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altar wrote:Anyway, another reason why I don't think Japan should have veto power at the UNSC is that since it depends on the US for it's own security in the region it lacks the required independance on international issues.
From Mr. Futao Motai, Counsellor and Director, Japan Information and Cultural Centre, Embassy of Japan, London
Sir, I wish to refer to your editorial "Japan's burden" (April 8th). In particular, you mention "Tokyo's approval of school textbooks that have become steadily less honest over the years about Japan's violent record in Asia before and during the second world war" and state that "the school books in question gloss over the coercion of labourers and 'comfort women' for Japanese imperial troops and the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians in Nanjing".
In Japan, unlike some other countries, the government does not offer one particular view of history via school textbooks. On the contrary, the writing and editing of textbooks is left to the initiative of private publishers in order to encourage academic originality and flair. The government authorises these books as textbooks when they meet such criteria.
In a statement in 1995, then prime minister Tomiichi Murayama clearly stated: "Japan, . . . through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology." Moreover, in the years since that statement was made, the government of Japan has consistently endorsed Mr Murayama's remarks and strictly maintains this position today.
In the last paragraph, you state that "Japan now has active territorial disputes with China, South Korea and Russia". This gives the misleading impression that China has a legitimate territorial grievance towards Japan. The Senkaku Islands have continuously remained outside the territory that Japan renounced under Article 11 of the San Francisco peace treaty. It was not until the latter half of 1970, when the question of the development of petroleum resources on the continental shelf of the East China Sea came to the fore, that the Chinese government began to raise questions regarding the Senkaku Islands.
I would very much appreciate your understanding of these points, which I trust will be reflected in any future articles on the subject.
What if the Japanese government apologised profusely and unconditionally for all the terrible things Japan did to China during the war? What if all Japanese textbooks described those wartime atrocities - the Nanking massacre, comfort women and so on - in full? What if Japan were to build lots of museums and memorials about Japanese war crimes committed in China, Korea, and south-east Asia? And what if Japan renounced all claims to disputed islands in the China Sea? Would this stop the Chinese from throwing stones at the Japanese embassy, or molesting Japanese students, or demonstrating against Japan's bid for United Nations Security Council membership? Probably not. These outbursts of emotional and sometimes violent nationalism in China take place partly because they are the only expression of public protest the government allows.
Similar things can happen in a democracy too, of course, as they do in South Korea. When they occur, more or less spontaneously, neither the South Korean nor the Chinese government can afford to ignore them or stop them too forcefully. Hence the odd passivity of Chinese policemen when demonstrators smashed Japanese property in Beijing.
Sometimes, however, the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the South Korean authorities deliberately inflame anti-Japanese passions to deflect attention from their own shortcomings. Nationalism, along with capitalist development, has become the only justification for the Chinese Communist Party's monopoly on power, and when capitalism falters nationalism must be cranked up. Ever since Deng Xiaoping opened China's door to foreign, especially Japanese, investment, and Marxist ideology faded into insignificance, "patriotic museums" have sprouted all over China - most of them dedicated to past Japanese atrocities.
Japan's record in the second world war is bad enough to stir up popular passions whenever they are needed. But the manipulation of xenophobia by Chinese rulers began long before the Nanking Massacre. When the Boxers, a revolutionary sect, went on a violent rampage against foreigners and westernised Chinese in 1900, they were encouraged by the Empress Dowager Zu Xi. She had to do this, because the discontent directed at foreigners was really about harsh economic conditions, for which the Chinese authorities were responsible. The Boxers hated all authority. So when foreign troops, including Japanese, put down the Boxer Rebellion, the Empress turned round and backed the foreigners.
That pattern has persisted to this day. And so has the explosive mixture in Chinese rebellions of xenophobia and anti-government protest. The Chinese resentment of Japan, too, stretches back at least as far as 1895, when the Japanese upstarts defeated the armies of the great Middle Kingdom. Even as Japan grew quickly into a world power, China lagged behind in economic development and saw its port cities come under foreign jurisdiction, while much of the country fell prey to violent warlords, and then to Japanese invaders.
One of the most famous and influential Chinese rebellions happened in May 1919, when students in Beijing demonstrated against the handover of German concessions in China to Japan. Ostensibly the so-called May 4 Movement started as an anti-Japanese demonstration. In fact, it was directed against the weak, backward and undemocratic Chinese government. The movement could have had many results. In the end, it turned out to be Mao Zedong's revolution.
So the present government cannot but be aware of the potential dangers of allowing anti-Japanese protests to spiral out of control. It is often forgotten that student protests in China in the 1980s, culminating in Tiananmen Square in 1989, also began with riots against foreign students and "Japanese militarism". Even as the latest anti-
Japanese demonstrations erupted in Beijing and Shanghai, tens of thousands of villagers began rioting in Zhejiang province, protesting against miserable economic and environmental conditions. Anti-Japanese demonstrations spilled over to Hong Kong this week and many more are being planned for this weekend in at least 10 Chinese cities. Chinese websites are buzzing with angry rhetoric. And the anniversary of the May 4 Movement is looming.
