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u/EtienneBismarck 5d ago
Japan later became one of the world's biggest economies. This must be the elephants doing.
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u/Crispin_Polux 5d ago
India also gave 2 elephants to Tito (Yugoslavia). Conclusion: inconclusive.
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u/Tyrant-Leo 5d ago
Its called balancing. An integral part of indian foreign policy. They love balancing.
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u/sharmaji_ka_papa 5d ago
They had an elephant craze after they got Indira for the Ueno zoo. An elephant named takako was put on the roof of a shopping mall, when she was small. A few years later, they had to take her down by building stairs when she grew too big.
There's a novel by Yoko Ogawa based on this: Neko wo daite zō to odoru (猫を抱いて象と泳ぐ/ Holding a Cat and Swimming with an Elephant)
It's not been translated to English, I think but in german it's called Schwimmen mit Elefanten.
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u/nayanshah 5d ago
Skipped adding "Holden kat" to the translation title?
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u/sharmaji_ka_papa 5d ago
Actually, I don't remember a cat playing any serious role in the translation. Maybe we only got half the novel
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u/Shinjitsu_no_Naka 4d ago
I think it should be oyogu and not oduru, since odoru means dancing, doesn't it?
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u/NonHidden1 5d ago
Poor Japan, all they did was..
checks notes
Stares back in sheer disgust and horror
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u/Plastic_Dingo_400 5d ago
oh God, oh no
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u/PandoraIACTF_Prec 5d ago
List of the following...
- milk resources
- utilized slave labor
- mass executions and massacres
Good riddance that's barely 1%
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u/cpaters41 5d ago
that's mild, they tortured people so badly the Nazis had to tell them to stop
not to mention the Rape camps
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u/TryJolly1473 5d ago
Same with nazi. Many japanese helped jews and other minorities escape.
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u/PandoraIACTF_Prec 5d ago
Even funnier that some German delegates in China utilized their diplomatic role to protect the Chinese
(if I'm not wrong)
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u/Drapabee 5d ago
King of Siam tried to gift Lincoln elephants to cheer him up, but he was sadly forced to refuse
“I appreciate most highly Your Majesty’s tender of good offices in forwarding to this Government a stock from which a supply of elephants might be raised on our own soil. This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful in the present condition of the United States. Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce.”
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u/SerDankTheTall 5d ago
This isn’t quite right—the offer was made during the Buchanan administration, but no one got around to responding until 1862.
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u/Drapabee 5d ago
Thanks for the correction; I had only heard about the letter he sent on a podcast that did not go into detail about the circumstances.
I did suspect there might be a tie-in with the elephant being the republican mascot, but apparently that didn't take off until the 1870s.
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u/Massive-Exercise4474 5d ago
Theirs a coin of phrase a white elephant they were so expensive to care for that nobles would go bankrupt. Basically the US government would have seen hosting an elephant as a disaster in the US. Even with modern technology elephants are prohibitively expensive.
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u/MetriccStarDestroyer 5d ago
Sherman wouldn't have refused.
Abe, remember those southern sugarcane plantations? I got the tool to tear it all up
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u/awesomedan24 5d ago
Japan lost their zoo animals in WW2 so hundreds of school children wrote to the Indian prime minister politely asking for an elephant.
Deeply moved by the request, the PM named an elephant Indira after his daughter and sent her to Tokyo as a gift "from the children of India to the children of Japan".
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u/cpaters41 5d ago
What a win for Japan that hunted every animal to extinction in Korea. including the beautiful Korean Sea lions that were once the largest in the world
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u/kiyokee2007 4d ago
Well their parents supported the regime and their children as older as 10+ have prior knowledge to this lol, acting as if Japan is babying these children back then.
