Comments by "DynamicWorlds" (@dynamicworlds1) on "History Summarized: The Meiji Restoration" video.

  1.  Aspiring Marauder  I mean, a lot of that is hardly unique to Japan. French maid and secretary uniforms didn't get sexualized out of nowhere, for example.
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  2. Well done
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  3. Can we take a moment to talk about how unusual Japan's class heirarchy was, flipping the normal positioning of farmers and merchants? That shit is fascinating!
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  4.  @nickmalachai2227  I mean....you're not wrong
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  5.  @anna_in_aotearoa3166  I think it was largely a stability thing. If the merchants are more segregated from political and social power, their accumulation of economic power is easier to keep in check. Likewise, having your largest demographic block be the lowest rung of a heirachal system is a breeding ground for unrest. While you see a lot of feudal and feudal-like power structures depicted like pyramids, that's actually incredibly unstable as it means that the group with the most to gain by knocking it down is also the largest group. If you want to keep an oppressive system in place, you need to not just segrigate the types of power (so only those at the very top can have all forms in abundance) but make that structure more diamond-shaped. This gives the majority of people someone to feel better than and, by doing to others what you to to them, constantly encourage them to rationalize kicking down as "just the way things are" and to see any anti-heirarchy movements as a threat to their position rather than a possibility for their own liberation. Also, just broadly, getting people to blame those "below" them for their problems keeps the attention away from those at the top. Any such heirachal system will either need to put a certain caste there, or turn to marginalizing ethnic, religious, and/or sexual minorities to fill the scapegoat role if they don't want the people to start realizing that "hey, maybe we don't actually need these rulers above us all the time"
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  6. Technically not a samuri
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  7. I mean...it's a centuries' old tactic for justifying imperialism still used today.
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