Hidden Harmonies China Blog

Recently, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, a prominent Japanese politician, raised a storm in Asia when he pronounced that the “comfort women” Japan enslaved during WWII as “necessary.”  According to this BBC report, Hashimoto said:

In the circumstances in which bullets are flying like rain and wind, the soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives….  If you want them to have a rest in such a situation, a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that.

The report continued: Read more…

I would have to say the movement of the “Han people” is very complex. Most casual observers would think that the Mandarin version of Chinese language is the most “proper” version. In fact, it is the most modern version with the Beijing dialect heavily influenced by the Man language. Both the Minanese and Cantonese would claim their “version” as the most original Chinese. Scholars are still debating whether Minanese or Cantonese are the older form of Chinese or which is the Shang or Zhou version.

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