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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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 Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:41 pm Post subject: Re: Oh those poor Japanese |
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There are only 14 class A Japanese war criminals in the shrine. The main problem with it is the museum the shrine operates which is filled with revisionist history. I'll just cut-and-paste from Wikipedia.
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A documentary-style video shown to museum visitors portrays Japan's conquest of East Asia during the pre-World War II period as an effort to save the region from the imperial advances of Western powers. Displays deny that events such as the Nanking Massacre took place and systematically portray Japan as a victim of foreign influence, especially Western pressure.
A pamphlet published by the shrine says: "War is a really tragic thing to happen, but it was necessary in order for us to protect the independence of Japan and to prosper together with our Asian neighbors." It also says that Japanese POWs executed for war crimes were "cruelly and unjustly tried" by a "sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces".
The shrine's English language website defends Japanese occupation and aggression prior to and during World War II, by stating the following: "War is truly sorrowful. Yet to maintain the independence and peace of the nation and for the prosperity of all of Asia, Japan was forced into conflict."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_shrine
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billybrobby
Joined: 09 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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Go to the web site right now, and you can find find this rambling piece of revistionist history:
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The text books used in history instruction at intermediate schools from the 1997 school year will contain material on the subject of comfort women. The textbooks depict as a historical fact the story of Asian women who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army. Imparting this story to students who are still young and immature has become a great problem since last year. This matter is drawn upon the judgment professed by the Military Tribunal for the Far East that Japan fought a war of aggression. Can we say that this view is correct? We must pass judgment on this matter in the same manner of a tribunal that passes judgment after gathering credible proof. We cannot help but feel that the possibility of ulterior motives have not been discounted. Isn't it a fact that the West with its military power invaded and ruled over much of Asia and Africa and that this was the start of East-West relations? There is no uncertainty in history. Japan's dream of building a Great East Asia was necessitated by history and it was sought after by the countries of Asia.
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coffeeman
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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| I_Am_Wrong wrote: |
| Those that gave their lives for Japan also committed terrible crimes in the name of Japan. The fact that Japanese society trieds to hide the past instead of dealing with it is the problem. Instead of dealing with the past they would rather complain about a big red building. Germany has been struggling to deal with their past for year and years. They have done a lot and are continuing to do a lot. Japan has shown a complete inability to come to terms with the past. |
This is true and it's a good example to study world politics from. As for Japan not apologizing, I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that the great powerful countries don't apologize for their attacks on other countries. He says that his own country, The United States, has plenty of horrible deeds to apologize for - he cites the capture and takeover of Hawaii as one example. The United States has never apologized for any of its mistakes. Viet nam is another example.
Behind the United States, probably Japan is the most powerful country overall despite not having a strong military themselves. They're the #2 economic power of the world. Nowadays they assist the U.S. military closely with a number of things like arms development.
Japan has never formally apologized for attacking Pearl Harbor and although the U.S. has requested it, they've never demanded it (I'll bet the situation would have been different had Japan attacked the continental United States). Japan is significant enough that the U.S. does not want to put stress on its relationship with Japan.
Germany, on the other hand made the big mistake of attacking England (You don't attack England and get away with it!). This is why they've been forced to apologize. The world is not too concerned with Korea's suffering at the hands of Japan. They don't care much for the Dokdo issue either.
I'm not saying what I have written here is right, but it's one possible explanation for Japan's refusal to admit and apologize for what they have done in the past. Simple. They don't have to. |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:06 pm Post subject: |
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| I think they've apologised but not learnt from their mistakes. |
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KiteOperations
Joined: 09 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:03 am Post subject: |
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| It's also a shrine that honours the Koreans that died. |
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| I read that Koizumi visits the shrine because not going to the shrine would be to disregard the men who gave their lives in good faith to help the country. Seems like a reasonable excuse to me. |
Naive.
