is so large it is split into  a Main House which consists of all the families closest in line of succesion and the Branch Houses which encompases all the remaininf families. The Main house functions like nobility while the branch house is subservient tot them.

Ah, I always thought that since the branch house were sort of their "servants" they would live in the same compound, but apparently not.