The Elusive Independence Day - When will Japan officially proclaim its Independence from Imperial Japan?

Today, 68 years ago, Imperial Japan surrendered.

Today, Shinzo Abe didn't visit the infamous Yasukuni Shrine, but he did send an aide to pay tribute to Imperial Japan war criminals. And today, the Korea JoongAng Daily reveals* that Abe's grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, then the Prime Minister, was the one who dedicated the headstone in Aichi-ken's Mount Sangane cemetery to his former boss Hideki Tojo and fellow war criminals, honoring them as "seven patriots who died for their country".

"Far from Yasukuni, cemetery honors criminals" - Korea JoongAng Daily 20130815

Unlike war criminal Kishi (see "To better bridge the gap between Japan, Korea, and China, let's measure the gap within Japan"), these monsters were tried, officially found guilty of war crimes, executed, and cremated. Their ashes have been dispersed at sea, but their lawyer managed to smuggle away some, allowing this infamy.

So let's add 1960 to an already disturbing timeline:

• 1945: end of War War II. Imperial Japan is officially defeated, and Japan officially ceases to be an Empire, but the Emperor himself is spared to avoid a total political collapse. Hirohito undoubtedly was a war criminal: he was the man in charge, and he issued himself key orders for proven war crimes (e.g. Unit 731, WMDs..). Politically castrated and painted as a naive royal abused by mean military leaders, he became that popular figure now referred to as Emperor Showa, a double entendre name ("enlighted" / "radiant") that sums up his 1926-1989 reign started with imperialism and fascism (until 1945), and ended with peace (after 1945).

• 1948: a few Imperial Japan war criminals are tried and executed, including Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister from 1941 to 1944. The US decide to spare key figures willing to collaborate to ensure pro-US conservatism in Japan in times of Cold War. Among them, "Showa Era Monster" Nobusuke Kishi (see "To better bridge the gap between Japan, Korea, and China, let's measure the gap within Japan"). It worked, but to this day Japan's democracy continues to pay the price: every day we see how this great nation's political system remains totally controlled and undermined by a dangerous clique of fascists, revisionists, and descendants of Imperial Japan leaders.

• 1954: "Self-Defense Forces" are established, with "new" military flags almost copying the infamous Rising Sun flag. They have 8 beams instead of 16, but I'd rather call these beams "fasces", like the beams around the axis that gave their name to fascism. That meaning didn't exist when the original Rising Sun flag was created (1870), but chosing this design is a very clear statement in 1954 Japan. Particularly under a Prime Minister like Shingeru Yoshida: he served as embassador to Italy during the 1930s, and was among the bad guys arrested in 1945 but released later... Frankly, the 1948 deal was not US Diplomacy's finest moment, but letting this infamy happen six years later, that's almost as shocking. The least the US could do now is to change that embarrassing US Fleet Activity Sasebo insign...

• 1960: Nobusuke Kishi, now the Prime Minister, dedicates the Mount Sangane cemetery headstone honoring the worst monsters in Japan history

• 1978: 14 convicted Class A war criminals - including Tojo and co. - are enshrined in Yasukuni, after a failed attempt in 1966, when Yakusuni Chief Priest Fujimaro Tsukuba refused to put all the names listed by government officials. The decision to go ahead with the enshrinement and to keep it discreet was taken in 1969 in a secret meeting between officials from Yasukuni and the Ministry of Health and Welfare (the Minister was ten Noboru Saito, and the Prime Minister was still Eisaku Sato). Clearly, the plotters had to wait for a friendlier Chief Priest, and they wasted no time after Tsukuba's death. The candidacy of former Self-Defense Force official Nagayoshi Matsudaira was pushed by Chief Justice Kazuto Ishida, an ultra-conservative who tilted his own institution towards far-right territories. In "East Asia's Haunted Present. Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism", Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and Kazuhiko Togo report how Matsudaira answered to Ishida's proposition for the job: "Overturning the verdicts of the Tokyo Tribunal is essential to achieve Japan's spiritual renaissance. Therefore, it is necessary to enshrine those who are called Class-A war criminals". Tsukuba died in March 1978, Matsudarai was appointed in June, and the enshrinement happened in October. Hirohito knew about the enshrinement before the media, who first mentioned it in 1979. In a 1988 memo disclosed in 2006, Hirohito explained why he stopped visiting Yasukuni in 1978, regretting Matsudaira didn't have his father's "strong wish for peace".

• ...

• 2013?: Shinzo Abe modifies the constitution of Japan, starting with article 96 which makes modifications very difficult and subject to referenda. Japan abandons its commitment to peace (art.9), reclaiming Imperial Japan's potential as an aggressive military power, as well as it abandons all obligations regarding international laws and treaties (art. 98-2)... As Matsudaira put it, the enemies of democracy can now "achieve Japan's spiritual renaissance".

