MovieChat Forums > The Railway Man (2014) Discussion > Abe and his war criminal grandpa would h...

Abe and his war criminal grandpa would have a real good laugh at this

posted 10 years ago by JacquesDemy
3 replies | jump to latest

Even though it is based on real people, the story and its naive understanding of war history and war crimes are just way out of time, especially considering the rise of Abe and the right-wing establishment's absolute domination of Japanese domestic politics. This is a time that Japanese politicians don't even care to conceal their militarist agenda or nuclear ambitions. they publicly deny war crimes, declare revisionist historic views and get big applause from domestic political circus. It is hardly an ambiguity game anymore. Just let the pacifist facade collapse and how dare you play victim card on us, that is the current mentality in Japan.

It is just sad to see people miss the big picture and totally ignore the deeply-rooted dishonesty and paranoid in Japanese culture. Reconciliation film like this one is really just an impotent feel-good farce that has nothing with Japanese reality.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] MitchumsGal 10 years ago

You've missed the point that this is/was Lomax and Nagase's reality.

Canning: I'm the new Will.
Kalinda: You're not the new Will.

[–] Kawada_Kira (7269) 7 years ago

This movie is a true story about two people who lived through the war and reconciled afterward. It wasn't about the wider war or historical memory of it. The setting was also in the 1980s, long before the Abe government.

But yes, Abe and his Nippon Kaigi clique and their historical revisionism and militarism are extremely dangerous, and unfortunately no one is paying attention to the danger except China and North and South Korea, which Western countries don't take seriously. China, North Korea and to a smaller extent South Korea warn of the danger, and Westerners roll their eyes, if they hear it at all, which they usually don't. The Abe government denies Japan's historical crimes and tries to rewrite the constitution to remove the barriers that prevent Japan from committing such crimes again. When China and Korea react, they're called the aggressors, and Japan is called the victim that needs big strong America to come save it. It's enough that Japan is serving America's interests in its new Cold War against China; nothing else matters, even if fascists are coming to power in Japan again.