Huh? Japan uses tanks, fighters, destroyers, infantry men, and hell, even marines. They don't use Samurais anymore in war
Japan doesn't have marines
After the WWII defeat Japan was half-forced by the Allied Forces to adopt the current *peace constitution* which bans Japan to possess *Armed forces*.
Yes, Japan has military but strictly speaking it's a *self-defense* force and it's managed by government branch one level lower than *ministry* (equivalent of the U.S. department)
Also Japan is devoid of any offensive military capability - no landing ships, no marines(for landing on foreign soil), no long-range cruise or ballistic missiles, much smaller army than navy ect... They are only allowed to *defend*.
That's why it's ranked below all of its neighbors except for impoverished and outdated North Korean military on Global firepower index
Russia - 2nd
China - 3rd
South Korea - 8th
Japan - 17th
North Korea - 29th
However, the current right-wing nationalist government is pushing for change of constitution to allow Japan to have proper armed forces or at least change the interpretation of current constitution if, the referendum fails.
Japan's neighbors are obviously not happy about this
- just imagine how other European nations would feel if Germany is out of NATO and started to change constitution so they can declare war on their own again
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/...ounces-push-to-change-the-peace-constitution/
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/21-2
Thanks - that's extremely interesting. I can certainly recognise everything the piece says about the UK (which, as a British publication, it naturally focuses heavily on), particularly modern Britain's scepticism towards political authority.
Yes, the general theme of the 2012 report was about the
deteriorating democracy in the West, especially in US and UK
I believe the Japanese Imperial religion was something closer to what Total War calls "Shinto-Buddhism" - it's a label made up for the game, but the religion adopted was essentially Buddhism with Shinto elements.
Yep, Shinto isn't really a proper organized religion - I don't know why Civ 5 included it as one the major religious symbols in the game, in reality it's more of a pantheon barely 3% share even in Japan, virtually unknown outside Japan
Oh, one gimmick of Imperial Shinto was that the Japanese emperor was officially a *living god* during Imperial age
and this status was dropped after they surrendered in Pacific War
Allied forces actually wanted to prosecute Japanese emperor for war crimes, but they compromised this for smoother occupation of Japan and unconditional surrender in other areas.
The 'morality' of religion is defined by humans' basic moral instincts, human morality isn't defined by religion.
Yes, and the most variations of morality come from geography - surrounding environment or political reasoning.
Examples;
In Middle East, water is scares and more valuable than other regions thus, pigs are are considered *dirty and immoral* as they naturally defecate in water source and nest there
This obviously made into Judaism and Islam
Among nomadic central Asian people where the population is small and sparsely scattered, it was not at all immoral to marry the wife of your dead family members - brother, cousin or even your son!
So many able and wealthy men were encouraged to take widowed women of his extended family as second or third wife.
This was (and even now to certain extent) actually very important and useful tradition - widowed women and their children were very likely to die without protection of someone with secure assets (livestock) in nomadic lifestyle.
In East Asia, stealing waterway was considered highly immoral as they do wet farming for rice paddies.
In India, beef was banned for political reason first(ruling caste wanted to preserve them for farming purpose) then made into religion later.
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What if Scotland leaves the union? 
