Hey, the street can run two ways! We can both think the other is pretty cool.

Japan's active interest in Germany actually stems from around the end of the Meiji era, when a lot of German educators, scientists, and other such folks were brought over by the government to help Japan modernize. The German Empire's sense of orderliness, scientific advancement and emphasis on education really did it for a lot of the Meiji-era politicians, who gradually modelled civil government more and more on German modes of conduct than their earlier, French-inspired modes. The Japanese school system, for instance, is very much inspired and modelled on the Prussian and Imperial German school systems.

Things cooled off for a bit when German decided it wanted a piece of the East Asia pie.

But then Japan thought they were pretty nifty again once the Weimar Republic had been underway for 3 or so years. You can dig up a lot of old magazines from the Taisho period with German titles and art styles, and also a lot of glamorourization of Weimar Berlin.

One quality the fuhrer has: now that he's dead he does no more harm.

TBH, I think the Japanese like the grandness of Germany's past, what with the holy teutonic knights and the almighty Holy Roman Emperor and such -- historical Germany is a lot like the Japan of Europe, if you think about it. Which is pretty much what you just said. But also, the fact that Germany is the only place with more fucked up porn than Japan has to count for something




Like... seriously? Or are you just being ironic? The man's memory certainly does harm people, I know of at least one person murdered in the U.S. by a group of Hitler-obsessed neo nazis last year. Though the really ironic thing is that the U.S., which fought to kill Hitler, protects peoples' rights to worship him in public. I mean, pledging allegiance to a former enemy of the state would be considered treason in other places (it's the same with the Confederacy, too!). And Germany, the country that literally followed the man to hell (but not back, because he was dead before they recovered) bans that sort of thing. Though don't get me wrong Germans, I'm glad that your lack of free speech prevents nazi-ism from regaining too strong of a foothold in the place where it's most likely to be resurrected.

Hey we...oh, wait, there was something.
But frankly, i don't know anybody who gets turned on by Anscheisspornos.
Okay, they wouldn't be likely to admit it, but please don't believe we are a country full of coprophiliacs.



If there's one place in the world where fascism would not make it's big comeback, it's Germany.
It's not that we don't have morons over here who haven't learned jack from history, but fortunately, they're really in the minority and established parties wouldn't make the same mistakes as in the Weimar Republic again (remember that Hitler could not have seized power without the aid of several conservatives such as the Zentrumspartei or various revisionists from the Wilhelminian days).

I don't think that's because of censorship, either, but because every German has been confronted over and over again with what fascism ultimately leads to.

But as far as the censorship thing is concerned, the point is mostly moot nowadays anyway.
I recently got into a quite heated debate with a friend on wether it would be justified to block acces to video footage from nazi bands on youtube.
As disgusting as it may be, you couldn't prevent this without resorting to means of control similar to what the People's Republic of China is employing.
I don't see the point in becoming totalitarian to fight totalitarianism.

Or, at least meaning I'm not white. The specifics don't really matter, if you're a minority trying to live outside of enclaves. You don't face overt racism much anymore, but subtle prejudice is still common.

And when I said I'm from the Tir, it's because I like in the state of Oregon, which became Tir Tairngire in Shadowrun.

Not much prejudice? But you're a filthy...

OREGONIAN!

@Rasumichin: Sadly, censorship is the new province of liberals. Not long ago, liberals were in the minority, and they fought hard for the right to express themselves and offend the squares who controlled society. Then most of the squares died off, and the liberals who are in charge now have decided that the best way to make people stay liberal is censorship. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those paranoid liberal-haters, I myself am a liberal. But mainstream liberals have actually created a huge backlash in rural America, leading to such atrocities as Bush and Palin, by threatening to silence those who disagree with them. They don't want people to say anything racist, sexist, or sexually explicit, because all of that harms society by making people think bad thoughts about disliking other races or treating women as objects. Instead of punishing people for bad actions, just like their conservative forebears, they've decided that the proper way to control society is to censor thoughts by keeping bad information away from people who are too irresponsible to handle it (everyone).

