Encouraging people to wake up early? NATIONALISM!

Overthinker,

I suppose that whether “society” is or isn’t a vague term depends on what the definition of “is” is. Anyway, here’s the definition from Webster’s: “a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members.”
As to the definitions of “adequately” and “thoroughly”, I believe that both words refer to the idea of having done enough. As to who exactly defines what is adequate or thorough enough, in this case: I do. I’m stating my opinion.
I have to say that I don’t think it’s a legitimate form of argument to sieze on a word or a phrase that someone has used and declare it vague or selectively define it.

Be that as it may, let me give you an example of American society (I apologize, but I just can’t stop using that vague amorphous word) failing to adequately (in my estimation) address an aspect of its wartime past: The Bomb. There is a remarkable difference in the amount and intensity of attention that American officialdom, schools, the press and Hollywood have paid to, for example, the holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during the war than there has been to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is strange. The dropping of the first bomb literally marked a new epoch and in so many ways is so important for Americans to understand.
Now, it would not be very difficult for someone to contradict what I’ve just said with specific examples from American textbooks and popular culture. Actually I’ve just finished reading “Racing the Enemy” a book by UCSB professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa that makes a pretty undeniable case that the decision to drop the bombs was made easily and calculatingly justified after the fact. As far as popular culture goes, you could cite countless examples of lines from Hollywood movies saying something like, “Yes, and we can saved millions of lives” and claim that rather than accepting the idea that the Bomb saved lives, Americans take a very cynical view of that rationalization in popular culture.
The problem with that is it’s not the truth. The truth is that the United States, as a society, has failed to look squarely at this momentous event in its history. That’s just my opinion, but it is an opinion that’s held by a whole lot of other people (I can’t quote you a number on that, but I believe that it’s somewhre around “a whole lot”). Similarly, in my opinion, Japan has failed to look squarely at its wartime history.

Dropping all sarcasm and in complete seriousness, I think that there is a common reason for this historic myopia on both sides of the Pacific: this is history that contradicts the image we have of ourselves. Both Americans and Japanese like to think that they are fundamentally kind and fair people. Sadly, history doesn’t bear that out.

So in the end this just ends up as a fruitless clash of opinion. “Has!” “Has not!” and so on. So there really is no point in saying “Japan hasn’t done enough” without further clarifying whose POV and what the definitions are. Talking of which, words like “society” and “culture” are actually very malleable terms, despite what Webster’s might say. It is a legitimate form of discussion if the terms are vague. I am not after all claiming that “WW2″ is a vague term, or anything: despite what you might think, I am not trying to derail things by pulling a Clinton. In fact your response cleared the matter up perfectly.

Actually, Overthinker, I almost always agree with your opinions. I think you’re one of the most reasonable people who regularly posts on Japan Probe.
I didn’t agree with your or any of the other original reactions to this particular thread because they seemed to me to be a knee-jerk reaction to the charge of “resurgent Japanese nationalism” without firsthand knowledge of what was actually said by the author.

By the way, I’m not an idiot, I’m perfectly aware that “culture” and “society” are malleable terms. But (heavy sigh) when you insist on strict parameters of vocabulary and point of view in a discussion it seems to me that it all becomes academic, in more ways than one. In the end it only becomes so much sophism.

I’m not accusing you of sophistry or insincerity, but I don’t think this is the kind of forum in which one has to strictly define terms. Anyways, language is inherently vague. Take the word “twig” for example. A twig is both tangible and narrowly defined: it’s a small piece of wood, smaller than a “stick” and the even larger “branch”. O.K., then can you tell me how big a twig is? No you can’t. Nobody can do that. A twig can not be defined by exact or approximate size by any unit of measurement. But do you know a twig when you see one? Of course you do. 　
I don’t think that we have to agree to disagree, I’m sure that we share a lot of common ground, but I really really can’t accept your idea that the word “society” should be disallowed from the discussion of Japanese society.

Overthinker,

O.K. I agree with you.
Actually, as I suppose you realize, that quote you used is one I posted in a review of Kevin M. Doak’s “A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan”.
To me, the problem has never been “resurgent nationalism in Japan”.
Japanese social conservatives often talk about the evils of “postwar education.” It seems to me that what they want is not a resurgence of militarism, but rather to reassert the total submission of the individual to the state. So this whole issue is not a threat to anybody who lives outside of Japan, but one that very much should be cause for concern among Japanese people. And yes, Japanese popular culture has dealt with these issues in many different ways and on many different levels; for examople, “The Matrix” is an absolute rip off of a Japanese animated movie (which I saw on T.V. but never caught the title of).