Hey, look, It's Yaskuni. It's not a every-corner-on-the-town-like shrine. It's the memoir of the war criminals. It's the capital of the far-right-wings. It's the icon of the imperialism. everyone knows about it.
I'm told approximately 20,000 monutary tablets of Koreans that died as soldier, comfort woman etc. were enshrined there along with class A listed war criminals without any informing of this to the families of the Korean war-dead or Korean government after the war. and this means those poorly dead Koreans are being portrayed as to promote the propaganda that voila! Koreans willingly participated in the war for the Japanese Tenno's sake and were honorablely dead for the Japanese Tenno's sake at the times of WW2. well, you can't say they did and were like that. the families of the war-dead are struggling for decades to get the monutary tablets back and stop enshrining them any longer in there Yaskuni. but the shrine don't listen.
When Hiroshima was bombed, 10% of the victims were Koreans and many of them were slaves working in the war plant. however, it took about fucking 30 years to be allowed to move the cenotaph of the Korean victims into the peace memorial park of Hiroshima from the outside of the park and to participate willingly in there the Japanese preach the peace to the world. but indeed how dilemmatic it is, no doubt about that long struggle, cause they have to explain why in the world they have had so many Korean victims there, before displaying how innocent Hiroshima, Japan were destroyed and victimized by the nuke.
Well, being a Korean, it doesn't mean I should automatically dislike Japanese all the time. I know there is a difference between the politics and the people. I've experienced Japanese are usually easier people to make friends with for Koreans than any other people in the world. and I know only a few people in Japan believes in the denial of Nanking, Comfort women, 731 and so on(interstingly, in Japan, there is a saying like this 'if you persist your idea 1000 times, then yours would be true') but I find any well educated and conscious Japanese people don't while some posters here do preach their twin ideas of the far-right-wings in Japan. |
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KiteOperations
Joined: 09 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| I think they've apologised but not learnt from their mistakes. |
For example, Koizumidiot have made (an) apology(ies) or done something like that whenever visit to Korea. But right next day he would visit to Yaskuni and show the respect to those war criminals(and also visit there the day before the election) and make Koreans look being fooled. uh, WTF? are you playing?
In fact, I think it's so simple and easy to prove an previous apology and show a respect to its neighboring countries that suffered and get the respect in return.
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February 11, 2006 / New York Times / The Saturday Profile
Shadow Shogun Steps Into Light, to Change Japan
By NORIMITSU ONISHI / TOKYO
AT day's end, it was perhaps one of the few things over which he held no sway, the relentless logic of aging, that made Tsuneo Watanabe, Japan's most powerful media baron, decide to step out of the shadows.
For years, most Japanese had caught only glimpses of the man, usually leaving, late at night, one of his favorite ryotei, the members-only redoubts where Mr. Watanabe dined with fellow power brokers and received supplicants. Reporters would swarm around him as he made his way toward his black sedan, peppering him with questions on the day's topic, and he would oblige them with imperious one-liners that made him the embodiment of the arrogant, ultimate insider.
But Mr. Watanabe, now nearly 80 years old, has stepped into the light. He has recently granted long, soul-baring interviews in which he has questioned the rising nationalism he has cultivated so assiduously in the pages of his newspaper, the conservative Yomiuri — the world's largest, with a circulation of 14 million. Now, he talks about the need to acknowledge Japan's violent wartime history and reflects on his wife's illness and his own, as well as the joys of playing with his new hamsters.
Struck by his own sense of mortality, Mr. Watanabe seems ruffled that his power may be waning. He has railed against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who he says just doesn't listen to him anymore. "Before, early on, he used to listen to me sometimes," Mr. Watanabe told a television interviewer.
During a two-hour interview at his office, where, in addition to the paper, he presides over Japan's most popular baseball team, the Yomiuri Giants, and the rest of the Yomiuri Media Group's empire, he puffed on one of the three pipes on the coffee table before him. He was a man in a hurry, in a hurry to change Japan, no less, by forcing it to confront, understand and judge its wartime conduct — and set it on the correct path as his testament to the nation. "I'll be 80 years old this year," he said. "I have very little time left."
