this is why we need anime. you simply don't get these life lessons anywhere else
This is kind of a bad translation tbf. It is literally correct but not figuratively. It's more like "Nobody can escape the finality of death."
Caveat: I don't know Japanese but I have seen this frame discussed before. I've also heard some other odd death related sayings in JP media, like "He wouldn't die even if you killed him."
In Dutch culture, Prime Minsters are considered important figures and assassinating them is necessary in order to eat them.
In Brazilian culture, Presidents, even former ones, are considered important figures and watching their meeting planning a crime is a serious cultural comedy.
(for anyone out of the loop: Bolsonaro recorded an all-hands meeting with several ministers, sometime during the 2022 campaign, wanting a "solution" to his inevitable loss. One of the ministers even asked if it was being recorded, to which both bozo and the intelligence general gestured a "no", because "everything we're saying here could incriminate us". Said recording was found on the Google Drive of one of his cronies and was openly displayed in local news)
To be honest: I passively learned that Japanese commit Seppuku if they break their knightly code. The kamakazi pilots. And during WWII, they were non stop “I didn’t hear no bell” even after the first nuke.
This biased me into thinking Japanese values life a tidbit less than others.
But I’m pretty sure they just had a rampant conservative choo choo train with no brakes, no exits for the more sane Japanese.
Watch some Japanese programming, read any magazine there, and you'll probably notice a huge amount of articles praising people living long, active, healthy lives. Is suicide an issue? Absolutely. But it's ridiculous to say they don't value life, especially when compared to some countries which seem to have a problem with gun violence
To describe a tactic that exploited the Shintoist beliefs of soldiers of a fascist state as "conservative" is certainly one way to put it...
Pretty sure the ones dropping nukes on entire cities have even less value for life.
We literally nuked them to cow them into surrender rather than spend millions of American and japanese lives in a brutal and ultimately pointless land campaign. We took away their glorious last stand on the home islands and replaced it with instant annihilation, lingering death, and the taste of the sun. It might have spared more Japanese lives in the long run, but it definitely saved a whole mess of American lives in an immediate way. That's what really matters. USA #1 baybeee
Here in the states we have a long standing tradition of assassination of our elected officials.
The US also has a long standing tradition of overkill in warfare. It has little to do with our lack of respect for life, rather the assumption enemies might not me keen to surrender or may believe in the cause for which they're engaged in hostilities enough to put up an honest fight.
Shaun on YouTube makes a pretty strong case the US didn't need to drop atom bombs on Japan to secure its surrender, but the US has been really good about not resorting to nuclear attacks since then even when officials wanted to use them, as per Reagan and Trump. Human civilization continues to close on eighty years without a nuclear war.
Who told you Japan was planning to continue the war after Hiroshima?
They were planning to concede after the first bomb. The president didn't even learn of Nagasaki until it was in the news.
In traditional Nippon culture ritual suicide is the final act of protest one makes, say if ordered by superiors to commit an immoral act. In the twentieth century, this translated into a if you can't take the heat... sentiment in the highly competitive corporation environments. Hence young adults had a high suicide rate when they couldn't perform well enough in school to get salaried jobs.
(My understanding of this is warching from the US and seeing the pressures on Japanese businesses to compete wit American ones. While companies on both side were rivalistic towards each other, they all influenced and were affected by the mutual economy, so recession for everybody!)
In the aughts, Japan became aware of a population crisis. Young people were not having enough children to match geriatric mortality. Also young people were disengaged from the traditional values of their grandkid-starved elders: Much like the US, and, I expect, similarly aided by the new deliberation capacities of the internet, kids realized their elders didn't care about the welfare of them or their kids, but their own legacies and, maybe, to play with the cute infant.
Which brings us to this era, in which Japan is looking to move away from the hypercompetitive, pro-suicide culture that presumably drove productivity in the 20th century.
As a note, the US typically outperformed Japan in productivity per capita, mostly because we are culturally less compliant and obedient to our authorities, hence our industrialists are quicker to replace labor forces with automation. The quicker US companies could downsize production teams and send out another batch of pink slips, the better.
Here in America murder is also really looked down upon. For example say you kill a guy then twenty years later on death row your turn finally comes up and the state fucks up and kills you badly or has to try a second time or change methods of killing. I mean that's just terrible.
I love this genre of tweet. No idea what it's called though
Tumblr shitposting
Here in Morocco, you're not even supposed to hate the king, let alone try to kill him.
One of the most famous photos from Japan was a communist getting assassinated via katana stab during a public speech. They say that assassination changed the course of government in Japan to this day.
Queen Min has entered the Chat
Bat the description doesn't do it justice. It was basically a slow fall cluster bomb but full of incendiary bats instead of dumb bombs. The bats then scatter and hide and eventually start every single fire imaginable.
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