Japanese Mayor Says He’ll End SF sister City Status Over Comfort Women Statue

San Fracisco Chronicle ^ | Friday, November 24, 2017 | Evan Sernoffsky

[PCPOET7]

I believe in living in the here and now. getting worked up over past wrongs of a country can turn in to tit for tat game when the wrongs one is angry over happened over 70 years ago...we must remember the past but then move on to the present and make sure we don’t let the past dictate are future.

[vette6387]

“”Why did we work to restore your nation and give you back your independence; “

Sure, that's the obvious answer, but the matter goes to the Japanese cultural need to save face. It's not part of their makeup to be able to say you are sorry or to accept someones concern either.
We were traveling in the Kansai with the parents of our exchange student who lived in Fukui. At a shrine, the father tripped and fell, and bloodied his elbow in the process. Our natural tendency is to render aid and express our concern. Not in the Japanese culture. Our daughter who had been a student in Japan for a year, interceded, telling us that by expressing concern and being sorry for what happened we were heightening his shame. In their culture, he had screwed up, and any acknowledgment would only serve to make him more aware of his “mistake!”
It's the same with WWII and their not being accepting of the truth, because in doing so it would mean that they as a people had “screwed up” and therefore turning the issue around allows them to save face.

[Greenpees]

While the “comfort women” reality is what it is, why would it be beneficial for an American city to rub Japan’s nose in it? I’m not giving them a pass, but should America not be forgiven, at some point, for the bad that occurred under our history? It’s 2017. How much kneeling is enough? It serves only to divide people. This was not done to acknowledge anything or anyone. It’s a predominantly Chinese area carrying historical hatreds to American shores. We should reject it as neither the time or place.

[otness_e]

I hope you’re right that it’s indeed uncommon. That said, though, considering how a lot of Japanese gaming companies and media for whatever reason think they should bash America to such an extent that we’re practically bad guys despite our defending them during the Cold War, and many times actually rooting for the Communists, the same guys who would probably nuke them out of existence if the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into a hot war, I am still a bit wary.

Like, for example: The Metal Gear series has Hideo Kojima using his games as a platform for anti-American statements since Metal Gear Solid 2, maybe even Metal Gear Solid 1 (since he DID have a character, Nastasha Romanenko, pretty much blame America for everything relating to nukes, offering little if any criticism for the Soviets or the Chinese having nukes, and this was despite her backstory being her being a survivor of Chernobyl). In Peace Walker and MGS4, plus MGSV and MGS2 to a certain extent, the American hatred was such that he was practically rooting for communist insurgents like the FSLN, the Gurlukovich Mercenaries (a Russian mercenary group trying to reestablish the USSR), an implied Maoist South American rebel group, and the MPLA, not to mention in the case of Peace Walker a lot of love for Che Guevara (who, BTW, was a large part of the reason why the Cuban Missile Crisis got as bad as it did, and he doesn’t even MENTION his ties to the CMC at all), while American patriots were largely depicted as evil or, in the case of The Boss in MGS3, more like nihilists even if they were technically good, while most of the “heroes” were anti-American in outlook. In the Guardian’s interview with Kojima, he even admitted he wanted to show America in the opposite of a heroic light, thinking not even Hollywood went far enough, and he also demonized GITMO by implying that literally everyone was merely “snatched up” random nobodies who got slapped with the term “terrorism” even when they never actually did anything like that (which is false). As a matter of fact, they also tended to blame America first for stuff like, say, drug-running in Central America, give IT the lion’s share of the blame, and yet they completely ignore, say, the KGB and FSLN not only being involved in the drug-running operation in that area as well, but that they if anything STARTED the whole drug running elements, get a free pass. I can tolerate America being blamed for drug running if we’re guilty of it, but what I do NOT tolerate is other parties who were involved in the drug running operation getting a free pass, especially if they’re the ones who started it. And no, Kojima’s not motivated by a love of Japan at all for his dissing America. Heck, if anything, he SUPPORTED the whole textbook controversy about exposing the ills of Japan during World War II, and MGS2 was written in part because of the whole textbook controversy. (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/18/hideo-kojima-interview-metal-gear-solid-phantom-pain; https://web.archive.org/web/20060813191032/http://www.mgstus.org/downloads/misc/MGS2_orginal_gameplan/metal_gear_solid_2_grand_game_plan.pdf; http://www.metalgearinformer.com/?p=25955; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJn4kFDDc4s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9TTy8ABV1o; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYtK3d2ydk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKl6WjfDqYA; There’s a whole lot more in there than can be cited in this post. Just look up any gameplay video from MGS1, MGS2, MGS4, Peace Walker, and MGSV, also any Codec calls, many of which you can find on YouTube or even on the Metal Gear Wiki.)

