J-Nationalism on the rise

[Wage Slave]

Sincere apologies for posting while drunk again. Sorry.

[Yokohammer]

And another response:

Abe’s unconvincing attempt to whitewash Japan’s history

The more I study the statement issued in the name of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet on Aug. 14, the more it disappoints me. The statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II glosses over unpalatable facts and attempts to interpret them in a favorable way for Japan.

Most Japanese today cannot be held responsible for the crimes committed by their leaders before they were born any more than we can be held responsible for the iniquities of the slave trade or other crimes committed by our ancestors. The Russians today are not responsible for Stalin’s crimes. Nor are today’s Chinese culpable for the massacres and misery caused by that monster Mao Zedong. But we all need to know the basic facts if only to try to ensure that we do not repeat the errors. Cruelty and greed are characteristics sadly found everywhere.

Since the Meiji Restoration, Japanese achievements in industry and commerce have been paralleled in art and culture, but in the first half of the 20th century Japan was led by misguided leaders to “become a challenger to the international order,” to use the euphemism of the Abe statement. Unfortunately the first part of the statement is so full of such euphemisms and vague phraseology that it reads to anyone who knows the facts as a totally unconvincing attempt to whitewash recent Japanese history and suggests that Japan was forced to go to war by the attitude and actions of the rest of the world. ...

Continues at the above link.

[matsuki]

Can we coin the phrase "Japanese guilt?"

[Samurai_Jerk]

A little reminder of the follies of war for the nationalists.

What happened to the settlers the Japanese army abandoned in China

71 years ago, thousands of Japanese settlers—mostly women and children—found themselves trapped in an area then known as Manchuria, or Manchukuo, the name of the puppet state the Japanese military established in 1931.

Abandoned by their army, 80,000 Japanese civilians died in northeast China, roughly equal to the number who perished after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.

Now, in a small northeast China town named Fangzheng, their memory lives in a one-of-a-kind, all-but-unknown cemetery that has become Ground Zero in the battle over how China remembers its war with Japan.

Uniquely, both the Chinese and Japanese governments would rather forget this far-flung relic—the “Sino-Japanese Friendship Garden”—which feels as haunted as its origin is harrowing.

In 2011, I stood on an abandoned dock along the Songhua River, 110 miles downstream from the Heilongjiang provincial capital, Harbin. There are no plaques, no markers on the site, only rusting skiffs and oil drums. The river here is as wide as a lake, with water that looks deep and dangerous.

An old man carrying a fishing pole appeared from behind a dune and asked what I was staring at. “Today’s the anniversary of the date the Japanese mothers waited here,” I said, “hoping a boat would come to pick them up.”

This is the fisherman’s village; he knew the story, even if he hadn’t yet been born. On August 10, 1945, the day after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, the Japanese army evacuated military families from Manchurian cities, cut telegraph lines, and blew up bridges, severing settlers—mostly women in children living in remote areas—from rescue.

“Their only alternative,” a Japanese general cabled, “is suicide.”

The Soviet army drew near. Mothers stared upstream and down. No boat came. Hundreds of Japanese women placed their children—some of them just infants—on these docks, stepped off into the current, and disappeared.

[...]

Four miles from the riverbank, at the end of a dead-end street, stands a gated grove of birch and pines. It is the only memorial of its kind. The characters on the entrance gate read: Sino-Japanese Friendship Garden.

An estimated 10,000 Japanese settlers had lived in the area around this cemetery, in a county called Fangzheng. Of the 3,420 survivors, 2,300 women—facing no other choice—married local men, and 1,120 children—including those left on the riverbank—were adopted by local families.

Their legacy is still seen on the streets of Fangzheng town, where shop signs display Chinese and Japanese characters, and there are more Japanese-language tutoring centers than ones teaching English. According to the county government, one-fifth of its 230,000 residents have lived or worked in Japan. For years, descendants of Japanese settlers made annual pilgrimages here each August, during Obon, the grave-sweeping festival.

The cemetery’s roots date to 1963, when a Japanese “remaining wife,” as women who married Chinese men were called, struck bones while plowing a field. An excavation unearthed the remains of roughly 4,500 refugees who had died from suicide or starvation.

For three days, on a gasoline-fueled fire, locals cremated their remains. Even though the war caused 14 to 20 million Chinese deaths, in 1963 a monument sanctioned by Premier Zhou Enlai was erected at the tomb containing their ashes.

“The people of Japan and the settlers,” Zhou said, “were also victims of Japanese imperialism.” (Thirty thousand settlers still remained in China when it normalized diplomatic relations with Japan in 1972. Most returned, aged and adrift in a modern Japan eager to forget them.)