What really scares me is how good a job they're doing, at least in Europe. Because most (all?) of Europe doesn't have a clear constitution guaranteeing free speech, the establishment feels free to censor bad information to "protect" people from it. After all, it's hard to keep young people from radicalizing into neo-nazis. You have to make sure that they're included in society, that they have jobs, that they have opportunities and aren't stuck in a backwater somewhere, blaming the government for their poverty. But it's a lot easier to try and choke off all information about nazism, and the government will go to great lengths to take the easy way out. Nevermind that persecuting a minority just makes it stronger.

*raises an eyebrow* Don't you mess with the Oregonians Larme. We have a hell of a lot of military in Washington, and we don't take no guff when people diss on Oregon, Idaho, or British Columbia. (It's good to be from a state that has it's own border 'states').

(Side note: Washington is SUCH a wierd state. A huge amount of the west coast's military, plus Microsoft, Boeing, UPS, Starbucks, etc etc. Yet a vast majority of the state is rural, and geographically it's republican. We on our own (as much so as the fed gov will let us anyway) trade with most of the Pac Rim. We're either in the first 3 states to adopt a new (normally stupid) law or policy, or we never approve it until the federal goverment makes us. And we keep electing politicians who we (supposedly) don't hate, yet we keep approving citizen legislation that is directly against what said politicians want.)



Really? I really like Horizon because they are just so dang evil! They make nice, but you know they are totally setting up a more subtle power base than most of the other Megas. (See: Rifts - Coalition States.) Their image to us is basically what Aztechnology's image is supposed to be to the general public in SR.



Actually I assume most of the Megas don't have huge standing armies. When you defuse enough "security" personel among the number of holdings the corps have, you have a pretty large "army." I assume the megas have special strike teams, and small but powerful standing armies, with the rest of their "army" basically being made up of the higher end security personal who they transfer and consolidate in one place when they need it. Plus they rent out their "real" armies to make ends meet. (Basically for a organization that large, sometimes you need to take hits to the bottom line to prepare for a horribly rainy day.)

Are you kidding me? I'm from Washington! And those places blow! Especially Idaho. If you're from Washington, and you think Washington likes Idaho... well all I can say is that you must be from the other Washington

Regarding corporate militaries, corporations aren't just businesses in SR. Each one is actually a nation state. People don't buy stock in a company that's simply making widgets for a profit, they buy stock in a sovereign nation that's making widgets for a profit. A sovereign nation that, at any time, could be gobbled up by its rivals either militarily or economically. A corporation must be strong on both fronts. Otherwise, rival corps will swoop in, capture their assets by force, and moon them when they protest. There's a legal system in place, but as long as the bad actor is mightier than the victim, the legal system is probably not going to help. As I understand it, the global political situation in Shadowrun is kept stable with military deterrence -- the big corporate council dealie is only nominally in control, and war is averted only as long as it remains bad for business.

*laughs* Where in Washington are you from? Idaho protects us from Montana, just like Oregon protects us from California. They are both terribly important as border states. Washington to Oregon/Idaho is like the US to Canada. We love our little brothers.

Yeah, the corporate council is kinda like if you gave nukes to a handful of people who were located in a position that made them invulnerable to relaliation, but who have no interest in killing everyone. The corporate council sits there and goes "Kids, don't make us work, otherwise you will regret it... *glare*"

I kinda like that cold war aspect of the game.

No, they're not. They're really so clean, according to the background provided. THEY HAVE NO SKELETONS OF NOTE IN THEIR CLOSET. Where that would be comparable to Aztech, which is run by cosmic horrors, practices ritual blood magic on a grand scale and seeks to bring about the end of the world as we know it is totally beyond me.

My oldest child (child #2 due next month) is half Japanese, half English but she looks Japanese. My oldest brother also married a woman who happens to be white and their son looks like his dad. Yeah, I think we have the same parental concerns here.

