Japanese flag will not be the Rising Sun

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Hello everyone,

as you might have noticed from earlier posts/videos, the new Japanese Chi-Nu Kai will most likely (allegedly it’s not 100 percent) have a regular Japanese flag (instead of the Imperial Rising Sun) as you can see here:

jap1

The reason for this move is that while we Europeans and Americans have nothing against such symbol, for Korean and Chinese players it is offensive. Allegedly, it is not outright banned, but highly frowned upon.

The Rising Sun flag in World of Warships trailer already caused an outrage amongst Korean players. Allegedly, a petition of 40 thousand people was made not to include this flag. This is actually a good example of how little we know of what goes on in there, because such a petition on European and American server would make major news, even on WoT scale.

This is not a singular incident aimed at Wargaming, other artists, who used the Imperial flag also caused a scandal in South Korea.

To quote the abovelinked article:

“We will be removing the Rising Sun flag from the game in the future,” a moderator wrote on Wargaming’s official forum. “There has been quite a bit of discussion recently regarding this sensitive topic and I hope this clears some of the confusion.”

144 thoughts on “Japanese flag will not be the Rising Sun”

  2. That’s good I guess. The only hardship I see in NA about the Rising Sun Flag is the people living in Hawaii still remembering about that attack on Pearl Harbor.

    • The American flag is not banned in Japan where they nuked two whole cities. People still pissed over Pearh Harbor need to shove it up their arse.

    • Said people tend to uh…

      Fought in the War?

      The rest of the nation moved on, hell, the only reason my grandpa hated the Japanese was because he surrendered at Bataan and endured the Death March. But he still did business with them after the war and had no qualms with my parents working with em. He just wasn’t willing to be overly friendly with em.

      Your hardship is fabricated.

    • Yeah right like the Japanese people don’t give a shit about the two atomic bombs dropped on civilians…

      • And that China doesn’t remember the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, or the Rape of Nanking. The Dutch and Brits don’t forget their colonial possessions overrun, or us Filipinos not remembering Japanese rule of our homeland.

        The whitewashing of history is quite annoying. I can understand this outrage, but when someone notes the Atomic Bombs and saying the Japanese are innocent, they tend to ignore everything else.

        but back to my earlier statement, here in the U.S., no one really gives a damn. In Asia, yes. The ones who do give a damn here in the U.S. tend to be leftist loons who ignore anything but their own rosy view of history.

      • Maybe the US should have posted a warning sign on their battleships. Attacking this ship can result in butt-hurt for your entire nation. Up to and including blowing your cities off the planet.

  3. Well, let me quote the official opinion of WG concerning historical content in WoT: “As such, we will not remove from our games any historically accurate content that is not prohibited by international or national law.”

    On the one hand, WG does not care about European players who think that Stalin inscriptions are offensive, but they care about Korean and Chinese players who think that the Japanese Rising Sun Flag is offensive.

    Where is the difference? This is a clear case of double standards.

    • If Japan was on USSR’s side in the WWII, then there would be no problem i guess.

      SerB’s answer will be: How Terrible.

    • Agree: i don’t see how a flag is supposed to more offensive than Stalin inscriptions…

      • I seem to recall reading somewhere the Rising Sun flag is seen as a sign of Aggressive Japanese Nationalism. Which when you consider what happened in China and Korea, you can understand why its seen as very bad thing.

        As to the Stalin thing. I get the impression (Look at the Jingles video where he translates the Russian), that as WG is Belarus’ only international export it has a very high public image in country.
        Now you add in their government, and well it sounds like WG got leaned on by the politics. If unpleasant politicians are threatening your company, what do you do?

    • The difference is income. Not only EU brings less, also more here don’t care and will pay anyway, and even most whiners don’t stop playing&paying.

      So if their wallets still say “yes”, no point in listening to anything else.

    • Apparently, WG sees more (financial) potential in the upcoming Korean and Chinese players… EU will always be the underdog, so be it

      • Well they are constantly sucking up to the chinese. First with their copy/paste tech tree no one asked for, then with the dragon ridge, then with the great wall map. I guess dumb chinese likes p2win and WG loves it. On the other hand they don’t give a shit about evil EU capitalists opinions. When Polish people have issues with symbolism they are called whiners, trolls, non important….when korean and chinese fucktards have issues with one symbol…oh noeees…we need to please their needs…such an piece of shit company

  4. So, let’s recap:

    Rising sun flag is not banned, but offensive for the chinese server so it will not be introduced.

