Last Friday afternoon they took the Tsuyazaki Jr High kids next door to Camelia Hall and the theater to watch a movie. They watched Kankara Sanshin, an anime about the Battle of Okinawa during the last days of WWII. It was a bit sanitized, to be expected given the horrors of war, but it did feature some graphic realities. People blown apart by shelling, the horrible conditions, the engendering of mass suicides by the Japanese army and visually, a moderate, but not insane amount of blood.
It reminded me that last year they took the kids over to see Nagasaki no Kane [The Bells of Nagasaki] based on the true story of Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki), wounded by the blast of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, aiding other victims during the immediate aftermath of the explosion at Urakami First Hospital, not far from the epicenter of the atomic bomb blast. Radiation burns, suffering... death and heavy pathos.
And all I kept thinking was that they could NEVER have shown these in an American Jr High school. Maybe... maybe... in an upper level High School course, but this kinda violence would never fly in the states.
And honestly, I think that's really fucked up.
At what point did it change from protecting your kids - you know, making sure they didn't walk off a cliff or get kidnapped and eaten by bears - to shielding kids from information about the reality of the world? How did it come to be that so many parents teachers and adults somehow think it's serving the interest of their kids by not telling them things or lying to them about the state of the world? I swear on all that I once considered holy [hi Catholic church circa age 8!] that this protectionist "think-of-our-oh-so-sensitive-children" attitude is about the most frustratingly nauseating things I come across.
I honestly do not understand willful fucking ignorance, or intentionally perpetuating it.
I totally agree with you (except the swearing). However, they censor a lot of information here in Japan as well (and change some things). If you ever go over to the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima, the Japanese translation of a lot of the captions are totally different from the English. Hmmm...interesting. Plus, they never acknowledge the atrocities that Japan did in Korea, China, and the Philippines. I'd like to see a Korean or Filipino movie shown here about WWII.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting, one of the bits in the movie was how the Japanese military coerced and forced the Okinawans to commit suicide rather than surrender to the Americans. That's the bit current politicians are trying to omit from current textbooks, and pissing off the Okinawa population by doing it. But I was talking about it with one of my English teachers, and his perspective was revealing. He said all Japanese people KNOW that's what the military did. The government just doesnt want people to talk abou it. How very very Japanese of them. Damn politicians.
ReplyDeleteAnd you know you love the swearing :)
If we don't talk about it, it never happened.
ReplyDeleteTalk about perpetuating ignorance...
"Abe sparked controversy in March by saying there was no evidence the imperial army had directly coerced thousands of women into brothels across Asia."
"Some 44 Japanese lawmakers, including some close to Abe, took out a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post earlier this month denying Japan's military forced the women into sexual slavery."
Full story here...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070627/pl_afp/japanuspoliticswomen_070627133748;_ylt=AkEY2fjS3PpCmn1ij7aLX0v9xg8F
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070627/pl_afp/japanuspoliticswomen_070627133748;_ylt=AkEY2fjS3PpCmn1ij7aLX0v9xg8F
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