Yasukuni Shrine
STRAFFINRUN
Yasukuni shrine in Chiyoda ward, Tokyo is a magnet for reftist activitists that don’t rike it’s enshrinement of 14 Class A war criminals from Imperial Japan’s miritary. My buddy and I took a trip there last Golden Week to check it out for ourselves. It certainly had a different vibe than the other Shinto shrines I’ve visited. I get why people object to the 14 people, out of 2.4 million that are enshrined there, whose souls are floating around. The problem arises when you realize that according to Shinto, once a person is put on the list at a shrine, they are there forever. You can’t just go in and delete them like a bad tweet. Feel free to debate that and I’ll just show you the pics.
“Honden” or Main Hall. This is where you go to ? for the souls of those lost in the war.
Sit. Good boy!
Lion Dogs guard the entrance.
Wooden door with the Chrysanthemum seal towers over us.
The Mitsubishi Type 0 Carrier-Based Fighter Model 52. A formidable foe.
Gimme that gorgeous profile.
Specs.
The pilot seat looks a tad uncomfy.
Type 99 20mm machine gun carried by the Zerosen.
105mm Howitzer.
One is always bigger than the other.
Kamikaze pilot. As a sayonara for their fatal mission they’d tell their fellow pilots, “We’ll meet again at Yasukuni.”
Gift shop. Imperial Japan cookies.
Or maybe some hard candy or curry?
These are “Kamon” or family crests. Love these.
Miniature katana with real blades.
A peaceful *wink* walk around the perimeter.
From what I’ve read, the Zero was a formidable foe early in the Pacific war. By late 1943/early 1944, they were being hacked out of the sky by F4U Corsairs and F6F Hellcats.
Lack of armor and self-sealing fuel tanks is a bitch.
They didn’t want the weight. Bad decision.
There was the Thach Weave which helped out Wildcat pilots.
It is amazing how much of Thach’s work was redone by Col. Boyd in his Aerial Attack Study.
‘Pit your strengths against the enemy’s weaknesses,’ is pretty universal, I guess.
From ’41 to ’45 Japanese military technology was relatively static compared to the American military that advanced dramatically during the period.
I have an Arisaka rifle. It was state-of-the-art in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War, and an obsolete relic when they were being used in WWII. Rather than reverse engineer captured Garands or M1 Carbines, the Japanese bumped it up to 7.7mm ( because Americans were shooting them with 7.62mm bullets?) and kept producing obsolete rifles. I assume because they did not have the machining capability and/or capacity to produce something like a Garand.
Same thing happened with aircraft and many other tools of war.
The Japanese were working on reverse engineering Garands.
John Pederson took some of his rifles to Japan.
I had a chance to break down a Japanese WWII machine gun some years back and discovered it was a complete functional match for an M240, right down to the three sided gas plug.
That gun was based off the German MG-42 and the BAR, so they definitely were doing some RE.
I assumed that the real problem was getting them into mass-production while maintaining quality requirements.
I’ve seem to have also read that it was difference in the tactics the infantry employed. Much more command and control.
The Nambu pistol was also basically cerimonial. The 1911 is much superior.
It always comes down to logistics, though. We had a massive industrial base in 1941. Once it moved into wartime production, the Japanese were hosed.
I remember an apocryphal story of a Brit Colonel watching American ships unload in Africa during Operation Torch. After watching the endless stream of vehicles, men, equipment and supplies being unloaded, he commented that “the Americans don’t so much solve their problems as overwhelm them.”
“Quantity has a quality all its own.”
— Some American general, probably
“One Panzer is worth four American Shermans. The problem is, the Americans always seem to have five.”
– Some German general, probably.
I was watching a review of Apocalypse Now the other day, and the reviewer made reference to overwhelming force as being unfair in battle. I turned it off at that point. If someone is that stupid re how to win a battle, they are too stupid to review a movie about war.
Funny that. There is an anime reviewer that I used to watch because he had good criticisms and observations about anime and sometimes pointed me to interesting things I may not have watched or noticed,
He’s always been woke, but generally small comments here and there. In one particular show the main character is falsely accused of sexual assault. He spends five minutes explaining how it works well as plot device and is completely plausible, but OTH, in real life “we must believe all women”.
At that point I turned it off and unsubscribed. It’s a bit of shame, but I’m done.
Wanda Gershwitz: Oh yeah, like no one in England never lies! Like Margaret Thatcher never lies!
