Japan is not a long-term ally
Eamonn Fingleton, the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon, ($19.99 at Castalia Direct) observes that the USA would be very, very unwise to put much weight on its strategic alliance with Japan in the event of a serious war with China over the South Pacific:
As difficult as it may be for the average Westerner to accept, the Japanese do not genuinely prize the Western values and social structures that were forcibly imposed upon them subsequent to their military defeat at the hands of the USA. The USA has twice imposed its will upon an unwilling Japanese people, first in 1853, then again in 1945, and I expect that the Japanese would be considerably more comfortable in a Chinese hegemony than in the entirely foreign one that the US hegemony represents.
The Japanese know perfectly well that the Chinese are not a naturally aggressive empire. For centuries, China has been internally focused, and far more sinned against by imperial Western powers than inclined to engage in any imperial adventures. True, the Japanese occupation of the 20th century was cruel, but considerably less cruel and less lethal than the Cultural Revolution that followed it.
And it is entirely evident that the superficial adoption of Western ways has not been good for the Japanese people. The malaise that affects them is entirely the result of the attempt to impose Western civilization on a foreign nation lacking any integral connection to its three foundations, Christianity, the Graeco-Roman legacy, and the European nations. I doubt it escapes Japanese observers that the West is presently suffering the same malaise as a result of its rejection of its own civilizational roots.
The Japanese and the Chinese are pragmatic people who rarely let history get in the way of good business. And there is no question that, for both sides, the alliance is good business. The two economies are highly complementary: Japan’s ultra capital-intensive manufacturers supply the sophisticated components and complex equipment needed by China’s labour-intensive factories. As the resulting consumer goods are exported mainly to the west, the relationship is a win-win in trade terms for both nations. For Japan in particular, the benefits are far larger than is generally understood: it has an enormous interest in China’s exporting success. Thus although China’s exports to the U.S. now exceed even Japan’s, the widely voiced conclusion that China’s success has come at Japan’s expense is misguided. The truth is that a large proportion of the high-tech components and materials used in China’s exports originates in Japan. In effect, much of what Japan exports to the U.S. these days goes through China. This helps explain a crucial fact: Japan’s aggregate current account surpluses with the world as a whole are three to four times greater than China’s.I suspect Fingleton's analysis is much more likely to be correct than the common foreign policy assumption that Japan is frightened of China and will rely upon the US military to protect it from its increasingly ascendant neighbor.
Short-term economic considerations are not the decisive factor in Japan’s changing diplomatic priorities. Japan’s preference for a world led by China rather than by the U.S. is based on culture. Though many westerners imagine otherwise, Japan is deeply uncomfortable with many aspects of western culture. Although Japan presents a thoroughly westernized face to the world, this reflects no sincere acceptance of Judeo-Christian values.
Japan and China share Confucian and Buddhist traditions. Both are ruled by a traditional East Asian ethos of father knows best. Citizens are saddled with a heavy burden of duties while being denied many rights taken for granted in the west.
Because of their common cultural heritage, the Japanese and Chinese think alike in economic matters, too. Officials in both nations have huge powers to direct savings flows, build export industries, and generally shape economic outcomes. This means the two nations find themselves making common cause in opposing American efforts to reshape other nations’ economies along U.S. lines.
Human rights is another area in which a common cultural heritage has helped align the two nations’ diplomatic interests. Japanese and Chinese leaders are at one in viewing a nation’s human rights policies as a purely internal affair. Thus Japan does not try to dictate China’s human rights policies, any more than China tries to dictate Japan’s.
As difficult as it may be for the average Westerner to accept, the Japanese do not genuinely prize the Western values and social structures that were forcibly imposed upon them subsequent to their military defeat at the hands of the USA. The USA has twice imposed its will upon an unwilling Japanese people, first in 1853, then again in 1945, and I expect that the Japanese would be considerably more comfortable in a Chinese hegemony than in the entirely foreign one that the US hegemony represents.
The Japanese know perfectly well that the Chinese are not a naturally aggressive empire. For centuries, China has been internally focused, and far more sinned against by imperial Western powers than inclined to engage in any imperial adventures. True, the Japanese occupation of the 20th century was cruel, but considerably less cruel and less lethal than the Cultural Revolution that followed it.
And it is entirely evident that the superficial adoption of Western ways has not been good for the Japanese people. The malaise that affects them is entirely the result of the attempt to impose Western civilization on a foreign nation lacking any integral connection to its three foundations, Christianity, the Graeco-Roman legacy, and the European nations. I doubt it escapes Japanese observers that the West is presently suffering the same malaise as a result of its rejection of its own civilizational roots.
95 Comments:
Western feminism has caused the collapse in Japanese birth rates.
How much do we really need foreign alliances?
"Western feminism has caused the collapse in Japanese birth rates."
Superficially obvious, but I'm unconvinced. Birth rates have plummeted around the globe in every industrialized country, regardless of religion or politics.
Hmm...On the other hand, China and Japan have been historic enemies since the Mongol invasion around 700 years ago. While we should never put foreign allies on the critical path to our national security, I don't think the Japanese will abandon us that soon.
Thanks for this post. I find it very interesting to consider that not only do different nations produce different cultures that these nations may actually need a different culture in order to function properly. This idea that what is best for European people may not be best Japenese people flies in the face of the American ideal of an intrinsically superior culture.
Hmm, Have had two Chinese friends, and their hate for Japanese was very real, with only slightly less hate for the English. What the Chinese have done to their own is one thing, but they have looong memories for slights from others. Pragmatic business will overcome this short-term, but it will be an uneasy alliance at best. The Japanese will ramp up their military even while creating an economic alliance, and this South China Sea control may irritate them, yet it will bother them less then most in those areas.
That being said, I've followed Eamonn Fingleton since the 1990's, he lives in Japan, and keeps a good hand on their economic pulse.
I wonder how the Chinese view of the return of militarism in Japan. Competition or complementary?
On the other hand, China and Japan have been historic enemies since the Mongol invasion around 700 years ago.
Totally false. The Mongols are not the Chinese. This isn't that hard.
Have had two Chinese friends, and their hate for Japanese was very real, with only slightly less hate for the English.
I've had two Hungarian viszlas. I don't believe that makes me competent to opine on Hungarian foreign policy.
Please do not play the "source?" game here, Desert Streamer. If you want to dispute a claim or offer alternative explanations, go for it. Gamma-style communication is not permitted here, even when it is utilized in good faith.
5. Deus Vult
Please demonstrate where this "ideal of a superior culture" exists anymore in the USA, as quite the opposite is usually true. All our sources are telling everyone about how worthless the USA is and always has been, especially real Christians and Western Civilization believers.
So the strength of their alliance and their individual economies depends on exporting to the enemy that they will displace or defeat?
Remember, Japan was allied with the Nazis who wanted to take over the world and kill everyone who wasn't blue-eyed blonde people of colorless.
You don't want to be like Nazis, DO YOU???
VD "As difficult as it may be for the average Westerner to accept, the Japanese do not genuinely prize the Western values and social structures that were forcibly imposed upon them subsequent to their military defeat at the hands of the USA."
Yes the US is happy imposing its sort-of-culture on others. It thinks its culture is better. Even its horrendous problems, like obesity, junk food, gmo food, chronic illness, etc, etc, ... is seen by many Americans as "first-world problems". No, its fourth-world problems masquerading as first-world. F-in incredible.
There are a number of historical comparisons available from medieval and Renaissance European powers allying with Ottoman or North African Muslim powers against other Europeans. Common bonds of culture and religion have rarely produced long-term alliances for geographically adjacent powers. This is especially true regarding cultural and religious bonds that are similar yet notably different. Most of the lasting alliances have been between powers that are geographically separated, with spheres of influence that they seek to protect from neighbors.
How that applies here I'm not sure, but it's worth considering that the similarities do not indicate what Fingleton states, historically speaking.
"How much do we really need foreign alliances?"
We don't.
If we kicked out all the invaders and hunkered down we'd last a thousand years. There's no reason for us to be dependent or obligated to anyone other than ourselves.
But of course that's not what our elites want. No... We have to go get involved around the world to 'save' people that hate us.
We have no need for foreign goods either. We have the resources here to produce anything we could ever want.
Just remember: Empires collapse much faster than nations. And whereas a nation can recover, the empire is often devoured and destroyed by their former subjugats.
Do the Japs have a word like the Chinese do for white libs?
