Featured Ivory & Shibuyama Whist or Bezique Counter, Signed

Because this thread was about a Japanese item, and Japanese not being fully recompensed for their treasures, I limited myself to Japan.

Understandable. You know almost first hand what they're like, and know the threat they pose.

They couldn't without an army. They lost the right to an army after WW II. They have the Self Defense Forces, but that is not an army as other countries know it.

I can think of a few others, but not the ones already mentioned in this thread.

 

Any, I am so sorry to hear about your husband's and his family suffering because of the Japanese imperialism! Your posts about Japan are absolutely understandable in the light of such personal experience

The only survivors I have met are from the "Bulgarian GULAG", my mom's cousins, and my experience is related to Stalinism and Russian imperialism. About Japanese atrocities I have only read, it does not make them less horrible, of course, I mean that it is universal but also personal, we tend to be concerned the most by things that we witness first-hand.

 

Yes. it was, but then Nazi Germany was brought in for comparison, and when there is a comparison, Stalinist USSR is just a twin of Nazi Germany, so one cannot go without the other, and then you know...
There is a Russian writer, Victor Suvorov, he has a very well done parallel between Hitler and Stalin, it is amazing how many similarities they have, one of the few differences though, being the attitude of the Anglo Saxon world towards the two during WWII.

I admit that the discussion became too off-topic so I put a dot here. Although it was a pleasure to be part of it, as usual!

 

I don't dare comment on the inherent capacity for the cruelty of the human race-i couldn't stop & (despite our generous OP's) might actually get banned.
PS-Back to the prices re Japanese Antiques,the Meiji mixed-metals (esp Shakudo) still aint low enough for my wallet-not even those damn little Ojime beads.Just can't bring myself to buy the repos.

 

It is more about a feeling of injustice, and being Dutch I already knew the stories growing up, years before I met my husband. We heard the stories from refugees that came here from Indonesia.
The Japanese weren't victims, they were perpetrators, and the Japanese population in general was in favour of the war. That doesn't mean they should be treated harshly, but the victim role they assumed after Nagasaki and Hiroshima was used to negate their role as a cruel perpetrator.
I have also known people who were in Nagasaki at the time btw, Dutch-Indonesian POWs who were forced to work in the shipyards under harsh conditions, like daily beatings.

Another thing is the lack of attention to what happened in East Asia, the focus is generally on Europe, or it rapidly shifts back to Europe. Even today there are people in Europe who say "oh it was much worse here than in SE Asia, because we had cold winters".
Of course cold winters were an exacerbating factor, but so were the extremely brutal treatment, harsh conditions and tropical diseases in SE Asia. The war in Asia wasn't a second rate war with second rate suffering, 20-30 million deaths say otherwise. (Numbers were probably higher, for instance the Indonesian number of 3-4 million is based on incomplete information.)

 

Oh, Any, I absolutely understand you, and this truth should be announced, no doubt, and you are very right to do it, here or elsewhere. I myself don't "rank" where the war was (is) more devastating, it is always and everywhere devastating! In this case, such understatements are due to lack of information, IMO, so it should be spoken about, no doubt. But indeed, attention to war atrocities depends on where one lives and what personal experience he/she has. And also to what propaganda one was (is) exposed - I can certify that during the Cold War in BG nothing about Japanese atrocities in WWII was said (and almost nothing about WWII in Asia in general), taught or publicly announced because the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was used by the Soviet (aka BG) propaganda to denounce USA as imperialistic aggressors and blood-thirsty monsters. I have studied at school that there was absolutely no need to bomb Japan with nuclear bombs, the war was almost over and Japan would have surrendered anyway, and this bombing was just to show off how mighty USA were and scare USSR, which was in line with the Cold War narrative between the two former allies. Actually around this time (Japan bombing) the Cold War started. This propaganda claim would have been nonsense if Japanese deeds were revealed, so they simply weren't. I read about these events much later, after 1990. And have little knowledge even now.
I guess there are other examples, too, so it is important to exchange and speak about historical events, everyone from their position and knowledge.

 

Humans, when given the opportunity, tend to use and abuse those "not like them", whoever "not like them" may be. I've heard some of the Asian atrocities, but grew up with Jewish survivors right next door. Literally - my neighbor growing up escaped the Nazi Germany in 1935. There were three synagogues in town, and one Rabbi was a Concentration Camp survivor. My favorite college professor was an Austrian Jew who lived through a North African camp. The Asian stuff I only know from books.

 

That is probably the difference, exposure to personal stories. Living in the Netherlands I grew up with personal stories from both continents.

 

I'm not surprised. We didn't have the Asian survivors here, other than some returning POWs. I didn't hear those stories until adulthood, when the men involved finally felt OK about telling them.

 

It is exactly what I think, personal experience is crucial, including exposure to personal accounts of survirors. And propaganda for the ones in countries with dictatorships, like me. In this relation, here many people believe that there were no crimes or misbehaviour during communism because there was "law and order", ensured by the dictator. But the proven facts are very different, proven with official documents in our archives. And it is that they were even more crimes then now but they were not announced publicly but remained "state secret". It was also part of the propaganda, and now many of those who were adults during that time, truly believe that it it was more safe and there was more pubic order than now, when crimes are always widely announced in the media.

 

Countries have different ways of coming to terms with state crimes of the past. Do you think there will be legal action in Bulgaria, or some kind of "restorative justice" towards victims?

I know east Germany, the former GDR, is also struggling with the past, and the Stasi archives are now mostly accessible, which is a start.

Of course it was, look how good and healthy our state is compared to the degenerate West, etc.
The hiding of crime statistics and "safe" propaganda was the same in Spain under Franco, also a dictator. Probably the same in other dictatorial states.

 

There are some who say it's still going on in America. Tougher to pull off, but being done. I think it happens whenever scummy people get power and want keep it, get rich, etc.

 

what's going on in the USA..... is a concern to us all !!

 

Sorry for the much delayed answer, I've had a lot of work lately, and some business travel.
No, I don't think so, except for abolishing all political court sentances like "spreading retrograde Western propaganda" or "non-compliance with the norms of socialistic society", etc., and clearing the files of the victims, nothing else I have heard of.
There are not many of them alive through, as GULAG camps were dissolved in 1960s, and most of the survivors have passed away.

Yes, it is typical for dictatorships.

 

I doubt it can be effective in the presence of media reflecting views from different political spectrums, and also searching for sensations and relying upon them for attracting readers. In dictatorships there is no other media apart from the ones belonging to the dictator's circle or the state which is dictator's property. And all media with different views is closed, and journalists persecuted and even killed if they don't comply with the official narrative.

The most recent example is Russia - look what happened with all media different from official state channels. And what happened to Politkovskaya, and not only her, there are 19 journalists killed since 2000, and no one is held accountable. There was some mimic "free" media, Novaya Gazeta and Echo Moskvy radio-channel, and since the start of then aggression to Ukraine, even this "fig leaf" was removed, now it is a federal crime punished with jail if a journalist writes or speaks against the war, or against Putin and his clique. There was a case of a young girl who drew a picture with "no to war" words at school, and she was removed from her home to an institution to be "disciplined and re-educated", and her father sent to jail.

This is not the case in USA, though.

 

Not effective for as long, but they still try. They just don't get away with it as much.

Many years ago, Putin expelled a charitable organization because they have "army' in their name. That was the excuse anyway. Their real "crime" was telling people it was OK to love God in a way the Official State-approved Orthodox church does not.