The Yomiuri Shimbun "Showa War" Responsibility Verification Committee

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri Shimbun Chairman Tsuneo Watanabe spoke in an interview, cited in this thread, of his paper's War Responsibility Verification Committee. Here's their report: EDIT: The Yomiuri has kept the links to the reports here.

Yomiuri sums up who's to blame for 'Showa War'
The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Daily Yomiuri will report today and Tuesday the findings of a yearlong examination by an in-house committee into the responsibility of wartime national leaders. The Yomiuri Shimbun's War Responsibility Verification Committee has examined various factors in battles that started with the Manchurian Incident--a conflict that from today we will collectively call the "Showa War"--such as why Japan recklessly entered the war and why it took so long to bring the fighting to an end. Works by the committee have been carried occasionally in The Yomiuri Shimbun. To conclude the War Responsibility series, The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Daily Yomiuri will carry final reports today and Tuesday in which we clarify the degree of responsibility of Japanese political and military leaders, as well as chiefs and officials in the army and naval general staff offices and ranking bureaucrats. At the same time, we look at what lessons the country and people should learn from the war. The War Responsibility series, which started in August last year in The Yomiuri Shimbun, inspected the period from the Manchurian Incident of 1931 (sixth year in the Showa era) until the end of the fighting in 1945 (20th year in Showa era). The Yomiuri Shimbun has decided to rename the last world war as the "Showa War"...not because of consideration to Emperor Showa, but because the war occurred during the Showa era...more...

If you look at towards bottom of the page for that article, you'll see eight additional links to articles looking at separate episodes of the war with the names of those the committee holds responsible. The Yomiuri doesn't generally archive these so catch them early. In case you are wondering, the Emperor isn't on their list.

[Mulboyne]

China Daily: An honest Japanese effort to own up to history

...The series drew attention of Chinese scholars well versed in the Japanese language, and Tsinghua University's professor of communications Cui Baoguo recommended the book to Xinhua Publishing House. "We read several chapters and realized its publication in China would be meaningful," Wang Qixing, managing editor of the publishing house, said at a forum yesterday. Leading Chinese scholars on Japan, too, shared their views on the book at the forum...The Chinese version reached bookstores across China last week. More loyal to the Japanese version than the English, it is divided into three major parts. In the first 11 chapters, the writers vividly narrated the political intrigues, economic rise and fall, social uncertainties and military domination and even terrors...Chinese people who have already read the book consider it very important because writings on the subject, especially from Japan, have been few and far between...But some Chinese scholars say the research team has not delved deep enough and their findings are limited and at times erroneous. For instance, the Chinese cannot agree with their conclusions on who instigated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident or how many Chinese civilians and soldiers were killed in the Nanjing Massacre...The Japanese have the tendency to discuss the wars as victims...As a result, even this book shies away from the fact that Japan was the aggressor and the perpetrator of atrocities...more...