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I Me My! Strawberry Eggs Review
	Topic by: kamapuaa Posted: March 19, 2004 - 7:07 PM PST Last Reply: April 6, 2004 - 12:23 PM PDT

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author	topic: I Me My! Strawberry Eggs Review
hamano	post #61  on April 2, 2004 - 4:51 PM PST   Hey, my missing talk show guest! > On April 2, 2004 - 3:08 PM PST dpowers wrote: > --------------------------------- > hamano i disagree that the boy character is entirely held to blame. there are many institutions represented in the film and i think about half of the adults come out looking like their heads are up their butts, including the that touch near the end where the wealthy landowners' kids assess the beauty of the countryside - politely scathing. who besides the cop and various other civil servants are generous? and what exactly is the meaning of a cop protecting a victory garden from a war orphan? many ways to read that. I'm not exactly blaming Seita... He's a child and a victim of circumstances... but he was raised to be proud, a good navy son, a future warrior. The boy that he was and the way his world was headed were completely at odds. I get the feeling that the adults have come to accept the defeat and are finding ways to deal with it and move on. On any number of occasions Seita was in a position to ask for help, for himself and his sister. But he isolates himself, maybe he's aware that the time of the warriors, the celebration and glory of his dreams, has passed. He's quite determined to make a go of it alone. But he's not some streetwise survivor type, either. He's really playing at surviving, most of the time. He's not entirely aware that his sister's very life depends on him now. Like I said, I think the authors are not making it easy to say, oh, these are pure innocent children, total victims of this war situation, boo hoo. I like the complexity here, the layers in Seita's personality that keep him from being entirely sympathetic or entirely blameless. I like to think about the possible reasons why Seita makes these series of decisions that doom him and his sister. Remember those kids who poke around in the camp at one point? They are the children of the mainstream of Japanese civilian society at that time, not Seita and his sister. They don't need to fight to survive, they're just playing like regular children under the circumstances. There are no other children starving to death in that train station, just the dregs of society, such as it is. Seita didn't have to end up there. He put himself there, whether he could help it or not... I don't think the adults have their heads up their asses. I think if Seita had humbled himself and asked for their help, even those rich girls would have done something. Those girls could see a better day coming now that the war is over, and they could move back home and rebuild. Who can blame them for that? Seita could see how he fit into a world where his dad was a naval officer and Japan was invincible, but he couldn't see how he fit into the bright future that those girls could see from the veranda.
Catullus	post #62  on April 3, 2004 - 3:57 AM PST   I think the movie Grave of the Fireflies portrays Japan in a negative light more than america by far. It was his mean Japanese relatives that were the reason he ran away and when he stole some fruit and vegetables it wasn't an american farmer who kicked the crap out of him. That combined with his own horrible decision making was the reason he suffered, the americans bombing japan and his mom dying as a result from that was a small plot point. Furthermore the reason I didn't like the movie because it was one big pity party, when at any time some Japanese people could have helped them, or he could have helped himself. I don't appreciate the melodramatic symbolism and bullcrap... If I really wanted something that made me cry Id cut onions and if I wanted to watch something sad Id rather watch something much better than Grave of the Fireflies. Im sure there was some group in Japan helping war orphans btw, I seriously doubt the Japanese just left little kids out to live on the street and starve. All in all an extremely unrealistic overrated movie. Also while I like and respect Japan and its culture very very much, The country brought everything bad that happened to it during 40'-45' on itself as a whole, sure the people didn't deserve what happened to them, but their millitary and their horrible attrocities they committed in china, I really can't feel too sorry for them as a whole.
hamano	post #63  on April 3, 2004 - 6:53 AM PST   > On April 3, 2004 - 3:57 AM PST Catullus wrote: > --------------------------------- > Also while I like and respect Japan and its culture very very much, The country brought everything bad that happened to it during 40'-45' on itself as a whole, sure the people didn't deserve what happened to them, but their millitary and their horrible attrocities they committed in china, I really can't feel too sorry for them as a whole. > --------------------------------- Just replace "china" with "Iraq" or "Afghanistan" or "Vietnam" and this would express how people who are sympathetic to Al Quaeda think about the USA. Humans have an incredible ability to suppress empathy as it suits them.... Often governments and leaders require or encourage their followers to suppress empathy. Propaganda is a useful tool.
