How cool is this? Japan is launching a military space force http://t.co/O9VYlpKPic
— Stephen Stapczynski (@SStapczynski) August 4, 2014
Okay, so it’s mostly a work-around for Japan’s extremely strict “self defense only” post-WWII constitution, with a side of “reducing the draw-down on the U.S. military budget”. But still…
(Figure 17 is a much better story, and for that very reason a less effective punchline.)
Suffern ACE
It’s not that I don’t appreciate their efforts, but they’re supposed to save us from the threats from below.. We can handle the threats from above bits.
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
And here I thought you were going in this direction.
Origuy
I for one welcome our new large-eyed, mini-skirted overlords.
Amir Khalid
Me, I’m looking forward to the colourful space-cadet uniforms and fantastic aircraft, which will look way cooler than those boring old F-15s in low-visibility grey.
Tommy
Reading that Yahoo link I didn’t even realize Japan had an air force.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Why did Americans ever think they could make better Gojira movies than the Japanese? The 1998 one was lousy, and I heard this year’s version was not as good.
ruemara
Not enough angsty teens with genetic manipulation and psychic bonds with robots. FAIL But if they put up an most excellent Minmay defense, the Earth will be protected. From taste.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: I have no clue. I tend to think Americans always feel we can do everything better then other nations where that often isn’t the case.
Villago Delenda Est
This is a really bad idea, and the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Australians, and Kiwis probably agree with me.
The current Japanese regime is itching to ditch the post-war constitution’s prohibition of Japanese militarism.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid: You left out that we edited Raymond Burr into the original.
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: Willing to bet you know more about this then myself, but isn’t Japan really worried about China. Dispute over islands. All kinds of things. If was a citizen of Japan I might really, really want my own military to protect my nation.
Tommy
Watching Democracy Now and I didn’t even realize yesterday was the 69th anniversary of Hiroshima. They are interviewing somebody that was there that day and honestly I don’t know if I have ever heard an interview with somebody that lived through that day.
Asked if he hates Americans he says no. He hates war not Americans.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tommy: The island disputes have more to do with Chinese internal politics than anything else, and Japan is the perfect foreign threat to bring up for those reasons.
The Chinese have not forgotten what Japan did in WWII, and the situation is made much worse by active Japanese denial of those atrocities.
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: My grandfather was a HUMP pilot. China, India, Burma. I don’t think I can recall him ever being mad. Saying something racist. Well outside of Japan. He was not a fan. As he said they shot me.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: this years was better than 1998, but it was not good, either. Pacific Rim wasn’t bad, so it’s not like we make bad movies about big things fighting. The problem was that they tried to graft a superhero movie onto a Godzilla movie, and that didn’t work. It should have been called “Gorgeous Batwolverman and Godzilla save San Francisco.”
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
For all that, I don’t get a sense that Japan is yearning to regain a lost empire — at least, such a desire doesn’t seem to me a part of mainstream political thought there. On the other hand, I do sense that China sees itself as an up-and-coming superpower, and imposing its will on other nations as part of being a superpower.
Mike E
Saturday is the 69th anniversary of atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It created the phrase “Kokura’s Luck” since that was the intended target & its inhabitants had no idea they skirted annihilation. One of those “lucky” people went on to do pioneering research of tornadoes.
Also, it’s my daughter’s birthday.
Amir Khalid
I am discovering on YouTube what Disney songs sound like in German. Here’s Let It Go.
Amir Khalid
Hilfe mir, Anne Laurie!
I have two quite innocent comments awaiting moderation, of which one needs to be liberated and the other deleted.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: The Chinese and Korean feeling about Japan’s changing their defense posture has more to do with what happened in the first part of the last century. In Korea’s case it goes back a bit further. Korea was a japanese colony between 1910 and 1945. It’s a very unpleasant part of korean history with people who lived though it are still with us.
Major Major Major Major (formerly J.Ty)
Anybody else read Pact?
It’s like if Stephen King was… well, different.
Hobbes
@Amir Khalid: The film industry isn’t about making good movies. Godzilla[1998] made more money, even after adjusting for inflation, than every Godzilla movie made in Japan put together.
Tommy
@Mike E: I mentioned that uptread. Just watched an interview with somebody that survived that day. His recount of events were horrifying.
lostinube
@Villago Delenda Est:
At least someone in the Philippines likes it:
http://www.philstar.com/world/2014/06/25/1338839/philippine-leader-backs-larger-japan-military-role
China doesn’t only have island problems with Japan. They have island disputes with almost all of the other countries you mentioned. And the US is happy that a bulked up Japanese military can take some of the load of their own military.
Mike E
@BillinGlendaleCA: How’s the scanning going? I’m finishing a project for a friend, then moving on to my own archives. I need to figure out which photo sharing site is the friendliest to the least technology inclined folks (aka ‘teh olds’). 40 year old slides are a hoot!
