It is fair to expect that the announcement, by one of world's dominant political parties of the past 60 years, of a re-examination its country's role in a wartime atrocity is a prelude to an acknowledgement of past wrongs and, perhaps, an attempt to make amends to the victims.
But the outcome of a fresh study by rightwing MPs from the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) into the Japanese military's use of an estimated 200,000 sex slaves in the 1930s and 40s is unlikely to leave much room for truth and reconciliation.
Last month, as members of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee heard three elderly women recall how they were snatched from their homes by military officials and forced to have sex with up to dozens of soldiers a day in "comfort stations", Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, suggested the women were either volunteers or had been procured by private contractors.
There was "no evidence," he said, to support claims that the women were forced to work in frontline brothels. There had been no coercion "in the narrow sense," he said, meaning that sexual enslavement was not military policy.
He now finds himself at the centre of a political storm, not least because the most indignant responses to his remarks have come not from commentators in China and Korea, but from those in the US and Australia.
Mr Abe's denials contradict the oral testimony of survivors and repentant former Japanese soldiers; they are also at odds with an unofficial apology, which admitted that military coercion had occurred, offered by the government's then top spokesman, Yohei Kono, in 1993.
In an attempt to mollify his critics overseas, Mr Abe claims to stand by the Kono apology, while agreeing to help his party colleagues prove that the Kono's statement was a mistake.
It is a tricky political contortion for a man with impeccable nationalist credentials, who rose to power partly on the back of his reputation as a hardliner against North Korea.
He is, after all, a founder and former leader of the same group that hopes to bury the Kono apology and dismiss the brothels as an example of distasteful wartime entrepreneurship.
That is not how the estimated 2,000 comfort stations located across Asia are regarded abroad, not least in the US, where a Los Angeles Times editorial denounced Mr Abe for "pandering to the Japanese right wing's most disgusting tendencies toward historical revisionism."
And all this, just weeks before Mr Abe is due to meet President Bush in Washington and greet the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, in Tokyo.
He now faces the near impossible task of winning over allies who regard Japan's historical amnesia as an inexplicable blight on an otherwise mature democracy, while appealing to his conservative power base at home as the LDP braces itself for difficult upper house elections in July.
When his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, encountered bumps in the road, he turned to the electorate to resurrect his reformist agenda. Mr Abe, whose approval rating has plummeted since he took office last autumn, turns instead to the far right of his party.
As it attempts to expunge from the historical record that it bears direct responsibility for the sexual enslavement of women, Japan's problem may not only be that it is led by an unreconstructed nationalist, but also by a man who is increasingly out of touch with voters.
While Mr Abe constructs grand visions of a "beautiful Japan" where children are raised as patriots and the military is released from the shackles of a pacifist constitution, the electorate has more pressing matters on its mind: pensions, health care, the declining birthrate and the rising income gap.
Rightwing Japanese politicians may well regard international criticism as a price worth paying for rolling back the progressive gains of the postwar era. But Mr Abe's decision to indulge their zealotry at this critical time in his fledgling premiership could come at a huge political cost.
Comments
12 March 2007 9:12PM
'Rightwing Japanese politicians may well regard international criticism as a price worth paying for rolling back the progressive gains of the postwar era. But Mr Abe's decision to indulge their zealotry at this critical time in his fledgling premiership could come at a huge political cost.'
I can only wish the Japanese all the worst and that this does indeed, come at enormous political, economic and social cost. It seems that only then will they finally, collectively, accept responsibility for their role in the war, and be able to move on.
12 March 2007 9:20PM
In an exemplary way, post-WWII Germany acknowledged the crimes committed by the nazis and compensated the surviving victims.
It is very difficult to understand why Japan is unable to admit to its own horrors.
12 March 2007 9:21PM
In an exemplary way, post-WWII Germany acknowledged the crimes committed by the nazis and compensated the surviving victims.
It is very difficult to understand why Japan is unable to admit to its own horrors.
