JAPAN Politician " Sex Slaves Were Necessary"

You missed a part. Humorless?

You successfully Godwined it, like Sparth mentioned. At this point, we know where the thread is going. So, we may as well tack and saddle it and ride it down.



Just a heads up...

So, there's my critical German in the wake of tongue-in-cheek American humor.

EDIT: It really annoys me when I have to hold another adult's hand through a little piece of knowledge that you should have obtained in your childhood/teens and retained through adulthood.

Necessary - Needed to achieve a certain result or effect.

The military still has sex slaves now.

Without talking about the necessity of it overall, in this particular case, he's saying it probably because he's a nationalist douche. He has denied the forceful use of women in other countries as comfort women (Korea etc) and is apologetic of the use of them in his own.

So basically we can all point at him and laugh at his idiotic misogyny and move on.

So my assumptions were correct and hes doing this to score political points with his base. Good to know politics is working as intended.

I'm probably overthinking it but in what context are you using apologtetic or rather what does it mean when you use it that way?

Trying to read and make sense of the word

Many people see being too dismissive of history is a validation of heinous acts. It's true that people should "get over it" eventually but people should never be dismissive. For me personally I feel that way whether you're talking about Alexander the "Great" or Emperor Hirohito.

This tends to go double whenever Asian countries get butthurt over Japan because they have a history of doing this sort of thing even in their textbooks and such.

WHITO PIGGU GO HOME!

NIPPON BLA BLA BLA

Yes.

And its context:

Switzerland is a republic. Its suffrage was based on military service. With a 100% male draft. I don't think they let women serve in the military before 1971, for that matter I don't know if they do today.

But not all politicians are stupid or crazy. Eventually the Swiss parliament decided that by preventing women from serving it was unfairly depriving them of the vote.

I'm not really sure were you get the notion that I state the Indian Wars are equivalent to any politician simply saying "comfort women were probably necessary" You took only a part of my entire post and applied the response to the incorrect context. My opening statement was to strictly say that all nations are guilty of some sort of appalling acts when reviewed in hindsight. Japan isn't the odd man out. The first statement I made and you quoted was actually in defense of Japan.

I did however, say in my second paragraph that you didn't care to quote but your reply would actually be relevant to, that any politician saying that "comfort woman were probably necessary" is a fool, because as a political figure, in this case a mayor, you represent a public image. Even more so than ever, any thing a politic says can carry a global weight. There are plenty of Chinese and Koreans, many who legally applied for Japanese citizenship, or became naturalized citizens of Japan as slaves or descendants of slaves that would be hurt by his words because they either were victims of sexual slavery, or have family members that were. Japanese occupation of Korea, China, the Philippines didn't end until after 1945.


I dare you to source me a politician that lives in a state with a prevalent Japanese population, like say any coastal state of USA (California for example) say something to the extent of "The A-bomb was necessary at the time." I'm not talking about a rural city in southern USA. Japan has some 1.3 million Koreans, Chinese, and Filipinos in Japan and the Japanese country itself is a mere 700 miles away from China and Korea. The backlash from such a statement would be imminent.

Actively elected politicians do not have the luxury to review events of history and determine if they were truly necessary actions for the time and share their input on camera. You and I are reserved that luxury, Flavin, but you and I are not politicians which was the point I was making.

You and I can talk until our eyes dry out about whether or not forced Jewish labor during World War II was necessary for Germany or if slavery was necessary in America in hindsight with no real repercussion.

Everything a politician says is dissected and scrutinized under a magnifying glass. It isn't about what's "straight forward" and "honest" because what's "being honest" and what's being "insensitive" are personal interpretations of whoever is listening to what he has to say. He would have to appeal to the public need and share the public popular opinion they do and judging by the popular response he got from his statement, he wasn't appealing to a popular consensus. Bottom line, like I said before, it was a stupid move on his part.

What was odd was that this reminded me of the Okinawan rape case in 1995 of a school-girl...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Okinawa_rape_incident

...because, infamously, the USPACOM commander at the time claimed that the marines wouldn't have gotten in trouble had they simply rented a car and hired prostitutes instead (to relieve their sexual urges.) While the accuracy of this statement, vis-a-vis Nik's arguments above, could possibly be seen as cogent reasoning, it was nevertheless viewed as tremendously insensitive to the victim and her family and predictably he suffered a loss of rank standing as a result.

Ironically, in trying to google up the above new-story, I came across this very recent story, from the US Stars and Stripes periodical...

http://okinawa.stripes.com/news/osaka-mayor-%E2%80%98wild-marines%E2%80%99-should-consider-using-prostitutes

...where the same mayor in question from the OP seems to echo Admiral Macke's view (with a current Marine commander at Futenma distancing himself from that position, understandably, given the 1995 case.)

As an aside, though, and to put Nik's distinction between the role "comfort women" and the modern near-military-base prostitute, my understanding is that "comfort women" were conscripted locally (or in the case of conquered areas such as in mainland China and the Philippine Islands, forced into those roles) and thus isn't the same sort of situation, in my view.

I don't think Nik was saying it was the situation... just that it has been replaced by prostitution...

But that's the point, though, no? To state that "the military still has sex slaves now" implies there is more similarity than difference, I would think.

Anyhow, just trying to make that distinction between the two cases.

I think the point is that they function in the same way but it's a business transaction now as opposed to how it was before... The similarity being the function...

Er, yes, the physical function of sexual urges (and mechanics of sexuality) is similar historically LOL, as is the perception of its necessity, but the comparison of the two cases is dubious at best based on the above distinctions? I don't know how better to describe it.

I'll just leave it at that...I feel like I am reiterating the same points.

I get much of my Japanese culture fix from Sankaku Complex which is NEVER SFW BTW. They tend to quote 2chan a lot.

Among the comments quoted from 2chan, which Sankaku Complex calls "the nest of right-wing loons which is Japan’s largest online forum" we find:

“I thought most brothels refused to serve foreigners in any case.”

“Right, most of them ban white and black men anyway. And their girls hate whites. How sad, even if a white has money he can’t even get a woman in a brothel.”

And...

“Isn’t this guy a moron? He seems to just want to stand out by any means necessary.”

“What is he on? How could you think to say something like this in public?”

TLDR: Japan's right wing loons are WAY better than ours.

I like how it says "in public" like it would be any better in private? tsk tsk...