His first move was to publish an editorial last June criticizing Mr. Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto memorial where 14 Class A war criminals, including the wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, are deified. It was an about-face for The Yomiuri, which had tended to react viscerally against foreign criticism of the Yasukuni visits.
Indeed, the paper was a main force in pushing for the more muscular nationalism now emerging in Japan. Shortly after becoming editor in chief in 1991, Mr. Watanabe set up a committee to revise the American-imposed pacifist Constitution. If MacArthur's Constitution emasculated Japan by forbidding it to have a real military, Mr. Watanabe's Constitution, published in 1994, restored its manhood. Now, it seems only a matter of time until Japan completes the process that Mr. Watanabe started years ago. Still, he seems troubled by some aspects of the nationalist movement he helped engender. The editorial, which reflected his worries about Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors, sent shock waves through the political world. It called for the building of a secular alternative to the shrine and said Mr. Koizumi did not understand history.
Mr. Koizumi worships at a shrine that glorifies militarism, said Mr. Watanabe, who equates Tojo with Hitler. He added, "This person Koizumi doesn't know history or philosophy, doesn't study, doesn't have any culture. That's why he says stupid things, like, 'What's wrong about worshiping at Yasukuni?' Or, 'China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.' This stems from his ignorance." Like many of postwar Japan's leaders with wartime experience, Mr. Watanabe is suspicious of the emotional appeals to nationalism used increasingly by those who never saw war. In his high school in Tokyo, he said, military officials visited regularly to instill militarism in the young. "I once instigated my classmates to boycott the class and shut ourselves in a classroom," he recalled. "We were punished later."
When he entered the army as a second-class private, the war was in its last stages. The military began dispatching kamikaze pilots, whom the Japanese right wing now glorifies as willing martyrs for the emperor. "It's all a lie that they left filled with braveness and joy, crying, 'Long live the emperor!' " he said, angrily. "They were sheep at a slaughterhouse. Everybody was looking down and tottering. Some were unable to stand up and were carried and pushed into the plane by maintenance soldiers."
AFTER graduating from the University of Tokyo after the war, Mr. Watanabe joined The Yomiuri newspaper in 1950 and made his mark as a political reporter. Political reporters in Japan tend to succeed by becoming close to a particular politician. According to a 2000 biography by Akira Uozumi, Mr. Watanabe ingratiated himself so much with one Liberal Democratic heavyweight, Banboku Ohno, he became the gatekeeper at his house. Politicians seeking favors from Mr. Ohno would ask Mr. Watanabe to put in a good word. One young politician helped by Mr. Watanabe was Yasuhiro Nakasone, the future prime minister. They remain close.
Such was Mr. Watanabe's power that by the 1980's, he helped broker major political deals. In those ryotei, nationally known politicians prostrated themselves before the shadow shogun. It was only after Mr. Watanabe became the head of the media group's baseball team in 1996, that the Japanese became aware of his existence. He became a George Steinbrenner-like figure of a team even more dominant than the New York Yankees. "I'm not an ogre or a snake," Mr. Watanabe said with a smile, protesting that his one-liners were frequently twisted.
NOWADAYS, he is expansive, even on his own frailty, including his fight against prostate cancer eight years ago. Talking about his wife of 50 years and the brain hemorrhage that led to her senility, he turns reflective. "We rarely went to the play or other places together," he said. "I'd come home late at night and then leave home early in the morning. She dozes all day now. She's lost much of her personality. I remembered that one time I slapped her on the cheek. I want to make it up to her, but there's nothing that I can do. Sometimes she smiles happily. That makes me the happiest."
