#'why is there so much about Japanese imperialism in here' why do you think.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

top possibilities for JOJOLands setting, pulling only from geographically appropriate islands I have lectured about in the past year:

Japanese-occupied Micronesia during the Japanese Mandate (unlikely)

Japanese-occupied Micronesia during present day (slightly more likely...but why)

Okinawa during present day (more likely than either of those but kind of tame)

Okinawa during present day but it’s about Japanese imperialism (less likely AND less tame)

Okinawa during the Japanese Mandate of Micronesia (NOW we’re cooking and also I’d read that for the Taisho-vibes)

Guano Islands (unhinged but it explains where the money is from)

any of the other numerous islands in Southeast Asia that Japan invaded during WWII (unlikely, unless Araki has gone really wild)

the above but during present day (more likely...but why)

the above during present day...but it’s about the continuing legacies of Japanese imperialism (again, I would read this, but would Araki write it?  probably not)

Hawai’i during present day (why)

Hawai’i but the main JoJo is there to work on the sugar plantations (...I would read this but also. why)

[yamayuandadu]

Consulting the convoluted history of supernatural foxes, or why is Tsukasa like that

I know I said you should only expect one long Touhou-themed research article per month, and that the next one will be focused on Ten Desires, but due to unforeseen circumstances a bonus one jumped into the queue. For this reason, you will unexpectedly have the opportunity to learn more about the historical and religious context of the belief in kuda-gitsune, or “tube foxes”, as well as their various forerunners. Tsukasa is clearly topical thanks to Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, and I basically skipped covering Unconnected Marketeers in 2021 save for pointing out some banal tidbits, so I hope this is a welcome surprise. The post contains spoilers for the new game, obviously.

Obviously, in order to properly cover the kuda-gitsune, it is necessary to start with a short history of foxes in Japanese culture through history, especially in esoteric Buddhism. Early history: the Chinese background Early Japanese sources pertaining to foxes show strong Chinese influence. There was an extensive preexisting system of fox beliefs to draw from in continental literature, dating back at least to the Han dynasty (note that while the well known story of Daji is set much earlier, its modern form only really goes back to the Song dynasty). This is way too complex of a topic to discuss here in full, sadly, so I will limit myself to the particularly interesting tidbits.

A multi-tailed fox in the classic Chinese encyclopedia Gujin Tushu Jicheng (wikimedia commons)

It will suffice to say that historically the fox was perceived in China as a liminal being, and could be associated with pursuits regarded as ethically dubious, ranging from theft and banditry to instigating rebellions and promoting divisive religious views (so, for example during the reigns of firmly pro-Taoist emperors, Buddhist monks could be associated with foxes). Literary texts focused on supernatural foxes emphasized their shapeshifting abilities. In contrast with some of the other well attested supernatural beings in Chinese tradition, they could take a range of human forms, appearing as men and women of virtually any age. Often they favored mimicking people who lived on the margins of society, like bandits, courtesans or migrant laborers. It was also emphasized that they displayed a considerable degree of disregard for authority. The fact these animals lived essentially alongside humans without being domesticated definitely played a role in the formation of this image.

A contemporary statue of Bixia, a deity in the past associated with fox beliefs (wikimedia commons)

At the same time, foxes enjoyed a degree of popularity as objects of semi-official cult, still practiced here and there in China in modern times, for example in Boluo in Shaanxi. The religious role of foxes was reflected in, among other things, the development of terms like hushen (狐神) “fox deity”, or huxian (狐仙), “fox immortal”. The belief in such “celestial foxes” (tianhu, 天狐) was relatively common, and there is even a legend according to which there was a formalized way for the animals to transcend to higher states of existence, with the goddess Bixia making them undergo the supernatural fox version of the well known imperial examinations. If they failed they were condemned to live as “wild foxes” (yehu, 野狐) with no hope of transcendence. There are also accounts of foxes pursuing the status of a xian through illicit means, through a combination of praying to the Big Dipper and draining people’s energy, as documented by He Xiu in the 1700s. Note foxes were already portrayed as worshiping the Big Dipper during the reign of the Tang dynasty, but back then it was only believed this let them transform into humans.

The ambiguity of foxes is evident in the Japanese perception of these animals too. Supernatural foxes are probably among the best known youkai, and especially considering this is a post about Touhou I do not think the basics need to be discussed in much detail. They were believed to shapeshift and to steal vital energy, much like in China. Their positive role as messengers of Inari, a kami associated with agriculture, is generally well known too. The earliest sources documenting encounters with supernatural foxes are obviously, as expected, the earliest chronicles like the Nihon Shoki, where they mostly appear as omens. By the Heian period these animals are well established in the written record. For instance, Nakatomi Harae Kunge includes “evil magic due to heavenly and earthly foxes” among phenomena which require ritual purification. In addition to the tales imported from China being in circulation, some setsuwa written in Japan involved shape shifting foxes. However, supernatural foxes only gained greater prominence in the Japanese middle ages due to the growth of relevance of two deities they were associated with, Inari and Dakiniten. The latter is more relevant to the topic of this article.

Foxes, Dakiniten and tengu

Part of a hanging scroll depicting Dakiniten riding on a fox (wikimedia commons, via MET; cropped for the ease of viewing)

The connection between foxes and Dakiniten reflected their associations with the dakinis, a class of demons in Buddhism. Originally the dakinis were associated with jackals instead, but Chinese Buddhist authors presumed that the animal mentioned in this context is basically identicial with more familiar foxes, and that belief reached Japan as well. It was strong enough for Dakinite, the dakini par excellence, to be regularly depicted riding on the back of a fox. Dakiniten was originally a regular dakini, according to Bernard Faure specifically one who appears in Heian period Enmaten mandalas (Enmaten is related to but not quite the same as the better known king Enma, for the development of two distinct reflections of Yama in Buddhism see here). However, she eventually developed into a full blown deva in her own right, and her prominence was so great that it basically resulted in the decline of references to the generic dakinis in Buddhist literature in Japan. She was particularly popular in the Shingon school of Buddhism, and at the peak of her relevance played a role in royal ascension rituals, developing a connection with Amaterasu in the process (Amaterasu acquired many peculiar connections through the Japanese middle ages, it was par the course). A Tendai treatise equates her with Matarajin instead, though. An interesting phenomenon related to Dakiniten is the occasional fusion of beliefs pertaining to foxes and tengu, which might have originated in the similarity of the terms tengu and the Japanese term for the already mentioned “heavenly foxes”, tenko. Its best attested examples include the inclusion of tengu in mandalas focused on Dakiniten as her acolytes. However, a different deity ultimately exemplifies this even better. Iizuna Gongen and "iizuna magic"

Iizuna Gongen riding on the back of a fox (Museum of Fine Arts Boston; link to the source is temporarily dead, the image is reproduced here for educational purposes only)

The indisputable center of the network of connections between foxes and tengu is Iizuna Gongen (飯綱権現), depicted as a tengu riding on a fox. As you can probably guess, he was a (vague) basis for Megumu, as evidenced by the similarity of the names. While many other aspects of his character aren’t really touched upon in the game, I’d hazard a guess he’s also the reason why ZUN decided to include a kuda-gitsune in the same game as Megumu - the evidence lines up exceptionally well, as you’ll see.

Originally Iizuna Gongen was simply the deity of Mount Iizuna (飯綱山), located in the modern Nagano prefecture. Near the end of the Japanese middle ages he spread to other areas, likely thanks to traveling shugenja (also known as yamabushi), mountain ascetics belonging to a religious tradition known as Shugendō. Two aspects of his character are particularly pronounced, his role as a martial deity and his association with foxes.

I was unable to determine when Iizuna Gongen’s connection to foxes originally developed, but it was strong enough to lead to the use of the alternate name Chira Tenko (智羅天狐; “Chira the heavenly fox”) to refer to him. Foxes also appear in a legend describing his origin. It states that he was one of the eighteen children of an Indian king, and arrived in Japan alongside nine of his siblings on the back of a white fox during the reign of emperor Kinmei (the remaining eight went to China and became monks on Mount Tiantai). His connection to foxes is also reaffirmed in an Edo period treatise, Reflections on Inari Shrine (稲荷神社考, Inari jinja kō), which declares that names such as Iizuna Gongen and Matarajin (sic!) are used in the worship of wild foxes to hide the true nature of the invoked entities. The author further states that the true form of “these matarajin (plural) and wild foxes” is that of a three-faced and six-armed deity, which curiously has more to do with early Matarajin tradition than with Iizuna Gongen as far as I can tell. The two were not really closely associated otherwise, but it’s worth noting that apparently shugenja perceived them both as similar tengu-like deities. 

The key feature of conventional iconography of Iizuna Gongen, the fox mount, has nothing to do with Matarajin strictly speaking, and likely reflects the influence of Dakiniten. However, the animal in this context developed its own unique identity thanks to the presence of foxes in a type of ritual focused on Iizuna Gongen, which could itself be referred to as iizuna. The shugenja community centered on the worship of Iizuna Gongen was not very formalized, which led to poor understanding of their practice among outsiders, with the term iizuna basically acquiring the vague meaning along the lines of “magic”. and rather poor reputation. These rites are where the kuda-gitsune comes into play. Kuda-gitsune in iizuna magic and beyond

The kuda-gitsune, as depicted in Shōzan Chomon Kishū by Miyoshi Shōzan (Waseda University History Museum; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

At first glance, kuda-gitsune is just one of many local variants of the standard supernatural fox, similarly to the likes of ninko, osaki-gitsune or nogitsune. The etymology of its name is straightforward. I’m sure you can guess what the second half means, while kuda (管) in this context refers to a bamboo tube. You’d think the name would basically guarantee it was universally accepted that’s how one could carry such a critter undetected, but apparently there was an alternate explanation, namely that it was invisible. I have not seen any further discussion of this in literature, but I assume this might be connected to shikigami beliefs, as these quite often are described as invisible. Do not quote me on that, though. Even more bizarrely, there is no consensus that the animal meant was always a fox. According to Bernard Faure it is distinctly possible the term referred to a weasel. Kuda-gitsune could be described as a type of shikigami, but note that this term had a much broader meaning in real life than in Touhou, and referred to basically any supernatural being which acted as an extension of the powers attributed to “ritual specialists” (祈祷師) such as onmyōji, shugenja or Buddhist monks. In Buddhist context, the analogous term could be gohō dōji (護法童子; “Dharma-protecting lads”), though there are also cases where gohō and shikigami are contrasted with each other. The shikigami category didn’t just consist of animated papercraft and animal spirits typically designated as such in popculture. Even the twelve heavenly generals defending the “medicine Buddha” Yakushi could be labeled as shikigami. Obviously, kuda-gitsune is closer to the familiar meaning of this term than to Buddhist deities, though. People relying on kuda-gitsune were referred to as kitsune-tsukai (狐使い), which can be loosely translated as “fox tamer”, and it is said they were often shugenja. Given the popularity of the associated deity among them this shouldn’t really be a surprise. Various supernatural abilities were ascribed to the kuda-gitsune. The ability to possess people attributed to other supernatural foxes was the domain of kuda-gitsune too. Apparently people afflicted by it were compelled to eat nothing but raw miso. Purportedly they were bringers of wealth - but said wealth did not necessarily come from legitimate sources. That, in turn, could lead to distrust or outright ostracism of people allegedly relying on foxes to acquire wealth. They also provided aid in divination, and could supposedly reveal past, present and future alike this way. However, they could look into the soul of anyone using them this way and learn their secrets. Bernard Faure notes that occasionally it was said that they even could even be utilized to kill enemies who attempted casting spells on their owner.  Shigeru Mizuki's kuda-gitsune

