Slavs, of course. I shutter thinking of the other errors I’ve probably made, though.
cckerberos’ point is that as Yasukuni is a shrine, it is not the same as Arlington.
Here is a case against the claimed equivalence.
The Yasukuni Complex does, though, have the Chinreisha Shrine, with the first za dedicated to those Japanese who died fighting against the Imperial Army, and the second, to everyone who died in war.
This would be biting snark on a rah-rah hooah USA #1! board, but here it falls a bit flat.
Don’t mind me if you feel I’m wasting your time. :dubious:
Time is life.
It’s really not. It’s not the physical location where the dead are buried, it’s where they are enshrined, including not just the 1,068 convicted war criminals from WWII, but also Enshrinement is not exclusive to people of Japanese descent. Currently, Yasukuni Shrine has enshrined 27,863 Taiwanese and 21,181 Koreans without consultation of surviving family members and in some cases against the stated wishes of the family members. Those not included in the “most” war dead in the service of Japan since and including the Meiji Restoration are quite notable as well:
They were part of the Empire at the time and fought for the Emperor, so that’s why they’re included. About 207,000 Taiwanese and 200,000 Koreans were in the Japanese army during the war.
I think it works pretty well, actually, apart from the obvious difference in scale.
This is because nationalists like Abe are fairly rare. The sin that can be placed at the feet of your average Japanese with regards to WWII is not active denial of Japanese atrocities but rather personal indifference and/or ignorance (though I think the latter is a bit exaggerated).
One that satisfies Japan’s neighbors, basically.
Like that one?
Oh dear Rickjay and Monty, I am sorry to do this, since this is really like shooting fish in a barrel.
All this was imposed from outside Japan, so being made to behave is hardly any sign of contrition.
Firstly, forgiveness is not given merely because of the selection of a few appropriate words and payment of compensation, rehabilitation is an on-going process and that will include behaviours and acceptance of ones guilt and a commitment to do better, along with actions that will underpin that acceptance.
Perhaps Japan might have chased down its war criminals for itself, but it didn’t. There should be a recognition of the hurt caused to others by making appropriate gestures.Flattening that memorial would have been one such gesture, how about investigation and documentation of their own crimes? Self recognition of ones own sins would have been a great healer.
How about teaching it to your children?
Above all though, perhaps its as much about what you do not do, I doubt that Angela Merkal would go to a memorial that openly memorialises the SS or the leaders of that country, and most definitely she would not seek to deny or minimise or moderate the actions of the animals that ran Auschwitz.
Lets look at Shinzo Abe.
Now he didn’t have to go to that memorial, but he did and he knew full well how it would be seen from outside Japan, especially China. He did it for his own political fortunes in Japan - which is slightly worrisome but in general it is seen as a national Japanese attitude. You should also note that 168 of his fellows in Japan’s legislature also visited the place just two days later, so now it isn’t just his personal opinion, its an official Japanese government policy revisionism.
He didn’t have to make statements such as this,
He didn’t have to say anything at all about this, but he chose to do so, and this rather undermines previous Japanese statements of ‘regret’
He also did not need to say this,
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/04/24/2013042401169.html
In effect he was saying that Japan did not invade China, Oh rly?
This isn’t some right wing redneck nutter making these comments, and also the shrine visits, this is the Japanese Prime Minister and as such he is taken to represent Japan as a whole.
So, in summary, I would say that that an apology, instead of a mealy mouthed equivocal statement of ‘regret’ would be a good start. Its not just what you do that underlines that apology, its also what you choose not to do and in this Shinzo Abe has signally failed.
They were an involuntary part of the Empire of Japan at the time and did not serve in the army of, or die in the service of the Emperor of their own volition. They were conscripted colonial subjects who had their home countries taken from them by force by the Empire of Japan ~50 years previously. That is why the expressed wishes of many of the surviving family members are that they not be enshrined there, and why they consider the enshrinement of their relatives offensive.
Well, some of them. A lot of Taiwanese and some Koreans enlisted, but you’re right, most were conscripted. But, of course, the same was true for most of the Japanese who fought in the war. They also were conscripted, and at higher rates than the Taiwanese and Koreans, largely because prejudice against Taiwanese and Koreans meant they weren’t treated as equals so they weren’t trusted as much.
