Won't Miss #31 - culture of victim-hood (reflection)

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I'm a person who favors balanced perspective. I have mentioned "yin" and "yang" many times in posts and I find it far more difficult to believe in the starkness of "good" and "bad". I think that the world would be a far better place if we taught people perspective-taking in school. By that, I mean that we helped them place themselves very effective in the shoes of another person rather than simply adopt an attitude that they stand on the better, higher ground.

One enduring frustration for me since returning to the U.S. is how reactionary people can be and how incapable they are of seeing value or validity to opposing viewpoints. It's as if people feel that understanding an opposing viewpoint is the same as accepting it and choosing not to change the world. I wrote a post about gun control in which I said I understand where such thinking comes from. I don't believe it comes from a fundamentally "evil" or "wrong" place, but from a perspective that I personally do not embrace. That doesn't mean I won't continue to oppose personal gun ownership, but simply that I know why people feel the way they feel and it's not because they are stupid, mean, inherently violent, or inferior in their critical thinking skills.

If you truly want to be open-minded and embrace the complexity of life, you cannot paint things as being all black or all white. In fact, I think we do our children a disservice for their futures if we indoctrinate them into such thinking. Generally, I felt that Japanese people were better at perspective-taking than most Western folks (and Americans in particular), but the huge acceptance to this was anything related to World War II.

There's a South Park joke about how the Japanese talk about the atomic bombs as if they were standing around minding their own business when America just decided to annihilate a bunch of them. That joke comes from the fact that Trey Parker spent some time in Japan and studied Japanese (and possibly also because his former wife was Japanese). He had some insight into the highly polarized and biased way in which Japan teaches its children about WW II. Trust me when I say that American kids aren't being taught that what the U.S. did to Japan was a good idea. They are well aware of the horror that resulted and as many (if not more) Americans are prone to viewing the bombs as unnecessary as necessary. In Japan, well, South Park got it right.

I continue not to miss the culture of victimhood that surrounds the way in which the war is regarded and the way in which it presents a one-sided view of history to Japanese children.

Won't Miss #504 - the Yasukuni flap

Yasukuni shrine is one of the few places in Japan that openly acknowledges that Japanese actually fought in the war (as opposed to simply being unwitting victims who got nuked for reasons that continue to mystify them). It enshrines the souls of soldiers, generals, and others who took part in all aspects of the fight. Unfortunately, some of those enshrined there were determined to be war criminals by the rest of the world and that is where the flap comes in. Being enshrined there gives those whose spirits are there a "get out of hell free" card and allows them to rest in peace. The situation at Yasukuni  itself doesn't really change any present reality, nor does it necessarily deny the past. War is not a personal thing. Death is. The families of those who died deserve to feel that their ancestors' spirits rest as peacefully as the families of those on the other side. But, that's just my opinion. I don't see the actual shrine as being anything other than a place designed to heal personal wounds in the aftermath of a terrible war.*

Unfortunately, the fact that prominent politicians have (and likely will) continue to make a pilgrimage to Yasukuni on New Year's makes the situation very political rather than personal. Koreans and Chinese in particular see any Prime Minister or high ranking official who goes there as essentially thumbing his nose at Japan's Asian neighbors. Personally, I feel that it's just a way of pandering to political extremists. If it pisses off Korea and China, well, that's just gravy in the quest to get the right-wingers to rub their hands together with spiteful glee. 

I don't miss the annual brouhaha over Yasukuni, whether it be the flurry of critical comments when prominent politicians actually visit it or the "will he or won't he" articles on whether or not the visit will actually occur. I don't think it was ever intended to play the part of a villainous place, and that the intention was never to be a point of contention with Japan's former adversaries.

*I'm not interested in playing a game of "who was worse" in World War II. Comments to that effect will not be replied to because I don't think anyone knows the depth and sophistication that went into the start of the war, let alone any of the actions that followed. If you want to go fight about this with someone, this is not the right place.