dpowers	post #64  on April 3, 2004 - 8:23 AM PST   still it's good to remember that the problems of reading the movie come from the fact that the country is still a major industrial power, a rich country with a lot of money to spend on telling itself stories - because of the influence of their national media, an internal debate they have becomes a public statement in other places - a privilege the chinese don't really enjoy, because of their own political priorities, and the cultural (dis)regard they get from the G8-ish world. granted it can be hard to differentiate baseline quality, or political discourse, from self-regard - "this thing we're fascinated with is important for everyone because we're the only ones saying anything worth talking about" - and maybe, the two things are connected anyway...
hamano	post #65  on April 3, 2004 - 10:39 AM PST   The film does have a nod to the present day Japan at the end, when there's a transition showing the ghost kids to the skyscraper nightscape. I think of that as a comment on how Seita was trapped in a certain, specific time, but the shot is rich in other nuances as well... could be a comment on the preoccupations of modern Japanese, and what they choose to remember about the war, if they bother to remember at all.
kamapuaa	post #66  on April 3, 2004 - 7:45 PM PST   > Just replace "china" with "Iraq" or "Afghanistan" or "Vietnam" and this would express how people who are sympathetic to Al Quaeda think about the USA. Humans have an incredible ability to suppress empathy as it suits them.... Often governments and leaders require or encourage their followers to suppress empathy. Propaganda is a useful tool. It's not a matter of supressing empathy. Even if you're extremely empathetic, you can believe that the Pacific war averted even more of the tragedies that Japanese conquerers were committing across Asia. Making a movie about the World Trade Center's destruction would be impossible without mentioning the 1st war in Iraq, the USA-Russian proxy war in Afghanistan, American neo-colonialism, etc. Even if people don't feel one justifies the other, their role is widely acknowledged. An anti-war movie on the subject wouldn't just show pictures of the grieving family of WTC victims, and assume if the movie's sad enough, it becomes a serious anti-war statement (I realize there was a character & plot to Grave of the Fireflies, but obviously the movie was actually about the war). Everybody know war causes suffering, and everybody know suffering is bad, but most people believe it's still necessary. That's why a movie where little orphan kids go around hungry, and the larger war context goes unmentioned, strikes me as more a trite form of self-pity & political spin, than a serious statement on the war. But, what does this have to do with Strawberry Eggs?
skybrian	post #67  on April 3, 2004 - 11:32 PM PST   re: Grave of the Fireflies and "On any number of occasions Seita was in a position to ask for help, for himself and his sister." That's an interesting thought. It's funny, it didn't occur to me that the other folks would actually help, even if he asked. With food scarce all around, and even his own relatives only grudgingly taking him in, I was under the impression that people were pretty much looking out for their own survival and unlikely to have sympathy for yet another beggar.