Kuda-gitsune, as depicted by Shigeru Mizuki (reproduced here for educational purposes only)

While there isn’t much information about kuda-gitsune in scholarship, especially scholarship available online in English, they received extensive coverage in various books about youkai written by Shigeru Mizuki, famous for arguably canonizing the modern concept of youkai. Note that while I am a fan of Mizuki's works, his encyclopedias are best understood as something closer to Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, complete with some dubious sourcing and possible fabrications. However, ultimately modern media about youkai, including Touhou, owes much to him, and arguably he continued the tradition of night parade scrolls which often invented new creatures wholesale, so it strikes me as entirely fair game to summarize what he has to say too. Shigeru Mizuki cited the Edo period writer Matsura Seizan as an authority on kuda-gitsune. He states ccording to the latter, certain ascetics (yamabushi) were provided with these critters upon finishing their training on Mount Kinpu and Mount Ōmine. In his account cited by Mizuki there are a lot of details I haven’t seen elsewhere. The storage tubes after which kuda-gitsune are named apparently had to be inscribed with a certain sanskrit phrase (left unspecified, tragically) so that the animals didn’t have to be fed. However, releasing them and giving it food was necessary to gain their help in divination. There was a downside to this - kuda-gitsune were apparently hard to place back in containment once released without the help of a seasoned specialist. Also, they refused to provide anything of value unless fed well, and they had quite the appetite. Mizuki cites the particularly disastrous case of an ascetic who kept multiple kuda-gitsune in a single tube, and eventually couldn’t pay for enough food for his collection since the animals kept multiplying inside. According to Mizuki  it was believed that a kuda-gitsune could be gifted by its owner to another person, but the creature would come back if it was not satisfied with the food provided by the latter. If the original “fox tamer” dies before passing their kuda-gitsune to someone else, it will instead go to the Ōji Inari shrine located in what is now the the Kita ward of Tokyo.

Conclusion: Tsukasa and her forerunners

In theory I could’ve kept pointing out “see, it’s just like Tsukasa!” in virtually every single paragraph of this article. To answer the question from the title, evidently she is like that because that's how foxes have been in folklore both Japan and China for centuries. It is not really hard to see that ZUN is genuinely great at research when he wants to be, and Tsukasa's character is remarkably accurate to her real life forerunners, both as an adaptation of kuda-gitsune specifically and as a representation of the broader tradition which lead to the portrayal of foxes as supernatural creatures of questionable moral character. She engages in morally dubious “get rich quick schemes”, she definitely provides advice (of variable quality), and her self-declared ability from her omake bio pretty clearly reflects skills actually ascribed to the kuda-gitsune in folklore. In the newest game the ability to provide information is clearly in the spotlight - Tsukasa seems to be reasonably knowledgeable (she brings up Kojiki in a line aimed at Hisami, among other things), and other characters generally agree she’d be more useful doing something else than fighting. I do not think there’s any real reason to doubt this is what is meant. I think it can even be safely assumed that Zanmu’s decision to pressure Tsukasa to partake in her assassination bluff is rooted in genuine tradition. I’m obviously not going to say that Tsukasa reaches the platonic ideal of Okina, the quintessential character aimed at fans who like research, who largely seems to exist to get people to dig deeper for sources explaining the dozens of religious allusions in her dialogue, spell cards and design, but I do think it’s worth appreciating that the series reached a stage where even the minor animal youkai can be enjoyed as multilayered representation of centuries worth of genuine folklore and mythology. Bibliography -Bernard Faure, Gods of Medieval Japan vol. 1-3 -Michael Daniel Foster, The Book of Yokai. Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore  -Berthe Jansen and Nobumi Iyanaga, Dākini (Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism) -Xiaofei Kang, The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China -Shigeru Mizuki’s assorted writings on kuda-gitsune (collected online here)

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

i absolutely lost my mind discovering your blog this morning. i absolutely adore your style and your story/concept ideas SO MUCH. i love your love for chang and i adore how you draw him and just the love and care you have for the characters and their stories, their history-just everything. oh my god your art and animations are incredible thank you so much you made me so happy this morning 😭😭😭

Thank you very much! I just feel like the Tintin universe has a lot of potential for deep dives. Herge often drew inspiration from the real world so that naturally brings a lot of richness - I'm just lucky to have the privilege of having nearly a century of hindsight and an Internet connection for my research!

also fun fact, I draw Chang the way I do for multiple reasons. I ramble so here's a Read More:

The first is just to update how Chinese people are depicted in this style - I'm Chinese myself (British Chinese) and while I do appreciate Chang's original appearance was basically modelled off a real guy and Herge really did try his best with depicting Chinese people sensitively I wouldn't be comfortable sticking exactly to those original portrayals (tbh it’s mostly the eyes and the skin colour I have an issue with, I liked the weird rubberiness of early Herge!). I also would like to update how the Japanese characters were portrayed too as man those designs are viscerally uncomfortable (like those characters were villainous because they were doing imperialism, not because they're Japanese man come on)

The second is - Chang is a fucking shapeshifter. I swear he looks different in every appearance he makes in official materials. You're telling me these are all the same guy??

From left to right: Chang from a postage stamp that uses artwork from The Blue Lotus, the middle is from the 90s cartoon and the one on the right is from a... cheese sticker??? His nose, hair and face shapes change quite a bit

To get his design I mixed together the 90s cartoon version with the original. People have mentioned The Cheekbones Chang has in the 90s cartoon but I actually like how they give him a distinct shape, it helps differentiate his shape language from Tintin who's all round and soft.

For his young adult design I initially thought to reference Tintin in Tibet but he's so malnourished and close to death his portrayal there probably wasn't intended to represent what he's normally like. I just took my design for Chang and pushed the shapes more. I thought it would be cool for him to look pretty different when he grows up as a contrast to how static Tintin is as a character.

The third (and funniest) reason why I draw Chang the way I do is I actually look a lot like Blue Lotus Chang to a frightening degree, like to the point where it looks like my likeness was stolen 70 years before I even existed. I do not like thinking about my physical existence! I do not want to draw myself! No thank you!! my self insert is haddock if we’re being real

[blue-thief]

Ok. Thoughts on the Itoshi Sibs / their parallels with Isagi?

HELLO this took forever for me to answer because summer school and the sadness. as you know.

also i went too crazy with tying blue lock into my fixation with japanese nationalism so it got way too complex and i got scared but now i'm just gonna make that its own post (<- said the same thing about bsd. that analysis about bsd's connection with japanese nationalism has been sitting in my docs for a year now i think)

(smh this is what happens when the japanese imperial army almost wipes out your entire bloodline /gen /srs)

anyway. all that waiting to say that rin is... just some guy to me

usually a fw anime boys named rin. esp if they're the sworn rival of the plain protagonist. not necessarily this one though

i have no clue why he doesn't scratch my brain properly. he just doesn't. i need to spend a good three hours staring at the ceiling at night to figure that out

when you first sent me this i didn't really care for sae much either. now i do

that's how long this has been sitting in my drafts 😃😃

(i've written and scrapped thousands of words for this ask sob sob)

(this answer wasn't even formatted this way originally)

i've probably told you the story of how sae grew on me before but like

i don't plan out my fics right

i do play out random scenes in my head to test out if i like them or not

(shivers because updating my fic is another thing that is taking forever.......)

and i was just fucking around with random jokes kaiser and sae could say to each other

then i imagined sae smiling

and i was like "what the fuck... why is that so endearing........"

that was the turning point but it really was a lot of sitting and contemplating sae's character honestly

to really understand him and why he'd be friends with kaiser

and sae is kinda just like me frfr

that guy can't do anything other than soccer/football. he has nothing going on beyond that

and yeah. yeah... i get that.......

it's the reason why i like a bunch of other bllk characters but it's most pronounced with sae yk

(SORRY MR. SNUFFY)

and like. just his inability to be a normal fucking person 😭😭 too real

anyway those are my general itoshi brothers thoughts

now for the parallels part.

(this is the part that killed me and i wanna go more in-depth. but i'm saving that for another post. because holy shit my original idea was so fucking ambitious)

i had other thoughts and god i wish i wrote that stuff down

but the major thing i want to get into here is dependence

isagi is independent. soo independent it's kinda crazy

this was outlined most during the second selection with bachira where he had to learn to play by himself

meanwhile there's rin who seems independent on the surface

however, rin has always been dependent on sae in one way or another

when they were younger, rin was dependent on sae to take care of and guide him

rin also depended heavily on sae on the field

now that they are older, sae's attempt to shake rin off has just made rin's dependence on sae even more intense, just in a different way

rin's only motivation to play soccer/football had been to "crush" sae

...but now he's met isagi

and his obsession has found a new object

with the recent chapters, now we know he places isagi and sae on a similar level in his personal hierarchy, and his desire to destroy sae has bled into rin's feelings toward isagi

while rin has only one rival, the same can't be said for isagi

isagi gains rivals like pokemon, and while they have all played a significant roll in isagi's development as a person and a character, his obsession doesn't consume him. in the PXG vs BM match, he's doesn't fully comprehend the effect he's had on kaiser and rin

and mannn i wish i could find this analysis, but it's gone now

but someone compared isagi's desire to "devour" to rin and nagi's desire to "kill"

I WISH I COULD REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAID

but from what i remember, "devouring" someone is temporarily defeating them, but both parties ultimately improve so there's room for them to meet again and help each other improve even more

however, "killing" someone is defeating them completely so they're never able to play/improve ever again

which outlines the fact that while isagi can be a little bitch on the field, he wants his rivals to improve alongside him, and in the end, he wants the best for people (in terms of soccer/football)

which is why he never became overly-dependent on bachira and why he treats midfielders as actual human beings 😭😭

isagi is independent, but he pushes for the people around him to be just as independent

the itoshi brothers are different though

rin is codependent on sae, and you could say his hatred/obsession with isagi is a different type of codependency

but that thing about treating midfielders as human beings...

uh. that doesn't really apply to rin

sae is somewhat similar with how he "tamed" shidou but it's not THAT imbalanced lmao

there's also how the three of them are on different places of the striker-midfielder spectrum

in-universe and within the fandom, rin is perceived as japan's ultimate striker. his raw shooting power + metavision makes him perfect for this position.

however sae, another metavision user, is the perfect midfielder

then there's isagi who's tried emulating rin's play style at first but is ultimately most similar to sae, leading people to say that isagi is better suited to be a midfielder rather than a striker

while rin represents what the ultimate japanese striker is, something isagi is trying to reach, sae's path is one that isagi could easily fall down instead

many people have theorized that sae became a midfielder to improve rin's chances at becoming a better striker. sae may be considered to have a strong ego, but if this turns out to be true, that might not be the case lmao

errm. idk how to end this off. sorry for the wait sob sob

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Why Pizza and Italians as a counter to food cultural appropriation?

Noticed during the whole Simu Liu thing, but what is it with particularly white people loving to roll out pizza as an example of food cultural appropriation?

