Japan is like if you combined 1950s white America with one of Ted’s nightmares :a-guy:
it feels reductive to say that appreciating a country’s history and culture is weird because they have a shitty government tbh. i like the architecture, the woodcuts and traditional paintings, a lot of the movies, etc, doesn’t mean i endore the LDP or the whole ethnostate thing
nah not just a shitty government. a pretty fucked up culture that people in most countries would see as fascistic if they were forced to live under it and didn’t grow up with it.
its obviously true that there are a ton of shitty things about japan. that doesnt mean that high and low is a bad movie, or that hokusai was a bad artist, or whatever. if you find a culture out there that doesnt have shitty elements please let me know because as far as im aware they don’t exist and i am going to continue to enjoy art produced by those cultures because i don’t want my life to be dour and joyless.
enjoy it by all means! i enjoyed avatar, doesn’t mean i still don’t say Death To America every day of my life.
not my holesum chungus amerika! we solved racism and sexism in the 60s silly! and then homophobia in the 90s! okay, maybe those are still around a bit. dont let a few bad apples spoil the bunch! but also dont throw out those bad apples! but also stop talking about it! wait, trans ppl exist?
Yuri on Ice unlocked something in me that I didn’t know I was missing.
Like I never got soap operas like my mom watches. I’m gay. It didn’t appeal to me. I never had romance stories of gay men growing up because America is prudish AF. 35 years of not having stories that reflected me. Yuri on Ice filled a gap in my life and I suddenly understood why my mom watches soap dramas and lifetime.
I think of this every time there is an LGBTQ book ban.
My favorite music is from Uematsu and Mitsdua.
FF7 brought me in touch with the planet and concepts that we are all connnected. It is a very philsophical and spirtual story. It cracked that conservative shell I was raised in and helped me grow as a person.
Japan may be prudish and have a hellish work culture, but they get art and music and stories. Far better than colorless, lifeless, joyless USA.
You should check out Aggretsuko on Netflix where her boss is a literal shovanistic pig. That show is a commentary on Japan’s work and prudish culture in hopes to address it.
If there was no Japan we would have no :the-doohickey:
