[Moogs]

Well, political climate can mean a lot of things. Obviously the economic frameworks are very different but I wonder if the frame of reference that the individual peoples in each nation use, to view the other nations, hasn't changed much in character. Truthfully I have not kept up on the political maneuverings in those countries of late (the official policy decisions, etc), but in general the article struck me because as much as I've been around the Japanese, I never would've expected things like text book cleansing of WWII atrocities, when they have been so well documented, even in Japan.

I should note that aside from being very group-think oriented, they are also very introspective in a lot of ways, so it's all the more surprising in that respect. I might expect a country that is not known for any sort of philosophical or introspective tendancies to approach their own sordid history in this way, but not necessarily Japan. Turkey is a perfect example, with their wholesale denial of the Armenian Genocide, which took the lives over over a million people and is well documented ... I don't think anyone would claim Turkish society or cultural history shows evidence of a lot of introspective or philosophical tendancies (the way Japan or even China do). My opinion of course, but it's one example.