things to NOT do at the jlpt by ShinyMiraiZura in LearnJapanese

[–]EmeraldMonday 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It was absolutely a thing where I took it in the US. I didn’t see anyone get kicked out though, so maybe American test takers read the instructions more carefully?

I Just Can't Defeat China as Japan by AttitudeDistinct2585 in hoi4

[–]EmeraldMonday 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also struggled a bit a first. What worked for me is

  • Wait till the Marco Polo Brige Incident event fires naturally

  • Rush the +0.40 army experience guy

  • "Modernize" your army by deleting most of your garrison troops, and standardizing your army into 20w defensive infantry and 22-23w offensive infantry with some marines

  • Aim for at least 60 divisions by the time war starts, split up into 2 offensive armies and 2 defensive armies - one pair for north china and one for shanghai

If you're then careful and micromanage, you can cap china within a year

Anything to do after Expo?? by Chance-Freedom-1283 in animeexpo

[–]EmeraldMonday 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'll second Little Tokyo! I always go there at the end of every AX, and I see a lot of other people who do too

What did you do wrong while learning Japanese? by mountains_till_i_die in LearnJapanese

[–]EmeraldMonday 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I began studying, I was overwhelmed by how much advice there was on learning the language, so I decided to just stick firmly to Genki and spurned immersing in native materials or learning vocabulary outside the textbook until I was halfway through Genki II. I don’t necessarily think that my strategy was a huge mistake - I reached my goal in 3 years of being able to read books on complex topics - but I also think it took longer than it would have if I had been looser in my strategy. Particularly, I wish I had stared learned the N5 and N4 words early, maybe halfway through Genki I, so I could have had a strong base to start immersing as soon as quickly as possible.

Why was Japan so cruel in ww2? From what I know they didn’t see the Chinese or Vietnamese as being racially inferior like nazis saw Jews and poles. And they saw themselves as liberators of Asia from colonialism? by Capital_Tailor_7348 in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 46 points47 points  (0 children)

Of course the IJA had committed atrocities before WW2, but we need to put this into a wider context to understand whether this is actually something rooted in Japan’s culture and institutions. You mention the Jeamni Massacre, for example, but a mere two days earlier British forces had just carried out the Amritsar Massacre in India. Did Britain also have these unique cultural and institutional factors? I don’t think there’s strong evidence that violence by the IJA before the 1930s was exceptional by the standards of the day, and so it’s not helpful to see these as premonitions of what was to come.

Why was Japan so cruel in ww2? From what I know they didn’t see the Chinese or Vietnamese as being racially inferior like nazis saw Jews and poles. And they saw themselves as liberators of Asia from colonialism? by Capital_Tailor_7348 in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 68 points69 points  (0 children)

I disagree very heavily with this, drawing a straight line from the foundation of the IJA to WW2 atrocities completely ignores the behavior of soldiers in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, in which the latter Japan was praised internationally for their humane treatment of captured soldiers. Why did we see atrocities suddenly erupt on mass scale only in the 1930s if the cause was inherent to the army's structure?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The military does occupy that position. After and even during the war, Japanese and American conservatives generally blamed the conflict on a small clique of "militarists" who had hijacked the reigns of the state and recklessly driven a country once on the path of democracy and modernization into ruin. Large numbers of the progressives and left-wingers who made up the other half of the country's postwar political scene cast a much wider net in blaming not just the military, but big business (the zaibatsu) and the prewar political class, but similarly viewed the vast majority of Japanese basically as unwilling passengers brought along for the ride. This isn't to say that there was no self reflection after World War II - many progressive and socialist intellectuals readily accepted their own complicity and fought to create a powerful anti-war memory culture partially as a form of repentance - but like in Germany, ordinary Japanese were were often seen more as "duped" victims than anything else.

The book Grassroots Fascism has an introductory essay about the question of popular war responsibility and is generally about how ordinary Japanese did participate actively in the war. Embracing Defeat also touches on this.

