I've heard that stuff was encouraged by the US to gloss over the bombings and reduce the place to an nonthreatening fantasy land.Someone told me once that kawaii culture was kind of a counter-culture originally, a rebellion against being austere and conformism. That person wasn't Japanese and I haven't read anything about it personally.
It's funny though I think of both Japan and Germany as benign, unthreatening cultures - which is what they WANT me to think
There's a bloke at Hiroshima Peace Museum who has a US flag painted on his leather jacket and plays 50s RnR songs on guitar. I'm pretty sure he's there to remind US visitors, "It's OK, we still like you."I've heard that stuff was encouraged by the US to gloss over the bombings and reduce the place to an nonthreatening fantasy land.
"And we were sort of asking for it, tbf."There's a bloke at Hiroshima Peace Museum who has a US flag painted on his leather jacket and plays 50s RnR songs on guitar. I'm pretty sure he's there to remind US visitors, "It's OK, we still like you."
Fits with the anti-German movement (of Germans) too.There's a bloke at Hiroshima Peace Museum who has a US flag painted on his leather jacket and plays 50s RnR songs on guitar. I'm pretty sure he's there to remind US visitors, "It's OK, we still like you."
actually i suppose the UK has the same thing going on - the rest of the world sees us as tea-sipping hugh grant types who not so much wouldn't as couldn't hurt a fly?