This is, IMO, a very good analysis. With the Meiji Restoration, Japan wanted to become a Modern, Industrialized, Japanese Empire. Not a Western one.
So a taste of Western civ isn't what caused them to go full tentacle pron? Fk we shoulda dropped a stepson on them.
The Second Sino-Japanese War was no concern to Americans. America would have been better off if we had allowed that war to come to its own natural conclusion.
Japan would not have been in a position to fight the Second Sino-Japanese War if Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. hadn't funded the Russo-Japanese War in an effort to destroy Tsarist Russia. That the principals of this bank were able to become citizens of the United States shows the naturalization system made by the Founding Fathers was naive.
“serious war with China over the South Pacific”
If such a thing happens and Japan is unreliable, then the war will be forfeited. Let China have it. In the sharing of values, China can share anything they win back to Japan including trade.
"The Second Sino-Japanese War was no concern to Americans. America would have been better off if we had allowed that war to come to its own natural conclusion."
Which, China lobby blustering aside, it basically did; the embargoes and Pacific Fleet redeployment only happened once Japan moved into French Indochina in 1940.
Of course, some might question why even that should have been enough to trigger a response from the U.S. But Japan was clearly moving into a very aggressively expansionist mode by 1940 (far beyond anything being done by the PRC today), and at some point, that was going to be a direct threat to even a restrained sense of American security interests in the Pacific.
But the military regime in Tokyo resolved the problem for all concerned by launching a truly suicidal war on the United States before long, and the rest is history.
S1AL,
Yes, superficially obvious. But western feminism has the same effect everywhere. It has dropped birth rates everywhere it has been deployed.
"Totally false. The Mongols are not the Chinese. This isn't that hard."
True. The real historical issue for Sino-Japanese relations has mostly to do with what Japan did in China in 1937-45, which is still just within living memory - though that animus is, obviously, just about all on the Chinese side. Which suggests that China has the initiative in any thawing of relations between the two. Popular resentments may limit the speed and scope by Beijing of such a detente or entente, though they might not arrest it.
Why would Japan, a country with strong traditional values would want to jump ship into the shinking ship that is the West whose core values is:
Feminism
Abortion
Faggotry
Trannies
Immigrants
(((Usury)))
Why would they wish to open their country further to that shit-stain?
I had the good fortune to travel through China for the first time after 3 prior trips to Japan for races. I agree with this entirely and would add that the ongoing China menace narrative being pumped out by Fox/Tucker is propaganda - the Chinese have their hands full with their own population.
China is much poorer than Westerners have been led to believe by both the Chinese gov and the anti-China propaganda. Wanting a body of water called South China Sea to under Chinese control seems reasonable to me. But the idea that Chinese will inevitably take over the west and the world with their technical intelligence ends the minute you hit a Chinese road outside the little prescribed Potemkin Villages they parade in the media. The place is basically a dirt poor, open air prison.
Yet, the japanese do fear china. Not only militarily (and the current Chinese empire is more expansionist than some of its predecessors) but also culturally. The common cultural points between the two make it easier/more likely that the Chinese behemoth will dominate or overwhelm japanese culture due to the entry points created by the commonalities.
On the military side, Chinese expansionism is not expressed in direct conquest, at least not yet,but rather in creating economic and military client states. Their biggest nearby obstacles have been Japan, vietnam, and south Korea, but they may be able to effectively surround and isolate those three to some degree as time goes by.
Japan's interest is probably best served by being Asia' version of Switzerland; economically and militarily neutral with a defense capability that makes it too costly to attack them. I expect the Japanese govt sees this option as viable.
As for the Chinese threat to the US: it's there and growing. 1) stop financing it America! And 2) undermine their cohesion via support for separatist movements and cultural rot.
If you're suggesting we ignore China's ascension to legitimate threat at our expense, you are insane
I dunno.
I see China as playing france and japan as playing england, with korea playing the role of the dutch. The two arent natural allies, and will compete for influence all throughout the western pacific.
@24: I definitely agree that the scars from the Second World War play a much bigger role in Sino-Japanese relations than older events. That period was very, very ugly.
China I find reminiscent of Wilhelmine Germany. They are a rising Great Power, a bit late to the party...and looking for tokens of respect. Which could very well lead them to blunder their way into a war.
