Japan's Cute Army

> it is normal adult interest.

Is it really? How intimate are you with Japanese culture? I am skeptical that Japanese people generally view anime with the same reverence that they view the works of Akira Kurosawa or Natsume Soseki.

edit: okay, anime is serious business.

->It's no different than painting pin-up girls on on your B-17.

Yup, my first thought. Then I started googling and found this about how apparently writing on weaponry seems to be an ancient practice.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll...

Relevant reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lmzov/is_th...

I don't know what to think, years ago the Japanese defence minister talked about Godzilla invading and he was only half-joking (http://www.japannewsreview.com/politics/politics/20071220pag...).

On the other hand, The Culture is just sci-fi, while Japan exists.

This is a very good point, but I think the Japanese way might actually be better. The problem is that emphasising brutality and ugliness in the style of the Culture may over time lead to a shift in perception normalising agression, or in other words, it could shift the Overton Window towards militarism. For example, if ships were named something like "Peacekeeper" or "Ambassador" rather than "Torturer" or "Thug", it would lead to a perception of peace-keeping as their intended role.

It works in the case of the Culture because of their extraordinary degree of self-awareness and anti-militarism; no member of the Culture could possibly lack cognizance of the significance of the names, wheras we, alas, live in somewhat less enlightened times. In the Culture it serves to emphasise the ugliness of their purpose, wheras if applied in our world could be all to easily misinterpreted as unvarnished militarism.

It is interesting to note the degree of anti-militarism in Japan. Though this may be taken to an extreme in the opposition to taking part in international peacekeeping missions, at the very least it means that Japan is very unlikely to be subject to escalating influence and dominance by the military as may be permitted in other countries due to general public apathy. However, I think this also means that any attempt to emphasise the inherent ugliness the the purpose of the military would be prima facie faced with extreme opposition, no matter the intent.

The Culture doesn't have quite the same aims as Japan in this scenario. The Culture reluctantly entered into open, large-scale war against the Idirans because they had incompatible morals. The Idirans were religiously-motivated conquerors whose beliefs placed their species above all others, and the Culture is all about personal freedoms. The Culture's goal in the war was to defeat an enemy their ideals could not tolerate and then stop fighting. They were not looking to permanently transition to a more military society, or have those unpleasantly named warships around longer than necessary. The Culture's people knew going into the war that it would be an ugly thing, and the sooner it was done the better.

On the other hand, Japan is not really doing much fighting at all, and their military is even called the "Self-Defense Force." They can't get rid of their military-industrial complex because they already did and what they've got now is what they were left with at the end. It makes sense for Japan to try and make their people comfortable with the idea of coexisting with the SDF, since they will in fact have to coexist with the SDF indefinitely. It's not going anywhere, and it's not really doing anything particularly ugly just sitting there.

Not only Roman empire level culture but also elves，wizards and dragons.

It's also full of Japanese imperialist apologism. As you might expect from such a source.

I watched that, and enjoyed it for the most part, but I either totally missed, or they just didn't explain, what the purpose was for the initial invasion from the other world into Japan. Do we know what that was all about? Was it purely, "Hey we've got this sweet portal thing, let's go seize whatever's on the other side"?

Gate is popcorn watching.

The vibe that I got off of it is that the creators really, really, really wanted to glorify the Japanese military and imperialism. Unfortunately, Japan having not been in a significant combat role for many decades, there was no actual concrete thing to reference.

So, instead, they had to fabricate a civilization so far backwards that the military could show off uncontested (hence Bronze-age tech) but which could still be portrayed as an aggressor (hence the portal and attempted invasion of Tokyo).

And that's not even touching on the weirdness of the normal harem tropes (things like a gothic lolita demigod, etc.) that interrupt an otherwise entertaining if absurdist portrait of military operations.

The funniest thing in the series is how the other countries are portrayed, especially the United States. Then again, I'd much rather watch a show about the US doing an Iraq peacekeeping mission in fantasyland than what Gate has to offer.