And it’s not just Metal Gear. In Dead Rising, two of the games feature the American military in a very negative light, being responsible for the mess that happened in the game that resulted in the place becoming a zombie apocalypse, while the terrorists directly responsible for it are depicted sympathetically in terms of the story. Heck, Resident Evil has a similar problem to Metal Gear, where the heroes are either anti-American (Chris Redfield) or otherwise forced to do America’s bidding (Leon Kennedy). Resident Evil 5 in fact even had a condemnation against capitalism from Chris when he was talking to Sheva.

And Killer7 had the guy who created it pretty much stating that America was under the control of a shadow government since its founding. (http://suda51.wikia.com/wiki/Hand_in_killer7)

Don’t even get me started on Osamu Tezuka’s 1967 Astro Boy story arc dealing with the Vietnam War, where he had Astro Boy basically slaughter American soldiers and treat the North Vietnamese as being pure innocent souls that are being victimized by American “tyranny” when they were Communists who most likely WOULD murder even their own in the name of communism had we not gotten involved. Don’t believe me regarding Astro Boy? Read this: (http://apjjf.org/-Matthew-Penney/3116/article.html)

Probably the only Japanese people I can think of who DON’T bash Americans as being monsters right now or use their works as a platform to bash Americans are Tomonobu Itagaki, the creator of the Dead or Alive series (pretty much one of the few Japanese games that I can think of that actually ATTEMPTS to paint America in a decent light in the form of Tina Armstrong and her dad, at least they aren’t villains, and he certainly doesn’t try to use his games as a means to bash America.) and possibly Satoshi Tajiri and Mayumi Iizuka.

Seriously, with how those guys act towards America, even rooting for our enemies over us, sometimes I wonder, why are we even bothering to aid them or treat them as our allies, if they’re just going to continue knifing us in the back like that. I mean, go ahead, blame us for stuff we may have done wrong, but DON’T let people who did far worse deeds, or even the same deeds as us at the same time, get away scot-free (ie, don’t brush aside the FSLN or KGB’s role in the drug running in South and Central America during the 1970s, and don’t try to paint the North Vietnamese as good guys)!

So far as the actual statue in San Francisco that acts as the overall topic, to be honest, I’m not even sure why we even had a statue regarding the comfort women anyways, same as why there’s a Lenin statue in Seattle. That’s not part of American history, if anything that’s Chinese/Japanese history. If they really want a statue about that event, they should put it in China, since that’s part of their history. Now, if they had a statue of the American POWs at Iwo Jima, that I can understand since that IS our American history. As far as Harvey Milk, I’m not fond of that creep especially when he can’t keep his proclivities to himself, but to be fair, he IS ultimately an American citizen, so him getting a statue, while I wouldn’t like it, I’d ultimately tolerate since he IS part of our history whether I like it or not.

[Vigilanteman]

Nastasha Romanenko? Now there's a real Japanese sounding name, eh?

It should come as no surprise that lefties who dominate the entertainment industry in Japan deal extensively with their like minded counterparts in the USA. Most Japanese consider their entertainment celebs as entertainment celebs and not as a source of political advice.

The same was true once upon a time in the U.S.A. before our publik edjucashun system dumbed down enough of the populace to think otherwise.

[otness_e]

Nastasha Romanenko is supposed to be Ukranian (and technically Russian, since the USSR was still around and in control of the Ukraine at the time Chernobyl happened), hence why Chernobyl was used for her backstory.

Guess I shouldn’t be surprised either that they’d deal with their like-minded counterparts (funny, I think I recall Kojima saying that he feared the rise of the right-wing in America fairly recently).

Well, if what you say is true and Japanese entertainment celebrities are treated appropriately as such by the Japanese, I guess I don’t have much to worry about regarding the Japanese hating America in droves and supporting communists, at least on that front. And come to think of it, Metal Gear definitely wasn’t quite as popular in Japan as it is in America. The only thing I can definitely say is that the only Japanese video game designers/entertainers who definitely don’t come across as anti-American in any way are Satoshi Tajiri, Mayumi Iizuka, and Tomonobu Itagaki (being either explicitly pro American in word and deed, or otherwise not commenting one way or another on America). Still, I’m not sure where Kojima and his ilk got their views on America from, or their overall leftism? The only place I could think of may in fact be Japan’s education system (and besides, I know that Kojima at least did enough research to know about and even reference the Katyn massacre in Snake Eater, and even referenced the bit about how our missiles in Turkey were obsolete and that we were planning to get rid of them even before the Turkey Deal required us to do so due to the advent of nuclear subs, which is cited in the Politically Incorrect Guide to the 1960s). And yeah, agreed with you regarding our public education system being crap.