12 March 2007 9:30PM
goto100:"I can only wish the Japanese all the worst and that this does indeed, come at enormous political, economic and social cost. It seems that only then will they finally, collectively, accept responsibility for their role in the war, and be able to move on."
Really? Collectively? Do you also think that, Oh I don't know, Jews ought to collectively accept responsibility for the killing of Jesus Christ? Call me old fashioned, but I think the people responsible for crimes are the people who commit them. Not the people who just so happen to speak the same language as those criminals. What about you?
No one's hands are clean. Japan's are not particularly clean even by those standards, but the Comfort Woman issue *is* more complicated than this article makes out. For a start there is a strong movement in South Korea to encourage all women who suffered to claim they were forced - even though in some cases they were sold into prostitution by their families. What else are they going to say in a patriarchal culture anyway?
12 March 2007 10:44PM
SeerTaak, of course it is unfair collective punishment. But, it has been 60 years, and after managing one step forward in all that time, Japan at a stroke, appears ready to take two back. The contrast with Germany's coming to terms with its role in the war could not be stronger. And really, what can we do or say? We cannot continue to tacitly accept this revisionist attitude to history when it becomes enshrined in government and of course, education with the infamous history text books. In the long run, we'd be doing Japan a great disservice by not objecting at every turn, and letting the Japanese know that whilst we can forgive, we will not do so if they collectively forget, or worse ignore and revise.
12 March 2007 11:31PM
Because Japanese war crimes were not pursued as vigorously as Germany's after the war; it led to the Japanese establishment believing that it had no case to answer. America felt that their own interests would be better served by not prosecuting the Emperor and the top brass.
Japanese war crimes were at least as appalling as German war crimes. Some would argue that they were much worse, given that they were committed over a longer period in the 30s and 40s.
For anyone interested in the true history of Japanese atrocities and not the sanitised version; I recommend, The Knights of Bushido (A short History of Japanese War Crimes), written by Lord Russell of Liverpool.
This is what it says on the jacket. "This book is a straightforward account, written with no suggestion of sensationalism, of Japanese atrocities perpetrated in the last war. Murders, massacre, death marches, mutilation, vivisection, and even cannibalism were all practised by the proud descendants of the Knights of Bushido of the Order of the Rising Sun-and condoned by their High Command. The mass destruction by starvation and forced labour which turned tens of thousands of healthy men into diseased skeletons was deliberate military policy. The rape of women was not enough for Japanese soldiers; their most heinous tortures were kept for victims of their animal lust".
What I find Ironic, is the fact that we never seem to tire of reminding Germans of their negative past. Even though they have acknowledged their wrongdoings and atoned for them. However, we seem quite happy not to remind the Japanese of their negative history, even though they are denier's of it.
Why is that I wonder?
13 March 2007 12:53AM
Bugaboo: This is one of the more disturbing account I've read of part of the Japanese atrocities:
Dissect them alive: order not to be disobeyed Richard Lloyd Parry in Hirakata, Japan For 62 years, Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he�d done, but to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience. Why else would he have returned so often to the obscure, mosquito-blown town in the southern Philippines where he had experience such misery during the Second World War?
He set up war memorials, gave clothes to poor children, and bought an entire set of uniforms for a local baseball team. Last year, at the age of 83, he embarked on a gruelling pilgrimage to 88 Buddhist temples in Japan - after number 40 he collapsed from heat exhaustion, having permanently injured his knees. �My wife didn�t like me going back to the Philippines, she called me �war crazy�,� said Mr Makino, a frailold man who lives alone in Hirakata near Osaka. �But she let me go anyway. Right up until she died three years ago, I never told her. But over time I think she realised.� Only in the twilight of his life, has Mr Makino begun to talk about the secret which he had carried.
In 1944, as a medical auxiliary in the Japanese Imperial Navy, he was stationed in the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. There he was party to one of the most notorious and poorly chronicled cruelties of the Japanese war effort - the medical dissection and murder of living prisoners of war.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1438491.ece
13 March 2007 2:01AM
All decent people must insist that Japan acknowledges the fullest extent of its crimes in WW2.
