Henry Scott Stokes (born 15 June 1938 in Glastonbury, Somerset, U.K.) is a British journalist who has been the Tokyo bureau chief for The Financial Times (1964–67), The Times (1967-1970s?) and The New York Times (1978–83).[1]
He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. After graduating, he moved to Japan, where he became a journalist of the Tokyo bureau of The Times. Also around this time, he became close friends with famous Japanese author Yukio Mishima.
He is the author of the biography, The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima (1974).
Attempts to deny history are sad if done in ignorance, and pathetic if done in spite of knowledge of the truth.Japanese historians slam sex-slave apology review
A group of Japanese historians Friday stood behind their government's 1993 apology over wartime sex slavery, slamming Tokyo's possible move to revise it as "unforgivable".
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"It is unforgivable to retreat from the Kono Statement," Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a professor of modern Japanese history at Chuo University, told academics and rights activists at a Tokyo conference.
"The latest historical documents can allow us to say that the military hurt the honor and dignity of many women."
Hiroshi Hayashi, a politics professor at Kanto Gakuin University, said he and his fellow researchers discovered at least a dozen new documents proving that there was direct military involvement in the practice.
"There are many more, probably more than 6,000, undisclosed documents that had been stored by the Japanese government," he said.
"The government has repeatedly said there are no documents remaining to show the military's direct involvement in the issue. I must say this is an extremely disingenuous attitude."
i want to see it"There are many more, probably more than 6,000, undisclosed documents that had been stored by the Japanese government," he said.
Hiroshi Hayashi, a politics professor at Kanto Gakuin University, said he and his fellow researchers discovered at least a dozen new documents proving that there was direct military involvement in the practice.
as for histry, if there is a new or unknown docmnent, it should verify it.
this is an academic of history in fact
The history without verification is a just myth.
Does a lie come out by inspecting it?
If the verified result is right, it is also a wonderful thing.
i want to see it
before that why did not they open it to public as soon as possible. stupid
Isn't that one of the many reasons for Abe's secrecy bill? To keep many many things from verification? State secret, after all.
It must be a full time job staying so deeply in denial.
What people think is not related to facts. Every Japanese person in the country could think Japan smothered Korea with flower petals, and it wouldn't change the truth.
Lost in translation: British journalist 'shocked' Japanese book he dictated denies Nanking Massacre | South China Morning PostA veteran British journalist says he has been misrepresented by the translator of his best-selling book that looks at Japan's history from an outsider's point of view, and has disavowed the book's claim that the Nanking Massacre never occurred.
Henry Scott-Stokes' Falsehoods of the Allied Nations' Victorious View of World History, as seen by a British Journalist, has become a bestseller since it was released in December. Conservatives and nationalists have held it up as evidence that Japan has been the target of unfair international criticism for its colonial past.
But Scott-Stokes claims his Japanese translator twisted his words.
I realised I felt that Mr Stokes was having his words taken out of context ANGELA ERIKA KUBO
Most controversially, the Japanese-language book concludes that the Chinese government made up the Nanking Massacre for its own political purposes.
Scott-Stokes could not be contacted by the South China Morning Post, but in an interview with Kyodo News he said that he was "shocked and horrified" to discover his book dismisses one of the most notorious events of the second world war as propaganda.
Scott-Stokes insists that while he believes China has exaggerated the figure of 300,000 victims of the Imperial Japanese Army in the city now known as Nanjing, a blanket denial that the atrocity occurred is "straight forward right-wing propaganda" put forward by Japanese revisionists.
He added that claiming nothing happened in Nanking in December 1937 and January 1938 was ludicrous and fatuous.
Now 75, Scott-Stokes suffers from worsening Parkinson's disease that makes it difficult for him to type or write. He was also unable to read all of the Japanese-language version of the book.
Scott-Stokes dictated the book during more than 170 hours to Hiroyuki Fujita, a translator who is a member of the nationalist group The Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
Fujita told the Post there had been "a lot of misleading explanations" put forward and that a statement would be released through the web site of publisher Shodensha.
"Regarding the translation, we had a discussion on interpretations and what he had in mind and what I thought he had in mind," Fujita said. He declined to comment further.
Speaking previously to Kyodo, Fujita admitted that he "added his own language" to the book, but the opinions it contained were those of Scott-Stokes. Fujita has declined to comment on other additions that he made to the book and is refusing to share the recordings of the interviews.
Scott-Stokes was apparently alerted to the possibility that his book had been appropriated by the far-right in Japan by Angela Erika Kubo, who was helping create an English-language transcript of the book. Kubo wrote to Scott-Stokes to tell him that she could no longer work on the project, amid her doubts that it accurately represented his views.
In a statement on the Japan Subculture Research Centre web site, Kubo said: "I realised that I felt that Mr Stokes, who is a very nice elderly journalist who I respect, was having his words taken out of context."
In a letter to Fujita explaining her reasons for resigning from the project, she added: "I've also become increasingly uncomfortable with the content of some of the recordings.
"It seems that words are being put into Henry's mouth and that the interviews don't reflect his real opinions or thoughts – and that there are many leading questions."
Scott-Stokes, a former Japan bureau chief for The New York Times, said he was warned by colleagues to be wary of the venture.
It was apparently proposed by Fujita and Hideaki Kase, another leading member of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, both of whom he considered friends.
"As I was being interviewed by these people, I trusted them to stick by the record," Scott-Stokes told Kyodo. "And if they haven't done that, they have let me down and let themselves down."
In a surprising turn of events, former New York Times bureau chief Henry Scott Stokes denied that he had accused translators of his best-selling book of right-wing sabotage, and said his viewpoint on the "Nanjing Massacre" remains unchanged on paper.