There is no evidence of a direct link between the rural Zhejiang protests and the anti-Japanese demonstrations elsewhere, but the very thought that such links might be possible would fill any Chinese government official who knows anything about history with dread. That is why the authorities will no doubt try to stop the demonstrations from going much further. But there is equally little doubt they will recur, no matter what the Japanese do.
China is a great leader... of killing it's own people.Some things you won't find in Chinese history textbooks: the 1989 democracy movement, the millions who died in a famine caused by misguided communist policies or China's military attacks on India and Vietnam.
As China criticizes Japan for new textbooks that critics say minimize wartime abuses like the Japanese military forcing Asian women into sexual slavery, Beijing's own schoolbooks have significant omissions about the communist system's own history and relations with its neighbors.
"With rising Chinese nationalism, the efforts to rewrite history, to reinterpret history according to the demands of nationalism have become a major national pastime," said Maochun Yu, a history professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Experts say China's textbooks are written to heighten a sense of national victimhood and glorify the Communist Party that seized power in a 1949 revolution and lashes out at any threat to its rule.........
Omissions of major events appear aimed at shoring up China's image of itself as a non-aggressor, especially since the 1949 revolution.
The books don't mention the brief but bloody 1962 border war with India that broke out when Chinese troops attacked Indian positions to enforce territorial claims.
There is nothing on the 1979 war when Chinese troops attacked Vietnam. The assault was ordered to punish Hanoi for ousting the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which was an ally of Beijing.
Also missing:
The 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrations, when Chinese troops killed hundreds and possibly thousands of unarmed protesters.
The estimated 30 million Chinese who starved to death during the 1958-61 "Great Leap Forward," revolutionary leader Mao Zedong's attempt to speed up China's farm and factory output through mass collectivization.
Textbooks gloss over ally North Korea's invasion of South Korea at the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, a conflict that drew in troops from the United States and other countries on the side of the South and China's army in support of the North.
The texts say only that "civil war broke out," without mentioning how it started. America is portrayed as an invader that forced Beijing to intervene by threatening Chinese territory.
A seventh-grade text also accuses the U.S. military of using biological weapons during the Korean War, repeating a claim made by China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War but never proven.
BEIJING, April 14 (Xinhuanet) -- China denied Thursday that two Chinese students have been killed in Japan. A short news release issued by Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Japanese media reports that two Chinese students had been killed in Japan were untrue. "We have carefully checked the facts, and the story is false," Qin said, without revealing details.
SHANGHAI, China - About 20,000 anti-Japanese protesters — some shouting "kill the Japanese" — rampaged through Shanghai on Saturday, stoning Japan's consulate and smashing cars and shops in protest over Tokyo's bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat and perceived whitewashing of wartime atrocities.
Thousands of police watched the rioting but did little to restrain the crowd, and Japan filed an official protest, complaining that Chinese authorities failed to stop anti-Japanese violence for a third weekend in a row.
CNN had an article about China's own 'missing' history in it's textbooks I posted here: [url]http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/showthread.php?p=90541#post90541&highlight=#91110[/url]L S wrote:Haven't seen many articles bringing up this obvious double standard in this situation.
I just wish American media would also start exposing some homegrown bullshit.. But why would they? Sheeple are good consumers.. Has the 'wa' invaded the US?The books don't mention the brief but bloody 1962 border war with India that broke out when Chinese troops attacked Indian positions to enforce territorial claims.
There is nothing on the 1979 war when Chinese troops attacked Vietnam. The assault was ordered to punish Hanoi for ousting the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which was an ally of Beijing.
Also missing:
The 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrations, when Chinese troops killed hundreds and possibly thousands of unarmed protesters.
The estimated 30 million Chinese who starved to death during the 1958-61 "Great Leap Forward," revolutionary leader Mao Zedong's attempt to speed up China's farm and factory output through mass collectivization.
Textbooks gloss over ally North Korea's invasion of South Korea at the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, a conflict that drew in troops from the United States and other countries on the side of the South and China's army in support of the North.
The texts say only that "civil war broke out," without mentioning how it started. America is portrayed as an invader that forced Beijing to intervene by threatening Chinese territory.
A seventh-grade text also accuses the U.S. military of using biological weapons during the Korean War, repeating a claim made by China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War but never proven.
altar wrote:suck at diplomacy? The entire world is licking their ass right now and would let them get away with anything (occupying Tibet, threatening Taiwan, eliminating the Uighur people, just being a filthy dictatorship...)
When you're the world's largest prospective market, that's your diplomacy, and it looks like it works better than any other.
