Obeika noted something important, the rewriting of history textbooks.
...speaking of text books...I just came across one on US history:
"History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History"
it is comparative history. Takes an event in US history and shows how
2-4 other countries cover the topic.
I won't get started..., I mean really started..
As for the atomic bombs.
US history teaches about them. "It capped a great heroic victory."
Is how they are presented.
They are not presented as an attrocity or a war crime, as they are, both.
According to the book I cited above
Most textbooks run in 5-7 year cycles, meaning every 5-7 years, a new round of textbooks will be published with the hope of being adpoted in the main markets (Texas, California, and New York). If any of these markets adopt them, they are in effect assured of being adopted elsewhere across the country. As for the history textbooks themselves, the US Department of Education has worked toward the establishment of voluntary norms or standards, but these serve as mere suggestions and not as any sort of fixed national curriculum. In the US model, the market drives textbook production.
This book also notes that textbooks have over the last 20-30 years, become a bland encyclopedia of dates, persons, and events. Fear of being perceived as too liberal or conservative or patriotic or whatever. As if believing students not capable of having discussions (you know, when real learning takes place) in classrooms.
They also noted that about 30? states have some sort of state-wide standards, but beyond that it is mostly up to local school districts.
If you get a good teacher, they might show you some video footage of the atomic bomb wreckage. Ours showed us video of piles of dead jews (and others) in mass graves from germany.
OMG, Americans have a peculiar logic. A possible worse alternative doesn't justify any bad that's done. If you use this logic, you can almost always make up a worst possible alternative to justify anything. Your people have a peculiar sense of justice.
It's not the same. "No more Hiroshima" is an anti-war slogan. It doesn't imply retaliation. Hiroshima is such a peaceful place, and animosity is surprisingly non-existent.
"Remember" often does lead to retaliation, which leads to retaliation in retaliation, which leads to ....
Isn't it not what the US did after 911. It played the victim card to justify the invasion of other countries.
"Remember" often does lead to retaliation, which leads to retaliation in retaliation, which leads to ....
Isn't it not what the US did after 911. It played the victim card to justify the invasion of other countries.
caster51
to the video...
i trust transnational corporations about as much as i trust governments.
not that the guy in the video is necessarily a bad guy or anything,
but, we don't invest there for the cheap labor.
like, whatever.
i just started reading 'confessions of an economic hitman'.
sheesh, if i didn't trust corporations before....
an EHM would be working for a development corporation and would bribe
some local official into accepting some mega-project and the country would get billions of dollars in loans from the IMF or world bank. loans they could never hope to pay back. GNP would go up, because it wouldn't matter if a relative few would get ultra wealthy and the vast majority got poorer and burdened with the countries debt. who made the money did not affect GNP.
then, if they got caught, it would just be marked up as corporate greed, when really it was that crap-old tradition of honorless empire building. honorless.
maybe the guy in the video really does respect the people of Vietnam (just the ones he delt with?), that doesn't mean the corporations aren't going there for cheap labor and the resources.
it's pretty sad,
but US politicians often cite Vietnam as an excuse of not beign able to fully wage war.
1) as if they were held back
2) as if it was moral
3) as if the US was not engaged in agression
4) as if the US was the wronged party
back to diceke
nobody wants war (except arms manufacturers and empire[turd] builders)
the people of vietnam and hiroshima and just about every where
just want to get along with their lives.
if we do not remember how horrible Nagasaki and Hiroshima were,
we will be doomed to repeat it.
The following is FAQ pafe of the blog "Occidentalism" by Matt.
I cannot paste the URL here, I recommend you to go directly this blog.
Matt is an Australian, he writes/reads Hangul, Chinese, Japanese, too.
============================Quote
화병 FAQ
Q: I am Korean
A: Thats good to hear
Q: This site is anti Korean!
A: The truth is anti Korean, because Koreans stand at odds with the truth. Joking aside, what specifically is anti Korean about this site?
Q: It just focuses on the bad things about Korea! Why dont you write about some other stuff?
A: Ah, so you admit there are bad things about Korea? I write about what interests me at the time. Not everything on this blog is about Korea, although a lot of it is. What is the problem again?
Q: Your articles are one sided. There are two sides to the story.
A: Well, maybe my articles are one sided – after all, I am writing about my opinion. As for there being two sides of the story, I tell the other side of the story, the one that the Korean media ignores or covers up or distorts.
With the blindingly nationalistic propaganda at work in Korea, my site is just a small counter reaction. Here is a commenter that found occidentalism to be useful.
Travolta Said:
August 26, 2005 at 10:39 am
Holy ****. Thank god for people like you who are around to set the record straight. This makes me think I should trust even LESS of what the Korean media claims. Having recently read much about the history between Japan and Korea and opening my mind to views opposing the established Korean views I am amazed to learn how much seems to have been invented and blamed on Japan. I've lived in Korea for two years and heard only the Korean side and it's easy to see how Koreans have such a hardcore hatred of Japan. Korean schools and Korean media must be a factor holding Korea back internationally. (Discussion please). I understand Korea suffered under the Japanese and what Japan did in WWII was shocking and terrible. But the vast majority of Koreans I have spoken to don't know anything about the numerous apologies, the millions in reparations money and seem to easily dismiss the 60 years of peace between the two nations which have existed since the end of the war as being not good enough or not sincere. Koreans seem to want to become a big player not only in Asia but the whole world, however at the same time they attack their closest ally (USA), take a **** on Japan at every chance they get and lick the sweat off Kim Jong Ill's hairy balls with pleasure. Why would anyone in the world take Korea seriously? Hub of Asia? Keep up the good work exposing this kind of crap!
PS: I don't hate Korea (I live here don't I?), I hate bullshit and lies wherever they exist.
Where do you think comments like that come from? The problem is not with this site, the problem is with the attitudes of the Korean media, and indeed, many Koreans themselves.
Q: You must be a right wing Japanese or Japanese American. Only they could write such a thing.
A: No, I am a white Australian.
Q: I have proof you are Japanese American. I found your ISP etc blah blah blah.
A: I dont know what proof you think you have, but I am a white Australian.
Q: This site offends me. Take it down.
A: No. People don't have a "right" to be offended about stuff. If some fat guy has a problem with being called a fat guy he can ignore my comments, or better yet lose some weight. The only right you have is to stop viewing the site. It is the fault of the thin-skinned if they are offended about such things.
Q: You are just spreading propaganda about Korea and pretend to be logical! You try to say that what the minority opinion of Koreans is the majority opinion!
A: If what you say is true about me 'broadcasting the minority opinion as that of the majority', then where are all these people? They are certainly not on this blog, and other (non Japanese) foreigners that read this blog rarely seem to come into contact with this 'majority'. Anyway, I have my opinion. If you disagree, thats fine.
Q: You take a single take a single incident and generalize the entire race. I've come into contact with quite a few Korean-American communities, and all seemed to have be sociable and considerate. My best (foreign) friend dated a Korean girl for a couple of years, and her family seemed completely accepting.
A: So you comdemn me for making negative generalizations, but you make some hefty generalizations of your own! Is it okay to "generalize the entire race" based on a "single incident", if only they are positive? Nice logic.
Anyway, I am not telling you what to think, only giving my anecdotal evidence, which I have built up over many years. Some other people agree with me, which makes me think that I am not alone in my thinking.
In short, take want you want from the site and leave the rest. If foreigners are surrounded by Koreans that are different from the way I describe, then they will see my opinion as foolish and incorrect. On the otherhand if their experiences match mine, they will agree.
Q: Why should I believe you?
A: Thats the great thing about it! You dont have to! On the right hand side on the main page of the blog, there is a section called blogroll. That contains links to other blogs about Korea, people with points of view that are different to my own. Read them, I do.
Another commenter, Yoshomasaki, gave his opinion -
Since Matt opened this site, I've had "another opinion" in my back pocket. I haven't been informed ONLY by the Korean mass media, and the many Koreans and non-Koreans who will stick up unfailingly for anything it reports (and they are legion!). That's what I think best describes this site, as a single source of information among many in your/my toolbelt, to be used as best you see fit to complement and conflict your understood notions of Korean culture, people, nationalism and anything that goes on involving Koreans around the world. It only helps that his articles are often well-researched, well-reported, logically argued and supported by the facts. His Korean abilities make "their" side of the story accesible for me as well.
But that still doesn't mean you HAVE to believe him. What you must realize is that bias is not your enemy. The failure to admit human biases and the denial of its existance that is standard procedure in major news organizations is. Since you do not know which way the news is being spun, it is that much harder to make an informed opinion on what is being reported. The typical TV viewer's empathy and poor media fact-checking is responsible for the existence of millions of misdirected and often manipulated lemmings around the world. Since you have taken your search to the internet, where the countless bloggers debate all sides of every issue, why would you be so closed-minded as to call Matt's site irrelevant, "dead"? Is "the rest of the story" so unimportant to you, or worse yet so distasteful to you that you would rather not hear it? By declaring the opposing view unnecessary you would be willingly subjecting yourself to blinders.
Thinking people don't even trust the media of their own country to be right all of the time, or even close to it on some issues. Why is it that the Party Line coming out of China or Korea is so easy for so many foreigners to swallow? And why should any voice(s) crying against them be of any deficit to you? If you don't want to read Matt's opinion, you don't have to come here anymore. But it is in no way irelevant.
I just wanted to make the point to those who blow their tops when they see this site: News is a market of facts and opinions. As a consumer of news you are responsible for the final value judgement and fact-checking. Lamenting that any view, no matter how distasteful to you personally, is expressed in the marketplace of ideas is putting blinders on. It is saying "I don't have the capacity to make a value judgement on this (or I fear others don't) because it is threatening to my view. I am terified of challenges to my view, so the other guy's side must not be heard!"
Q:By what right do you write these kinds of things about Korea?
A: Why is it Koreans keep asking questions about rights, etc, and dont want to debate the facts? The comments section is open – If I am telling lies about Korea, then you have a chance to tell everyone about it.
Q: How dare you delete my comment! You have no right, its unjustified!
A: If I deleted your comment it was because it either contained obscene language, was off topic, or contained personal, ad honimen attacks against myself or another poster. And, I do have the right.
Q: I disagree with you. There was nothing in my post that deserved deletion.
A: I told you the rules. Follow them and your posts wont be deleted. You can disagree all you want, but I am paying for this site. If you dont like my editorial policy, then starting a blog of your own is an option.
Q: So you write all this 'proof' about Korea, but this blog reminds me of a witch hunt in the Middle Age. When they burned these witches to death, they also had a bunch of proofs that these women were indeed witches.
A: The witches accused in the middle ages were not free to speak up in their own defense, as you are doing now. It is funny that you should call a site that brings attention to Korean witch hunts against foreigners a 'witch hunting' site. To you, truthful analysis = witch hunt against Koreans. This is probably the reason it is so hard to make any progress.
Q: I just found out there are lot of people in the world who has lot of negative reputation about koreans. Even I had lot of bad experience with middle-eastern people I always tried to think more carefully about them before I negatively judge them. You people suck.
A: guess you have never heard of 自業自得(자업자득). The meaning is 자기가 저지른 일의 과보를 자기 자신이 받는 일.
What is written on this site is true. You wont find many judgements from me unless there is plenty of reason to do it. You think after writing all this I havent 'thought carefully'?
Q: This site is racist! You paint Koreans unfairly with a broad brush! Korea hater!
A: You completely miss the point. You say I paint Koreans with a broad brush, but I say in the case of Koreans, it is fair to do so. Where was the Korean outcry when DJ Doc made a song called '**** Japan'? Nonexistent. Infact, it did well on the Korean charts. Where is the Korean outrage when a well known Korean novelist says that between 3 and 4 million Koreans were killed by the Japanese? Nonexistent, because many Koreans think the same. Where was the Korean indignation when hundreds of thousands of Koreans rose up demanding death when the American soldier drivers of an amoured vehicle accidentally ran over a couple of schoolgirls that in any other country would be thought be trying be to run over (walking in the middle of the road, hands over ears)? Where was the Korean sense of justice when a mainstream TV program in Korea, 'I want to know that', ran a story on English teachers looking down on Korean women, getting female underage students drunk then having threesomes, and molestering kids without offering any proof at all?
Korean society not only permits but encourages this kind of slander against non Koreans, whether they be American, Japanese or from other countries.
You call me a anti Korean hater, but opposing Korean hate and extremism is what I am I doing here. Funny that you should call someone that exposes truthful facts as a hater.
Q: This is a race hate site, not a genuine media analysis site. Other balanced Korea bloggers would be embarrassed to be associated with you.
A: Your sense of bias and one-sidedness is completely subjective, and is no doubt fueled by your own biases and prejudices. When I read other Korea related sites, I sense bias, not balance. No process in which human beings are involved will be free of bias. At least I am honest about it, and people know where I am coming from when they read what I am writing. Nor am I afraid to allow readers to see other sites, as I recommend over and over again.
Comparing this site to other Korean sites is comparing apples and oranges. Perhaps if other Korean sites were actually balanced, I wouldnt have made this blog. But they are not. While many Korea bloggers are in Korea and probably cant touch on the sacred cows for career reasons, none of my money comes from Koreans so I am not similarly restricted, which I think is a good thing.
I was able to show the crude lies of the Korean media in my post 'Japanese Repentence Marathon', something that other bloggers either ignored or didnt know about. I was able to show the 'Crisis of Journalistic Integrity in the Korean Media', the exposure of which you call 'race hate'. More examples of the 'race hate' you criticise me for and be found here, here and here, as I exposed fake atrocity photo's being used on Korean sites to stir up genuine race hate against Japanese. Again I showed more Korean media lies about Japanese apologising to Koreans - a subject untouched by any other blogger. I wrote about the topical subject of Korean/foreign race relations, here, here and here, using only the real words of Koreans without distortion. A small portion of the articles that would never have been written if I had not written them.