dpowers	post #68  on April 3, 2004 - 11:51 PM PST   that's exactly the thing the movie's trying to shift. most people don't believe the bombs that fall somewhere else are falling on anybody but the bad people. anybody within range of the explosion is guilty by proximity or they wouldn't have been there. i've heard that over and over, from people of all political stripes. we've accepted total war, but we've done it by summarily judging the victims as accessories by virtue of their death. it's twisted and it does us mental harm. the story is a personal document of the grown-up boy who lived through that and watched his sister die. the movie is a discussion of the many ways that a person can become isolated in war, in japan, in a fascist country, or under any conditions. yes the film has a lot of pity, because in japan, to express pity, to act on it, is to criticize severely the parties who caused the harm. it's hard to slip through the cracks in japan, but when you do, it's generally because you're embarrassing. to fascist japan, the people who were embarrassing were the people who got wounded. if you lost your leg, or your mother, it was a slap in the face to the dominant thinking and IT WAS YOUR FAULT. you'd get the silent treatment from the entire civilian population. and at the front, entire boats filled with folks who had families back home were intentionally sunk so as to save the commanders the embarrassment of having to surrender. i want to say something about the foundations of these ethics but i don't know them. all i can say is, from what i've seen, to get sympathy, your suffering has to be widely acknowledged and relatively uncontroversial. on the other hand, it's difficult to speak of the fire bombings of japanese cities as anything other than acts of extreme cruelty. the numbers of non-combatants, of children, who died in those fires was very large. nobody ever set fire to american children. what we did there was an atrocity, the same way that what japanese soldiers did in china, korea, the philippines, and elsewhere, were atrocities. someone mentioned that it was hard to believe that many orphans died that way. they did. they were dirty and unwanted and they died neglected and abandoned. japanese folk can be incredibly cruel. or, they can pursue indifference with exactly the same total intensity that they bring to drinking tea or folding clothes or cheering on their friends. "this is how we do it." what does anything have to do with strawberry eggs... sorry hamano...
dpowers	post #69  on April 3, 2004 - 11:53 PM PST   er, sorry, "exactly the thing the movie's trying to shift" referred to "That's why a movie where little orphan kids go around hungry, and the larger war context goes unmentioned, strikes me as more a trite form of self-pity & political spin, than a serious statement on the war."
NLee	post #70  on April 4, 2004 - 9:36 AM PDT   It's Easter Sunday today, right? What do chocolate eggs have to do with Jesus Christ coming back to life? How about chocolate bunnies? Marshmallow chickens?
AFleming	post #71  on April 4, 2004 - 10:06 AM PDT   > On April 4, 2004 - 9:36 AM PDT NLee wrote: > --------------------------------- > It's Easter Sunday today, right? > > What do chocolate eggs have to do with Jesus Christ coming back to life? How about chocolate bunnies? Marshmallow chickens? > --------------------------------- Don't scare me like that! Easter Sunday is NEXT Sunday. Today is Palm Sunday. Man, I just panicked! I have children you see. Can't screw up on those holidays! As for your other question, bunnies, chicks, and eggs have nothing to do with Jebus. They have everything to do with Eastre, the godess of fertility upon whose feast day we celebrate Easter (hence the name of the holiday). Chicks, lambs, eggs, etc are all symbols of the goddess and most especially bunnies (who were veiwed as the most fertile of animals).
hamano	post #72  on April 4, 2004 - 10:53 AM PDT   > On April 3, 2004 - 11:51 PM PST dpowers wrote: > --------------------------------- > most people don't believe the bombs that fall somewhere else are falling on anybody but the bad people. anybody within range of the explosion is guilty by proximity or they wouldn't have been there. i've heard that over and over, from people of all political stripes. I feel since Vietnam "most people" KNOW that bombs tend to fall on the innocent, no matter how "surgical" the original intent... They're too easily appeased or comforted, however, by politicians who mouth soothing platitudes about the fight between good and evil, and the advance of technology that allow us to select and kill only those judged to be evil. If someone asks about collateral damage, they need only to put on their "sad face" masks and murmur the appropriate words, like "tragic" and "under investigation".... then they raise the threat level to orange to get our minds off the subject. > if you lost your leg, or your mother, it was a slap in the face to the dominant thinking and IT WAS YOUR FAULT. Traditionally, the greatest sin is to make yourself a burden on others. You dishonor yourself and your parents/family if you put a crimp in the smooth gears of society by taking a moment to indulge in some trivial personal loss. However, this is merely the ideal, and not exactly how the norm in society actually operates. Heads of navies and armies and corporations have to comport themselves in the prescribed manner, but regular people are not reasonably required to do so. Seita is too young to figure this out. His plan of action to "not put himself in the debt of others" is to resort to stealing and court malnutrition to preserve the illusion of self-sufficient survival. Note that this way of thinking is not unlike the mentality of waging war.... appropriating and expending your