-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Dragon Quest composer Koichi Sugiyama isn't happy just being a war crime denier, is anti-LGBT too!
- Thread starter duckroll
- Start date
- Status
Ah, the "I Admit" defense.
Bear in mind that the opinion you're talking about is "you know that thing we have plenty of evidence of where thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people were brutally killed for no reasons other than pure sadism? didn't happen". Which might technically be an opinion in the same way that "eating Tide Pods is safe and delicious" is an opinion.
Nanking is talked about a lot and information is freely and easily accessible. The issue is that there are plenty of people who have power and platforms who downplay/deny it. So to a lot of people its something thats part of an ongoing debate. Unlike German warcrimes.
In the end, Japan can't live in a bubble forever. It can't be a first world country with its own history that no other country in the world agrees with. It's a matter of time when the people most invested are gone and we can have a little sanity here.
Yeah, Sugiyama is a douche. I can't even use the "at least his art is good" side note because now he's obssessed with using reverbless MIDI now. I can't wait until he's finished working with the series, there are tons of composers that can not only emulate his style but could improve on it, too.
I'm also German, and I'd argue against this. Torture, rape and murder are nothing new. They've been part of war for centuries, and nothing the Japanese did hadn't been done before, although perhaps not on a similar scale.
What it comes down to is that the Japanese did not attempt genocide. Not only did the Nazis deliberately plan and commit genocide, they did it by essentially industralizing the process of mass murder, creating a massive logistical network and accompanying bureaucratic apparatus whose only purpose was to quickly and efficiently funnel the Jewish population of Europe to various death camps, where they were to be killed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Here's my daily "fuck Sugiyama" post. Unfortunately he is way old and shows no sign of redeeming himself and renouncing his viewpoints, so all that's left really is to wait for these people to die off. I really hope he doesn't stick around for future DQ games, the situation with the orchestrated / midi soundtracks has been getting messier in the last years as well.
Also, I fear that boycotting the game in the west won't do shit. DQ always sells like hotcakes in Japan and western sales have been lackluster more often than not. If DQ 11 sells like shit here the only thing SE are gonna do is just keep DQ in Japan and stop releasing it in the west. Not too much skin off their nose, and they're definitely not going to do jack about Sugiyama.
Are you a pokemon?
Also, I fear that boycotting the game in the west won't do shit. DQ always sells like hotcakes in Japan and western sales have been lackluster more often than not. If DQ 11 sells like shit here the only thing SE are gonna do is just keep DQ in Japan and stop releasing it in the west. Not too much skin off their nose, and they're definitely not going to do jack about Sugiyama.
Are you a pokemon?
No worries, I know you didn't mean anything bad by it, but there are some people I do know irl who say similar things despite knowing the truth so it riles me up a bit when I see it.
Yeah, might just hold off buying DQ XI day one. SE need to boot this guy or make a statement or something.
Because I like to discuss and get people opinions maybe? It's good to see people opinions. It helps you to be a better person I think
Nah, his estate will still benefit from it, but I doubt his family wants to spend money for some propaganda that doesn't benefit them.
Unless his family is as bad as him or if his will literally leave his copyright ownership to organization that share his cause.
If that's the case then you're right.
Dutch is also well known to be quite bad to their colonies.
All the history textbook in Indonesia tells that Dutch was very horrible during their 350 years there.
However, apparently Japan's 3 or so years was much worse than the Dutch 350 years.
Yuji Horii and AKira Toriyama are pretty old too, I wonder if Squarenix will replace the three at the same time. I wonder what DQ would look like without them
Not surprised, he was already a piece of shit anyway, can't wait he retires... Not only his views are freaking bads, but his compositions are seriously laking since a long time (it started wit VIII imo)
There were brothels in concentration camps too. I think concepts like "worse" should just not be used here.
Hell, most of the things that happened in Nanking also happened in Vietnam - on both sides.
I claim because square paid him for a service. Like the programmers. Voice actors and everyone else in the process. I can't ignore all other people here because of him. I don't agree on anything he said. But in my vision I rather write to square or do a perdition than boycotting a product because one guy
It's absolutely terrible but the victims of Imperial Japan died in extreme agony and pain, and there were A LOT of victims.
They are both just as bad, especially since Japan faced very little criticism after WWII in comparison to the Germans, and most criticism are about Pearl harbor anyway.
Good, bet he ''loved'' it.
User Banned (3 Days): Hostility towards other users. Please refrain from ad hominem attacks. You can make your point without them.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to think that it's "just as bad"
Death wishes in a random internet forum the dude is never going to read are meaningless and have no effect.
This fucker is actively funding far-right extremism.
Anyone that thinks that a death wish( unless you are terribly stupid and think wishes are things the universe actually grants) is the same as that is a complete fucking dumbass that needs their brain checked asap.
They pretty much tried, just without the infrastructure that the Nazis developed, but their intention was the same.
It's important to note nuance in these discussions, so I'll say that Imperial Japan did awful shit before Hitler's rise, and as such were bad, but also separate and distinct from Nazis. For example the suzerainty/annexation of Korea that was completed in 1912, and involved Imperial Japan treating the Korean people like literal barbarians who were unable to appreciate culture and religion before the Japanese "helped" them. They also did this with the help of the Americans, who were happy to sell guns to the Japanese and push the idea that the Japanese were the "good ones" in the region, unlike the opium addicted Chinese and the useless layabouts in Korea. One contemporaneous pro-Imperial Japan article (that is, from around 1910) I read during my degree, written by an American, equated the Koreans with the Indigenous American Indian populations, and the Japanese with the White People of the US, sweeping into Korea in their own version of Manifest Destiny.