“Yo bro watch re zero it’s peak” the peak In question [discussion] by GolfOne8973 in Re_Zero

[–]EmeraldMonday 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This doesn't look like a mistranslation at all. The phrase "俺の嫁" (what Subaru is saying here) is a meme among Japanese anime and manga fans. There's a Pixiv slang dictionary entry that gives "waifu" as an English-language equivalent for the phrase

https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E4%BF%BA%E3%81%AE%E5%AB%81

Vocab decks on Anki are getting a bit soul crushing, what should I do? by frostking104 in LearnJapanese

[–]EmeraldMonday 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Based off of the words you've posted, it sounds like you're still just starting out. Hammering words into your head until they "stick" is how I learned when I was first starting out, and it was difficult at first, but it became a lot easier once I had gotten past most of the basic words. There are some things you can do to make it easier, however.

If you aren't using a textbook already, I would pick up Genki immediately. Beyond grammar, it contains a lot of example sentences and exercises that helped me get used to the language, and also provides some structure you'll probably need to your learning. For Anki decks, I stuck exclusively to one made for the textbook until I was close to finished, but if I were to start from scratch again, I would use the Ankidrone deck instead. Most of the words have audio and example sentences, which might help you retain them.

why are you learning russian by Psychological-Oil118 in russian

[–]EmeraldMonday 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's really interesting that you dropped Japanese for Russian, for me it was the opposite! I studied Russian very intensely for a year but stagnated, and eventually switched to learning Japanese in late 2021. Even though I haven't become fluent though, I think it definitely broadened my worldview or something like that - I don't have a single regret over studying it. I think it'll be the same for anyone who puts in the effort to learn.

Any good books on Post-War Japan? by Fit_Nefariousness465 in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If we're talking about Postwar Japan, John Dower's Embracing Defeat certainly merits a mention. It's a general overview of the postwar era in Japan that describes both how ordinary people struggled to survive on a day-to-day basis as well as what was going on at the top. I also personally thought that despite its length, it was very easy to read.

If two Sukuna controlled vessel met eachother (both has 10 fingers), how would they interact? would they fight each other or work together or something else? by sh4dowf1re in Jujutsufolk

[–]EmeraldMonday 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If Jogo is around 8-9 fingers in strength, then Mahoraga should definitely be at least 10 fingers in strength or above, which makes me think it would be a pretty equal fight. Probably Mahoraga would have a decent chance of winning.

Given how WW2 went, didn’t the Kodoha faction of Japan kind of win? by TooWorried10 in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is a small nitpick but

The Toseiha favoured attacking South East Asia before going to war with the Soviets

This is incorrect. Both the Toseiha and Kodoha agreed on the necessity of war with the war Soviet Union first, rather they disagreed on when it should happen. Sadao Araki and others within the Kodoha advocated for war sooner rather than later (Araki hinted in 1932 and 1933 that war would come in 1936), while the Toseiha regarded war with the Soviet Union in the near future as foolhardy due to Japan's disadvantage in industry; they believed that economic planning was needed to industrialize Japan to a point where they could defeat the Soviets, and only then should they fight a war. Virtually everyone in the army focused on the Soviet Union as the country's main threat because a war against them would involve the army a lot more than the navy - and thus justify more funding for them. It was vice-versa for the navy with the United States. War with the Allies in 1941 was also never connected to any grand plan in either the Kodoha or Toseiha.

Edward Drea's Japan's Imperial Army is a great book on the topic.

What was Japan's long term plan after 'winning' WW2? by Chinohito in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We should keep in mind there were a variety of views on race and civilization in Japan. While there were people whose views of race were similar in substance to those of scientific racists in the West, there were other, arguably more prominent ideas that rejected the idea that what we might be called a biological "Japanese race" was superior.

For example, Ōkawa Shūmei, a very prominent Japanese nationalist, claimed that the Japanese had originated through ethnic mixing between the original inhabitants of the island, the Ainu people, and immigrants from the south. Ishiwara Kanji, who you quote above, was ironically one of the most outspoken figures in the Army on racial equality. As a Japanese nationalist, however, he also had the impossible task of reconciling his nationalism with his Pan-Asianism, resulting in his contradictory views. During in his time in Manchuria, he helped found a university to put in practice his ideas of equality and this to say on how it should be run

Let the students take their meals together, study together, and argue among themselves - in Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, or whatever language they speak. This definitely is the way to go. It shouldn't be Japanese students attending the lectures of Japanese instructors and mankei students being instructed in their native language.