Athelstane wrote: But Japan was clearly moving into a very aggressively expansionist mode by 1940 (far beyond anything being done by the PRC today), and at some point, that was going to be a direct threat to even a restrained sense of American security interests in the Pacific.
Was Japan planning to resettle 100 million of its people as colonists? If we kept a non-interventionist policy what threat do you think Japan posed to American security interests?
@S1AL
Re: plunging birth rates
Everything runs in cycles and demography is no exception. I read Carrol Quigley's book Tragedy and Hope many years ago and the introduction was all about demographic cycles.
There will be baby booms in the future. As to when I cannot say.
If you're suggesting we ignore China's ascension to legitimate threat at our expense, you are insane.
There is not a damn thing we can do about it. The sooner we accept that and adapt a functional defensive strategy, the better. The global hegemony is over.
“And 2) undermine their cohesion via support for separatist movements“
And this will make them less adversarial to the US? Nothing decreases a threat like pissing in their back yard. We don’t want or need your Neo-conservatism anymore.
What's missing from this analysis is the strong nationalist animosity that Japan and China have toward each other. Having lived in Japan for many years, I'd rate it an understatement to say that the Japanese look down on the Chinese in a similar fashion to how the English look down on the Irish. Historically, yes, Japan owes a lot to and has culturally and linguistically borrowed much from China. Modern Japan, however, largely views Chinese people as filthy, criminal, and untrustworthy.
China, for its part, has spent decades stoking nationalist resentment against Japan for everything that happened in the first half of the 20th century. In the last decade or two, this hatred, which the Chinese government tacitly encourages while publicly attempting to rein it in, has spilled over every few years. Once it was violent riots after Japan beat China in soccer (a result that surprised nobody, and yet it was an excuse to rage against Japan). A few years later, amidst tensions over the Senkaku Islands, it was a Chinese man with his head bashed in by a mob for making the mistake of driving a Japanese car.
Eventually, I agree that Japan will lose its admiration for American and European cultures, and there probably will be a strong, possibly violent reaction against Western values and influence when that happens. But it hasn't happened yet. Japanese people are not Western in any respect, and yet they still aspire toward outward Western trappings far more than to traditional Japanese styles, let alone Chinese influences. Western culture is imploding on itself, and Japan will eventually reject Western values outright once the collapse is apparent. That said, Japan is actually out in front of America and Europe in the demographic suicide in some respects, so it may be more a question of whose culture collapses first.
Japan is also in the process of implementing a new immigration law allowing foreign workers to fill manual and minimally skilled labor roles that there aren't enough Japanese people to fill. Japan will probably come to recognize this law in the same light that Americans are coming to understand the 1965 U.S. immigration reform. Most of the low-skilled workers coming to Japan under the law will probably be Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, or other Asian/Pacific nationalities. If proximity equals war, then the new wave of immigration coming to Japan carries more long-term potential for conflict with China than for an embracing of mutual regional economic interests.
Anyone who has lived in Japan is quite familiar with Eamonn Fingleton's writings. Having read his schick over the past 27 years, I found that most of his predictions have been wrong.
However, I do think he is correct in his assertion that the Japanese could be quite comfortable in a Chinese dominated world. Despite their rivalry, the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese are keenly aware of their cultural similarities in comparison with the world outside of Northeast Asia (e.g. they see themselves as Toyojin). They certainly do lots of business with each other.
For example, the Seoul subway was financed by the special deal between Japanese and Korean politicians and businesses. There are all kinds of such deals between Japanese and Chinese businesses.
The sticker I see with Fingleton's thesis is if most Chinese people still bear resentment of their treatment in the hands of the Japanese during the first half of 20th century. Another issue is IP. The Japanese companies I worked for would not sell their equipment to Chinese business entities. They would sell only to Japanese companies that had manufacturing facilities in China. However, this is probably a minor point in the long-term relationship between the Japanese and Chinese.
@Stilicho
The japs will probably be happy to come to an accord with China. However, if the Chinese attempt to take Taiwan by force then I believe the Japanese will have no option but to get involved, as the Taiwan strait is probably Japan's major strategic sea lane.
I assume the japs would not mind if China peacefully annexed Taiwan as a mutual deal between the two types of Chinese. For the reasons stated in the post, this would be their (Japan's) optimal outcome.
The analogy we have is that Japan is Switzerland, (South) Korea is Austria, and China is Germany. The question for them all is what to do about North Korea.
