Which, if you think of Japan's OTL achievements, is pretty darn patronizing if more positive than the Nazis...
)Bruce
Alternate History Book Club: Man in the High Castle Discussion
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Which, if you think of Japan's OTL achievements, is pretty darn patronizing if more positive than the Nazis...
)Bruce
Of course, during WWII, Americans saved their most intensive loathing for the Japanese (no American Admiral or General ever said something along the lines of "Before we're through with them, the German language will only be spoken in hell" ) and only after the war and the reveal of the full extent of Nazi crimes did the Germans become the bad guys of the war. Politics helped here, too: by the 1960s Japan was our Little Buddy in the Pacific, producers of cheap crap and silly monster movies: China was Red China and Top Bad Guy Number Two, and what harm they had received at the hands of the Japanese was almost irrelevant.
Negative portrayals of the Japanese, I suspect, arose again more due to resentment over Japanese economic competition than any reassessment of Japan's role in WWII.
Bruce
Alex Richards
Donor
I think Brtain tended to ignore the Japanese more than anything- the war against Germany just had so much more of an impact on life here.
That said, with the Burmese Railroad and Bridge over the River Kwai and such when the Japanese were portrayed in films it wasn't as watered down as in the states.
That said, with the Burmese Railroad and Bridge over the River Kwai and such when the Japanese were portrayed in films it wasn't as watered down as in the states.
There was a British version of Bridge on the River Kwai separated from the one Americans saw? Irrespective of what the novel had in it, I always thought the movie gave a surprisingly watered down view of Japanese POW treatment.
Alex Richards
Donor
No, that was the American film, I was referring to the effect the actual event had on British views towards the Japanese.
Suffice to say that's the impression generally had in this country as well.
Which, if you think of Japan's OTL achievements, is pretty darn patronizing if more positive than the Nazis...
Bruce
I don't think you can call it patronizing when Mr. Dick was unable to see, you know, the future.
I don't think you can call it patronizing when Mr. Dick was unable to see, you know, the future.
I presume he could see the past, the one in which Japan more successfully and quickly modernized than any other non-European country?
Bruce
So is this why Japans HORRID crimes are ignored or down played (to this day) even by people IN THE GOVERNMENT, but the Nazis are more evil then vampires?
Alex Richards
Donor
That plus the common racism of a substantial proportion of the country not caring about massive atrocities when it happens to non-whites.
hmm, true. All the stuff that is made into films, Bridge on the river and the one with kid Baleman about Shanghai. Are about white people mostly.
Is Japan a better manager then Germany though? Didn't like 20 million people die in Japans occupied territory (indochina and East Indies) due to food shortages, was this deliberate or just bad management?
Could Japan have managed a large empire better then Germany?
edit: Fixed, cause Europe don't give no S*** about what the japs did down here either.
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I presume he could see the past, the one in which Japan more successfully and quickly modernized than any other non-European country?
Bruce
Peanuts compared to the Nazi industrial machine, which is all that matters in this novel's context.
I don't quite get your point here. (Nazi industrial machine another thing that gets oversold, it was generally less productive than the British one)
Bruce
Try Merry Xmas Mr Lawrence for a more candid look on Japanese POW treatment
That Japan was the most effective and rapid of the extra-European industrializers doesn't have anything to do with their portrayal in the book. Considering how far they were behind the other powers in World War 2 in terms of industrial output, and how little in the way of whizz-bang superscience they put out compared to the Nazis, they play a role in the novel that's very different from that taken by the Nazis. For all that they're, you know, the bad guys, they're far more human than the Nazis, who are connected to the technological terrors they've accomplished (exterminating Africa, dominating space, draining the Med. Sea). Dick isn't being patronizing by painting them this way, he's using them in contrast to the Germans. Two high-tech mega-engineering evil societies wouldn't provide the same flavor.
I liked some of the ideas in MitHC, like using Canada as a dissident trap to lure trouble-causers away from the Riech and Empire without letting it powerful enuogh to cause them serious trouble in turn. It's definitly a decent piece of sci-fi and alt-history but I wouldn't say its the best by a long shot
The idea of Nzi super-science seems to contradict itself at points since near the start we're told that the Nazis colonised the solar system, drained the entire Mediterranean and wiped out all black people. Yet nearer the end we're told that the Reich is stagnating because it lacks innovation and free thinkers to counter the new problems rising in the cold war and it's rigidly national socialist economy and government is beginning to crumble, how's that possible? Did everyone born after 1930 have their creativity sucked out at birth?
