Instapundit links to a ‘CDR Salamander’ column about relations between Taiwan and Japan. (Isn’t that a cute pen name?) The author apparently just discovered something I’ve noted here before, repeatedly.
If you’ve traveled or lived in Asia - I’ve done both - you know the Japanese empire which ended with their defeat in 1945, left behind few friends. Generally they were brutal, cruel conquerors who treated non-Japanese as sub-humans. The one exception to that is Taiwan. I found that exception amazing 39 years ago, apparently it still strikes visitors as peculiar. ‘Salamander’ writes:
A friend of mine recently moved to Japan. He and his Japanese girlfriend vacationed in Taiwan recently. The one thing he noticed was that without fail, if they were trying to talk to someone who could not speak English, his girlfriend would switch to Japanese and, sure enough, they were off and running. To a person, everyone was happy to meet an American and a Japanese.
As the author notes, Japan is an archipelago of islands, the southernmost of which - Yonaguni - is merely 70 miles from Taiwan. Relatively large Japanese Okinawa with several US military bases is only 375 miles distant - a day’s cruise or an hour’s flight away.