Stokes was entangled in the literary mess after a Kyodo News report emerged claiming he was unaware that the conclusion of the book, Eikokujin kisha ga mita rengokoku sensho shikan no kyomo (Falsehoods of the Allied Nations' Victorious View of History, as Seen by a British Journalist), did not reflect his opinion.
The Kyodo report said Henry Stokes was "shocked and horrified" after learning that his translators added "rogue passages" into his work without permission to make it seem he denied that the Nanjing Massacre ever happened.
But on Friday, Stokes shot down the report, saying it was "wrong" and "far from the truth."
In a statement released to Japanese publisher Shodensha, he described the event as a "propaganda tool of the KMT government."
"The so-called 'Nanjing Massacre' never took place," the former journalist said in a statement. "The word 'massacre' is not right to indicate what happened."
Kyodo News in turn released a statement saying it was "confident in the accuracy of the article" which "drew on its interview with the former Tokyo bureau chief." The agency said the interview was recorded.
Translator Hiroyuki Fujita, in an interview with The Japan Times, said the Kyodo report was "simply wrong" and was based on "Henry's misunderstanding about what was written in Japanese in his book."
Fujita said that he simply "put together" Henry's comments on the Nanjing Massacre during their 170-hour interview. He also "added" Stokes's examples of historical facts.
"There was no original written in English," Fujita said. "So I guess that's the initial cause of confusion."
"But the truth is that what I wrote in the Japanese book doesn't deviate at all from [Stokes's] actual opinion."
By Maesie Bertumen
Image: "Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall" by Kevin Dooley/Flickr
Nanjing Massacre, Henry Scott Stokes, Japan News
A veteran foreign correspondent defended a statement in his war history book that a massacre of Chinese citizens by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing in 1937 never took place. The comments came after recent reports suggested the team who helped put the book together may have altered its content without the author's knowledge.
In a video interview posted on YouTube this week, Henry Scott-Stokes, a British journalist who served as bureau chief of the New York TimesNYT +1.56% and the Financial Times earlier in his long career in Tokyo, said he had been "fully aware" of what was written in his Japanese-language best-seller.
Mr. Scott-Stokes's book, whose title is translated as "Falsehoods of the Allied Nations' Victorious View of History as Seen by a British Journalist," has sold over 100,000 copies since its publication toward the end of last year, riding on a mini-boom in Japan for books with nationalist themes as tensions with China and South Korea soar.
The author's skills in written Japanese are limited so he worked with a translator who edited the 170 hours of interviews Mr. Scott-Stokes gave to discuss his self-described "right-of-center" political views, according to Kyodo News.
"I am saying that the so-called Nanking Massacre by Japanese troops had never occurred," Mr. Scott-Stokes said in the video. "I am very insistent on this. I am not willing to be called a liar by anybody on this subject. I have pledged my existence on this."
He described what happened in 1937 in the Chinese city as "sporadic violence here and there" that should be referred to as "incidents" rather than as a "massacre."
Throughout the six-minute interview, Mr. Scott-Stokes, who is 75 and suffers from Parkinson's disease, sat slumped in a chair and looked down without facing the camera. He spoke slowly but lucidly.
The controversy surrounding the book came into the spotlight after Kyodo reported earlier this month that the ailing journalist had not been aware of what was written in his own book. During a series of interviews with Kyodo, Mr. Scott-Stokes said he was "shocked and horrified" by the book's conclusion that the Chinese government fabricated the Nanjing Massacre, describing the claim as "straightforward right-wing propaganda." Kyodo also reported that Mr. Scott-Stokes had requested the translator issue a correction.
Shortly afterwards, however, the author issued a statement through the book's publisher denying the Kyodo report, and said he stood by the book's content, including a statement that "the so-called Nanking Massacre never took place."
Tsutomu Tsunoda, who edited the book at Tokyo publishing company Shodensha, said he has known the author for a number of years and during that time Mr. Scott-Stokes's views on war issues had remained "constant." Those views were written in the book and discussed by the author himself in comments and in the video after the Kyodo story came out, Mr. Tsunoda said.
The video interview was conducted by a newly established group called the Watchdog for Accuracy in News Reporting Japan, run by a former journalist of Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese conservative daily.
Responding to the denial, Kyodo News said in a statement that it was "confident of the accuracy of the article." The news agency also noted that it had a recording of its interviews with Mr. Scott-Stokes and the book's translator, Hiroyuki Fujita.
Adding to the questions over the book was an article written by a freelance journalist who said she resigned from an assignment to prepare transcripts of Mr. Scott-Stokes's interviews for the planned English edition of his book, after she began to feel the translator was manipulating the interviews to fit his own views.
"I've also become increasingly uncomfortable with the content of some of the recordings…It seems that words are being put into Henry's mouth and that the interviews don't reflect his real opinions or thoughts," Angela Erika Kubo said she wrote in a letter sent to Mr. Fujita.
Asked about Ms. Kubo's claim that the translator manipulated the interviews, Mr. Tsunoda said Ms. Kubo had listened to "just a tiny portion" of the recordings of Mr. Scott-Stokes's interviews before she quit, not enough to make a judgment as to whether they fully reflected what he intended to say.
In the latest interview, Mr. Scott-Stokes said the Kyodo story was "not inaccurate so much as they were inattentive to the real detail."
Asked if he would ask Kyodo to correct the article, he said, "I am very reluctant to ask someone to correct their work if they are not working for the same company as me."
Mr. Scott-Stokes could not be reached for further comment.