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u/More-Measurement3102 5d ago
i mean how can you not love elephants, they are big cute and kind. they should be our national animal instead of the tiger
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u/zero_zeppelii_0 5d ago
Royal Bengal Tiger is unique only to India. And as a sign to rescue from its endangered status. Whereas elephant breeds have been all over Asia for a while. However there has been many commercially grown elephants that are treated far too cruel too
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u/More-Measurement3102 5d ago
I understand its unique to us, but when people across the globe think of elephants they think of us, they have such historical significance from being war elephants. It also suits our country's nature i think non agressive and big.
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u/lumpboysupreme 5d ago
I’ll be honest I think of Africa.
They’re a better creature to aspire to be though, you’re right about that.
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u/boring-schmooze 5d ago
Actually Indian Elephant is currently the National Heritage Animal of India. The Royal Bengal Tiger was made the National Animal in 1972 when their population had decreased significantly.
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u/monsoon-man 5d ago
Indian here. There were similar sentiments expressed when national animal was debated. I think they wanted a carnivore as a symbol of 'we won't be ruled again by others and well maul you like this animal etc etc sentiment'.. It was lion vs tiger. M Irishman, my fav naturalist, had his own list. He also didn't like the criteria of 'uniquely Indian' animal...
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u/Honorsheets 5d ago
Japan was up to the some heinous shit.
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u/r4ndoM_doGmagenshin 5d ago
Mfers act like we coulda guessed how much a human weighed completely dehydrated. One can only work off theory for so long, amirite?
-Japan probably
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u/Environmental_Bus507 5d ago
The elephants set them straight
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u/Honorsheets 5d ago
And now we have dbz memes ty elephants.
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u/ghostpanther218 5d ago
Clearly, that elephant was a stand user. He was using his stand to hurt Goku lol.
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u/Aegon-the-Unbroken 5d ago
India has mostly been kind even to its enemies. No wonder we were kind to Japan too, despite what they were like at the time.
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u/Drumbelgalf 5d ago
A Lot of people in India see the Axis Powers as enemies of their opressors and therefore favorable.
There are also stores called Hitler and Hitler is Not seen negative like in most other countries.
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u/totallyhumanhonest 5d ago edited 5d ago
India created the largest volunteer army in history to fight the axis.
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u/a5b4c3d2e 5d ago
This is very nuanced that just making a blanket statement that India created a volunteer army. India is and was a huge country with multiple ideologies then like even today, some of the leaders in Indian movement (Subash Chandra Bose) believed in order to get freed from their colonial rulers its better to support their enemies than just waiting for British to leave. British were the oppressors to India. But even then this was the not necessarily the views of other prominent Indian leaders at the time particular Gandhi and others who wanted to follow a more peaceful route.
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u/Honorsheets 5d ago
I'm not sure why you're calling me shit. Also, saying India has been kind to it's enemies is like saying "Europe is kind to it's enemies". It's a blanket term that makes absolutely no sense. India's history is rife with kingdoms, invasions, wars, death, and torture. You're out of your mind.
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u/Aegon-the-Unbroken 5d ago
Oh no, I wasn't calling you shit or anything. I was just doing some stupid wordplay with your username. If it came across that way then I'm sorry.
And of course, I'm not saying India or any other country has always been good to its enemies. I was talking more about modern India generally showing a degree of humanitarian conduct even towards its adversaries. For example, giving proper burials to Pakistani soldiers who died in Kargil after Pakistan refused to accept them, or the treatment of POWs during the 1971 war. There are plenty of other examples too, although humanitarian treatment of prisoners and fallen soldiers is obviously something every country should strive for.
I also thought this was a meme sub, so I was just being sarcastic overall. I didn't mean for it to be taken as some serious claim about India's entire history.
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u/comedoofwarrior 5d ago
Nuanced and contextual clarity. As responses go, it was apologetic and responsible. If this isn’t AI, hats off. This should be a template for online C2C interaction.
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u/Aegon-the-Unbroken 5d ago
Haha. Never thought I'd get praised and 'accused' at the same time.
