a Code Ge-Oss review and my response

[Setzer]

http://hubpages.com/hub/Lelouch-of-the- ... ass-Review

After reading this review, I was so annoyed that I felt compelled to respond. My reply to the above link is as follows. I've also sent this to the original writer via e-mail.

To your credit, you start off by saying that you never studied much on the Second World War. You make this painfully clear in your review. I was going to simply leave a short comment, but I feel that to address the matter properly, I need to go into greater detail. If I seem unfairly angered, please keep in mind that history is a field of study I particularly enjoy, and blatant mistakes are bound to get under my skin. I have no personal vendetta against you, and all my invective is directed at your lack of research and historical ignorance

I am not Japanese and I was born long after WWII was over. For most of my life, when WWII was mentioned, I automatically thought of the Western front and pretty much ignored the role of Japan. If we think in terms of Nazi Germany, WWII seems almost like a moral fable about good versus evil, in which the moral is that good always triumphs. After all, the allies didn't start the war. They merely responded when attacked. The war was conducted by a genocidal maniac who made countless strategic mistakes. Germany deserved to lose the war, on so many levels. It seems inconceivable that it could have won.But if you examine the war from the Japanese perspective, things don't seem all that clear cut or even fair.Of course, I am not completely blind to the fact that the Japanese ruled conquered enemies with an iron hand, that they forced prisoners of war on long death marches, or that they kept women and children who were enemy aliens in inhumane living conditions in internment camps.
Nevertheless, as hard as the Japanese were on others, they held themselves to an equally tough standard.

Seriously, put the manga down and open a history book. Read about the Comfort Women. Read about the Rape of Nanking. Read about Unit 731. The Japanese did shit to other nations that they never did to themselves. They used chemical and biological weapons on Chinese civilians. They used Allied POWs for bayonet practice. You need to get the myth of Japan as a noble and martyred warrior race out of your head, and look at history the way it is. I think you like anime so much you seem incapable of admitting the Japanese could do anything bad.

The Italians pretended to be fascisti, dedicated soldiers who lived for their nation. This was merely a pretense. The Japanese actually lived up to those standards. One by one their allies deserted them. The Russians and the Italians changed sides.

When the Italians changed sides, it was because Mussolini had fallen. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini didn't come to power legally. After he'd gotten hundreds of thousands of Italians killed or captured while playing second banana to Hitler, Italy's government was finally strong enough to remove the fascists, and their leader along with them. The people in Italy just wanted jobs and food. They didn't want war and bloodshed, and after 4 years of dying in someone else's war, they had had enough. The Germans actually had to invade Italy and reinstate Mussolini to keep Italy in the war.

Read about the battle of Khalkin Gol. The USSR and Japan fought, and when the Japanese Army lost, they signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviets. A non-aggression pact is nothing more then a formal promise not to fight each other. Russia and Japan were never allies. The Russians couldn't have abandoned the Japanese, because they never sided with them.

You know who else the Russians made a non-aggression pact with? Germany. They were trading with Germany right up until the Nazis invaded in 1941. When the USSR allied with Britain and the USA, they didn't do it because they wanted to trade up like a man whose trophy wife got too old. They did it because they wanted help fighting off the armies that were literally trying to exterminate them, both as a nation and as a people.

The Germans were defeated. Still the Japanese fought on. Valiant pilots threw away their lives on one way missions. The entire Japanese population soldiered on. They might never have surrendered. Except for one thing.The atomic bomb!Was that fair? Did the best side really win? Or did the Americans use a dishonorable technological trick, because they could never have beaten Japan otherwise?

By 1945, the Allies HAD beaten Japan. They had thoroughly and utterly crushed them. By 1942, Japan had lost most of their carrier fleet at Wake Island and Midway. They spent most of 1943 being pushed off strategically important islands by the Allies. In 1944, their offensives into China and Burma were defeated. Their carrier planes were shot to pieces in the aptly named Marianas Turkey shoot. The IJN Yamato, the world's largest battleship, was blown apart on a one way suicide run. The Kamikaze planes were invented because the Japanese had given up on training actual combat pilots and decided to throw their chief efforts behind manned missiles. It was like one Halo match where I was hopelessly outclassed, and my only hope for scoring a kill was to drop a grenade at my feet when my opponent came in to bludgeon me to death.

Have you ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Watch the scene with the Black Knight. That was basically Japan in 1945. Allied bombers flew over their cities with impunity. Allied warships could park off the coast of Japan and empty their guns into targets of opportunity. They were being forced out of British territory and Thai territory and Dutch territory and American territory and Chinese territory and Burmese Territory and French territory, and virtually the only troops not in retreat were the ones who were stuck on isolated island garrisons and had nowhere to run to. Japan had almost no means of fighting back other then hoping to bleed the Allies enough in a land invasion to make peace. Considering how well their desire for a decisive battle turned out in every other attempt they made, all they would likely have accomplished is getting thousands or millions of people slaughtered in a battle they'd still have lost.

Fighting bravely can usually be admired, but after a certain point, further resistance is stupid. Japan had long since reached that point. They had lost, and if they had been willing to acknowledge that point, no one could argue that it was necessary to beat it into them.

Well, it all depends on your point of view. We might argue that all is fair in love and war. We can argue that technological advances count just as much as dedicated troops and selfless civilian populations. But... look at the world today. And think how different it might have been had Japan won the war!When the Japanese surrendered, they gave up their empire, their form of government, and even the rays emanating from the rising sun on their military imperial flag. How did that feel? Well, watch Code Geass, and you might have some idea.

They didn't give up the Rising Sun Flag. They still have it. The Japanese Self Defense Force uses it. It just stopped being the flag of the entire nation. The flag Japan currently uses dates back to 1870. It wasn't forced on them by the Brutal Western Opressors. The Rising Sun flag was a war flag, being used to represent the entire nation. Imagine if the Stars and Stripes was replaced with the seal of the US Army. That would roughly reflect Japan's situation during World War 2.

The only form of government Japan was forced to give up was the rule by the military. The ruling dynasty was left alone. Hirohito's own son is the current Emperor of Japan. The Legislature and Constitution written during the Meiji era were altered, but not eradicated. Their language and name were both preserved. Organizations that pre-dated the World War 2 military dictatorship were running the country for the first time in years. Since you seem reluctant to learn about history through any other medium then anime, I would recommend Ruruoni Kenshin. One of the themes in that series is Japan's attempt to set up a government that isn't based around warlords and warfare. Shishio Makoto represents the warrior supremacist ideology of WW2 Japan, and the scenes in Shingetsu village shows how much the ordinary people suffer under the kind of government Japan had during the war.

