Abe seems to be
hallucinating, blinded by the success of the low yen and the support of extreme
rightists.
God often borrows
the hand of a human to punish the evil deeds of men. The cruelest form of
punishment would be a full-scale air strike against crimes against humanity. We
all remember some of the most devastating raids in history. In February 1945,
as World War II was nearing its end, Dresden was destroyed by fire. In the
months that followed, Tokyo was carpet bombed and atomic bombs were dropped in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These bombings were divine punishment and human retaliation at the same time.
The bombing of Dresden was a retaliation for the Jews massacred by Nazi
Germany. Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were revenge for the Asians steamrolled
by Japan’s militaristic nationalism, especially the “Maruta,” the human beings
used in experiment by a covert biological warfare research team in China called
Unit 731. The revenges resulted in very different outcomes. Germany completely
changed its national spirit and was reborn as a free and progressive state.
Japan, on the other hand, did not turn its back on its past misdeeds.
In 2006, I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. More than one
million Jews were killed in its gas chambers or of starvation or disease. Among
the many horrific traces of the Holocaust, I have two very shocking memories.
One is the mark of nail scratches on the walls of gas chamber. When the lethal
gas was injected into the chamber, the Jewish victims died in excruciating
pain, leaving their marks on the concrete wall.
The other is the “standing cells” in which four men were locked up as
punishment for infractions in a 16-square-foot space. The prisoners were left
to die, standing and facing each other. They scratched the walls with their
nails and engraved their last words. “God” is the word that can be found the
most.
When Hitler’s evil acts were at their peak, Great Britain and the United States
decided to strike Dresden. The city was not just the home of war supplies
plants but also a cultural landmark. The so-called Florence of the Elbe was
rich with Baroque architecture. Over three days, 5,000 bombers dropped more
than 600,000 explosives. The entire city was in flames. The attack claimed the
lives of 35,000 people.
Unit 731 was in Harbin, Manchuria. The Unit 731 War Crimes Museum reproduces
the experimentation on the human subjects the Imperial Japanese Army called
Maruta or “logs.” The Maruta were killed in vacuum chambers, injected with
germs and used as targets of bombs. At least 3,000 victims were used in the
tests, including Chinese, Russians, Mongols and Koreans.
Perhaps the cries of the Maruta reached heaven and the bombs were dropped on
Tokyo and atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Just like
the Jewish victims in the gas chambers, the Maruta and the victims of the
Nanjing massacre, Japanese civilians died in pain. More than 200,000 were
killed by the atomic bombings and the subsequent radiation.
Flames in a sky can transform a nation and change its history. 25 years after
the bombing of Dresden, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt down at the
monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on a rainy day. Whenever
given a chance, German presidents and chancellors have been making apologies
and asking for forgiveness again and again. And investigations into that
hideous past continue even today. Recently, German authorities arrested a
93-year-old man who allegedly worked as a guard at Auschwitz.
But Japan is different. Some leaders deny the history of aggression and hurt
their Asian neighbors with such denials. An emerging next-generation political
leader said the sex slaves for Japanese soldiers were “necessary” during the
war. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe posed smiling inside a military jet emblazoned
with the number 731. Does he not understand the blood and tears associated with
the number? Abe’s conduct turned all of humanity into Maruta all over again.
Abe seems to be hallucinating. The low-yen boom and extreme-rightists’ support
have blinded him to push Japan onto an arrogant and selfish path. He is
mistaken when he thinks he can challenge the memory and decency of humanity
just to be popular among his own ignorant people.
Abe is free to do as he wishes. But God, too, is at liberty. The vindictive
spirit of the Maruta has been resurrected thanks to Abe. God may feel that
retaliation against Japan hasn’t been complete.
*The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.
在我的眼皮下,不要再闹靖国神社了(No more Yasukuni visits on my watch) 24/04/2013 |Clyde
Prestowitz |Foreign Policy Over the past weekend, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso
and two other cabinet members visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine. This followed an earlier visit by 168 members of the Diet (Japan's
parliament) mostly from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.
