Natiolism without theory
Autor: Maybi | Publicado: 2013-04-23T23:43:00-03:00

I was doing my homework when it came to my headphones a Chico Buarque's song, "Meu caro amigo" (my dear friend) and I started thinking about militarism, repression, nationalism... As I mentioned in the title: no theory, just thinking in the library.

First I thought over Latin Americans fighting dictatorship. Then it came up to my mind how ashamed&nbsp; many of my Brazilian friends and I am of our armed forces. Not that we think they are incompetent or should be better. From my point of view, it's something related to how we see our past (the coup d'état followed by the 2 decades of military government) and its consequences in the current actions and reactions of Brazilian police and government.

That's when I started the inevitable comparison with the situation in Japan. From my perspective, Japanese people in general are very apathetic, specially concerning the current reality and their recent history (II WW onwards).&nbsp; I was now wondering if this attitude might be purposeful: if I don't know what's going on, I can avoid discussion, so that I can avoid conflict (the society that avoids conflicts in any forum, amen!), and whatever happens is never gonna be my fault.

&nbsp;For those who aren't aware of what happens here frequently, I'll explain (as short as I can) a representative example.

There's a Shinto Shrine called Yusukuni, where the Japanese pray for the spirits of people who died fighting in wars Japanese caused or participated in, such as II WW. That means that those guys who raped and killed women in ocuppied territoies, killed people in general with extreme violence, and so on (for my "legal" friends, you can just check the Rome Statute and think that Japanese army committed basically all the crimes listed in it) are honored there. During the American occupation, American negotiators wanted the extinction of this shrine, it was a polemic issue. In the end, they had to let it go, and the Japenese "gave up" on the Emperor but maintained the shrine.

At least once a year, Japanese politicians (including some prime ministers) visit the temple under the attention of the media, despite of the official complaints of its neighbors that keep asking Japan to recognize properly the History. Every time the visit happens, we se diplomatic reactions from China and from South Korea. The Japanese government just says the visit is not made in official capacity and deplore the reactions of its neighbors ("the visit shouldn't affect our bilateral relations").

What about the Japanese people? What they say? I never heard/saw a word. They keep voting for those politicians; there's no relevant movement against the existence of the shine. Nationalism here is still strong and extreme right-wing movements that would be forbiden in Brazil for example, are allowed in Japan. It's very common to listen some groups making protests on the streets shouting, for example, "foreigners, go home! You aren't welcome".

When I as younger and didn't have a critical perspective about the world that surrounded me, I used to think we're bad bad Brazilians: we don't celebrate the independence day for real, we don't praise our military, we aren't eager to sing the national anthem, and we love our flag only during the world soccer competitions. Nowadays, I can only think we are nationalists in a much more positive way: we recognize our history and praise our positive characteristics. I used to see and hear everywhere in Europe that Brazil is related immediately to joy and beauty. Every time I said "I'm Brazilian", the person immediately smiled.
(I wouldn't see it's the same here, but this is a topic for a new post...)