In order for a democratic country to express its true remorse, an apology must minimally contain the following four points:
(1)the apology must be based on a law duly enacted by the Japanese the Diet, authorizing its Prime Minister and Emperor to make a public apology to all the aggrieved nations;
(2)the same law enacted must include an authorization for the government to compensate the victims of Japanese aggression and atrocities and a mechanism for determining the just compensation for the victims;
(3) the law must also mandate a faithful collection, documentation, preservation, and distribution of the truths about Japanese aggression in the Pacific War, 1937-1945; and
(4) it must also include a mandate that the textbooks in Japan reflect this history in perpetuity.
These points, by the way, were the foundation of the Civil Liberties Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1988, authorizing President Ronald Reagan to apologize for the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and to compensate each living internee a sum of $20,000. Along a similar line, the government of Germany has been doing the same every year for the Jewish victims of Nazism and the state of Israel.
Any apology without these four minimal points is therefore phony and devoid of any substance. It is simply an empty gesture, even if it is delivered personally by the prime minister with the profoundest sense of remorse and humility.
Accordingly, it should be rejected by all of Japan's Asian neighbors and none of them should rest in peace until the Japanese Diet has enacted such a legislation. To date, the Diet has taken no such an action.
Prime Minister Koizumi made a point of replicating the apology statement issued by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, a statement considered strongest among all statements made since the end of the WW II. The world should know that Prime Minister Murayama made the personal apology only after he failed to persuade the Diet to enact an apology into law.
The book does not bring up the wartime brothels, and mention of the killings in Nanking is relegated to a footnote.
Nobukatsu Fujioka and Hidetsugu Yagi, members of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, said their book is meant to correct exaggerated accounts of Japanese atrocities in other books
TOKYO (Reuters) - The vast majority of Japanese want China to apologize and pay for damage caused by anti-Japan protests last month, a poll published on Wednesday showed.
But voters were almost evenly split over whether Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should keep visiting a shrine seen by China as a symbol Japan's past militarism.
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi is in Japan for a week-long visit and will meet Koizumi as both sides seek to improve relations strained by several feuds, many linked to Japan's wartime past.
These include Chinese anger at Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honored along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead.
Eighty-five percent of respondents to the poll sponsored by the conservative Yomiuri newspaper said Koizumi should demand an apology and compensation, and 92 percent rejected Beijing's argument that Japan's failure to own up to wartime atrocities was to blame for the demonstrations.
(Full Story)
"Though I was prepared, I'm still shocked at the sight of the skeletons," said 69-year-old Japanese photographer Jin Takaiwa when visiting the Pingdingshan Tragedy Memorial Hall in Fushun City, northeast China's Liaoning Province.
Jin came to China to seek evidence to prove Japan's intrusion of China during 1930s and 1940s, and Fushun is an important leg of Jin's tour in China.
Jin said, "I'll show the historical truth to today's Japanese youth and let them know the historical facts beyond their textbooks."
With a dignified look and seldom speaking when shooting exhibits at the memorial hall and when he finished his work, Jin wrote down: The massacre would not happen again, and he will look for historical facts and let the Japanese know. He went on to write, "Long live the friendship between Japan and China."
(Full Story)
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi was seeing business leaders yesterday at the start of a trip to Japan where she plans to take forward relations that have seen major strains.
After arriving Tuesday evening she held a private dinner with the Expo's chief Shoichiro Toyoda, who is the honorary chairman of Japan's largest company Toyota Motor, a major investor in China.
[...]
Wu met yesterday with local business leaders in Nagoya and talked about the importance of urban renewal. She was due to head today for China's national day in the six-month Expo.
Beijing decided to send Wu, an veteran negotiator and Politburo member, instead of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao who was invited by Koizumi to the Expo.
Analysts viewed the move as a sign that China wanted to send an official for serious talks with Japan but without the symbolism of such a high-ranking visit.
(Full Story)
Quoting Confucius, a defiant Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday defended his annual visits to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine, shrugging off the uproar they inevitably cause in Asia.
Referring to wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, one of 14 Class-A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni, Koizumi told the Lower House Budget Committee: ``They cite Tojo (as a reason to stop the visits). But Confucius says, `Condemn the offense, but pity the offender.'''
In a clear reference to outbursts over the visits from China and South Korea, Koizumi said: ``Other countries should not meddle in how we think it is best to pay tribute (to Japan's war dead).
(Full Story)
A senior official in Japan's ruling coalition said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should stop his annual visits to a shrine for war dead that is seen by China and other neighbours as a symbol of wartime militarism.
Akihiro Ohta, acting secretary-general of the New Komeito party, said the government should instead build a national war memorial where Japanese leaders could visit without upsetting Asian neighbours who were victims of Japan's past militarism.
"We think the prime minister should refrain from making official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine," Ohta told Reuters in an interview, referring to the Tokyo shrine where some war criminals are honoured along with Japan's 2.5 million war dead.
(Full Story)
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