#ermmm im not sure what to tag this i dont go here often sorry

[nicofan57]

hi i havewords to share. the seitei war info from this chapter is propaganda (kagurabachi 66 spoilers kinda)

okay i dont really post much analysis or long textposts on here (i usually share my bachi thoughts on reddit) so um. bear with me. also if anyone wants to add or refute a point i make idm! im not the Most knowledgeable on these things so

^the pages i am talking about, for reference

first i wanna start by talking about real life. for anyone reading this that doesnt know yet, kagurabachi’s story is about japan’s atrocities in ww2, it is anti-imperialist. history textbooks glorify the military especially, and schools just dont explain the war in depth and for the most part this contributes to making japan look better. there is a lot of glorification of japan as a completely “perfect” country, even from the citizens themselves, because they dont have anything deeper than a basic understanding of what happened during ww2. i read something on this for an ap lang paper, so i’ll link it if anyone’s curious (idk how to access this without jstor, sorry!): The Glorification of War in Japanese Education by Saburo Ienaga.

now how does this relate back to kagurabachi ? at first glance, the info about the seitei war doesnt really seem like its propaganda, and its easy to fall for what these pages are trying to make you believe— that the people on the shokoku are the enemies (ive seen it happen on twitter). but actually examining the pages, its very vague. like it just talks about “the invasion” it doesnt say like Who invaded What if you get what i mean. the vagueness is intentional, it shows there is something about the war we dont know. chihiro is only just regurgitating the surface level information he knows about the war to iori, who only also has that surface level knowledge (since her memories got wiped). both are victims of this censorship i mentioned before, it’s supposed to reflect the basic education japanese people get about ww2. it says the blades and the master swordsmen “wiped out the enemy” but who really Is the enemy? if the people of the shokoku really were the enemies, why was there graffiti on samura’s walls saying he’s a murderer, despite being regarded as a hero in school? why was kunishige so reluctant to tell chihiro about the war?

so honestly i think that it wasn’t really a war it looks like it was kind of more like. a genocide. it makes sense, theres a lot of recurring events in history where the gist is “strong country invades other country and destroys the natives of other country in order to exploit/take something”. land, materials, etc (in this case it would be the datenseki). it lines up with samuras betrayal and his goal to kill all the swordbearers, it lines up with kunishige frowning whenever shiba told chihiro stories from the war, it lines up with even shiba being hesitant to reveal what really happened in the war to chihiro and shatter what hes known for his entire life to keep him safe, and probably many other instances i cant think of rn

as a closing thought: based off the information we have now, the closest thing i think parallels the seitei “war” from actual history is the pacific war during ww2