Distorting Japan's behavior a political crime

Distorting Japan's behavior a political crime

The Jakarta Post Asia Correspondent Harvey Stockwin
explores why it is that Japanese cabinet ministers keep on
resigning after they have distorted wartime history.

HONG KONG (JP): Once again, another Japanese cabinet minister
has been forced to resign because he has offended Asian opinion
by misrepresenting Japan's behavior in the first half of the
twentieth century.

On Aug. 12, immediately prior to the commemoration of the
ending of World War II, Environmental Agency director-general
Shin Sakurai, spoke about Japan not intending to be the aggressor
in Asia prior to World War II, and of Japan having been the
liberator of peoples oppressed by European colonial rule.

"Literacy rates (in Asia) are far higher than in African
countries (which were) controlled by Europe," Sakurai said,
adding that Japan should publicize that its wartimes actions were
both good and bad. Sakurai was clearly implying that whatever
literacy rates former Asian colonies have achieved were primarily
due to the three to four years of Japanese "liberation" which
they enjoyed in 1941-1945, a beneficial experience which the
African colonies missed.

The foreign ministries of South Korea and China quickly
protested. Socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama quickly
admonished his minister, with Sakurai being a member of the
conservative Liberal Democratic Party. On Aug. 14, Sakurai
resigned.

His departure raises a crucial question - why do Japanese
ministers go on doing it?

The question naturally arises because he is the second
minister to resign this summer for this reason. Several other
ministers have resigned for the same reason in the past two
decades. Others have misrepresented Japan's colonial and wartime
record but have avoided having to resign as a consequence. All
these incidents simply cannot be merely attributed to
incompetence and a refusal to learn from other politician's
mistakes.

First and last, these incidents keep occurring because many
Japanese, not least its politicians, simply still do not know
what that real record was. From 1931 onwards, when Japan began
the march towards World War II by conquering northeastern China
and turning it into its colony of Manchukuo, the Japanese people
were only told about victories and achievements. The wartime
governments were highly successful in brain-washing the Japanese
people with a highly distorted view of history.

To say the very least, the Japanese Ministry of Education has
not considered it a priority to rectify these distorted
perceptions in the 49 years since Japan's surrender. Many would
argue that, to the contrary, the ministry has worked hard,
through its textbook policy, to sustain the distortions.

Secondly, there has been a postwar political incentive not to
put the record straight. Aug. 15 is commemorated within Japan as
the day on which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender,
saying that the Pacific War "had proceeded not necessarily to
Japan's advantage". Had Gen. MacArthur subsequently forced
Hirohito's abdication, (instead of allowing his reign to
continue) Japan would have been much more likely to explore a
harsher and more relevant verdict. Conversely, it is only since
Hirohito's death that Japan has started to tentatively explore
more relevant and accurate perceptions of what actually happened
in the first half of the century.

Thirdly, Aug. 15 is commemorated in both South and North Korea
as their Liberation Day from Japanese colonialism, even though
troops from the Soviet Union and the United States did not
actually do the liberating until a later date. Neither Koreas
have any happy memories of Japan's attempts to eliminate their
language, their names or their culture. In Korea, under Japanese
colonialism, it was rather as if the British in India had forced
Mahatma Gandhi to call himself John Smith.

When Sakurai, now 61, was a youth, official propaganda
stressed Japan as a liberator of Asia from colonialism, a view
which appealed to Japanese public idealism. Again, Japanese were
never told that the British colonial rulers were welcomed back in
Malaysia and Singapore after Japan's brief rule in those
countries - or that Japanese "liberation" reduced Manila early in
1945 to a smoking ruin.

Fourth, Japanese politicians are typically parochial to an
astonishing degree. Well-heeled Japanese members of parliament
sometimes pay for their constituents to visit Southeast Asia but,
unlike U.S. congressmen, they themselves seldom travel. In any
case, when they do, the politicians are no different from
Japanese tourists - they tend to mix with their own people rather
than expanding their foreign acquaintances when abroad.

Fifth, being domestically preoccupied, Japanese politicians
pay very careful attention to politically active groups of
veterans and relatives of the war dead. Such activity reinforces
the pressures to see the past in a favorable light. It seems
impossible for Japanese to be happy concluding that their loved
ones died courageously in an evil or morally dubious cause. The
relatives of the deceased have to believe that both the cause and
the deeds were good.

Sixth, the historical recollections of Sakurai and his
predecessors are but an extreme manifestation of the Japanese
nationalist tendency to believe that "my country is always
right." This is in stark contrast to those countries where the
ethos is rather "my country, right or wrong."

So, to put it simply, Japanese nationalism produced the
fanaticism which was so often on view 50 years ago, just as
Japanese nationalism produced a subsequent refusal to see
precisely how and why the nation had gone wrong.

Given the enduring strength of that nationalism, and the
relative weakness of anything approaching a truly international
outlook within Japan, it is very unlikely that Sakurai will be
the last minister who has to resign for justifying the
unjustifiable.

Window 1: Japanese nationalism produced the fanaticism which was so
often on view 50 years ago.

Window 2: It is very unlikely that Shin Sakurai will be the last
minister who has to resign for justifying the unjustifiable.