Edward Becerra wrote:

At 01:37 AM 10/7/1999 -0600, David Johnston wrote:

Aw man, not the Rape of Nanking routine again.  Why would an Amazon care
anything about an atrocity carried out by one group of Outsiders on
another group of Outsiders a good 1500 miles away?  It's nothing to
do with them.  The valley they live in is well beyond the area that
was ever controlled by the Japanese, although the Japanese might
have sent out an expedition looking for all that magic stuff in
the vicinity.

        Dave, the invasion of China and the subsequent atrocities
were a defining point in Chinese history. Before, the Chinese had
regarded the Japanese as their inferiors, despising them. AFTER that,
they _feared_ and hated the Japanese as the Enemy.

I know that the Chinese still harbour hard feelings about it but the 
Amazons are not Chinese in that sense.  They are culturally different, 
radically different, and do not identify with the Chinese.  They 
consider everyone outside their village (and maybe a couple of nearby 
villages) to be a foreigner.  To expect the Amazons to care about the 
Rape of Nanking is like expecting a Tibetan, or a Taiwanese from before 
the Republican Chinese invaded, to care.  They simply don't identify 
with the Chinese as a people despite living inside the boundaries of 
China.  Now to be sure from the perspective of the Japanese, the Amazons 
are Chinese on the principle that "Wogs begin at Calais", and the 
Chinese would not concede that the Amazons aren't Chinese for the same 
reason they won't concede that the Taiwanese aren't Chinese but things 
would look very different to the Amazons.  Their perspective is so 
parochial that unless the Japanese did something that affected the 
Amazons, they would regard them as "just another bunch of foreigners".  

Now to be sure, the Japanese might have sent out an expedition into the 
region.  It has a number of very interesting things of potential 
military use.  But to me it would make far more sense for the old lady 
to fondly reminisce about that Japanese company they wiped out in the 
good old days for daring to intrude on the Amazons than to worry about 
an atrocity as remote to her as the activities in Yugoslavia are to 
someone from Normandy.


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