Hacker News Reader

Comment by gattr | Hacker News Reader

I heard an anecdote from a ninjutsu instructor (a European). He was visiting Japan, meeting with friends; and to one of the meetings he wore a T-shirt with the Nin kanji. Suddenly one of his hitherto very friendly acquaintances changed to being only coldly polite. Later it turned out he was from an old samurai family, which was mostly wiped out by assassins some 400 years ago.

View on HN

Similar story, though less "exotic":

Someone I know retraced their genealogy. They discovered that a few generations back (maybe 5 generations?), a girl was banned from the family. I don't remember why, probably something like getting pregnant from the poor miller's son.

They found out that she had had children, and that her branch of the family now lived the next valley over, so my friend and brother/cousins contacted them with a nice mail like "Hey believe it or not, we're related! Here's what happened 200years ago blahblah it would be great to do a big family reunion dinner!"

The response wasn't so enthusiastic, more along the lines of "we know. We've been raised to hate you. History matters, please do not contact us again."

People, even from the same country (literally the next village over), have very different view of lineage and history

Reminds me of Sarah Taber's thread about how people whose ancestors were in the Salem witch trials are interested in it in direct proportion to which side they were on.

https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/118304392158632755...

Talk about holding a grudge...

I don’t understand people who somehow feel involved in things that happened literally 100s of years ago, it does neither impact nor reflect on them in any way.

Attitudes like this are often passed down from generation to generation, as stories which can form the basis of family identity and culture. When your parents tell you about the band of ninja that nearly wiped out your ancestors, it probably seems like a much bigger deal than, say, some random battle from the history books. Especially if they seem to care about it.

History matters. Where can anyone draw the line?

We draw the line at personal involvement. If not for that no German would walk the streets abroad safe in Europe.

That's right. Germans abroad such as myself do appreciate that a lot. :)

It feels like once again some Unix philosophy could be applied for the better: be strict in what you emit (ie. be kind and consider how your behavior reflects on you, but also be cognizant of your or your culture's history), but lenient in what you accept (ie. do not take offense easily/unnecessarily).

I believe this is a TCP principle not a Unix principle. Aka Postel’s law.

Indeed, thank you, won't mix that up again!

This is a ridiculous comparison. A proper analogy would be someone with a swastika symbol on their shirt talking to a Jewish person. I think we can all agree that wouldn't go well.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Old people here (80 and up) still loathe the Germans and for what was done during the war. Their personal involvement is what make it impossible for them to move on. But as one of their children I have absolutely no grudge against Germans, old or young, simply because I wasn't personally involved.

Jewish people come in all shapes and sizes, and I know quite a few of them. The bulk are very well educated and are able to see history and their own part in it quite clearly. They are definitely not going to like some one with a swastika symbol on their shirt but the chances of that happening here in Europe are relatively slim because there would be a lot of other people - non Jews too - who would take offense.

That's nothing to do with personal involvement but with recognizing that those that wish to engender a second round of Nazism in Europe need to be dealt with before they become a problem.

This is bizarre, you start your comment saying that I have no idea what I'm talking about and then go on to agree with everything I wrote.

jacquesm's really disagreeing with the person above you, probably just replied to the wrong comment.

The time scale is way off - 400 vs 70 years. The sword and eye of Inquisition might be a better match.

Surely by now very few feels any sensitivity regarding Rome's Aquila.

The swastika has existed for thousands of years before the Nazi party ever existed and has never represented war before Hitler borrowed it. You can still see occasional swastika designs all around Europe in pre-WW2 buildings as well as used commonly outside of Europe and North America.

The question of the usage of the swastika then becomes intent. eg is it used as part of a Pagan, Indian or other non-Nazi design?

I figured it was obvious from the context that the hypothetical person is wearing it in support of Nazis, and not as a buddhist symbol...

Not really. You wanted a more direct comparison with the GP and the GP wasn't wearing his T-Shirt in support of the Nazis. Which means either your counter-analogy is also flawed or the context should be that the wearer isn't doing so in support of the Nazis.

WW2 isn't a good example. A Nazi flag would be horribly offensive for a holocaust survivor. Or a Japanese rising sun flag in Nanjing

Being a holocaust survivor would imply personal involvement.

At the point where all the people involved are dead because the world belongs to the living. About 100 years is enough.

The descendants are involved. The deaths of ancestors has an effect on the descendants.

Also, gauge theory suggests that someone who thinks assassination was cool in 1600 would also think that assassination is cool in 2000.

Their death directly lead to the other events which lead to other events. You can always blame the fate if death was natural, but if some other party was involved, that party directly played god with their actions and ruined someone else's life trajectory and thus their descendants life trajectory. And now you find out that the descendants of the murderers are proud of their heritage and hero worship at the expanse of you.

Turkey is doing almost the exact same atrocities today under Erdogan that they did in the 1920s under Ataturk.

I won't comment on where exactly the line is, but this is on the level of me getting angry over someone practicing horse archery because of the Mongol invasion.

Horse Archery was a common martial technique which predicates the mongols (Its way ancient), and during the mongol period it was practiced by a lot of civs, both allies and enemies of the mongols.

But yes, a lot of people still hold a grudge against the Mongols in Asia and Europe

>it does neither impact nor reflect on them

You're definitely not Japanese.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com