[eternalban]

I had a conversation with a Japanese American artist a couple of years ago on the general topic of the post-WWII infantilization of Japanese culture.

I believe we reached a sort of mild agreement that Japan's collective unconscious is still trying to process the shock of being on the receiving end of a nuclear attack.

[mariodiana]

Please, can you give some details about this "infantilization"? I can't be the only one who can't think of anything other than Hello Kitty.

[reflexive]

The original "Gojira" (Godzilla) in 1954 has been regarded as an expression of the impotence and powerlessness felt by many Japanese after being forced to surrender to the Allies in WW2, and the subsequent American occupation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-wh...

[honkhonkpants]

Interesting perspective. Defeat was the consequence of having started the war in the first place. Nobody in America was sitting around in 1941 thinking up ways to vaporize Japanese people. As they say on the Internet: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[krapp]

It wouldn't surprise me if some Japanese viewed the atomic bombings as an unwarranted act of unprovoked aggression - and they may not be entirely unjustified if they do.

From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.

[honkhonkpants]

Yeah, unprovoked? That belies a lack of historical perspective.

Japan killed tens of millions of Chinese and intended to occupy the entire western Pacific, killing or enslaving all the people who lived there. The entire nation, all of its labor and industry, was bent toward this goal. It was a nation of profound evil.

[krapp]

>It was a nation of profound evil.

That's one perspective. Another is that Japan was merely doing what it felt was necessary to protect itself from interference by aggressive Western Imperial powers, and weren't necessarily more "evil" than any other empire at the time. A third is that the country that dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities and firebombed Tokyo to the ground was no less evil than the empire they were fighting.

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this, but "evil" seems more often than not to be matter of cultural relativism and propaganda. It wasn't long after World War 2 that the US was begging Japan for help in their other Asian conflicts and burning whole villages to the ground in the name of fighting the "profound evil" of communism.

[seanmcdirmid]

It's not like China didn't do that in its past either, probably as recently as qianlong. But they don't go around calling China a nation of profound evil at the time.

[Implicated]

> From their point of view, it probably seemed as if the US had already won and just decided to spike the football.

That wouldn't be far from the truth? If I remember, and it was reported correctly, the US govt deemed the nuclear bomb to be the lesser of two evils; the other being a long drawn out deescalation due to Japanese pride.

[jbicha]

Yes, that's what's taught in US schools, but there's significant controversy among historians over whether the Japanese may have been about to surrender in the late summer of 1945 anyway.

It's mentioned in the (rather "left") book and Showtime series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone%27s_Untold_Histor...

I don't think it's a stretch at all to believe that the US did not need to drop the second bomb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

[tasty_freeze]

I'm not expert on Japanese culture. This comment comes from my experience 20 years ago I spent about six weeks in Japan, four of them working in an office in Kyoto and doing the daily commute on the train (the real reason I was there).

One thing that jumped out at me was what appeared to be a widespread fetish where the ideal woman looked like a cupie doll type school girl, almost like a living anime character.

There were also a lot of free "manga" around (anime magazines) and not only where these schoolgirl characters everywhere, raping them was a common theme.

I loved my short stay in Japan, and I had a lot of positive experiences there, but that aspect of the culture was downright creepy.

[astrange]

Nuclear bombs and then Hello Kitty? This thread is about as up to date as my grandparents.

[benjohnson]

There's a corollary theory here in America where the people who lived through the horrors of WWII reacted by raising the next generation to be free spirits interested in enjoying life while they could.

[eternalban]

We were discussing various topics, fashion, film, and graphic arts, and of course, Godzilla:

http://www.oneikathetraveller.com/tokyo-style-and-infantiliz...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_manga#After_World_W...

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/godzilla-is-our-never-endin...

--

[p.s. edit: this thread got me surfing around and landed on the topic of Kawaii Ambassadors [below], which prompts the thought that another component of this very visible trend in post WWII Japanese culture may be a desire to present a non-threatening global image.]

http://web-japan.org/trends/09_culture/pop090827.html

http://www.japannewbie.com/2010/01/14/state-sponsored-cute-k...

https://youtu.be/qAc3xXEx7lo