EDITORIAL: Koike’s hesitancy to condemn hate crimes is part of disturbing trend

Amid social unrest sparked by the Great Kanto Earthquake, which struck the Kanto region around Tokyo on Sept. 1, 1923, and left more than 100,000 people dead, many ethnic Koreans and Chinese living in Japan were killed by “vigilante groups,” the military and police.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike again refused a request to send a message of condolence to a memorial ceremony for the victims of racial hate crimes.

The annual memorial ceremony, organized by a citizen group, has been held since 1974 in a Tokyo metropolitan park in Sumida Ward. The successive Tokyo governors sent messages of condolence for the massacred.

Koike also did so in 2016 immediately after she took office, but stopped sending a message of mourning for the victims in the following year in a pointed break from the tradition.

In explaining the reason for the move, Koike said she expresses her sorrow at a Buddhist service for all the victims of the disaster.

But her rationale is far from convincing since casualties of a natural disaster and victims of murders are clearly different in nature.

In addition, Koike has taken an equivocal stance toward this dark chapter of modern Japanese history. She has said there are “various views” about the massacre, saying it is up to “historians” to uncover the truth about what actually occurred.

She deserves to be roundly criticized for her attitude toward the issue, which shows disrespect for the facts and indicates a lack of commitment to learning from the past.

Koike made these remarks after a question by a Liberal Democratic Party member of the metropolitan assembly during an assembly session.

The legislator characterized what vigilante groups did as acts of “self-defense” against ethnic Koreans and other racial minorities who perpetrated brutal crimes under the cover of confusion following the earthquake. He also criticized the description of the massacre in the monument to the victims in the park, saying the number of the killed shown in the text, “over 6,000,” is an exaggeration.

But the government at that time acknowledged that rampant rumors saying Koreans would riot and had poisoned wells were false.

While the accurate number of victims remains unclear since no detailed investigation was conducted, a 2008 report by the Cabinet Office’s Central Disaster Prevention Council estimated the death toll at one thousand to several thousands.

Describing the incident as “the worst situation that has ever occurred at a time of a large-scale natural disaster” in Japan, the council called for learning lessons from this grueling episode.

In essence, this is a real story of mass murders in which citizens killed and injured many innocent people in fits of racial hatred stirred up by groundless rumors.

But Koike’s decision is only one sign of a growing and disturbing trend in this nation.

In recent years, a slew of revisionist movements have popped up in Japan. Revisionists have tried to promote claims and arguments that ignore or partially question the results of many years of serious research about gloomy aspects of Japanese history with the apparent purpose of creating the impression that there is no academic consensus on such topics and thereby banishing the established views from the public space.

Attempting to terminate the gubernatorial tradition of sending messages of condolence to memorial ceremonies for the victims of racial hatred provoked by the 1923 earthquake only contributes to the trend.

Making effective responses to hate crimes, typically violent crimes motivated by prejudice on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or other grounds, is a tough policy challenge confronting many countries.

In Japan, there have been waves of false and vicious rumors triggered by natural disasters in recent years, such as foreigners engaging in crime sprees.

Next year, Tokyo will host the Olympics and Paralympics under a charter that bans all forms of discrimination. Scientists have warned about the high likelihood of a huge quake occurring directly beneath Tokyo.

But the chief of the metropolitan government is showing signs of unwillingness to face up to past hate crimes committed in the city.

Any sensible person, either Japanese or foreign, will feel disillusioned with Koike and doubt her qualifications as the chief of Japan’s capital when he or she learns of the governor’s actions concerning this ugly side of Japanese history.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 29