I love their trains, the food is good, it’s a beautiful country.
But also, holy shit, Japan has just never reckoned with its imperial past in the slightest.
If you ever see those tourism promotion photos of mt. Fuji with a pagoda in the foreground, that pagoda was built in the 50s, around the end of the US occupation, to commemorate soldiers who fought in essentially every war that imperial Japan got itself into. It’s very clear political statement.
And I learned this, upon climbing that damn mountain, and reading the plaque in front of the pagoda, only to learn that it was a monument to imperialism the whole time
I love their trains, the food is good, it’s a beautiful country.
But also, holy shit, Japan has just never reckoned with its imperial past in the slightest.
If you ever see those tourism promotion photos of mt. Fuji with a pagoda in the foreground, that pagoda was built in the 50s, around the end of the US occupation, to commemorate soldiers who fought in essentially every war that imperial Japan got itself into. It’s very clear political statement.
And I learned this, upon climbing that damn mountain, and reading the plaque in front of the pagoda, only to learn that it was a monument to imperialism the whole time