WW II atrocities: Japan's unpardonable impunity

By Lee Kyong-hee

SEOUL: Makiko Tanaka, the new foreign minister of Japan, has expressed her discontent with distorted history textbooks -- a welcome turnaround from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's earlier remarks that he found no problems at all with them.

In her first press interview, Tanaka said Friday that she was surprised to see there were still "those kind of people who try to distort facts in a textbook."

Japan's first female foreign minister, Tanaka didn't elaborate on how she would handle expected requests from Seoul to revise the controversial textbooks glossing over Japan's wartime atrocities. But she made it clear that historical facts must be recognized as facts. "We must seize every opportunity to make things better," she said.

Considering that her appointment was apparently intended to help improve relations with China, the outspoken daughter of former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka (who normalized Sino-Japan ties in 1972) may be expected to deal with the contentious issue in a different manner to most of her predecessors. But it remains unclear exactly how the popular politician would actually cope with the sensitive issue that involves public sentiment not only in China and Korea but on her home front as well.

There is no doubt that the current rightist moves in Japan are anachronistic with little prospect of benefits even for the Japanese themselves. The resurgent movements convey an unpleasant message to the Koreans who experienced Japan's brutal colonialism in the 20th century. Minister Tanaka would therefore well be advised to look into the basic historical perceptions of her fellow countrymen and the psychological undercurrents of the textbooks at issue, beyond the mere "facts" that are mistakenly presented in them.

Tanaka may find Herbert P. Bix's Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, to be useful for her to gain a better understanding of Japan's relations with other Asian countries before and after World War II. The Harvard academic's pursuit of the roots of modern Japan's "xenophobic nationalism and a sense of superiority over its Asian neighbors," will help open her eyes to how self-centered historical views can lead nations into disasters.

As the author notes in his introduction, a major concern of the book is the late emperor Hirohito's failure to "publicly acknowledge his own moral, political and legal responsibility for the long war fought in his name and under his active direction, both as head of state and supreme commander."

The book delves into the way by which he was pardoned for lacking "all the consciousness of personal responsibility" for presiding over the deadly expansion of the war of aggression at the expense of millions of lives through a period of almost 14 years.

Based on a decade-long research, the author endeavored, with remarkable success, to unveil the myths surrounding Hirohito's entire life, from his birth in 1901 as the eldest grandson of Emperor Meiji to his death in 1989.

He is portrayed as a man deliberately groomed as the successor to an "unbroken lineage of sacred blood." He guides Japan into the modern world, leads the nation through a losing war, and then spends the last 45 years of his reign participating in a shameless concoction of history designed to artfully immunize him from the consequences of his actions.

In Bix's account, Hirohito is not a reluctant and passive monarch, a victim of circumstances manipulated by his military officers. He is depicted as "a man of strong will and real authority," who, in close coordination with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, whitewashes his wartime role and reshapes the historical consciousness of his people in order to maintain his status.

"As long as they did not pursue his central role in the war, they did not have to question their own," Bix argues. "The issue of Hirohito's war responsibility thus transcends the years of war and defeat."

Hirohito, as a teenage prince, owed his imperialist view of history to his teacher, Kurakichi Shiratori, a German-educated liberal historian. Shiratori denounced Confucian legends and traditional Chinese culture. He had an impatient attitude of contempt toward other Asians and the "escape from Asia" way of thinking initiated by the famous Meiji educator Yukichi Fukuzawa.

For Hirohito and his five classmates educated in the court, Shiratori wrote five volumes of National History, recounting the Japanese history from the divine origin of its imperial family to a review of the wars of the Meiji era. He taught the young prince about Korea-Japan relations that he interpreted with moral complacency and hypocrisy, which was popular among the Japanese at the time.

Shiratori's theory of Japan's role in securing "peace in the Orient" and the benefits of its imperial project on the Korean Peninsula, finds a resounding echo in the growing voice of the Society for History Textbook Reform. Aimed at a "complete overhaul of Japan's masochist history education," the society insists that Japan contributed to Korea's modernization and its colonial exploitation of Korea is an "illusion."

During a press conference in Tokyo, following the publication of his book last year, Bix said that most of the materials he used in writing the book had been available for many years. So he didn't want his book to "reinforce the stereotype that the Japanese are covering up and it took some foreigner to come along and show it."

However, he said, he hoped that his book had created a certain message on impunity for heads of state. This is exactly what Japan's imperial household and the new cabinet should bear in mind.

-- The Korea Herald/Asia News Network