nation's wealth/health, causing suffering to faceless people abroad, all acceptable and justifiable...."our nation needs to be strong to survive... our nation needs to expand to survive.... in the end everyone will see that this is all for the good and glorification of our people..." I don't believe Seita's aunt ever meant to drive Seita and his sister out. Here's my interpretation of her psychology. The same social fabric where you say pity=condemnation would also have protected the kids had they decided to stick it out under the tyranny of their aunt. Her hang-up was the resentment against the pampered military elite families which of course she was not allowed to express publicly. So she did this in private, in the form of harshness directed at the children of the military. But social conventions would have not let her turn her relatives away in a time of need, and the aunt would also have been afraid of how she would be judged if she really harmed the children or kicked them out. Seita lets her off the hook by running away. She probably told herself she couldn't be blamed if Seita decided to leave and seek out the care of other distant relatives. Had she become aware of the children's dire circumstances toward the end, she would have been compelled to help, again driven by social conventions. So if you're saying that contemporary Japanese society judged Seita and cast him out, I'd have to disagree. Seita isolates himself, in order to preserve HIS immature and misdirected sense of honor, his father's sad legacy. Yes, when everything is humming along smoothly, society condemns those who are deemed to be a burden. But the same conventions condemn those who are callous or cruel to the innocent and defenseless. Japanese culture clearly portrays such characters as unsympathetic or villainous, from Seita's aunt to the stereotypical psycho feudal lord. > you'd get the silent treatment from the entire civilian population. That's the thought in Seita's head, unfortunately for him and his sister. > i want to say something about the foundations of these ethics but i don't know them. all i can say is, from what i've seen, to get sympathy, your suffering has to be widely acknowledged and relatively uncontroversial. Whatever the foundations of "these ethics" are, I think the humanistic basis of most societies are fundamentally similar. These inscrutable social standards are really as shallow and important as the the shape of my eyes or the color of your skin. Underneath, we share more similarities than differences, essentially we're the same. Whether you're Japanese or American, we understand the golden rule, treat others as you want others to treat you, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt take care of children who have lost their parents. It's not fair to pretend to be puzzled by this... > on the other hand, it's difficult to speak of the fire bombings of japanese cities as anything other than acts of extreme cruelty. the numbers of non-combatants, of children, who died in those fires was very large. On the other hand, as many people were crushed or were burned to death by the Great Kanto Earthquake they show a bit of in Millennium Actress. The difference here is that you can draw some lines. Connect the dots. Can't tell you the number order, but there they are. A line from Seita to the dad he idolizes. A line from dad to the Navy, glorious in Seita's eyes. A line from the Navy to Pearl Harbor. A line from Pearl Harbor to the little sticks of flame that fall from the sky. A line from the sticks to the Mother's stinking corpse. A line from the mother to the treasures buried in the back yard, food available to a select class. Another line from the mother whose hands made delicious onigiri to the balls of dirt a starving child makes for herself to eat. A final line from the shining new can of fruit flavored candy to the rusty tin filled with pebbles...see, if you shake the can it still makes the same sound! These lines form the outline of the spot where Seita's corpse lay. The film-makers present us with this case, and we're the detectives looking for the killer. I know it's sentimental and unDBooherlike, but I get choked up just looking at the crime scene photos. > nobody ever set fire to american children. what we did there was an atrocity, the same way that what japanese soldiers did in china, korea, the philippines, and elsewhere, were atrocities. But isn't it nice that we (I'm a US citizen now, after all...) can sit in our armchairs, pass the remote around, and discuss all this like gentlemen? It's so abstract, what happened over there... over there... send the word... send the word... I'm just glad I think I'm figuring out for myself what to teach MY children. I see a lot of people driving around with bumper stickers that say, "I'm proud my kids only learn what Bush and Cheney want me to teach them!" > someone mentioned that it was hard to believe that many orphans died that way. they did. they were dirty and unwanted and they died neglected and abandoned. That would depend on your definition of "many"... it can be such a relative term. Many orphans are dying horrible deaths as I type this, or are being taught to hate and that it might be a good idea to learn holy prayers and strap bombs to themselves when they're all growed up. Maybe "japanese folk can be incredibly cruel" but so can Somalians or Serbians or Afghans or Cambodians or the Chinese or Israelis or Palestinians. I mean, talk about pursuing something with total intensity! Sheesh! You just gotta look in the right point in history... You'll see many "many" everywhere! > what does anything have to do with strawberry eggs... Strawberry Eggs - Fruit Candy Drops - Sweet Innocent Girls! See, I'm really good at "connect the dots." > sorry hamano... ???
