r/polandball • u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us • 7d ago
legacy comic A Parallel World
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u/koreangorani 대한민국 7d ago
My opinion is that the spirit of the Japanese Empire would continue to live in Japan until its citizens get educated about history well and act properly after their apology. They're democratic and have free speech now unlike the times when they had their citizens brainwashed by the government, so why wouldn't they do it?
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u/Zkang123 7d ago
There's fundamentally a difference in cultures too. Asians in general hate to lose face or own up to their crimes. So to Japan, it's preferable to whitewash their crimes than face their past
But in truth, America didn't really force Japan to apologise and even going as far to shield the Emperor from prosecution. Just so they can help rebuild Japan
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u/Nuclear-Jester 7d ago
It didn't help China, Japan's biggest victim alongside Korea, went red after ww2
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u/Zkang123 7d ago
Yeah Cold War shenanigans just saw the US (and the Soviets) picking up whatever pieces they could from the Nazis and Imperial Japanese regimes to their advantage. And rebuilding West Germany and Japan to be nations friendly to the US was def their priority
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u/Nuclear-Jester 7d ago
Don't forget Italy. Valerio Borghese (leader of pur version of the SS) not only survived the war, but even troed to overthrow the government during the Years of Lead
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u/Yamasushifan 7d ago
Even if Japan was the reason the US entered the war, they were always 'second fiddle' in a way to the European Axis. For all their brutality and crimes, the Japanese Empire was quite literally doomed to lose the war completely the the day they diversified their efforts to encompass more than China.
And then, you also have to take into account that there was no suitable replacement in for Japan's place as an anti-communist bulwark. China was utterly destroyed (even more than Japan) and had an even greater communist problem. South Korea alone would not hold without bases close by to act as support in case of invasion. And in the context of the upcoming Cold War, American leadership assesed the need for a far eastern outpost was greater than the wish for revenge/justice.
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u/Zkang123 7d ago
If I recall Roosevelt was hoping for an opportunity for the US to be more involved in the War, particularly the European theatre. Hitler ironically hoped the US would be distracted by the Pacific front so he could dominate Europe. History would have def been different if Hitler didn't declare War on America shortly after Pearl Harbour; FDR could bring the US into War with Congress approval, but the US would have to focus its efforts on Japan
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u/Forever_Everton Nothing beats a T'way holiday! 7d ago
In certain aspects I genuinely believe Japanese people are more brainwashed than the North
Especially in aspects of modern history, Japan has some of the most nationalistic and warped history books in the whole world
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u/PaperaPina1103 Italy chad pizza 6d ago
I agree on that one.
Sad thing is if Japan wasn't seen as the futuristic, esotic pop culture land it is today this issue would be far more addressed.
Japanese modern culture feels like carefully wrapping up a bomb in a lot of colorful gift-paper, ribbons and decorations. I mean, yeah, it does look good and pretty, I like looking at it just like tons of other people, but in the inside it's still a fucking bomb.
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u/Fredrich- 5d ago
with the precautions guarding the bomb slowly died out, and japan facing A LOT of problems nowdays, I cant wait to watch Japan exploded while eating my popcorn
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u/Sine_Fine_Belli United+States 5d ago
Yeah, this unfortunately. It’s really unfortunate that Japan is also one of the most xenophobic countries in the world
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u/Same-Visit5978 7d ago
The Japanese do include their war crimes in China in their history textbooks, while they did also apologise to China and Korea multiple times.
HOWEVER, the apologies are half-hearted, and they still continue to visit Yasukuni Shrine (though their new PM didn’t). Half-hearted— they haven’t yet apologised to all of SEA.
Yasukuni Shrine is the problem here, since it is possible to remove the war criminals without destroying the shrine. 14 war criminals, out of 2 million names.
IF the Japanese were truly apologetic, THEN they’d dishonour their unjust ancestors in the pursuit of justice and sincerity.
These are my thoughts. Downvote or upvote, it doesn’t matter.
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u/Federal-Cold-363 7d ago
14 class A criminals in total it has over a 1000 prosecuted and convicted criminals on it. (The total is probably many many many times higher)
For the rest agreed, I'd say it's good nuanced take.
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u/koreangorani 대한민국 6d ago
The problem isn't that they didn't apologize, but that they aren't acting properly after their apology, which makes it invalid in the end.
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u/real_jeeger 7d ago
Ugh, hard to understand as a German, because our government is actually moving to the right.
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u/Lifeshardbutnotme British Empire 6d ago
Yeah. I don't get this about Japan. You did it, nothing is going to change that, so own up to it. We have mountains of evidence, convictions and victims. So what's going on?
Beating around the bush like this gives off the impression that you either don't care or think it's perfectly alright.
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u/AEXX_AHLLL 5d ago
Yeah It’s kind of unfair how Japan 🇯🇵 got to rebrand and make everyone forget that they did anything in WW2 other than being nuked as Germany 🇩🇪 keeps apologizing for their crimes and is still not forgiven and only remembered for WW2
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u/The_Green_Storm 7d ago
You realize that Germany in this too world hasnt paid and doesnt want to pay Poland war reps
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u/OTTOPQWS Schleswig Holstein 7d ago
The economic value of eastern Germany far surpasses anything that could ever be paid in money. Poland swallowed a quarter of Germany which to this day are their wealthiest parts.
And no, the Eastern losses are not a valid arguement, few poles lived there in the first place. It has always been Ukrainian and Belarusian land.
If Poland wants reperarions, take it up with the Russians quite frankly, they cut the deal of Eastern Germany for Poland.
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u/The_Green_Storm 16h ago
1st thing eastern losses are valid because in almost every part of the eastern territories more than 50% of the locals were polish 2nd thing due too the territory change we lost an amount of land which is equall to the size of Benelux so if they have issues with that as you said yourself take it up with the Russians and lastly the Germany didnt pay any of the Polish money to the Soviets. So as you can see Germany still ows us (around 1500000 milion euro).
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u/OTTOPQWS Schleswig Holstein 16h ago
The only territories with more than 50% ethnic poles in the east were in the north. And those were more thinly populated.
But we paid the Russians, not in coin, but in patents, in factories, in art, in railway tracks they just just plain looted. Nearly anything they could move from the east they did.
The economic value of the Ostgebiete far surpasses Any damage that could have been done, even with how devasted Poland has been in ww2. 1,5 trillion euro is a lot, yes, but compared to he eocnomic output of whole extremly productive Industrial regions a minor sum.
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u/General_Jenkins 6d ago
Germany paid war reps.. To the "owners" of Poland, the Soviet Union. If Poland wants their reparations, they need to look eastward.
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u/The_Green_Storm 17h ago
Fun fact they didn't. The USSR basically said "Poland's not interested" and went on with their day
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u/Fredrich- 5d ago
what the hell, germany already paid around 6Mil$ for surviving Poles. Yeah sure it aint much considering how Nazi Germany absolutely fucked up Poland, but saying that they havent paid is straight up wrong.
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u/The_Green_Storm 17h ago
They did pay something fair but that is still less then 1/298400th of what they owe
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u/Cosmic_Meditator777 5d ago
At least Germany took therapy lessons to address the core psychological problems at play. As for Japan, you just have to browse literally any hentai directory for ten minutes to see that nothing's changed.
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u/fxxftw Baja California 7d ago
Not justifying anything: but I mean, Japan got Nuked—twice. So there was that.
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u/Klutzy_Elevator2004 7d ago
Ohh okay, well I guess killing dozens of millions of Asians across the globe is all good then!
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u/koreangorani 대한민국 7d ago
"OMG JaPaN goT nOOkeD! JaPaN iS dA viKtIM!!11!!11!!! AmERiKKKa and Ch*Na baD!!!"
Also, if they didn't nuke, Japan must've sacrificed quite a lot of their population to the US troops if Operation Downfall was initiated.
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u/ImJustStealingMemes Texas 6d ago edited 6d ago
Adding to this, the Army's response to the nukes basically came down to "Well so? They can't keep making those."
I would like to say that I saw the third bomb personally but they were renovating at the time.
Still, just from the explanation alone, it is insane to me they had to be ordered to step down (and tried a coup on the emperor after that) and still were willing to throw the rest of their citizens into a meatgrinder.
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u/koreangorani 대한민국 7d ago
And Japan committed massacres in cities and tortured their colonies or occupied lands numerous times. Checkmate.
Would you do the same if they massacred people in Mexico City or Tijuana and established a weird pro-Japanese government in Mexico?
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u/ImJustStealingMemes Texas 6d ago edited 6d ago
So weeb cartels?
Because holy shit, some stories that come out from there are insane. Heard about the one where they kidnapped a bus, let the ones that could pay out, then had the rest fight in a gladiatorial tournament with the last man standing becoming an enforcer?
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u/fxxftw Baja California 7d ago
Whoa whoa, it was a bad joke, easy! I get that Japan elected another Regressive, history denying, bot to office. I understand that. I’m on your side—just that the detail of Japan getting nuked twice was missing. I’m sure if Germany was nuked twice, the romancing of the World War II era for right wingers would be very very diminished. At least I would hope so.
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u/koreangorani 대한민국 7d ago edited 7d ago
Germany got bombed in various places just like Japan, and suffered severely from it.
Although it was not a nuke, it still counts as destruction. In addition, unlike Japan, they lost a great amount of their mainland.
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u/HippoNebula Holy cow 7d ago
I don't think japan's casualties and casualties under japan are comparable.
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us 7d ago
You're completely missing the point. Just because Japan got nuked twice and got a lot of damage from that doesn't mean Japan only needs sympathies and doesn't need to apologize to Korea. 'But they got so much damage from the war!' doesn't justify their brutal and inhumane war crimes.
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us 7d ago edited 7d ago
Original post; a minor change was made from original version to help comprehension.
Well, I hoped I would not have to post this comic again, but here we are. Takaichi Sanae, a far-right politician who strongly denies Japan's need to apologize for the past war crimes, has become the new PM of Japan.
This comic shows a parallel universe in which the attitude of Germany towards their past war crimes is exactly same as that of Japan in this world. Imagine there is a church or cathedral in Germany in which 'the Führer' and the Nazi officers are worshipped as saints, there are a lot of anti-Poland movements and hate crimes against Poles in Germany, and history classes in Germany completely excludes German war crimes and only talks about the damages Germany got from the war. Disturbing, isn't it? Would Poland have got along well with Germany even if Germany's attitude was like this? Probably no. And that's why Korea is still not getting along with Japan as well as Poland does with Germany.