It's pandering.

I also thought that line was interesting, because, the way I look at it, Pearl Harbor was a pre-preemptive strike by the Empire of Japan. They figured our entry into WWII was imminent and decided to strike early and decisively to cripple our strength in the Pacific.

> I found this sentence interesting -- I've been under the impression for some time that preemptive war is not necessarily a traditional doctrine, at least in America

I'm not certain what exactly 'preemptive war' is supposed to be, either than war undertaken in order to preempt a worse possibility (which would seem to be the traditional doctrine for going to war in general).

America's first war, the Quasi-War with France, could be seen as a kind of pre-emptive war in order to prevent further seizures of our ships, which was seen as worse than the war itself.

The First Barbary War was waged in order to prevent the Barbary Pirates (of Tunis, Tripoli & Algiers) from seizing & enslaving our merchant sailors. It should stand to reason that war was considered preferable to continued enslavement of American citizens.

The War of 1812, of course, was waged in response to certain British provocations whose continuation was considered worse than war.

The Second Barbary War was again waged in order to prevent the Barbary Pirates from seizing & enslaving our sailors.

Historically, a lot of military action is preemptive.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was a preemptive move in their eyes.

Imagine how Americans would feel if Russia established a huge military base halfway between Russia and America in the middle of the ocean somewhere. Now imagine that nuclear weapons don't exist.

In that scenario, a preemptive strike might start to make sense to a lot of people in America.

That's pretty much how Japan felt about Hawaii before Pearl Harbor.

I'm not justifying Japan's attack. It was a horrible tragedy. But it's totally understandable, if not laudable.

Napoleon waged preemptive wars more than two centuries ago, most notably against Russia: that one didn't end up well for him or for France. But the concept of striking a known enemy before its army is fully prepared is probably as old as war itself.

Preemptive war is a traditionally-accepted justification of war; is a subset of defensive war in which the attack it is responding to is an imminent attack (one in progress) rather than one that has completed.

What was controversial in the Bush Administration was an attempt to expand the concept of preemptive war to include what is also referred to as "preventive war", where the attack is not "imminent" as that concept had been traditionally understood, but a more distant presumed eventuality. This had been traditionally (and generally remains, despite the efforts made by that administration) viewed as a subtype of aggressive war.

("Traditionally", here, means particularly in the post-WWII, under-the-UN-Charter, world in which states are viewed to operate under a regime of international law in which resort to force, except in immediate self-defense -- possibly collective -- or as directly authorized by the Security Council is forbidden. Though this generally follows other theories of war and its legitimate justification that make similar distinctions, such as Catholic Just War doctrine.)

Large portion of assaults have been framed as pre-emptive throughout history. Famous example would be sack of Carthago.

Past 100 years is exception as rifles, machine guns, mines and then antitank missiles have made defense lot easier than assault. If it's lot more effective to dig in and wait, the rhetoric loses credibility. I'm oversimplifying of course.

> recruitment tool

Are Counter Strike, Battlefield and their ilk in the west "recruitment tools"? Nah. Fiction involving military is still just fiction and implies little about its purpose. All those examples are definitely entertaining though.

Why does a country need to have a military (as opposed to whatever the SDF is) to remain sovereign/independent? I don't see it as doublethink; rather, the author doesn't carry that assumption.

Does Japan not govern itself?

It might be the case that Japan's pacifist stance was forced on them by the US ~70 years ago, but they're still officially pacifist because they choose to be. The US has wanted Japan to take a more aggressive military role for years, particularly in dealing with the other Asian countries, but why should they, when they have the world's most powerful and violent superpower sworn to throw themselves into the meat grinder on Japan's behalf?

Japan is not allowed to have a preemptive overseas strike capability because of what they did with it last time.

(Also, there are a number of microstates with ceremonial armed forces only, and Costa Rica has none at all)