The couple moved to a new home, where he misses the wild birds that used to fly into their old garden. So Mr. Watanabe began keeping hamsters. He is hardly ready for retirement, though. Convinced that Japan will never become a mature country unless it examines its wartime conduct on its own, Mr. Watanabe ordered a yearlong series of articles on the events of six decades ago. In August, the newspaper will pronounce its verdict.
The series and Mr. Watanabe's attacks on Mr. Koizumi are said to have shaken Japanese politics, as Mr. Koizumi prepares to retire in September. Even though he won a landslide election a few months ago, attacks against his legacy are rising. Political analysts see the hand of Mr. Watanabe. The series, he said, has started changing the opinions of some politicians. But he is far more ambitious. "I think I can change all of Japan," he said.
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:26 am Post subject: |
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Japan��s rich buy organs from executed Chinese prisoners
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing and David McNeill in Tokyo
Full Story at The Independent
March 21, 2006
HUNDREDS of well-off Japanese and other nationals are turning to China��s burgeoning human organ transplant industry, paying tens of thousands of pounds for livers and kidneys, which in some cases have been harvested from executed prisoners and sold to hospitals.
When Kenichiro Hokamura��s kidneys failed, he faced a choice: wait for a transplant or go online to check out rumours of organs for sale. As a native of Japan, where just 40 human organs for transplant have been donated since 1997, the businessman, 62, says it was no contest. ��There are 100 people waiting in this prefecture alone. I would have died before getting a donor.�� Still, he was astonished by just how easy it was.
Ten days after contacting a Japanese broker in China two months ago, he was lying on an operating table in a Shanghai hospital receiving a new kidney. ��It was so fast, I was scared,�� he says. The ��e-donor�� was an executed man; the price: 6.8m yen (about £33,000).
Beijing does not reveal how many people it executes, but analysts estimate as many as 8,000 people are killed each year. Reports of Chinese authorities removing organs from executed prisoners have been circulating since the mid-1980s, when the development of a drug called Cyclosoporine-A made transplants a newly viable option for patients.
Until now, most of the evidence linking executions to the organ trade has been anecdotal and has not been helped by a lack of transparency in the Chinese criminal justice system or the secrecy that surrounds prison executions.
http://www.watchermagazine.com/?p=4113 |
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pauly
Joined: 24 Sep 2004
Location: Incheon
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:48 am Post subject: |
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| The thing is that Japan still believes that they are destined to rule the Pacific rim. Believing that, why would they apologise to Korea and China, their future subjects? Losing face to those that are beneath them is not an option. |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 4:44 am Post subject: |
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| pauly wrote: |
| The thing is that Japan still believes that they are destined to rule the Pacific rim. Believing that, why would they apologise to Korea and China, their future subjects? Losing face to those that are beneath them is not an option. |
I see you have lived there awhile and actually met the people to be able to make such a wide generalization. |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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| It's the memoir of the war criminals. |
No, it is a memorial to all Japanese war dead. It also happens to commemorate a tiny number of people deemed to be war criminals. It would appear that you are Korean. Perhaps this is why you have such a biased, and flawed understanding of this issue. Koreans often like to talk about the revisionist teaching of history in Japanese schools, while totally ignoring the ultra-nationalist nonsense their own education system teaches. |
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KiteOperations
Joined: 09 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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| bigverne wrote: |
| No, it is a memorial to all Japanese war dead. It also happens to commemorate a tiny number of people deemed to be war criminals. |
yeah, it would be convenient for everyone if I, you and whoever keep that Yaskuni is just an innocent place that enshrined anonymous Japanese war-dead in mind. but sorry I shouldn't overlook the good-looking alibi that has been told so. many including myself but you see Yaskuni is much more than that. unless blind, anyone can sense the obvious representaion behind that the tiny number of the war criminals being respected by their prime minister creates, that you might ignore cause you're not a person concerned probably. however, you're still under the suspicion you're not that biase-free either if you can't see what it exist.
for the record, I wouldn't mind an anonymous Japanese person visiting Yaskuni at all cuase s/he represents nothing. |
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huck
Joined: 19 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:16 am Post subject: |
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If you look at history over the last 600 years, I doubt that many countries ever apologized to their colonies....
