·japan: beh-na-ali-tsosie · planes: wo-tah-de-ne-ih · transport: dineh-nay-ye-hi · weapon: beh-dah-a-hi-jih-gani what role did these and other terms like them have in world war ii?

Explanation:

Japan has struggled with the legacies of its imperial aggression for decades.[1] Neither domestically nor internationally has the nation been able to find a formula which would put the so-called “history problem” behind it. Germany, in contrast, seems to have been very successful at confronting the problem of the Nazi past. Its neighbors do not fear the country and the “German problem”—once Europe’s biggest worry—no longer defines the geopolitics of the region. Why is this the case? And why do we observe the differences in how the two nations approached their aggressive histories? The answer usually goes something like this: “Germans have honestly reflected on their past, apologized for it, and paid their dues. The Japanese have not.” From this a prescription typically follows: if reconciliation is to take place in East Asia, Japan needs to be more like Germany.

I do not object to German-Japanese analogies and the discussion of their memory cultures in principle. Neither do I disagree with the efforts to push Japan to better address its legacies of rampant militarism. Yet, I find that much of the current German-Japanese comparative discourse operates on assumptions that are unwarranted.[2] In my view, this leads to gross oversimplifications. The purpose of this essay is to point out some of these problems, and to offer a few thoughts on how Germany and Japan can be compared, and where such comparisons reach their useful limits.