Okay, this is a little strange. Thinkgeek (popular nerd-toy online store) sells, among other things, t-shirts. Some of them have japanese slogans/mottos from WWII on them, like this one: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/74b1/ . It says “Dirty American Devil” in Japanese.
Yah, it’s a neat-looking shirt. And it’s a goofy-sounding thing to say, I can see the appeal of it. But, I can’t imagine any reasonably mainstream store (which this is - thinkgeek is owned by the same people as slashdot) would sell a nifty t-shirt with Nazi slogans on it. Or even Italian fascist slogans, for that matter.
Does anyone else think this is strange, or is it just me? Yah, I get that japan is the land of anime and all that is good and nerdly - but still.
You got most of it. Nazis are still scary but the Japanese aren’t. The Japanese seem oddly hip and silly and they put out those weird translations that don’t seem all that different from the slogan. The true perceived threat just isn’t there. Not that the Japanese didn’t do some horrific shit during WWII as well. My grandfather came home from a year in a Japanese POW camp at 91 pounds (he was 6’3’’). He never recovered physically and died at 55. Still, popular culture teaches me that the Japanese are a little odd yet all good now why the Nazis could rise up from underneath us at any moment.
Could it be that there’s far more Japanophiles than Germanophiles in the US, and the Japanophiles tend to be geeky while the Germanophiles are more often older German-Americans and neo-Nazis? (Note: German-Americans should not be confused with neo-Nazis.)
What explains why Stalin is cool and kitschy, while Hitler isn’t? For instance, one can buy a watch depicting Stalin from many legitmate retailers online. If a Hitler watch was available, the only places it would be found online are Web sites with names like http://www.seigheil88.com. I must admit that if I saw some hipster wearing a Stalin shirt, it would just seems funny and ironic, while if I saw someone wearing a Hitler shirt, I’d be scared.
I doubt the Japanese are as hip and silly to, say, the Koreans or the Chinese. Or for that matter to folks like Shagnasty’s grandfather (my condolences, Shag). I’ve never undesood why they didn’t get equated with ultimate evil the way Nazis did. They were pretty damn evil. And were worse to the American POW than the Germans were. Odd.
Just floating a trial balloon here, but could it be because Hitler began a dedicated, orchestrated, well-planned effort towards a nonsensical genocide, but the Japanese atrocities were less a primary war goal than a secondary, side-effect of fighting an enemy?
In America, there really isn’t any Neo-Imperial movement that goes around vandalizing Korean and Chinese neighborhoods.
This isn’t necessarily the case in Japan, where there have been over 50 attacks on Korean schoolchildren since October 3 (when North Korea announced it would test a nuke), and over 170 since July. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061110b1.html
Do you think maybe they’re trying to poke fun at the people who get kanji tattoos that don’t know what they really mean? Maybe they find it amusing to know that their shirts say “dirty American devils” but the non-geek imbiciles don’t know that their tattoos they thought said “hot American dude” don’t say that at all.
Can’t tell from the site’s description of the t-shirt, though.
While in it’s original Japanese context, “dirty American devil” may be a very serious insult or a bloodcurdling battle cry, it just sounds silly when translated into English. It seems to me that not many Americans(the target of the epithet) would find such a vague, silly sounding phrase to be particularly offensive, so this particular slogan thus translated sounds fairly tame. The Chinese have a similar epithed for the japanese, which roughly translates into “Japanese Devil”. It too, sounds a lot more venomous in it’s original language than the English translation.
Have you heard of Unit 731? The Japanese conducted experiments that were every bit as horrible as what Josef Mengele did in Auschwitz, and also did biological warfare tests on prisoners.
I think there is some truth in a number of the different explanations posted here. Let me add one: the target audience for this shirt is a group of people who love all things Japanese.
It’s true that people don’t look at Japanese and German people the same way, and the varying amounts of atrocity-related publicity may be a big factor. The US’s close cultural and trading status with Japan may be another. If I can exaggerate a little, we see the Japanese as a funny, harmless little people who make cartoons, videogames and technology. They can’t pronounce the letter R, and they have a thing for schoolgirls. What’s to be scared of? They’re non-threatening. Although if you’re older than, say, 60, it’s possible you’ll feel differently about that.
I do think I see a distinction; maybe it’s just a different “level” of evil. The Japs used people they considered expendable for experiments; so did the Nazis. But I know of no campaign led by the head of Jap govt to systematically target and exterminate an ethnic group of people world-wide based on an ideology like that expressed in Mein Kampf.
I have a friend who took graphic arts in school, and she made a T with all the axis and allied leaders in the grateful dead chorus line [like the jesus chorus line, skeleton chorus line or teddy bear chorus line] I always thought it was really neat and wanted one. Something about Roosevelt, Stalin, Hirohito, Mussolini, Churchill and Hitler lined up was just existentially right
Another reason could be the systematic…well, discrimination might be too harsh of a term…let’s say discouragement against foreigners that’s endemic in Japan. As a former expat, I know some of this kitch is a way of blowing off steam against a sometimes illogical, frustrating system. For example, wearing something like this Respect the Emperor, Expel the Foreign Barbarians T-Shirt exposes an old but lingering prejudice and embraces it with a cheeky grin.
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I think kawaiitentaclebeast has a good point. I also want to add that the Japanese atrocities just aren’t as well known in the States. When I was in seventh grade, we did a whole big section on the Holocaust, but nothing (that I remember) on the Japanese. There are lots of movies that focus on the Holocaust or just have Nazis as the bad guys, but far fewer that touch on Japanese atrocities. It hasn’t been absorbed into our culture in the same way, so it doesn’t feel as close-to-home. I know very little about what the Japanese did during WWII, and I’d bet that’s pretty normal in this country.