I know, I'm food nerding again. But I think pizza is a terrible example, especially since the concept doesn't seem to originate from Italy. OMG, I know, someone is going to hard block on this and say, No Duh, Naples Italy.

But the first cheese on flatbread (since you can't get tomato without the new world) goes to Persia.

This is far from something like this travesty:

The core idea of kimchi was developed in Korea and later applied to Napa. Ingredients like hot pepper that came from Central Americas, replaced what is thought to be older ingredients like sichuan pepper, which is occasionally still used in some kimchi recipes and have good documentation. (Sriracha like this one is a travesty and a total WTF). There's good documentation of its development being older than the Chinese Pao Cai, which has a totally different fermentation process. So it's 100% Korean native in concept.

In fact, all of the ingredients in pizza and the concept itself originated outside of of Italy.

Haha. Pointing this very, very true fact lead someone to reporting my post even though I cited all my sources.

Wheat- Fertile Crescent. (Levant gets a ton of credit for agriculture).

milk- from cows, sheep and goats, from West Asia. Cheese, for those food ignorant comes from milk.

Pepperoni- (not required) Pigs, not Europe.

tomato- New world.

are the core ingredients that you think of in a pizza pie. All of them are IMPORTED to Italy. The concept itself, much like maths originate from outside of Italy.

Flat Bread is mentioned in ancient texts, and cheese originated in ancient texts. So cheese on flat bread isn't that revolutionary.

For instance look up lahmajouns, which originate from Armenia which does not have cheese on it, but various toppings. There are stronger origins for it in the Middle East.

This is a terrible usage for the whole, "OMG, would you be insulted if PIZZA was made by Armenians." (which I definitely saw during the Simu Liu debate. WTF. lahmajouns is older than pizza! That's a terrible example.)

Also, another example rolled out during that. was, "But Koreans run several sushi restaurants."

Look, Japan isn't the only country to serve raw fish. In Korea, the provinces of Kyeongsangnamdo and Jeolla do too. What do you think all those live octopus challenge things are? In fact, with sushi, the origin of eating raw fish, in general, is China, not Japan. The vinegared rice, though, which is what sushi refers to, is Japanese. As Koreans don't vinegar their rice nor put Mirin in it. Koreans are east Asian and were imperialized by Japan.

But every other comment was the whole "Italians". I covered this a whole, whole lot, but Italy is a poor choice for, "But, but appropriation."

Italy was an imperialistic nation.

Libya, Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia! It also... dundundun, had negative relations to China.

Stop rolling out Italy? You'd have better luck with Bulgaria? But I doubt anyone shouting this knows anything about Bulgarian food.

Once you are an imperialistic nation, imposing your rights to rule, and basically doing the equivalent of assault, you pretty much lose your right to claim that the world is appropriating when you've been imposing your culture on other people.

It's the whole school ground bully saying, "Do it my way or I'm going to give you a wedgy." and then you do as they say and then they complain to the teacher with big tears in their eyes, "They stole my stuff and are copying me."

So I'm saying here, with a side of food geekery, stop rolling out pizza and pasta sauce as uniquely Italian. The concept didn't originate there. The ingredients didn't originate from there, and I have a strong suspicion given that wheat originated from Iran-Iraq, etc and knives from Northern Africa that there is an older pasta dish we've yet to discover in the archaeology. The personal table fork originated in the Byzantine empire (Outside of Europe). The utensil used to eat pasta.

Yeah, I know a popular Youtube channel went over it, but then they failed to realize that the core ingredients came from Western Asia. !@#$ How do you think it got to the Silk road? You need chopsticks AND the ingredients in order to argue about pasta. Wheat didn't magically appear in China. You require the origin of the ingredients to make it make sense.

To make noodles you need semolina, wheat, and basically starch and a knife. None of those originate in Italy. To make die cut pasta you need a Chinese invention. Did not originate in Italy. Pasta, did rise up in Italy, though there isn't solid evidence for noodles per se. (I've done a lot of rounds of this, but people like to claim something is older and they domesticated it when it isn't--look up tamarind, for example, which has a false scientific name... it shouldn't be indicus. It should be africanus.)

What pizza is an example of is mass trade followed by colonization and a case of amnesia.

What pasta is an example of is trade, independent invention and then trade by two distant cultures over time. (And a side of imperialism if you're including the tomato).

How do you think the tomato ended up in Italy? Imperialism, colonization, and a lot of genocide?

It's not a dichotomy between appreciation and appropriation. Appreciation means you don't touch or profit from it. Appropriation means you stole it. You're missing trade, invitation, evolution and imperialization. And pizza is probably the worst example of "But, but People appropriate from Europe too." I covered what Europe would be like without trade. Not much going on eh? (BTW, what is it with white people and false binaries? ;) )

In fact, if you leave Europe out of the conversation, it's probably better... (that time someone tried to say Asians wearing jeans was cultural appropriation. You mean after mass imperialization and then cotton itself being an example of a slave good? Yeah, not the best example there.)

When Iran (Persia for those who failed History class... I've been running into those people lately) declares that pizza is actually their invention, 'cause the whole cheese on flatbread is theirs, then that's a conversation worth having. 'cause they've been imperialized and done some imperializing. Then it becomes blurry, but I doubt any white people can name a Persian dish.

A side tangent into Simu Liu

BTW, tapioca comes from the Brazilian rainforest, from the Guarani people. It came to Asia in the 16th century. This was to replace the sago pearls which are native and of Chinese origin. But the concept of Tapioca pearls themselves in Boba is Taiwanese. Both of the people attributed to originating are are Taiwanese Han Chinese (as supposed to the other ethnic groups in Taiwan, which there are people of, BTW, Hokkien and Hakka are both sub ethnicities of Han Chinese.) So Simu Liu claiming it's part of his culture too, as a Han Chinese descendant isn't far off, but also because the concept spread back to the rest of East Asia for years before it landed into white hands who said they would "solve the problem for Boba tea") What? What's the problem with Boba tea?

BTW, one of the credited inventors is Liu Han-Chieh. Liu. Liu. That's the surname. *sighs*

Yeah, gets a bit dicey with the whole imperialism thing, and Japan invading Taiwan thing, but seriously... that whole debacle was odd. And still, I'm going to say pizza is a terrible example of food cultural appropriation.

[flagellant]

perhaps this is in bad faith, but don't you think it's plausible that ms appleton was just a government food scientist who was sent to japan as sort of U.S. ambassador and given a generic, americanized name? we know that resources were scarce during the war and that many changes had to be made, or simply were made to cut costs, in the production of lots of things at the time. it just makes sense when you break it down that traditional shoyu is time and labour intensive to make but improves the taste of even outright bad dishes. at a time when people were forced to eat whatever food was available to them demand was likely very high to the point of unreasonably outweighing supply. either officials at kikkoman reached out to american food scientists for a solution or they offered one up themselves, given the fact that food science was undergoing a huge international renaissance led by the americans during the 30s, 40s and 50s. americans have a tendency to synthesize food. they also tend to feel strongly about imposing their culture on other countries. it seems more to me like this is a story about the american government taking extra steps to obfuscate the story of how they semi-successfully tried to be the final nail in the coffin of widespread, traditional shoyu production. less like some kind of yakuza conspiracy somehow centred on one woman. just the perspective of someone who's felt compelled to do their own research. it's my opinion that the way you're presenting your findings leaves massive gaps as well as leaps to get over them. i can't speak for the things you haven't shared publicly, obviously, but it feels a lot like you're dancing around the point. good luck to you in your research, regardless of my own feelings.

I think I agree that you're either arguing in bad faith or simply aren't really paying attention to a wider picture here. It's common knowledge that postwar economics in Japan were heavily influenced and remain to this day connected to organized crime and the Yakuza as an old tool of the imperial/noble order. We also know for a fact that the CIA worked with the yakuza during American occupation in order to manipulate political culture and economic structures.

It's also a common conspiracy in Japanese circles (or at least so it appears, and I want to be clear I am not voicing this as more than preexisting theory/belief, so I will not directly source to give complete credibility; consider this as context for why I might be interested in investigating further, just in case) that Empress Michiko and the Seifun Milling Company had close under-the-table connections with America, which would further influence the traditional shoyu brewing culture.

Like, I feel as though if you seem to be aware enough that America's treatment of Japan was one of extreme hostility and cruelty with little-to-no care about the nation or its people, solely using it as a means to enforce American/Western ideals and principles onto an unwilling populace and using violence and illegal organized crime syndicates to fulfill those goals...then why are you acting as though it's sus of me to look at a single woman in 1947 having this much power/control over Japanese-American relations when you have said yourself that shoyu is the single most important ingredient for Japanese food of all time, and only moreso during war rations/scarcity times?

[silviakundera]

I found your blog while watching for love's sake splendid drama and nice commentary from you I saw you watch chinese shows and I have a question am I dumb or because why are they so frustrating I don't know if it's because I'm used to japanese ones where there isn't much romance and this is how romance is written these days or is this a cultural thing because why every one of these I watch has such weird romantic relationships where this dude is breaking his back for her from day 1 and this dudette is out here acting like he's number 5 on her priority list?

yaassss Love for Love's Sake representation. I will never rest from reccing that drama 👏👏 you clearly are NOT dumb & have great taste 😘

for cdramas, my beloved, in my experience of watching in recent years is that there is such a wide breadth of genres & tones. There is just SO MUCH. Definitely chinese entertainment has its own tropes and way of portraying romance. And you either like or you don't. But there are many different flavors. If you feel like you were seeing the same dynamic repeatedly, it may have been bad luck.

If you prefer minimal romance, there are definitely options for that in cdramas! There are mystery/investigation dramas and wuxia martial arts dramas with little to no romance. Because of censorship the gay romances naturally are circumspect and light on the romance (see: The Untamed, Couple of Mirrors, Word of Honor, Spirealm, Guardian). Since you like Love for Love's Sake, I'd rec The Spirealm on Viki - also queer love story about a guy who enters a video game and the people he meets there become real to him; though warning it IS censored and that means the ending is more ambiguous. I can't promise you'll like it. (Semantic Error and Eighth Sense are my other 2 fav korean gay romances btw. )

There are also cdramas that do include romance but in terms of screen time the romance is like 30% of scenes and the plot & character arcs are 70% of scenes. Like in Blossoms in Adversity that I'm watching now, yeah there is most definitely romance but the FL/ML romance scenes compromise like 25% of the overall screen time. It's about way more than who she might marry.

But also in terms of cultural differences? hmm idk because I'm not chinese. I really should NOT speak like I understand their PoV. From an outsider's perspective, I have felt like there are many cdramas with overtly feminist themes - commentary about restrictions on women, the challenges of navigating through a society that can be unfair and entrenched with misogyny. (I joke and yet not that chinese entertainment seems to have 3 propaganda drums that it beats: nationalism/unification, anti-war, and feminism.) It's certainly a fact that many cdramas feature female characters that fall in love but they maintain other priorites & don't let themselves be subsumed in devotion to a man. They have romance & find love but "keep their eye on the prize."

My best guess (??) about this is that it's a rebellion against old cultural mores about women's role being subserviant to father then husband, when during imperial times a woman was expected to prioritze her husband and his family above her own wants, health, and happiness. (It was immoral to be jealous or not follow direction from the man.) Modern chinese screenwriters, both men and women, appear to be writing for an audience that will respect & support the idea of a woman who has her own agenda and maintains focus on her goals despite her love for the ML. Perhaps because this is viewed as moving away from "old thinking". idk.

