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Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak for Europe, but maybe I can shed some light on Japan.

Christianity had started to spread to Japan by 1600 from the Portugese, but after Hideyoshi Toyotomi unified Japan, he made Christianity illegal. After Toyotomi died, the Tokugawa government cracked down even harder, and Christianity was basically eliminated from Japan by 1700, leaving the hybrid Japanese Buddhist/Shinto religion where the Emperor was God-on-Earth as the sole major religion.

After Japan lost WWII, part of the surrender terms was that Emperor Hirohito had to admit he's not a god. During the occupation of Japan, MacArthur's team scrubbed away a lot of the traditional power and prestige of the Japanese native religion, leaving the country largely secular and atheist. They do have strong cultural values and ethics though, which serves some of a similar function that traditional religion does.

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Just an FYI to justify my East Asian Studies degree: the Emperor as God-on-Earth Shintoism is largely a creation of the Japanese government and elites, extending from the late Meiji era (i.e. a couple hundred years after genociding the Christians) into the military junta that was ended by WWII. Shinto previously existed in Japan as a set of diverse minor traditions and local legends, and would have been mostly unrecognizable as a religion prior to it being used as a founding myth to justify the new regime.

Looking at the reading list for the course I learned that in (almost a decade ago now), I think the source is probably W. Scott Morton, "Japan Its History and Culture", but don't quote me on that.

Fun historical trivia note: the Japanese constitution forbids government support of religious schools. The reason for this is late 19th-century American anti-Catholicism. How the heck did that happen? Well, Protestant nativists afraid that Irish & etc Catholics were going to breed quickly and overwhelm "real" Americans passed a series of so-called Blaine Amendments in American states (failing at the national level), which forbid giving money to sectarian schools with the express purpose of forbidding Catholics to fund their schools with tax dollars. Some genius in MacArthur's constitutional drafting committee copy/pasted one of them into the Japanese Constitution.

For additional potent irony, I'd lay even money on the Blaine Amendments being declared unconstitutional (in the US, obviously) within the next few years. They will then survive only in 21st century Japan, protecting it from 19th century Irish immigrants.

Interestingly, whether these are facts or not, they aren't what is taught in Japanese schools. Try throw these questions at a Japanese. He/she would think you are talking about conspiracy.

Well, heck, you should see what American schools have to say about Columbus

what do they say?

This statement sounds really horrible, but every time I hear about what good things have happened to Japan after losing WWII, I'm kinda almost sad we didn't lose.

They certainly don't have a crazy, out of control amount of military spending... not that Japan doesn't have a lot of its own problems. But it seems like they've really had lemons turn into lemonade.

For both Japan and Germany, losing WWII led to an economic miracle, but it might be worth pointing out that losing to the Allies was almost certainly very different than losing to the Axis would have been.

Quite true.

Japan and Germany's economic success was to the benefit of the Allies in the long run anyway.

That's what usually happens when you go a little out of your way to be nicer than you could have been: it turns out that, just by coincidence, some of those times come back to help you later. :)

Also, todays Japan and Germany are a far cry from 1930s Japan and Germany because the loss of the war changed both substantially.

I can't speak for Japan, a total lack of experience in that department, but Germany is still licking some of its wounds 55 years later.

Don't forget that East and West Germany got reunited in fairly recent times and the shockwaves of the reunion have not yet subsided.

Actions have consequences. Could Germany be even more prosperous if it hadn’t started a war? Possible. But if that’s what they wanted then they shouldn’t have started a war with the explicit goal of, well, world domination.

Germans today are just as rich as the French or Britains, much richer than Poles or Russians. Germany has the fourth largest economy in the world (behind China, Japan and the US). The world owes us nothing, we owe the world.

>>losing to the Allies was almost certainly very different than losing to the Axis would have been.

Well... there is e.g. Ukraine and the holocaust. Then there are the Japanese camps, etc.

But was it really worse in e.g. France or Norway compared to Soviet rule? Consider the low survivability of the national elites sent to Siberia. Check e.g.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Estoni...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Brothers

Estonia was certainly unusual in that the occupying Soviets even managed to kill almost as many Jews as the occupying Germans. The reprehensible behaviour of Soviet armies in their sphere of influence nevertheless isn't enough to make me disappointed the Axis didn't win...

I met a Jewish man who had survived the holocaust,(he spent about a year in Auschwitz before being liberated) and then decided to go back to Soviet controlled Hungry, where he was born. He explained to me that he believed living under Soviet rule was worse then living under Nazi rule.

I'm pretty confident (no sources sorry, but thats not the point) that the vast majority of people would disagree with him, but it goes to show you that one side wasn't necessarily better than the other.

Of course I'm sure American control wan't nearly as bad - but that could just be my American bias talking.

> They certainly don't have a crazy, out of control amount of military spending

Because the Japanese were forced to include in their post-WW2 constitution that they would no longer have a military for any purpose other than self-defense. As a result, the American taxpayer pays for the US military to be stationed in Japan for the purpose of offensive attacks against threats like North Korea, Russia, and China, thus indirectly also funding Japan's self-defense. This means Japan's self-defense expenses also drop, not to mention any offensive attacks (as long as the US agrees with them, which it probably would) come free of charge to the Japanese.

Not quite. Japan can and does defend itself just fine against neighbours like North Korea, Russia, and China.

The American taxpayer does something different than you state. In actuality, they fund the projection of force everywhere that the US has interests. To relate back to the example of Japan, this means that the American taxpayer funds the defense of the things the US wants from Japan, not truly the defense of Japan itself though the defense of the former can often aid the defense of the latter. This holds true essentially everywhere else the US chooses to project force and the distinction is absolutely critical but too easily forgotten.

EDIT: in case the above sounds a bit too much like some kind of anti-American rant, the point I should have made more explicit in response to the parent is this: parent makes it sound like Japan is restricted from defending itself against the listed neighbour countries and therefore requires outsiders to do so. This is not true, and since it is not true, one should periodically ask themselves why the US has forces there (and everywhere else.)

There's a much more boring reason behind it too, though: Japan's military isn't nearly strong enough to hold off North Korea or China by itself, and if Japan's military was strong enough to match its neighbors, all the other countries in Asia would be very uncomfortable about it. It just keeps everyone happy (and trade flowing) to keep Japan militarily weak, and the best way to do that is to guarantee them the protection of our military.

It's not free of charge. Japan pays U$2 billion a year for the US military presence.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/commentary/view/japan-bal...

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