I would not say so much that Japan is facinated with the victor, but lacking China's world view that 'we are the center' Japan has been willing to borrow from proven winners. When Japan was moderizing in the late 19th C. the Germans were the biggest baddest army in the world so Japan patterned those. The British had the biggest baddest navy so Japan copied those. Traditional Japanes school uniforms today still mirror that, with boys uniforms drawn from Prussian uniforms and Grils uniforms english sailors.

Korea was conquored finally by Japan in 1905 and did terrible things there, but Korea was for centuries caught between China and Japan the way Poland was caught between Russia and the Germans.

In 1945 the US became the first people to conquor Japan since the Ainu were pushed out. So Japan, helped by occupation, adopted much of that winning culture. Somehow though, Japan has managed to hold onto its indiginous culture and religion while still advancing technologically/economically/politically.

*tosses a flag at Hermit* I call BS on that. Yeah right, they are clean. Your going to buy into that propaganda?

How are they comparable? Exactly how I said they were. In SR Aztechnology has the squeaky clean image to the general masses. Horizon has the sqeaky clean image to us as runners. (Aztechnology we know about, Horizon we'll find out how evil they are.)

Material that's presented to us by sourcebooks in a third-person "this is the way it is" text, matter-of-factly stating the OOC truths behind the setting? That stuff's not "propaganda." Or, at least, it's not supposed to be.

What exactly is it that makes you think Horizon is "so danged evil?" And don't just fall back on the "they've got to be evil, they're a megacorp!" line, please. Cite specific examples of evil things they do.

Sorry, I go by published material and the devs saying they presented horizon as 'evil, though a different kind of evil' in corp enclaves. Because they suck people dry of creative energy and the Dawkins group is a bit judgemental, they are consideredn to be 'evil' enough. Sorry, no revelations about how crown of bone runs the corp, or maybe the avatar of Nyarlathotheb, are to be expected.

Didn't they totally trick us with the Universal Brotherhood, way back in the day? Or was the whole bug spirit thing a known part of the story from the beginning? Assuming they did trick us, that would be an example of how "official" good guys turned out to be very bad...

But maybe they just wanted to create a Google analog! A huge, powerful media company that is not evil, except insofar as how it manages everything for its own benefit like a corporation would be expected to. I wonder if the new verb for web search is "Horizon." But that would sound lame... Maybe Horizon bought google, so we can still google stuff! Whee!

The only state at least in Western Europe without a written constitution is, AFAIR, the UK.
Germany certainly does have a written constitution and it also includes freedom of speech and explicitly states that censorship is unconstitutional.
However, there are legal loopholes, allowing for various forms of censorship.
Most can be compared to what the FCC in the US is doing.
The main difference is that it's flat out illegal to brandish nazi insignia for propaganda reasons (much like it's illegal to use a confederate flag in the US, but more strictly enforced) and to deny that the shoa happened (understandably, it's a cultural taboo over here to either trivialize or glorify the holocaust).

A notable difference is that the German constitution was designed specifically to prevent a resurrection of fascism after WWII, so there is -in theory- the possibility to outlaw organizations actively working to overthrow the state and erect a totalitarian system.
However, this is difficult in practice- a recent example is the completely failed attempt to outlaw the NPD, a nationalist party that maintains extensive contacts with the neonazi scene.





Don't forget that they maintain Clockwork Orange style brainwashing penintentiaries outside of LA and actively destroy memes perceived as detrimental to their interests.
They are certainly not Azzie level evil (unless Cline is a shedim...might explain their good relations to Asamando), but i expect a lot of skeletons in their closet to be dug up in future publications.
Horizon is systematically trying to brainwash people, even cultures as a whole and this offers too many possibilities to be passed up in the future.
To me, their goody two shoes image appears like a systematic setup by the developers, much like in the case of the UB.
Probably without cosmic monstrosities pulling the strings behind the scenes, but evil nevertheless.

