7

From twitter:

Australia's 'HATE' against JPN; War memorial hall in Sydney require visiters to trample down JP flag./ @mizubasyo シドニ

Example photo in question

"シドニ" is Japanese for "Sydney".

Is this photo from a war memorial in Australia?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
11

This was noted by Masamune Wada, a Japanese politician belonging to the centre-right Your Party. A tweet about the photo, and mentioning Masamune Wada, can be seen here The Japanese language Wikipedia article about him, translated via Google Translate, says

September 2013, the Australian War Memorial visit time, World War II on the floor of the corner of the Rising Sun flag and discovered that video is being projected, the museum and the Australian government protests [6] [5] . After that, the Australian government in response to the proposal from Current Australian Embassy of Japan, withdrew a projection of the video until October 15 [8].

Even without relying upon Wikipedia, it's possible to conclude the image is genuine.

Doing a google search for the image gave pages such as http://2ch.ki9.biz/archives/18383.html, which also had the following image:

another image, with surroundings as well

In this image, the flag (the Rising Sun Flag, not the ordinary Flag of Japan) can be seen on the floor. However, it is part of a exhibition about World War II, and in this instance it can be walked around if one so wishes. (That being said, I'm rather surprised that a war memorial let a flag be projected upon the floor - I thought they would treat flags, even enemy ones, more sensitively than that)

That image can be seen at A sombre experience at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, (not Sydney) a blog post by Dean Wickham showing several photos from the memorial.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Similarly, Canadian War Museum turns off 'insulting' flag exhibits
    – ChrisW
    Commented Oct 1, 2014 at 12:22
  • 19
    I suspect they simply thought it was an interesting design element and never considered the "trampling" aspect. For contrast, here is a picture of a US flag being "trampled", by people with sharp metal blades on their feet no less, as thousands cheer: and it seems clear from context that no disrepect is intended :-)
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Oct 1, 2014 at 14:25
  • 2
    In fact, it is impossible to trample this flag - because it's projected from above, the moment you try to step on it, it ends up on top of you.
    – Grimm The Opiner
    Commented Feb 27, 2023 at 10:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .