h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not japanese... that being said I think that the dropping of Atomic weapons on two of their cities has had a profound effect on the japanese psyche as a whole, and it is still something they are struggling with to this day. Much of their pop-culture has an ultra-fatalistic view and representations of enormous explosions and whole cities being consumed in balls of fire are commonplace in Anime (which i feel is representative of the national psyche to a degree, just as Hollywood is representative of the national depravity of America) One example of this is the wave of Giant-Monster Movies that began in the fifties, such as Godzilla and Gamera and all the others...usually these monsters were portrayed as having been created by radiation and were unstoppable city-destroyers.... It is impossible to imagine the kind of nightmare it must have been for those who lived through that and saw the devastation with their own eyes... carbon ash in the shapes of people were the remains of the lucky ones who died instantly...the other victims' fates were far slower and much more cruel...that kind of mental shock stays with a people through generations and shapes what they are... In my opinion the japanese people did not cease the war after the surrender, they shifted it from one battlefield to another. Deprived of the ability to fight wth weapons, they began to fight with economics, and did a very good job of it....their economy grew faster than any other in the world, until in the 80s it was a joke in america about how the japanese own the whole country... their economy did hit problems in the 90s though, but not until after many of the world's largest and most powerful corporations were japanese...

Anyway, thats how i see it.....

H.A.

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Congratulations!

Thank you kind scout on behalf of the absent researcher who originally penned this work.. I only hope that the fact that he gets an e-mail out of the blue telling him his article has been accepted will bring him back to H2G2...

And that he's not to upset with me butchering his work to get it through PR

That dropped like a bombshell!
At last!

You're very welcome Whisky

'Bout time too.