Amazingly, given that Red Guards—youth bent on destroying “old customs, culture, habits and ideas”—smashed foreign graves across China, and even the tomb of Confucius, the Japanese cemetery remained intact through the decade-long period of chaos known as the Cultural Revolution.

[Wage Slave]

“The people of Japan and the settlers,” Zhou said, “were also victims of Japanese imperialism.”

And that fact, and anything that points to that fact, is the one thing the right wingers never ever talk about. Even to try and deny it. They know it's true and they know it is an arrow to the heart of everything they claim.

[matsuki]

I'm more interested to know how they even got people to move there in the first place. (but if leaving you baby on a dock and jumping into the river is your option...maybe I'm being too generous about the types of people they were?)

[Wage Slave]

They just told people what to do, didn't they? That's how a death cult fascist dictatorship works. If you are told you are a soldier in Burma, then that's it off you go to die. If you are told you are a kamikaze pilot then ditto. If you are told you are a settler in Manchuria then off you go to settle Manchuria. No arguments, no discussion and the loss of your life is as light as a feather to you never mind anyone else.

[matsuki]

They just told people what to do, didn't they? That's how a death cult fascist dictatorship works. If you are told you are a soldier in Burma, then that's it off you go to die. If you are told you are a kamikaze pilot then ditto. If you are told you are a settler in Manchuria then off you go to settle Manchuria. No arguments, no discussion and the loss of your life is as light as a feather to you never mind anyone else.

So you're saying...they are the original "Exile Tribe?"

[Wage Slave]

I am saying that they, like all other ordinary Japanese people, had very little say in the matter. Or in any matter.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I'm more interested to know how they even got people to move there in the first place. (but if leaving you baby on a dock and jumping into the river is your option...maybe I'm being too generous about the types of people they were?)

From the linked article.

Although they made up only 17 percent of the 1.5 million Japanese living in its puppet state “Manchukuo,” settlers accounted for nearly half its death toll.

They had been enticed here by the “Millions to Manchuria” campaign begun in 1936, when Japan’s farms faced stagnation amid a nationwide recession due, in part, to the American embargo. “Go! Go and colonize the continent!” propaganda posters urged Japanese. “A new land awaits the village youth.”

“The Joy of Becoming a Progenitor,” a colonization manual aimed at men, trumpeted “What could be better than creating a new country and of becoming the founding fathers to that country?” Women were given pamphlets titled “The Joy of Breeding.”

A 1941 journal promised, “If you become a Manchurian pioneer, you can be an owner-farmer, and you will see permanent prosperity for your descendants. There is no way to revive the [home] villages other than developing Manchuria.”

Under the plan, Japanese villages would be replicated in a puppet state it called Manchukuo, with branch family members—second and third sons—sent to pioneer a satellite outpost sharing the same name as their home village.

Unbeknownst to settlers, the majority of these villages were hotbeds of guerrilla warfare, or along the Soviet border, with farming land seized from natives, who came to call them “exploitation regiments.” Photos show Japanese soldiers teaching newly arrived women, infants lashed to their backs, how to fire the single-bolt rifle each household was issued on landing.

A Japanese writer recorded that when the “pioneer settlers” left for Manchuria, children waved flags, and “the villagers let go of the handkerchiefs and shouted banzai, throwing both hands up in the air” as tears streamed down their cheeks. As their train pulled away from their Japanese home, some of the settlers heard a farewell song that went:

The pioneers of our great Japan
We divided the village and went to Manchuria
To build the paradise of the imperial way
We will all march together

Many of the settlers who woke on August 10, 1945, would not survive the fall of Manchukuo. Many committed suicide, together.

[wagyl]

Matsuki, read up on conditions in this country in the twenties and thirties, with advances in health leading to more children making it to adulthood, but not enough farmland to support the family and no alternative employment opportunities. I'm sure you have heard of the daughters sold into prostitution. It was the time when Japanese would move to the far side of the world, to Brazil, to take over the sort of work that had been done by the previously enslaved. If people see a chance at a better life, in settlement in Manchuria, they go. It was a new, bustling settlement with many more opportunities than were left back home, and like many colonies a chance to reset your life and avoid some prejudices. As an example, my shoemaker in shitamachi was started by the elder generation when they returned from Manchuria. If you don't get the connection, shitamachi shoemaker means a trade in leatherwork, and the area is a burakumin area.

Much of Hokkaido, and Sakhalin, was settled in the same way.

You could just as easily ask why some of your ancestors rode in covered wagons over the Rocky Mountains on the Oregon Trail, at risk of fatal attack nightly at the hands of your other ancestors. Or to move it to the current times, why do people go work in Dubai? It is not just the Filipina and Indians who do it. And what are they going to do when that place eventually implodes?