I presume the target audience in china for romance dramas simply doesn't worry so much that the ML is getting loved enough & aren't as sensitive to thinking he might be at a disadvantage... They're aware society is already set up to his advatange & for much of history he would have all the power in the relationship. (He might bend now and be giving it his all, but the audience knows he can tap into more power & control at will. if she gives up control & her goals, it will be harder for her to recover & reclaim status/money/power compared to him. There are dramas I've seen that pretty much explicitly state that FL wants to earn her own status and money that is hers, thru her own efforts, not lent by him - not prestige or wealth that comes through him and thus could be taken away).

Personally I don't view this as unromantic, just the practical realities of existing in a patriarchal society. (cdramas can hit different imo because they can be blunt about how people operate based on self-interest & pettiness, the realities of classism, the ugliness of rumors, how judgmental people can be about appearances, how you can't always get justice when wronged. Reminds me of the Discworld books that were very frank about how the common people commonly are. It's not saying: this is how people should be; it's saying: this is how things are, the bitterness of life, but you can still find sweetness & meaning within it)

There's another aspect: some cdramas have male protagonists (e.g. Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Blood of Youth, League of Nobleman, Eternal Brotherhood) and some have female protagonists. If you're watching a female protagonist, as the protagonist her priorities & goals are the story driver. So her love interest will take a back seat to that even though it's a romance. He's a support role - his job in the story is to break his back for the protagonist. (A Journey to Love is an example where ML and FL share the protagonist role & you can see that in how things play out, how they each have separate priorities that don't get dropped for love.)

At the end of the day, there are plenty of cdrama romances where I ship it hard and feel a mutual love & devotion between the couple. My fav flavor is where both FL and ML have their own strengths and can be counted on to support each other. I'm not keeping score on who owes who, and neither are they.

But it's all not gonna to be to everyone's taste and that's fine. :) When it comes to international tv, if we enjoy content from other countries then it's our good luck. But if we don't...well, it wasn't made for us. That's ok.

[zhongwans]

Since QV is talking about the groom from the Nogi shrine wedding again, here's a summary of relevant info:

Aside from the Yasukuni shrine related smears, ZZH was also accused of attending a wedding held in a "politically sensitive" shrine with "far right-wing Japanese nationalists" in attendance as wedding guests.

Is the Nogi shrine really politically-sensitive?

Not nearly as much as the slimeballs behind 813 want people to think. The shrine was dedicated to a Japanese commander called Nogi Maresuke who was involved in the Battle of Lushunkou in the First Sino-Japanese war. According to his Baidu page, he was the head commander of the battle and was the mastermind behind the Lushunkou massacre which took place right after. But all of that is actually incorrect. The real head commander was an entirely different person, a man called Oyama Iwao. Nogi was only the leader of the 1st Infantry Brigade and was under the command of Lieutenant General Yamaji Motogaru, who was in turn under the command of Oyama Iwao. And furthermore, before the battle of Lushunkou ended, Nogi was commanded to head up north to reinforce Jinzhou, so he wasn't even present when the the massacre happened.

So what happened here was that all that false information was edited into Nogi Maresuke's Baidu page on the evening of August 12. And the Nogi shrine's Baidu page did not exist at all before all of this and was only created at the same time Nogi Maresuke's page was edited. So when all the smears dropped and people went to Baidu to do some research, this is what they all saw. Before this, the Nogi shrine was only really known in China for one thing: it was a popular wedding venue.

Were there really far right-wing nationalists in the wedding?

One of these so-called right wing nationalists was an older male wedding guest who people claimed was Motoya Toshio, the president of APA group. APA group ('Always Pleasant Amenities') operates in the Hospitality industry and runs Japan's APA hotels. Now this Motoya Toshio dude actually is a piece of shit. Aside from being the president of APA group, he's also an essayist who writes and distributes political propaganda touting Imperial Japan's WW2 atrocities as "fabricated stories made to dishonor Japan". He distributes his essays and other material containing historical revisionism through his very influential APA group, so you can see why so many people hate this rotten piece of horseshit.

But that old man in the wedding was not him. As far as we know, the only thing they have in common is that they're both old asian men and that's apparently enough for people to claim they're the same person.

The other supposed "right-wing nationalist" was Madame Dewi, the wife of former Indonesian president Sukarno. According to the smears, her husband was anti-China and perpetuated the genocide against Indonesian-Chinese people, so she in turn must be guilty as well. But the reality is that the one responsible for the genocide was a man named Suharto. Their names may sound similar but these two men were very different. Sukarno, Madame Dewi's husband, was a friend to China and the founder of the Bandung Conference. In fact, a major reason why he was overturned was because of his pro-Communist position. And the very man responsible for it (and eventually replaced him as president) was Suharto, who then launched a bloody genocide targetting Indonesian-Chinese people and anyone he deemed "communist friendly". Suharto's rule was considered to be one of the most violent and corrupt dictatorships of the 20th century.

So what happened here was that Madame Dewi's Baidu page was edited, and her husband's name was changed from Sukarno to Suharto. And this falsified information was what people saw when they went to Baidu to research the validity of the smears. Plus, people were claiming that Madam Dewi was a high-ranking right-wing politician in Japan, when she's actually a celebrity and socialite who is largely uninvolved in politics.

People were also pushing the story that ZZH and Madame Dewi were close because they took a photo together, but it seems they did not know each other at all and she only took a photo with him for her blog (where she then criticized his oufit as being unsuitable for a wedding).

Back to the groom:

So at the height of the controversy, the groom posted an apology letter on his instagram account:

I grabbed this from a reddit post because the groom's IG account is now private and I can't be bothered to install the app again to verify. I don't even remember his username or even the password to my own account, so uh...

Also note that the post contains the misinformation on Nogi Maresuke and the Nogi shrine from the maliciously edited Baidu pages.

This seemingly well-meaning apology ended up indirectly "confirming" the false information surrounding the Nogi shrine and Madame Dewi. "Sorry I didn't research the history of the shrine, sorry I did not know Madame Dewi's political background,"

Apologizing like this seemed to suggest that the falsified info was legitimate. It essentially had the same problem as ZZH's apology letter, which frustrated the fandom at the time as it was such a dumb move and only ended up making it look like he was admitting that the smears were correct. There's speculation that the apology letter was not actually from ZZH (or if it was, he was deliberately counseled in bad faith). The statement he gave months later in the presence of other government officials and Li Xuezheng, where he asserted his innocence, was a much better one.

At the time, it was believed by the fandom that the groom had panicked, and in his haste to defend ZZH, did not have time to fact-check the claims or reach out to a lawyer or PR firm. So while his apology only added to the flames, nobody really held it against him. But recently QV pointed out that the groom is friends with an influencer who had a hand in spreading the smears. The groom follows the influencer on social media and QV says (I have no idea how she knows of this, just keep that in mind) that they are also friends in real life. If true, then it's something to consider. Because the groom's "apology" absolutely did add fuel to the flames, and if he had only clarified—truly clarified—instead of apologizing for things that weren't true and making them look true, it really would have helped ZZH in that moment. And if there is a chance his terrible apology was made terrible on purpose....well.

[centrally-unplanned]

Assassination tier list request I forgot about until this second - killing of Ii Naosuke by imperial loyalist samurai in 1860

Oh man, they are a complicated one I think, its all tied up in the Sonno Joi/"Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians" Movement and evaluating its goals and legacy.

So the context is that Li Naosuke was the Chief Minister of the Shogunate and the real leader - the shogun at the time was the 14-year old Tokugawa Iemochi that Naosuke had appointed in a power struggle that resulted in what is called the Ansei Purge, when over a 100 high daimyo (the fuedal clans of Japan under the shogunate) officials were arrested or killed for their opposition to Japan's opening up to the west and treaties with the foreign powers. Naosuke led this effort, which he had to - not like Japan had much of a choice in signing the treaties. He was trying to walk a line; appease the west while opening up Japan to strengthen the nation, and purging the government of anti-shogunate forces to keep the government strong enough to do that.

His assasination (the Sakurada-mon Incident) in 1860 was led by a band of samurai from the Mito daimiyo, one of the victims of the purge, and it was both part of and ushered in a wave of terrorism and civil violence in Japan that fatally undermined the shogunate and its relationships with the Imperial Court and the daimiyo lords. I think this is one of those *extremely* impactful acts of terrorism. Naosuke was striking a bargain with Japan's elite; you work with me, and we will weather this storm the west is inflicting on us, and if you don't I will destroy you. This was absolutely working at the elite levels, there were not large overt actions being conducted to undermine the Shogunate at the time and real reforms were being made. In return, the lower-ranking samurai, educated, priviledged, but relatively powerless, were furious at the level of appeasement, engaging in terrorism and violence. The violence wasn't getting elite buy-in though; the shogunate was the default for the ruling Daimiyo and they had been threatened into toeing the line.

There is a japanese term Gekokujō, "the low rules the high", which is very fitting here. Killing Naosuke opened the floodgates; not only did his death cause the shogunate to flail around rudderless for a long stretch, but it empowered the Sonno Joi samurai to run riot, not only attacking the government but also pressuring the daimiyo elite themselves into treason. Naive portrayals of Japan at the time pit "shogunate vs daimiyo" as the primary conflict, and its a conflict for sure, but just as important is the conflict between the elite vs the radicals. After Naosuke's death Gekokujo ruled, the elite feared the radicals *more* than they feared the shogunate. They began to work against the shogunate in order to appease the factions in their own court that now, embolded, might assasinate them if they didn't. And man were there assasinations in the Bakumatsu period - so many that attacks on westerners eventually inspired a military invasion of the Shimonoseki treaty port in 1864, which hugely weakened the shogunate. You can trace a direct line between those actions and the Sakurada-mon incident; it was the "propaganda of the deed" that showed every angry disempowered saumrai that they too could make a difference via extreme violence, while pushing daimyo over the edge into the anti-shogunate faction by breaking the spell the Ansei Purges cast.

(This does bring up the topic that due to technology of weapons & information + outdated legacy governing systems, the Long 19th Century was the ideal time for assasinations to make a difference. Thread for another time though)

So A+ or S easy, right? It set the stage for the collapse of the shogunate as much as one assasination could, right? Well, not so fast. We are lucky for this one - the assasins left a manifesto! We know excatly why they did it:

"While fully aware of the necessity for some change in policy since the coming of the Americans at Uraga, it is entirely against the interest of the country and a stain on the national honour to open up commercial relations with foreigners, to admit foreigners into the Castle, to conclude treaties with them, to abolish the established practice of trampling on the picture of Christ, to allow foreigners to build places of worship for the evil religion, and to allow the three Foreign Ministers to reside in the land ... Therefore, we have consecrated ourselves to be the instruments of Heaven to punish this wicked man, and we have taken on ourselves the duty of ending a serious evil, by killing this atrocious autocrat"

Peak Sonno Joi vibes, its all here - expel the foreigners, cut trade, purge the body-politic, RETVRN. To achieve this goal, they allied with the emperor, formed an anti-shogunate faction, overthrew the government, and ushered in the Meiji Restoration to return Japan to the old ways.

How did, uh, that work out?

