The History Master
@myhistorymaster
Just a historian & political analyst for East Asia with a pretentious social media handle. Clio, give me strength...
True enough! I guess I was just gesturing at what this writer notes: German soldiers (and those of other would-be conquers) raped and pillaged too, but it's the Japanese army's "rape culture" which seems lodged more firmly in Western popular consciousness. What might this fascination say about us?
Joking aside and reading this back into history, this is how you get WW2 propaganda that essentially boils down to "buy war bonds and join the Marines or else the Japanese will cover over here and rape your wife!"
The Canadian equivalent. You mean the Wartime Prices and Trade Board (WPTB) will have to control and ration things in wartime?! Outrageous and "Gestapo-like"!
Depressingly, I think forever. This was Carl Jung at the end of a long and successful career in psychology. The only difference now is that modern technology makes it easier to do than ever before.
This one (along with the average Monty Python skit) probably sums up my general approach to humour. Absurdity meets dark.
I've always found this rather infamous entry in Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King's diary to be telling on this point: The bomb wasn't dropped on Japan explicitly because of racism, but racism made it easier to justify and think that the Japanese deserved to suffer more than the Germans did.
Bit late to this party, but I'm reminded of the glum British writer who essentially made this same point about the Nazis during WWII. (From Richard Overy's Why the Allies Won)
I still regret not taking a look at these when I had the time. This is material from the Carnegie Endowment, by-the-by.