masayuki yoshida wrote:

> > Even Fukuyama was carpet bombed, with (they include injuries) a casualty
count
> > of 80,000. Lack of media or public attention and a focus on the
A-bombings,
> > particularly of Hiroshima, has contributed to this ignorance or apathy
among
> > Japanese. Many even forget the Tokyo firebombing.
>
> As far as the majority of contemporary Japanese is a post-war
> generation, using the word 'forget' is not appropriate.  You mean
> failing to recall person's real experience by the term?

Perhaps what Eric means is something like "many teachers forget to teach
their students" about such things. I forget what percentage of Japanese
twenty-somethings didn't know that Japan had fought a war on the same side
as Germany and against the United States in a recent survey, but it was
rather depressingly high. And even in this newsgroup there have been
numerous gaffes by Japanese people who clearly have a very hazy idea of what
actually went on in the 1930s and 40s.

Still perhaps that's a tradition in itself - the "floating world" - only now
it's a world of karaoke, pachinko and shopping sprees, and the realities of
history all seem very far away...

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com