dpowers	post #73  on April 4, 2004 - 7:06 PM PDT   "sorry" because i was being unfair, engaging in something near racism, by not qualifying anything. > I feel since Vietnam "most people" KNOW that bombs tend to fall on the innocent, no matter how "surgical" the original intent... They're too easily appeased or comforted, however... "know" is too strong a word for it. there is still a large percentage of americans, a vocal percentage, who doubt the innocence of foreign parties in all cases, under any conditions, and a fairly large number who will celebrate the successful launching of a war campaign, without regard for its prosecution or its aftermath. people are easily appeased/comforted because we're all a little suspicious of the rest of the world. personally i think this is why we have such evangelical zeal. how can "we" trust "them" if they're not converted to our faith? > [Seita's] plan of action to "not put himself in the debt of others" is to resort to stealing and court malnutrition to preserve the illusion of self-sufficient survival. Note that this way of thinking is not unlike the mentality of waging war.... this interpretation is foreign to me. through my eyes, it's natural that an adolescent boy, in a movie, would act this way, and he does seem to be getting the shaft from his aunt. with a little more experience he might have been able to pull it off, or with a different kind of support available from outside. in any case if seita were an american kid, i think his behavior could be completely explained by the stress of having lost his home and parent. > The same social fabric where you say pity=condemnation would also have protected the kids had they decided to stick it out under the tyranny of their aunt. my imagination may have gotten the better of me here. twice now i've seen the aunt as a victorian villain, to be escaped, ASAP, in order to endure Hard Times and be reunited with the Real Family. i think takahata plays with this, and perhaps my problem is that militarism and individualism of seita's upbringing more closely resembles my own experience here than do any japanese childhood alternatives. > Her hang-up was the resentment against the pampered military elite families which of course she was not allowed to express publicly. So she did this in private, in the form of harshness directed at the children of the military. it's hard to remember the aunt as anything but broadly uncharitable, per the victorian model. > Had she become aware of the children's dire circumstances toward the end, she would have been compelled to help, again driven by social conventions. granted, but i think they chose not to present that possibility, to leave the aunt unredeemed, in order to scare people away from behaving resentfully and uncharitably toward the needy. > So if you're saying that contemporary Japanese society judged Seita and cast him out, I'd have to disagree. Seita isolates himself, in order to preserve HIS immature and misdirected sense of honor, his father's sad legacy. the crux is the aunt. i'll have to watch her more carefully next time i see the film. i think i'm misreading her badly. partly for above reasons. > Yes, when everything is humming along smoothly, society condemns those who are deemed to be a burden. But the same conventions condemn those who are callous or cruel to the innocent and defenseless. right but, the question is, what are the criteria used to determine "innocence." > These inscrutable social standards are really as shallow and important as the the shape of my eyes or the color of your skin. Underneath, we share more similarities than differences, essentially we're the same. ... It's not fair to pretend to be puzzled by this... i've already granted the basic similarity of species and the general comparison of strengths and weaknesses, at the group levels, individual levels, everywhere, that indifference and cruelty are everywhere. i grant the very high quality of life in japan now, even after years of economic pain. i even grant that you see american TV treat central american native folk as people about as often as you see frontal nudity. it's just that... i don't get it. i'm not to the point yet where i can tell someone "these are the reasons that in the realm of the senses is a counter-argument to the ultranationalism of mishima." i find the formality of the relationships impenetrable. not inscrutable. and i know that a lot of people have this problem with japanese folk. i feel as though the real text of even a popular