Not just tech, the way the americans engaged the japanese changed to play to the disadvantages of the Zero’s design (once they’d figured those out) It was also the teaching of tactics, as the US tended to pull the best from the line to train new recruits while the Japanese best kept fighting. So while attrition was wearing down the top line of the japanese forces, the american minimum aptitude for fighting zeroes was rising.
The Zeros continued to be more maneuverable and I think had higher climb rates than the US fighters, but the increased power and armor of the US planes allowed better outcomes against the Zero later in the war. The Zero’s lack of armor in critical areas contributed to its decline. They couldn’t up-armor them, either, because it would have reduced their other advantages to an unacceptable degree.
Also, Straff, every time I see your walkabout views on Zoom, you make me miss Japan. We’re hoping that tourism travel opens up again before too long.
Damn, son.
Show us on the doll where he firsted you.
Oops. That was supposed to be in the main thread.
I don’t think the doll has those parts, anyhow…
Neither does Brochettaward.
Neat.
Thanks straff!
I’ve been wanting to do a post about Yasukuni as well. The other thing is that it has what we can call a “selective” discussion of the history within its museum. I would say it’s notable for what it omits instead of what it actually says.
For Japanese politicians it’s become a political litmus test on visitation. Everytime one visits it will bring howls from China and Korea. So some years some politicians go and other years they simply send a note and “donation”.
I looked up “Class A war criminals”, and it isn’t what you would expect. The definition is:
Class B is the typical war crimes (shooting prisoners, murdering civilians), and Class C is things like genocide and massacres.
Interesting. So essentially many world leaders over many time periods.
Can we add a few in the US?
Unit 731
That whole debacle should really tear to shreds the misconception that it was “better” in the good old days. Even in the vaunted 1940s, the non-political decision makers in our government were flat out evil.
Shiro Ishii should have been publicly burnt at the stake, but thanks to our betters he lived out the rest of his life in anonymity.
One of my Japanese friends was friends with one of the few nurses at the facility who publicly spoke in Japan about what happened there. She’s now deceased. Very few Japanese want to be reminded about this. One need look no further than the Korean “comfort women”.
OTH, it pains my friend greatly.
TBF, the average bureaucrats concerned with this case were overruled by the men running The Project.
*takes a drag from a cigarette*
Also from that episode, don’t be too smug: https://youtu.be/zZOcyxqU6ZA?t=184
So Col. Sanders got his secret recipe from Japanese war criminals? Time to cancel KFC.
He got his revenge!
Curse of the Colonel
Also
ケンタッキークリスマス
“However, lacking a Caucasian person to imitate MVP Randy Bass, the rabid crowd seized a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders (like Bass, the Colonel had a beard and was not Japanese) from a nearby KFC and tossed it off the bridge as an effigy.”
Why, I tell ya- those wacky japs
I don’t trust anything Straff says about Shinto ever since he lied to me about maple kami.
The problem arises when you realize that according to Shinto, once a person is put on the list at a shrine, they are there forever. You can’t just go in and delete them like a bad tweet.
They just aren’t damnatio memoriae-ing hard enough.
Thanks straffinrun! I like the pictures.
Biden to address the nation tonight about gun violence.
No.
“…there were lungs everywhere…”
“Terrible.”
I’m really not sure what they expect to accomplish. At this point how will this change anything with supporters or engage them further.
OTH, if you are against gun control is this suddenly going to change your mind. (Excluding the dozen people the MSM will highlight who now have given up most or all their weapons.)
The immediate goal is to rile up supporters for the mid-terms. Those ballots aren’t going to harvest themselves.
Yep – etither making it the big issue for the mid-terms (rather than inflation gas, losing the proxy and economic war with Russia…) or he’s going to try something unconstitutional with an Executive Order.
They don’t need minds to change. They need the groundwork to be laid for whatever they’re going to try next. “We tried to do it the right way, but the wreckers and kulaks at the NRA bought too many lawmakers. Now we have to do the right thing even if we have to break a few rules to do so.”
From local news:
Gun lobby spent more than $580,000 on political contributions in Ohio since 2010
From the article:
NRA ~ $310,000
Safari Club International ~$90,000
National Shooting Sports Foundation ~$88,500
Since they’re going back to 2010, that means on average, there’s a whopping $50,000 (rounded up) in “gun lobby” money spent on Ohio politicians a year.
lol. They never do the pubsec donations, or Planned Parenthood, or the Arabella-type dark money crap which was probably more than 500k just in 2020.
The dark money was well into the millions in 2020.
https://www.opensecrets.org/states/donors.php?cycle=2020&state=OH
The “gun lobby” are pikers when it comes to political spending.
Money isn’t their power. It’s getting people to vote on the issue.