I spared you all the events that deserve to be listed on this timeline, but I guess you get the idea: these guys know perfectly what they're doing, and where they want to go. And Taro Aso? They don't need your advice**: they already know how to stay below radar surface the way the Nazis did during the thirties. 

Ever since 1945, revisionists have seized every opportunity to pledge allegiance to Imperial Japan, to contaminate post-war Japan with its noxious heritage, and to pave the way for its "spiritual renaissance". A day will come when all Japanese lawmakers will be asked to officially pledge allegiance to democracy and to denounce Imperial Japan war crimes before taking office. A day will come when the Japanese constitution will be strong enough to prevent people like Shinzo Abe from reaching power. But what will happen until then?

Imperial Japan abominations didn't stop in 1945: they continue to this day, and they will not be resolved until Japan officially proclaims its independence from Imperial Japan.


Seoul Village 2013
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* see "Far from Yasukuni, cemetery honors criminals" (Korea JoongAng Daily, 20130815)
** see "Taro Aso, Japan's Constitution, and Godwin's Law"

To better bridge the gap between Japan, Korea, and China, let's measure the gap within Japan

A few comments following an article in the WSJ's JapanRealTime today*, about a Pew Research poll** on the image of Japan and Shinzo Abe at home and across Asia.

 

Unsurprisingly, Japan fares much better in Southeast Asia than in China or Korea, where 85% of the people disapprove this most controversial PM... who certainly contributed to the spectacular deterioration of the image of Japan over the past few years: negative opinions reach 77% in ROK (+25 pts since 2008) and 90% in China (+16 pts since 2006).

 

And this poll was held between March 4 and April 6 2013, before the sick Abe - Hashimoto duet climax mid-May (see previous episodes)...

 

 



JRT @ WSJ today

Regarding the score of Indonesia. I remember that back in the late 80s, views on Japan were still very critical there, and now 79% of the population see it favorably, one of the best score among Southeast Asian nations. But this can be easily explained:

• Indonesia is not exposed to provocations from top Japanese politicians as recurently as China or Korea, countries where, in the first place, Imperial Japan atrocities were arguably the most extreme
• Unlike Japan's aging neighbors, Indonesia is experiencing a baby boom that completely modified its demographics, accelerating the 'pastization' of that period (one fourth of the population doesn't know how to answer the question about Japan apologies for Imperial Japan crimes)
• Japan not only invests a lot in the Indonesian economy, but also provides considerable amounts of aid. China is probably more perceived as a fiend nowdays.

Regarding the public opinion in Japan, the Pew Research poll also confirmed significant trends we recently mentioned***:

• Abe's popularity remains stellar at home with a 71% approval rate, and very little variations across key demographics. In spite of recent hiccups, "Abenomics" continue to play in his favor.
• I just wrote yesterday about the project of changing Japan's Constitution so that the nation can become an offensive military power again (NB: in "Shinzo Abe: an offensive Defense White Paper ahead of the elections... and Constitutional Revolution" - the "Abeignomics" part of the equation). The proportion of people supporting these changes keeps increasing: over the past 7 years, supporters jumped from 27 to 36%, while opponents decreased from 67 to 56%. But here, demographics and particularly testosterone levels seem to make a difference: only 28% of Japanese women are ready to embrace militarism, compared to 45% for men.

Now regarding the question "Has Japan sufficently apologized for its military actions during the 1930s and 1940s?" (98% of South Koreans answer NO, 78% of the Chinese, 28% of the Japanese). It doesn't tell us much about what people actually know about the issues, and what is behind this very vague and neutral label "military actions". We do know that only 1% of South Koreans don't know what to answer, compared to 9% of Japanese or 38% of Malaysians, but we don't know how much the 48% of the Japanese who think the apologies were sufficient know about the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan, or if they are even aware that war crimes were committed, not to mention the fact that their dear Emperor himself gave the nod for the infamous Unit 731.

Note that the knowledge regarding Imperial Japan war crimes is not homogeneous among the victim nations either: for instance, the Chinese are certainly more aware of the Nanking massacre than the Koreans, who are themselves certainly more aware of the sexual slavery system for the Japanese military than the Dutch (in case you didn't know: among the hundreds of thousands of "Comfort Women", about 300 were Dutch girls and women).