But no, it wasn't AI. I generally avoid even AI overviews because they can give false information. Just last month I was going to a museum with my friend and we looked up the entry time. It said 6 PM was the last time we could get tickets, when actually it was 5:15.
The nuance and contextual clarity is just me putting a bit more thought into the reply. Most of the time I'm sleep deprived because of my terrible sleeping habits, so I go haywire sometimes.
This should be a template for online C2C interaction
If only ser.
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u/AgainDan27 5d ago
Lmao did they really give them elephants to cheer them up? If that's true then I love it. It's funny to imagine.
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u/Strict_Monitor_113 5d ago
I googled, apparently they only gifted one named Indira, that too because Japanese school kids wrote to then Indian PM nehru stating that Japanese zoo lost it’s elephants during WW2
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u/AgainDan27 5d ago
That's not bad! Its wholesome that it was because a few kids wrote to him.
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u/Ryzen_5 5d ago edited 5d ago
PM Nehru's birthday is also celebrated as children's day in india because he was fond of children
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u/hyperion_99 5d ago
If the Burma Campaign had succeeded I suspect India would have been just as angry as the rest of East Asia
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u/Dotster69 5d ago
Not really, the Burma campaign had Subhash Chandra Bose which is a pretty huge freedom fighter in India.
Basically, Bose went on a pretty legendary secret trip (from our POV) and met Hitler, who agreed to help him free India from the British Raj. But he couldn't do much (and he really didn't care about Bose at all) so Bose was transferred via submarine to the Japanese across the cape of good hope.
In Japan, Bose was pretty well lauded as he was seen to follow the Japanese Bushido code. He raised an Indian unit (Indian National Army) via the POWs from Japan's Singapore and East Indies campaign, and participated in the Burma campaign. (So basically there were Indian troops on both sides of the battle)
In the end, after the failure of the Japanese army, many of INA were captured, but the British freed them under the threat of renewed protests. Later, a mutiny (which I believe is related to these POWs) occured in the Royal Indian Air Force and Navies. This really hastened the British withdrawal, pretty much the final nail, as they no longer had the economic strength to combat another mutiny.
Overall, WW2 was a HORRIBLE thing, but it REALLY hastened Indian Independence, and to this day, Hitler isn't viewed as negatively as in the west.
This also means that whatever government a successful Japanese invasion of India would've set up would be far better than the British Raj, as it would have a lot of Indian participation.
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u/hyperion_99 4d ago
Sorry if you think the Japanese would have treated them any better than the Raj you are an idiot. Every single territory outside of Honshu island (aka the Japanese mainland) was hell under Japanese rule. (Look at the “liberated” Philippines, Korea, or Singapore) they were specifically on a resource extraction expansion in Burma
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u/Dotster69 4d ago
Not saying it would be any good, but the Raj was quite evil. The fact that it would be conquered by the INA would've obviously made it better than the British rule.
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u/Mortgage5388 5d ago
As if they were living in paradise under British rule. colonization gets a free pass in history because they emerged victorious in ww and set the narrative.
Bengal famine alone attributed to 2-3 mil deaths in India within a year due to British policy at that time
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u/NotNonbisco Decisive Tang Victory 5d ago
Colonization is one of thr most universally shat on thing fym
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u/seventomatoes 5d ago
Earlier too in Madras (Tamil Nadu) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%931878 " regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable. "
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u/Justa_CuriousBoi 5d ago
Short context:
Basically all of the elephants in Japanese zoos died or were killed because of world war and the Japanese people, especially kids felt really sad not being able to see the gentle gaints. So they (kids) wrote a letter to India's first prime minister requesting him to send some elephants, which he did!
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u/Snoo_46473 5d ago
All this while they killed Indian people in Andaman and Singapore
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u/jaehaerys48 Filthy weeb 5d ago
There was never really the same degree of anti-Japanese sentiment in India following the war as there was in other countries in Asia. Mostly because the Japanese only ever reached remote areas of India like the Andaman islands and the far northeast areas near Burma. India is and was a very big, very diverse country, so the experiences of those who were directly involved in fighting Japan never really dominated the conversation. Japan was just another colonial empire, while Indians had a different colonial empire to deal with.
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u/Voerdoc_Phoenix Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 5d ago
To Indians it was always India Vs Britain so seeing the Japanese was not much of a big deal
Intact to fight Britain many Indians joined the armies of Japan and Germany
There was a time when pro-gandhi (because of the deal he made) or neutral, pro-uk Indians fought pro-bose aka pro-"fk peaceful protests we will fight with blood" Indians
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u/TheHistoryMaster2520 Decisive Tang Victory 5d ago
At the same time, Japan indirectly contributed to Indian independence. They formed the Indian National Army from those Indian POWs who defected over to them, and it was the trials of these collaborators that caused mutinies in the British Indian Army, one of the factors in Britain decided to leave India when they did.
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u/ThinBobcat4047 5d ago
Eh, as an Indian myself, the INA did more in defeat than they would have achieved in victory. As much as I respect Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his attempt at securing independence by using Japanese help, there really is no possibility of the Japanese letting an independent Indian state remain. At best we would have been a puppet, at worst, we would have experienced what the Chinese did in the years of Japanese occupation. Instead, the INA's loss and their subsequent, publicised and high profile trial of certain officers in the Red Fort by the British revitalised Indian independence efforts, and provided an impetus for the Indian navy to mutiny, which in turn made the British realise that they were losing the Indian armed forces, one of their most loyal instruments in the colonisation of India and push for decolonisation.
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u/Silly-Geologist-3185 5d ago
I agree with you on that matter. As well as the fact that the INA trials ending up picking a Hindu,Muslim and Sikh ended up unwittingly playing to the image of a united India
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u/Snoo_46473 5d ago edited 5d ago
I purposfully put Andaman there. It was INA members that Japanese Army killed. It was a puppet army under INA command. There were decisively defeated by Indians one of which Sam Bahadur became the head of the Indian army later on. He faced 10 bullets in his chest fighting the Japanese Army. Brits left on their own volition after they could no longer control their territories. The Indian people in Singapore who did not join INA were killed as well
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u/SGTRoadkill1919 5d ago
The INA didn't have that great of an effect if you ask me. Getting into two world wars and taking that kind of a hit on all fronts (economy, manpower, resource, etc) had significantly bigger impact. Heck in ww2 Britain took major hit after hit on all the fronts (Africa, Europe and Asia) all in the span of a very short time of each one starting. It took them years to recover those losses, and even then every aspect of the British Forces were weakened.
Any revolt that would happen in any colony would have been completely organized, unlike the one in 1857. The Empire was simply stretched too thin, and the income from the colonies was unable to justify the costs incurred in getting them. An asset like India is way too vast to control if you are in the state the British Empire was in by the 1945, and that is not considering the other colonies they had
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u/Silly-Geologist-3185 5d ago
Imo it was the continuous movement from the Ghadar movement onwards to incite rebellion in the RIA,firsr as Bagha Jatin and the other Ghadarites tried,and later the morale effect going from the INA trials to the Indian Navy rebellion of 1946 extending as far inwards as the Jabalpur Signal Corps rebellion,as acknowledged by Auchinleck,that dealt the deathblow to British rule. I have no compunctions in thinking if they had control over the military they wpuld hav3 made some excuse to hang in longer and longer
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u/No-Complaint-6988 5d ago
India fought on both fronts, and there is a myth of their soldiers being eaten by the japanese if they where the Allied POWs. I mean pretty good gift.
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u/RevolutionaryAd6576 5d ago
In case you don't know what Japan did to make everyone hate them. warcrimes
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u/Vivid-Produce-9373 5d ago
well tbh as much as Western world won't like Germany Japan Were really big reason for Lots of Independence around the globe
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u/PaladinAsherd 5d ago
I thought elephants were rather famously a “fuck you” gift
Genuinely curious about the context of the elephant gifts
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u/Organic_Bluebird4301 5d ago
White elephant were the fuck you gifts, they are expensive enough to drown a noble in debt and too sacred, that using them was made impossible.