But... But... What about anime???
The Japanese do not fear China. The specter of Imperial Japan still haunts the nightmares of the Chinese.
If Japan decides that the US is not capable of protecting its lands or people, they might set a new world record for zero to jackboots. How the Chinese will react to when the boogieman steps out of their darkest dreams and into reality is a far better question.
One indicator to look for if the Chinese, Japanese, and korean seek some sort of rapprochement with each other would be an effort to standardize the Kanji writing between all three countries.
Could I have some malaise on that sandwich?
Will there be an audiobook?
China has never been expansionist beyond its natural borders. That's just a fact stretching over 5,000 years. So Japan does not have a problem doing business with China...And the degree of US dominance is very exaggerated. One of my kids traveled around Japan, and found the people outside Tokyo to be very kind and generous, but very few of them spoke English.
Stg58/Animal Mother wrote:But western feminism has the same effect everywhere.
It's cancerous and toxic, in more ways than one.
Of course, as usual, their accusation of toxicity (i.e. masculinity) is better applied to them.
@42 That's nonsense. You might as well say we should standardize vocabulary among English, French, and Italian.
Korea uses Hangul for its writing, which is an entirely separate system from Chinese characters. Hanja (Chinese characters incorporated into Korean) are needed mainly only for historical literature and documents. Anything modern is in hangul.
Japan uses hiragana and katakana in addition to kanji, and all three elements are utterly necessary to the syntactic structure of the language. Japan's kanji have pronunciations and meanings distinct from anything used in modern China.
China, meanwhile, has fought to squeeze many regional dialects into a shared, modernized Mandarin script.
In short, the languages are incompatible, probably to a greater degree than many European languages are because they share, at best, only portions of the same written script. A Japanese person could write down 暑 on a piece of paper, and a Chinese person and most educated Koreans would recognize that it had something to do with "heat" or "hot," but it would be a vague categorical understanding at best. As soon as anyone tried to put the character in combination with other characters to form a sentence, nobody would understand each other.
Based on human nature and historical precedent, this analysis definitely rings true.
I am curious, though. If it does come to pass that Japan sides with a Chinese-led pan-Asian hegemony, would China continue to play nice with Japan and keep the trade status quo going indefinitely, and otherwise allow it to carry on unmolested? Or, since China knows that such a large portion of Japan's trade already flows through China anyways, would China eventually attempt to conquer Japan, in order to take Japan's tech manufacturing industry for its own exclusive use?
Gen. MacArthur called for Christian missionaries to help mass convert Japan.
One wonders if that had been more successful if Japan would be more wary of the Godless Commies in China.
https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars/2011/06/scandal-general-douglas-macarthur-thought-christianity-would-help-japan.html
Nearly twenty years ago, maybe longer, I can no longer find the prophecy, an American prophet declared that China allied with Japan and other Asian nations will invade the west coast while Russia invades the eastern seaboard landing on the beach in Delaware; I have kept my eyes open ever since I saw the prophecy and I am watching it develop.
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They certainly do lots of business with each other.
Indeed, and even on a micro-, household level. Chinese houses are filled with Japanese and Korean products even in North America. Especially their garages: you're pretty hard pressed to find an American car in a Chinese driveway.
Japan does come off as the most Western of the Asian Nations. I think there was a time where they very much admired the West, but the modern West does not seem worthy of admiration.
dienw, was that the prophetess Malkin?
Thsi is teh oldest invasion prophecy I have found.
@54 No.
@35 I suppose you could interpret my comment that way in light of the history of Neocons categorizing their foreign excursions that way. However, what I meant was this: support those nations whom the Han have conquered in their efforts to achieve independence. This does not mean go to war for them a la neocon doctrine. It works hand in glove with efforts to undermine beijing by exporting western cultural rot (consumerism, debt, feminism, etc.) and encourage their own homegrown rot as well. Then let the Chinks stew in their own fetid juices as much as possible. China considers itself at war with the West in general and the US in particular. It is foolish to ignore such an enemy, nor is hiding behind your version of the maginot line an effective strategy for the long run. Nations have interests. They protect them or die.
@49
"Gen. MacArthur called for Christian missionaries to help mass convert Japan."
MacArthur also insisted on writing the right to abortion in the new Japanese Constitution...
