I love Japanese architecture and Japanese food. And I’ve watched my fair share of anime and read my fair share of manga.
Anyone who doesn’t know how terrible Japanese culture is to outsiders needs to educate themselves, there’s a reason they sided with Hitler. That culture never really went away like it did for Germany. Talk to an actual Japanese person, who went to school in Japan and see how much they know about their war crimes, and then talk to a German.
I don’t think it’s that worse than other countries tbh. It’s amplified by the fact that it’s an island so foreigners are scarce and a lot of them are there for weeb tourism and may not be the best to interact with, but racism is a constant in most countries all around the world.
They do need to acknowledge their war crimes though, sure. I agree Nationalism is definitely a bigger issue in Japan than in most other countries.
It’s amplified by the fact that it’s an island so foreigners are scarce
First off, in these times, being an island doesn’t mean anything, so that is not an excuse actually. Second, I have heard that their own policy regarding taking non-Japanese in made them a bit more isolated.
In modern times it might not matter (or rather, it matters less, refugees still have to move to the closest country and distance by sea does matter), but it mattered in the past and they grew up as a very isolated society (which in turn had them spawn those laws you’re talking about).
So, I knew a girl who went to a Japanese international school in my South East Asian home country where the Japanese did some utterly horrendous things during WWII. She told me the school took them to a war museum kinda place on a field trip and basically shouted at them like “LOOK AT WHAT YOUR PEOPLE DID!” until the whole room of grade school kids were crying about how sorry they were. So at least outside of Japan there seems to be some (perhaps over the top) education about the atrocities committed by the Japanese government to Japanese students, but I agree, most of the Japan educated Japanese people I’ve spoken to are just vaguely aware that they did some bad stuff before they got nuked.