I'm interested to know how they get gaijin to move to Japan in the first place.

[Tsuru]

Or to move it to the current times, why do people go work in Dubai? It is not just the Filipina and Indians who do it. And what are they going to do when that place eventually implodes?

The Europeans and Americans who work in Dubai come right back. A great many western airline pilots, engineers and managers went to work in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar for that country's respective booming airline. A lot of them are coming back to pursue better opportunities at home in Europe/NA, or move on the Asia to pursue better opportunities there, but in recent years many have also left because life the ME is ultimately unfulfilling. Cheap gas, taxfree income so you can buy yourself more toys are all very appealing to the young guns, but in a general sense people are starting to realise life isn't as good as it was ten years ago and is still getting worse. People have to work ever increasing hours for less pay and perks, and things like raising a family and keeping them fed, schooled and happy is becoming increasingly difficult. So people just come back.

[matsuki]

Women were given pamphlets titled “The Joy of Breeding.”

Matsuki, read up on conditions in this country in the twenties and thirties

....and there is where my ignorance came into play. Definitely a worthwhile subject to read up on.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

I'm interested to know how they get gaijin to move to Japan in the first place.

Pussy...but now Hello Kitty for weaboo.

[dimwit]

Here is a story to warm the cockles of your heart

Ex-ASDF chief Tamogami suspected of political funds embezzlement

TOKYO —

Prosecutors on Monday searched the office of Toshio Tamogami, a former Air Self-Defense Force chief who unsuccessfully ran in the 2014 Tokyo governor race, on suspicion of misusing political funds for private purposes together with his one-time account manager.

According to a political funds report, Tamogami’s fundraising group took about 132 million ($1.2 million) yen in 2014 and declared about 50.54 million yen as unaccounted-for expenditure.

Tamogami, 67, filed a criminal complaint last March against the former manager, who was in charge of accounting at the fundraising group, for allegedly embezzling political funds collected through donations and other means.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crim ... bezzlement

What a hamster. He can't even embezzle without getting caught. I am left wondering what exactly were the 'other means'. Was he shaking down other ASDF staff members?

[Takechanpoo]

Tamogami is already out of fashion even among netouyos. its no more than a pitiful shorty would-be or wanna-be militarist. nobody takes seriously whatever the shorty asserts.

[Taro Toporific]

He who makey Pearl Harbor end up making own Hiroshima.

NOW

pearl-harbor-day.jpg

THEN

war-is-on.jpg

japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/12/03/national/history...---The front page of The Japan Times, 75 years ago: "Japan declares war on U.S., British Empire"

[wagyl]

Price 8 sen!

[matsuki]

US embassy sent out warnings about possible demonstrations...what are they protesting? The rewriting of history to make Pearl Harbor a defensive maneuver or?

[wagyl]

what are they protesting?

250,000% inflation in 75 years. And even then the news gets printed a few days slow, and is more parochial.

[kurogane]

[matsuki]

Ha diddly ha ha ha!



...so what are the Japanese protesting? Abe's planned visit to Pearl Harbor?

[kurogane]

There was a fair bit of static and BS rumours down here amongst the R'erW Jpn transplants ( ) that he planned to apologise, which he didn't, as he shouldn't have. Sneaky or no it was a legitimate military action, and a lot more so than Hiroshima and especially Nagasaki. Or even the fire bombing of Tokyo.

[Yokohammer]

And speaking of the Nippon Kaigi:

In rare move, court suspends publication of best-seller on Abe-linked conservative lobby group

A Tokyo court has ordered a publisher to suspend publication of a best-selling nonfiction book detailing links between the conservative Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi) lobby and a religious group, saying it contains defamatory information.

Published last year, “Nippon Kaigi no Kenkyu” (“A Study on the Japan Conference,”) written in Japanese by Tamotsu Sugano, claims the lobby has influence on the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and criticizes his administration’s drive to revise the war-renouncing Constitution.

The decision Friday by the Tokyo District Court came after a man in his 70s who is mentioned in the book sued for libel and demanded that Fusosha Publishing Inc. suspend sales.

...

And more at the link above.

Little by little the screw turns. Wonder where they'll hold the first book burning.

I have this book here in the house by the way. Better hide it ...

[legion]

I have this book here in the house by the way. Better hide it ...

You have a collector's item which is about to go up in value

We can but hope for a bit of the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

[Russell]

I have this book here in the house by the way. Better hide it ...

You have a collector's item which is about to go up in value

We can but hope for a bit of the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

So, waiting for someone to put it on the Internet on a server located outside Japan...