The shrine unfortunately serves several conflicting
purposes. In principle it is a memorial to the dead from all of Japan's wars --
a kind of Arlington Cemetery in U.S. terms. But it also enshrines several
former officials and soldiers who were convicted as Class A war criminals after
World War II. The shrine is also attached to a museum of World War II which
portrays a highly nationalistic and even inflammatory version of the causes and
course of the war. In addition, over the post war years, the shrine has become
associated intellectually and emotionally with right wing causes and thinking
in Japan. Some of this thinking denies the inhuman treatment of Nanking, the
drafting by the Japanese army of Korean, Filipina, and other women into
prostitution as so called "comfort women", and other wartime
tragedies.
Because of this, the shrine and visits to it are not
popular with countries like South Korea, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and
Australia that were occupied or in combat with Japan during the war. They see
it as analogous to a scenario in which high-ranking Germans would make a
pilgrimage to a shrine to the Nazis. Obviously, were such a shrine to exist and
were Germans to visit it, there would be an enormous uproar in the countries
that suffered and fought in the war against the Nazis.
Japanese officials, of course, argue that they are merely
honoring the memory and service of the dead veterans. And no doubt, this is so
in many cases. Nevertheless, no high ranking Japanese official can visit
Yasukuni without sending the message, both to Japanese and to foreigners, that
he or she sympathizes with the deniers and with the nationalistic right wing
sentiments. Indeed, such a visit hints at denial of Japan's numerous apologies
for its role in World War II. Japanese often are exasperated that their
opponents in the war have never fully accepted the Japanese apologies. But an
important reason for this hesitating acceptance is the continued subtle denial
by the shrine visitors.
Visits at this moment are a particularly bad idea in view
of the fact that Japan is engaged in a potentially explosive dispute with China
over the control of the Senkaku islands, with Korea over control of the
Takashima islands, and with North Korea over its nuclear and war like threats.
Japan needs allies at this moment, not enemies. Yet the shrine visits have
enraged the South Koreans, who cancelled a visit to Japan by their foreign
minister, and the Chinese whose Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement
saying: "Only when the Japanese government faces history with the right
attitude and can profoundly reflect on the history will it march toward the
future and develop a friendly and cooperative relationship with its neighboring
countries."
Prime Minister Abe is engaged in a momentous effort to
revitalize the Japanese economy and, more broadly, the whole Japanese nation.
He has needed and gotten the cooperation of the G-20 and of his neighbors in
Korea, China, and Southeast Asia in accepting a major devaluation of the yen.
He has requested and received acceptance of Japan as a new partner in the Trans
Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement negotiations. He has asked and
is receiving major U.S. support with regard to the threat North Korean missiles
and possible nuclear bombs.
Why, in this situation, would he (he didn't visit the
shrine but sent a potted tree offering) and his lieutenants do something they
knew would gratuitously insult and enrage the very people with whom they need
to cooperate? Of course, a lot of it is domestic politics and perhaps certain
allowances should be made for that. At least that is what Abe and his team are
telling the diplomats of the United States and of the other countries involved.
But it is dangerous domestic politics.
Over the years, the United States has never publicly
objected to these visits. Privately, some American diplomats have suggested
that they are not a good idea, but the Japanese politicians have always been
able to rely on the certainty that Washington would hold its nose and keep
quiet.
One reason that Washington has been able to keep quiet is
that the American public has no idea of what Yasukuni means. If it did, these
visits would blow the U.S.-Japan alliance completely out of the water.
Since there is always the chance that the American public
will become better informed, it would be wise for Washington to stop holding
its nose and perhaps have a good sneeze.
For the White House to be welcoming Japan into the TPP
talks and sending B2 bombers on warning flights over North Korea and telling
the Chinese to back off on the Senkakus and urging the Koreans to cooperate
more with Japan while Japan's top leaders are visiting Yasukuni is in a word --
ridiculous.
President Obama ought to get the word to Abe that there
should be no more Yasukuni visits on his (Obama's) watch.