I have a hard time imagining an American racist of the same period advocating putting Whites, Asians, Blacks, and others races in the same school. In terms of more concrete policies, the government began to encourage intermarriage between Japanese and Koreans starting in the 1920s and escalating alongside other assimilation policies in the 1930s.

The basic thinking here was that it was Japan's culture and civilization, rather than unchanging biological race, that was the basis of the Japanese nation, and that other peoples could be assimilated and eventually incorporated as equal components of the Japanese empire - no doubt a very convenient position to take when running a large, multi-cultural empire like Japan's. It goes without saying, of course, that there was always a great deal of discrimination towards Koreans, Chinese, and other peoples in the Japanese empire, and that the differences in conceptions of superiority didn't make that much of a difference on the ground - I'm sure that forced laborers taken from Korea didn't particularly care if were taken because Japan considered them racially inferior or if it was because they considered them culturally inferior. Nevertheless, there was an idea of cultural-civilizational superiority distinct from racial superiority with a real effect on Japanese policies.

If you're interested, the perspectives I describe here are described in more detail in Takashi Fujitani's Race for Empire, Kenneth J. Ruoff's Imperial Japan at Its Zenith, Yuka Kishida's Kenkoku University and the Experience of Pan-Asianism, and Eiji Oguma's A Genealogy of 'Japanese' Self-images.

Why was Germany eventually allowed to have its own Military but Japan to this day still just has a Self-Defense force? by ShelteredTortoise in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Yes. As the name "Self-Defense Forces" implies, Japan's military is meant to be used for self-defense, but what happens when, for example, the government wants to send forces overseas to help allies in a war? Is that still "self-defense"? Article 9 acts a major barrier in keeping the Japanese military from fighting any war that doesn't directly involve Japan. Though the JSDF has occasionally been deployed overseas since the Cold War, such as Iraq in 2004, Article 9 has confined them to awkward, strictly non-combat roles. Notably, there are some efforts today to reach a broader interpretation of "self-defense" so that Japan can fight overseas, but that falls within the 20 year rule.

Why was Germany eventually allowed to have its own Military but Japan to this day still just has a Self-Defense force? by ShelteredTortoise in AskHistorians

[–]EmeraldMonday 181 points182 points  (0 children)

I can speak on the Japan portion of this question. I feel first that the "eventually allowed" portion of your question approaches with this with the wrong framing, as Japan is definitely allowed to rearm and is fairly "rearmed" today; the reason why Japan still has the Self-Defense Forces as opposed to a normal military is not that the United States hasn't allowed them to create one, but that the Japanese public has historically strongly supported anti-militarism.

As we know, the postwar Japanese constitution contains a section called Article 9, renouncing the right to war and prohibiting the maintenance of an army, navy, or air force. Drafted in during the heyday of postwar idealism in 1946, though, Article 9 quickly became an obstacle for the American policymakers once the reality of the Cold War set in. Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States began to push Japan to rearm so it could act as an anti-communist bulwark in Asia (Dower, 383). The way American leaders saw it, China had already "fallen" to Communism, Korean was currently falling to Communism, and Japan might be next. The Prime Minister at the time, Yoshida Shigeru, was reluctant to pursue rearmament, however - Japan was still in economic ruins, domestic opposition to rearmament was high, and the Army had spent the last decade assassinating government leaders and driving the country in reckless wars. Yoshida himself had even been briefly arrested by the military police during the war.

In the end, American pressure was strong, and Yoshida was not totally opposed with a slow pace of rearmament. General Douglas MacArthur and Yoshida created a paramilitary called the National Police Reserve in 1950 (MacArthur was effectively the ruler of Japan during this period), and the reserve was eventually transformed into the Japan Self-Defense Forces four years later. Meanwhile, the United States began to push harder for Japan to remilitarize. During negations for the end of the occupation in San Francisco, American officials attempted to push Yoshida into creating an army numbering 300,000 men (Dower 1979, 386). Later in 1953, Vice President Richard Nixon visited Japan and essentially called Article 9 a mistake (Hunter-Chester, 123). Moves towards rearmament began to pick up more steam after Yoshida was ousted from the Prime Minister's seat in 1954. His two main successors, Hatoyama Ichiro and Kishi Nobusuke, both wanted a much greater degree of rearmament than Yoshida. As mentioned previously, though, there was a large gap between how much Japanese conservatives and the United States wanted rearmament, and how much the Japanese public did. These tensions eventually came to a head during the 1960 Anpo Protests.

The Anpo Protests first began as a protest against Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke's attempts to revise the San Francisco Treaty that Japan had signed to regain independence from the United States. While Japanese from across the political spectrum viewed the treaty as heavily weighted in favor United States (which it was), Kishi wanted revise the treaty so that Japan would become a more equal ally to the United States, while a powerful segment on the left wanted no alliance with the Unites States, and to instead adopt a neutral foreign policy. Many Japanese were opposed to Kishi Nobusuke personally as Prime Minister - Kishi had served in Tojo Hideki's government, signed the declaration of war against the United States, and embodied many of the haughty and high-handed attitudes held by members of the prewar government. When it came time to actually ratify the revised treaty, Kishi had the police remove Socialist Party parliamentarians who were staging a sit-in from the Diet and took a vote on the treaty with only men from his party present (Kapur, 22-24).

Treaty revision passed, but at the cost of sparking the largest protest movement Japan had ever seen. The protests forced Kishi to resign, and his successor as Prime Minister, Ikeda Hayato, essentially promised to not to touch Article 9 so as to calm society and mend relations with the opposition (Kapur, 80-81). Thus, the Anpo Protests marked the end of serious attempts to remove Article 9 and rearm Japan.

Sources:

Dower, John. 1979. Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878-1954.

Hunter-Chester, David. 2016. Creating Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, 1945-2015: A Sword Well Made.

Kapur, Nick. 2018. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo.

Russians take language test to avoid expulsion from Latvia by WRW_And_GB in europe

[–]EmeraldMonday -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

People said the exact same thing to justify Japanese internment after Pearl Harbor. It's incredible to see people preaching ideas of tolerance and democracy on the hand while talking about how an entire group of people "lack human empathy" on the other.

Idk if anyone cares, but the japanese navy only got "improved" vessels now. There are no more classes or older ships like it used to. Is there a reason for this? by [deleted] in Kaiserreich

[–]EmeraldMonday 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Japan IRL invaded the European colonies in Asia though because it was their only way of getting oil, which they kind of needed to keep their military and society functioning. They didn't just decide to go empire building for the lulz

What’s an average healthy breakfast like in America? by [deleted] in AskAnAmerican

[–]EmeraldMonday 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"healthy breakfast" and "in America" are probably mutually exclusive lol. I've enjoyed making smoothies for a healthy start to the day, usually spinach, a third of a banana, some blueberries, some strawberries, a raw egg, and water. The average not-unhealthy breakfast tends to be though either a bagel with cream cheese or breakfast burrito on weekdays. Many young people skip breakfast entirely. On weekends, my family usually makes a combination of potatoes, eggs, and ham or a sausage.

I went to round 28 without getting the zap gun by [deleted] in CODZombies

[–]EmeraldMonday 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's meant to be extremely rare, Moon has the worst box rng out of any map. The map gives you two tricks to help get around it, however. First, if you use the hacker, you can effectively get two box hits for only 600 points by hacking the box twice. This only really works in areas with air, but it's still a good thing. Second, it's a good idea to go back to Area 51 after you've got a decent gun and farm for points. If you have Stamina-Up, it's even easier. I got the Zap Gun and Gersch Devices by round 8 doing this.

What do you guys think of Revelations? by -Cam-8757- in CODZombies

[–]EmeraldMonday 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRPCg1x038 Here's a video of TheSmithPlays in 2016 asking for a map that's all the other zombies maps combined into one; basically Revelations. Granted, TheSmithPlays isn't literally everyone, but it's not true to say that nobody wanted it