If Nazi atrocities also covered a wide range of crimes, the Holocaust remains the ultimate reference, allowing surveys that can help clearly measure levels of awareness or denial, draw comparisons between countries. And if one cannot and should not compare 'Comfort Women' tragedy with the Holocaust, it could become an international marker to measure the perception of Imperial Japan beyond its "military actions". More and more people across the world are able to answer these two questions: "are you aware of the existence of a large scale system forcing hundreds of thousands of girls and women into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japan military (euphemistically referred to as 'Comfort Women')?", "do you consider it as a war crime?" If you answer "yes" to both, you'll probably do the same for the rest: "do you think the Japanese government should formally recognize war crimes, apologize for them, prosecute war criminals, make negationism and the praising of war crimes illegal, remove war criminals from Yasukuni shrine?"

Japan has, to this day, refused to recognize any war crime, and as long as descendants from Imperial Japan leaders control the local politics, that's not about to change. Consider that Shinzo Abe's own maternal grand-father, Nobusuke Kishi, a man also known as the "Showa Era Monster", a man who served under Hideki Tojo as Minister of Commerce and Industry, overlooking economic mobilization and thus forced labor, a man who only escaped trial as a Class A war criminal because in 1948 the US decided to recycle a bunch of key hardliners to secure a very conservative Japan during the Cold War****... consider that this man could still become PM between 1957 and 1960!

Speaking of Japan and the Holocaust. I just re-read Rotem Kowner's piece on the rise and fall of Holocaust denial in Japan*****, and to me it illustrates perfectly Japan's dichotomy in political / historical awareness:

• On one side, the neo-fascist minority that cripples the whole political system manages to put a lid on wartime atrocities, denying the crimes, making sure no law emerges that would make denial illegal (Japan had to wait until 1999 to see a - local - ruling stating the existence of the Holocaust)
• On the other side, the vast peaceful majority that now associate the Holocaust with the bombing of Hiroshima-Nagasaki (another war crime and trauma with long lasting effects), but without mentioning the responsibility of the Imperial regime in the conflict, or of course the countless war crimes it perpetrated
• This ignorance / selective memory serves the purpose of the revisionists, because the dark side of Japan's history remains hidden under the overwhelming lid of nuclear apocalypse, and because Japan is presented as a victim... which ironically paves the way for their project of revising the Constitution to discard the peaceful nature of Post-War Japan, and restore the belligerent nature of Imperial Japan (see "Shinzo Abe: an offensive Defense White Paper ahead of the elections... and Constitutional Revolution"). After the Rape of Nankin, that's the Rape of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the victims of atomic bombings become victim a second time, forced into becoming propaganda tools for the impostors who want to disgrace Japan for the second time.

6 in 10 Japanese think their country should be more respected than it is overseas. They have the power to fix that by voting for democracy, honor, and justice or at least, since no one seem to be representing these values in their most devastated political landscape, by removing from power the dangerous minority of fascists who've been corrupting their whole political system for decades.

It would be easier if the right questions were asked. To better bridge the gap between Japan and its neighbors, it would be interesting to measure and follow the gap between what the Japanese people knows and what the Japanese leaders know.


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* "Japan's Glaring Image Gap" (Wall Street Journal - 20130712)
** "Japanese Public's Mood Rebounding, Abe Highly Popular" (Pew Research - 20130711)
*** see scores mentioned in "So you want to know what is 'necessary', Mr Hashimoto?"
**** see previous episodes, most recently "Shinzo Abe: an offensive Defense White Paper ahead of the elections... and Constitutional Revolution"
**** the US were clearly instrumental in the lack of justice for Imperial Japan war crimes (see "Can't top that? Shinzo Abe posing as Shiro Ishii, the Josef Mengele of Imperial Japan"), and I'm glad to see many American local authorities show the way (e.g. Glendale, CA will also have a memorial for the victims of sexual slavery)
***** see "Tokyo recognizes Auschwitz: the rise and fall of Holocaust denial in Japan, 1989–1999" (Rotem KOWNER - Journal of Genocide Research (2001), 3(2), 257–272)

Mirrors are abominable

Long time no post about revisionism in Japan, eh*?

I just passed by one of those distorting mirrors over the web, and saw something interesting.

Here, when I mention 'distorting mirrors over the web', I'm not referring to revisionist propaganda, but to the way information can be altered along it virtual journeys.

And when I say that I saw something interesting, I'm not referring to my female self (NB: that's not the first time a translator or a journalist mispells my name as "StephaNIE" or thinks "Stephane" is a girl's name**), but to a 10 year old video that remains scaringly relevant.

I must pause here: I can't help but think about my favorite piece of literature, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", where Jorge-Luis Borges redefined fiction and prefigured our internet's pervasive maze of hoaxes, facts, fictions, and mirror sites. When The Great Blind Librarian wrote "mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of men", he simply couldn't imagine that they could also change their genders.

Now where was I?

