The row between Japan and neighboring China and South Korea over the contents of a new Japanese schoolbook which glosses over Japanese wartime atrocities should not be dismissed as a storm in an oriental teacup. The charge is that the book deliberately distorts history, presenting the country not as a guilty party to events of more than a half-a-century ago but as the innocent victim. There is no mention of the 200,000 Korean other Asian women, forced to prostitute themselves for the pleasure of the occupying Japanese army. Nor is there any mention of the 200,000-300,000 inhabitants of the Chinese city of Nanking, massacred by the Japanese in 1931.
The row and Japan’s attempt to rewrite its past is linked by many observers to the views and ambitions of the new Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He wants to see Article 9 of Japan’s postwar constitution removed. The article forbids its having an army; all it is allowed is a defense force. Another ambition is a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. He also intends next month to visit a controversial shrine to the country’s war-dead, where Japan’s militaristic past is honored and the remains of 13 Japanese war criminals executed after World War II interred.
In fact, there is nothing new about Japanese efforts to repackage the past. This is not the first time that China and South Korea have protested. Nor is Koizumi the first prime minister to visit the controversial war shrine. That taboo was broken in 1985 by Yasuhiro Nakasone. That said, it is devious of Koizumi to claim, as justification for going to the shrine, that his country’s war criminals paid for their guilt with their execution and that death has eradicated all difference between the war dead; all should be honored. Imagine if the German Chancellor decided to visit a shrine which honored Hitler and the SS. Austria was for including in its government a neo-nationalist party led by a man who said far less.
There is a world of difference between deciding that the time has passed for constant apologies for the actions of a previous generation and refusing to admit that Japan did anything wrong in World War II, and claiming that, on the contrary, it was the victim with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Austria and Germany have never tried to repackage their past. Unfortunately, in Japan’s case, there is a form of national amnesia shared not only by right-wing politicians but also by many ordinary folk who believe that it was not responsible for events in World War II. All it tried to do was defend itself.
The danger in this lie is that what it might do in the future. Japan’s neonationalists are not anti-American; but as Japan’s economy declines, they may become so if they believe their country did nothing wrong in the past and that it was lured into war by an American-led plot. There is an even greater danger closer to home. For the moment, the Japanese government does not care if its twisting of history creates diplomatic difficulties with other countries. But Japan is no longer the economic giant of the Far East it once was. Around it, potentially greater giants arise, notably China. And if Korea ever reunites, it too could become a greater economic power than Japan. Tokyo cannot afford to make itself a hate figure for them.