The fact is I am able to have a point of view that virtually every other blogger in the Korean blogosphere is unable to, and I am able to do that because I can speak, read and write Japanese to a near native level, and have decent Korean abilities too. I can also read (slowly) historical Korean texts written in Chinese, texts that non specialist Koreans cannot read today. This gives me the ability to read original documents from various time periods, like from the Japanese Administration period, to the Korean documents written in Chinese that clearly show that Dokdo is not mentioned as Korean territory, contrary to Korean claims (documents that I will be presenting and translating soon).
This ability has enabled me to offer more than just the narrow points of view being offered by the Korean media and parroted by some bloggers. Being able to read Korean and Japanese and of course, English, I am able to read several sources with several points of view, and then post on Occidentalism to allow readers to decide for themselves what they think. I posted a review of a video (and the video itself) of a Japanese news story on the subject of the anti Japanese pictures drawn by Korean school children, not shown by any other blogger. When other Korea bloggers were wringing their hands and speculating about the content of 'Kenkanryu', I actually went out and bought the comic, and after reading it, gave an honest review. Again, no other blogger did it, nor did any supposedly 'balanced' blogger do it (you would think that balanced would mean seeking the truth, but obviously that is not the case). I offered a photo essay of an alternative point of view on the Japanese administrative period in Korea, one that is not permitted in the mainstream Korean thought that focuses on, and exaggerates, Japanese abuses while playing down the amazing advances in the health and living standards of Korean people during that time. Its a point of view that has rarely been heard by foreigners, nor have I seen any Korea bloggers (much less 'balanced' Korea bloggers) put forth such a view.
I write about what others do not write about. That is why this site is necessary, whether you agree with the content or not. The so called 'balanced' bloggers you extol either ignore, cover up or do not know about the kind of information I have been presenting here. This site exists to provide balance.
Q: Yeah, well yankee's murdered those two little girls by their tank in 2002 by running them down and laughing about it and boasting that the Korean police cant touch them and the yankees smuggled them out of the country after defiling the pure maindenhood of our country's women and looking down on our women because they think they are easy to have sex with but none of our women except women working in bars will date foreigners and all the women I see with foreigners are all ugly Korean women that Korean men wont touch and GI's can beat up Koreans and never get arrested even when they kill Koreans and we dont have to always feel eternally grateful to Americans that rape our women and and are war criminals that ordered the killings in no gunri and kwangju and prevent our countries unification and turning our country into a colony and destroying our economy with the IMF which is nothing short of genocide.
I know, but it was more meant to be an opinion than anything else. Although history facts are often deformed and suffer from ethnocentrism and patriotism, I don't think my opinion would have been any different if it wasn't the case. Nevertheless, I would have to admit that I am very ignorant and that I don't know much about history. It is just that the use of nuclear bomb seems to be ﾂ"rudeﾂ" or ﾂ"cruelﾂ", something many ﾂ"US scientistsﾂ" were also agreeing on.
i am not sure if atomic bomb is worse than what japan had been carrying out in east and south east asia during the colonial period.
And like people mentioned before, American students learn about the atomic bombs. When I went to an American school, we were forced to argue pros and cons of using the nuclear missile in Japan. Were nukes necessary to end the war? All the vivid horror images were used by students to argue nukes were not necessary. But then again, Japanese government only acknowledged defeat after the second nuke. Only God knows how much more people Class A war criminal would have sent to die before Japan could admit defeat.
Lastly, we are talking about relation between Japan and East/Southeast Asia. and in the view of an average person, U.S. or Germany is lightyears ahead of Japan in admitting her wrong doings.
Japan simply do not admit wrongdoing. If they do, they would at least attempt to teach about them in class so it will never happen again.
Japan simply do not admit wrongdoing. If they do, they would at least attempt to teach about them in class so it will never happen again.
Apr 10, 2007 01:40
evrybody know that
it is have a nothing to do with teacheng about war in class.
How stupid.
it is very suprised that they dont know If they dont attempt to teach about it .
evrybody know that
it is have a nothing to do with teacheng about war in class.
How stupid.
it is very suprised that they dont know If they dont attempt to teach about it .
Do you have any idea at all what kids are taught about Japanese history in ES/JHS and HS now?
Please dont add a bunch of links to Youtube or links to the Education Ministry Homepage describing the course of study for Japanese students, tell me straight, do you know?
I was a straggler of Japanese masochism of history class.
I was taught by a commie teacher like " japan was wrong....." in HS..
HOWEVER, the fact was different...
KId should know the Fact.
I find it myself.
recently, many kid trend like me. Their brainwashes can be loosened like me.
If the HS's kids go to Korea by school trip, kids would be forced to apologize about past history like that (Dogeza 土下座).
im korean..n i dont think japan has to apologize to koreans..but i think the japanese government should admit the fact of the wrongdoings sincerely instead of saying o sorry haha.. i mean every year da german president visists Israel and apologizes to israel of the wrongdoings. sincerely.. japan government cant even do that..okay we are fine with that but that new prime minister sayign taht those 200,000 women from china and korea were prostitutes and wanted to be literally raped 24 hours a day by japanese soldiers is bullcrap. and japan asks y da koreans have grudges against japan?? i mean its common sense. da last thing koreans want to do is to deal with japan. koreans want to move on but japan starts ****.. japan wants NK government to admit dat japanese women were kidnapped by NK spys.. and wants NK to admit it and apologize but japan wont admit their war crimes??that is ridiculous.. and da fact that most japanese students arent taught about true facts is embarrasement for japan i think
You make an interesting point in your post, I do know of a number of students that were quite embarrassed at learning about what Japan did and was guilty of during WWII.
The apology issue it seems rather childish and tit-for-tat kind of diplomacy. You apologize for this and we'll apologize for that, but you have to go first even though we were guilty of our misdeeds before you were guilty of yours.
Crime and Responsibility: War, the state, and Japanese society
by Yuki Tanaka; August 22, 2006
'Forgetting, even getting history wrong, is an essential factor in the formation of a nation, which is why the progress of historical studies is often a danger to nationality.' -- Ernest Renan
In 2002, the Japanese government built the "Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims" within the Hiroshima Peace Park. It is located less than two hundred meters from the A-Bomb Peace Museum operated by the Hiroshima City Council. This new Memorial Hall, funded and run by the Japanese government, includes the following message on one of the wall panels:
'At one point in the 20th century, Japan walked the path of war. Then, on December 8, 1941, Japan initiated hostilities against the U.S., Great Britain and others, plunging into what came to be known as the Pacific War. This war was largely fought elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region, but when the tide turned against Japan, American warplanes began bombing the homeland, and Okinawa became a bloody battlefield. Within this context of war, on August 6, 1945, the world's first atomic weapon, a bomb of unprecedented destructive power, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima.'
Other panels present the following statements:
'The Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims is an effort by the Japanese national government to remember and mourn the sacred sacrifice of the atomic bomb victims.'
'We hereby mourn those who perished in the atomic bombing. At the same time, we recall with great sorrow the many lives sacrificed to mistaken national policy.' (emphases added)
These formal statements clearly reflect the Japanese government's assessment, but they also articulate widely held popular attitudes concerning Japan's war responsibility. In other words, in the absence of explanation of any kind, the viewer is left to conclude that Japan simply, inexplicably, "walked the path of war" and the "real" war started with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. That "real" war, in other words, did not begin on September 18, 1931, the day that the Japanese Army detonated an explosion on the South Manchurian railway, providing the pretext for the seizure of Manchuria and the establishment of Manchukuo under Japanese aegis. Nor did it begin on July 7, 1937, when the Marco Polo Bridge Incident plunged Japan into full-scale war leading to the occupation of large areas of China. In the Memorial Hall's rendering, Japan's major enemies in the Asia-Pacific War were the U.S. and Great Britain, not China, still less the other Asian peoples that Japan conquered following the attack on Pearl Harbor. In short, Japan was defeated by Anglo-Saxons not by Asians. Such an interpretation of the history of the 15 year war (1931-45) naturally hinders full recognition of responsibility for Japan's abhorrent military acts and the war losses that its Asian neighbors suffered as a result of war and colonialism. It also fundamentally distorts the dynamics of power played out on the fields of colonialism and war in the first half of the twentieth century.
On the other hand, the atomic bomb is said to have been "dropped on the city of Hiroshima" as if it were a natural calamity, without identified human agency, the consequence being that many people were "sacrificed to mistaken national policy." Thus the responsibility of American forces for the killing of large numbers of civilians is not seriously questioned. Instead, the victims of atomic bombing are simply presented as the "sacred sacrifice" of war, just as the nature of Japan's "mistaken national policies" is left unexamined. In particular, the words "sacred sacrifice" remove any reference to who killed so many people or why and for what these people had to be "sacrificed." This is partly due to the fact that the word "sacred" possesses a kind of religious function that blurs the historical process whereby these people became victims of war. The word "sacred" tends to refute any mundane queries regarding the background of a "sacred person." In other words, it is widely accepted that once a person is apotheosized and becomes "sacred," no one should catechize about his or her past. Here we can find a similarity with the "sacred souls" of soldiers enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine, where the issue of Japanese war crimes remains unquestioned.
Because non-explanations of this kind are the characteristic not only of the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall but of most school textbooks and the school curriculum generally, the result is that the majority of Japanese people remain ignorant not only of Japan's war responsibility, but also of the history of the Asia-Pacific War in general.
It is often said that the Japanese people tend to see themselves as victims of war rather than as assailants, largely due to the experience of U.S. aerial bombing towards the end of the war, culminating in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Undoubtedly this was one of many factors that contributed to such a popular perception.
Indeed, the A-Bomb Peace Museum operated by the Hiroshima City Council is filled predominantly with exhibits highlighting the victimization of the citizens of Hiroshima as a result of indiscriminate bombing using the atomic bomb. Although there is a brief explanation of the Nanjing Massacre in relation to the activities of the Imperial Army dispatched from Hiroshima to China prior to the atomic bombing, the museum invariably presents the atomic bombing of the city as the historically unprecedented and unparalleled victimization of Japanese citizens. Indubitably the museum conveys a powerful anti-nuclear message. Yet it is interesting to note that the museum exhibits scarcely nothing except information on the bombing of Hiroshima, and even the bombing of Nagasaki and other landmarks of nuclear history are hardly mentioned. Hence the museum fails to bring to light fundamental features common to all victims of atomic bombings, nuclear tests, indiscriminate bombing, and war in general.
Yet even this perception of "war victims" is rapidly fading, and younger generations no longer recognize their nation's war responsibility or even the price that war exacted on their own society. Indeed, few have sufficient knowledge of Japan's modern and contemporary history to hold opinions concerning Japan and war.
We cannot give a simple answer to the question of why many Japanese failed to nurture a strong sense of war responsibility. In this essay, I examine some important factors that have hindered the cultivation of a clear public sense of Japanese war responsibility. I will particularly concentrate on the 15 years after the war (1945 -- 1960), the period in which the fundamental framework of the Japanese popular concept of "war responsibility" was molded. This is because of my strong belief that a lack of of war responsibility among younger generations is not simply due to a lack of education, but is deeply rooted in the very fabric of Japanese popular thinking on war issues formulated and implanted in the early post-war period.
One of the new programs that GHQ (General Headquarters of the Allied Occupation Forces) introduced in the early stages of the occupation was "the re-education of the Japanese." The CIE (Civil Information and Education Section) of GHQ was given the task of teaching Japanese citizens "the truth" about the war by revealing Japanese war crimes and highlighting the devastating consequences of the war including Japan's destruction and defeat. Between December 8 and 17, 1945, the CIE required all Japanese national newspapers to publish a series of articles drafted by CIE on the history of the Pacific War. At the same time, NHK (the Japan Broadcasting Commission) ran a serial radio program called "This is the Truth." This series, designed and produced by CIE, was broadcast once a week over 10 weeks from December 9, 1945. The content of the two series of articles and broadcasts can be summarized in the following points.
1) Although they pinpoint the Manchurian Incident of 1931 as the start of the war and acknowledge the continuity between Japan's invasion of China and the Sino-Japanese War as well as the Pacific War, Japan's colonial rule of Taiwan and Korea is completely ignored.
2) The decisive role of U.S military forces in determining the outcome of the war in the Pacific is singularly emphasized, while the anti-Japanese resistance carried out by Chinese forces over fifteen years, and by various Southeast Asian forces over four years, are ignored. The single exception is brief mention of Filipino guerrillas who collaborated with American forces.
3) The responsibility of a handful of Japanese military leaders is emphasized, while Emperor Hirohito and his close associates within the Imperial Court as well as business and media leaders, are simply characterized as "moderate groups" in contrast to the militarists.
4) Emphasizing Japanese military leaders' concealment of the actual circumstances of the war creates a popular image that the Japanese people were deceived by their military leaders. The result was therefore to ignore the structural foundations that led Japan on the road to colonialism and war.
On December 8, 1945, the same day that the newspaper series commenced, General MacArthur issued an order to set up the IPS (International Prosecution Section) for the IMTFE (International Military Tribunal for the Far East, popularly known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) and appointed an American lawyer, Joseph Keenan, as the chief prosecutor. A-class war crime suspects had already been arrested and the IMTFE was planned to open in May 1946. In short, one of the aims of the media exercises directed by CIE was to prepare the Japanese people to accept the legitimacy of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal on basis of the official American interpretation of the Asia-Pacific War.
The judges of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal were chosen from U.S. allies who fought in the Pacific War. The result is that the justices were from 11 nations, namely the U.S., the U.K., the Soviet Union, France, Australia, Canada, China, Holland, New Zealand, India and the Philippines. There were three Asian judges including one from China, which sustained by far the largest casualties of Japanese invasion (serious estimates range between ten and twenty million war-related deaths), as well as India and the Philippines. However, despite that fact that millions of Asian died in the war and it was Asia that bore the brunt both of Japanese colonialism and war deaths, no legal representative was drawn from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, Indo-China, Korea or Taiwan, and the court was dominated by Western allies of the U.S. It should also be noted that the U.K., France and Holland as well as the United States were the colonial rulers of large areas of Asia, in which national independence movements were underway including the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Singapore, Burma, the Philippines and Indochina. Therefore, it is not surprising that Japanese responsibility toward Asian people was framed by the tribunal in ways that focused on war atrocities and elided issues of colonialism.
In addition, General MacArthur and the U.S. government protected Emperor Hirohito from indictment as a war criminal, kept him on the throne, and shielded him even the necessity to testify. Their goal was, of course, to exploit the emperor system in order to smooth occupation control of Japan. For this purpose, GHQ presented Hirohito as having been manipulated by the military leaders, denying all direct exercise of power over the Imperial Forces -- in other words, the emperor, too, was a victim of the war. Further, Hirohito was credited with taking the crucial initiative to end the war, that is, he emerged during the occupation as the peacemaker who saved Japan from annihilation. MacArthur skillfully burnished the image of Hirohito of the peacemaker as well as the key figure who "voluntarily" led the Japanese government to formulate the new democratic Constitution renouncing all Japanese military forces. The U.S. in short, with the enthusiastic support of the Japanese government thus propagated an image of a "democratic monarch" and a "peace monarch."
In short, CIE's "re-education programs" together with the American framing of the War Crimes Tribunal and the projection of the myth of the peace emperor, had a huge impact upon the formation of the postwar Japanese self-image. That is, the Japanese were pitiable war-victims like their humane emperor, who were deceived by military leaders represented by General Tojo Hideki. The result was to relieve the Japanese people of the necessity to reflect seriously upon the colonization and oppressive rule of Taiwan and Korea by Japan, war crimes such as the Nanjing Massacre that their troops committed against the people of various nations in Asia, and the emperor's ultimate responsibility for the sufferings of vast numbers of Asian people. This lack of reflection concerning responsibility towards their Asian neighbors is central to understanding why many Japanese still cannot overcome their prejudice toward other Asians. John Dower makes the point well in his book, Embracing Defeat, as follows: 'One of the most pernicious aspects of the occupation was that the Asian peoples who had suffered most from imperial Japan's depredation -- the Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians and Filipinos -- had no serious role, no influential presence at all in the defeated land. They became invisible. Asian contributions to defeating the emperor's soldiers and sailors were displaced by an all-consuming focus on the American victory in the Pacific War.' (p.27)
It should also be noted that one third of young Japanese men, who were born between 1920 and 1922, and who comprised the largest segment of the Japanese Imperial Forces, died by the end of the war. Consequently many surviving men came to hold a deep sense of guilt about not having died. This quite probably contributed to preventing them from engendering an acute sense of responsibility for the Asian victims of the war. Typical of their attitude, was the determination to adopt a strong resolve to work hard to help rebuild Japan on behalf of their deceased friends, i.e., "true war victims" in their eyes.
This popular self-perception, which highlighted Japanese "victim-hood" and downplayed their war responsibility to Asia, was further augmented with signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in September 1951. This treaty marked the formal cessation of the Asia-Pacific War, ended the occupation of Japan by the Allied (primarily American) forces, and simultaneously restored Japan's independence, and consummated a US-Japan security treaty that provided for the permanent stationing of U.S. forces that continues to this day, and lashed Japan firmly within the arc of U.S. military power. With the refusal of the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia to sign the treaty, and with neither the People's Republic of China (Beijing government) nor the Republic of China (Taiwan) invited to attend, despite the fact that China had suffered the heaviest casualties in the war against Japan, the treaty was clearly revealed as a Cold War instrument of the U.S. In addition neither North Korea, fighting the U.S. in the Korean War, nor South Korea were invited to attend, on the dubious ground that Korea was not a state at the time of Japan's surrender in 1945. India and Burma refused to participate in the conference, regarding it as a "rigged affair" so that only four Asian nations -- the Philippines, Indonesia, Ceylon and Pakistan -- attended the conference. Yet Indonesia never ratified the treaty, but signed a separate peace treaty with Japan in 1958. The Philippines only ratified the treaty after it came into effect. In this way, the "invisibility of Asia" was again conspicuous at the San Francisco Peace Treaty Conference.
The question of reparation is similarly important for locating Japan in comparative perspective, particularly vis-à-vis German behavior. Under U.S. pressure the Allied nations waived all reparation claims in accordance with Article 14 of the treaty. Later, Taiwan, China (both Beijing and Taipei), the Soviet Union and India likewise renounced the right to reparations. Thus, Japan eventually paid modest war reparations only to Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Vietnam. In addition, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea eventually received small amounts of economic aid and cooperation as Japan rejected the idea of paying reparations.
We have shown that the San Francisco Peace Treaty was less a peace treaty than an agreement to lash Japan to U.S. aims in the Asia Pacific. The combination of the Treaty and the AMPO Security Pact signed on the same day strongly reflected America's anti-communist policy and intention to use Japan to contain the Pacific side of the communist bloc (namely the Soviet Union, China and North Korea) by retaining U.S. military bases in Japan, in particular, in Okinawa. Therefore the treaty as a whole was lenient with respect to Japan's war responsibility. The Japanese government did perfunctorily acknowledge its war responsibility described in Article 11: "Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and of other Allied War Crimes Courts both within and outside Japan, and will carry out the sentences imposed thereby upon Japanese nationals imprisoned in Japan." However, the same article also opened the possibility that Japanese B- and C-class war criminals who were tried for crimes against humanity such as war atrocities, and who constituted the great majority of war criminals, would be granted clemency, reduction of sentences or parole if the foreign government that conducted the war crimes tribunal agreed. Therefore, shortly after the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in April 1952, a movement demanding the release of B- and C-class war criminals began, emphasizing the "unfairness of the war crimes tribunals" and the "misery and hardship of the families of war criminals." In this way, Japanese B- and C-class war criminals came to be viewed as "victims of war" by Japanese people generally. By the end of 1958, all Japanese war criminals, including A-, B- and C-class were released from prison and politically rehabilitated.
As a result, by the early 1950s the basic framework of popular thinking on war issues, which has hamstrung the development of a clear and deep sense of Japan's national responsibility ever since, was well implanted within Japanese society. For its part, the Japanese government had adopted a kind of double-standard ¬– on the one hand it officially accepted as a foreign policy Article 11 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, including the judgment of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, while refusing to accept war responsibility as a domestic policy. This is evident both in the large-scale amnesty of those convicted by the Tokyo and the B- and C-class trials, and in the failure to embed responsibility for the consequences of the war in its public statements, in its textbooks, or in substantial reparations to the victims of colonialism and war. This contradiction, which continues today, has been the main cause of friction between Japan and other Asian nations, in particular China and South Korea. It is interesting to note that even such hawkish politicians as Nakasone Yasuhiro could not openly negate the legality of Article 11 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty while serving as prime minister. Even the current Prime Minister, Koizumi Junichiro, does not publicly contradict the Japanese government's official interpretation of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
From around 1950, military histories written by former staff officers of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy Forces, such as Tsuji Masanobu, Kusaka Ryunosuke and Hattori Takushiro, began to be published and many became bestsellers. However, as typified by Hattori's Daitowa Senso Zenshi (General History of the Great East Asian War), these popular books are written strictly from the perspective of explaining Japan's defeat, invariably attributed to the lack of natural resources and economic power. None address questions of Japanese colonialism, aggression or the atrocities that Japanese troops committed throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, Hattori does not even mention Japan's warfare against guerilla forces in China, the Philippines or elsewhere, as he did not regard "guerrillas" as proper military forces. For him "military history" was the history of war conducted only by regular military troops, i.e., in this case the Japanese Imperial Forces versus the Allied Forces.
However, in the late 1940s and early 1950s a number of books containing moving stories conveying strong anti-war sentiment began to be published. One such influential publication was Kike Wadatsumi no Koe (Listen to the Voices from the Sea), a 1949 collection of the letters home, diaries and wills of young student soldiers (mostly kamikaze pilots). Although this book had a profound anti-war message, one that resonated deeply with the Japanese people who had experienced the destruction of their cities from the air in the final months of the war, it raised few questions of Japanese responsibility for their deaths. It powerfully presents the young students who died during the war as sympathetic "victims" of a war waged by irresponsible military leaders. Nowhere, however, does it suggest Japanese responsibility for Asian victims of the war. Two other remarkable books which appeared in the same period were semi-autobiographical novels -- Furyoki (Prisoner of War) and Nobi (Fires on the Plain) -- both written by Ooka Shohei, a former Japanese POW captured by the U.S forces in a jungle in the Philippines. (Fires on the Plain was made into a film in 1959.) In these novels Ooka skillfully describes the painful physical and psychological problems of a sick and emaciated Japanese soldier struggling to survive the jungle fighting. These outstanding literary works convey a profound anti-war sentiment. Yet again, in both novels, the focal point is a young Japanese victimized by war, and little attention is paid to the Filipinos who were the targets of brutal Japanese military conduct.
Another book which became very popular in this period was Biruma no Tategoto (The Harp of Burma) by Takeyama Michio. It is a story about a young Japanese soldier in Burma, who deserted his troop and became a Buddhist monk. Even after the end of the war, he remained in Burma in order to appease the souls of his dead comrades. Here too, the plight of the Burmese people is completely ignored. Indeed, the author did not ever visit Burma. (The Harp of Burma was made into a film in 1956, and again in 1985.)
From the mid 1950s, numerous memoirs of former soldiers were published. Most were written by low ranking officers and noncommissioned officers, explaining how hard and bravely ordinary Japanese men like themselves had fought during the war and how honorably they had fulfilled their duties as Imperial soldiers. An interesting characteristic of these memoirs is that many authors criticized military leaders' conduct of the war, including the abandonment of their soldiers in the final months of the war. In this sense there is a certain similarity with the book, Listen to the Voice from the Sea. Yet these publications, too, contributed to the existing popular perception of the Japanese as war-victims, and failed to address questions of war crimes committed by Japanese against Asians.
In the latter half of the 1950s, partly due to popular peace movements in Japan against U.S. nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific, the re-militarization of Japan and the existence of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil, lively discussions regarding the Japanese people's war responsibility took place among the so-called progressive intellectuals. One product of this ferment was the publication of the book Showa-shi (A History of Showa) coauthored by three prominent Marxist historians, Toyama Shigeki, Imai Seiichi and Fujiwara Akira. The question of "war responsibility" in this case, however, centered on the failure of Japanese citizens to prevent the invasion of China. That is, the focus was on citizens' failure to halt militarism and fascism. An important issue, to be sure. But little was said about the nature of Japanese killing and atrocities in China and nothing about the impact of Japanese militarism on other Asian nations. Another important book published in this period is Gendai Seiji no Shiso to Kozo (The Thought and Structure of Modern [Japanese] Politics) by political scientist Maruyama Masao. Maruyama provided a theoretical explanation of the development of Japanese fascism and militarism in conjunction with the strengthening of emperor ideology from the Meiji era , but nowhere did he address the question of the Japanese people's war responsibility. In short, all of these works were heavily inward-looking rather than outward-looking. Furthermore, these debates were conducted within a limited academic circle and in left-wing circles associated with the communist and socialist parties. The result was that they had limited impact on popular perceptions of the war.
Popular feature films produced in the 1950s also shaped popular images of the Japanese as war victims, including feature films directly dealing with B- and C-class war criminals. Among them the most widely viewed was the 1958 film Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai (I Want be a Shellfish). This is a story of an innocent man, who happily returned home to his wife after the war to resume a normal life as a local barber only to be arrested as a war criminal and igiven the death sentence. His crime was to have carried out the execution of an American POW, a surviving crew-member of a B-29 bomber that was shot down over Japan. The film depicts him as an extremely unfortunate man in the lowest rank of the Japanese Imperial Army, who could not refuse an order handed down from senior officers. The result is that he emerges not only as a typical victim of Japanese militarism but also of the capriciousness of the war crimes tribunal. (This film was remade for television in 1994.) Another film, Kabe Atsuki Heya (Room With a Thick Wall), produced in 1953 is about B- and C-class war criminals detained in Sugamo Prison and it too presents the prisoners as victims of war, while highlighting some legal defects of the tribunal.
Two other types of war-related feature films were produced in the 1950s: films on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those presenting the brutality experienced by　Japanese rank and file soldiers in the Imperial Army. Between 1950 and 1955, several films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki were produced. Amongst them were Nagasaki no Kane (The Bell of Nagasaki, 1950), Nagasaki no Uta Wasureji (Never Forget the Song of Nagasaki, 1952), Genbaku no Ko (Child of the A-Bomb, 1952), Hiroshima, 1953, and Kurosawa Akira's Ikimono no Kiroku (Record of A Living Being, 1955). The last three films are particularly impressive from storytelling and filmic perspectives, and do not simply present Hibakusha (A-bomb victims) as the Japanese victims of war. Each has a profound and universal anti-nuclear weapon message. Yet none examines the impact of Japanese war on Asian people, and none poses serious questions of Japanese war responsibility.
