The Rising Sun is still the official flag of Japan.
It is still widely used in Japan.
Describing it as “notorious” is a distinctly anti-Japanese act.
Have Turn10 and Microsoft made the right argument on this?
The following is the official position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
I guess the Twitter madness has penetrated the forums as well.
How in the world did you come to a conclusion that Turn 10 hates Japan?
PS: I am from a south east asia and that flag has an extremely dark history in our past. Just look at the issue the flag causes to south koreans or koreans in general and then understand why the ban is necessary.
I support the ban of such flags as that is something we went through during the second world war, something not easily forgotten. The last thing I need is to have symbols like those in a game. Plaster it in your room, have it on your phone - just leave it out of the game as the political ideals should never be in a game.
Calling their flag a hateful symbol maybe? Now, I’m sure Turn 10 doesn’t hate Japan of course, but they are saying they hate the flag. Which is bound to be rather offensive to many Japanese.
Every flag has a ‘dark history’ if you want to go there (I don’t). Cherry picking some flags to call ‘hate’ symbols and others to leave alone (like the Soviet one) is controversial. I agree that politics should have been left out of the game ENTIRELY but the can of worms has been opened now so blowback for this unwise decision is coming.
Rising Sun was common in Korea until the 90s. However, in the 00’s, after the World Cup, they suddenly tried to make Rising Sun a bad thing, and they started to use it as an excuse for a new generation. I got it out.
You should know your history, and if you want to discuss it, put out the material.
I’d like to say that I’m Chinese and don’t care if I see the flag on someone’s car. It doesn’t offend me in the least. My neighborhood is dominated by Japanese cars so of course I’ve encountered the rising sun as a sticker, JDM leaf badge, or vinyl. I drive a Volvo. And I put a Swedish flag on it to show my pride, love, and support for Swedish cars. Someone putting the rising sun flag on their Japanese car is no different. I totally understand the reason why that flag is on their vehicle and am cool with that.
Life’s too short to be throwing a hissy fit over a car accessory.
The Imperial Japanese forces, who fought under the Rising Sun flag, built concentration camps throughout China, South Korea, Manchuria and the Philippines. They enslaved thousands upon thousands and forced many women into sexual enslavement for their troops. They used r*pe as a way to instill fear and obedience in conquered territories as a stated policy.
The modern Japanese state, and it’s population for the most part, have refused for decades to acknowledge their atrocities. Just because some Japanese body kit company has chosen to incorporate that horrible symbol into their corporate identity doesn’t make it acceptable or ok.
I think you may be confusing the national flag (white with red disc) with the military flag “Rising Sun” (red disc with stripes extending outwards.) While I like modern Japan, the Japanese forces committed some pretty nasty war-crimes under the “Rising Sun” flag, which is why a lot of other Asian countries take offense to it.
So either the developer offends a handful of Japanese, or they offend off most of the rest of Asia. Considering the virtually non-existent Xbox market in Japan, this was probably the “smart” move in these ridiculous times of over-the-top political correctness.
Some rather bad things have been done by people wearing the US flag as well, in the modern day too. Many people in the world today despise the US flag.
But the flag itself isn’t inherently evil, any more than the rising sun is.
Just wondering (again as it seems), shouldn’t MS therefore recognise the couple of hundred thousand who were turned to dust in mere minutes by not 1 but 2 nuclear bombs in Japan.
Obviously this was an evil act as it targeted innocent people and not military sites (admitted by the Americans too) which on any other day would be a war crime in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
Taking that into consideration, wouldn’t the current US flag represent that atrocity as it represents people who created a bomb that killed thousands (millions today god forbid it ever happened again) and had a message that read “here’s to you and lots of love”.
See where the problem begins when you start targeting flags of other nations…
Me personally, i think T10 and MS should stay out of social causes and politics or at the very least not bring it into their products and forcing their views onto others by default.
I’m pretty disgusted by the behavior of MS and Turn10 on this whole thing. As was said earlier, nearly every nation has done disgraceful things under their flag, and cherry picking which flags to ban just seems silly.
From another perspective, I personally find the celebration of death with skulls and such in liveries (and permanently part of the boneshaker) to be extremely distasteful, but I don’t see anyone calling for the ban of those things.
The history is what it is. Early in second world war one of the moves of Soviet leader Stalin, was to draft Ukrainians to support Soviet war effort against us. Things being like they were, Ukrainians didn’t had a choice. So they fought and they died, very few ever returning, in a conflict really nothing to do with them.
I don’t take independent Ukrainian flag or use of their national colours offensive by any means and I hasn’t experienced Ukrainians finding Finnish flag offensive. History is sometimes pain and worst mistake is to forget. For people, cultural evolution through education, accepting reality and understanding that revisionist history is path to hell as evidently puppet masters never really go away.
Nationalism can be bad, can be also contributing factor to be able to participate to the UN sanctioned peace keeping missions since 1950’s. Ability to prove humanitarian aid in form of goods, money and education, participation global scientific efforts by designing instruments for satellites and space probes and participating to global market in form of various products and services. Alternative being a part totalitarian regime responsible for millions of deaths.
Worst mistake would be to forget.
Skull and bones symbol on Boneshaker and some Valentine’s livery Turn 10 gifted. I get how they can be seen a bit differently if you ponder the symbolism a bit and they don’t reflect things I appreciate in life. I don’t want them removed either, but different things to different folks.
Speaking of Ukrainians, Poles and other people who struggled under Soviet domination/influence, the only reason why the Hammer and Sickle is still allowed worldwide is because it wasn’t originally a symbol of hate, but appropriated by totalitarian states. Similar to the Rising Sun.
Besides, communist parties are irrelevant in 99% of the world’s nations.
I didn’t asked and I won’t ask Soviet flag, Hammer or Sickle to be removed. There were used by some obscure western rock bands in tongue in cheek way back in the 80’s and it didn’t offend me a bit. Neither did games like Command and Conquer Red Alert. What disturbs me is that if we start to remove these things, also the dark side of things, we forget history, we come prone to repeat the same mistakes, perhaps not directly but creating power vacuums or perhaps for the sake of self importance or something stupid.
I was basically saying what many others has been saying in this topic. About every symbol there has been associated with one atrocity or other somewhere and we can’t solve problems by creating some fake reality where none of that happened, no matter where you live. We can look past in history and think something constructive, why did this has to happen? what could have been done differently? But that sort of thing cannot happen, unless we accept history and reality, even when it may feel crushing, when it can make us angry or frustrated. No real solutions can be achieved by other means.