However it must also be said that the same applies to the British - and indeed to ALL those involved in gross human rights abuses.
Thus while everyone is rightly aware of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million victims) very few are aware of the contemporaneous man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India (4 million victims) that has been largely deleted from British historiography and hence from general public perception in a CONTINUING process of racist holocaust denial.
The man-made 1943/1944 Bengal Famine (studied by 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, Cambridge and thence Harvard) occurred because when the price of rice (for a variety of reasons) rose 4-fold those on the edge who could not afford it simply starved under a ruthless and racist British administration (the consequent 1940s demographic defcit in Bengal was about 10 million).
Colin Mason in his book A Short History of Asia (Macmillan, London, 2000) has condemned the ignoring of this atrocity by British historians and politicians - indeed he has speculated that it may have occurred as a result of deliberate scorched earth policy by the British to discourage Japanese invasion from India.
The British-forgotten man-made Bengal Famine was associated with horrendous military and civilan sexual abuse of starving women and girls that was so big as to affect demographic statistics for Calcutta where perhaps 30,000 females suffered such abuse - the total number of victims of such abuse in the British Military Labor Corps and in civilian life may have totaled hundreds of thousands province-wide i.e. was on a scale commensurate with the comfort women abuses of the Japanese Imperial Army.
An entrenched British culture of (a) academic, media and politician lying and (b) of unstated ubermensch belief means that this man-made famine atrocity - as well as the horrendous attendant sexual abuse of women and girls - has been largely swept under the carpet. For detailed accounts of this conveniently forgotten British atrocity see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ , http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s19040.htm, Greenough, P.R. (1982), Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the Famine of 1943-1944 (Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York). Greenough, P.R. (1988), Famine in Embree, A.T. (1985a) (editor), Encyclopaedia of Asian History (Collier Macmillan, London) pp457-459 ).
Of course the British and their Canadian, American and Australian offshoots are still LYING and indeed lying about contemporary, on-going atrocities - thus authoritative medical literature and UN agency data indicate that the post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories now total 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively, and the refugees total 6 million, 3.8 million and 3.7 million, respectively (for detailed analysis and documentation see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12904/42/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/13099/42/ ).
13 March 2007 3:27AM
I am a foreigner living in Japan, and I hold to a very strong conviction that I(and anyone else in similar circumstances, anywhere)should guard my tongue; out of both good manners and social and political expediancy. However, it is startling to hear, as an item in the main NHK evening news, references to 'volunteer women'. And in the context of Vietnam, then, and Iraq, now, it is equally startling to read Fairness USA March 12 21.21 " It is difficult to understand why Japan is unable to admit to its own horrors" As a BritI also acknowledge, although sceptical, the points made by Gideaon Polya Aus; sceptical does*not* mean reject. It does seem to me that the world would benefit very considerably from an International Truth and Reconciliation Commission able to consider and adjudicate and pronounce on, without final judgement, these contentious historical issues. That's utopian and unobtainable, of course.
13 March 2007 4:07AM
Japan is the second largest economy in the world, and once in the '80, the largest financiers of the U.S. debt. What it says and does makes a significant impact in the rest of the world, let alone the Far East.
I believe Asians(who took the brunt of the Japanese atrocities--many British and Australians suffered horribly as well) are by and large pragmatists and are willing to let bygones be bygones, if proper official acknowledgments(as well as in historical and educational texts), and governmental restitutions to the victims are made.
The problem here is that Japan has never made an official acknowledgment and apology of the "comfort women" issue, merely an individual high ranking Japanese official making an unofficial apology, which Abe et al seem to find "inaccurate" in its key claims; Japanese military, it seems, is not at fault.
The poor surviving women in South Korea refused private donations from Japanese citizens and are dying, one by one of old age, waiting for the Japanese government to make the official apology and official restitution. They have made it a point of honor.