Yeah, the question is, how do we deal with that? Your kids will look Japanese, but lack the Japanese "soul". They won't fit in 100% in either the American or Japanese societies. I'm sure they'll adjust, but in the meanwhile, I wouldn't wish that personal crisis on anybody.

The tack I'm trying is to treat "Japanese" like being "German": It's just a funny little thing about you, that means you occasionally eat funny foods and have to put up with Grandpa's stories about the old country. What tack are you trying?

We probably have a pretty fair SR mix of east and west in our house. My husband is English, not just English parents but actually born there talks funny etc. The art in our house is a mix of the cultures and with SR having big influential Japanese corps that might be pretty common. Our family room has a hardwood floor and low comfortable furniture. Our dinning room and living room are more English country manor with pub signs in the dinning room. Our small back garden has a cherry tree planted when my first child was born, and several rose bushes as well.

So we plan to tell our children they are American, which means a mix of different peoples’ culture. We can show how our children how their English ‘nanny’ and Japanese ‘grand ma both do things differently but still love them. My husband has accepted my family’s tradition/habit of taking shoes off at the door, leading to a few interesting discussions about balance and muddy shoes. I cook recipes taught me by mother and some I learned from my mother in law. We can argue about putting milk in tea, barbarian, or what is the starch with dinner, rice or potatoes and what is the protein, fish/chicken, lamb/beef but in general we want our children to grow up knowing that these are just the way we do things and people whose parents came from other lands may do things differently.

My biggest fear is how other children may perceive her. Where I grew up in New York there was a big Japanese population. There isn’t in Philadelphia. All the minority problems I faced, misunderstandings if prejudice is too strong a word, will they be worse for my children or will the world be a little more understanding? I was the youngest of 3. By the time I got to school the response was “Oh God, another Kurimoto.� My brothers had a reputation but they also protected me. Only once did a boy through a racial word at me and my brothers made an example of him.

Of course my brothers and I are all ethnic Japanese. We can ‘pass’ for Japanese. But the Japanese in Japan are xenophobic-see the title of this thread. And frequently look down on people who are not ‘pure.’ If I teach my children to revere the traditions of land of their grand parents and then they are discriminated against by these people, what will happen?

I want my children to grow up understanding and embracing the American melting pot. My fear is that they will encounter other people who do not.

It goes both ways. If everyone's not constantly reminded of how alien you might be, they can more easily accept you as American. But when they are reminded, the mistakes are often larger in scope.

I also hope to raise my daughter as American. But like you, I don't know if others will be able to accept her as such. I'm sure we both have tales to tell about "misunderstandings", both among the Japanese and the American communities. You're not Japanese enough to be Japanese, and not American enough to be American; believe me, I know that tune.

What also bugs me is what happens to a female? I don't know anything about growing up as a girl, so other than banning Barbie dolls, I don't know how to raise her without appearance-anxiety. Since you had two brothers, did you notice anything different about how you grew up, the problems you faced, the expectations put on you?

I think that you are right about teaching your children how different people do things in different ways and that different doesn't mean wrong or of lower dignity. By teaching your kids to live accepting other people ways is much better than teaching them to venerate an ideal, if the ideal is disproven the psychological consequences would be potentialy dire, in the specifical case of raising your children so they follow the japanese proper ways (a bit hard if they sorrounded by people that don't), just to have them find themselves rejected by that society that they were raised to be part of said consequences would be much worse.
Your desire of shielding them from the hardship of life is comprensible but (sadly) the only way for preventing hardship is resolving all the problems for them, which would require to control their life and would strip them of their freedom (at least until they grow fed up and start doing things their own way); the best thing is to explain them the reasons of the various way of life and to make sure that they understand them but to leav to them the choise of how they want to live their life, the hardship will come but that's unavoidable, stand at their side but let them face the problems, it will make them stronger.
With this I just wanted to show my support (in spirit at least, there's not much else I can do) not to tell you how to raise your children, nobody knows the right ways to do so, all you (and anyone else) can do is doing your best.

P.S.
If some "pure" Japanese think themselves better than your kids because they aren't "pure", just pity them because their selfdelusion preventes them from understanding much of life; unless said "pures" step over the line and try to commit violence, in which case just do what's needed to protect your offspring.

Just relax a bit, saying "what am I going to do?" won't do any good.
When problems will come do what you think it's the best thing to be done; here in Italy we have a proverb: "è inutile fasciarsi la testa prima di essersela rotta", it's useless bandaging your head before have it broken.
Also can anyone define the meaning of "American"? Let your doughter to just be herself, and avoid spoiling her.

*laughs* I'm sorry, no I don't really think Horizon is as flat out evil as Aztechnology.

But yes Critias, much of the assumption is based on the fact that is a Megacorp. There are few "good" corporations today (and many are flat out evil in their disregard for anything but the bottom line), and it's pretty much a fact in SR that there are not good megacorps. I think Rasumichin said it well (and Larme).

Horizon has a massive power base which they use to destroy what is inconviently in their way. Being able to control the masses is a hugely powerful tool. Just because we haven't been clued in to thier long term plans doesn't mean they are going to stay 'warm and fluffy' forever. In their own way, I think they have the potential to end up being the most powerful/destructive megacorp. It's a more subtle power than the rest of the corps, but it has the potential to be the most far reaching. *shrugs one shoulder*

Btw, Rasumichin do you have a source for the Confederate Flag thing? Because I've never heard anything like that, outside of people complaining (and sueing over it) that it shouldn't be flown over the state capitals or be on (or be) the state flag.

Dude, I wouldn't even worry about it. I'm half Japanese, and people sometimes mistake me for Filipino or hispanic. That being said I've almost never had problems with blatant racial issues. So really I just wouldn't sweat it.

Ha, ha, that being said, I actually don't really like Japan that much. I mean, I used to when I was a little kid, but not really anymore. So I was never playing up the Japanese culture thing in public, ever.

I have faced blatant racial issues, although I think I come from a different generation than you guys. Anyway, blatant racial issues isn't the problem. It's the more subtle ones that cause issues and identity crises.

Dude? She's a lady!!!

In my opinion Horizon stand to become a corporate power.
By controlling the consumers they will affect other corps bottomline, in order to avoid incurring in a loss of credibility they will shy away from much of the dreck that other corps get involved into (the best way to avoid skeletons to pop up at the most inopportune moment is to not have them), they will expose some misdeed from time to time to keep the other corps on their toe and the masses hooked; however when the other corps will realize that the mass medias is their turf and they have to come to term with it (and realize that is cheaper hiring them as PR consulents instead of waging a mediatic war) they will just grease Horizon hands, and maybe commission a scandal or two to keep the masses attenction away from where could hurt them.
As I see Horizon stand to be more hypocrit than evil, as some pofessional said (I think it was in Corporate Enclaves) their job wasn't entertain people, it was making them buy alot of crap; they will be the mesmerizing lights that distract the consumers from the reality, the screen behind which corporate power hides its dirty secrets.
They don't have much of choise, either that or having the other corps eventualy get realy fed up and ally to take them down; which course of action is most likely from an economical and logical point of view? Getting rich or getting hanilated?

Hey! The English speak proper English. That's why it's called English! It's you filthy colonials that speak with funny accents

and is having it spread like wildfire thanks to large scale culture export.

Indeed but your proper accent makes sometimes difficult for foreigners to understand you.
Speaking is about comunication.

This one's pretty far off-topic, barring the recent Horizon-related posts above. I'm going to close it down, mostly so that it doesn't get reborn in a few months when someone searches it up. Please continue SR related conversations in a new topic.

No warnings are gonna be given on this one; nothing deserves any such action. But, keep in mind that we don't have an off-topic area here at Dumpshock, so kindly stick to SR and not to RL cultural debates, however interesting they may be.