Comments by "Voryn Rosethorn" (@vorynrosethorn903) on "Could Russian military take Japan if it wanted to? (2020)" video.

They already hold all of the islands, it is simply that Japan disputes their ownership.
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The Japanese are a lot weaker culturally and demographically than they were in WW2. The willingness to fight and die for the emperor is one of the things which there has been considerable effort to undermine and also the are large groups of anti war opponents (who are fanatical and thus will undermine the public interest no matter what and left wing traitors (the communists and socialists who are both entrenched in the education system and have a history of doing nasty stuff like covering for the North Koreans when there were suspicions about people going missing along the coasts). A large part of the population is elderly and unlike in other countries there aren't even going to have ever had military training, Japan will have a lot less to make up troop numbers than the population size would suggest. The one thing which might be good is production, there is already a work culture of working yourself to death without complaint and most people are reasonably clever and know how to work together and take orders so production would probably go a lot smoother than most would think possible for such a challenge and in a timeframe which would leave western experts baffled. They would just have issue finding the men to use the equipment who aren't one foot in the grave or totally apathetic.
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Amount of money and industrial capability (es especially for specialist production like weapons) are different things. True is Japan reallocated spending for years of build-up before anything then that would have a big effect. But to just throw money would not be effective against a nation better set up for military expansion and production of war materials.
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Less the public being very opposed, more media attention, foreign perceptions and a small part of the population who fanatic pacifists but also elderly so a notable voting bloc. The general public view is opposed but not very strongly so except during media frenzies, how many missiles North Korea shot over their heads that month also has an effect. Foreigners start talking nonsense whether there is talk of military expansion as through its part of some plan to invade China again, so the politicians don't feel like cultivating poor perceptions or stupid conversations. The pacifists brought into propaganda in the schools post-war and decided the don't have any other defining characteristics to lean on, in time they will die and it will be materialists rather than idealists who form the most annoying elderly voting clique.
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Russia is doing so poorly due to terrible leaderships and staggering mismanagement. Japan is not somewhere that has to worry about that, against a first rate military power like the US, Britain or France a lack of experience could show but they largely run of models that have been proven to work even if not by them. Equipment is very good as well, the main problems would be not enough manpower (due to not enough young people), lack of will (due to anti war taking root in the population and the decline of confidence of individuals in public and private life) and indecisiveness. Japan needs to focus on family as a motivation for work rather than work as a motivation for life, not listening to westerners (they have many of the same problem as Japan but worse and are just better at covering it up and telling themselves that nothing is wrong), having lots of children (minimum of 3) in order that the society won't collapse, regaining confidence and stopping the obsession with material prosperity (Japan living costs are not bad by global standards, house prices are at the point most in other countries would kill for and everyone being a salaryman makes no sense). The JSDF is fine defensively, Japan's problems are internal.
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It runs off assuming that people aren't lying about statistics and capabilities and are reasonably aware of them at least as well. Also that their actions will make sense and not be based on hubris and appalling planning and logistics. To be fair even the best military analysts were stumped by what has happened and though they had mentioned some of the problems that were displayed they weren't expecting anything like what we've seen (they are in large part still confused as even if accounting only for what the Russians can be confirmed to have they should not be doing so poorly, they have tons of artillery for example but for some reason are not using it on the scale that would make sense).
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@lepepelepub12 I wasn’t saying they’d lose, considering Russia’s policy on nukes and Japans lack of a deterrence the war likely wouldn’t start in the first place. I was responding to the idea that fight like the Japanese of WW2 did, even if the cultural context was not fundamentally different the capability would be inhibited by the fact that a large portion of the population would be unfit to fight. Ultimately the context is different however, in 1945 the Japanese had been at war for 14 years and had been steeped in Emperor deification, state shinto and militarism for 70 years. The school system drilled into them that death was better than dishonour and life lighter than a cherry blossom, adults in their live including their parents would also affirm it. There was military style training from a young age and even the school uniforms were based on military uniforms (Prussian for boys, sailor for girls), on top of this the population was young, vigorous and confident, the birth rate was high so each generation grew and the elderly were cared for within the traditional family unit (though care for might be a western way to put it as they were often the ones at the top of the family hierarchy and at the very least were accorded considerable respect). The two societies were in some ways mirror images of one another. I know I might have made it sound a bit romantic but the cost of the old system was in human life and it had negative aspects like being terminally stupid in it’s fanaticism, dealing with people on intentions too much (it doesn’t matter if someone professes loyalty to the state, if they don’t follow orders then they are impediment to its aims and should be punished) and having a culture of political assassination. An actual war between japan and Russia might be worthwhile so long as Japan gets nukes first so it can call Russias bluff, the northern territories are mostly of strategic worth but Sakhalin has oil reserves which would make it worth the price in blood considering how resource poor japan is. The fact that many of the professional troops are off getting killed and the Japanese have local naval superiority so it be a probable bet. Japan would do less well if it wanted to take more than islands and China would probably be the main threat throughout. A limited war followed by consolidation would be the only plan feasible from the start however. Though it would do little to deal with the much greater existential threats to the nation.
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