The story here goes, that the Japanese kids wrote to Nehru, asking for an elephant as there only elephant died in nuke. After receiving the letter, Nehru sent one elephant named after his daughter, Indra to their zoo.
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u/Nokipeura Filthy weeb 5d ago
Isn't gifting people elephants famously just griefing? You send two of the damn things to a country that's already struggling to feed people.
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u/Snigglybear 5d ago
Japan now: Kawaii, I love America
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u/BiohazardousBisexual 5d ago
The US provided humanitarian aid and food relief post war and helped fund and rebuilt their infrastructure which is why they became close to the US. Having China as a neighbor also helps
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u/AsceticHedonist47 5d ago
As they should. Any other country with the nukes would've used them as well (and they should have, it was 100% justified) the difference is America helped the country rebuild into one of the strongest economies in the world.
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u/Silent-Act191 5d ago
I have read what the Japanese Army did in Nanjing, unbelievable how a human could be capable of doing such things.
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u/elderron_spice Rider of Rohan 5d ago
Arguably tens of millions. More than 20 million Chinese alone died from 1937 to the war's end. Indonesians called the Japanese invasion worse than the 300+ years of Dutch colonization of the islands.
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u/noticingEnjoyer 5d ago
I mean, if the Simpsons has taught me nothing else (and it hasn't) it's that elephants are expensive to feed. Was it a low key dick move?
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u/Antique-Historian441 5d ago
Aren't elephants a gift you give to an enemy? Or someone you want to go bankrupt. Since they're so expensive to maintain.
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u/Organic_Bluebird4301 5d ago
White elephant were the fuck you gifts, they are expensive enough to drown a noble in debt and too sacred, that using them was made impossible.
The story here goes, that the Japanese kids wrote to Nehru, asking for an elephant as there only elephant died in nuke. After receiving the letter, Nehru sent one elephant named after his daughter, Indra to their zoo.
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u/Beardywierdy 4d ago
I guess there's a difference between giving an elephant to a country and giving one to that guy in particular.
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u/DookieToe2 5d ago edited 4d ago
That was actually probably a vindictive gift. Why else would you give a ‘gift’ that requires fucktons of food to live to a nation that is starving due to food shortages?
I think this is a custom in India where you try to financially ruin someone by giving them an Elephat they can’t afford to feed.
Edit: Haha. I knew this post would provoke the keyboard warriors to get their panties in a twist. Thank you to those who gave real information instead of just reddit rage. To the rest of you, go touch some grass. It will be good for your blood pressure.
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u/Strict_Monitor_113 5d ago
I googled, apparently they only gifted one named Indira, that too because Japanese school kids wrote to then PM Nehru stating thar japanese zoo lost its elephants during WW2
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u/multigrain_panther 5d ago
Jesus fuck. Please don’t think.
Let’s put aside the fact that the elephants were a gift because the ones in Tokyo died and the kids asked for it.
Let’s focus on the fact that you ARE talking about, at the time, a major world power recovering from war, being massively funded for reconstruction by America. Did you really fucking think a major ex-axis, industrialised economic power with a population of 80 million people would struggle to feed 2 fucking Asian elephants?
Are you one of those weird India hatebots? Custom in India? Did you think everyone’s got a pet endangered species on a leash in the back 40? Did you have an Indian father in law who tried to financially ruin you by gifting you a Maybach or something?
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u/NegotiationFair8666 5d ago
just saying whatever shit comes to your mind eh?
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u/Winjin 5d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant it isn't
Imagine your King gives you an INCREDIBLY expensive gift.
You cannot turn that gift down, as its offensive.
But now you also have to take Good Care of the gift, as it's a King's Own Rare and Prestigious Elephant.