I for one would love to see the Japanese build their own fighter aircraft again. They were fairly good at it.
To look upon past enmity between China and Japan and make assumptions that the Japanese will align with the west is to look at it with western viewpoints. Only in the west do we expect it to be like that. But the Asian mind has a different notion about the past and what to think about it.
It appears only the west is all about guilt trips and expecting people to feel sorry for things they didn't do.
@VD yes, we can't stop China taking a larger role in the world, but we do need a viable strategy that protects our national interests. Foremost is strengthening our own nation, culturally, economically, and militarily. Second is making Chinese expansionism too costly for them when they intrude too much into our interests. The devil, as always, is in the details.
George Friedman has argued that the US will find itself in an alliance with Korea to counterbalance a Japan that becomes more assertive in that region in the late 2020's. I think his idea is that Japan cannot trust the US to protect it and therefore will increase military capability, which in turn will cause the neighbors unease, which in turn will lead to the US supporting Korea and even possibly China. Whatever, no one can predict the future, but it's fun to speculate.
I would completely agree that China and Japan have more in common than either one would ever admit to.
Commonality in culture and society and religion and mores has not made Americans and British automatic best buds, even when they were wartime allies.
If the Chinese or the Japanese are going to partner with anyone, it is not going to be another country with an abundance of human beings and little in the way of natural resources. Both Japan and China are completely pragmatic and not in the least bit sentimental about any foreign relationship. China owes much to the Russians, just as Japan owes much to the USA. Both Russia and the USA have much more natural resources than they do people...Australia and South Afrika and Brazil and Canada would be a similar situation.
If Japan (or China) are going to partner with anyone, it is going to be a country that can supply their huge demand for resources, particularly in regard to food and fuel.
Japan is a modern, non-western country. I do not consider Japan to be "westernized" at all. Modernity and westernization are two separate traits.
Vox, I was addressing Marcel Marcellus' comment about Cbina just being a dirt poor, open air prison. I should have included his name in the comment.
After centuries of militant isolation, Japan decided to open up to foreign trade and interaction. The difference in technological and industrial capacity between feudal Japan and the rest of the world, convinced Japan that they must modernize Japan's industry and military. So typical Japanese fashion, they studied all the existing social and economic examples in the world before selecting one. Remember, they were not trying to Westernize...they wanted to become part of the modern world and compete. They chose to copy the British example and that is what they did. They could have picked American or Russian or French or Austrian or Turk....but they did not. That British influence is still part of Japan, even after the American occupation.
@1 It isn't the indoctrination of feminism as an ideology that is necessary, just a hypergamous reaction to a female's perceived increase in her own status due to urbanization, education, and credentialism/job.
Japan wouldn't be content to be in China's sphere. They haven't been content to do so since Nobunaga first reunited Japan in the 1500s and their economy is too large to be subservient to China's anyway. The US is useful as a counterweight as long as they don't try to intervene with Japan's internal affairs.
And why, pray tell, is weakening China's influence in Asia 'in our national interest'? We don't need them. Much like how they don't need us.
Granted, it currently does matter since we're trying to police the whole world. But that isn't something we should want. Nor is is sustainable.
Let Asia decide how Asia will be governed. Same goes for every other continent in the world.
@55. dienw
That would be interesting to compare it with the prophecies of Edgar Cayce and Siener Van Rensburg.
Wouldn't there be better token gestures, like building a "defensive" SSBN?
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/12/18/japan-announces-first-aircraft-carriers-since-world-war-ii/
The era of cheap labor in Chinese factories is over. China now operates high tech, even automated, robotic factories.
Also, the long history of violent Japanese colonialism in the whole region does put a limit on Sino-Japanese cooperation. That said, I don't think we can count on those Japanese carriers being on our side. Japan has unfinished business with us.
Just a few years ago, there were serious anti-Japanese riots in China. Nor have the Chinese forgotten the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the Japs.
@1 & 3:
Check out biohistory:
https://www.biohistory.org/
Mr Darcy wrote:Just a few years ago, there were serious anti-Japanese riots in China. Nor have the Chinese forgotten the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the Japs.
At the end of WWII, Japan still had 5 million troops in China....many times more than all the US faced during the war.
Sorry Vox,I didn't know that muy comment falls inside the gamma spectrum.It's not that I don't believe him,but until today I though that western feminism was virtually inexistent in Japan and was just asking for more info
Desert Screamer, it's elementary. How many career women does Japan have?
What China wants, apparently, is for the East Asia to be their sphere of influence. My take is that we should be involved with this only if the other countries in the region support our doing so. None of this lone ranger stuff. We support Japan and South East Asia only if they accommodate us in the project.
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@Vox
We both spent time in Japan but the people we got to know were quite different. I spent most of my time rubbing elbows with SDF types.
Those guys will NOT accept Chinese Hegemony. I know in my bones they won't.
They will overthrow the civilian government if it comes to that and I am not exaggerating. Not even a little bit.
None of them will admit to that in public or private but if you bring up the subject of Kokutai-Goji, their faces harden and they give small but perceptibly sharp and emphatic nod of the head.
Yes, Japan still has nationalists.
That said, you are correct. Japan is not a long term ally.
In my view Korea is the real trigger point for any serious trouble between Japan and China.
China maintained and the Kingdom of Joesen acknowledged Chinese suzerainty over Korea.
Japan ruled Korea directly (although volatility) from 1905-1945. The Koreans aren't wild about admitting this but there was a substantial assimilationist movement in Joeson. With Prominent Koreans adopting Japanese names and aping Japanese customs. They were quite proud of their first Kamikaze.
Everyone is pretending now that it never happened but both countries have substantial population groups that were exchanged during the Japan's rule of Korea.
No colonial power has ever really abandoned their former colony.
And that is the problem in a nutshell. China had a couple thousand years of being used to ruling Korea at arm's length.
But Korea was Japan's first colony...and Japan was our last.
@80. I believe it doesn't matter what the trigger is the US should stay out of it. It isn't strong enough to do anything about it either way. The British needed to learn this when our Pax was over. The US should not be thinking about doing anything about Korea. Allow Japan and China to sort it out.
I agree that the China-Japan alliance is wrong, and the Japanese will not allowed China to dominate them. Japan is in a strong position and is no longer accepting the peace terms forced on it by the Americans. Its going to be interesting how China and Japan deal with their issues in the coming decade. Again, the US should stay out of it.
@77 All supporting other nations does is make them weak, leave them alone and they will protect themselves.
Whenever Japan is mentioned, all the eikaiwa teachers married to ugly locals have to comment... But the real key to a Chinese hegemony is the continued existence of One China.
The Chinese economy is being propped up by a debt spending shell game that makes the Japanese bubble look like the church collection plate at a Hells Angel's rally. All the GE needs to do is announce that the US is divesting itself of its trillion - dollar debt to China because it doesn't do business with belligerents. US and European companies, long tired of dealing with Chinese IP theft, pull out to SE Asia... The Chinese paper tiger burns and each region of China scrambles to assert its independence from Beijing.
WW III will basically be China VS. China. Japan will stand off to the left, defend itself with US tech and sop up the profits.
We Japanese assimilate foreign ideas but we never "become" what we have integrated. Japan has nothing in common with China just because they had an idea 1500 years ago any more than an anime fan becomes Japanese from watching the entire Naruto series.
In the meantime, unreconstructed boomer libertarian John T Reed praises Japan for cracking open the door to immigrant workers: https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-news-blog/japan-finally-allows-immigration-we-should-allow-more
He argues the US should imitate Japan's sudden xenophilia by recruiting "about a million families of five a year to migrate here." By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that would imply taking in... 50 million immigrants, roughly the population of South Korea, every DECADE.
Assuming zero natural population increase, Reed's plan would bring the US population to half a billion by 2054.
Boomers.
65 to 70% of the Japanese are against the influx and the ones allowed in won't ever be allowed to stay, no matter what is being reported. They are essentially being imported as labor and then they'll be disposed of when they are no longer useful.
The Japanese are merciless when it comes to deporting illegals.
True, the Japanese occupation of the 20th century was cruel, but considerably less cruel and less lethal than the Cultural Revolution that followed it.
But the Chinese don't see it this way. It's not that they won't admit it if pressed, it's that the atrocities committed by Mao are more forgivable because he's Chinese, and they still admire and respect him for what they consider the good things that he did. He's seen as a great uniter of China, like past great emperors.