...yeah. The Meiji Restoration is one of those things where the dissident samurai intellectuals blamed the shogunate for the entirety of Japan's problems, when virtually none of them were the shogunate’s inherent fault - the new government inherited all of those problems and no new solutions. But, with more centralized control and cooled tempers (and dead bodies) once the Boshin War let everyone scapegoat the shogunate, the new Meiji government proceeded to go ULTIMATE WESTERNIZATION and crash course into modernizing the country in a way the shogunate could only dream of.

Samurai? Gone. Feudalism? Gone. Western Clothes? Check. Parliament? Check. Christianity? Legally permitted in 1871, ushering in a boom of churches and schools. Hell they even switched over to the western time system in 1872, you wouldn't even know *when* to ~retvrn~ to at that point. These changes isolated so many of these former samurai they launched the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, led by ur-samurai Saigo Takamori and possibly Tom Cruise (and who, by the way, absolutely used guns & artillery). They were crushed, and westernization continued. The new Japanese government did fight back to restore its soveriegnty in regards to the West at least, but not in the way the Sonno Joi samurai wanted.

On the near-term goal of destabilizing the shogunate and inspiring their dissident reactionary comrades, the Sakurada-mon Incident was a rousing success. On the far-term goal of its actual political agenda, it empowered a faction that betrayed its agenda on every level. They achieved nothing they truly wanted but the deaths.

Still, as harsh as that all sounds, you can't go *that* far into history, this is a long stretch of time. From the vantage point of 1860 few in Japan knew how irreversible modernity was going to be. The Meiji government certainly didn't - they did not at all set out to End Feudalism, instead finding they simply had no choice if they wanted to compete. The assasins were definitely in the foolish side of the conflict, real leaders knew something had to change, but its too much to put the Meiji Restoration on the shoulders of this one act. They did change Japan in a way that pursued their goals, even if they turned out to be impossible, and things like the immortalization of the emperor in the new Meiji system have to count for some reactionary points.

So for their impact, the inspiration they provided to countless violent samurai reactionaries, and the inherent uncontrollability of Japan's modernization, I will give them an A-/B+, right on the threshold. Definitely a complicated case.

Also this whole exercise as really highlighted Japan's long, deep history of effective terrorism, if we did a country/terrorism ranking they might be near the top.

[legalkimchi]

The Mistake in Comparison

So, recently someone tweeted (x'ed?) about how Japan was the showcase of why diversity doesn't matter. That Japan was "one of the most civilised, educated, dynamic, safe, tolerant, peaceful and culturally-rich nations on Earth."

It reminds me of when someone tried to argue, when queen elizabeth died, that there are examples of great monarchies, just look at the Japanese monarchy.

As a korean, we have very specific views about the japanese monarchy.

This got me thinking about the japanese occupation of korea and china. of the entire "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Then i started thinking about how we don't really view Imperial Japan in the same light as Nazi Germany. We comment on the death toll of the Holocaust but not as much of the tens of millions of chinese and koreans who died at the hands of the Japanese. How Japan escaped the fate of nazi germany. Holocaust denial is outlawed in Germany. Japanese war crime denial is part of the official curriculum in Japan.

THEN i realized my mistake.

The mistake i made in my own thinking. The Problem with that thinking is that it is a comparison. It is a feeling of injustice that the Holocaust is discussed and not the east asian genocide.

That thinking leads to antisemitism. And i have witnessed asians, who historically have no strong feelings towards jewish people (because why would they?), get some antisemitism from the seed of this thought.

Because when you start thinking that way, you start the road to resentment. Why do people care about the jews? Why don't they talk about us?

Well, it isn't the jews fault that the west doesn't talk about us.

It is victim blaming on a grand scale. and not the way to go about it.

We need to focus on educating people on what Imperial japan did. For those that know, koreans have very harsh views on the Japanese, and it is difficult to make the distinction between the Japanese people and Imperial Japan. Specifically because the Imperial Japan didn't just attempt to eliminate koreans off the face of the earth once, but twice.

But, with the exception of 3 years, Japan has had a right wing prime minister since 1996. The current one still sends offerings to the Yasakuni Shrine. it's been 4 consecutive years that cabinet members have gone to the shrine on the anniversary of the end of the war to honor Japanese war criminals. The current prime minister requested the german Chancellor's help in removing a statue symbolizing korean "comfort women" in berlin. "Comfort women" being the term used to describe the hundreds of thousands of women that were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese.

The right wing isn't on the rise in japan, it's been in power for decades. and while many don't know about it, or ignore it because they love anime and sushi so much...

those who know the history of East asia do not ignore it. every korean alive, in country or diaspora, has at least family directly affected by japanese atrocities.

People need to know about Japan's actions, and it's government's complicity in hiding, or worse, embracing their criminal past.

I don't hold a grudge against japanese people. they are being lied to by their own government. lead to believe a fairy tale of their country's history. (much like how we do in the US). But people need to know the history here.

[kafkaoftherubbles]

话匣子：《致不灭的你》 日语名与英译名的小小想法

Due to what I do for a living (which my extra ass adamantly refers to as "language alchemy"), I easily fixate on certain features of languages and word choices. My favorite subtitles are dual-combo of Chinese and English because I get to compare notes between the two while watching stuff (reading Chinese subs while watching in English is a lot more effortful, and it risks distracting me from the show itself already). I even humor myself by giving characters "more authentic" (your mileage may vary) Chinese names that aren't transliterated (I was supposed to place a record of the names here, in this blog, but I balked in the end).

The point is: I have some thoughts about the Japanese title, 不滅のあなたへ, and its (official?) English translated title. There are two separate thoughts!

(1) Thoughts on the English-translated name first:

The most literal translation for 不滅のあなたへ would have been "to (へ) an immortal (不滅の) you (あなた)". As my non-TYE-watching best friend once pointed out, "Why the hell is the English name translated to what it is, though?"

The original rationale would have to come from the translator(s) who coined it, but I have a pretty strange interpretation of my own.

In English, there are forms of address to people in certain roles. The most famous example would be "Your Majesty," from Latin maiestas (greatness). Others one can easily think of will be "Your (Royal/Imperial) Highness", "Your Excellency", "Your Holiness", et al.—ya know, fancy schmancy human-created hierarchies. You catch my drift.

The "Your" in "Your Majesty" meant it as a second-person address, while the second word is whatever quality one associates with that role. "Majesty." "Holy". "Excellence."

And that is exactly how I interpret the English translation. Fushi is eternal, innit? So, "Eternity." And they are the immortal caretaker of their world's inhabitants. As much as I personally like to zero in on Fushi's humanity, I'd be remiss to forget their canonical divinity (or alien-ness! Meheheh!). They are necessarily seen as "an important figure occupying an important role" the way monarchs and popes are seen.

So to me, the English translation is a deferential address to Fushi.

I don't think the translator(s) who coined the translated name would ever see my post, but on that off-chance—however slim—they are reading it now? I wanna say, as a translator to another: brutha I love what you translated, man

(2) Thoughts on the Japanese title

The title is simple enough. "To an Immortal You." But it can also be read in a very... romantic or intimate way. The sort of "romantic" I'd expect from a poet or something!

It's kinda simple. あなた can also be used, by women (not sure about men/masculine genders), to mean "dear." An address for thy lovers.

So when interpreting it in that sense, doesn't this title become "To My Undying Beloved?"

Now, I don't pretend to know who, in this entire story, would be that person who calls Fushi "my eternal beloved". I honestly think that person is Ooima herself, ha! Maybe it's us, the readers. Or maybe it's the inhabitants under Fushi's care, or it really is one specific character (throw your bets!) in the story. Either way, it's fucking poetic, romantic, and/or poetically romantic.

---

Combining these two interpretations yields a pretty amazing picture, doesn't it? Imagine that! Someone in a wooden cabin sometime in winter, hunching over the table from their chair by a flickering candle. Writing a long, long letter to an undying beloved. A moving letter, written in experiential emotions and emotive experiences.

Perhaps it was narrated by the lives and life of this world, meant for its immortal caretaker. Perhaps it was written by an immortal being, meant for his successor.

Or perhaps it was written by the immortal themself, addressing all the lives and people they had, have, and will acquire. Because by being a part of them, these lives have been immortalized.

And as any letter penned by someone who fancies themself a wee bit of poetic flourish, it starts,

To, Your Eternity ...

----

Thank you for reading my ramble.

[fantasyinvader]

I’ve been wondering if there’s more to Edelgard’s Napoleon allusion than meets the eye. I mean, sure, Edelgard has Amyr adorned with the “Crest of the Beast,” suggesting she’s an antichrist figure much like how Napoleon was seen in the past over his ability to wage war (see War and Peace). Likewise, Edelgard is a villain while Napoleon was considered THE villain back in the day. Just look at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hyping up Sherlock’s supposed last opponent Moriarty as “the Napoleon of crime” to see what I mean.

But what I’m thinking is how Edelgard is an absolute monarch (autocrat) whose rule is backed by the army. We see this in her Japanese ending, how Claude refers to her rule as “military rule” and her being identified as a hegemon in both Flower and Moon routes. But this rule comes after an insurrection that was meant to limit the power of the crown.

People tend to forget that feudalism isn’t just simply obeying what your king says. Titles such as dukes, counts, barons, knights are all granted with privileges, but those privileges must be respected by the monarch. It’s transactional, and if the monarch doesn’t honor his/her side of the bargain they’re liable to face uprisings. That’s why these things are backed by laws, traditions or customs. It’s not just “God says to follow this guy, so do it.” If the monarch simply tries to impose their will, it could very well lead to a civil war.

And in France, King Louis XIV/The Great/The Sun King went about weakening the nobility in this regard by centralizing power. He didn’t appoint someone as his prime minister, he did that work himself while at the same time using his charisma to get nobles to want to support him. The French nobility were too busy partying at his court, keeping them in Versailles rather than in their own lands where they ruled in his name. And while the nobles were busy, Louis XIV and his ministers went about overhauling France, taking power out of the hands of the nobility and instead putting it in the hands of selected intendents who were dependent on the king for their position.

In this context, Versailles sounds like Enbarr in how all the Imperial nobility are supposed to work out of the capital rather than their feifs. This also sounds a lot like how Edelgard frames her reforms. But if you know your history, it’s these reforms by Louis XIV that planted the seeds of the French Revolution. After all, he fed the decadence of the nobility in a time when things were good, decadence they refused to give up when times got bad. His successors also didn’t have the charisma to make this work for them.

The parallel here is Ionius, trying to consolidate power for himself and take it from the nobility. However, he appears to have lacked the charisma of the Sun King, leading to the Insurrection of the Seven. After all, he wasn’t performing his duties to his nobles and presumably his parties fucking sucked. Reforms are made to limit the powers of the monarch by corrupt individuals, each seeking to empower themselves rather than the people. Hell, these same nobles would want to join with Edelgard’s intended conquest of Fodlan in order to further their own authority, see Caspapa joining her in Houses in exchange for control of the former Alliance territories.

Sadly, this reflects how the French Revolution became corrupt, not living up to it’s own ideals and giving way to the Reign of Terror. We don’t really get much of a RoT in Fodlan, at least until Edelgard, the Napoleon figure, takes over. And of course, we can argue the hypocrisies of Napoleon and Edelgard. Whatever lofty ideals they talked about spreading didn’t really gel with their actions.

