In the U.S. (and many other western countries), seeing a swastika fills you with a sense of dread that someone has seen fit to use this ugly symbol of Nazism. The truth is that the swastika has been a positive symbol for thousands of years, but until I came to Japan, I never saw it used in its spiritual context. When I see the symbol here, it is always with a positive connotation. When I return to America, it'll almost certainly be a negative one.
I'll miss seeing the other side of this all too familiar symbol.
Posts
