[EVA] Religion and Gainax was RE: [EVA] Moura interviews

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 7:24 PM,  <once at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
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> -----Original Message-----
>>From: V V <frumious99 at yahoo.com>
>>Sent: Dec 22, 2009 2:16 PM
>>To: "The english-language evangelion mailing list." <evangelion at eva.onegeek.org>
>>Subject: Re: [EVA] Religion and Gainax was RE: [EVA] Moura interviews
>>
>>my functional explanation for "why are so many things in the series German"? is:
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>>1-during World War II, ignoring the fact that Japan was allied with Germany, I've seen in documentaries and such on wartime Japan that pretty much all European or "Foreign" culture was banned, except for German stuff: i.e. radio stations could only play Beethoven and such.  Just as its cool/geeky/trendy to know Japanese in America, I've gathered that just behind knowing English in Japan, it's trendy to know German.  German pop culture stuff as noted before, etc.  This is on a general level.
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> There's some truth to that stuff about foreign culture being banned, although remember, Italy, with its own rich culture, was also an Axis ally of Japan and Germany, and there were other pro-Axis foreign nations such as Vichy France that were less politically suspect. However, there was a general trend as the war ground on to regard enjoying anything "fancy" as unpatriotic, and that included enjoying foreign culture, even cuisine. As always, these suspicions fell harder on those with less influence, money, or the wrong connections (Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen point out that not everyone suffers in a war equally--like natural disasters, they're often hardest on those who have less to fall back on anyway). Yasujiro Ozu, who would become one of Japan's greatest filmmakers after the war, relished the fact that working for the propaganda department of the army gave him an excuse to watch captured Western films (seized when Japan took Singapore)--strictly for study, of course ^_^

Interestingly, I came across some related material (while doing some
light reading), and we may be overestimating how much German influence
there was:

  > "The Japanese, in turn, had to purge their translations of _Mein
Kampf_ of the worst racial slurs...Privately, the Japanese - with
conspicious exceptions among die-hard fascists - often expressed
contempt for their German allies (they appear to have generally
ignored the Italians). Indian nationalists such as Mohan Singh
reported tha Japanese officers were contemptuous of the Germans and
regarded them as but temporary allies. On a more anecdotal level,
reports out of Batavia (Djakarta) in 1943 claimed that one of the most
popular captured films among Japanese officers was Charlie Chaplin's
satire of Hitler, _The Great Dictator_. Whether positively or
negatively, Germany and the Germans did not have the hold over popular
consciousness in Japan that China and the Chinese did in the United
States. In any case, the Germans hardly cared what the Japanese
thought about race issues..."

-- pg 207, "The Pure Self", _War Without Mercy: Race And Power In The
Pacific War_, Jown W. Dower

-- 
gwern