Forum - View topicAnime & Manga = Propaganda?
|
Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4 Next |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
musashi1600
 Posts: 199 Location: Hawaii |
|
|||
|
Way to fearmonger, CNN.
Then again, I've only seen the first episode of Zipang so far, so who knows?  
|
||||
|
||||
|
fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
|
|||
|
Complete bull. Nobody wants a war more than Japan does, and the Defense Ministry can't go on the offensive anyways. Doesn't mean that they can't deploy, that should be obvious when they sent troops to Iraq. Only if Japan were to amend it's constitution could it go on the offensive, but I doubt people want to fight anyways in Japan.
|
||||
|
||||
Abarenbo Shogun
 Posts: 1573 |
|
|||
Anderson Cooper prefers....SEAMAN SHIP!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJrIF7pHyO0 |
||||
|
||||
Maryohki
 Posts: 526 |
|
|||
|
I just love how they seem to have the attitude that Japan is exactly the same as it was during WWII.
|
||||
|
||||
Kouji
 Posts: 978 |
|
|||
 Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the U.S. use Bugs Bunny in military propaganda cartoons, too?
|
||||
|
||||
|
Maryohki
Posts: 526 |
|
|||
Yes, that was nice of them too. D=. |
||||
|
||||
SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
|
|||
It's actually an Associated Press article that CNN is circulating. My comment can be summed up into one word: "So?" While not so much in the Middle East, the image of a 'Japanese military' makes a lot of people uneasy still, despite the drastic change in Japanese society since the war, including but not limited to Article 9. I don't think the issue of recurring former military images is unique to Japan, either. I know that in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, East German troops were not a part of the initial invasion, but then played a smaller support role after the invasion occurred. The reason for this was that many Czech citizens would respond more negatively to an invader speaking German than ones who were speaking Russian, Polish, and other eastern European languages. I wonder how German ground troops/peace-keepers were received in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s? Despite Germany's about face, even militarily from the 1930s and 1940s, I think there may still be a stigma attached to them. If painting Captain Tsubasa on their trucks or drawing cute cartoons showing Japanese-Arab friendship helped them accomplish their mission, then by all means, use it. Last edited by SalarymanJoe on Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
hentai4me
 Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
|
|||
|
What I got from that is that Japan wants to use Anime characters to make diplomatic relations easier, using culture as a diplomatic weapon as opposed to economic or military sanctioning, and powermongering.
If indeed using Captain 'Majed/Tsubasa/etc' kept Japanese vehicles safe or at least played some role in it then how can you complain? 'Oh no, the Japanese didn't get shot because they have cartoons on their trucks...I call foul play!' |
||||
|
||||
|
abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
|
|||
|
Yes, I tend to agree, that's a pretty damn stupid and bigotry-laced article.
Shame, really, because the use of mascot characters is an interesting trait of Japanese official culture, and might have made for an interesting topic, had it not been used as a vehicle for this biased claptrap, instead. Then again... it's CNN. Their motto could be "Less biased than Fox. Just barely." - abunai |
||||
|
||||
|
Patachu
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 1325 Location: San Diego |
|
|||
|
I find the style of this "Prince Pickles" mascot unsatisfactory, looks too Americanese.
Isn't there like an SDF-tan? |
||||
|
||||
Rakushun
 Posts: 116 Location: Hawaii |
|
|||
|
"Some contemporary artists have used their characters to tout a more resurgent Japan, like the popular Yoshinori Kobayashi, who has sold millions of copies of cartoon books -- or manga -- that claim Japan's fight in World War II was a noble battle to liberate Asia from a racist world order."
I'm not entirely opposed to Japan building its own military, since it means the US can finally get out of their backyard after 60+ years. What worries me are the revisionists like Yoshinori Kobayashi who downplay or flat out deny Japan's war crimes of 60+ years ago. And why is it "Prince" Pickles and not "Mister" Pickles? Is this typical of anime mascots, or am I missing something in translation? |
||||
|
||||
|
pat_payne
Posts: 179 |
|
|||
So? All the major combatants in the war used the film medium as part of the war effort. In the US, as another poster mentioned, the talents of Disney and Warner Bros. were harnessed to make propaganda shorts. And some of them could be almost as raw as their Japanese counterparts. Take "Bugs Bunny N*ps the N*ps," for instance. The cartoon was typical of the treatment of Japanese in the wartime period (as I mentioned elsewhere in the forums, the perception changed almost overnight with the surrender) -- Bugs gets the best of short, buck-toothed, thick-glassed stereotypes who seem to make every other word "please" or "sorry" or "honorable." I love watching the old wartime cartoons for a historical perspective...but this one is so over the top racist that I cringe when I even just hear the title. Or "Tokio Jokio", by Norm McCabe. The same exact stereotypes reproduced for the US forces. The idea was (as all propaganda in all nations is) to dehumanize the enemy, to break the troops' fear of them, to make it easier to fight them. Laugh at 'em or make them less than human and soon they're not as fearsome. We had the "families cheeering their sons off to war and sharing resources" cartoons as well. Mickey Mouse and Pluto starred in cartoons urging that Americans save old cooking grease for munitions plants. Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd were featured in a short advertising War Bonds. Donald Duck was in a cartoon that advocated paying one's income taxes to fund the war effort. Even in non-war-related cartoons, the war entered -- In one Bugs Bunny cartoon (in which he became a "Superman"-style hero), Bugs foils the villain at the end by ducking into a phone booth and...emerging as a US Marine, marching off to battle. The villain may have been dastardly and low, but even HE wouldn't interfere with an Allied victory. The Soviets made animated propaganda by the bushel, believing film to be their key form of propaganda for an illiterate population. Granted, most of it was directed at the Germans as the USSR didn't officially declare war against Japan until just after the bombing of Hiroshima. To say (or in this case imply by omission) that the use of animation was a uniquely Japanese form of propaganda is something of a lie.
Bullshit. Our own forces were by no means saints (Order 9066 ring a bell?), but to say that the Imperial Japanese Military was on a noble mission to end racism in Asia is pissing on the world's leg and saying it's raining. The Japanese were out to build what they called "the Great East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," an exclusively Japanese economic zone, where the Empire could harness the resources and labor of Asia for the benefit of Japan, which as an archipelago hugging the coast of Asia was (and to a lesser extent, still is) somewhat economically hamstrung by lack of natively-residing critical resources such as fuel oil and coal, to name just one. It's no coincidence, therefore that they went after the oil and rubber resources of Java/Indonesia and the mineral resources of China/Manchukuo -- or that that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a response, essentially to the US-led embargo on aluminum, fuel and other war resources in response to Japanese actions in China. Was there racism in Asia? Tremendously. The colonizers did take a Kiplingesque, "white-man's burden" view of their new dominions, seeing the natives as little more than "savages" to be exploited or civilized. To them, the life of an Indonesian, or Chinese, or Burmese, or Indian was cheap. However, where was the Kwangtung Army's concern for the racism of the foreign concessions in China when they set up the "special units" and tested biowarfare agents on the Chinese population? |
||||
|
||||
|
abunai
Old Regular
Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
|
|||
Or, viewed a different way, Japan was out to create its own Asian version of the United States' Monroe Doctrine. Imperialism it was, but hardly without precedent. - abunai |
||||
|
||||
|
kyonichi
Posts: 16 |
|
|||
|
At least Japan uses propaganda. The American government has made it pretty clear that they don't care enough about what we think to even bother brainwashing us.
|
||||
|
||||
DragonsRevenge
 Posts: 1150 |
|
|||
Hehehe /sophomoric humor |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group