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: I am not an expert on this topic, but what you just wrote is my take. The concern is what Japan did decades ago. Almost a century ago. Terrible, terrible stuff. But I like to think Japan has shown since WWII they can be trusted. I mean does anybody think Japan if hey had a military would go invade another nation. I don’t. And I might add my grandfather was shot in WWII by the Japanese. My grandfather never got over it but I did.
Tommy
@Mike E: My father has tens of thousands of photos. I come from a family where many members took a lot of photos. Scanned them all in. His two sons are tech nerds. Personally I am not sure there is any photo site that is non-nerd friendly. I use Flickr and find it totally not user friendly. My dad just sends me CDs with the pics on them.
wasabi gasp
Mayumi Kojima – Hard Bop
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike E: I’m on roll 49 out of I think about 65. I’m not using any photo sharing sites, I’m just putting them on a flash drive to plug into a TV or OTG adapter for a phone. After the color negatives, it’s on to the slides and if I can find them a bunch of b/w negatives(I had a darkroom as a teen).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Here’s a link to a series of posts about Korean-Japanese relations. The author is a Korean guy who immigrated to the US as a high schooler. Koreans ill will toward Japan has a long history.
BillinGlendaleCA
@BillinGlendaleCA: Opps, forgot the link.
Korea/Japan Relations – Part 1
Villago Delenda Est
@lostinube: The Chinese have made their island disputes with Japan, in particular, something of an issue lately pretty much for domestic reasons. They haven’t been as assertive about their disputes over various island groups to the same extent.
There are a lot of island groups all over the South and East China Seas that in dispute between various countries, most of which have to do with potential oil deposits. China, as Amir has noted, has superpower ambitions and historically has pretty much had one of those “if it’s somewhere near us, it’s ours!” perspectives. Historically the Chinese have seen themselves as the center of the universe and that has not changed.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: “they are the most insufferable among all insufferable Korean men who went through military ”
The Universal Jar Head.
BillinGlendaleCA
Gawd, Harold Ford is an asshole.
Botsplainer
Finally – my childhood dream come true. We get Hiyata, the Science Patrol and Ultra Man!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y6NN91yno3g
BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer: As, at this moment, I’m scanning pics from Tokyo.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
“if it is anywhere on the globe it is ours – we are the center of the Universe” Gee, as an American the lyrics sound familiar but the tune is unfamiliar, as if it had a different scale.
Schlemizel
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That could be interesting, I’ll read it when I get home from work, thanks.
The whole area around the South China Sea has been fought over for millennia. Parts of it have changed hands many times to many different groups. This creates a lot of animosity (most Americans are not aware the technically Korea was Japans allie in WWII and that it was not particularly willing to do that but it was force of arms that made them). Families has storys back well into pre-history of various groups killing, raping & pillaging them. Plus the various victories give each group a point in time they can lay claim to some particular spot. With Chinas rise all these things could come to a head & it could be very ugly. Lets hope that somehow they work it all out before shooting it out.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemizel: It’s a 5 part series of posts, well worth a read. Korea wasn’t an Allie of Japan in WW2, they didn’t have an independent government. They were a Japanese colony. Sorry just picking a nit.
NotMax
Aside from the silly mispronunciation of the Hawaiian word, also a use of the touch screen weather map to create doodles approaching incomprehensibility.
Schlemizel
@BillinGlendaleCA:
True, the reason that Korea was divided at the end of the war was to give the Soviets a stake in rebuilding & maintaining order, like they did in Germany. This was done because of their status as an allie, as I noted it really wasn’t voluntary, as you noted it was much worse. Thank pasta we didn’t also divide Japan.
Well, off to the stamp mines. You guys hold down the fort while I am away
Suffern ACE
@NotMax: you are about to be scribbled to death
Tommy
@NotMax: That touch screen shit is so over the top. Can’t you just show a map and explain weather that way.
Suffern ACE
@Schlemizel: The war’s end technically didn’t “return” Taiwan to China. Taiwan was the part of Japan’s empire that China was to administer. Or so my Taiwanese friends have told me. I think we didn’t put a lot of thought into what we were going to do to end these occupations. France figured it would just take its empire back, the US figured it was time for the Philippines to have independence. China, no matter who ruled it, would probably never allowed The local Taiwanese to decide whether they wanted to be part of China again after 70 years as part of Japan.
NonyNony
It should be in the Japanese Constitution that any space military hardware they develop must combine together into a giant fighting robot. For defense purposes. Just in case.
Also that should be int he US Constitution. And let’s scratch out the space part.
Basically I just want giant fighting robots. Somebody get on that.
Suffern ACE
@NonyNony: someone is working on it. You could get in on the ground floor.
Gene108
@Amir Khalid:
I found this year’s Godzilla movie quite enjoyable. A worthy big budget adaptation of the franchise.
Paul in KY
@Tommy: In the past, Japan hasn’t needed protection from China since the 1600s. China, however, has needed protection from Japan in the past 80 years.