Clyde Prestowitz is the founder and
president of the Economic Strategy Institute (ESI), where he has become one of
the world's leading writers and strategists on globalization and
competitiveness, and an influential advisor to the U.S. and other governments.
He has also advised a number of global corporations such as Intel, FormFactor,
and Fedex and serves on the advisory board of Indonesia's Center for
International and Strategic Studies.
FROM THE MOMENT last fall when Shinzo Abe reclaimed the office of Japanese prime minister that he had bungled away five years earlier, one question has stood out: Would he restrain his nationalist impulses — and especially his historical revisionism — to make progress for Japan? Until this week, the answer to that question was looking positive. Mr. Abe has taken brave steps toward reforming Japan’s moribund economy. He defied powerful interest groups within his party, such as rice farmers, to join free-trade talks with the United States and other Pacific nations that have the potential to spur growth in Japan. He spoke in measured terms of his justifiable desire to increase defense spending.
This week he seemed willing to put all the progress at risk. Asked in parliament whether he would reconsider an official apology that Japan issued in 1995 for its colonization of Korea in the past century, Mr. Abe replied: “The definition of what constitutes aggression has yet to be established in academia or in the international community. Things that happened between nations will look differently depending on which side you view them from.” Officials in South Korea and China responded with fury, and understandably so. Yes, history is always being reinterpreted. But there are such things as facts. Japan occupied Korea. It occupied Manchuria and then the rest of China. It invaded Malaya. It committed aggression. Why, decades after Germany solidified its place in Europe by facing history honestly, are facts so difficult for some in Japan to acknowledge? We understand that South Korea and, to an even greater extent, China at times stoke anti-Japan sentiment for domestic political purposes. China distorts its own history and, unlike Japan, in many cases does not allow conflicting interpretations to be debated or studied. But none of that excuses the kind of self-destructive revisionism into which Mr. Abe lapsed this week. An inability to face history will prejudice the more reasonable goals to which South Korea and China also object. Mr. Abe has valid reasons, given the defense spending and assertive behavior of China and North Korea, to favor modernization of Japan’s defense forces. He has good reason to question whether Japan’s “self-defense” constitution, imposed by U.S. occupiers after World War II, allows the nation to come to the aid of its allies in sufficient strength. But his ability to promote reform at home, where many voters remain skeptical, and to reassure suspicious neighbors plummets when he appears to entertain nostalgia for prewar empire.
Japan’s Unnecessary Nationalism 23/04/2013 |纽约时报社评 Since taking over as Japan’s prime minister in December, Shinzo Abe and his conservative Liberal Democratic Party have been juggling a packed agenda of complicated issues, including reviving the country’s economy, coping with the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and managing prickly relations with neighbors like North Korea. Stirring up extraneous controversy is counterproductive, but that’s exactly what he and his nationalist allies in Parliament have done.
On Tuesday, a group of 168 mostly low-ranking conservative lawmakers visited the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo, which honors Japan’s war dead, including several who were executed as war criminals after World War II. It was the largest mass visit by Parliament in recent memory. The Japanese news media said that Mr. Abe didn’t visit the shrine, instead sending a ritual offering, but his deputy prime minister and two other ministers made a pilgrimage there over the weekend. He has a record of defending Japan’s conduct during World War II.
Mr. Abe and his allies know well what a deeply sensitive issue this is for China and South Korea, which suffered under Japan’s 20th-century empire-building and militarism, and the reaction was predictable. On Monday, South Korea canceled a visit to Japan by its foreign minister and China publicly chastised Japan. On Tuesday, tensions were further fueled when Chinese and Japanese boats converged on disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Japan and China both need to work on a peaceful solution to their territorial issues. But it seems especially foolhardy for Japan to inflame hostilities with China and South Korea when all countries need to be working cooperatively to resolve the problems with North Korea and its nuclear program.
Instead of exacerbating historical wounds, Mr. Abe should focus on writing Japan’s future, with an emphasis on improving its long-stagnant economy and enhancing its role as a leading democracy in Asia and beyond.