My thoughts on *that* sonic merch and the flag:

I don’t blame them for making the mistake. I mean, if you don’t know the history it is a pretty cool design. But not only is the flag a sign of imperial power, it also represents far-right Ukyoku Dantai
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Ukyoku Dantai are ultranationalist groups that spread propaganda and wave both the current and imperial Japanese flags. In Japan, no normal (commoner) person waves the country flag because it now means you’re far-right.
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Tbh, it makes me cringe when I see someone wearing merch with a prominent Japanese Hinomaru flag because that’s not what it’s meant for.
The rising sun flag does represent good fortune and tradition, but it was used so much during war that it now has the additional meaning.
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It now represents all the actions imperial Japan took, and personally it reminds me of how many people were harmed and killed under it. I hate it when non-Japanese/non-Korean people try to defend the FLAG because either “it’s just a cool design, they didn’t know”-
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-or “the military still waves it so you’re disrespecting those people.”
Yes, they didn’t know, but I know they knew the design in the first place. They associated it with Japan. Okay, fair enough. But did they do research since it’s from such a sensitive time period? No.
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And for the military, I deeply respect the people working in it. It just makes me feel weird that the higher-ups (or whoever decides those things) decide to use the rising sun flag. But that’s okay, because it also represents the military as a whole, too. It’s tradition.
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But do you want a sign of military on your Sonic merch either? Hell no!!
Before anyone says anything, this is completely different from the Buddhist manji 卍 vs Nazi swastika 卐 discourse a couple of months ago.
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The swastika is something that was appropriated by Nazis and used to have a completely different meaning from the original. I have a bag with many crests on it (Touken Ranbu-themed), but I’m always afraid of people calling it out because of the manji on one of the crests.
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The manji still holds a strong meaning of Buddhism, and it’s still used on Japanese maps everywhere as an icon for temples.
But for the rising sun, it doesn’t really have a widely known meaning of good fortune anymore.
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I’m completely fine if some media (like manga/anime) shows the imperialist flag to represent imperialist ideologies and/or corrupt government or military as a part of the setting of a dystopian fiction. Because the writers and readers both know “this represents bad things.”
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But that’s completely different from plapping it on a shirt and going “this represents bad things, but that’s history and should be reappropriated while there are still people alive who were children during the wars.”
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Again, I don’t mean this is what the merch meant. But that’s what the merch makes white people think.
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#RISINGSUNFLAG_IS_NOT_DECORATION
For those scrolling through the hashtag, above is a thread about my thoughts on the issue.

(For those reading directly, sorry for the extra text, this hashtag started while I was typing the thread lol)

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