The opening to Code Geass shows two little boys climbing up from a valley filled with sunflowers and looking up at the sky through the trees at something horrible and ominous. There is no sound, until the narrator tells us: "The date was August 10 in the year 2010 of the imperial calendar. The Holy Britannian Empire had just declared war on Japan. The far east Island nation held fast to its neutrality, and now Britannia looms as the world's only superpower. Rights to Japan's underground resources became a hotly disputed issue, straining the already deep-rooted diplomatic tensions between the two sides. In the deciding battle for the mainland, Britannian forces introduced into combat the humanoid autonomous armored knight known as the Knightmare Frame. The enemy's forces were far greater than anticipated, and the Knightmares obliterated the Japanese line of defense on the Mainland with little effort. Japan became a dominion of the Empire. Japan was stripped of its freedom, its rights and its name. Area Eleven. The defeated and once proud nation of Japan was rechristened with a mere number."

Earlier, you pondered what the world would look like if Japan had won. Well, we don't have to imagine. The Japanese occupations of China and Korea are well documented. In the Manchuria region of China, Japan invaded them for natural resources, conquered the region, and made strenuous efforts to eradicate the local culture, even going so far as to strip Manchuria of its very name. Ironic, isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dshi-kaimei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_Manchukuo

Then one of the little boys says to the other: "I swear! I swear, Suzaku, so help me, I will one day obliterate Britannia!"I have to say that I don't really understand the Japanese animators' interest in "humanoid armored vehicles" or machines that turn into people and people who turn into machines. However, if we simply accept that this is a metaphor for a high tech method of winning without actually engaging in direct, conventional person to person combat, then we can move on and discuss what the show is really about.

You know, anything from an atomic bomb to a rifle to a bow and arrow can be metaphors for winning without engaging in "direct combat." War isn't some boxing match where opposing soldiers are in the ring together and fight one on one. I agree, the mecha were just stupid, but if I go into my reasons why, I'll probably never finish writing this.

The show is about fascism, nationalism, resistance groups, the will to power, the thirst for revenge and other Wagnerian themes of the highest order. It even touches quite explicitly on social Darwinism and the way that different levels of ability and personal achievement are accomodated by society. The story follows Lelouch Lamperouge, a Britannian prince in exile who is helping the Japanese resistance for some convoluted reasons of his own, not the least of which is revenge. After Lelouch kills his half brother Clovis, the crown prince, we get a speech from the Emperor of Britannia himself that pretty much spells out the Britannian take on social equality. Why does social Darwinism seem to always come up in these situations where different people, and different peoples and nations, vy for supremacy and dominon over the same natural resources? The reason seems to be that we need some sort of justification for the successful party. The justification runs along these lines: "Our weapons are better because we are better, and it is the natural order of things."How then can someone resist the conqueror without rebuilding himself into the oppressor's own image?

Social Darwinism doesn't always come up. As an ideology, it only dates back to the 19th century. With ordinary conquests, it was usually a case of “We want it, they have it, we'll take it.” When the Romans conquered Gaul, they didn't try to claim that it was advancing the species as a whole. They simply saw it as enriching themselves and defeating a hated enemy. That whole "White Man's Burden" thing was pretty much limited to the 19th century.

That is the universal problem that is at the heart of this series. This is why it appeals to so many across the globe, and this is why the Chinese government has pulled the videos from the shelves of some of its stores.

Really? I heard that the Chinese government censored the show because it portrayed them as being ruled by a naive child Emperor who was manipulated by amoral eunuchs. As offensively racist stereotypes go, it's a bit more grounded in reality then the buck toothed, bespectacled Asian who's incapable of pronouncing the letter L, but not by much. Communism preaches many things, but social Darwinism is not one of its tenets. Mao Zedong believed conflict was caused by class warfare, and that was why everyone needed to be made equal under communist rule. If he was a social Darwinist, he would have said that the peasants suffering in squalid poverty were weak failures who deserved to suffer.

Frankly, I wonder if you and I have really seen the same series. You mention Wagnerian themes, the Will to Power, the thirst for revenge, but you miss the most obvious theme, that of racism. The whole “Honorary Brittanian” thing reminds me of the German treatment of conquered populations in World War 2. When they were desperate for manpower, the Nazi racial scientists created the title of Honorary Aryan for recruits from Russia or Eastern Europe who fought alongside the Germans. The Japanese also drafted non-Japanese when military necessity dictated it. Did you just not notice? Were you in the bathroom in the scenes with Suzaku? Were you fixing a snack in the kitchen every time the locals angrily demanded to be called Japanese?

The growth of a small group of people into an empire is not inevitable. Growth is not the only way of life. It is possible to maintain a stable population in a limited area without depleting natural resources. Many peoples have maintained a natural equilibrium since their group evolved. The problem is that once another group of people whose way of life requires constant growth shows up, then the People of Exponential Growth are bound to overpower the stable group!In order to beat the Britannians, you need to become like the Britannians! When this happens, everybody loses

America managed to defeat the Confederacy without adopting slavery. The Allies managed to defeat the Nazis without becoming genocidal racists. And they also managed to defeat Japan without using Japanese babies for soccer practice or Japanese women as prostitutes. The Romans managed to defeat any number of despotic nations while maintaining their Republican government. The British beat the French without adopting the excesses of the Ancien Regime. Russia beat the Nazis without herding their Jews into death camps.

The idea that the only way you can defeat an enemy is by sinking to their level just goes to show that the writers of Code Geass are as stupid as the timeline, the characters, and the plot.

[Nephtys]

That review link is two pages of straight ignorance that I think you've responded to quite effectively. The author's insane notions of 'valiant Japanese fighting to the last' completely whitewashes the fact that it was the actions of a deranged military oligarchy whipping unchecked national state-worship into a war they couldn't win, committing crimes that are every bit as evil as what the Nazis did. The idea of 'did the best side win?!' is utterly insane. How is nuking 150,000 people any less merciful than letting hundreds of thousands more starve, burn, or bleed to death over a prolonged war? Last I checked, the side that won that war in question didn't test chemical weapons on POWs.