Here. And there. Marking a pause, precisely. Because Shinzo Abe kindly decided to hold his own horses***, I seized the opportunity and updated my miserable French blogules, recycling in one single post**** the "Abeignomics" series I'd just shot in broken English on this excuse for a blog. The story was later adapted as a Tribune in the French news website Rue89: "Le Japon prisonnier de son extrême droite révisionniste" (May 20).

What I came across was a short post in The Moderate Voice, where William Kern wrote: "In the latest in a series of similar criticisms from around the world on the Abe government, Rue 89 Stephane Mot writes in small part – and I do mean small, since she goes on for a full 1200 words". A long quote ensues, from the similarly titled***** translation of my Rue89 Tribune in Worldmeets.us, the non-partisan journalism project Kern founded after working for the IHT in Paris.

I clicked the link to read the translation... and at the very last line, found out that an "I" had unfortunately fallen over my name, like a guillotine over my proud stephanehood.

But again, that's not the interesting part... Ill-chosen words, sorry. I meant that's not the point - gaah, forget it, just watch the video Worldmeets.us kindly picked to go with the translation.

It's called "Japan's Dirty Secret" (23 May 2003), by Mark Simkin. This ABC News journalist, who spent four years in Japan, manages to raise quite a lot of issues in less than 20 minutes.



The focus is on Unit 731: as a former torturer flies to Harbin to apologize to Chinese survivors, Simkin tells everything about the dark side of today's Japan, without sparing the US, who by clinching the infamous deal with Shiro Ishii, prevented justice from happening, and Japan from facing its past, paving the way for revisionists such as Shinzo Abe.

If you think Japan can do without formal apologies for the crimes committed under Imperial rule, think again. All Japanese citizens should watch this non distorting mirror if they want to save their peaceful democracy, and prevent further abominations from happening.

Stephane (without an I)
NB: that's my fault. I changed Abenomics into Abeignomics.
An "I" for an "N"?

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* already eight days ("Silver lining, darker clouds"), time really flies.
**  So far, the Asia Times remains the only one to have dubbed me "Stephan".
*** "ABE forced to back down a bit. For the moment. Next PR stunt: KIM Jong-un" (May 15)
**** "AbeIGNomics - Shinzo Abe a fait son coming out: il est bien le pire ennemi du Japon" (blogules V.F., May 18)
***** "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a Threat to Democratic Japan (Rue 89, France)" (Worldmeets.us, May 31), "Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a Threat to Democratic Japan (Rue 89, France)" (The Moderate Voice, May 31)

UPDATE 20200406 - Rue89 link updated to new NouvelObs URL.

Can't top that? Shinzo Abe posing as Shiro Ishii, the Josef Mengele of Imperial Japan

It didn't take Shinzo Abe long to reply to Toru Hashimoto.

Reminder  (see "So you want to know what is 'necessary', Mr Hashimoto?"): Osaka Mayor just claimed a spectacular warholian moment in the sick race to the most outrageous AbeIGNomics* provocation.

So what did Japan's PM do this time? He posed for a photo op, all smiles and thumb up, in the pilot seat of a war plane with the number "731" painted next to the Japanese flag. To make sure, ubi et orbi, that this number was not unintentional, it was topped by a mention in English: "Leader S. Abe".

The reference to the infamous Unit 731 could hardly be clearer. That's the Harbin-based unit where the Japanese Imperial Army performed atrocious human experimentations during the 1930s and 40s. And who was the "Leader" of Unit 731? Shiro Ishii, a monster who escaped trial for war crimes by sharing his nasty secrets with the US, part of a revolting deal that not only amounted to one of the lowest moments in the history of the great American democracy, but also crippled Japan's nascent democracy, preventing the nation from facing its troubled past, and paving the way for revisionists such as Shinzo Abe.

Yesterday, as Shinzo Abe all but dressed up as Shiro Ishii, the US joined China in a most vehement condemnation.

In the eyes of the international community, Abe made his ultimate coming out as an all-out fascist supporting all the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese regime.

Imagine a German Chancelor who would have previously headed a revisionist association, and who would now deny Nazi war crimes, say deportees chose to go to the camps, contest the word "invasion" to qualify the aggression of Poland, and parade as a Josef Mengele fan**. Inimaginable? Welcome to 2013 Japan. 

Again*, the biggest scandal is the deafening silence of Japanese citizens before the political and moral suicide of their great nation.

Even the people who disagree with Abe, know about the darkest moments of Japan history, and know their nation is in great danger remain silent and do nothing.

Wake up! Speak up! Stand up for Japan! 

Or be doomed.

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* see "Dear Japan, Please Say No To Abeignomics" - have your say on Twitter: #abeignomics
** CHUNG Mong-joon compared Shinzo Abe to an Angela Merkel "riding an aircraft with the Nazi swastika", but Abe deliberately reaches as far as possible into that abomination