Patricia fleeing the Empire with Cornelia’s help calls to mind the Scarlet Pimpernel.

There’s also the Enlightenment angle. We have the whole Enlightenment/Nirvana symbolism with regards to Buddhism, but there’s also the European Age of Enlightenment. We have technological clues to suggest Fodlan is around the 1700’s in terms of development comparative to our world, such as the fact there’s children’s literature, with opera being from the 1600’s as well as the discovery of the speed of light. We have John Locke, believing that humans are inherently good and would work in the interest of society in opposition to the Church’s stance that people are naturally sinful and need guidance. There’s also the belief if we did away with the old order it would lead to a new golden age.

Those last two points remind anyone else of Edelgard? Bonus points, the end of the Napoleonic wars is said to be the end of the Age of Enlightenment.

Edelgard also restores the Church under her control after it was kicked out of the Empire over a hundred years prior. Reminds me of Napoleon bringing back the Catholic Church after the revolution tried to replace it with their Cult of Reason/Cult of the Supreme Being, but did so in a way he wouldn’t be under their control.

But it is known that when Napoleon was defeated, the people of the capital opened their doors to their enemies. They were sick of him and his endless wars. With regards to Edelgard, reach Enbarr and you can recruit a battalion of civilians to oppose her with Dorothea and Manuela. You don’t get that for any other lord. It’s meant to show that even her own people think she’s a tyrant, just like Napoleon was considered the first modern dictator. Both are also skilled at using propaganda, both ran police states (see Hubert about that one).

Invading a frozen country only for their capital to be set on fire as you take it?

Really feels like there was this effort to link Edelgard to a real person, one greatly debated by history, when you look at stuff like this. Too bad Fodlan didn't have a Horatio Hornblower, but to be fair he is a fictional character.

[stillness-in-green]

Songs I'm Vibing To Right Now

Got tagged by both @codenamesazanka and @robotlesbianjavert for "ten songs you're vibing to right now," so there're ten vocal songs and a bonus three instrumental pieces. I tried to use things that are fairly current to my playlists, or at least recently back in circulation there, so they're not all-time favorites, but they are songs for my "right now." They're in no particular order beyond trying not to have too many of the same tempo and/or language in a row. Find Youtube links, write-ups of varying lengths, and small lyrics excerpts (translations in italics for Japanese) under the cut, because, what, I was expected to be concise about this? Please.

(Sparing anybody who doesn't want to have to scroll all the way through this to find out why they're tagged at the bottom, I think Nal and Kota have mostly tagged most of the people in my immediate chat circle, so let's round it out with, oh, @leftofrevolution, @scumtrout, @evilasiangenius, @megkips, @shockersalvage, and @wheredidmydadgo. Share some song recs if you like! With, my verbose ass's example notwithstanding, as much or as little detail as you feel like providing re: Why Vibing. Pardon any double-notifications; drafts and I don't always get along.)

1: Rome, by Dessa: I discovered Dessa via The Hamilton Mixtape and have been following her ever since.  This isn’t my absolute favorite of hers (that’d be the haunting urban fantasy Mineshaft 2), but it’s the one of her recent ones that I’ve had most constantly on playlists.  A brilliant, blistering tirade on wealth disparity, beauty standards, police brutality, and more.

Chekhov says, you got a gun, you gotta use it Guess they’re reading Chekhov downtown in their cruisers Bang, catch the case, we all lose Make Dixie look like Khartoum That Lady Justice ain’t blind yet Lens cap on the body cam, missed again, damn

2: Deep Down, from Chainsaw Man: The closers for this series were, of course, an embarrassment of riches, but while I loved the final lines of this one, I didn’t immediately fall for the main body of the song.  After about the fifth time I’d been so haunted by it I needed to purge by pulling it up on Youtube, though, I finally gave into the inevitable.  I think of this as the, “What comes of tangling with Makima,” song: poisoned, yearning, and drowning.

Negatta mono wo te ni shita kanbi to soushitsu ni nomare (I got what I wanted, but in return I was consumed by sweetness and loss) Dore hodo nagai toki wo tadotteta (I wonder how long it took me?) I call you deep, deep, deep, deep Deep, deep, deep, deep down

3: Butterfly Wing, from Love Live: Almost exactly halfway through the newest show in the franchise—which, I should stress, I do not watch, so take my summary here with a grain of salt—Wien Margarete disrupted Love Live's safe, sheltered, inoffensive status quo like a boulder crashing through the ceiling of a greenhouse.  A solo artist dressing for the role of Swan Lake’s Odile and singing prideful, imperious songs evoking barren landscapes and metaphors for death and transcendence, her debut functioned as an overt declaration of war against groups of girls in rainbow costume dresses singing generically peppy, shallow songs about love and encouragement and sparkling.

While the show wasn’t courageous enough to do anything truly transgressive with her in the end—her second song in this mode (Edelstein, also great) ultimately lost to a song that even fans of the show think is pretty darn generic; from what I’ve read, Wien is one of those characters who exist to be proven wrong and who can only hope to not come off as too much of a strawman in the process—her introduction made a big enough impression to be noticeable well outside the show’s normal circles, with comparisons being made to Macross, Princess Tutu, and Disney villain songs.  All three things I’m very fond of, so, you know, definitely enough to make me take notice!

I gave a link up top to the full version, but here’s a link to the episode clip. Please watch, reflect on the miracle solution to not being able to write vocal harmonies for your massive idol groups being to introduce a middle school edgelord whose whole shtick is that she’s a soloist, and enjoy the hysterically funny expressions of terrified dismay on the faces of the main characters at the fifty second mark.

Tsubasa nado nakutemo toberu no (Even without wings, I can fly) Tamashii ni chou wo yadoshi (I will summon a butterfly into my soul) Sora wo kakeru ano tori yori mo (And even higher than the bird far above) Mabushii iro wo hakidashi nagara Fly, Sky (I will cast blinding colors as I take to the sky.) Erabareru no wa tsuyoku negau mono dake (Only those with strong wishes will be the chosen.)

4: Misty Mountains, by The Wellermen: An incredible cover of the Jackson Hobbit trilogy version of the song by a “bass supergroup” that got their start during the sea shanty craze that Covid brought us.  It’s three verses longer than the Jackson version, plus a bridge of sorts, with each immaculately layered passage developing new variations and body across the full length.  There’s truly nothing like a rich choral performance, and I’m maybe a bit smitten with the contrabasses in this one.

The wind was on the withered heath But in the forest stirred no leaf There shadows lay be night or day And dark things silent crept beneath

5: The Over, for Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans ~ Urdr Hunt: I always admire when there’s a sense of continuity with songs for a series, be it a shared composer or just having new ones who can emulate the original’s sensibility, and I knew the instant I listened to it that The Over was an Iron-Blooded Orphans song, but tweaked just enough to reflect Urdr Hunt’s lighter story hook and its younger, more idealistic (and, it must be said, at least slightly more privileged) protagonist.

It’s got plenty in common, lyrically, with IBO TV’s opening songs, which all talk about the world as being impersonal and grinding and cruel, but those songs take a defiant stance, calling to reach for everything no one will ever give you, to go down fighting rather than roll over and be collared.  The Over lacks that righteous underclass fury—its singer has been hurt by the world, but not hardened by it, and still wants to pursue something that inspired him.  Accordingly, it soars in the chorus in ways none of IBO TV’s songs do.

Dakara doko made mo (That’s why, no matter where) Motto tooku e (Keep going) Tatoe kore ga akeru koto no nai yoru datta to shitemo (Even if this is a night that never ends) Ano ni negatta mono ga fusouou demo (Even if what I wished for that day is unsuited to me) Dou shiyou mo nai hodo boku wo ugokashite (It still desperately moves me)

6: Never Say Goodbye, from Golden Kamuy: GOD THIS SONG IS JUST A BANGER, OKAY.  The English portion of the lyrics is a bit stilted (“This is my doorway to kiss the end”?), but as far as I’m concerned, four seasons in, they’ve finally found a perfect aural match for Golden Kamuy’s revisionist-Western-by-way-of-Hokkaido vibe.  The yowling rap trading off with the earnest sweetness, the rotations between pounding, throaty, brass-heavy urgency and soaring, string-carried wistfulness—it’s a perfect pastiche of a song for a perfect pastiche of a show.

Taiko kara tsunagaru kono taiko ga towa wo shinjiru kimi e no kaitou sa (This drum, connected from ancient times is the answer to you who believe in eternity) Mada da ze, madamada da ze tabi wa tsuzuku haruka kanata made (Not yet, it’s not over yet, the journey continues far away) Ima wa ‘Never say goodbye’ de mata aimashou (Let’s meet again at ‘Never say goodbye’) So, hasta la vista, baby!

7: Toki no Meikyuu, from Macross Frontier Short Animation ~ Labyrinth of Time: Hi, yes, would you like to hear about the strings of alphanumeric that bring me to tears every damn time I hear them?  That are making me tear up just in the process of writing about them?  They’re in this song from the Macross Frontier animation short attached to the Delta movie, and they make me So Emotional.

So like, the whole thing with the Frontier movies is that they ended in a decidedly downbeat fashion, with the male lead Alto lost in space, the older and more established idol Sheryl in a coma, and the younger newbie idol Ranka telling herself she’ll get them back—eventually.  Labyrinth of Time is where that starts to happen.

Outside of categorical exceptions like musical theatre and story songs, most songs don’t tend to be very specific in terms of who they’re directed to. That’s certainly true of the songs in Macross as well, especially from the singers consciously modeled off of idols. They’re songs aimed at “You”—an imagined listener, who at best might fit a few broad traits: the You the singer has a crush on, the You the singer looks up to, the You the singer wants to comfort.  Those songs will get plugged into dramatically appropriate moments, scenes that make it obvious who the You in a given song is aimed at, but they still don’t name names, because the songs are still notionally something that could be found on the singer’s album, now on sale at whatever music sales-front is available in-universe.

Toki no Meikyuu is about Ranka calling for Alto and Sheryl—not You, not the general listener, but specifically Alto and Sheryl.  And you can tell that not only because of the personalized nature of the lyrics in the verses, but also because, in the choruses, she identifies her Yous by callsign: 0258-S04 and 0215-F09.  During the songwriting process, legendary composer Yoko Kanno asked the producer for a list of numbers and letters that would be relevant/meaningful for the characters, selections from which she mixed around and set to the song’s meter.  The resulting callsigns reference aspects of the characters’ history, both in-universe and in the broader franchise, so there is no one else in the universe Ranka could possibly mean when she sings out those callsigns in desperation to be reunited with her dearest ones.

And then Sheryl comes in after the bridge with a distant, faint version of one of her own iconic numbers, and gathers strength, and then they both start calling Alto’s callsign????????  JUST DROWN ME IN MY OWN WEEPING, WHY DON’T YOU.

(I’m physically incapable of picking any one stretch of lyrics for this one, sorry.  It’s sung to two people—how could I pick a portion aimed only at one? I wish I could provide you all with a really good lyric video, or even a good color-coded text rendering, but I'm afraid the best I've got is this one, which at least puts Sheryl's parts in parentheses.)