Tie this in to an insipid, very cursory 'review' of an anime and it makes it all the sadder. The author subscribes entirely to hamfisted attempts to add 'depth' and 'social theory' and 'political commentary' to a show about an angry kid with magical genius powers who can take over people's brains and pilot giant robots. Oh, and chinese eunichs. And really bad attempts to add 'european' elements without vaguely resembling anything to come out of europe.

So no, giant robots aren't a metaphor for taking the humanity out of war and replacing it with machines. It's to sell plastic toys to japanese kids and american nerds.

[Setzer]

I'm going to wait for a response. It's entirely possible the girl was simply misinformed by a mass media that tends to boil history down to "America Wins the War." Personally, I don't think there's an ethical way to bomb a city, so all you can really do is try to end the war fast.

[Setzer]

So no, giant robots aren't a metaphor for taking the humanity out of war and replacing it with machines. It's to sell plastic toys to japanese kids and american nerds.

As opposed to the Mobile Dolls in Gundam Wing, which were used to address taking the humanity out of war.


And to sell plastic toys to Japanese kids and American nerds.

[UCBooties]

As opposed to the Mobile Dolls in Gundam Wing, which were used to address taking the humanity out of war.


And to sell plastic toys to Japanese kids and American nerds.

Hey Mister, those aren't toys, they're collectables. Don't you know this is serious business?

I have to say, even though I enjoy a lot of anime, I'm very careful to keep anything dealing even slightly with Japanese history in the perspective of their rampant revisionism. History is one of the hardest things to ignore when it comes to the influence of Japan's massive cultural bagage on anime. It always makes me a little sad when it becomes obvious that most anime fans have absolutely no perspective and are pretty much unabashed Japanophiles.

[Samuel]

When the Italians changed sides, it was because Mussolini had fallen. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini didn't come to power legally.

Wasn't he appointed by the King? So his position was legal, but the King could remove him from power at will, which he did when Italy was invaded. There was extra-legal power behind Mussolini (his blackshirts), but the actual mechanism of control was legitamate.

By 1945, the Allies HAD beaten Japan. They had thoroughly and utterly crushed them.

You got everything but the US submarine fleet eating Japanese shipping alive. Unlike the Germans are U-Boat campaign worked and Japan was even less self-sufficient than England. Also you forgot to answer:

Was that fair? Did the best side really win? Or did the Americans use a dishonorable technological trick, because they could never have beaten Japan otherwise?

which is so retarded I think you just skipped over it. Apparently she thinks war is something that has rules and she isn't talking about the Geneva convention. The point of a war is to win and any legal method to do so is fair game. It reminds me of the final battle in The Last Samuri, where they choose the "honorable" path. All I could see is them brutally killing and being killed for no reason or purpose other than their own stupid pride.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Well I think Setzer dealt with the points he highlighted better than I could (knowing very little about Japanese history, thus most of Code Geass probably goes over my head besides the fact they're historically not fond of America/Europe and China), nevertheless, I'd like to comment on a couple of points.

Nevertheless, as hard as the Japanese were on others, they held themselves to an equally tough standard.

You know, this is particularly stupid, because even if it was true it would just make the Japanese fascistic, totalitarian imperialists rather than just regular imperialists(like the British, we weren't particularly nice but you couldn't call us fascists).

The Germans were defeated. Still the Japanese fought on. Valiant pilots threw away their lives on one way missions. The entire Japanese population soldiered on. They might never have surrendered. Except for one thing.The atomic bomb!Was that fair? Did the best side really win? Or did the Americans use a dishonorable technological trick, because they could never have beaten Japan otherwise?

Christ, the dishonourable use of technology to triumph when wars should be decided by manly fighting prowess, or something, ridiculous. Did the British really win the Battle of Britain, or did they use a dishonourable technological trick (radar and better planes) when they might never have beaten the Luftwaffe otherwise?
Horribly innaccurate example, obviously, but probably no less than the original.
Maybe a more apt example would in fact be the ancestor of the Japanese government of the time, who, I am lead to believe, beat the samurai warlords by using dishonourable technological trickery.

Claiming that it's unfair to use superior technology to win a fight is ridiculous if you are using any technology at all, because if you are using technology to fight you'll want to find a way to make it better, be that by making a bow with better draw, a more accurate gun, a more agile plane, any of those is an 'unfair technological trick'.

However, if we simply accept that this is a metaphor for a high tech method of winning without actually engaging in direct, conventional person to person combat, then we can move on and discuss what the show is really about.

Now this bit about the knightmares really interested me, I may be reading too much into it since even the reviewer doesn't seem to think it's important. Still, I think what this taking the humanity out of war thing means is that you make human attributes less important, a longbowmans strength and skill does no good against massed musketry, a knights fighting prowess, chivalry and armour is no good against a crossbow bolt, etc. The thing is, as an example of this, knightmares are really, really bad, because they make personal attributes more important. An atomic bomb will obliterate you no matter who drops it, but the Lancelot can take out a whole platoon of lesser vehicles because Suzaku Kururugi is unrealistically skilled, and the importance of his skills is accentuated by the fact that everyone is fighting with machines that make direct, conventional person to person combat more important.

[Vendetta]

An atomic bomb will obliterate you no matter who drops it, but the Lancelot can take out a whole platoon of lesser vehicles because Suzaku Kururugi is unrealistically skilled, and the importance of his skills is accentuated by the fact that everyone is fighting with machines that make direct, conventional person to person combat more important.

Spinzaku wins because he has ridiculous plot armour. It's one of those things that the series relies on, we're told that these characters have zomg skills, but we're not actually shown anything of the kind, we're shown authorial fiat.

[speaker-to-trolls]

^His consistently running rings around other machines and doing absurd martial arts stunts in a twenty ton humanoid mech don't demonstrate skill?

[Setzer]

That's what I thought with Lelouch's leadership skills. He may be a tactical genius, but strategically, he's a fucking moron. I've seen his leadership with the Black Knights. He micromanages everything! How are they supposed to function if anything happens to him? What if his radio goes down, or has faulty information about the battlefield? Normally this is where independent officers and NCOs would use their own judgement and improvise some tactics, but normal officers and NCOs haven't spent their entire careers following orders like "Soldier A, go here, shoot that mecha, turn right and then take the second left heading north, attack the mech platoon stationed at the crossroads, then retreat east once they see you. Go 200 meters east and join with Soldier B, C, D, and F to wipe out the pursuit unit."

