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Comment by noobermin | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of sounding somewhat like I'm stereotyping, why is this? I never associated this with Japan in particular, but between losing out of loads of Japanese music I followed a few years ago and Nintendo basically invalidating everyone's Wii purchases it feels like it is ingrained in the corporate culture over there particularly for the large publishers.

Not that we have our own blemishes, DMCA, disregard for things like fair-use, parody and so on, etc. Heh, now that I think of it we have our own issues too.

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I'd be very surprised if South Korea doesn't still view itself as an underdog, both economically and culturally. They were very poor until the early 1990s. As recently as the mid 1970s, they were still third world poor.

Japan was a mighty empire not so long ago, and then quickly rose again after the 1950s to have one of the most potent economies. In the late 1980s while Japan was viewed as taking over the world economically, South Korea was just beginning to stir (Japan's economic output per capita was about 6x that of South Korea in the late 1980s). All the way back to the early 1960s, Japan had 5x to 6x the output per capita of South Korea.

I think a country that perceives itself as an underdog always behaves very different from a country that regards being on top as their natural right (which was certainly Japan's attitude during their economic ascension decades). South Korea will surpass Japan's per capita economic output in the next dozen years, for the first time in over a century. It'll be quite the accomplishment.

I read this bit below 2 - 3 years ago online.

>> Annual profit/revenue (not quite sure) of Samsung Electronics (not Samsung overall, just Electronics) was greater than or equal to top 9 Japanese electronic firms combined, including Sony.

I think the comparison does not include Sony Films though? Not quite sure.

A lot of people look at the economic miracle of West Germany and Japan post WW2 with admiration. Amazing accomplishments for sure. But both nations already had well established education, technology, institutions, and etc that were already present at end of WW2. Sure, a lot of it had been destroyed/disrupted because of the war. But they were there.

South Korea on the other hand had none of that. S. Korea never had the core ingredients needed for economic recovery. In 1945, literacy rate in Korea was 22%. Korea as a whole was just barely joining the modern world around 1900, a lot of it due to the colonization by Japan.

It is an amazing achievement.

I think S. Korea also feels more threatened than others because it shares land/sea border with China, Russia, and Japan. China/Russia, 2 most powerful nations with non-democratically elected government...

EDIT: Before someone yells at me for putting down Japan and/or putting Korea on a pedestal, I am just stating a fact I read. For sure, Japan has had amazing achievement in the past.

Japan does need a bit of putting down. I've been to Japan and the Meiji Shrine had people with flags of Imperial Japan doing a photo session.

They're quite admirable as a people in most respects but that's just misguided. Especially since without US backing China would definitely want to have a word or two with them about those war criminals. And today's China is not China during the century of humiliation.

On the other hand South Korea did everything peacefully. They deserve their praise 120%. I just wish they'd be reunited with North Korea peacefully and with the resulting country following the South Korean model.

That would be a great counterbalance in the region to Chinese ambition.

The Rising Sun flag remains the flag of the Japanese Navy to this day, and is appropriate to fly on any occasion where you'd fly a Navy flag.

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

The flag had the sun centered...

What, a whole country needs to be taken down a peg because a few idiots posed with imperial flags in a wartime srhine?

Do you know the history of the shrine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Shrine

It's far from a "few idiots". The place is super controversial. A nice place, but super controversial, politically.

Are you maybe thinking of Yasukuni? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine

Yeah, my bad, wrong link.

Yes, I know what the Meiji shrine is.

Like I say above, why do a few idiots waving flags at Meiji mean that _the entire country_ needs to be "taken down" like the OP says?

I stress that this is "Japan"- the whole of Japan. Not the idiots waving flags at Meiji. Are all Japanese nationalist assholes?

I'm not going to support the gross generalization that an entire country needs to be humbled, BUT: the shrine is a flashpoint of Japanese ultra-nationalism, which is on the rise.

Common ultra-nationalist beliefs are fairly odious: e.g. Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 "Nanjing massacre" were exaggerated or fabricated.

Regarding illegitimacy, in absence of any laws anything can be legal (no laws) but not moral. Just going to leave it here

Tokyo Trial https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091880

Those things are true, but the OP said that "Japan" has to be taken down.

As a not unrelated aside, nationalism is on the rise everywhere and if this doesn't change there will be new wars and possibly another (very) big one. I am personally freaked out very much by the rise of nationalism in the EU where I live. I'm not one to trivialise waving flags at a war memorial.

But- again, why does this indict the entire of Japan? Are all Japanese likely to go wave imperial flags at Meiji?

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