Cervantes
@Origuy: Overladies?
Paul in KY
@Tommy: I wouldn’t think they would, but if some nut became emperor & was charismatic as well, he might influence a right-wing government to get delusions of grandeur.
Craig
Hurry, Star Blazers! There are only 364 days left to save the Earth!
Citizen_X
@Craig: Yes, I would only support raising the Yamato if they intend to turn it into a starship.
NonyNony
@Suffern ACE:
I said a fighting robot, not a juggling robot.
And I’m not really sure that Kickstarting a future super-villain’s plans for world domination is a good idea. Because I’m pretty sure that the only practical thing you can do with a team of robot jugglers is to start your own Circus of Crime.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d say China has more than “superpower ambitions.” It has 200-250 nuclear warheads, several of them now probably aimed at a spot not too far from you.
Duck and cover!
(Or is that a popular Sichuan dish?)
lol
Anyone watching Zankyou No Terror? Great series about two kids launching terrorist attacks against the Japanese government.Excellent production team behind it. Really interested in how it’s going to turn out. I can imagine there’s going to be a freakout when it starts getting brought to the US, given that it riffs off a lot of 9/11 imagery.
If you’re more into mecha, Aldnoah Zero has gotten off to a pretty great start as well. Sort of a reverse anti-Gundam type series. Again, great production team behind it.
Bill Arnold
@Cervantes:
Cite?
While looking online material about this, I found Jeffrey Lewis’s interesting story about the Phillip Karber Second Artillery nuclear arsenal in tunnels theory.
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
The actual number is a state secret, obviously, but my estimate is based (partly) on:
Their precise estimate is 240. You can take a look at their summing up. Be sure to look at footnote f.
Note: That article, being a few years old, is not a source for my suggestion that Chinese warheads are aimed at, or can reach, the US.
maya
The dawning of the age of Satellite Samurai.
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
I won’t comment on the Georgetown study — but it’s mildly amusing that when Lewis mentions “declassified US intelligence estimates of the size of China’s nuclear weapons (200-300),” his links lead to two “404” errors at cia.gov.
Bill Arnold
@Cervantes:
Thanks, that looks plausible.
VincentN
So there are concerns about Japan getting a military because of its actions in the past century.
Yet Germany has a military and nobody seems overly concerned about that.
I wonder why these two countries were treated differently in this respect after the war.
kevind
If they need an anime for inspiration, they got this
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel: Yup. American Exceptionalism and Chinese Exceptionalism are both alive and well. Fuck ’em all.
Villago Delenda Est
@VincentN: The Germans have done a much better job of owning up to their atrocious past than the Japanese. There is honest shame and remorse in Germany. In Japan, there’s denial.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t know if it is so much ‘denial’ as: ‘This is the way wars were fought in this part of the world for centuries, just doing what Ghenghis Khan, Tamerlane, etc. did. Get over it.’
VincentN
@Villago Delenda Est:
That is a good point. But I was wondering more about immediately after World War II where we went over and rewrote Japan’s constitution to prohibit a standing army whereas we didn’t do that in Germany. I might be wrong. I don’t know much about that time period. Was it because of Pearl Harbor that we took a more heavy-handed approach with Japan?
Also, if we look at current actions where Germany is causing so much turmoil with its economic policies compared to Japan who is at least producing stuff that people like to buy and consume and doesn’t seem to be harboring any imperialist tendencies I’m not seeing much reason for concern.
But I guess I can see where China and Korea are coming from with their negative history with Japan.
Robert Sneddon
@Villago Delenda Est: After WWII the German military had to be rebuilt immediately to either:
a) defend central Europe from the ravening Communist hordes
or
b) prepare for the capitalist’s next assault on the home of world socialism in Moscow.
depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you happened to live.
In the case of the Japanese their navy, the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force[1] was reduced to a coastal defence organisation carrying out minesweeping operations so Japanese fishermen could catch enough fish to feed the population. Unlike the Germans who got to bomb Belgrade again in the 1990s before deploying to combat as part of NATO in Afghanistan the Japanese military overseas have been restricted to roles such as minesweeping in the Persian Gulf and logistics operations.
[1] The JMSDF has a museum in Kure down the coast from Hiroshima. (It’s across the street from the Yamato museum). I’ve visited the JMSDF museum a couple of times, most of the history on display is about their minesweeping operations but their main attraction is a decommissioned submarine from the 1980s, the Akishio, on display in the car park. Unlike many Western nations the Japanese do not sell retired capital ships, aircraft etc. to other nations and they do not sell through their own-build weaponry such as aircraft, tanks, rifles etc.
VincentN
@Robert Sneddon:
Ok, so Germany had to be able to defend itself from its angry neighbors. So it was really a matter of geography that the Allies allowed them to maintain a military.
Cervantes
@VincentN: You might even say it wasn’t really their military.