That's what I like about the Belisarius Saga. The Malwa soldiers got so used to having perfect orders from above, that when the invaders were able to disrupt Link's recon and information, its armies were essentially leaderless.

Anyhoo, she sent a response.

Charles Day,

Thanks for writing to me. However, I don't think it's the facts we disagree on. It's our evaluation of the facts.

For instance, the Italian people just wanted to eat and live their lives and not be embroiled in war, so they took Mussolini down. Right! We both agree on that. The Italians were pretending to be Roman fascists, but they were in fact peace loving consumers. You think that's a good thing, because that's what you are, too. Most Americans and many other people all over the world today are like that. But don't object to my saying they weren't real fascists. They weren't! They were not willing to make the personal sacrifices that ancient Spartans, ancient Romans and Japanese during world War II were willing to make.

In contrast, the Japanese would never in a million years have turned on their emperor. It was not because they liked him personally. It was because they revered the system of personal and national honor.

Do I not know that the Japanese committed horrible atrocities against other people, including helpless women and children? I admitted as much.
I certainly wouldn't want to have been one of their victims. This doesn't change the fact that without the bomb they would have been figthing still.

You are blinded by your middle class American values not to be able to see valor in people who do not embrace your social structure. The Japanese were valorous by their own standards of conduct, while being horrible &
cruel by ours. Have you ever tried to look at history from the viewpoint of the vanquished? I don't whitewash the atrocities. But I also see that a standard of "eat, drink and make merry" can seem pretty empty to a warrior nation.

We are now facing a war against Islamic fundamentalists who are committing suicide to accomplish their goals. I don't want them to win, but I cringe when I hear Americans call them "cowards". That's simply not true. They are cruel and vicious -- but not cowards!

Until we learn to honor Kamikazi pilots in retrospect and to value their courage, we will never be able to understand suicide bombers well enough to defeat them!

As for it not being true that America was taken over by the People of Exponential Growth, I think you are mistaken about the history. When Europeans took over America, it had been in the hands of native hunter gatherers who had a small scattered population. The introduction of agriculture allowed the land to be populated much more densely.

When the North defeated the South, it replaced an agrarian economy with one that was primarily industrial-- again exponential growth, higher population density.

I don't know of any example in history where that trend is reversed. It always goes from hunter gatherers to herdsmen to farmers to an industrial economy.

We have to separate our values from the facts. First discuss the facts. Then discuss how different people evaluate those facts as desirable or not.

Best,

--Aya Katz

[DPDarkPrimus]

Sounds like a lot of harrumphing and well yes buts to me.

[Nephtys]

So we've got a class A Japanophile.

In contrast, the Japanese would never in a million years have turned on their emperor. It was not because they liked him personally. It was because they revered the system of personal and national honor.

Yes, a public culture of shame and mindless worship is a noble thing. I guess 1984 was the story of an evil rebel who didn't understand honor and loyalty.

You are blinded by your middle class American values not to be able to see valor in people who do not embrace your social structure. The Japanese were valorous by their own standards of conduct, while being horrible & cruel by ours. Have you ever tried to look at history from the viewpoint of the vanquished? I don't whitewash the atrocities. But I also see that a standard of "eat, drink and make merry" can seem pretty empty to a warrior nation.

Yes, of course! Bayonetting prisoners is honorable. Killing ten thousand civilians for the DISHONORABLE ACT of sheltering an enemy pilot is completely valorous! Testing biological agents on prisoners is the YAMATO SAMURAI PATH.

We are now facing a war against Islamic fundamentalists who are committing suicide to accomplish their goals. I don't want them to win, but I cringe when I hear Americans call them "cowards". That's simply not true. They are cruel and vicious -- but not cowards!

Until we learn to honor Kamikazi pilots in retrospect and to value their courage, we will never be able to understand suicide bombers well enough to defeat them!

Shocking! Unthinking fanatics committing suicidal acts against their enemies! What does the author even mean by 'value their courage'? The Japanese were damned well defeated, no matter how much BISHIDO SPIRIT they had, by material and scientific superiority.

As for it not being true that America was taken over by the People of Exponential Growth, I think you are mistaken about the history. When Europeans took over America, it had been in the hands of native hunter gatherers who had a small scattered population. The introduction of agriculture allowed the land to be populated much more densely.

Yeah, because the Native Americans didn't practice agriculture. Nope. None at all.

We have to separate our values from the facts. First discuss the facts. Then discuss how different people evaluate those facts as desirable or not.

*snickers* Yes, we must discuss the facts. Naturally, our western techno-facts are invalid because they lack NIPPON VALOR.

[Setzer]

And my response.

Charles Day,

Thanks for writing to me. However, I don't think it's the facts we disagree on. It's our evaluation of the facts.

And thanks for responding so quickly. BTW, I posted my response to your review on a web board I frequent. Is it OK if I post your reply there too? (Note: As you may have guessed, she gave me the OK to post her responses)

For instance, the Italian people just wanted to eat and live their lives and not be embroiled in war, so they took Mussolini down. Right! We both agree on that. The Italians were pretending to be Roman fascists, but they were in fact peace loving consumers. You think that's a good thing, because that's what you are, too. Most Americans and many other people all over the world today are like that. But don't object to my saying they weren't real fascists. They weren't! They were not willing to make the personal sacrifices that ancient Spartans, ancient Romans and Japanese during world War II were willing to make.

Well, the Spartans were a society based around slavery. They trained so hard in warfare because they had to be willing to beat down Helot (slave) revolts at a moment's notice. When the movie 300 was drooling over how tough Spartan training was, they left out the part where they had to sneak out and kill a Helot.
Spartan soldiers were outnumbered by their slaves, so what you see as self sacrifice on behalf of an entire culture was in fact the self serving actions of a tiny minority.

The Romans did not march lockstep behind authority. They could be self sacrificing when it was necessary, but this doesn't mean they never rebelled against the system. There was class conflict between the Patricians and the Plebians because the Plebians believed the Patricians had an unfair amount of power concentrated in their hands.

And as for the Japanese...

Have you ever heard of the Kempeitai?

http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/kem.html

From 1933 to 1936, nearly 60,000 people were arrested. Their crime? "Dangerous Thoughts."

http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_79_2005-02-02.html

Prisoners in Kempeitai custody were often shocked with electricity, had their stomachs pumped full of water and jumped on, or burnt with cigarettes. These were Japanese who were guilty of not supporting a government that gassed and raped civilians. When the Kempeitai arrested someone, guilt was assumed unless proven otherwise.