But I don’t know that it matters that their surviving family members object. The shrine is for all the people who died in the Emperor’s service during the period. It’s not “All the people unless their families object”, or “All the people unless they’re Koreans or Taiwanese”, or “All the people unless they’ve been put on trial for war crimes.” Even an American citizen born in Chicago (Ryo Kurusu) is enshrined there. When you start making distinctions like that, it stops being a shrine to those who died in battle, and starts becoming a judgement on the actions of the enshrined. You start saying, “Oh, this person shouldn’t be there because he did this bad thing” or “This person is a bad person so he shouldn’t be included” or “These troops participated in a massacre so they should be left out” or “This soldier was a coward so why is he here?” I think that starts a dangerous precedent, and I think it’s a way to deny history and deny Japan’s past.
You can support that the 14
Sorry. I submitted early.
I was just going to say that you can support that the 14 people accused of class A war crimes be included at the shrine without approving of their actions, and you can support that the soldiers who died be remembered without saying that Japan’s actions in China were all correct.
You’re seriously going to make this argument?
A comparable (though much, much worse) example is the conscription of slaves by the Confederacy in the US Civil War.
I would not think it strange at all for any of their descendants to object to the inclusion of their kin in any memorial to the Confederacy.
Or, maybe a comparable example would be the African troops who fought in the French Army (who had a monument in Reims, built after WWI), or the Indian troops or Irish troops who fought for the British?
Seventy years of peace is far beyond “being made to behave.” Japan is a sovereign nation and could choose a more militaristic outlook tomorrow and there isn’t shit anyone could do about it.
Lots of countries that have had peace terms imposed upon them couldn’t be “made to behave.” Germany lasted less than twenty years after Versailles before going in the warpath again.
I don’t believe you. I thin if Japan issued an abject apology tomorrow you’d pretend it never happened and go on railing about “rehabilitation,” and I know that because Japan HAS issued absolutely clear, unequivocal apologies, on several occasions, and yet you write your posts as if they never happened.
Both honor primarily volunteer, not conscript, forces.
Worse yet, both of these, unlike Yasukuni, specifically honor Irish and Indian volunteer forces, rather than tossing in conscript soldiers as an afterthought to primarily British forces.
The Confederate example is still much, much closer. Try again.
That’s a rather weak rebuttal. It relies on your impression rather than any actual facts.
Worse, we know what Abe’s take on the subject is. He’s on record as wanting Japan to formally “unapologize” to the comfort women. That’s a hard and uncomfortable fact to face.
Conscription of Poles and Ukrainians in the Imperial Russian army. Conscription in French Indochina, North Africa and West Africa. Conscription of Filipinos by Spain. Conscription of Arabs in the Ottoman Empire. Conscription of the Maltese by Britain. Conscription of pretty much every ethnic group in Austria-Hungary.
Conscription of colonial populations isn’t exactly unique to Imperial Japan.
You never showed that those statements were “mealy mouthed equivocal statement of ‘regret’”, and in fact a number of them clearly were not. What you did show is that Japan has done other things to undo the value of its apologies.
That’s probably true. But if you’re going to argue that Japan has done a bunch of other things to piss off their neighbours, then just argue it! Don’t argue that words don’t mean what they plainly mean!
I was going to include this as a comparison but decided against it, perhaps I should have included it. The wishes of the families and indeed the wishes of those dead Korean and Taiwanese enshrined there would be not to have such an ‘honor’ for being forced to serve and die in the name of those they despised. There is very little love lost between Korea and Japan to this day, Japanese colonial rule of Korea was quite brutal, and most of those who had the ‘honor’ of dying for the Emperor did so not even as soldiers but as forced laborers impressed into service in the Imperial Japanese Army in labor battalions. The conscription of slaves by the Confederacy is a far closer example. That the relatives of those enshrined at Yasukuni consider it offensive to the memory of their loved ones speaks pretty clearly on the subject.
That isn’t the issue at all though, it’s not that Imperial Japan conscripted its colonial populations from Korea and Taiwan (again, mind you, mostly as laborers, not as soldiers), it’s that the powers that be unilaterally enshrined them and refuse to delist their names despite that fact that it is offensive to the memory of those enshrined and their families and against their expressed will. Enshrinement is carried out unilaterally by the shrine. Some families from foreign countries such as South Korea have requested that their relatives be delisted on the grounds that enshrining someone against their beliefs in life constitutes an infringement of the Constitution.[25] The Yasukuni priesthood, however, has stated that once a kami is enshrined, it has been ‘merged’ with the other kami occupying the same seat and therefore cannot be separated.