8: The Turn of a Friendly Card, Pts. 1 and 2, by The Alan Parsons Project: The Alan Parsons Project, a long-since disbanded British art rock/project album band, is really more my BF’s lane than mine, but I’m a sucker for this kind of late 70s-style synth, especially combined with gorgeous beds of strings and anguished lyrics.  This song in full is a sixteen-minute suite in five parts about gambling addiction; the title parts bookend the rest, with the opening being very delicate and meticulous, and the closing resuming in that mode but winding itself up into tightly controlled keening and orchestration that just keeps going harder through the outro.  Great stuff, and it has one of those melodic lines that lingers in my mind for days after every listen.

There’s a sign in the desert that lies to the west Where you can’t tell the night from the sunrise And not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men Have prevented the fall of the unwise

9: Do You Hate Windy Days? (White Ryu version), from Zombieland Saga: One of the joys of Zombieland Saga is the stylistic diversity of its music.  The conceit of the show—girls from different decades reanimated as zombie idols—means that, while the bulk of the girls’ default songs are pop rock idol numbers, the “character” songs and more oddball moments have the benefit of being able to lean on styles from different eras of music. In the case of this song, it’s more direct than usual: Do You Hate Windy Days? is not, itself, even an idol song, but rather the “original” song, of which Franchouchou’s version (centered by motorcycle punk Saki, because ZLS is outstanding) is merely a “cover.”

While their version is a lot of fun, sped up and joyous, I have to give the edge to the White Ryu "original."  It was written to be the kind of one hit wonder that would be all over the Japanese radio in the 90s, a soulful, synth-heavy ballad about drive-in theaters (a fad in Japan at the time) and adolescent disillusionment and growing up.  Performed by a local celebrity in irl Saga named Hakuryu, it’s an unironic throwback of a song, earnest, wistful and nostalgic, and chock-full of encouraging vibes.

Ore to nita omae to tsurun deta doraibuin (Us two alike hanging out at the drive-in) Akete iku sora no hikari ni sae mo iradatte niramitsuketa (Even glaring at that irritating morning light) Ahh, dakedo itsuka wa kitto wakaru-sa (Oh, but someday you'll definitely get it) Ahh, sou sa, omae wa kitto kawaru sa (Oh, for sure, you're gonna change) Ano hi no jibun o dakishimete yareru sonna jibun ni nareru sa (You'll be a you who can embrace the you that you were)

10: Binary Star, from Legends of the Galactic Heroes ~ Die Neue These: The central metaphor of the two sides of an unending conflict being as a binary star system hit like a train the first time I heard this song and I'm still not over it.  Good god, what a great conceit.  Musically speaking, it’s very Sawano Hiroyuki doing what Sawano Hiroyuki always does, which can get a bit samey, but if the groove he’s in is yours, it’s great stuff—incredibly dramatic, rich, electric and layered.  But mainly I’m here for that metaphor.  Locked together but irreconcilably torn.  Binary heart.  My god. Wow.

Binary A centrifugal force pushing us far away That’s our eternity Binary We can’t escape the force crushing us, gravity Is our eternity

BONUS INSTRUMENTAL PIECES: Since I got tagged twice, here’re some instrumental pieces that can’t properly be called “songs” but that I’m vibing to right now all the same.

1: Tenkyuu, from Kono Oto Tomare!: With a title that translates to Rain From a Cloudless Sky, this is an eight-minute koto chamber piece for seven players, but don’t let yourself be put off by it if you think it sounds a little too classical and stodgy.  The changes in tempo and volume, the incredible beauty and intensity, the breathtaking precision and control with which it takes you through its different movements, up that final mounting climb, and to the perfect catharsis of its final plucked note—this piece is, as is even commented on within the series, the kind of performance that could win over even people from outside the hobby.  Kono Oto's anime is not exactly a marvel of adaptation, but it did see the CD containing this and several other tracks played by various different clubs in the series becoming more widely available, and I’m incredibly thankful for that.

2: Otome no Policy, from the Sailor Moon Classic Concert 2018 Album: The concert albums Sailor Moon gets for its anniversaries or possibly just because some conductor at the Tokyo Philharmonic is a huge fan make me sad for other fandoms that don't get spoiled that this. (Which is to say, almost every other Japanese fandom that isn't a long-running video game franchise with a massively famous composer).  As to why, look no further than this comprehensive overhaul of Otome no Policy.

The original version, for comparison, is a cute and deeply "90s girls' anime" piece of bubblegum pop fluff about doing your best and being determined and energetic even in the face of periodic fleeting sorrows.  This arrangement starts with slow, sweet-tempered strings and woodwinds, but it swells with drums and brass as it goes along, modulating the tempo quicker and slower and quicker again, going through passages that could easily be from some film’s transcendent, triumphal march or a rousing theme from some lightly comic opera.It’s certainly the melody of Otome no Policy, but the overall impression is something much closer to “climactic segment from a version of Fantasia we never got.”

3: Reminiscence ~ Salamander and Loup-Garou and Father and Son, from the Heartcatch Precure movie: The latter of this pair is the one that really gets me, but it's a reprise of the former, and reprises always work best if you have the context of the first one, so have a listen to them both. (Also, I'm going to make some guesses about instruments in the descriptions below. Sorry if I get any wrong; I was in choir in school, not band.)

So, Reminiscence ~ Salamander and Loup-Garou plays over a flashback of the history of those two characters—the convivial but spite-filled Baron Salamander and his very young adoptive son/ward Loup-Garou (or Olivier, as the Cures will call him).  It uses a creepy harpsichord and vocal part for the darker scenes at the beginning, then transitions to a melancholy recorder as the flashback moves to more ambiguous scenes.

While I don't know if it was the composer's intention, the order of the title and the way the song has two distinct melodies makes me think of the harpsichord bit as "Salamander's part" and the recorder bit as "Olivier's part." That clear transition between the two melodies/moods echoes Salamander and Olivier's relationship problems—they're linked together, but on different pages, one following the other, out of sync with each others' wishes.

Father and Son, then, plays just as the climax is about to ramp up, as the two come to blows.  Olivier is desperate to stop the man he sees as his father from pursuing his world-ending goals; he loves the days they spent journeying together and doesn’t understand why they can’t just keep living that way.  Salamander, however, refuses to cede the vengeful bitterness he’s been nursing for centuries against the worlds and peoples who cast him out.

Accordingly, then, the piece reprises both halves of the Reminiscence theme, but this time, they're not played sequentially; instead, after a brief lead-in of the recorder part's melody (now on piano), the two melodies play together, both souped way, way up in orchestration and intensity for maximum heartbreak.  This is, after all, a scene that can’t possibly be resolved happily—if Salamander and Olivier could work things through on their own, there'd be no need for the Pretty Cure!—and the mournful brass and merciless march of the drumbeat emphasize that.

Do I feel a little awkward about having a piece of music used solely for a pair of male character movie OCs as my favorite piece of music in the entirety of the longest running magical girl franchise in history? Well, I, erm, um—look, how about you go listen to the immaculate thirteen-team theme music medley from the Hugtto All Stars movie and leave me here with my feels about this space dragon and his preteen artificial werewolf son. Thanks.

[otnesse]

National Review article: Jane Fonda's Vietnam Actions Were Worse Than You Think by Kyle Smith

NRPLUS

CULTURE

Jane Fonda’s Vietnam Actions Were Worse Than You Think

By KYLE SMITH

March 3, 2021 11:14 AM

A newly restored documentary spotlights her despicable Team Communism cheerleading.

Back around the time Jane Fonda was giving aid and comfort to America’s Communist enemies in North Vietnam, yukking it up with anti-aircraft gunners who shot down our troops — I wonder if there are any laws against that sort of thing — she also headlined an anti-U.S.O. tour. Despising the actual U.S.O. for its policy of giving aid and comfort to American troops, Fonda went on the road with a hippie rebuttal to bolster the chances of the North Vietnamese Stalinists who, after the war turned out the way she wanted it to, forced 300,000 people into prison camps for reeducation. Fonda’s tour was called “F.T.A.,” and in the opening moments of the documentary of the same name, you can see her on stage with her pal and Klute co-star Donald Sutherland screaming out what it stood for: “F*** the Army.”

Filmed in 1971, the film F.T.A. went over like a rat in the punch bowl when it was released in 1972. It was yanked from theaters and most copies were destroyed; seldom has it been seen since. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recently decided to spend some of its Golden Globes money on restoring the film so we can all take a look at it with fresh eyes (it is being released in virtual cinemas). So how does Jane Fonda, who was just honored with a lifetime achievement award by the HFPA, look half a century later? Exactly the same: like a brainless simp for Team Communism. Those who tend to dismiss Hollywood stars as merely stupid, not evil, can consider the other side of that.

Fonda, Sutherland, and assorted tuneless musical acts (songs include “My Ass is Mine” and “Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be in Indochina”) first went on the road in the U.S., performing in countercultural coffee houses. Next they went on a Pacific tour, aiming to attract off-duty anti-war troops they could influence and leverage while putting on shows near military bases in Hawaii, Tokyo, Manila, and Okinawa. In a new intro to the film, Fonda frames herself as simply an ally to the anti-war troops. It’s evident however, that she and her pals were determined to do everything they could, including encouraging crimes, to depress morale and help boost the Communist side.

Fonda says much but knows nothing; we hear her make all sorts of false assertions. In 1971 footage she proclaims, “The American GIs don’t know why they’re here, don’t want to be here, don’t want to be in Vietnam or Japan or the Philippines or Hawaii.” Hang on, should U.S. troops not defend . . . Hawaii? Is Fonda aware that Hawaii is a U.S. state? Fonda seems to think it’s imperialism for the U.S. to support overseas allies at their invitation, and that imperialism starts in Hawaii. (Okinawa was occupied by U.S. troops after the war, but two years before this film was shot the U.S. agreed to cede the island to Japan. American troops remained there at the request of the Japanese government, not out of imperial aggression.)

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Sutherland and guests are seen onstage in their F.T.A. show making larkish jokes about “fragging” — suggesting that it’s hilarious when enlisted soldiers shoot their officers. Other dopey songs and skits absurdly refer to U.S. efforts in Southeast Asia as “genocide,” urge soldiers to commit insubordination, and steer them to refuse to fight. One describes the war as secretly being controlled by “the businessmen you’re fighting for,” in an interlude that features Fonda and Co. singing and dancing in top hats while carrying canes. Singers belt out lines such as, “They’ll lock you up in their stockades, yeah they’ll lock you up ‘cause they’re afraid.” The vibe is half puerile Seventies variety-show, half Maoism; the tour could have been called Free to Be . . . Ho and Me. Or maybe Socialist Sesame Street. Several segments, aimed at black troops, make the absurd inference that losing the war will somehow make things better in Harlem (which remained a dire place to live for decades after we lost the war) and there’s a slam-poetry section that contains lines such as, “I can’t exactly tell you what to do/But there’s the armory. The rest is up to you.”

Sutherland solemnly reads from the (Stalinist) writer Dalton Trumbo’s anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun, Fonda and three other ladies perform a can-can to protest catcalling, and there’s a loving segment on a communist street march in Manila, as well as a bitter one about the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima. (Fonda et al. do not provide an alternate theory of how the U.S should have ended the war that Japan started.) One performance, amusingly, breaks down when pro-war GI’s start making their voices heard and go up on stage to interrupt the action. “Should we ignore them?” Fonda asks Sutherland. “No, no, no, they have to go,” he explains.

