On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 19:54:52 GMT, "DALing"
daling43[delete]-at-hotmail.com wrote:

what's worse is the current tendency by the Japanese to either lay down WWII
or discount those actions entirely. It's like they are either so embarassed
by their actions they want to forget them or just brush them under the rug.

It's a walking contradiction. What you say is true, but on the other
hand they are thoroughly pacificistic and, while ethnocentric, are not
"nationalist" in the sense of saluting flags, pledges of allegiance,
frequent national anthems, etc. There was an uproar from the teachers
about 10 years ago when the gov't wanted to put national flags back
into school classrooms, where they hadn't been for decades. I'm not
sure how that came out.