In my mind, Germany should have advanced via leaps and bounds in its weapons programs to the detriment of the other sciences unless they had some tangential benefit to the armed forces. Then the increasing militarism, government controlled economy and very unstable leadership make it the new Roman Empire with generals and bigwigs all vying to be the next Fuhrer. In direct contrast to this the Empire of Japan should be more stable with the increased reverence to the Emperor, though with Prime Ministers still rising and falling almost daily. It ends up as a commercial hub as it allows more free thinking and creativity as a way to culturally oppose the Reich, so in this timeline many of the big abstract or counter-culture artists are Japanese or come from the Pacific States of America (and the yanki become this timelines hippies). The cold war then becomes a battle of capitalism VS fascism in lieu of capitalism VS communism (would red still work as a nickname for fascists?)
That makes more sense to me than Hitler gloating about seeing the swastika fly on Venus
The idea of Nzi super-science seems to contradict itself at points since near the start we're told that the Nazis colonised the solar system, drained the entire Mediterranean and wiped out all black people. Yet nearer the end we're told that the Reich is stagnating because it lacks innovation and free thinkers to counter the new problems rising in the cold war and it's rigidly national socialist economy and government is beginning to crumble, how's that possible? Did everyone born after 1930 have their creativity sucked out at birth?
In my mind, Germany should have advanced via leaps and bounds in its weapons programs to the detriment of the other sciences unless they had some tangential benefit to the armed forces. Then the increasing militarism, government controlled economy and very unstable leadership make it the new Roman Empire with generals and bigwigs all vying to be the next Fuhrer. In direct contrast to this the Empire of Japan should be more stable with the increased reverence to the Emperor, though with Prime Ministers still rising and falling almost daily. It ends up as a commercial hub as it allows more free thinking and creativity as a way to culturally oppose the Reich, so in this timeline many of the big abstract or counter-culture artists are Japanese or come from the Pacific States of America (and the yanki become this timelines hippies). The cold war then becomes a battle of capitalism VS fascism in lieu of capitalism VS communism (would red still work as a nickname for fascists?)
That makes more sense to me than Hitler gloating about seeing the swastika fly on Venus
WHY DO YOU THINK JAPAN IS LESS EVIL THEN THE NAZIS!?
They are far, worse. They killed more people, were more repressive and morally bankrupt then Germany.
The Germans had special units to oversee their death camps, normal Japanese soldiers did almost as horrid things to allied pows.
Germany never put in place the 'three all's policy' closet they got was the death camps.
I AM NOT SAYONG NAZIS ARE GOOD, THEY ARE EVIL, BUT THE JAPS WERE JUST AS BAD IF NOT WORSE
They are far, worse. They killed more people, were more repressive and morally bankrupt then Germany.
The Germans had special units to oversee their death camps, normal Japanese soldiers did almost as horrid things to allied pows.
Germany never put in place the 'three all's policy' closet they got was the death camps.
I AM NOT SAYONG NAZIS ARE GOOD, THEY ARE EVIL, BUT THE JAPS WERE JUST AS BAD IF NOT WORSE
First, it get less and less to the generations and if you go into the material you notice that the Sonderweg theory and linking NationalSocialism to certain special trends to German cultural gets you nowhere.
When there is one thing which is to be learned from the Rise of the Third Reich and the industrial murder complex, than it is that this scenario could happen in any nation under the right circumstances. That it was my Fatherland which went full evil, well that is a burden every German has to carry.
In the context of The Man in the High Castle, the Nazis are portrayed as much, much worse. The part where they exterminated everyone alive in Africa drives that point home pretty strongly. Japan, so far as I recollect from the book, may have been a vicious mass-murdering imperialist dictatorship, but no continent has been scoured of indigenous life by them.
In TMitHC the Nazis are as others have said, worse considering they wiped every black person in the entire of Nazi-occupied Africa
I was pointing out that the Empire of Japan would be in a better position to outlast the Greater German Reich as it ha a capitalist economy and permitted more creative thinking compared to Nazi Germany
Well that's weird since in otl I didn't think the Nazi hated 'Blacks' (I thought they viewed them as children to be educated, not killed enmass.) While the Japs seemed to have no real long term plan for anything they did. How does that make them more likely to out last Germany?
I also disagree with the Japs (ww2 era Japan) being more capitalist and free thinking then anyone. Japs were trained to be fanatically loyal, like the SS. So I don't see how you can say that they would be better then the NAZIs.
I also disagree with the Japs (ww2 era Japan) being more capitalist and free thinking then anyone. Japs were trained to be fanatically loyal, like the SS. So I don't see how you can say that they would be better then the NAZIs.