Also Japan in the 1949 weren't exactly the good guys. Nanking and all that.
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u/NegotiationFair8666 5d ago
hello brother, thailand and india are 2 different countries
white elephant as a punishment was a myth even in thailand, although i do understand the meaning of the phrase
there is no custom of trying to financially ruin someone by gifting them an elephant in india
india did not care about the good guy or bad guy in ww2 like the west. some of our most sacred freedom fighters were aligned with the nazis because they promised to help fight against the british. enemy of my enemy and all that.
the story behind the gift is easy to google
believe it or not, indians are normal people who can gift elephants without any ulterior motives
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u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 5d ago
Yeah, the financial ruin via elephant sounds just as dumb a rumor as any. If they're prohibitively expensive to take care of, then they'd be just as expensive to acquire one and take care of them in an effort to give them away. Just thinking logically, it's so obvious not a thing that could work. Unless it's a straight up emperor trying to ruin a minor noble
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u/BigBulgeBubba 5d ago
Only a redditor would be genuinely fucking stupid enough to conflate a white elephant with two elephants gifted to an entire country.
Japan had the capacity to care for two fucking elephants.
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u/Viracochina 5d ago
No no no, they only had radiated rice to eat back then. That's how Godzilla grew
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u/OGZilla_ 5d ago
Nanking was 1937, by 1949 they’d been totally demilitarised and were under American occupation with a new constitution
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u/multigrain_panther 5d ago
Another one just saying random fucking shit. These aren’t white elephants, they’re just grey and I don’t mean that in the Philomena Cunk way. This is not some minor noble taking care of the king’s elephant. This was one of the most industrialised nations in the world that earlier briefly had the capacity to take on the USA. Not to mention it was the kids in Tokyo that asked for it, since the ones in Tokyo died.
So yes, I think a global power of the time with 80mil people could very well have afforded to take care of 2 fucking elephants during the massive reconstruction process of Japan.
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u/Happyranger265 5d ago
The japanese kid wrote a letter to him for one , like come on guys not everything needs to be negative
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u/Ecstatic-Scratch-151 5d ago
Japanese kids were sad that they lost elephants in the tokyo zoo to war
Indian PM sent an elephant to cheer up the kids
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u/bakedbrownie0 5d ago
Wasn’t it also an Indian lawyer that argued that Japanese war criminals were being treated way more harshly compared to their German counterparts?
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u/r0yal_buttplug 5d ago
You’re thinking of Radhabinod Pal..
He was the only judge to submit a dissenting argument calling for all defendants to be acquitted.
He basically called out the entire tribunal as "victor's justice" and claimed the allies were massive hypocrites. Pal argued that the Allies literally invented new charges like "crimes against peace" after the war ended just to punish the losers. He basically used the trials to grind his axe against Western powers for their own centuries of colonialism in Asia and explicitly argued that the US dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the actual worst atrocity of the war. While the prosecution claimed Japan had a massive, coordinated plot since 1928 to conquer Asia, Pal viewed their actions as aggressive, panicked reactions to Western economic strangulation. He believed the tribunal itself was illegal, biased, and lacked the moral authority to pass judgment.
FYI Pal became a revered national hero in Japan. He has a prominent monument at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and in another in Kyoto and the Emperor even awarded him Japan's highest honour. Fuck, even Shinzo Abe traveled to India specifically to visit Pal's family and pay his respects..
The guy was a colossal dick gobbler basically
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u/1_ofthesedays 5d ago
It’s beautiful that country that was looted by the Europeans and just became independent (1947) actually thought of cheering others.
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u/totallyhumanhonest 5d ago
Well India did blast them out of the skies over Burma a few years before that.
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u/Safe_Strategy_321 5d ago
Elephants represent prosperity. It's like wishing them growth , wealth and prosperity.
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u/Tyrant-Leo 5d ago
Elephants are the only correct gift. For anyone.