The axis - Forward 60 years.
Every friday, I have these classes where the teacher grabs many newspaper articles about different subjects, and then comment on them. Yesterday he was reading one that mentioned that Japan is the country with the highest percentage of people over 65 years in its population, and also the country with the lowest percentage of people under 15 years.
Then he noticed that in both “Top 5″ tables were also Germany and Italy. His commentary was inevitable “the countries that lost the war”.
Now, a very interesting discussion could follow about wether the two facts are connected or not, and to what degree. But that wasn’t what came to my mind at the moment.
If you stay for any length of time in Japan, you’ll come across people who use the “japan is the country that lost the war” as an excuse to a series of things, positive, negative or trivial. For these people, “Country which lost the war” is sometimes admitted with a kind of “damn we were caught” shame, or with a grim pride, but nonetheless consideret to be part of their japanese identity, as if the second world war was something which affected them as directly as it affected Togo (the effective chief of state of japan during WWII). And thus, something that has influence in almost all aspects of contemporary Japan.
On the other hand, it seems to be exactly the opposite in current Germany. Althought I hadn’t experienced it first hand, it seems to be common knowledge that the easiest way to anger a german is to draw lines between german and nazis, or between germany and the third Reich. Nazi propaganda and denial of the holocaust are censored and outlawed there (iirc). In short, is as if the germans want to put a stone over their past, and say to all the world that current germany and WWII germany are two absolutely different countries, which happen to share nothing but their geographical location. (This is the image that I have).
Now, a very interesting discussion could follow about these two instances, why the two countries have such different attitudes toward their past, and which one is more appropriate (if either). But that’s not where my thought flowed to next.
What about Italy? I mean, whenever I think about second world war’s axis powers, Germany or Japan spring immediately to mind, with mussolini coming as a distant third. And while the first two countries have obvious past issues, does Italy have any WWII axis power issues? I can’t remember hearing of any, and in fact the reverse link Italy -> WWII Axis seems unlikely to come up spontaneously. Why is it so?
I tried looking a little into wikipedia, but besides lots of US and USSR bashing, couldn’t find much. Interesting. I wonder if someone raised in the EU would have a different point of view.