Japan's Revisionist History
From a Los Angeles Times article of April 11, 2005. Quote from his work will be in italics.
The United States, ever quick to criticize China for human rights abuses, has of late been remarkably silent about Japan's ethical lapses, current and historical.
Japanese politicians and publishers have made a cottage industry of denying the 1937 Nanking Massacre in which the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the old Chinese capital. This is an offense to Chinese sensibilities comparable with Holocaust denial in Europe.
This is something that I find almost impossible to believe, something which denies all rational thought. There is massive evidence for both events taking place. The exact numbers that died can be quibbled over but there is no doubt that, in both cases, large number of totally innocent people were killed. The evidence is there in both cases in documents, film footage, personal memoirs, interviews, etc. Neither event can be denied. I will grant that the numbers of dead due to the Holocaust far exceeded those dead in Nanking but still, both things did happen and those who say neither did are living in some kind of unreal world of their own making.
In recent months, major publishers and broadcasters have been bullied to conform and self-censor in accord with the rising tide of resurgent militarism. That tacit governent approval is given to such xenophobic, right-wing thinking can be seen in the latest Ministry of Education-approved school texts that erase or evade critical lessons drawn from Japan's bad behavior in its war of aggression.
In the "New History Textbook," the Nanking Massacre is dismissed as a controversial "incident." And the war of invasion is no longer termed an invasion. New textbooks drop references to "comfort women," sex slaves of mostly Chinese and Korean origin who were forced to service Japanese fighting men in the field. To borrow a phrase from the late writer Iris Chang, the abused women are being raped a second time, this time by defenders of the Japanese army who attempt to erase them from memory.
Again, there is no denying that this happened. Again, there is lots of evidence supporting the fact. It's something else that cannot be denied.
So, why isn't the United States more critical of Japan? The author of the article says that, with the Cold War, the United States turned away from China (thus overlooking its suffering during the war) and embraced Japan.
The writer also notes the publication of various right-wing books in Japan while, at the same time, a series of manga that was covering the Nanking massacre was not allowed to be published.
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