No offence meant, btw, just nuance and accuracy in these things is good. :)
User Banned (1 Week): Posting racist imagery.
Heilige Scheiße we've got a live one.
Mod Edit: Removed offensive imagery.
Last edited by a moderator:
I don't think large scale human experimentation was something that was going on for hundreds of years, or armies being given daily dosage of methamphetamine to kill their empathy and promote their sadism. I'll agree that they're still different from Nazi Germany, but let's not pretend Imperial Japan was just business as usual, or even that they're separate from the Nazi Germany that they frequently modeled themselves on.
Maybe not from the west. But you'd be hard pressed to find many Asian countries that have very strong feelings about Germany's actions compared to Japan.
a poster earlier said there was an effeminate male, but that their sexual orientation was never implied in the game. I mean, I haven't played the game but yeah.
Got some receipts? Because that's some 1970's era thinking.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan is probably the most definitive word on the matter to date (published in 2005). He was born in Tokyo lived through the firebombings, and spent his career as a history professor in the United States where he specialized in the Cold War.
It covers the reality of surrender from a more holistic angle. The bombs aren't what really pushed Japan to surrender. How could they when firebombing couldn't and was every bit as catastrophic given the scope?
The entry of the Soviet Union pushed Japan to a point where surrender was inevitable. But at that point they were trying to find a way out of unconditional surrender. The first nuclear bomb weakened the resolve to hold out for conditions. The second ended it. The bombs weren't what made Japan surrender, they were what made Japan surrender unconditionally, immediately, without drawing out a war for months longer while they sought an exit that allowed concessions.
And in the end that was what needed to happen. Japan couldn't be given peace with conditions when the negotiating party was the military powers who had seized complete autonomy. It needed to be completely replaced, just like the Nazi regime in Germany needed to be completely replaced.
Unconditional surrender should be the terms with which we fight against wars built on the principle of ethnic cleansing as justification for expansionist military efforts.
From all I saw it's a great char and not used as a joke at all. That said, while they do use a female name they are neither explicitly stated to be gay or trans.
That shouldn't give him a pass. There are many old men in Japan that don't think the kind of garbage he thinks.
I'm Taiwanese and I don't really agree with that, people here definitely despise Nazis as much as imperial Japan, mind you we were colonized by Japan back in WWII as well.
The crime of imperial Japan is more ''personal'' yes but that doesn't mean we don't have strong feelings for the Nazis, and certainly no one would argue that one of them isn't nearly as bad as the other like many people in this thread believed.
The fact that the Square continue to use this guy mean they are complicit in promoting his views.
It makes their company look real bad.
It makes their company look real bad.
Why should we? He takes joy in the suicides of LGBT people and I'm sure doesn't mind violence against them either. The world WILL be a better place without him and his ilk.
The GENOCIDAL REGIME asked for peace terms with them keeping their conquered territories and the US said no! BAD US, BAD!
Basically, anyone saying that the US should have agreed to those terms is a racist who thinks Korean, Chinese, etc lives are meaningless. It would be like the Nazis demanding control of Germany, France, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Czexh, etc etc .
Taiwan might be one of the few countries like that though. Weren't they 'relatively', treated better compared to the horrors almost everywhere else? Hell, didn't the Nazi's save a bunch of people in Nanking? There aren't thousands and thousands of old people in Asia who experienced atrocities by Germans first hand. I seriously doubt there is an 'equal' amount of coverage.
Yes it is it reflects awfully on them.
How can you see it any other way?
They continue to employ a bigoted, racist monster in their company.
They are basically saying 'we thing this behaviour is ok for our employees'.
The comments in here on Japan's war history are very well informed which makes me happy. Happy we can learn from each other. I think one thing that helps when thinking about the war crimes is to look at a map and see just how much Japan "trampled" over Asia touting racial dominance. Many site China and Korea, but it was much more than that. Also the concept of Yamato "pure bloodness" is the unifying ideology which was used to justify their atrocities.
First he is not employed at Square Enix.
Second his work has nothing to do with his wrong political/human views.
Third Square Enix can employ him if they wish without has nothing to do with off work actions/views.
The content of his work doesnt.
But he gets royalities for his works done for S-E though and he is funding war-crime denying propaganda with the fruits of his work.
Not that I'd expect them to do anything for such a popular composer, but I don't really see how it's supposed to help their case if they aren't employing Sugiyama and don't have to actively fire him to cut their ties.
While I do think he is wrong I have no right to say what he can do with what he profit with his musics.
Square Enix needs and pay for his works... not what he is outside his work.
Square pay the man to use his music!
They continually give this arsehole money! That is the point!
They are paying him to peddle his filth!
Also it is impossible to separate the art and the artist completely.
He reflects on his work and vice/versa.
Well I don't think Taiwan is that different from other Asian country but hey I could be wrong.
One thing I'll agree is that the Japanese did threat us slightly better and there really weren't a lot of conflict during the colonization, in fact it was actually better than when our current government first came to Taiwan which is a goddamn nightmare (those who played Detention will know), but still, it doesn't stop us from despising the crimes Japanese committed in WWII. It always disturbs me to see my Japanese friends not feeling remotely sorry about WWII, they usually just shrug it off like ''Well It was a mess, I'll give you that''.
Yeah, what the fuck are you even talking about? If I keep paying human trash, then I am supporting it, which makes you complicit.
It's hard for people like that to change their opinions. It's not surprising in the slightest. It's sad, but old people are not going to change for the most part. We shouldn't forgive or ignore him having these views, but at 84 we can't expect him to 180 on a fucked up opinion his brain has been trying to reinforce for so long.
We certainly shouldn't be awaiting his death with glee.
That I agree.
The best artists in the history are not know to follow the right path.
- Status