Much like the abortionists.
Pffftttt……
The National Association of Realtors spent $1.8M in Ohio in 2020. And the NEA spent $1.25M.
Yeah. The gun lobby one is reaching back and totaling it since 2010. FFS, FirstEnergy (somewhat known to Ohio politicians and voters), still donated almost as much in 2020 alone then the gun lobby had since 2010.
And “A year after the news officially broke about the scandal, on July 22, 2021, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio announced that FirstEnergy would be fined $230 million for their part in it. Vipal Patel, the acting U.S. Attorney, said that this was the largest criminal fine ever collected by the Southern District.”
I wonder what charitable use they found for that money.
Tres:
Meth, hookers, and Little Kings?
Cleveland city council has passed a resolution asking FirstEnergy to give up its naming rights to the rebuilt Muni stadium. Note, the city of Cleveland did not offer to return the money they got paid for the naming rights to the stadium.
Meanwhile Gov. Hokum is happy to throw a billion tax dollars at the Pegula family for another Bills Stadium and nobody (in power) raises an eyebrow.
I’ll watch because I prefer to get the bs from the source.
And I’ll need something to pick on / bitch about tomorrow.
Here’s hoping he spends an hour aimlessly rambling about cannons and that time he had to confiscate one from Corn Pop at the public pool where he used to hang out and let kids play with the hairs on his legs.
Maybe put Hinkley in the audience for a quick laugh.
He’ll probably be indisposed, too busy stalking Jodie Foster. People like Hinkley don’t grow out of their obsessions.
Probably down at the gun store waiting for his new .22 while his info sails through NICS.
I guess someone needs to sue Ford for that business in Waukesha.
Just yesterday, CNN reported that Ilene Steur, 49, who was injured in the shooting attack on the New York City subway in April, is suing gun manufacturer Glock over its marketing practices and distribution strategy that she says allowed the suspect to acquire one of the company’s products.
Steur’s suit names Georgia-based Glock, Inc. and its Austrian parent company as defendants. …
Steur’s lawsuit follows the landmark $73-million settlement in February paid by gun-maker Remington to families of the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The families argued that the company recklessly marketed the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle to young adults.
If I recall the kid stole it from his mom and killed her.
Yeah, but he wouldn’t have stolen it and killed mom if wasn’t for all the marketing.
If they cared about people, they wouldn’t build red SUV’s.
That decision may be the single largest travesty in the history of American jurisprudence, at leastt pre-COVID.
Meanwhile, the NYC Subway is promoting how to safely get high on drugs.
My wife and I planned to go to Japan on our honeymoon last year. My wife’s a big Japanophile and it’s probably amongst the top places I’d like to visit. As it so happens, she got pregnant and thus likely wasn’t going to be keen on the long flights while carrying our child, but it seems the Covid restrictions would’ve prevented us from going anyways. I’ve been following the updates Sensei is posting – it seems they are annoyingly strict on foreign visitors. I haven’t looked at their data recently, but I’d think that they’d have managed better than the US did during the past few years, given Japan seems to be healthier than the US. Is that the case? And also, what are the prospects for them opening up a bit in the next couple years?
They haven’t had a vast amount of death from what I’ve read. However, their medical system has its own set of issues. They had empty ICU beds in some places and full ICUs in other places and for political reasons couldn’t match supply and demand.
Masking is near universal, but as we know that doesn’t do shit. However, on the whole, they’ve managed the disease as well as or better than the US in my opinion.
I’d think they are going to suck it up and mostly open up by year end or spring next year. But that is guess based on the pressure from their tourist industry. It’s not insignificant. Pre-plague it was $38bn down to $3bn last year.
Thanks Sensei, that’s good to know. I think one of the few things that could get my wife to flip her decision on the vaccination front would be denial of entry to Japan, as she loves visiting that country so much, so I’m hoping you’re right and they relent a bit over the next year or two.
Very cool pics. Thank, Straff’!
I am sure most of you have seen this:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-12-28
I just made this comment on another site:
“As an aside, I think most people get the wrong message from the SMBC graph. Most people take the message as ‘be humble and quiet when you have a little bit of knowledge’.
My take is the exact opposite: you need to go thru the process, and that includes shouting from the top of Mt Stupid. You need to be beat down into the pit of knowledge on the other side of the mountain. The key is to be open to learning and changing your mind. That is the only way to advance past the mountain.”
This is the great thing about the internet, you can opine stupidly semi-anonymously. If you don’t say the stupid things you think, how will you ever get corrected?
I usually find it interesting to learn how the same history is taught in different countries. So, I was happy to visit the history museum at Yasukuni and read about the Nanking incident of 1937 (elsewhere known as the Nanking massacre) and similar events.
In “Dave Barry Does Japan” he has a serious chapter in the middle where he visits the Hiroshima museum.
He says that it basically treats the atomic bombs as a natural disaster, sort of a “and then one week, two bombs fell on us.” Not directly blaming the US, but also not acknowledging Japan’s role.
In Martin Caidin’s A Torch to the Enemy, the author raises the fact that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions totaled only about three percent of the destruction visited on Japan by B-29s. But the damage was huge for being done by only one aircraft. After the first two bombings, US diplomats told Japan that they could expect atomic raids weekly if they did not capitulate. It was a bluff, but it worked.
I you’re wondering why the author’s name sounds familiar, he wrote Cyborg, the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man TV series. And now you’ve got that Steve Austin Nananana bionic sound effect playing in your head.
It was a bluff
Only slightly. They had another almost finished, and enough in the pipeline for a bombing every week or two over the next couple of months.
It was also a warning to the Soviets. When Japan surrendered, MacArthur told them the go to hell when they demanded that they be allowed to occupy half of Japan. The nukes helped prevent a permanent communist North Japan.
Yeah. Jesus, what a nightmare that would have been. Bad enough that President Dementia the First gave them half of Europe.
Little did we know that it was the western half.
???
And the Japanese certainly didn’t want the Soviets in there after the rather extensive history of ill will between them.
I highly recommend the book Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-47, for anyone interested in the strategy and politics surrounding the atomic bomb and the invasion of the home islands.
I haven’t been to Hiroshima but visited Nagasaki. A peaceful city was destroyed by an atomic bomb. That’s the message. The US wasn’t blamed, true. I believe the groups of Japanese children there were specifically instructed to be super friendly to Americans. When they were going so super friendly on me, I’m like, kids, I’m not an American. I hadn’t even applied for naturalization at the time.
From my readings the “peaceful” city part is true. The US wanted to see what the bomb was going to do to an urban area. It wasn’t selected because of its industrial or military value. They wanted a mostly untouched urban city.
If anyone know more or differently I’m curious.
I believe at the time it also had the highest population of Christians too. That wasn’t generally well known either. The history Christianity and where it was and wasn’t practiced in Japan is an article in itself.
The US wanted to see what the bomb was going to do to an urban area
That was Hiroshima. Nagasaki was picked as a military target to replace Kyoto, which was removed due to its historical significance. Nagasaki was actually the secondary target the day of its bombing.
So you’re telling me I mixed the two?
I recall Kyoto was partially spared because of its cultural significance as well as one of the bigwigs in military who honeymooned there and loved the place.
Yep. The first targets were selected for maximum destruction and maximum psychological effect, and Nagasaki wasn’t on the original list. When they took Kyoto off the list, they added Nagasaki as a strong military target that I think was still largely intact for some reason (poor bombing target, maybe).
Did you drink beer in the parking lot?
Since the Glibs who have seen the sequel all appear to have enjoyed it, here’s a little blast from the past:
Top Gun, but only the lines of Commander Tom “Stinger” Jordan.
What I want to know after seeing this is: how big was the box that the director had Tom Cruise stand on to make it look like the 5’6″ James Tolkan only came up to Cruise’s chin in their scenes together?
Thanks straff. I was going to visit it while the missus was at a quilt show at Tokyo Dome but went to a nearby garden instead.
Idiot
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/ciena-ceo-says-recession-might-actually-ease-supply-chain-crunch
Yeah, and your suppliers may cut products and quantities even further to meet expected lowered demand. Meanwhile your customers will dropping orders or stiffing you on payments.
TMITEbot execute recession routine. Beep. Boop.
if recession.likelihood > 0.8:
>if president.party == “D”:
>> generate_press(topic=”Recession”, sentiment=positive)
>if president.party == “R” :
>> generate_press(topic=”Recession”, sentiment=negative)
NullReferenceError: Variable ‘president’ not set to an instance of an object.
*applause*
So predictable and tiresome. Find some “important” person to explain how something bad will turn out to be good. I forget who it was that, during the Obama years, extolled the benefits of “funemployment” for people who had lost their jobs.
Wasn’t that Pelosi explaining how great it was that people could feel free to work on their artistic ambitions instead of going to some stupid job?
I think she was talking about breaking “job lock” with Obamacare.
I swear up and down that in 2002 I saw someone write “funemployed” on an application.
(rather, blood-donation form)
Caveat: a recession WOULD be a good thing, just not for these idiotic reasons AND assuming, companies were actually forced into bankruptcy.
Who else can we piss off?
China’s government on Thursday accused Washington of jeopardizing peace after U.S. envoys began trade talks with Taiwan aimed at deepening relations with the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing.
Talks that started Wednesday cover trade, regulation and other areas based on “shared values” as market-oriented economies, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. It did not mention China but the talks add to gestures that show U.S. support for Taiwan amid menacing behavior by Beijing, which threatens to invade.
Trade dialogues “disrupt peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” said a foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian. He called on Washington to “stop negotiating agreements with Taiwan that have sovereign connotations and official nature.”
Team Biden is like bunch of idiot kids taunting the neighbors’ dogs and throwing rocks at hornets’ nests.
Look we’re sorry…
Joe Biden No Longer Wants Vladimir Putin Ousted as Russia Leader
Germany is revolting against the plan.
I can hear Nuland and Sullivan ranting and cursing from here.
“Biden wrote” – I wonder which staffer actually authored that?
Why would Russia trust those statements? A little too late to close barn doors.
Remember, Trump was considered the child who shoots his mouth off.
Ah, The CCP has veto power over our trade relations now?
Oh yeah. Ever since Biden won.
From my readings the “peaceful” city part is true. The US wanted to see what the bomb was going to do to an urban area. It wasn’t selected because of its industrial or military value. They wanted a mostly untouched urban city.
I have a vague recollection of that.
“Imperial Japan’s miritary”
*narrows gaze*
Plus I just noticed the bio:
Do we get those notifications first?
That’s not the only r/l substitution.
Boogity boogity boogity let’s go
racingwoking!The world-famous auto racing and operating company, headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida, marked the first day of LGBTQ+ “Pride Month” with a unique version of the pride flag along with a message apologizing for actions it deemed uncharacteristic of its mission.
“As we celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, we acknowledge that recent actions have not aligned with NASCAR’s mission to be a welcoming sport for all,” the company wrote.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to create a more inclusive environment — in our workplaces, at the race track & in the stands,” it added.
Last Sunday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott waved the green flag ahead of the All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway.
I don’t know if the two are related but it would not be surprising.
Are they going to let nonconforming vehicles compete if they identify as a NASCAR?
My brain hurts from that but… the connection NASCAR seems to be trying to make is that Texas is unfriendly to people who want to drug or surgically alter their kids and that’s bad because reasons so we’re sorry?
SMDH
Ah, The CCP has veto power over our trade relations now?
No. But the Bidenettes seem to feel obligated to go out of their way to give anyone and everyone a gratuitous thumb in the eye.
Some happy news for today
Michael Avenatti, the brash California lawyer who took on then-President Donald Trump, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for defrauding his best-known former client, the porn actress Stormy Daniels.
A federal jury convicted Avenatti in February of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after a two-week trial, agreeing with prosecutors that he embezzled nearly $300,000 in book proceeds intended for Daniels.
But he seemed so trustworthy.
The hardcore Dem loons loved that guy.
They thought he was going to slay the
MadMAGA King.He’s their kind of asshole.
https://www.salon.com/2022/06/01/doug-mastrianos-largest-donor-is-shake-shacks-bread-maker_partner/
Huh.
Emphasis added.
I’ve always liked Martin’s Potato Rolls.
Now I like them even more.
There is no purpose for this except to get shake shack to ditch this supplier. It is a hit piece, nothing more.
Winner, winner. Shake Shack is very popular in NYC (and I imagine other liberal enclaves) so they want to be able to eat there guilt free as well.
Yup. Assholes, everywhere.
I use Martin rolls almost exclusively. I didn’t know they had icky politics.
Yup, and why do you suppose that is? Who was it that started cranking shit up in late 2016?
The crank started turning in earnest a lot earlier than that (e.g., Operation Fast & Furious, Operation Choke Point, Title IX Inquisition, etc.) but we weren’t supposed to notice. Part of the reason things are so “extreme” is we’re being punished for paying attention.
Neat-o.
Thanks, straff. I appreciate the tour!
Nice that the freaks can’t tear it all down. Something to be said for cultures that measure in millennia.
https://whyy.org/articles/monkeypox-philadelphia-pennsylvania-case/
Monkeypox hit PA!
Panic!
???
I expect full-on Mad Max when I’m down next weekend.
On that note: Oaks, PA Gun Show meet-up on the 11th?. I’ll repost on the PM links.
Possibly.
Don’t say sayonara!
Shonen Knife – I Am A Cat (HD+Lyrics)
Even better. Great band.
Sayonara