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The average starstruck Private Snuffy attending these shows might reasonably have surmised that Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland wanted him to shoot his superiors, refuse lawful orders, maybe even launch a mutiny. Doing any of these things would, of course, likely lead to a court-martial and imprisonment. Fonda says in the intro, “As I became involved in the GI movement, I started to understand its class significance.” Does she understand the class significance of rich Hollywood actors telling uneducated working-class kids to do stupid things that could ruin their lives? As usual when dealing with Bolshie Bourgies, the only connecting impulse is hatred of America. If American troops have to suffer for what they learn from Hollywood dopes, they’re just collateral damage in the larger war against America.

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KYLE SMITH is a fellow at National Review Institute and National Review’s critic-at-large. @rkylesmith

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Why Appropriating thing without researching the result is a bad idea.

So apparently US women, particularly white women (WTF) found 4B

and people are thinking, this is great. This is a story also on the difference between conclusion and result.

So the conclusion is 4B is great The end. It was all happy. The result is a whole new story.

But let's get into it. And actually think about what we could do to do this better?

'cause if you don't learn from actual history before stealing from it and not learning a thing, then you can't learn if you screwed yourself over or not.

Some history here since it's pretty clear no one bothered asking a Korean *cough* CNN.

You didn't learn from the translating fiasco to actually ask a drama translator who translates Korean dramas, or the Atlanta shootings... I hate it here.

There was a war that tore Korea apart. But usually US people end it there CONCLUSION. Koreans see it as a result, so also a beginning of many other things.

The country was destabilized because of the war, conveniently the US likes to cover this with their own wars (Say civil war), but not the results of wars outside of the US except where the US looks like a hero, if the history class gets that far, say The Marshall Plan (I'm really, really hoping that history classes haven't gone to shit this much that no one knows what it is. You should have gotten it in High School.)

Due to the US specifically destabilizing South Korea, they also suppressed unions and factory owners, installing, not one, but two dictators, a fact that people conveniently skip. This made the country markedly worse as massive student protests burst out and Korean citizens were jailed. This is in the 1970's-1980's. While the US was prospering and boasting its head off, this is what you were doing.

The country also was under the US thumb about the sex slavery camps for military use. Someone wants to mark this with a trigger warning, but sometimes I kinda feel like trigger warnings are used as a way to not face the horrors of history. And I think that the US needs to own this.

A lot of the bad discourse on women and setting back women in Korea isn't entirely from these camps, but it doesn't help either and you're sitting there high and mighty about it pisses me off. Oh, but the US is better on women's rights~~. As if the US and UK didn't put South Korea in this position in the first place with massive imperialism you don't want to own? The force prostitution pact taken from Japanese imperialism didn't lift until 2014. To me, you don't want to talk about Black Slavery, Native American genocide, but you also don't want to talk about the crap you did to all of Asia either with this and then talking about how Asian women just you know "want" it without having to talk the impacts of where that ideology came from.

This set Korea back and women had to fight their asses off from where the US left people like Eomma and my grandmothers as the US did nothing to help with the Japanese comfort women situation because it was running its own comfort women situation. OWN it. You were doing this ins 2014. If you're reading this, this is likely in your own lifetime. Did you care or did you care more about your Korean dramas and K-pop and say how dare you bring this subject up? (BTW, the contract forced prostitutes was also done to India, China and Japan, I'm working on researching other countries as well. Japan got this idea from the UK.)

From about 1990's, Women finally started to gain more rights and fought like hell to get there, large protests, got the right to divorce unilaterally, and by the time of about Kim Dae Jeong, they found allies in government and so on, but the cost of industrialization itself meant that as women gained the vote the rate of births sharply fell, and yet SK was exporting children still during this time period, mostly because of pressure from the United States. Own that one too. US UK and Europe would continue this pressure to export babies well in the 2010's, until SK was able to put some cross pressure back.

You plundered, you r*ped, but SK people refused to be razed to the ground and fought back.

After Kim Dae Jeong, and the final gain in women's rights, it looked like maybe some of the more conservative government would give in, but also women protested like hell because in Korean history Korean women were always the organizers and the biggest movements of resistance in Korean history have been Korean women—BTW, US white women go to relax, but Koreans fight for every last right tirelessly because literally look at the oppression wrought by the US.

Every time the government does something terrible, Koreans go to protest it, shut down news stations, the whole of TV, etc and workplaces often have to shut down due to the protests. Does the US do this? Nope. Apathy every single last time. "Oh we can't do anything, we can't rock the boat too much."

Black men like to say if you want something done, you go to a Black woman. Priests like to say if you want anything done, ask a nun. For Korea, it's always been the women. And not quietly.

So after the Me Too movement, unlike the US the discourse on that did not die in Korea and there were massive protests for YEARS to fight for more rights. One of them was 4B.

Repercussions

But men got frustrated at the 4B movement which also managed to get onto the lawbooks if a woman is drunk, then that's not consent.

Win, conclusion, we can go home. Wrong. This is why I hate the conclusion mindset sometimes.

As a result of this and rising women's rights, men, particularly during covid, pushed back on 4B and worked together by large degree and elected an incel supporting, crush blame-it-on-the drug users president, who BTW, had a grandmother who got frustrated with him. And so she threw flowers at him and cursed because Itaewon broke her heart that much especially after the boat disaster. He was callous and cruel.

So now the divide between men and women is greater so there is a lot of SA and SV as men feel much more emboldened and guess what this president also borrowed Trump's rhetoric to use for his own gain. Now there is a ruling on the books in SK, that in order for SV to "count" it must be violent. Wait, but she's sleeping, she's drunk? She's a child. Welcome to hell. Thanks Trump for being an Asshole. And thanks the US for your ignorance and complacency.

But sure, let's ignore systemic violence brought on by the US.

Result

This is the problem that PoCs often complain about white activism. They ignore their hand in it, but then see a pretty shiny thing on the hill and then use it without thinking about the causes and impacts and then slink off into the night once they get what they want, unwilling to organize ever again and then get all shocked when the rights backslide, because of united laziness. From watching protests, this is more of a UK/US thing. You aren't willing to protest to maintain and reinforce rights.

I told you, this is why cultural appropriation is bad. You're not willing to learn from history.

So how do you win this thing? Theoretically you have to find ways to make masculinity and manhood itself and win that discourse away from this bogus Alpha male thing. (I know, your poor omega verse, but why can't you let the whole alpha thing go romance writers, selling it to men in fiction? Can you have doms without having to tie it to this false notion of freaking wolves and selling it as sexy and powerful, etc?)

How do you make it seem like being able to choose and get rid of some of the basis of the whole ideology about men v. women, etc is powerful and better than this alpha ideology? How do you work with men to win that discourse?

Some ideas have been floated such as sacred masculinity, and secure masculinity, but how do you make those seem more powerful and more like ownership of identity than the Alpha male ideologies?

Once you win that discourse, you have to fight like hell to reinforce it and protest for it, and show and not shame men why this ideology is better while also fighting for other gender's rights alongside you.

Because I see you white women. You're saying it wasn't me. It wasn't me that skipped voting for president and now what. It wasn't me that thought that the case of the dog in the park valued a dog's life over a man's life and word. It wasn't me, that consumed Korean dramas with no interest in Korean history and what my country was doing to Korean women and stayed silent when someone spoke about the violence of the US and instead told them to shut up, it's only a TV show, it wasn't me who subscribes to Twitter with a blue check which donated to the republican party because followers is clearly much more important than defeating fascism while you mock and cry about how people voted on economics. Nope. It was you. You became complacent. You wanted to feel superior. It was all you.

You only care when your rights about to be taken, but don't show up for anyone else? This is why Black women are sick and tired of this. They showed up for Hilary Clinton and you didn't show up. Black women showed up for Harris, and *checks notes* even less of you showed up. Show up and examine your own group and press them harder as white women. You have an issue you need to address because there's more dissenters within your group. Ask for accountability and have those long chats using toxic white women's language for good. How do you tackle poverty and lack of education about economics? Press your own group to do better.

Self examine this shit and stop taking movements you won't bother researching the result of and actually show up. Stop engagement baiting and trying to get your follower count up and do shit that actually looks like outreach.

[faroreswinds]

There's a part of me that's worried that FE is going to lean into the "imperialism is good actually" mindset given how popular 3H was but given 3 Hopes' mixed reception and backlash especially in Japan, I don't think we have to worry too much about that. Thoughts?

Hmmmm. Hard to say. I have seen some comments from the Japanese fandom that has equated Edelgard's war with Ukraine's situation, and I have also seen comments about how worried they are that the West will think Japan loves imperialism in general.

Historically, Japan's history with imperialism and unification is... mixed. Japan was a bunch of warring states for a long time before Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu essentially conquered the other warring states at the turn of the 17th century, and then Tokugawa Ieyasu took all control himself.

You have to understand that in the 16th century, the country was in a near state of constant civil war. Like, it was really bad. The many lords that lived during that time were fighting for power and land constantly, until the three big dudes strolled up and ended it at last. They were determined to make sure that the country never experienced that again, so they promoted order among their people.

This is all very basic and spark-notes, so I won't get too deep into it, but essentially this unification allowed for Japan to finally stabilize and lead itself into the modern age. It was a major turning point for the country, and is looked back upon fondly.

But Japan also has a bit more history with imperialism and that goes into more recent times which is.... not looked upon favorably. At all. If you know your history, then you know I'm talking about WWII and Japan's attempts to spread their empire. The things they did to China, Korea, and the small islands like Saipan is absolutely heart-wrenching. Chilling. I've been to Saipan and we did a little history tour. Look up Suicide Cliff in Saipan.

They don't really teach that stuff in school though. It's not entirely swept under the rug per say, but it's not really fully taught about that time in their history. It is very uncomfortable to admit that your homeland did some pretty awful things (I know, because I have a hard time rectifying that myself).

So combine the elevation of unification with the downplaying of their imperialism and you get a sense that unification of any kind is pretty good. Especially if it leads to stability and prosperity.

I'm not going to sit here to say that all of Japan favors imperialism though, because that certainly is not true. But I can understand why some might be ok with the idea.

Heck, even I think there are times where unification is good! History isn't black and white, morality does not exist on a binary.

However....where I think Houses, and Hopes, fails for me on a message on "unification is good, actually" is thanks to the worldbuilding

Foldan is a continent but the game treats it as if it's a single nation

The three nations are not in a constant state of civil war with each other. In fact, they have been pretty peaceful with each other for 300 years.

Edelgard is not trying to create a world of stability from a state of constant war. She actively started a war to change the world in her image

Now while Hopes had backlash, Houses really didn't. Houses was honestly a big success for them. Despite being the bad guy, Edelgard is loved by many and still regarded as a hero (heck, even by other devs *looks at Three Hopes*).

So will the new narrative be "imperialism is good, actually?" Well, I wouldn't say to worry about that quite yet. KT really wanted to basically tell the story they are good at (Three Kingdoms) versus the story IS is good at (underdog good lord rises against big bad conquering nation). But I would be more worried about seeing the integrity of a narrative being undermined by marketable waifus.

But I do find it concerning that Hope's dev say Houses as a unification event, almost as if he saw it similarly to Japan's own unification event. He does say in his interview that he saw Edelgard as a unifier, rather than an imperialist.

If we get another game where imperialism is praised (or the Genealogy remake is rewritten somehow to praise unification and shit)... then I would really start to worry.