Don't underestimate the visceral, racial hatred of the Japanese that has been cultivated in the Chinese people for multiple generations. I live in China and I talk to these people everyday. Not all of them hate the Japanese, but a majority of them do. They hate them the way Jews hate Germans. Nanjing is their holocaust, and Never Forget! is the shared slogan.
JovianStorm wrote:We Japanese assimilate foreign ideas but we never "become" what we have integrated. Japan has nothing in common with China just because they had an idea 1500 years ago any more than an anime fan becomes Japanese from watching the entire Naruto series.
Completely agree, of course, except to say that One China is a fairly recent fiction, like One Germany. Neither have been One Nation for very long and many of the old cracks and fissures are still apparent.
I had made friends with a Chinese couple when I was in college and hoped to avoid the Ugly American appearance by telling them they could speak Chinese to each other when I was visiting and I would not feel offended. They laughed for a while and then explained that Chinese is hundreds of languages and his Chinese is not the same as her Chinese. The only common language they had was English.
It was stupid of me to have made the offer, then I remembered that the Czar Alexander II and his wife did not speak the same language either. She was German and he was Russian. The only common language they had was English. Even their personal correspondence was in English.
tuberman wrote:Hmm, Have had two Chinese friends, and their hate for Japanese was very real, with only slightly less hate for the English.
tuberman, the hatred is indeed real, but my understanding is that public attitudes have little influence on foreign policy and economic decision-making in China (can't really speak for Japan). The government will cut whatever deals with Japan it feels expedient, with or without public support or knowledge.
Moreover the government will encourage or discourage anti-Japanese sentiment through its powerful propaganda apparatus as circumstances dictate.
JovianStorm wrote:65 to 70% of the Japanese are against the influx and the ones allowed in won't ever be allowed to stay, no matter what is being reported.
JovianStorm, interesting. I'm not surprised. The reference to Japan's "sudden xenophilia" was a bit ironic, btw.
Sorry to "spam" the thread, but does anyone know what Eamonn Fingleton has been up to lately? He doesn't appear to have published anything since June 2017. Curious to know his perspective on recent events in East Asia.
Do they have enough young fit men for that?
Why would anyone think that ANY ally of ours will be steadfast when TSHTF. Nation building in our image has not worked anywhere and thinking that anyone will reflect our traditional values is not addressing the problem. Every culture has its own means to do what it needs to do and we (the US) should stay out. Every time we leave a country it evolves (or devolves)to make what we have left their own. If the Japanese want to kiss the buns of the Chinese they should be free to do it. I for one do not believe Japanese/Chinese partnership will work long term but then I have been known to be wrong before.
Just as an aside a colorectal surgeon I know just came back from Japan having done a lecture there about colon cancer. It is increasing there as they adopt the burger franchise diet. How long before Japan throws that baby out the window. And what of the bathwater?
I've noticed Japan, for the most part, has a much improved image in China. Even in Nanjing (in my experience). Chinese are still seen as uncouth in Japan, but their mannerisms are improving a little (upper class Chinese are actually quite good people). Both people are quite racist. But not as much as Koreans 😅
I like to ask Western Academics I work with what percentage they think Japan is "Western" vs "Eastern". Westerner's wildly over estimate the Westerness that Japanese consider themselves. Serious cognitive bias.
Most Japanese I speak with top out at maybe 10% Western. With some Japanese (those living in the West I've spoken with) going as low as 0% Western, 100% Chinese (culturally). Chinese I speak to maybe think Japan is about 5% Western (less than they estimate China is Western ironically).
I personally view Japanese as culturally conservative Chinese 😄 Japanese have done a much better job of conserving Chinese culture compared with Chinese. I think many Chinese greatly appreciate this.
It also correlates with females attaining higher education, rather than "feminisim" per say?
In many ways, Japan is still a patriarchy, I beleive the causal factor is dysgenic. With feminisim being strongly correlated.
@Meng Greenleaf
It's kind of true that the Japanese are culturally conservative Chinese, though most Chinese would not admit this. They'll gladly brag that "Japanese culture comes from China" but won't acknowledge that Japan conserved more of it than the Chinese themselves. A good example is Traditional Chinese Medicine. The Japanese have refined and developed it far beyond what the Chinese have done, all the while retaining a far greater devotion to the ancient classics of the field such as the Nei Jing Su Wen and the Nan Jing.
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