It is incredibly foolish to make this past history a needless obstacle to the future economic "Asian Union" of which Japan will undoubtedly have a leading role. Japan must realize that a truly great nation(a status her nationalists aspire to) has the strength and courage to recognize the mistakes of the past and make amends assuring that they will not repeat it in the future. She must look to Germany.
No one in the world will accuse post war Germany of racial revisionism. Germany has made Holocaust denial a crime along with other social and cultural changes in all levels of society--few skin heads aside--(I believe they went over board in their uncritical governmental support of Israeli policies). More diaspora Jews currently are immigrating to Germany than to Israel.
The Japanese often bristles at being compared to the Nazis -- We are not one of 'those people'. This is a critical mistake of course; real change will only come when they realize that "Indeed, we were 'those people', but we do not want to be any more."
There are cultural differences between the Germans and the Japanese. Japanese society is much more insular and collectivistic. It takes a long time for them make up their minds and change as a whole. I hope for their sake they do it while the octagenarian victims and offenders are still alive, so that the rest of Asia and the world at large can 'move on'.
13 March 2007 4:10AM
Japan is the second largest economy in the world, and once in the '80, the largest financiers of the U.S. debt. What it says and does makes a significant impact in the rest of the world, let alone the Far East.
I believe Asians(who took the brunt of the Japanese atrocities--many British and Australians suffered horribly as well) are by and large pragmatists and are willing to let bygones be bygones, if proper official acknowledgments(as well as in historical and educational texts), and governmental restitutions to the victims are made.
The problem here is that Japan has never made an official acknowledgment and apology of the "comfort women" issue, merely an individual high ranking Japanese official making an unofficial apology, which Abe et al seem to find "inaccurate" in its key claims; Japanese military, it seems, is not at fault.
The poor surviving women in South Korea refused private donations from Japanese citizens and are dying, one by one of old age, waiting for the Japanese government to make the official apology and official restitution. They have made it a point of honor.
It is incredibly foolish to make this past history a needless obstacle to the future economic "Asian Union" of which Japan will undoubtedly have a leading role. Japan must realize that a truly great nation(a status her nationalists aspire to) has the strength and courage to recognize the mistakes of the past and make amends assuring that they will not repeat it in the future. She must look to Germany.
No one in the world will accuse post war Germany of racial revisionism. Germany has made Holocaust denial a crime along with other social and cultural changes in all levels of society--few skin heads aside--(I believe they went over board in their uncritical governmental support of Israeli policies). More diaspora Jews currently are immigrating to Germany than to Israel.
The Japanese often bristles at being compared to the Nazis -- We are not one of 'those people'. This is a critical mistake of course; real change will only come when they realize that "Indeed, we were 'those people', but we do not want to be any more."
There are cultural differences between the Germans and the Japanese. Japanese society is much more insular and collectivistic. It takes a long time for them make up their minds and change as a whole. I hope for their sake they do it while the octagenarian victims and offenders are still alive, so that the rest of Asia and the world at large can 'move on'.
13 March 2007 4:17AM
Yes, the Japanese government should apologise as a gesture of goodwill to her neighbours. However; I'd like to see an international movement urging the govenrment of Russia to apologise to that country's Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, Baltic and yes, even German victims. Somehow,I don't see it coming.
13 March 2007 4:35AM
Hi GU Blog. Justin has asked me a number of times for a comment on this issue, but I am far from being a specialist. Still, I sat down last night and wrote up my latest newsletter (posted on my blog at http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=262), collating recent media to demonstrate how the debate has been influenced by the media, and vice versa.
