rising sun flag offensive?

Besides the actual demonstrators and campaigners that we have discussed, btw, that actual museum itself adjacent to the Shrine, itself has strong right-wing revisionist sentiments on its website....to my surprise, it did not even try to be apolitical up front, and simply as I expected say, well here you can see some military history artifacts....the management must be of a similiar mindset to those guys with flags and bullhorns that sometimes appear outside.

"so they would show up there to jeer at and appall and irritate the liberal youth?"

The ultra-right-wingers show up so they would show up everywhere to jeer at and appall and irritate people. It's just like how the ultra-left-wingers protest in to jeer at and appall and irritate people.

About the Yasukuni Shrine, for the reason that Patrick mentioned, a lot of people (not just left-wingers) do not approve of it. But being patriotic or praising war heros is slightly different from being ultra-right-wing.

Why not try to find a DVD copy of a movie called "Yasukuni." It was made by a Chinese film-maker and therefore suffered a lot of protest from right-wingers, but if you ask me, you would think that a right-winger made it if you didn't know that the director was Chinese :) Anyway, it tells you all about Yasukuni, good sides, bad sides and nuteral sides.

you may find this current affairs story which our ABC ran here a few years ago interesting, it touches upon these issues in japan as well as some darker ones regarding Japans history with China..it is unfortunate that there is only a transcript, no stream video as they now have for more recent stories...they occasionally feature other general report stories on modern japan, actually.

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/stories/s841387.htm

but how serious is it with the rising sun flag? you know, when you see a german wearing a swastika (or "hackenkreuz") you'll surely know that he is a nazi- no doubt about that. if you see a japanese with some rising flag design (like a shirt or so) is it also sure to know that he's righ-winged or might it be fashion only?

It might be fashion only. That flag doesn't have anything like the shock value of the ''hackenkreuz''.

I wouldn't say the right-wingers ''jeer'' anywhere they go, they just make long monotonous speeches through loudspeakers and play distorted martial music. People tend to ignore them.

Originally radical left-wing group was powerfull in the past and rigt-wing group was created as anti-comunist group.They are related with Yakuza.And some of them are zainichi korean becuase they are pro-south korea and anti north korea(comunist contry).

Flag and shrine is a superficial issue,real problem was two different ideology.

Ninja wrote;
"but how serious is it with the rising sun flag? you know, when you see a german wearing a swastika (or "hackenkreuz") you'll surely know that he is a nazi- no doubt about that. if you see a japanese with some rising flag design (like a shirt or so) is it also sure to know that he's righ-winged or might it be fashion only? "

I thought this question had already been answered.

Actually, I'm just curious. As I wrote previously, I can't really recall Japanese people wearing rising sun design just for fashion, with the exception of fashion-right-wingers (fasshon-uyoku). Where can I actually see these people wearing them just for fashion without any political message? How would they coordinate their clothes along with the design? Like I said, I'm asking this out of total curiosity. Anyway, it's hard to imagine what I would think if I saw a Japanese wearing it just for fashion, because I've never seen that sort of fashion on a Japanese person.

so, the flag design on a westener... they would probably think "stupid gaijin" ?

We covered this already, didn't we? Those who noticed would probably think "Rising sun flag on foreigner. Hmm."

As someone mentioned earlier, it might be like wearing a ''I Love New York'' t-shirt in New York City. So rather than wear a shirt with the rising sun symbol, I'd visit Tokyo or somewhere else in Japan while wearing a ''I Love New York'' t-shirt.

Maybe someone would spot the odd humor in that, or they might just be offended by the pride or arrogance that shirt potentially has in being worn in a foreign country.

Actually, I love NY and I, as a Tokyo-based Japanese, used to wear a big "I Love NY" badge in Tokyo all the time (not on my chest, but on my bag).

I happened to be wearing it at Blue Note Tokyo and one of the crew, who was apparently from NY, repeatedly said, "She's from New York!" and he didn't sound that negative :)

As it is in any part of the world, there are a lot of people in Japan, local and foreign, wearing shirts and accesories that implies (s)he loves a certain city or country or that implies (s)he's been there or what not. A lot of people seem to wear it just as fashion even though (s)he's never been there or don't know anything about it, but if I see one of those I just think, "Oh, (s)he's probabaly been there." and that's it. Occasionally I go up to the person, if it's a friend, and ask, "Did you like it? Because I've been there, too!" and often the person wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Oh, well.

No , Ive definitely seen westerners wearing sunburst headbands for like, fashion fad, not political ideology in any way, most of them would barely know the symbol was Japanese, let alone with any kind of political message possibly beyond that.
Another roughly comparable fashion was the leather-jackets with the Nationalist -China ( and now Taiwan) flag on the back, with some chinese writing...some designer had clearly seen the Leather jackets worn by American Flying tiger Pilots in south China in WW2, which were sometimes decorated in that way on the back with Chiang Kai Shek Nationalist red and blue flag..the fashion took off to some degree, in 80s or 90s, few would have known the origins of the jackets.

Actually of the headbands , it occured to me since a famous wearer Id seen- Jimmy Barnes, of the famous band Cold Chisel, MANY times appeared on stage with a rising sun headband..Jimmy was very popular rock stsar, but by his own admission, a simple soul...He could not have told you what that headband actually was to save his life.But there are probably gallery pics of Jimmy Barnes on the internet sporting one of those headbands....there were other people wearing them...they in their turn may have been emulating him.

I've seen them, too, but they're not Japanese people.

Actually just also hit me that band had a song titled "Rising Sun" :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ujtvhDl1Vs


Ironically, in that case, he is NOT wearing the wretched headband.

The Hakenkreuz flag was used by a political party with a racial agenda from the mid 1920's to 1945. It represents that party and its ideals.

The Rising Sun flag was used (in its current form) from the Meiji era to 1945, and re-adopted in 1953. It is a variant of the national flag of Japan and represents the soldiers and forces, either the interests of Japan or the defence of Japan.

It's not like the hakenkreuz at all. Koreans or Chinese may be offended by it, but they're in Japan if you see them there, so they can't in good social measure call you out on it. All flags will offend someone.

Imagine, though, if you will, a Japanese tourist with a shirt with a "DON'T TREAD ON ME" flag. You'd pretty much look like that.

Unless you want to join one of those gaijin-friendly Uyoku dantai.

Tbh, it would just make you look like a silly tourist. It's the equivalent of a Japanese tourist wearing a shirt with an American flag on it or the Eagle. Not overly offensive, but looks a little strange.