    Stalinism is either banned or offensive for the EU server so it will be introduced.

  6. If Japanese Rising Sun Falg hurts Koreans, than I can only suggest them what WG sugests to European players who disagree with Stalin captions:

    “Don’t play wth world of tanks then.”

    Nonsense! -.-

  7. Well Stalinec is frowned upon everywhere except in communist russia, but Stalinec is fine.

    If the Chineese are feeling offended, just dont do it on the Asian server, but on the EU RU and US servers it should be fine.

    WG are allways for historical accuracy, right?

    • Both China and South Korea have their own’s WOT server
      Why didn’t they choose to ban that flag in their server , Not in World Wide!

    • Well the US server could have anything included even swastikas as they are not banned in the USA the problem is when other ppl from NA start to join in, because I think Canada has different standards.

  8. The Imperial Japanese Flag is to Asia , that the Nazi Swastica is to Europe. Simple as that. It doesn’t matter to me, I’ll have the national roundel modified anyways.

    • Except it is not BANNED at all.
      The swastika is banned and therefore its not possible to introduce it into the game, but there is no problem for the Rising sun flag to be introduced, except the fact that some people will get their feelings hurt.

      So, what matters most? People’s feelings or Historical accuracy?

      • I’d go for Historical Accuracy. Did not say I wanted gone, hell I said I’m getting the national roundel modified anyways.

        If my grandfather can tolerate the Japanese after first surrendering to them and then living through a concentration camp after a brutal march, I’m sure others can.

        • What about waving the Nazi flag in Europe and America? If you ask for historical accuracy@@

    • As an Asian, and from a nation that endured Japanese occupation, i could say i don’t care about their flag. Most people on SEA will rather cool about it i think.

      …and interesting little search from Google, seems Rising Sun itself rarely painted on Japanese tanks on Pacific either, unlike US White Star or German Cross. Claiming Rising Sun historical is not really had basic either.

  9. Europe – irrelevant, major butthurt. And also polish player suck, german nazi tanks bias, french le surrender, english commonwelth bias.

    Chinesse – relevant questioning of WG steps.

    I know it’s all about money, because yellow bros spend more money on games but if european players were not regulary treated with dose of trolling, bs and incompetence, we would definitely buy more gold. I would. I was going to, lately, but the stalin shit came up and I didn’t.
    Major fuckup WG, major fuckup.

  10. Haa, haa double standards again while stalin crap is offensive or banned in EU/NA it will be introduced, but Imperial japanese flag is offensive in far east and it wont be introduced. WG stop calling your game historically correct game you should call your game – Flawed historically politically correct.

    • I completely agree with you!

      If you look trough the German captions, most of them are crap.
      To rebalance this issue they should remove those Stalin captions or Put at least Wehrmacht captions.

  11. I HATE censorship. If the vehicles had the rising sun flag then USE IT! Historical accuracy (I’m speaking generally here, not just in WoT/WoWs) is important for the future generations!

    • totally agree… if the koreans wont play.. fine…. I would preffer all to be historically accurate and not pander to the whim of sensitive dogooders… even 40,000 doesn not make them not noobs.

      If we want the rising sun lets have it!!! ffs we (British) suffered the same under Japanese military outrages… but it doesnt mean I dont want it in the game…..

      WG get rid of the tanks in case someone objects to them in a petittion and bring on ‘World of Fluffy Teddys’!!!!!!

      • Also Serb said this yesterday!

        “We will be guided by player surveys only if democracy is brought to Wargaming by American bombers, or if the players buy 51 percent of WG shares”

        All I want is some consistency here! Do Korean players own 51 percent of WG shares? Somehow I doubt it.

        • And before someone says “WG doesn’t want to hinder their profits in the south east Asian market” let me remind them that they pissed off a lot of people with the Stalin inscription fiasco and potentially lost some profits. Therefore WG policy is clear: Soviet historical accuracy is more important than company’s profits but other types of historical accuracy are less important than profits.

          Seriously WG you could make such an epic and important stand for historical accuracy (I even supported you bringing back Stalin inscriptions because they were historical) and yet you chicken out. I am very disappointed.

          • I think they will make a lot of money with the stalinist stuff, because of the russian server! Every stalin lover will put it on their tank with gold….

          • >Seriously WG you could make such an epic and important stand for historical accuracy (I even supported you bringing back Stalin inscriptions because they were historical) and yet you chicken out. I am very disappointed.

            That’s what you get for trusting SerB.

  12. Haha. The Rising Sun is still the official flag for the Japanese navy. Aren’t they butthurt about that but are about this?

  13. OMG they are planning Japanese tanks…. I fint all tanks offensive because they kill… please ban the game :P

  16. Goddamit… i really like the rising sun flag… :(
    I hope that someone makes a mod for it.

  17. While Imperial Japan was a controversial historical figure, we still recognize its contribution to perfecting pesticide gasses

  18. So? For me the Soviet flag is offensive as it shows decades of communist enslavement of my country…

  19. Well, I think that especially SerB is somewhat biased. There is no single reason to allow Stalin inscriptions and disallow the rising sun flag, since both of them are not prohibited by international or national law, but cause “butthurt” players in some regions outside the USSR.

    Once again: double standards from WG. This is unacceptable and paltry. Shame on you, SerB!

  20. I am a Chinese, but I think the Rising Sun should be keep on Japanese tank, thats the history.
    I can understand why some people dont want to see that, but to be honest it likely to make us (Chinese players) feel more rage and try to kill them all, rather than upset, feeling down and cry for our ancestors.

  22. ASIA server players will change it to their respective gold-bought nation flag anyway, rising sun flag or not is not relevant here.

    Well, maybe Japanese players will not happy with this decision. But I sure seeing filthy gaijins upset for this matter make them amused.

  23. Hi, I posted this in a previous topic before I noticed that this one was here, and it is more relevant to this discussion, so I’d like to post it here.

    It needs to be noted that there are some important differences between the Swastika and the Rising Sun. The Swastika was the flag of the Nazi party previously not a symbol of Germany, and was obviously immediately gotten rid of after the war. Meanwhile, the Rising Sun has been the symbol of the Japanese military since 1870, and it remains the flag of the Japanese military (now called the Japan Self-Defense Force) today.

    I understand that it’s offensive to the Koreans and the Chinese, so it shouldn’t be in their version of the game. However, it should be in every other version of the game, at least in my opinion. This business with one group of consumers dictating what other consumers should be offended by, as we saw with the Stalinist inscription incident, needs to stop. Just let each server decide what is acceptable to them. That’s called localization, and Wargaming needs to stop fucking it up.

    • From the article:

      “Wargaming, which is based in Belarus and is also known for World of Tanks, is keeping the Rising Sun flag in the Western versions of the game, with the rationale that the Japanese Imperial flag is not outlawed like the swastika is in some places in Europe and Latin America.”

      • That “For Stalin” symbol is going to look awesome on my T-62A.
        I can imagine the orde of butthurt polacks, nazilovers and amerifats but then I remembered that they have no idea what cyrilic script is.

        • If u r good enough player they will flame u more for wallhakz or gold ammo than for Stalinist symbols…

        • IF you use the stalinist inscriptions just to spite other people, then you are just a pathetic douchebag looking for attention. Move on, nothing to see here..

  25. I see, german massmurdering madmen, their symbols and inscriptions arent okay, japanese madmen and their flags arent okay either, but russian massmurdering madmen, their inscriptions and flags are totally fine. Sorry, got confused here for a second.

  26. This is a bunch of cock. No person who plays this game was impacted by WW2 or the Korean War so they have no right to whine about being offended.

    “It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”
    - Stephen Fry

  27. As a Korean I will comment about this. In Asia, the Rising Sun is a symbol of the horrible things that Japan has done to Asia, before and during WWII. The Rising Sun signifies Racial Superiority and Purity of the Japanese Race and its justifications for the enslavement and destruction of culture of Non-Japanese(especially the Koreans and Chinese) It is somewhat similar to the Swastika Flag of Nazi Germany in western terms. The Japanese used the Rising Sun flag starting in the late 19th century which was a time when they used weapons they received from the west to annex Korean and parts of China and pretty much enslave them.

    Unlike Germany which fully repented its past and forsake all the horrible things of the Nazi Regime, Japan has yet to really do the same. Japan denies many things that they have done(there has been apologies made, but their actions show that it was not completely sincere). Many of the people who were behind the awful things done are still alive and living well off lives. Japan got off fairly easy in War Crime Punishments compared to Germany.

    Japan tends to do things from time to time that irritate its neighbors. Such as making illegal claims to islands in attempt to increase their sea borders, revise historical textbooks to lessen or even completely omit parts of history involving their atrocities, worshiping shrines which hold various CLASS-A War criminals despite demands to have them removed. Japan’s attitude towards other Asians are fairly awful as well and does little to heal the scars of the past.

    Resentment in China and Korea toward Japanese is still fairly strong today and remain very strong due to Japan’s attitude of denying or downplaying what they have done.

    The Rising Sun represents the still living xenophobia and hatred that exists. Which is why its so offensive to China and Korea.

    Stalin has done some terrible things, but he did not go out on his way to commit genocide to the level the Nazis and Japanese did. Not to mention Stalin was instrumental in stopping Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, so he is in a sense a hero to the Russians. (Not a leader that is worthy of praise though)

    • “Stalin has done some terrible things, but he did not go out on his way to commit genocide to the level the Nazis and Japanese did.”

      Are you fucking stupid? Stalin killed more people than Nazis and Japs together. And stop feeling butthurt about something that didn’t impact your sorry ass in anyway.

    • The (potential) usage of the Rising Sun Flag (or the Swastika/Stalin slogans for that matter) aren’t about people, they’re about the game. It’s not meant to do anything other than to be decoration in a game.

      If you feel offended or feel discomfort looking at stuff like this then that is, harsly said, your own problem. Again; offense is taken, not given.

    • WG should not treat similar cases differently.

      @JC
      If you are offended by the Japanese imperial flag, you should understand that people in Europe also have the right to be offended by inscriptions which celebrate the mass murderer Stalin. Basically, there is no difference between Soviet, German and the Japanese war crimes.

    • thanks for the laugh. Stalin was as bad as Hitler and no, Japan was not worse in any way. you may take your butthurt somewhere else where someone might just give a damn.

      • Stalin has done some terrible things, but he did not go out on his way to commit genocide to the level the Nazis and Japanese did.
        _____________
        If you didn’t go full retard with this one i even might believe that your post was somewhat legit. After reading that i realised you are just another fucktard believeing stalin was a hero and hitler was the bad guy who did everything bad that happened in ww2.

  28. Breaking news:
    Stalin inscriptions won’t return in 8.8

    The reason for this move is that while Russians have nothing against this name, for eastern European and American players it is offensive. Allegedly, it is not outright banned, but highly frowned upon.

    In other news:
    Nazi-flag will stay in the game. The marketing department of WG concluded that while some people here in the dislike it, for Korean and Chinese players it is actually a whole lot of fun.

    Conclusion:
    Marketing > “Historical accuracy”

    • >American players
      LolWut? And what do they find of “offensive” in the name of their wartime ally?

      • Wouldn’t Americans SUPPORT Stalinist inscriptions being in game? We Americans like exercising our 1st Amendment rights and our interest in historical accuracy. We would accept swastikas on German tanks for the same reason, except that the swastika on German vehicles was not historical. Yes, they were on German vehicles, but they weren’t as apparent as the Cross, hence why the Iron Cross is used on German vehicles. American players are VERY lenient on what is represented in video games.

  29. Interesting. WG doens’t care shit that some EU countries don’t want Stalin insignias but they care a japanese flag. If the chinese server has specials we don’t have (eg maps), why not replace the icon file with another one only for them!? Should not be more difficult than adding new maps for them only.

    • China, Korea, and SEA had people who put up a petition of over 40,000 signature against the Rising Sun flag. In WoT terms that’s a lot of players. The Views in Asia are probably much more uniform about the Rising Sun flag, than Europe’s about Stalin, as SerB said most Europeans probably don’t care about Stalin, but a significant amount of Chinese and Koreans hate what the Empire of the Rising Sun stands for.

      • Okay, dont want that flag on your buthurt server? dont have that flag on your butthurt server!

        But why other servers should have unhistorical jap tanks because of you people? Its called localisation. Chineese WoW has no bones or the word Death anywhere, and still Wrath of the Lich king passed there no problem. IN CATA WoW in China, Deathwing was renamed to Fadewing, and so on. LOCALISATION.

        Asian servers have Golden Type 59, other servers dont have that tank. Asian servers have censured flag, Fine. But everyone else should have the HISTORICAL one

        The thing is, WG SAID that they dont care if people get butthurt over something, and as long as its historically correct and NOT banned anywhere, they will include it, no matter what. They SAID they wont give in to player petitions too, and now THEY ARE DOING IT.

      • as SerB said most Europeans probably don’t care about Stalin
        ____________
        Did you really fall for that pathetic lie from SerBcunt? Most don’t care? He said that just to get out with it, but he knows very well that most EU players don’t like it and don’t want it, but somehow he doesn’t give a fuck. It’s called propaganda. Tell to the public what you want them to hear and not the real truth.

    • Obviously those little flags weren’t historically there, but historicity is just an excuse for being butthurt at Wargaming, didn’t they tell you so before starting this stormshit?

  32. Well, the Red Star is a symbol of misery, tyranny and oppression for a hell of a lot of people in Europe too, so we should see that replaced by the good old Imperial Russian Flag then!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Russia.svg

    By the way, on the Stalin thing? I would *strongly* advise anyone interested to read ‘Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar’ by Simon Montefiore; it’s fascinating, and a really chilling insight into just how rotten the core of Stalin’s regime truly was.

    • >good old Imperial Russian Flag then!
      Old: yes
      Good: It was an imperialist country like Britain, America or the USSR successor itself, you can hardly build an empire without dirtying your hands…

      • Yes, absolutely – the ‘good old’ was in massive sarcasm quotes. Britain, the USA, the USSR, China…everyone has blood on their hands. The point I was making was that the Red Star is no more worthy of respect than the Swastika to a lot of people, and that WG’s apparent mindset of “Hitler bad, Stalin good” is wilful blindness at best and dangerously nationalistic bigotry at worst.

  33. Uh, as far as I know, the kyokujitsu-ki was not really used on tanks. Generally tanks had particular kanji(from the pictures I’ve seen, “ryou/good” and “kokorozashi/will” seem to be examples) or single hiragana on their sides(not sure what these represented.) I’ve also seen a white sakura blossom and a star used as well. The scant times I’ve seen a kyokujitsu-ki are on miniature models or modern photographs of restored tanks, so I do not believe it to be a historically accurate symbol to use on the tank. Same with the hinomaru flag as well(I’ve seen it painted on the lower frontal plate, though.)

    I think the kokorozashi kanji would be a great emblem for Japanese tanks, personally.

  36. Winners write history… ah, and of course MONEY !

    European capitalist whining about ‘Stalinets’? Make some “Your opinion is important to us” sht on their head!
    South-Korean / Chinese wealthy cubehead-nolife-MMOers whining about Rising Sun? Just prepare those nice tongues to clean some @##…

  37. pure stupidity again, same as the Stalingate issue, they bend to stupidity instead of being historically accurate.
    Those flags where used on that era, then they must be in the game, period, why do they have to be subject to heavy-handed censoring?. history is history, deal with it
    (i know i’m going to be modding the hell out of any stupidity like this to correctly fix it)

    • silly me, in the end of that kotaku article it says the hi-no-maru will remain in the western versions of the game, letsee how much truth is in that…

  38. Personally for those who actively watch the still going ons between the three countries, Korea and China are butt hurt every time they see the flag cause it reminds them when the country they now picked on ruled over them, especially when historically China has failed several times to take over Japan so it’s a pride thing. Korea on the other hand it’s a mix bag cause there was some Unproven war crimes against them done by japan that they repeatedly claim and use as an reason to try to extort funds out of japan.

    To them any kind of showing of the Rising Sun flag is counter productive to their current oppressive tactics, because god forbid the japanese just stand up and go “You know what it’s been half a century, shut the hell up you’ve both done more crimes against humanity to your own people in recent decades then we did to you during the war so just shut the hell up.”

    • “especially when historically China has failed several times to take over Japan”

      Out of all the nonsense in your post, this one takes the spot. China never even tried invading Japan, let alone “failed” to do it. Japan also never ruled China, and sure it took some territories which is no problem for any country to militarize and in short term invade someone. Germany did it to France easily, for example. France did it to ‘Germany’, Austria and Russia during Napoleon.

      “You know what it’s been half a century”

      And yet Japan still didn’t return the Chinese islands to China, which says enough about how they left their imperialism in the past. What territories of France is Germany holding?

      “shut the hell up you’ve both done more crimes against humanity to your own people”

      Oh boohoo, people died during experimental phase of rebuilding the once-great nation and civilization of China. Welcome to the real world. If you want a great country, some people will have to die. Thanks to these crimes against humanity China is about to be #1 world country in just about everything (and already is in many things). Crimes against humanity.. what the hell man you sound like American politician.

  39. ffs WG you are either historical or not historical there is in in-between either have them or not but stop pissing around!!!

  40. To be honest I am glad with the decision we did. Because the rising sun is usually only used on naval ships and naval vehicles not land vehicles. Not even on airplanes even today it’s strictly only used in the navy.

    It would be historical incorrect to slap it on Japanese tanks…

  42. Could you all just fucking grow up. The attitudes being displayed here do nothing but perpetuate racism, nationalism and bigotry, you know, the conditions that let fucktards like Hitler and Stalin come to power in the first place.
    Nationalism is the retreat of a tiny mind that is unable to comprehend the fact that, despite our differences, we are all one species.
    And to draw lines of division along something as arbitrary as where your mother happened to give birth is just down right stupid.

  43. As a Person Living in the Philippines – I can tell you that my generation no longer has any ill-will against Japan. I personally know of the atrocities they committed – but generally we do not hold it against them any longer. Maybe some of the older generation – but they don’t really play the game

  44. Hi guys

    I wish we could all have a beer in some nice and calm czech pub. It would so easier to actually listen to each other.

    Such discussion needs a lot of time but above all it needs knowledge and good will to understand others. I’m not sure If we will ever find such things in the internet. Which is kinda sad but life goes on.

    Personally I don’t care about game inscriptions. You can have svastika, for Stalin and japs flag if you want. You can have some of them I don’t care which ones.

    What I care is my butthurt. Because I know Stalin wasn’t controversial. Quite opposite. So when SerB says “nahh he wasn’t that bad” I feel offended, because it offends my knowledge. I know that Russians have a special law which forbids them to be historical accurate on that matter (saying something historically accurate of Stalin and Red Army is anty patriotic in Russia). So I don’t care about Russians a all. They have their freedom and their democracy. I just feel sad for such persons as Anna Politkowska.

    So SerB offended me. I can live with that. But I wish you guys to try to understand that butthurt.

    Just try to image the he wants to implement svastika. Imagine all the juish organizations reactions. And imagine SerB saying Oh.. it is just juish butthurt. What would you think of it? It is so easy to make laugh of butthurt Poles isn’t it?

    I think I will buy a beer myself. I wish you could joined me.

    Y.

    • Shit you can’t edit it? Should be Jewish instead of juish. Sorry about that.

      Y.

    • > What would you think of it?
      I would think the same, Jews aren’t special, you can be butthurt as much as you want, you can scream it as much as you want but in the end it’s take it or leave it, no one is forcing you to play this game. Anyway in this case, like some smart people pointed out, we’re discussing about nothing because the rising flag was never used on Japanese tanks….

      • *rising sun flag* I should really start to re-read my posts before hitting submit.

  45. SS, you really should have asked me about this.

    Kyokujitsu-Ki was NEVER used by IJA as an insignia on tanks. While the IJN did use their version of the Kyokujitsu-Ki, there is not a single example of the IJA doing so. That is why I have been opposed to suggestions within WG about that particular flag.