Anyway, for the purposes of this blog, my summary and conclusions:
////////////////////////////////////////////////// SUMMARY: Japan�s Prime Minister Abe has a long history of being a historical revisionist, coming out in full bloom recently with the �Comfort Women� sexual slaves issue of WWII. What�s interesting his how Abe�s Cabinet could not contain the gaffes, to the point where he comes off as a denier and a prevaricator�especially in the face of survivors testifying in the US Congress (after decades of lack of success in Japanese courts for redress). As articles included in this newsletter demonstrate, he gets deeper in trouble the more he says, then blames the media for �misunderstandings� and clams up. Then flunkeys from the LDP and the Foreign Ministry get to work on spin control, going abroad to contain the damage, getting the J media to make this into a domestic issue for public consumption, and redirecting the public eye back onto Japan�s perennial victimhood complex, by pouring tax monies into anti-North-Korean TV ads and the abduction issue. Meanwhile, his popularity keeps dropping, and people wonder if he�ll survive the next election in a few months. As people keep murmuring, Koizumi did it better. //////////////////////////////////////////////////
Conclusions:
...My point is that what�s lying latent in the debate is the acknowledgment of history, without historical creep to match political capitalizing.
This is one of the reasons why UN Special Rapporteur Doudou Diene has stated repeatedly that we need a written history of the region (brokered by the UN) which every country can agree upon. (http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=238)
Otherwise, we�re going to keep on falling into the vicious circles of historical revisionism, unaddressed victims, mooted apologies, and intercontinental tensions that span generations and last for centuries�which hinder people looking for commonalities and common ground in negotiations.
Get on with it, everyone. Grow up and face the fact that any honest study of history for ANY country or society has its dark moments and historical atrocities. Stop denying. Acknowledge, and move on. It makes a country no less �beautiful�, Mr Abe. It actually makes a country worthy of respect for its honesty.
Arudou Debito in Sapporo debito@debito.org, www.debito.org
13 March 2007 5:11AM
jihadisbad.
Thank's for the story and the link. It would seem that this particular soldier admitted his crimes, if only to himself, and attempted to atone for them.
GideonPolya.
I must admit to being pretty ignorant of the Bengal famine and its consequences that you mention. However, I shall certainly search the web for more information now that you have brought it to my attention. Cheers.
Moliphant.
And one urging the American government to apologise to the Vietnamese people?
13 March 2007 10:07AM
fairness, it is about the Japanese concept of 'face', a form of respect. To admit to atrocities will lose the Japanese face. It is deeply ingrained.
13 March 2007 10:31AM
Beat me to it Tox06, you are absolutely correct. I worked in the far east for several years and "losing face" there is considered a deep humiliation. It probably also explains why, during WW2, that so many Jappanese soldiers would fight to the death, and their commanders commit ritual suicide, rather than surrender.
13 March 2007 10:55AM
you might have added that Abe's own grandfather was a class A war criminal, which might add to his twisted view of history
Japan's way of dealing with its mistakes of the past is the same as it's way of dealing with societal problems of the present - brush it under the carpet and hope it goes away.
Its new "patriotic" education policy is a joke, and Japan risks being increasingly sidelined in Asia as China takes the lead in regional integration.
13 March 2007 11:20AM
Bugaboo:"And one urging the American government to apologise to the Vietnamese people?"
For what - failing to stop totalitarianism and genocide? Why should the American government apologise for that? Much better that Tom Hayden and the SDS comes out and apologises for bringing the Khmer Rouge to power.
Tox06:"fairness, it is about the Japanese concept of 'face', a form of respect. To admit to atrocities will lose the Japanese face. It is deeply ingrained."
Actually it is more about double standards and bullying. To admit that Japan did something specially bad in a region full of mass murderers and tortures is a little more than most Japanese can stomache. Sure, the Japanese are often in denial, but at least they have started the process unlike China or Korea.
Helado:"I worked in the far east for several years and "losing face" there is considered a deep humiliation. It probably also explains why, during WW2, that so many Jappanese soldiers would fight to the death, and their commanders commit ritual suicide, rather than surrender."
