If of course in Europe a Nazi or a Stalinist apologist gained political office it would rightfully cause great indignition but apparently this man who thinks the Japanese war criminals of World War II were not really war criminals becoming Prime Minister is unremarkable. This makes one wonder whether Japan truly reformed like say Germany after World War II or like the post Civil War South instead engages in apologism and whining and bitching about supposed war crimes against themselves
I doubt anyone here would take that position. However, it’s not *immediately *clear that the Japanese atrocities were worse than, say, firebombing hundreds of thousands of civilians out of existence.
Yet, that said, both Japan’s conduct during the war and it’s subsequent refusal to acknowledge said conduct have always been reprehensible. Questions about our own arguably bad acts and the consistency of our standards are germane, but we ought to acknowledge the legitimacy of the OP’s core lament.
The Allied troops committed a lot of rapes upon French women during the liberation of France, for example. Rape has generally been part of the point of war.
Well, yes, there were horrible crimes, as there always are when soldiers march. Nonetheless, the behavior of the American army in Europe was really, really different from that of the Japanese army in China. Likewise, the behavior of the German army in the first World War was really, really different from that of the German army in the second World War. To handwave away the differences as merely a matter of perspective is neither accurate nor useful.
Still, even by “civilized war” (ptooie) standards, the Allies were not exactly blameless - we sunk hospital ships, we deliberately bombed civilian populations, we executed prisoners summarily… we dropped fucking nukes !
And got away with it scot free.
While equating one set of crimes with another is, as you say, silly ; and while we can opine that we were “better” than the Nazis and Imperial Japan (we, unless “we” includes Soviet Russia, in which case it’s a toss up) it’s nonetheless true to say that we the Allies were also horrible cunts and never got punished for it - hell we even glorify some of our own exactions in film. It’s okay, they’re Nazis ! They’re the baddies. You can do whatever you want to them and it’s OK.
In that sense, it is a bit hypocritical of us to poo-poo the other side when they want to say “we weren’t all that bad”, when we’ve been saying we were pristine doves for the last 60+ years.
That being said, I will admit that Japan most certainly did not follow the same self-loathing road as Germany did (and to apoint still does), and their stance on history has always been a bit questionable. Still, who cares, really ? All national narratives are based on autofellating fictions that bear little in common with actual history. Does it really matter what the Japanese think or believe of themselves, as long as they’re not dropping tanks in Manchuria today ?
Noda is the sixth Japanese Prime Minister in 5 years. Apparently, he’s not exactly the people’s choice: he’s more of a party insider. I suspect his views on WWII will cause him some small difficulty in Korea and China.
According to a NYT editorial, he has no new ideas for re-igniting economic growth. So I guess the developed world will continue to plod on in its lost decade. So little aggregate demand, so much work to be done…
That’s not so clear. In WWI Belgium, German army units began shooting civilian hostages as reprisals against partisan acts in the first weeks of the war. In WWII, certainly German soldiers as a whole behaved a lot worse, but most of the bad behavior was not from regular army units. Most atrocities were committed by SS (not in the army chain of command) units that also recruited local bigots, thugs and informers to “help”.
The IJA committed acts of wholesale murder-on a scale never seen before. Take the Bataan “Death March”-over 11,000 American and Filipino POWS deliberately murdered by IJA troops.
As for China, I don’t know how any Japanese politician can pretend to be ignorant of the ghastly slaughter that went on there.
So this dope deserves fll scorn.
So did the Allies when you look at the firebombing of Dresden and several other cities. Wars are ugly, and if you wish to castigate the enemy make sure your house is in order first. This isn’t to defend the Japanese since what they did was indefensible, but the Allies did some pretty awful things as well.
It’s one thing to believe that the bombing of German cities in World War II was unnecessary or excessive, maybe even a war crime. But claiming any equivalence at all between the bombing of German cities and what Japan did to China is just being ignorant or disingenuous.
Apparently, bombing defenceless cities was a legitimate military tactic - it was used on Warsaw and later on Rotterdam for a start, and the Poles had little in the way of air defences and the Dutch rather less. That would make Dresden more of the same.
On the other hand, I don’t believe we perfidious Allies slaved prisoners to death on a railway at an average rate of one corpse per sleeper, for a start