movie like grave of the fireflies, that has a lot of emotional and political handholds, is as distant as a car license plate that has only the chapter and verse of a bible citation. or, being unable to grasp the musicality of chinese opera. my birth society is brutal but it is also very open and easygoing, without a significant tradition of nobility or elitism. formality is totally strange. > But isn't it nice that we (I'm a US citizen now, after all...) can sit in our armchairs, pass the remote around, and discuss all this like gentlemen? It's so abstract, what happened over there... over there... send the word... send the word... I'm just glad I think I'm figuring out for myself what to teach MY children. I see a lot of people driving around with bumper stickers that say, "I'm proud my kids only learn what Bush and Cheney want me to teach them!" the past is always fair game isn't it? > Many orphans are dying horrible deaths as I type this, or are being taught to hate and that it might be a good idea to learn holy prayers and strap bombs to themselves when they're all growed up. Maybe "japanese folk can be incredibly cruel" but so can Somalians or Serbians or Afghans or Cambodians or the Chinese or Israelis or Palestinians. I mean, talk about pursuing something with total intensity! Sheesh! You just gotta look in the right point in history... You'll see many "many" everywhere! yeah it's true. my point was, just because japan has a reputation for good social behavior, don't assume it was always operated as a welfare state. wasn't directed at you, that one. well i'm pooped, hope that's not too stupid...
hamano	post #74  on April 4, 2004 - 8:20 PM PDT   > On April 3, 2004 - 11:51 PM PST dpowers wrote: > --------------------------------- > the story is a personal document of the grown-up boy who lived through that and watched his sister die. the movie is a discussion of the many ways that a person can become isolated in war, in japan, in a fascist country, or under any conditions. This is interesting because it brings up the possibility that the author of the original book (he appears in the "extras") might be projecting some guilt-ridden death wish by having Seita die. It's pretty horrible, watching someone you feel responsible for die of malnutrition then growing up with memories of it. One probably knows that as a child one could not be held reasonably responsible, and yet... There's a family story about when my little sister was a toddler... I was 2 years older. I was a big hero because my sis fell in a little goldfish pond we had in the yard, and I went and fetched my mom to pull her out. Sometimes, in one of my more sinister moods, I muse about this incident. What if I had pushed her in, feeling jealous or slighted by her presence in my life? Either way, it's a good thing that pond was so tiny. I have absolutely no memory of this thing even really happening....
hamano	post #75  on April 4, 2004 - 10:55 PM PDT   So maybe this is not a West Vs. East thing, but a North Vs. South thing, how we interpret this movie... I grew up in NJ, NY and Toronto and tended to have public school teachers that were liberal and lefty. Also, I'm more intimate with Japanese melodrama conventions and arch-types. I think I can see how an American from certain regions/backgrounds might compare/equate Seita to a sort of Huck Finn character, and the Aunt to maybe something like Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. And maybe Takahata is playing with that, too. He makes us wish Seita was Robinson Crusoe, and yeah, for a while it looks like they might make it! The kids are just camping out while they wait for things to settle down! I've read a hundred American and European juvenile fiction titles where the kids camp out (Would modern parents even let their kids pitch a tent in the back yard anymore? After what happened to Polly Klaas?) and nothing really bad happens to them, or they have an adventure and come out on top. Those kinds of books are very popular in Japan. Seita seems like an optimistic, intelligent, outgoing and resourceful boy so we root for him, EVEN THOUGH we were shown where he ends up right at the beginning of the film, and EVEN THOUGH as the film progresses any reasonable adult has moments where you think, "Huh? Is that really a good idea? Why doesn't he ask someone for help?" I'm not coming to the defense of the Aunt... she IS pretty mean, although I can see where her ill will might be coming from. In a lot of respects, she IS a J-drama archetype, the