Like a Dragon: Gaiden: The Story so Far II: World history, politics

 As an American, in 2023, it is really hard to know what to make of Japanese politics, especially as they relate to nationalism and the history of Imperial Japan. It’s not even hard: I am flying fucking blind. 

The vitriol with which Americans treated the Japanese during World War II--it enabled the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-- remains a stain on the national character. The image of the “evil Jap” invoked during and after the conflict incurred a debt against decency that the country has yet to pay off. It’s something I feel bad about-- and that seems weird because the I wasn’t alive at the time, and half of my ancestors were in Germany, getting shot at by Americans.

But that’s actually the direct source of my discomfort with Imperial Japan. My grandfather immigrated to the US in the fifties and no one ever really held it against him that he had taken up arms against his adopted country not even ten yearsearlier. And the other half of my family is Jewish so the horror that my grandfather fought for has NEVER been lost on me. But they let my Opa into the county without batting an eye and it worked out great for everyone: he always paid his taxes, and even made a scientific discovery that contributed vastly to the marketability of used cars (a scent in a spray can that made them smell like new cars).

So it’s easy for me to feel like the beneficiary of unequal treatment, and that the Japanese have been treated in a way that is absurd, and motivated by race hatred, rather than history. 

But I’ve also seen enough movies to know that I might have yet a different perspective if the Jewish half of my family had been Chinese or Korean. 

ANYWAY: in the Yakuza-verse Japanese Nationalist politicians have an odd role, starting with the idiotic Yamato Mark II. They are essentially mostly bad-guys, they do a lot of ‘bad things’-- bribes, having Yakuza’s murdered-- for most of the game. And, in the finale, the ‘big bad,’ Mr Yamato himself, makes killing Kiryu the requirement for whoever wants to inherit his empire. 

But, he hadn’t banked on all those RIZIAP supplements I was carrying, and Kiryu does not die so easily. My sense, [and, fuck, I played the game and TOOK NOTES like two months ago, so I should be certain, but I am not] is that Kiryu survives Mr. Yamato and then goes to work for what’s left of the organization. 

So the post-WWII Japanese Nationalist politicians are pretty convenient folks, being capable of enough skull drudgery to be bad guys for a game, but also able to provide gainful employment for a supposedly dead violent hero, without costing him hero status. 

I’ll just say that if Mr. Yamato was German-- a Nazi who never paid for his crimes and went on to be a post-war power broker, while bribing and murdering to keep a secret Nazi weapons cache on the DL-- he would SUCK and Kiryu’s decision to work for the remnants of the guy’s organization would be shady as hell. Would it make Kiryu a Neo-Nazi? The answer is either ‘it’s semantic’ or ‘yes’-- neither of which is good enough for the Dragon of fucking Dojima. The Dragon of Dojima, unambiguously, is NOT any kind of Nazi, goddamit. 

Actually, the Dragon probably could not be German at all. It’s not a Nazi thing, not even a 20^th century thing: think about Goethe, or Nietzsche, or Beethoven. Those dudes were just too gloomy to do Kiryu things. They almost NEVER punched anyone; they took themselves way to seriously to decide to master pocket circuit racing or dress up as a mascot. 

[FUCK: now I REALLY want the ‘like a Nietzsche’ mod where you wonder around Tokyo and drop aphorisms] 

Or: the German ex-gangster with a giant tattoo of Fafnir on his back? He is not running a goddamn orphanage-- he is the subject of multiple court orders requiring that he never come within a thousand feet of children.