England never apologized to the U.S. or Australia or Canada.
France never apologized to their African colonies.
Spain never apologized to their South American colonies.
The Dutch never apologized to South Africa...
So many horrible things happened during the colonization of these countries. But the difference between most of these countries and Korea is that the other countries mentioned fought for their independence, and kicked out the invaders. Korea would still be a part of Japan if they hadn't been saved by the stronger, more powerful countries iof the world. I know Korea has been the whipping boy of stronger Asian nations throughout their history, but have they ever actually fought for and won their independence on their own?
If the "powers that be" in Japan don't respect Korea how Koreans want to be respected, maybe it's because Korea is nothing more than a colony that got lucky and was liberated by the big boys.
Disclaimer....I don't know if I believe what I wrote - it's an argument for the Korean whiners. I like Korea. I like Japan. I can't imagine actually hating a country or its people...Of course, I'm not a racist either, unlike some people. |
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Kenny Kimchee
Joined: 12 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:53 am Post subject: |
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| KiteOperations wrote: |
| in Japan, there is a saying like this 'if you persist your idea 1000 times, then yours would be true' |
Ahh, so that's why my Japanese co-teachers persist in using a grammar-translation approach...
Back on topic: the Japanese are complaining about an ugly, modern structure incongruously placed next to a traditional one? We're talking about Japan, right? The country that is seemingly on a mission to destroy everything beautiful and natural? The country with a love affair with conrete?
For the past three years, I have watched them dig up the quaint, willow-lined irrigigation canals in my town and replace them with concrete. Fireflies are a tourist attraction in my prefecture, drawing thousands of people to a couple of streams. Why? Because they've concreted over every stream in sight and the fireflies ain't got no habitat left and are a novelty (looks like the Koreans have taken a play out of the Japanese enviromental destruction playbook http://www.kfem.or.kr/wetland/html/hot_issue.html )
There's a quaint little shrine in my town that was ringed with canals lined with cherry trees (no war criminals here, just a normal shrine). The powers that be must have decided that this was too pretty, because they ripped up the trees, lined the canals with concrete, and put a white lacquered metal fence around it. The Japanese are angry that the Italians put an ugly building near Yasukuni? Nah - they're probably just jealous that the Italians beat them to the punch. |
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xeno439
Joined: 30 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 7:23 am Post subject: |
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coffeman wrote:
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I use Juan Valdez because I loved his character in the old TV commercials. I am an advertising fanatic. Liked the ad campaign. I also love coffee including Columbian.
Yes, it sux that the coffee pickers get almost squat for the coffee. I should buy fair trade coffee. I have bought it in the past, but got lazy and nowadays just buy whatever I can get my hands on easily.
Unfortunately, it's the market that decides prices. The majority of people want to get coffee as cheap as possible. The corporations press on the coffee producers to get it at unfair prices. If you want to change this, the onus is on you to buy fair trade.
If anyone knows a way to get fair trade coffee in Korea (without going to Starbucks and paying an extra premium because it's Starbucks), please post the info on a Fair Trade Coffee thread.
Somebody needs to change people's minds on buying cheap coffee. It is possible. For example: look at the dolphin / tuna controversy years ago. People protested against the tuna companies because the dolphins were getting caught in the drift nets. Now most people are buying dolphin friendly tuna. |
Okay, so your avatar is an innocuous expression for your love of coffee. But that doesn't change the fact that it is extremely annoying when you screw up the alignment with that oversized beast.
Last edited by xeno439 on Fri Mar 24, 2006 8:16 am; edited 1 time in total |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 8:02 am Post subject: |
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| England never apologized to the U.S. or Australia or Canada. |
Yeah, I suppose England should apologise to those countries for committing the heinous crime of founding them. |
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