Japanese version of the Victorian Cruella you're thinking of. But in a stereotypical J-drama, the kid who is the hero of the story ENDURES the harsh treatment, does his best in spite of it, and grows in the process. Maybe through his effort the cruel aunt begins to see his good side. Maybe he manages to find supporters elsewhere... the point is, the real J-drama hero doesn't run away, he sticks it out. So the fact that Seita doesn't stick it out means something to me, and to his credit I believe Takahata also invests the Aunt with a bit more depth than the typical J-drama "cruel Aunt" character. Look how nice the daughter (the older cousin) of the mean Aunt seems. I wish you could see a show called Oshin somewhere. The title character starts out as a 6 year old girl born to a very poor family, and she is sent out to be an indentured servant. This show was a big hit in Japan a couple of years before GotF hit the theaters, and went on to be a popular show in other Asian countries as well. Anyway, the poor child has to work her butt off, suffers cruel and indifferent treatment, and manages to stick it out. I still remember a scene where she is sent out in freezing weather to wash rice in a creek, and how the cold cold water of the stream hurts her hands. I think it would be safe to say that most adults who saw GotF in Japan also saw Oshin, so the degree of meanness he suffers would have seemed pretty minor. Actually, the aunt in GotF gives Seita plenty of opportunities to contribute and fit into her household, but Seita is a bit of a layabout (he doesn't go to school, he doesn't volunteer, he doesn't help around the house) and the aunt's frustration with him is fairly explicit.
hamano	post #76  on April 4, 2004 - 11:27 PM PDT   Because of this thread I just watched GotF again (I watched parts of Strawberry Eggs again, too!) Yowza yowza, I think some of the power of this film might be lost on some people posting here who don't have kids of their own. There's a scene where a very weak Setsuko offers food she made to her brother, but they're rocks! She's totally delusional, and the look of panic that crosses Seita's face! I could describe the feeling but you wouldn't understand how it really feels, like someone scooping out your gut. There are fewer things scarier than a wife who faints dead away in your arms, and a child who has a fever and starts spouting nonsense.... oh, and a febrile seizure brought on by high fever... that's scary, too.
dh22	post #77  on April 5, 2004 - 6:19 AM PDT   > On April 2, 2004 - 3:51 PM PST dpowers wrote: > --------------------------------- > eugenics, chemical weapons tests, mass killings, "comfort women," they did a bundle. they treated us like guests, in comparison. > --------------------------------- in comparison to who, are you saying? to how we treated them, or how they treated the chinese?
dh22	post #78  on April 5, 2004 - 6:31 AM PDT   oh. sorry for being two days late.
NLee	post #79  on April 5, 2004 - 8:28 AM PDT   Okay, I saw the second disc of Strawberry Eggs last weekend. Remember I said the first volume of this anime is cute, sweet and innocent? Well, remind me not to judge a series by the first volume. Episode 5 is suddenly filled with big-breasted high school girls and lots of jiggling. So sinisterguffaw, you may want to give this series another chance. ^_^ But as it turns out, this is still part of the comedy, and there is an important lesson to be learned. (think of the lecturing Mahoro always give to Suguru in Mahoromatic)
dpowers	post #80  on April 5, 2004 - 9:08 AM PDT   woah. 297 episodes. even the people who didn't see it would have been thinking about it. see that's what i was talking about before about the african film series. it takes a little work to discover context. h-sensei, can you think of a japanese novel that tells a like story? dh22 - yeah i meant comparing how the japanese treated the americans to how they treated folk in the countries they occupied, and this was reciprocated after the war. as far as i know, we didn't prosecute any of the japanese commanders for war crimes, and we refused to turn over anyone for trial in newly communist china. this is important because some people use japanese war crimes as justification for the nukes and the fire bombings. the fact is: americans didn't really give a crap about how east asia was treated, afterward. in the west there was both NATO and nuremberg, in the east, only the cold war mattered.

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