I'm not sure that's particularly relevant to whether 20-somethings care about understanding the meaning of random cool-looking foreign text on their clothes, but sure.
That's... no, that's not how anything works. There's a lot of assumptions and leaps of logic to get from point A to point B and they're not really in line with reality at all.
99% of the time, when a Japanese person wears something with English writing it says something like, "I BELIEVE TRUTH is the Love that is Belong." Like, for all they know it could be some Nazi shit, or it could be like, a quote from the Unabomber, or Stalin, or Ted Bundy. But it doesn't matter because to them it's completely meaningless gibberish. It's not that they're specifically ambivalent about the possibility of it being some Nazi shit, it's just that they're ambivalent about the meaning in general.
Nazis don't occupy anywhere near the same amount of cultural significance pretty much anywhere outside of the West. Also, most Japanese people (especially young people) aren't nearly as engaged or expressive regarding politics as Westerners.
If an American bought a shirt with random Chinese characters saying "Cao Cao was great" you wouldn't go looking through what part of American history would cause Americans to be more sympathetic towards Cao Cao than Liu Bei, you'd think, "They probably have no fucking clue what their shirt says, and don't care."
Yep usually the stuff that is offensive is the Rising Sun flag, which is still used :japan-cool: .I know many Japanese people doesnt like imperial japan, but its still bizzare that Nazi symbols are banned in Germany while the Japanese governement is allowed to fly that flag even though Imperial japan do fucked up stuff like Unit 731, Nanjing, or the entire "comfort women" system.
I'm not sure that's particularly relevant to whether 20-somethings care about understanding the meaning of random cool-looking foreign text on their clothes, but sure.
fewer social repercussions with nazi imagery
That's... no, that's not how anything works. There's a lot of assumptions and leaps of logic to get from point A to point B and they're not really in line with reality at all.
99% of the time, when a Japanese person wears something with English writing it says something like, "I BELIEVE TRUTH is the Love that is Belong." Like, for all they know it could be some Nazi shit, or it could be like, a quote from the Unabomber, or Stalin, or Ted Bundy. But it doesn't matter because to them it's completely meaningless gibberish. It's not that they're specifically ambivalent about the possibility of it being some Nazi shit, it's just that they're ambivalent about the meaning in general.
Nazis don't occupy anywhere near the same amount of cultural significance pretty much anywhere outside of the West. Also, most Japanese people (especially young people) aren't nearly as engaged or expressive regarding politics as Westerners.
If an American bought a shirt with random Chinese characters saying "Cao Cao was great" you wouldn't go looking through what part of American history would cause Americans to be more sympathetic towards Cao Cao than Liu Bei, you'd think, "They probably have no fucking clue what their shirt says, and don't care."
Yep usually the stuff that is offensive is the Rising Sun flag, which is still used :japan-cool: .I know many Japanese people doesnt like imperial japan, but its still bizzare that Nazi symbols are banned in Germany while the Japanese governement is allowed to fly that flag even though Imperial japan do fucked up stuff like Unit 731, Nanjing, or the entire "comfort women" system.
Westsplaining mayos BTFO