Full disclosure: I am a friend of marsmrsmars.

It comes off as weirdly paternalistic whenever you say that people who want to play on this MUSH "need to have a certain level of tolerance with uncomfortable history" in order to play here. First things first: the game does not bill itself as "dark" or "mature," the staff already went through the trouble of removing Adolf Hitler from leadership in Germany and outright banned ex-Nazi characters, so I don't see why there is any hand-wringing about ex-IJA characters.

Second of all: people in this thread are weirdly veering toward outright revisionism whenever they question whether or not Hirohito had any involvement in his country's crimes. His own family participated in them, and he was certainly aware of them. This is elementary school history. Any denial of that shows a complete lack of understanding, and you should not be speaking on a topic that you do not understand.

EDIT: It also comes off as oddly voyeuristic whenever people suggest that they're attracted to exploring these topics for whatever reason. As a roleplayer, I think you should consider that the themes you are interested in exploring are in a real context in this instance, and directly related to terrible suffering that is in living memory of some people alive today. If you WANT to play as a war criminal that participated in the massacre of 25 million Chinese people, I think you need to reflect on why that is.

@faraday
I understand this perspective entirely, and I think that there is room for "shades of gray" in media which portrays Imperial Japanese soldiers. However, I also think that it would be enlightening to wonder, for a moment, why there are no movies like this from the Chinese perspective.

@Groth
Bomber Harris, do it again.

The discussion of Japanese war crimes does not need to be punctuated by mention of Allied war crimes, it feels more like a disingenuous "gotcha" than a legitimate concern for these atrocities. One side participated in the deliberate ethnic slaughter of anywhere from 10 to 25 million Chinese people, and the other did not. You cannot draw an equivalency between the Japanese military's conduct in the Sino-Japanese War and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Holocaust and the fire-bombing of Dresden.

Nobody here will ever once deny that the Allies committed war crimes during World War Two, history is settled on that affair. It is wrong to draw an equivalence between these war crimes and the ones committed by the Axis, which more qualify as crimes against humanity.

The discussion of Japanese war crimes does not need to be punctuated by mention of Allied war crimes, it feels more like a disingenuous "gotcha" than a legitimate concern for these atrocities. One side participated in the deliberate ethnic slaughter of anywhere from 10 to 25 million Chinese people, and the other did not. You cannot draw an equivalency between the Japanese military's conduct in the Sino-Japanese War and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Holocaust and the fire-bombing of Dresden.

Nobody here will ever once deny that the Allies committed war crimes during World War Two, history is settled on that affair. It is wrong to draw an equivalence between these war crimes and the ones committed by the Axis, which more qualify as crimes against humanity.

I think that this conversation has spun out to the point of absurdity, but I'll say that the comparison to "Schindler's List" is absurd. Nobody walks away from Schindler's List thinking "Man, Oskar Schindler really loved Hitler."

We have taken issue with this character because they are a staunch monarchist who loves Hirohito and will ardently argue against democratic and communist ideologies. They are not an "Oskar Schindler" character.

I am familiar with the terrain of Chinese historical dramas and I can tell you that dramas about the Sino-Japanese War are very popular. The trend these days is Tang/Ming dynasty, but in the early 2000s it was all about the War of Resistance.

Well, historical fiction is not the sole realm of Hollywood. I was more (rhetorically) asking why the Chinese themselves never made such a movie.

And, to be honest, I think it's because their perspective on this atrocity is fundamentally different as the people who were subject to it. I don't think there is any room for "shades of gray" when you are the one being massacred. I think that movies like Letters from Iwo Jima or Midway come from a mindset that is fundamentally American. While the Japanese did commit war crimes against us (and we against them undoubtedly), those crimes were not on the level of "wholesale degradation of your entire country and slaughter of 25 million people."

@peasoupling
I think Japanophilia is the only reason that we're having this conversation right now. It is a matter of historical fact that MacArthur insulated the Japanese imperial family from criminal accusations for political reasons.

@faraday
I understand this perspective entirely, and I think that there is room for "shades of gray" in media which portrays Imperial Japanese soldiers. However, I also think that it would be enlightening to wonder, for a moment, why there are no movies like this from the Chinese perspective.

@Groth
Bomber Harris, do it again.

As a member of the Imperial Japanese Army, this character was (without a doubt) a participant in the crimes that were committed in China. In my opinion, whether or not they were direct or willing participants is not relevant. "Just following orders" did not work at Nuremburg and it should not work with the Sky Guard.

Just as players cannot play former Nazis, I do not think players should be able to play former IJA. There were many members of the Japanese public that protested against the actions of their nation, and there were members of the IJA that defected to the side of the Chinese. It is not completely unrealistic for Japanese characters to go against their own country, it happened many times in history. Japanese war crimes do not have to be written out of the setting in order to facilitate this.

Full disclosure: I am a friend of marsmrsmars.

It comes off as weirdly paternalistic whenever you say that people who want to play on this MUSH "need to have a certain level of tolerance with uncomfortable history" in order to play here. First things first: the game does not bill itself as "dark" or "mature," the staff already went through the trouble of removing Adolf Hitler from leadership in Germany and outright banned ex-Nazi characters, so I don't see why there is any hand-wringing about ex-IJA characters.

Second of all: people in this thread are weirdly veering toward outright revisionism whenever they question whether or not Hirohito had any involvement in his country's crimes. His own family participated in them, and he was certainly aware of them. This is elementary school history. Any denial of that shows a complete lack of understanding, and you should not be speaking on a topic that you do not understand.

EDIT: It also comes off as oddly voyeuristic whenever people suggest that they're attracted to exploring these topics for whatever reason. As a roleplayer, I think you should consider that the themes you are interested in exploring are in a real context in this instance, and directly related to terrible suffering that is in living memory of some people alive today. If you WANT to play as a war criminal that participated in the massacre of 25 million Chinese people, I think you need to reflect on why that is.