Uh huh. Japan has apologised half a dozen times. Every time the Chinese and Koreans, who exploit this issue mercilessly for internal consumption, say that it is not enough and Japan needs to grovel even more. If the Japanese were driven by face it would be hard to explain why they have spent so much time apologising.
domo:"you might have added that Abe's own grandfather was a class A war criminal, which might add to his twisted view of history"
It comes as news to me that Abe Kan was a Class A war criminal. Or indeed any sort of war criminal at all. Especially considering the US let him stand in the 1946 general election. Can you explain why you think this?
domo:"Japan's way of dealing with its mistakes of the past is the same as it's way of dealing with societal problems of the present - brush it under the carpet and hope it goes away."
As opposed to .... China? Korea? Let's talk about the women forced to work in the South Korean prostitution industry shall we? Or China's unique approach to the victims of the Cultural Revolution? Denial ain't just a river in Egypt you know.
domo:"Its new "patriotic" education policy is a joke, and Japan risks being increasingly sidelined in Asia as China takes the lead in regional integration."
Japan is going to be side lined no matter what. It can never ever hope to compete with China. I don't see what the joke is. Japan has a moderately good record of producing history books that cover most issues - even the Rape of Nanjing. Unlike, say, China which bans books that even show Taiwan on the map.
13 March 2007 2:27PM
SeerTaak, Abe's maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, did time as a class A war criminal, and was not allowed into politics until the americans left japan. As to why he and other politicians with their hands dirty were later in favour with the US it was becuase of their usefulness in establishing a strong anti-communist outpost in Asia.
Re history, are you suggesting that Japan should judge itself against chinese standards? I suggest germany might be a better example. As it is, Japan keeps giving ample excuses to China, Korea etc authorities to stoke anti-japanese sentiments at home to cover for their own shortcomings. Precisely how Japan could avoid being sidelined in Asia is to take the lead on such issues, and capitalise on the great reserves of soft power they have built up in the region.
The reason they are being sidelined is not because it cant compete with China - they are much bigger economically, militarily, culturally, technologically etc etc. They are just too insular.
The joke is this: that when their school results are slipping down in oecd league tables, and bullying and suicides are rife, they are more concerned with instilling "a love of ones country" at school.
13 March 2007 4:59PM
domo:"Abe's maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, did time as a class A war criminal, and was not allowed into politics until the americans left japan."
Ahh, I see, by grandfather you mean his Mother's Father. OK. I can see that. He was never tried for anything much less convicted. He just happened to be Minister of Trade in Tojo's government. It is not as if he killed anyone or anything.
domo:"Re history, are you suggesting that Japan should judge itself against chinese standards? I suggest germany might be a better example."
I would suggest that China might like to judge itself against the standards it applies to Japan.
domo:"As it is, Japan keeps giving ample excuses to China, Korea etc authorities to stoke anti-japanese sentiments at home to cover for their own shortcomings. Precisely how Japan could avoid being sidelined in Asia is to take the lead on such issues, and capitalise on the great reserves of soft power they have built up in the region."
As if they needed a reason. Nor do I accept that Japan does. For fifty years the Japanese have been apologising and handing over cash. It only encourages them to demand more. There is no chance of Japan taking a lead in Asia and confirming the paranoid delusions about Japan is hardly going to lead to Japan being accepted in such a role by anyone. Korea and China have to grow up and dump their delusions and get on with it - something China does quite well most of the time. Soft power? Come on. Innocent cherry trees in Wuhan University are not even exempt from the irrational hatred of the Chinese.
domo:"The reason they are being sidelined is not because it cant compete with China - they are much bigger economically, militarily, culturally, technologically etc etc. They are just too insular."
They are much bigger now - although even now I'd dispute that culturally. But that will not last. Tokyo cannot compare with Shanghai much less compete.
domo:"The joke is this: that when their school results are slipping down in oecd league tables, and bullying and suicides are rife, they are more concerned with instilling "a love of ones country" at school."
And yet the more bullying and suicides they had, the better they did. Why shouldn't they be? It is not as if Korean or Chinese text books are models to go on. See South Korea's anti-Semitic cartoons?