Japan has no future

[warpedbored]

 

... If they were exhorting the virtues of the war criminals and praising their deeds you might have a point....

 

The Japanese do not admit they have war criminals. That's the point.

 

And neither does the communist party admit millions were killed during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. Don't you think two nuclear bombs was punishment enough?

[Randy W]

The Washington Post weighs in . . .

 

Shinzo Abe’s inability to face history

Mr. Abe replied: “The definition of what constitutes aggression has yet to be established in academia or in the international community. Things that happened between nations will look differently depending on which side you view them from.”

 

Officials in South Korea and China responded with fury, and understandably so. Yes, history is always being reinterpreted. But there are such things as facts. Japan occupied Korea. It occupied Manchuria and then the rest of China. It invaded Malaya. It committed aggression. Why, decades after Germany solidified its place in Europe by facing history honestly, are facts so difficult for some in Japan to acknowledge?

 

We understand that South Korea and, to an even greater extent, China at times stoke anti-Japan sentiment for domestic political purposes. China distorts its own history and, unlike Japan, in many cases does not allow conflicting interpretations to be debated or studied. But none of that excuses the kind of self-destructive revisionism into which Mr. Abe lapsed this week.

 

An inability to face history will prejudice the more reasonable goals to which South Korea and China also object. Mr. Abe has valid reasons, given the defense spending and assertive behavior of China and North Korea, to favor modernization of Japan’s defense forces. He has good reason to question whether Japan’s “self-defense” constitution, imposed by U.S. occupiers after World War II, allows the nation to come to the aid of its allies in sufficient strength. But his ability to promote reform at home, where many voters remain skeptical, and to reassure suspicious neighbors plummets when he appears to entertain nostalgia for prewar empire.

 

 

China, on the other hand, at least (VERY) actively discourages "red nostalgia".

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

Japanese are Asians too and dislike losing face as much as the Chinese. If they were exhorting the virtues of the war criminals and praising their deeds you might have a point. The shrine is to war dead in general. There is no good that can come out of perpetuating a grudge.

 

Try to focus on one topic at a time. Carl, the first thing that comes to mind when I read your commentary about the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers toward the the people of China, is surprise of your ignorance. You are not Asian, and you're certainly not Chinese, yet you speak as if you believe you have some sort of voice of authority for them. Well, you don't.

 

You call the feelings of the people of Nanjing, and the many other cities of China a grudge? How debasing can you possibly be? A grudge is something someone gets after they find piss in their cornflakes. What do you call it when your country is attacked and you watch your sister raped and murdered, and her body desecrated, or your father is beheaded and his head stuck on a post in front of your home? A grudge?

 

I didn't have much interest a few years ago to tour the Holocaust Museum in Nanjing, but I did so at the encouragement of some of my Chinese friends. I didn't want to go because I knew what I might see there. But, I'm glad I went.

 

I suggest that you avoid going to that museum and telling the people in attendance what you wrote here; specifically that they have a grudge and they need to get rid of it because it's been over seventy years since the events.

Edited April 28, 2013 by JiangsuExpat (see edit history)

[Randy W]

. . . which was (the Washington Post article) , of course, picked up by Xinhua

 

Washington Post editorial chides Abe's inability to face history

Edited April 28, 2013 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

 

 

... If they were exhorting the virtues of the war criminals and praising their deeds you might have a point....

 

The Japanese do not admit they have war criminals. That's the point.

 

And neither does the communist party admit millions were killed during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. Don't you think two nuclear bombs was punishment enough?

 

 

Fulai made a very good point that the government of Japan has never admitted or apologized for what they did in China. The nukes were dropped by the USA, and not by the people of China. The people of China deserve an admission, apology, and reparation for war crimes.

[Fu Lai]

... If they were exhorting the virtues of the war criminals and praising their deeds you might have a point....

 

The Japanese do not admit they have war criminals. That's the point.

And neither does the communist party admit millions were killed during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. Don't you think two nuclear bombs was punishment enough?

 

While Chinese internal problems have no context in this discussion (about Japanese having a problem with their future for the reasons stated), documents have been released where Mao and government officials acknowledged their mistakes during the great leap which was horrible worsened by several devastating weather events. Furthermore, the Red Guards have published and demonstrated in person their apologetic sorrow for the cultural revolution. Also, China has never dropped a nuclear bomb, much less two, on anyone (but I would bet that Japan is in the crosshairs now and is one grave mistake away from being flattened... with or without the USA there). Just so you know.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Fu Lai (see edit history)

[danb]

Randy started this post with the words "Chinese Thoughts on Japan, from the Global Times..." and in that article it states "...the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including 14 Class-A criminals of World War II....."

 

I have many questions but will only post a couple of them.

 

1. Who wrote this article and what their intent? What are the reasons behind writing this article?

 

2. So if the 14 Class-A criminals were not buried at the Yasukuni Shrine would the Japanese have permission to visit the this shrine?