The military was so dominant in the government that from May 1932 until 1945, Prime Ministers would either be military, or members of a totalitarian para-military organization known as the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

Hamaguchi Osachi was the first Prime Minister of the Showa period who wasn't a member of the military. In 1931, he died, 8 months after being wounded in an assassination attempt. His successor, Wakatsuki Reijirō, was in office during the Mukden incident, where the army literally ignored the civilian government to wage war in China. The man after him was also serving as a General in the army. Inukai Tsuyoshi, another civilian, was assassinated by the military after serving 6 months. I don't count Takahashi Korekiyo because he was only an interim prime minister during the Showa reign. He also served only 11 days. However, he favored cutting back military expenditures, and was among those assassinated by the Army in 1936, after he'd left office. Admiral Saito Makoto was next. The previous PMs belonged to either the Friends of Constitutional Government Party (Rikken Seiyukai) or the Constitutional Democratic Party (Rikken Minseito) but Saito had no political affiliation. He was an active duty member of the military. Imagine if the American President was neither Democrat nor Republican, but gave his affiliation as the Army?

Okada Keisuke was next, another Admiral. Goto Fumio was another interim Prime Minister. Why did they need another interim Prime Minister? Remember that assassination I talked about? Well, by this time 1936 had rolled around. Takahashi, Saito, and Okada were all assassinated in a failed coup detat that would be known as the 2-2-6 incident. In other words, the Army had decided to dispense with that pesky democracy business and tried to force themselves on Japan like the political rapists they were. Afterwards, Hirota Koki was elected. To placate the military, he reinstated the system where only active duty army or navy officers could serve as War Minister. In other words, the military was no longer being run by a civilian, and was no longer answerable to the civilian government. Hirota resigned due to disagreements with his War minister. Ugaki Kazushige was going to replace him, but then an interesting thing occured.

The military took advantage of a constitutional loophole to subvert the democratic process. I already mentioned how the post of War Minister had to be filled by someone in the military. According to the constitution, if an elected Prime minister was unable to form a cabinet, then new elections had to be held. When Ugaki looked set to be next prime minister, the Military withdrew their choice for War Minister, forcing a new election to be held. The elections were won by General Hayashi Senjuro, who commanded troops that participated in the Mukden incident. He was another PM who publicly served as a member of the military. So now you have some idea of how politics were going in WW2 Japan.

In contrast, the Japanese would never in a million years have turned on their emperor. It was not because they liked him personally. It was because they revered the system of personal and national honor.

Define "turned on." They may not have harmed him physically, but they had no problem with ignoring him. Hirohito himself said "the council is using silk floss to suffocate me." In other words, they were revering him into powerlessness. The army and navy were so insistent that Hirohito not sully his hands with actual government that there was absolutely no way he was able to contest their will. If you've seen Avatar The Last Airbender, it was pretty much the situation that Long Feng and the Earth King had going.

If you leave a man unharmed, but refuse him any freedom, are you truly loyal to him? A Gilded cage is still a cage. And every time the Japanese people elected someone who wasn't pro-war, the military either dissolved his government through legal loopholes or just shot him. How honorable is that?

Do I not know that the Japanese committed horrible atrocities against other people, including helpless women and children? I admitted as much.
I certainly wouldn't want to have been one of their victims. This doesn't change the fact that without the bomb they would have been figthing still.

Actually, without the bomb, the Allies would have gone through with Operation Downfall, the conventional invasion of Japan. We were apprehensive about the number of casualties we would have taken. In fact, my grandfather was serving in the Navy at the time, and if we had actually invaded Japan, there's a strong possibility that I wouldn't be here right now. We had a gigantic pile of Purple Hearts in anticipation of a flood of dead and wounded. In fact, every Purple Heart issued until about 1991 was from that stockpile. In other words, 50 years of warfare had fewer casualties then were predicted in an invasion of Japan. In Okinawa, the Americans suffered about 12,500 dead and 38,000 wounded. But the Japanese dead numbered anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000. Of those dead, 40-150,000 were civilians. Most of them were suicides. The Japanese civilians living on Okinawa had been fed a steady diet of lies about "American atrocities." They were so desperate and scared, that they believed they had no other choice then to obey the army's orders for them to commit suicide to avoid capture. How is that honorable? How is it honorable to lie to someone, to horrify them to the point where murdering their own families seems like an act of kindness? How the FUCK is that honorable?!

You are blinded by your middle class American values not to be able to see valor in people who do not embrace your social structure. The Japanese were valorous by their own standards of conduct, while being horrible &
cruel by ours. Have you ever tried to look at history from the viewpoint of the vanquished? I don't whitewash the atrocities. But I also see that a standard of "eat, drink and make merry" can seem pretty empty to a warrior nation.

If the Japanese were so valorous, then why did they lie to their own people during a war they started? And if bloodshed and conquest were truly universal virtues in Japan, why did the military have to use assassinations and legal loopholes to secure their hold on power? Why did they have to use torture and imprisonment on Japanese who disagreed with them? I'll say it again. Put down the fucking manga and open a fucking history book.

We are now facing a war against Islamic fundamentalists who are committing suicide to accomplish their goals. I don't want them to win, but I cringe when I hear Americans call them "cowards". That's simply not true. They are cruel and vicious -- but not cowards!


Until we learn to honor Kamikazi pilots in retrospect and to value their courage, we will never be able to understand suicide bombers well enough to defeat them!

As for it not being true that America was taken over by the People of Exponential Growth, I think you are mistaken about the history. When Europeans took over America, it had been in the hands of native hunter gatherers who had a small scattered population. The introduction of agriculture allowed the land to be populated much more densely.

The Native Americans weren't all hunter gatherers. Tales of the first thanksgiving relate how Squanto taught the Plymouth bay colonists about local crops and how to ensure bountiful harvests. The Conquistadors learned about potatoes from the Incas. The Aztecs had such a successful agricultural infrastructure that they were able to sustain a city of 250,000 people when the greatest cities in Europe only numbered in the tens of thousands. They were not small or scattered.

When the North defeated the South, it replaced an agrarian economy with one that was primarily industrial-- again exponential growth, higher population density.

I don't know of any example in history where that trend is reversed. It always goes from hunter gatherers to herdsmen to farmers to an industrial economy.

We have to separate our values from the facts. First discuss the facts. Then discuss how different people evaluate those facts as desirable or not.

Best,

--Aya Katz

Did you even read that part? I wasn't talking in terms of conflict between agrarian and industrialized societies. That's a matter of economics. By "sink to their level" I was addressing things from a moral perspective. How did you not notice? I wasn't talking about economic and civilization development trends. I was talking about right and wrong. I was talking about how it isn't necessary to become your enemies in order to defeat them. And if Lelouch wasn't a revenge obsessed moron when it comes to strategy, it wouldn't have been necessary for him to become like the Brittanians he so despised.

I agree that courage is very important. It took lots of courage for the Japanese to take Singapore, a fortress believed unconquerable. It took courage for the Japanese to attack the powerful American pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. It took courage to fight when hopelessly outclassed at Leyte Gulf and the Marianas Turkey Shoot. That's called physical courage, where you disregard the threat of bodily harm to accomplish some task you've chosen to do.

But there's a different sort of courage. In my opinion, a superior form of courage. It's called moral courage. that's when you take a good look at your morals, at what you believe to be right and wrong, and you take a good look at what you're doing. And if your morals and your actions don't mesh, then that's where moral courage comes in. It takes moral courage to say no when someone in charge tells you to drop poison gas on that Chinese city. It takes moral courage to say no when you're told to cut apart a man while he's still alive. It takes moral courage to say no when you're ordered to take a woman from her home so the soldiers will have a pretty face to fuck in between battles. When I look at the actions of the Japanese military during World War 2, I can't imagine a bigger bunch of cowards.

[Setzer]

Sure, you can post my reply to the message board. Have you also provided a link to the review I wrote?

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=142239

Yes, it's at the top of the page. The website format shortens the link to read Lelouch of the Ass, but it works just fine.

You obviously do know a great deal more than I do about Japanese history and culture, especially in the area of how they dealt with their own dissidents.

I suspect any fascistic regime is bound to have less than a stellar record in the area of civil liberties. I am not suggesting that I would ever want to live under such a regime.

I also agree with you that there is such a thing as moral courage. Those who stand up for others and disobey orders that they believe ar morally wrong are very much to be commended and admired.

What you may not realize, though, is that not every person who obeys an order that you personally find reprehensible is in fact guilty of moral cowardice. The question is: did the person obeying the order find it morally reprehensible? Suicide bombers probably subscribe to a different set of morals than we do. To label them cowards is to misunderstand them, and therefore to underestimate their inner resources.

I once saw an episode of Rurouni Kenshin where Raijuta gathered an army to eventually overthrow the Meiji government. When Kenshin defeated him, one of Raijuta's disciples tried to commit seppuku. Kenshin stopped him, and said that sometimes it takes more courage to put down your sword then to keep fighting.

But it is true that we're all products of our time. To completely evaluate the actions of the Japanese military dictatorship, we need to look at what virtues they held dear, and how closely they followed it. An examination of Bushido is a good place to start.

http://www.koryu.com/library/kfriday2.html

According to Professor Karl Friday, world war 2 era Bushido was largely a fabrication for the sake of social control.

Since I'm rapidly losing any faith I once had in your reading comprehension skills, I'll state things even more plainly and simply: The militarists made shit up to get the Japanese people to do what they told them to. They were perfectly willing to piss all over the actual morals of the Samurai in order to keep power.

In 1894, an Imperial Proclamation stated that Japanese soldiers should make every effort to win the war without violating international law. According to historian Yuki Tanaka, Japanese forces during the First Sino-Japanese War, released 1,790 Chinese prisoners without harm, once they signed an agreement not to take up arms against Japan again. After the Russo-Japanese War, all 79,367 Russian prisoners were released, and were paid for labour performed, in accordance with the Hague Convention. Those men were honorable warriors. Their treatment of prisoners was humane and decent. But that does raise a question.If the code of Bushido states that men who surrender are beneath contempt and deserving of any suffering a Samurai chooses to inflict, then why did the Japanese let those prisoners go?

More importantly, why would the Emperor make an official proclamation saying that international laws were to be respected? This includes the Geneva conventions and Hague Conventions, which the Japanese apparently had no qualms about following prior to the rise of the WW2 Junta. For followers of Shinto, an official proclamation by the Emperor is on roughly the same level as God carving the ten commandments out of the rock of Mt Sinai. A Living god is deigning to take notice of we pathetic mortals, and is bestowing upon us his divine wisdom. It was an Imperial Proclamation after the atomic bombings that convinced the Japanese to surrender. Surely the military, with their unswerving loyalty to the Divine Son of the Goddess Amaterasu, would abide by his wishes and end the suffering, right?

Riiight???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_Incident

Even after untold millions had died, even after their ships were sunk and their planes blasted to flaming scraps of aluminum, after the Emperor himself proclaimed that Japan would accept the unconditional surrender demanded by the Potsdam Declaration, the militarists still wanted to fight on. The Kyujo incident was their attempt to imprison the Emperor, block his statement of surrender, and keep fighting. These are not the actions of honorable self sacrificing warriors. This is the behavior of power hungry madmen, who would gladly watch their nation parish on an atomic funeral pyre if it meant even the most remote chance that they would be able to continue ruling. For all their talk of obedience to the Emperor and sacrificing for the good of Japan, that all went out the window when it meant giving up their power.

BTW, Lelouch is hardly my favorite character in that series. Suzuku was obviously much more sympathetic.

I can see why you like him. He's clearly as naive and ignorant as you are.

I am currently researching information about Weihshien internment camp in China and Commandant Izu who ran it. Do you happen to have any source materials to suggest?

Browse Wikipedia. You can't quote it for serious academic research, but it frequently cites its sources in the footnotes. Click on those links and you'll usually get some good leads.

As for early America, I meant North America, where the agriculture practiced by natives did not support cities and was on a very modest scale. While I don't support the slavery practiced by the South, there are moral dimensions to consider in the move from an agrarian, smaller scaled society to one where industry rules. For one thing, individual laborers are much more likely to work for an employer than to be self employed in such a society.

Best,

--Aya

http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz

How the fuck does morality apply to this? People who work for others are not inferior to those who are self employed.

Being self employed in an agricultural society sounds good, as long as you don't stop and think about what that means. The proper term for "self employment in an agricultural economy" is "subsistence farming. "All you have to eat is what you grow for yourself. You live hand to mouth, and if there's a cold snap, or a drought, or a swarm of locusts, you run the very real risk of starving to death. Where's the moral superiority there. And furthermore, what does this have to do with anything we discussed? Code Geass isn't about romanticizing a life lived close to nature like in James Cameron's Avatar. It isn't about population pressure like in Soylent Green. Japan was invaded because it had a valuable resource, not because of the Brittanian version of Lebensraum.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That was genuinely informative and interesting, Setzer. I was expecting a thread on the plot of the series, but instead I get a nice crash course in things I'm only vaguely aware of. It's fitting that I read this all while listening to The Pacific score, no less.

[Axiomatic]

You speak great truth, Setzer, except that it might be well to point out that while the Allies weren't genocidal racists, that's merely because they weren't genocidal. And they most certainly did use the Japanese women as prostitutes. America managed to defeat the Confederacy without adopting slavery, but the laws it adopted immediately afterward were not exactly something to write home about.

Also, when the Romans conquered Gaul and other peoples, they DID do more than say "lol, we like to conquer." It was about spreading Romanitas, the superior culture, the only culture really worthy of the name.

[Ford Prefect]

I have to say, even though I enjoy a lot of anime, I'm very careful to keep anything dealing even slightly with Japanese history in the perspective of their rampant revisionism. History is one of the hardest things to ignore when it comes to the influence of Japan's massive cultural bagage on anime.

I'm not even sure why it's relevant to Code Geass, the first season of which was a pretty obvious critique of Japanese nationalism, hence why the Japanese resistance fighters are out and out suicidal terrorists who'd do anything to win, are totally blind to their situation, are only really effective once they realise they're out of their depth and allow someone else to make use of them etc. Toudou, the very symbol of Japanese resistance agaisnt Britannia, thinks that fighting is not only futile but totally ridiculous, and he only gets into it once Lelouch reveals his intent to abandon the Japan of the past and create a new Japan, founded on totally different base principles. The second season doesn't exactly follow through on this, but the first season is pretty much an unrelenting cavalcade of 'Japan isn't that fantastic, don't buy into it'. Even against the backdrop of the Holy Empire of Britannia Taniguchi managed to make Japan look bad.

[Samuel]

You speak great truth, Setzer, except that it might be well to point out that while the Allies weren't genocidal racists, that's merely because they weren't genocidal. And they most certainly did use the Japanese women as prostitutes. America managed to defeat the Confederacy without adopting slavery, but the laws it adopted immediately afterward were not exactly something to write home about.

Also, when the Romans conquered Gaul and other peoples, they DID do more than say "lol, we like to conquer." It was about spreading Romanitas, the superior culture, the only culture really worthy of the name.

Well what did you expect? That the US would import prostitutes from across the ocean? I think you mean forced prostitution.

As for the Romans spreading their culture, they did think they were better than everyone else... but they were more than willing to take things from other cultures (mostly the Greeks). I believe the justification they used was that these wars were necesary to defend Rome/Rome's allies/Roman honor. Of course, on occasion they were openly about the loot.

[scythewielder]

There's a lot of very interesting and even some relatively new (for me) information here, but in the end I just come back to the fact that Code Geass takes place in an entirely fictional and extremely unrealistic world where there are only superficial links to any real historical events. There are small bits and pieces which might be interpreted as commentary, intentional or not, but they're basically window dressing.

None of them are really that important to the show's main purpose, which is to entertain and sell merchandise, instead of trying to tell a mature story about modern political or historical trends. As such, I don't see the need to waste time trying to forcefully come up with a bunch of parallels with little to no lasting relevance, in addition to their historical inaccuracy.

This show definitely wasn't trying to be Legend of the Galactic Heroes, even at its best, and while people are free to make all kinds of interpretations they really shouldn't go too far.

Code Geass was never a particularly deep show as far as plot goes, the focus was always on the characters and the protagonist in particular. That's it.

The second season doesn't exactly follow through on this, but the first season is pretty much an unrelenting cavalcade of 'Japan isn't that fantastic, don't buy into it'. Even against the backdrop of the Holy Empire of Britannia Taniguchi managed to make Japan look bad.

I'd argue that even during the second season the series confirms in plenty of other ways that Lelouch isn't really interested in Japan or Japanese nationalism at all.

His motivations are still essentially personal and Japan's importance is pretty much one of convenience and necessity. He cares about certain individuals who are in Japan or are Japanese themselves, which means there is some relevant rhetoric early on, but none of it really makes Japan special as a nation or as a people. In fact, it even becomes necessary to create an alliance of nations (vague and rather underdeveloped, to be sure) in order to stand up to Britannia, pretty much making the Black Knights an ostensibly global force by default despite the organization's ethnic origins. Not to mention the fact they still need Lelouch, a Britannian, in order to get anything done.

And later on...without spoiling much here, some Japanese are portrayed in a very negative light and the focus shifts entirely to Lelouch himself and whatever he intends to do next.

[Setzer]

Her latest response. Haven't crafted a reply yet. But this is getting weird

Lots of religions are largely a fabrication for social control, including all the major religions of the world. Whether one actually believes that a deity is involved, or one simply accepts the values embedded in the religion is beside the point.

It would be nice if all would abide by the Geneva convention, but many regimes, including post 9/11 USA departed from it over the years. For people to give lip service to one set of rules and practice another is not uncommon. But many who do depart from the written rules in order to torture captives actually believe themselves to be in the right and feel no guilt. If such is their belief, then they are guilty of many things, but moral cowardice isn't one of them.

Please understand, I am not defending the atrocities. I am saying that you need to look outside yourself and your worldview to understand why they were committed, and why it keeps happening over and over again in different parts of the world.

To state unequivocally that subsistence farming is bad and that wage slavery is better again shows a particular bias. There are of course many other ways to be independent besides subsistence farming. There could be a nation of independent shopkeepers and farmers and artisans, each of whom owned their own business and were free to have commerce with one another. There could be herdsmen of great wealth, who had so many head of cattle that they need never starve. But each of these ways of living requires more space, lower population density and less collectivization.

You're not critiquing me for failing to understand what you write. You still haven't grasped that this is about values.

--Aya Katz

[Nephtys]

So... the Imperial Japanese aren't 'moral cowards', because... of.. uh. Something vague about the USA and the Geneva Convention? Last I bloody checked, the US didn't bayonet babies on camera, while testing chemical weapons on tied up prisoners. So hey, I guess since it was totally legal in Japan to brutally torture prisoners, that's way morally superior than a criminal NON-YAMATO nation that sometimes goes over their laws.

