shinjukuboy comments

It says it is a "memorial to those who have died in the line of duty" (or "fallen in action"). Does that include WWII? Won't this make China hopping mad?

Well, that look real mature.

Contrariwise, there was probably too much reality portrayed that did not match the Camelot myth that developed post-assassination.

China is our creation. Live with it.

Words like "implode" or "explode" don't really mean anything. When has anything ever imploded? The Roman Empire "imploded" over a 100 year period. People have been saying that Japan will implode since the 1970s and that the US would implode in 2009. Still waiting. Big things "implode" only exteremely slowly. It is a drama queen type expression. China will manage its affairs. We may have the invisible hand, but they have the iron fist.

Don't forget that the US spends more on defence that the entire rest of the world combined. Preparing for Armegeddan? Of course, most of the US military industrial complex is actually just an unemployment program. That shows up in recent results, right?

And the point of this article is????? Well, not bad for a high school social studies paper. I'd give it a B+.

PS: "oil rich Senkaku Islands"? The extent of the oil deposits there have yet to be ascertained. They may be "rich" or they may be miniscule and not worth the trouble.

Beat must be having cash flow problems. No other reason than that to stoop to pushing an English salon. But maybe he owns it.

Well, now that DADT has been repealed, they can get some real designers on this.

Meet the new guard, same as the old guard.

Totally wierd scene. And not just who designed the guard's uniforms, but who designed the wreath. A big red dot in the middle? The whole scene needs a makeover by Japanese designers.

It is a cultural difference: we consume, they war.

And didn't SB spend loads of money to fight a trademark infringement against Excelsior for their similar logo? I think they won.

I'm with Ranger Miffy also. But really, dropping your name from the logo is a bit of overconfidence. You should not assume that everyone in the world knows who you are. Lots of American companies famous in the West have made that mistake over the years, and they are no longer here. Don't take things for granted. They did pioneer no-smoking (against the strong objections of their Japanese partner), and I like the pastry and chai (I don't like coffee).

Well, it is not worth 50 billion to me, and that is what matters.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading in an article that these vehicles have "black boxes" like an airplane, and the reason the US government did not charge Toyota was that all the black boxes showed that the driver was at fault, i.e., they mistakenly stepped on the gas pedal, rather than anything malfunctioning.

Guess he lost hope of ever returning to be the Shah of Iran. The US used to be able to arrange that kind of thing, which is how the previous Shah of Iran was placed into power. But alas, the US is incapable of doing that sort of thing any more. It only took 4 years to vanquish Japan and Germany in WWII, but after 10 years, they are still trying to control pieces of desert in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just can't hack it anymore. So I guess it is natural that the guy gave up hope. So, how did he do it?

At any rate, modern China was enabled by the US, Japan, and Euroland by moving all its production over there and then importing all those "Made in China" products, thereby enriching the government. China is OUR creation, so put up or shut up.

Yes, 2010 was a diplomatic and PR disaster for China. They let Japan walk all over it in the Senkaku island dispute, and Japan made China look really scary. China thinks it can use the same strong arm force it uses against its citizens against other countries, and that doesn't work. Japan won because it is a master of "soft power", the only power it has been able to exercise since the war. They won the image game. China has been decreasing rare earths for more than 2 years, but Japan was able to work that into the scary image as well. Chinese response was totally incompetent. China's strong arm tactics do not make it look like a peaceful country ("Go to Stockholm, and there will be consequences!"), but like a bully, spoiled child, or brat.

Just for balance, 2010 was a great year for me.

After all these years of doing this, don't they realize how counter-productive this is? The quotes look silly out of context, especially if you don't know anything about Christianity. "God" is called "kami神", which is a Shinto term for "nature sprite" (they inhabit trees, rocks, caves, etc.). Also, they use very low quality speakers which just cause a headache (which is actually my main complaint).

So what happened to all the people who lived before Jesus and could not "call on Jesus"? I guess they are doomed to spend eternity in Hell for no fault of their own.

Chinese suffered a double barbarities, first from Europe and then from Japan. Don't romanticise the European occupation. So what is an American priest doing in Nanjing anyway? That is cultural imperialism as China has its own great religious and philosophical traditions. The priests followed the military and the companies that hauled the wealth of China away (visit the British Museum). And they tried to infect the Chinese mind too. Will Zhang raise these questions?

@AdamB It is the responsibility of any government to protect their citizens. For most of human civilication, China was the wealthiest and most advanced country. But China became debilitated and couldn't fulfill this responsibility (like the US and 9/11), leading to Nanjing. It is well known that to save their status, many Chinese elite collaborated with Europeans and even the Japanese. I say again: it was a complicated situation with lots of players and lots of motives. How will this be refracted through the mind of Zhang when he puts these events on screen, seen through the eyes of an American priest and the female victims he saves?

@AdamB Please read my posts.

I acknowldeged the rape of Nanjing I acknowledged the barbarity of at least some Japanese soldiers in China (I don't know about ALL of them). I acknowledged Zhang has the right to make the movie (and maybe even a duty to be sure it is not forgotten). The questions I ask are honest ones. Will his movie just degenerate into an anti-Japanese movie, or will it deal with the situation in all its complexity, including an honest look at what made all of this possible, that is, why China became so weak as to be unable to prevent some Japanese soldiers on a blood-lust rampage from doing this. There is not such a vacuum of information about the war here as you seem to think.

@seaforte03 Remember the Communists were quick to put the problem of Japanese guilt behind them, too. Mao Tse Tung said the Japanese suffered under the military just like the Chinese, and left it at that. Zhou Enlai, who had studied in Japan as a youth, ensured smooth release of Japanese prisoners and civilians back to Japan, much to the dissapointment of some Chinese who wanted something more punitive.

When Zhang makes his movie about Nanjing, he should include some serious content about why China had become so weak that it could first be taken over by westerners and then get onverrun by Japanese, leading to the Rape of Nanjing. Among these Japanese are the true believers who really thought they had to rid China and Asia of the westerners, whose next target was Japan. And among these Japanese, there were ones on a blood-lust rampage to barbarically kill or mutilate as many Chinese as they could. Behind them were the industrialists in Tokyo who wanted Chinese resources for Japanese industry. And there were Japanese Marxists and Christians who were abhorred by the war (many jailed for opposing the war). There were many players in a complex situation. Can/will Zhang show this complexity? Can any movie show such complexity?

Still have to keep rubbing that into Japan's face, do we? I guess China is still very embarrassed that the little country to the east could overrun China, commiting barbarities of all kinds. That is, the Chinese couldn't protect their own women. That is embarassing. I still do not understand why they single out Japan, and say nothing about the 100 years of humiliation brought about by the Europeans who took over China and treated them with just as much disdain as the Japanese. Not one Chinese woman was ever sexually used by the civilized European conquerers? This is why, even acknowledging that the Japanese did barbaric things in China, it all seems hypocritical.

@Frungy What you say is true. But family ties are getting thin (like "blood relations") and now you can find companies that will do these things for you. Pay one months rent, and a company be your guarantor and will cover rent for the duration of a contract if you can't pay, etc. Same for a loan. Teachers can guarantor jobs. People don't expect so much from families these days, and lots of families are disfunctional. Children sent their parents to homes for the elderly rather than take care of them. In the case the Aunt mentioned above, she probably just feels less guilty having the girl institutionalized than having a loving family take over what she should be doing.

I'll just add that the "blood relationship" thing is getting pretty thin among young people. It was strong in the grandparents generation. I doubt that will be a count against these kids as they grow up. Governments should invest in kids rather than bombs, anyway.