 

China has many legitmate reasons to complain how she has been treated by the outside. The West and Japan did not treat China and her people with much respect in the 1800's and at least the first half of the twentieth century. Why were the opium wars fought in the 1800's? Wasn't it so that opium could be be barter for Chinese goods that the West wanted? Didn't that opium wreak havoc on the Chinese people?

 

One more question what kind of response would the USA or the British or the German or French...or the Japanese were told that they could not visit their "Arlington's and Yasukuni" shrines to honor their war dead? Danb

[warpedbored]

Jesse you are no more of an authority than I am. All I see from you and Fu Lai is encouraging continued hatred of Japanese. What possible good does that do? I probably know more about Japan than the majority here. My ex is Japanese, I know many Japanese people and have been a Japanese history buff for many years. I am not downplaying what Japan did to China. I am saying and will continue to do so that it's time to put the past aside and get on with modern history. What do you guys expect Japan to do? Prostrate themselves and beg forgiveness? empty the national treasury as reparations? Has Germany and Italy somehow passed muster and been forgiven? Perhaps the US should give the country back to native Americans as well.

 

Hate is an ugly thing and the way I see it you guys are just proving my point.

[Fu Lai]

This thread is named "Japan has no future" and links to the article "Insisting on wrong road, Japan has no future".

 

1. People's Daily author: Zhong Sheng wrote the article. Intent is subjective but I would think it is one of many articles from different countries written about the reaction (complete disapproval) from Japan's neighbors regarding the Japanese leader and other officials trumpeting their support and visits to the shrine.

 

2. Japanese need no permission to visit the shrine, it is one of their top tourist attractions.

 

BTW, over 1,000 convicted war criminals are buried there. AFAIK there are no such war criminals honored by "the USA or the British or the German or French".

 

Opium wars are another topic altogether from this thread. It is sufficient to say that period the foreign powers were trying everything they could to divvy up China for their spoils. Is the same thing happening or even likely to succeed now? Again, that is for another thread.

[Fu Lai]

Jesse you are no more of an authority than I am. All I see from you and Fu Lai is encouraging continued hatred of Japanese. What possible good does that do? I probably know more about Japan than the majority here. My ex is Japanese, I know many Japanese people and have been a Japanese history buff for many years. I am not downplaying what Japan did to China. I am saying and will continue to do so that it's time to put the past aside and get on with modern history. What do you guys expect Japan to do? Prostrate themselves and beg forgiveness? empty the national treasury as reparations? Has Germany and Italy somehow passed muster and been forgiven? Perhaps the US should give the country back to native Americans as well.

 

Hate is an ugly thing and the way I see it you guys are just proving my point.

 

Your point is continue to ignore that Japan does not admit any wrongdoing which is the source of their dilemma (and the point of the international outrage). Good for you that you endorse Japan's actions so much but maybe you should encourage them to do what Germany, Italy and the USA did and not continue to foster ill feelings. A little admitting when you are wrong goes a long way.

[warpedbored]

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

 

Hate is an ugly thing and the way I see it you guys are just proving my point.

 

Your point is continue to ignore that Japan does not admit any wrongdoing which is the source of their dilemma (and the point of the international outrage). Good for you that you endorse Japan's actions so much but maybe you should encourage them to do what Germany, Italy and the USA did and not continue to foster ill feelings. A little admitting when you are wrong goes a long way.

 

 

 

Well said Fu Lai!

 

[Fu Lai]

 

"A familiar pattern"

 

 

Revisionism Tokyo-style Los Angeles Times

Japan's leaders still won't acknowledge their country's wartime atrocities.

This month 75 years ago, the people of Nanking, China's ancient capital city, were in the midst of one of the worst atrocities in history, the infamous Rape of Nanking. The truth of what actually happened is at the center of a bitter dispute between China and Japan that continues to play out in present-day relations.

 

Many Chinese see Japan's election last month of ultraconservative nationalist Shinzo Abe as prime minister as just the latest in a string of insults. And it was recently reported that Japan is considering rolling back its 1993 apology regarding "comfort women," the thousands of women the Japanese army sexually enslaved during World War II.

 

In 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army, captured Nanking on Dec. 13. No one knows the exact toll the Japanese soldiers exacted on its citizens, but a postwar Allied investigation put the numbers at more than 200,000 killed and at least 20,000 women and girls raped in the six weeks after the city fell.

 

In 2006, we traveled to China and to Japan to interview victims and soldiers who took part in the massacre. One former Japanese soldier explained, without a hint of regret: "We all drew straws, and the man who pulled out the one marked first, he brushed off her face tenderly and treated her pretty, yes, and then proceeded to rape her. As their daughter was being raped, the parents would come outside and gesture to us, 'Please spare her!' They'd bang their heads on the ground and plead with us. We'd take one girl and five of us would hold her down."

 

In China, a 79-year-old man tearfully described how, at 9 years old, he watched a soldier bayonet his mother to death as she breast fed his brother. Another man saw his 13-year-old sister sliced in half by a Japanese soldier after she resisted being raped. Elderly women told harrowing stories of the rapes they endured as young girls.

 

It was the mass rapes in Nanking and the brutalization of an entire populace that eventually convinced Japanese military leaders that they needed to contain the chaos. Japanese soldiers began rounding up women and forcing them to serve as sex slaves in so-called comfort stations.

 

This is what most historians believe. But not in Japan, where a large faction of conservatives, led by Abe, denies that the Japanese military forced women into sexual slavery. They maintain that any suggestion to the contrary is simply anti-Japanese propaganda and probably spread by China. At the furthest end of the spectrum, the minimizing turns to flat-out denial; one professor we interviewed at a top Japanese university adamantly insisted there were no killings or rapes in Nanking.

 

Not surprisingly, all this minimizing and denial enrages the Chinese and others in Asia. But this is a familiar pattern.

 

Abe has visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo and has said he plans to visit again as prime minister. This is the place where the souls of more than 2 million Japanese war dead are said to be enshrined. Among them are 14 men convicted at the end of World War II of what are known as Class-A war crimes, including Iwane Matsui, the general who led Japanese forces in Nanking. To the Chinese, every visit by an official is like ripping open an unhealed wound. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went there six times, and his 2005 visit resulted in anti-Japanese riots in China.

http://articles.latimes.com/images/pixel.gif

It's also informative to walk just a few yards to the Yushukan, the museum affiliated with the Yasukuni shrine. There, as we surveyed the exhibits on the Great East Asian War (World War II to much of the rest of the world), we were surprised to learn that Franklin D. Roosevelt had forced Japan to go to war in a calculated effort to lift the U.S. out of the Depression. (This exhibit was recently revised to omit the Depression reference; now it just says the U.S. forced Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor.)

 

Then there's the exhibit that argues that Japan's "entry into" other Asian countries was simply an effort to help them throw off the yoke of Western colonization. The museum claims that the Japanese leaders who were tried as war criminals were heroic. A tiny section on Nanking makes no mention of atrocities.

 

All this revisionism is interspersed with militaristic displays. And crucially, these are not a handful of dusty exhibits in an out-of-the-way place; the Yasukuni complex occupies 25 acres of prime Tokyo real estate.

 

Fueled by such an aggrieved interpretation of Japan's wartime past, Abe and his party are leading efforts to amend Article 9 of the nation's postwar constitution, which mandates that Japan not maintain a standing army. This comes at a time of escalating tension with China, much of it focused on the Senkaku islands. And Abe's government is considering revising what is known as the Kono Statement, a 1993 apology Japan made for the comfort women, an issue of great meaning to China and other nations that had women forced into sexual slavery.

 

[warpedbored]

Enough already. Just let it rest. If 75 years and two atomic bombs aren't enough to satisfy you you can't be pleased.

[Fu Lai]

Abe defends Yasukuni Shrine visits

today...

 

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent remarks defending his cabinet and parliamentarians' visits to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine have aroused strong criticism from the international community.

Abe questioned the definition of "aggression" on Tuesday, which he described as vague both academically and internationally, saying it depends on from which side one looks at the situation.

On the following day, the prime minister told a parliamentary panel that it is only natural to "honor the spirit of the war dead who gave their lives for the country", and that "our ministers will not cave in to any threats."

A group of 168 Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including 14 leading war criminals of World War II.

Their move followed donations by Abe and three cabinet ministers' weekend visits to the notorious shrine.

Urging Japan to have a correct understanding of history, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Wednesday it would be difficult for her country and Japan to move in a future-oriented manner if Japan holds incorrect perceptions of history.

Park added that if Japan continues its rightward tilting, its relations with many Asian countries will bog down, which is not desirable for Japan as well.

In protest against the visits, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se has called off a planned visit to Japan, while his ministry summoned Japanese ambassador in Seoul Koro Bessho for representation.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea's government newspaper Democratic Korea published an article on Sunday saying that the incumbent Japanese government is more conservative than previous ones, adding the Abe administration twisted and denied the history of Japanese aggression.

Facts have proven that militarism in Japan has been on the rise. The Japanese rightists should be aware that they are now on a path of self-destruction, the article said, stressing militarism will lead not to peace and prosperity but to destruction.

The US Washington Post published an editorial on Saturday, saying Abe showed a lack of respect for history in his recent controversial remarks.

After reviewing the "brave steps" taken by Abe to reform Japan's economy, the article suggested his controversial remarks over Japan's wartime aggression could put all the progress at risk.

"Yes, history is always being reinterpreted. But there are such things as facts. Japan occupied Korea. It occupied Manchuria and then the rest of China. It invaded Malaya. It committed aggression," the article said.

It also contrasts Japan's unwillingness to acknowledge historical facts with Germany's honest attitude in this regard.

The Wall Street Journal said Thursday that Abe's comments on shrine visits have further aggravated tensions with its neighbor countries.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Thursday that the essence of issues regarding the Yasukuni Shrine is how Japanese government and leaders understand and treat the country's history of invading other Asian countries.

If Japanese leaders regard aggression, expansion and colonial rule by the country's former militarists as "a proud history and tradition," and attempt to challenge the results of World War II and post-war order, Japan can never escape its historical shadow and there will be no future for Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors, Hua told a regular news briefing.