The second group of films is represented by Shinku Chitai (Zone of Emptiness, 1952), based on the novel of the same title by Noma Hiroshi, and Ningen no Joken (Human Condition, 1960) based on a long story written by Gomikawa Junpei. Both films denounce the extreme brutality inflicted upon Japanese soldiers by their superiors. Although the latter film briefly touches on the atrocities Japanese troops committed against the Chinese, the main theme of these films is still the victimization of Japanese men through widespread inhumane conduct within the Japanese military forces. At the time, the most popular work in this category was a series of comedies called Nitohei Monogatari (The Story of A Private). In total ten films were produced in this immensely successful series between 1955 and 1961. It ridiculed the military system and ideology of the Japanese Imperial Forces. In each film, rank and file soldiers are severely maltreated by their seniors, and commanding officers are invariably corrupt and selfish. Each film ends, moreover, with a revolt by rank and file soldiers against their officers at the end of the war -- a happy ending for audiences empathizing with the soldiers. In one film in this series, Japanese soldiers rescue Japanese comfort women captured by merciless Chinese soldiers, and a Chinese merchant closely collaborating with Chinese forces is presented in a dark light. However, not one of the films in this series depicts Japanese atrocities against local people in occupied territories.
Another popular film that deeply shaped the Japanese self-image as war-victims was Godzilla, particularly its original 1954 version. As I analyzed in an earlier article, 'Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and killed the Monster?', in many aspects Godzilla symbolized B-29 bombers that repeatedly attacked cities from Hokkaido to Okinawa and dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many scenes in this film evoked U.S. aerial attacks that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the final months of the war. Thus, although the film's effect is indirect, presented as it is through an entertaining monster film, it reaffirmed and strengthened the Japanese popular concept of being war victims not perpetrators of war crimes. Overall, these films sent a remarkably consistent message and hence their effect in shaping popular understanding of the Asia-Pacific War was vast.
Considering that feature films screened at local cinemas were one of the few sources of entertainment available to the Japanese public in the post-war period, the above-mentioned films undoubtedly played a considerable role in shaping a widely shared view of the Asia-Pacific War amongst the general population. In 1958, for example, Japanese films attracted more than 1.1 billion viewers throughout the country.
In early 1965, U.S. forces began full-scale bombing of North Vietnam. Over the next decade, large numbers of bombers, troops and military supplies were dispatched from U.S military bases in Japan, including Okinawa. In April that year, "Beheiren" (Japan Peace for Vietnam Alliance) was formed to oppose U.S. aggression and resist Japanese support for the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. Popular fears that Japan might again be dragged into war provided an important foundation for a relatively strong anti-war movement. Oda Makoto, a writer who led this movement, promoted the idea that the Japanese people should avoid becoming "war perpetrators" by refusing to collaborate with the U.S. in bombing and killing Vietnamese. He pointed out that, with respect to Japan's own war experiences, hitherto ample attention had been paid to the aspect of their own victimization, but few had addressed the responsibility of the Japanese as assailants. To grasp the possibility of Japanese becoming assailants in the Vietnam War, he stressed the necessity to clearly recognize the historical fact that the Japanese people had been both victims and assailants in the Asia-Pacific War. It was a powerful appeal at a time when not only the general population but also the majority of intellectuals were preoccupied with only one side of their war experiences, that as victims both of the Japanese military and of U.S. bombing.
In addition to the Beheiren movement, efforts to normalize the relationship between Japan and China that started in the early 1970s stimulated debate on Japan's war responsibility to the Chinese people. In this context, journalists such as Honda Katsuichi published detailed reports about the Chinese victims of Japanese military atrocities, notably those committed during the Nanjing Massacre. Some academics also started conducting research on war crimes that Japanese troops committed in China and other occupied territories of Asia. From the late 1970s, scholars such as Ienaga Saburo, Fujiwara Akira, Eguchi Keiichi and Oe Shinobu wrote about Japan's war responsibility, posing serious moral questions. Encouraged by the work of these scholars, detailed accounts of hitherto unknown cases of Japanese war crimes -- e.g., bacteriological warfare, massacre of POWs and exploitation of "comfort women" -- were produced in the 1980s and 90s by historians such as Tsuneishi Keiichi, Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Kasahara Tokuji, Utsumi Aiko and others. The impact of such scholarly work upon intellectual circles was profound.
Yet the effects that progressive political movements such as Beheiren and academic research on Japanese war crimes had upon popular attitudes in Japan was insufficient to overcome the one-sided victimization perspective on the Asia-Pacific War. The dominant Japanese self-image as war victims infiltrated deeply into the psyche of many Japanese throughout the nation in the 1950s and 60s through both official and popular culture channels. It was no easy task for a progressive political or academic movement to overcome that established view.
From the early 1990s, a backlash against the above-mentioned progressive academic work was touched off by nationalist scholars, who denied the historical record of Japanese wartime atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre and the comfort women, and called on Japanese to take pride in their war record. Cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori was particularly influential in transmitting their views to a vast popular audience, and achieving a certain success in undermining the credibility of critical scholars. This backlash reverberated through the Japanese Ministry of Education's approval of the school textbook produced by nationalist scholars associated with the Tsukurukai (The Association for Producing New Textbooks) group and government introduction of a nation-wide school program to inculcate patriotism. In addition, as a result of Prime Minister Koizumi's stern rejection of the criticism of neighboring nations regarding his visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A-war criminals are enshrined, and Foreign Minister Aso Taro's publicly urging the Emperor to visit Yasukuni Shrine, the issue of war responsibility is again a national and international issue. The Liberal Democratic Party's plan to amend the Japanese Peace Constitution in order to convert Japan's Self Defense Forces to a fully legitimate military force should be viewed in light of the question of war responsibility.
To grasp the rise of neo-nationalism in Japan in the 1990s, it is necessary to understand its close interrelationship with contemporary socio-economic phenomena such as "the bursting of the bubble economy," "financial crisis," "globalization," and "growing inequality." But we should also contemplate the entire framework of ethics, including the sense of moral responsibility. Only when the Japanese people fully accept moral responsibility for the hardships inflicted on Asian people through colonialism and war, will it be possible to achieve the aim described in the preface of their Constitution "to occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation of peace, and the banishment of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance for all time from the earth."
References
* John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W.W. Norton & Company/The New York Press, New York, 1999)
*Awaya Kentaro, 'The Tokyo Tribunal, War Responsibility and the Japanese People' translated by Timothy Amos.
* Oda Makoto, Nanshi no Shiso (Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 1991)
* Takahashi Tetsuya, Sengo Sekinin-Ron (Kodansha, Tokyo, 2005)
* Takahashi Tetsuya, Kokka to Gisei (Nippon Hosho Kyokai, Tokyo, 2005)
* Yoshida Yutaka, Nipponjin no Senso-kan (Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 1995)
Yuki Tanaka is Research Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, author of Japan's Comfort Women. Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation, and a coordinator of Japan Focus. He wrote this article for Japan Focus. Posted August 20, 2006.
I don't know what you are trying to say with this long article, but it must be the end of the world if all nations starting wars or colonization would pay the modest reparations.
In the past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility. And with feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology always engraved in mind, Japan has resolutely maintained, consistently since the end of World War II, never turning into a military power but an economic power, its principle of resolving all matters by peaceful means, without recourse to use of force. Japan once again states its resolve to contribute to the peace and prosperity of the world in the future as well, prizing the relationship of trust it enjoys with the nations of the world.
if people wanted Japanese name and liked japan so much, why did Koreans fight against japan? why did Koreans turn to Russia for help (partly causing Russia-japan war)
According to the study done in the University of Tokyo
The Japanese colonization of Korea has been mentioned as the case in point of "cultural genocide" by the Comparative Genocide Studies group of the University of Tokyo. The colonial government put into practice the suppression of Korean culture and language in an "attempt to root out all elements of Korean culture from society".
