You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Miss. Delicious #83 : Chamonix Teppanyaki in Taipei!
hi nicholas, always great to have your commentary here. I have a feeling I asked you before, but it wouldn't hurt to ask again - have you always been vegetarian? And what is the reason you initially decided to become one?
Perhaps you could write about some of the colonial discrepancies between the Japanese and Europeans, I certainly would enjoy a good read of those!
Thanks much. It is just as refreshing for me to read your posts. Concerning being a vegetarian, I developed an auto-immune diseases, called ulcerative colitis. I was on 15 pills per day, and would have been so for the rest of my life unless I stopped eating meat. I steal and eat a bit of fish sometimes, but for the most part I can't eat meat. I wrote about it in an earlier article.
Re the colonial differences between the two is something I am looking into right now. The big difference is that Japan is no longer in these countries, as far as Europe and the USA are concerned, their form of rule has merely morphed into more sophisticated forms of control. These controls are executed through international bodies like the IMF, World Bank, the WTO among other forms of control. Plus, Europe's has been only about plunder. I am not saying that the Japanese did not do a lot of horrible stuff. What happened in Nankin, for example, was beyond savage; but at least they are no longer in these countries exploiting them, or may be I am wrong. And I am not saying that Japan is not a part of those international bodies, but she, doesn't have that leverage on the international scene she had pre-World War II.
Furthermore, she modernized Korea. She built railroads, factories and communication systems. The Europeans did these things solely to cart resources away. The Japanese did this too. And again, their rule was harsh. But compare this to what the Brits did in India, they devastated the textile industry on the sub-continent. Plus, how many former European colonies have reached developed world status? I can't think of one.
This might seem like an oversimplification. As you know, this is a rather complicated issue, and I am in the process now of writing about something like this. It has to do with China in Africa and the Americas. There is this BS about China trying to colonize Africa. In a nutshell, I am gonna rubbish these claims by delving into how Europe's relationship with Africa is different from China's. Japan will be mentioned also. I will post the link in your comment section so you can see my take on it.