I don't think she knows what subsistence farming is. Or whatever the hell this 'independent farmer' civilization is she seems to be confused about.

[Ford Prefect]

Her latest response. Haven't crafted a reply yet. But this is getting weird

My suggestion is that you don't reply, and in fact you should run away.

Last I bloody checked, the US didn't bayonet babies on camera, while testing chemical weapons on tied up prisoners.

No, but the US did grant Shiro Ishii and other Unit 731 leaders immunity from tribunals in return for the expertise they developed through the course of their human experimentation. Not to suggest that this Aya Katz person isn't a total loon or anything, I just felt like mentioning it.

[Setzer]

Her replies are getting shorter and shorter. I expect her to bury her head in the sand sometime soon.

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 5:56 PM, A. Katz <amnfn@well.com> wrote:

Lots of religions are largely a fabrication for social control, including all the major religions of the world. Whether one actually believes that a deity is involved, or one simply accepts the values embedded in the religion is beside the point.

But what if you have a moral code that preaches one thing, and you warp it for the sake of securing your own power? If I rewrote the Bible to say I was the messiah and all humans were bound to serve me, and I gathered a flock of followers, would that make me a good Christian? Or would it make me a liar?

Just because I don't accept a certain set of values, doesn't mean that's the case for others. The Japanese military leadership had a set of values which they did not follow. This means they were not true to their own stated values.

It would be nice if all would abide by the Geneva convention, but many regimes, including post 9/11 USA departed from it over the years. For people to give lip service to one set of rules and practice another is not uncommon. But many who do depart from the written rules in order to torture captives actually believe themselves to be in the right and feel no guilt. If such is their belief, then they are guilty of many things, but moral cowardice isn't one of them.

You misunderstand. Japan had followed the Geneva Convention. The Emperor himself, the living god of Shintoism, said the military should do everything possible to win without violating international law. In the earlier conflicts with Russia and China, the Japanese didn't torture prisoners or bayonet babies or gas cities. And they won both these wars, so the World War 2 atrocities clearly were not needed to be victorious. What was the difference between the turn of the century wars and World War 2? Well, in the first case, Japan was run by a civilian government operating under the rule of law. In the second case, Japan was ruled by a militarist clique that cared only for their own power.

And if the Japanese people feel no guilt, why don't they own up to their atrocities? If the Japanese people believed they were in the right, then why do they try and pretend their wartime atrocities didn't happen?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_h ... troversies

Since I doubt you'll bother to read that link, let me give you the gist of it.As recently as 2007, Japanese schoolbooks were being written to downplay the military's role in the mass suicides of civilians. It implied that civilians in Okinawa killed themselves on their own, rather then being ordered to do so by the army. It implies they got grenades on their own, rather then being issued to them by the army.

Please understand, I am not defending the atrocities. I am saying that you need to look outside yourself and your worldview to understand why they were committed, and why it keeps happening over and over again in different parts of the world.

But you are defending them. You're saying that it fit the Japanese moral code, even though it didn't. You're saying they subjected themselves to the same treatment they gave others, even though they didn't. You're saying they believed their actions to be right, even though they never behaved like that before or after the militarists were in power.

And I have looked outside my worldview. I don't follow Bushido, nor am I a practitioner of Shinto, nor am I a member of the Japanese military. But I looked at the rules they agreed to follow, and how they failed to follow them in World War 2. A large portion of Bushido is about loyalty. It's about doing what you said you would do. The Japanese militarists claimed they were loyal to the Emperor, but they were willing to work against his wishes when it meant keeping their own power. If the Emperor says Japan will surrender, and the militarists try to arrest him to stop this from happening, are they loyal to the Emperor, or to their own power base?

Let me put it simply: The militarists openly disobeyed the Emperor when he called for surrender. They were not loyal to him. They were loyal only to themselves.

To state unequivocally that subsistence farming is bad and that wage slavery is better again shows a particular bias. There are of course many other ways to be independent besides subsistence farming. There could be a nation of independent shopkeepers and farmers and artisans, each of whom owned their own business and were free to have commerce with one another. There could be herdsmen of great wealth, who had so many head of cattle that they need never starve. But each of these ways of living requires more space, lower population density and less collectivization.

You're not critiquing me for failing to understand what you write. You still haven't grasped that this is about values.

--Aya Katz

But I am critiquing you for failing to understand what I write. Is English your second language or something? I'm speaking to you quite plainly, and you seem incapable of understanding me. When I look at the values the Japanese held, and how the militarists ruling Japan ignored them when their power was at stake, I see that the militarists cared nothing for what they claimed to hold dear. By their own moral standards, they were appalling. The Japanese military leaders betrayed their own values. Do I have to write in all caps before my words will register?

As for your talk about shopkeepers and artisans, what's your work history? I refuse to believe someone so naive has ever held down a job as a shopkeeper or farmer or artisan. Otherwise you would realize that everyone being their own boss isn't always for the best.

[Setzer]

You speak great truth, Setzer, except that it might be well to point out that while the Allies weren't genocidal racists, that's merely because they weren't genocidal. And they most certainly did use the Japanese women as prostitutes. America managed to defeat the Confederacy without adopting slavery, but the laws it adopted immediately afterward were not exactly something to write home about.

Also, when the Romans conquered Gaul and other peoples, they DID do more than say "lol, we like to conquer." It was about spreading Romanitas, the superior culture, the only culture really worthy of the name.

Yeah, I'm not saying the allies were angels. They were better then the enemies they fought, but the Nazis and Japanese militarists set the bar pretty low.

[Shroom Man 777]

Setzer, you're a great guy. And this, particular, is a beautiful line: "When I look at the actions of the Japanese military during World War 2, I can't imagine a bigger bunch of cowards."

I salute you, mangs. Fuck Imperial Japan. As a person from a country that was once under the proud banner of their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, I say you should have gundamechajapanimumango mechas shove balut eggs up that deranged woman's cunts.

EDIT:

Note for all the racism of the Americans, they did do a pretty decent job of nationbuilding here in the Philippines. Back in before WW2, they helped us make our government, invented the Colt M1911 to shoot Filipino Muslims with, and laid out a plan with which to give us back our independence in some time or another. There's a reason why MacArthur is considered a great guy for getting those Japanese fucks out of our goddamn country. The Joes did a great job here, and we love 'em for it. It's something that we'll be forever thankful for, namely killing the fuck out of those Japanese shits.