"Focus was heavily and intentionally placed upon the psychological and cultural element in Japan's colonial policy, and the unification strategies adopted in the fields of culture and education were designed to eradicate the individual ethnicity of the Korean race."
According to the Library of Congress
A country study conducted by the Library of Congress states that ﾂ"Korean culture was quashed, and Koreans were required to speak Japanese and take Japanese names."
FUKUOKA, Yasunori
Saitama University Review, Vol.31, No.1.
During its colonial time and especially after the Pacific War broke out, Japan, using its military power, forced Koreans to completely assimilate to Japanese. A s a part of its assimilation policy, Japan forced Koreans to do "soshi-kaimei"
Somehow, I think the Library of Congress and study were done by the University of Tokyo and Saitama is more legit than your so-called "proof" which actually shows the Japanese government advocating the name change. You see, these people actually do research and publish their findings. And all legit research shows unfairness and evilness of the Japanese imperial government.
I don't know what you are trying to say with this long article, but it must be the end of the world if all nations starting wars or colonization would pay the modest reparations.
This is an official speech of the former PM Koizumi, so-called ultra-militaristic, ultra-right, history-fabricating person.
Japan will vote in parliamentary elections Sunday. Some candidates call for the country to rearm its military, revise its constitution and rewrite history.
usatoday30.usatoday.com
In 2001, Abe, then the LDP's acting secretary-general, pressured national broadcaster NHK to censor a program on the Japanese military's wartime use of sex slaves (known as "comfort women"), according to the Asahi newspaper.
"We did terrible things during the war to foreigners and our own people. This is a fact," says left-leaning political commentator Minoru Morita. "We lost 3.1 million people and a third of our national wealth. It took us 25 years to recover. We learned we have to get along with the United States and China. Some of our politicians don't realize that."
Hundreds of Japanese teachers have refused to cooperate with what they see as coercive attempts to instil patriotism in youngsters and with the revision of Japan's history.
In Tokyo alone, 320 teachers have been punished ― some docked pay or suspended ― for refusing to salute the flag or stand for the national anthem, according to the Tokyo school board. Akira Suzuki of the school system's personnel department says the board is enforcing the rules, not political orthodoxy.
The Japanese Government has brushed aside growing pressure from US lawmakers for a fresh apology for Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of an estimated 200,000 women.
www.abc.net.au
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sparked controversy in March by saying there was no evidence the imperial army directly coerced thousands of women into brothels across Asia during World War II.
------------------------------------------------ Killing someone, say sorry, then deny all wrongdoings. That's what the Japanese government is doing. It refuses to teach the true history, censor television stations, and now ignores all comfort women issues.
if people wanted japanese name and liked japan so much, why did koreans fight agaisnt japan? why did koreans turn to russia for help (partly caussing russia-japan war)
Japan and your country, South Korea, have not recognised DPRK as a legitimate country, so your country demanded the money from Japan, even for the North part...
Don't worry I know your South Korean govenment had been ruled by dictators without telling the public that she got money from Japan. It was just a bit better than the North, and it was great that your govenment spent the money for your economic growth.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sparked controversy in March by saying there was no evidence the imperial army directly coerced thousands of women into brothels across Asia during World War II.
As an outsider looking in on this whole thread I must say that Japan has been lending quite a helpful hand to most countries they invaded over 60 years ago. I sometimes find that no one will ever be happy. I feel specially this way since I am American. Although I must admit my ties to my country have become more loose over the last few years. I know that the U.S. is a world power, but sometimes I wish we would just do what Japan did. Say here is some money work out your own problems. But then I suppose the backlash of that would never end. (discussion needed)
As an outsider looking in on this whole thread I must say that Japan has been lending quite a helpful hand to most countries they invaded over 60 years ago. I sometimes find that no one will ever be happy. I feel specially this way since I am American. Although I must admit my ties to my country have become more loose over the last few years. I know that the U.S. is a world power, but sometimes I wish we would just do what Japan did. Say here is some money work out your own problems. But then I suppose the backlash of that would never end. (discussion needed)
I think what he meant was, would you rather be the country giving the money (slaveowner) or the country receiving the help (slave) and being dependent on the giving country (slaveowner)? I'm probably totally wrong, though.
Japan and your country, South Korea, have not recognised DPRK as a legitimate country, so your country demanded the money from Japan, even for the North part...
Don't worry I know your South Korean govenment had been ruled by dictators without telling the public that she got money from Japan. It was just a bit better than the North, and it was great that your govenment spent the money for your economic growth.
OK, bring here the evidence. But don't worry I know the active and loud Korean testimonies said they were sold by their families.
i just shwoed you all the evidence. A study done by the Library of Congress, studies and researches done by University of Tokyo.
This debate has nothing to do with north korea. It has nothing to do with money.
It has everything to do with japanese prime ministers and political leaders refusing to admit all wrongdoings, refusing to teach the students the true history and attempting to turn NHK into a propagandic media for japanese imperialistic past.
You dont need a document that says by the government "kill and rape all women you like." Studies by Americans, Koreans, and Japanese, has been conducted to show that even if japanese government took no direct part in attempting to stop the murder and rape, japanese soldiers did rape and kill women, and put them in brothels forcefully.
Same as Nanking massacre. Japanese government never gave order for full assault massacre. But the army general, or whoever was in charge, decided that massacre was needed, and probably gave verbal orders to attack and kill commoners at will. And history, and all researches doen by independent organizations, agree that japanese army is responsible for killing.
This is just dumb. You will not be able to find one "evidence" of Koreans army's wrongdoings in Vietnam. There are only researches and personal testimonies for the wrong doings.
The primary studies conducted by respectable organization are enough proof for what has happened. That is proof enough.
As an outsider looking in on this whole thread I must say that Japan has been lending quite a helpful hand to most countries they invaded over 60 years ago. I sometimes find that no one will ever be happy. I feel specially this way since I am American. Although I must admit my ties to my country have become more loose over the last few years. I know that the U.S. is a world power, but sometimes I wish we would just do what Japan did. Say here is some money work out your own problems. But then I suppose the backlash of that would never end. (discussion needed)
actually its hugely different. If you look at American history books, it recognizes its wrongdoings against American indians and treatment of japanese during WW2.
Imagine Defense secretary telling NPR to not broadcast america's wrongdoing in the past on American Indians, but giving them financial aid at the same time. He also says there are no proofs of american mistreatment of indians. Is that a "true" apology or just a fabrication?
This is exactly what Japan is doing. And they claim there are no "evidence" although hundreds of studies has been conducted to prove them wrong. They want a document from japanese government that says "rape everyone" which of course will not exist.
And lastly, U.S. gives out far more aid than japan or any other nation. No need to play down your country.
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