On Wed, 30 Apr 1997 08:48:24 -0400, Thomas R. Jefferys wrote:

 My view of
why they weren't pacified forcefully:  1) They live next to Jusenkyo and
you've got to be willing to lose a large portion of you're army to go
through there.

Bull. Jyusenkyou is not big enough to pose a problem for modern warfare. A
five second back-of-the-envelope computation showed that one thousand
springs spaced three and a half meters apart (a not unresonable assumption)
can fit into an area two hundred meters square. NOT A PROBLEM. It might be
a shock when someone first marches into the area, but once the danger is
recognized, the area is easily avoided.

 2) the Chinese may not know about them (they're a small
village in the middle of nowhere.  And if they're found by anything less
than ten people, who's going to be left to report back.

The Chinese government almost certainly knows about them. At least one
Maoist knows about them, likely more. Jyusenkyou is published in a guide
book, in Chinese, and Joketsuzoku is a stone's throw away. Finally, there
are very few places on this earth that are not thoroughly mapped and
measured by some means. No one is truly in the middle of nowhere anymore.

This is something I've come to my own weird conclusion about: Why does the
Chinese government -- as well as all other world powers -- seem to leave the
Amazons alone?

Let's ask another question: Cologne is the matriarch of the Amazons, if the Viz
translations are accurate in this regard; at the least she is one of their most
respected elders and most powerful warriors. Why is she in Japan running a ramen
shop?

My guess is that these questions have a common answer. If all of the Amazons
stayed in their village, they could all be wiped out -- by a nuclear "accident"
if nothing else. OTOH, with Cologne in Japan, if anything happened to her
sisters back home she would remain. She would have very little trouble finding
out who ordered it and dealing with them.

Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics