Japanese War shrine visit thread

So far only, AFAIK, Lil and NewYorker have been defending the Shrine visits as appropriate. I suppose then by their logic, if the Chancellor of Germany decided to annually visit some hypothetical mausoleum venerating Hitler, Goebbels, Mengele, Hess, etc which also contained revisionist literature describing the Nazi aggression as just and downplaying or denying the Holocaust, that it would also be okay?

A simple yes or no answer to this question will do. If the answer is is "yes" then I need say nothing more on the topic as the answer speaks volumes.

 

NewYorker,

Admire your persistence, but really you must sense the futility of trying to convince the Chinese posters on this board?

Don't waste your time. If the Chinese INSIST on see the Yasukuni as a memorial celebrating Japanese aggression instead of simply a shrine celebrating nationalism and sacrifice, then it is their loss. Their own distorted worldview, reinforced by their irresponsible govt, makes them angry and hateful, to their own detriment, toward actions by their neighbors which never meant to cause offense. If they WANT to see enemies and disrespect and insult where there is none (this would include Japan, Koizumi, you, me), then heck the best policy is to avoid them. If you saw some lunatic on the street suffering from paranoia and dementia (now i'm NOT saying ANY of the posters here are like that), what's the best policy? Stay to the other side of the street! And judging by the way they've responded to you, do you deem them worthy of your time and efforts at persuasion and assuagement??

Frankly, from an personal standpoint (and I run the risk of bringing up an un-PC stereotype here), this distorted and highly narrow-minded (ok ok ethnocentric) worldview is typical of the Chinese nationals and immigrants I've met. These issues run the gamut between Taiwan, Tibet, US, Japan, Falun Gong, human rights, CCP, imperialism, aggression, etc. etc. etc. They have a highly insular notion (many times eerily close to the CCP party line), and they fiercely defend it, and often they perceive offense and insult when you present contrary evidence. There is another academic term for this, but heck I won't bring it up there. Whereas you and I can see both the Japanese and Chinese points of view on this (and see that both sides have got some valid points), they simply lack the capacity/willingness to understand, not to mention accept, Koizumi/Japan's behavior.

You and I can sit back in our academic disinterest (i dare not say objectivity), and just relax. Go grab a beer from the fridge, and come back to this thread with that knowledge, and I bet you'll get a chuckle looking at the general attitude of the responses here. Heck.. I get a nice laugh everyday at work when I see diehard conservative Texans denying global warming and trying to seal the border "for the good of America". What can you do?

 

Oh yeah, the Chinese lunatics - Chinese from Mainland, HK TW and overseas. How nice!

I imagine Deckard and others are also some fringe "chinese lunatics" now - welcome to the dark side Deckard - 'cause I only count New Yorker as firmly on your side.

Make no mistake, if there's even one ounce of merit in your argument, a lot many posters would have come out with force (where's Hayes?). There's no shortage of anti-China sentiments on this board.

 

sad to see that some confuse ignorance with persistence

not just the Chinese, the Koreans, Thai, Singaporeans. But, to the myopics like Lil and NYer, they all look alike !

what you've described is the USA under the derelict that is W.

 

Sorry Sishir, missed your post.

This question: Other nations honoring dubious dead leaders doesn't make it ok for Japan to do so.

I agree with you. In itself, worshipping war criminals without considering his crimes is irresponsible.

But you miss my point. My point is that while the state visits may be wrong to outside observers, it is absolutely logical and rational and the expected thing to do for Japan and her leaders.

Just as we cannot imagine Hu not paying respect to Mao, and Bush not paying respect to Arlington, Japanese leaders cannot go without paying respect to Yasukuni (or at least without paying a huge political cost). Everyone is doing the best they can. And I tend to give Koizumi the benefit of the doubt, since I believe he does go to the shrine with the conscientious awareness of past crimes and the resolution not to repeat them.

If you found out today that your father killed a man in his youth, would you still love him and honor him? If you found out today that your mother had an affair with another man in her youth, would you renounce her? I bet you'll make a choice, acknowledge the past, but still love and honor both of them. Japanese people and leaders aren't idiots. They know what their leaders did. They know Japan's past. And even if they have to go to Yasukuni with a certain amount of guilt (which they will probably resent if imposed on them by outsiders), they will never ever be dissuaded.

My personal opinion is that our responsibility as humans and nations is to align our interests with those of our peers and neighbors so that we can co-exist and thrive. This is obviously a case where interests don't align, and both the Chinese and Japanese govts are actually exacerbating affairs by publicizing differences.

 

I find this thread interesting. I guess it's good not to have too many SammyFisher type flamebait threads, cuz it pretty much shows just how ugly the ugly side of certain posters are here.

Back on track though, I find it pretty funny that certain people here portray Japan as this peace loving nation. Rather amusing, as I was amused with this entire thread.

To use NewYorker's own rather pathetic qualifiers, which is that China intimidates the Philippines, Vietnam, what have you (most likely over the Spratleys), Japan is far from a peaceful country now isn't it? I mean, after all, they are only fighting for the Diaoyu Island China, the Dokdo with South Korea and the Kuriles with Russia. I find it pretty ironic that these little, ahem, subtleties aren't addressed, or is he simply not aware of them?

Of course, he and Lil also can't separate "can't" from "won't." For example, why is Japan so allegedly "passive?" Could it be because because they CAN'T be anything but? Not from self-restraint though, but rather from lack of capacity.

South East Asia is just a wee bit too far and that leaves rather limited targets. If they ever try to invade either Russia or China in the foreseeable future, the next generation of lil' Japs would be growing up green. And of course, the North and South Koreans don't agree on much, but one thing they do agree on is their mutual hatred for Japan. They would temporarily put aside their differences to give the Japanese the smackdown, in a defensive war.

Of course, I expect this little rant of mine would get lost in the piles of bullsh1t that would accumulate by this time tomorrow, as ignoring legitimate points when unable to respond to them is a habit of many posters here.

 

Sammy, don't flatter yourself. Look at when this moniker was made. I look forward to you taking more "vacations" in the future...

 

The fact remains that China took territory that was Occupied by Indian forces - it went it and push Indian forces out and kept territory - that's called an invasion.

And if Tibet was already part of China, then why did China need to send troops in? Did it just forget that it was part of China? And why did Tibetans have to flee? I guess they were just paranoid???? Why did the Dali Lama have to flee? He certainly wasn't Chinese.

 

Is that anymore revisionist then what China writes about taking Tibet? You guys are totally living rivionist History. And In the U.S. - it's done as well. The U.S. talks about Columbus discovering America, but that's not true. It was discovered 30,00 years prior.

So when the Chinese posters on this board are willing to start criticizing their own country about it's revisionist history, then yeah, I think they have a right to complain about Japan doing it. But until then, shut up!

 

Lil and NewYorker, please repeat after me, "CONVICTED CLASS A WAR CRIMINALS". That is what this thread was about, before you hijakced it. It was about those convicted war criminals in the shrine, NOT the other solderiers.

Now, before any one of you threw in unrelated topics/items to intentionaly derail this thread, consider this ONLY criteria, that most Asians were upset about - HORORING CONVICTED CLASS A WAR CRIMINALS, and DENYING CONVICTED WAR CRIMES. Again, before you threw in irrelevant examples "whose father killed whom", or Mao, or Washington, or China, or Vietnam, or Korea, or Taiwan, or Tibet, or US, ANYTHING. Try to look up for the EXACT word "CONVICTED CLASS A WAR CRIMINALS", that was what this thread is about. If you have an opinion about that topic, go ahead. If NOT, please start new threads.

Again, please don't derail this further with anything unrelated to "CONVICTED CLASS A WAR CRIMINALS". I can give you a hint, you can find people in that category in Nazi Germany history, however, you might wonder what Germans did about those "CONVICTED CLASS A WAR CRIMINALS".

Once again, before you tell anyone else to shutup, go back to check your own 30 posts trying untirely to move focus away from "CONVICTED CLASS A WAR CRIMINALS". You really should follow your own advice.

 

**best attempt at mimicing NewYorker**

The difference is that I'm not attached to my what I'm writing. I can change my mind tomorrow. Want proof? - look at my posting history. At least half of the times I don't know what I was talking about, although I never owned up to it after being exposed of my ignorance.

None of you really know what I truly think...because I'm here only to discuss. My position will change over time as I take in more knowledge - but I don't really express my position, I only express what I think will foster my understanding. But I do not like the self-righteous chip-on-the-shoulder that many mainlanders have.

Yet I have the privilege to dole out brainwashing and to tell the others to shut up.

**end of mimicing**

Irony at it's best. Oh, BTW, the answer is yes. It is more revisionist than what China writes about taking Tibet.

 

for your education, this a Western diplomat's, now a contributor to Japan Times, account of what actually happened.
Western lies blackened Beijing's image

By GREGORY CLARK The Japan Times: May 30, 2005

China's successful moves to improve ties with India have done more than sabotage Tokyo's hopes for an anti-China alliance with New Delhi. They have also put an end to the myth that China's alleged aggressions against India since the 1960s would prevent any rapprochement between the two countries.

The key to this strange belief was the claim that China in 1962 had launched an unprovoked border attack against India. That claim was a blatant lie -- and one of the brighter and shinier variety. It was a classic example of the ease with which Western governments and intelligence agencies, together with their friends in academic, media and research organs, combine to distort information and blacken China's reputation in Asia.

In 1962 I was China desk officer in Canberra's Department of External Affairs. For much of the year there had been reports of Indian troops pushing into Chinese positions along the Sino-Indian border. On Oct. 20 we had a further report about clashes between Chinese and Indian troops at the Thag La ridge near the NEFA (North East Frontier Area) border, which was to lead to a Chinese counterattack into northern India.

New Delhi claimed unprovoked Chinese aggression. But the maps in front of me showed the Thag La ridge to be north of even the Indian-claimed frontier. So India must have attacked China first, and in an area where China had already offered major territory concessions (condemned, incidentally, by Teipei as a sellout to India). When my cables to London and Washington confirmed this rather important fact, I assumed I could suggest to my superiors to ease up on their instant denunciations of Chinese "aggression" and their promises of immediate arms to India. Their response was swift: "We fail to see that it is not in the Western interest to have the Chinese and the Indians at each other's throats." London and Washington went along with this grubby realpolitik. Soon the commentators and experts in the Western media and elsewhere were retailing ominous tales about China's aggressive intentions throughout Asia.

The myth of Chinese aggression against peaceful India was to distort Asian affairs for more than 40 years. With the help of Western black-information agencies -- British especially -- it was to provide much of the justification later for Western intervention in Indochina. Detailed documentation from Beijing proving the location of the Thag La ridge was ignored.

Even the 1972 publication of "India's China War," the irrefutably detailed book by Neville Maxwell, the London Times New Delhi correspondent at the time, proving how Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had ordered the attack across the frontier, largely because of national pride and angst over the way China had consolidated control over Tibet, did little to change things. My own book on the subject, "In Fear of China," published four years earlier, had done even less.

Now, finally, with last month's historic meeting between the Chinese and Indian prime ministers in New Delhi, the myth is being buried. Both sides have agreed to settle frontier differences -- something China has long been able to do with all its other contiguous neighbors, often generously. India has dropped any challenge to China's sovereignty in Tibet. China has recognized Indian sovereignty over the once semiautonomous Himalayan region of Sikkim. A strategic partnership has been promised.

But hopes of Japan-India cooperation to oppose China still smolder in the hearts of many Japanese hawks. For years the goal was a tripartite Japan- India-Australia alliance against Beijing in Asia. That began to fall apart as Canberra belatedly realized its economic future lay with China.

Now the hawks are making much of Japan and India's alleged democracy vs. China's alleged totalitarianism, hoping to link into U.S. neocon plans to use the democracy issue to inspire change not just in the Middle East but eventually to force confusion and breakup in China. Leading hawk Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara has now come out openly in the latest issue of Bungei Shunju magazine calling for such a breakup. With the Yasukuni Shrine issue back in the headlines, others will want to follow.

Yasukuni is an especially fertile source of continued anti-China claims.

• Tokyo's insistence that Beijing's protests over Yasukuni amount to intervention in Japan's domestic affairs rings hollow when one considers how the shrine and its notorious museum celebrate a Japanese intervention in China's domestic affairs that left some 20 million people dead. And Article 11 of the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty specifically obliges Japan to accept Beijing's key point, namely that the 14 wartime leaders enshrined at Yasukuni were in fact A-class war criminals.

You can't get more international than that.

Talk about Japan's 60 year postwar record of peaceful behavior in Asia and official development assistance to China is also meaningless when it is clear that Tokyo wants to be involved in U.S. plans for military action against North Korea and China. ODA was simply a cheap way for Japan to avoid having to pay war reparations to China.

The claims that Japan has already apologized to China more than 20 times are also meaningless, given Tokyo's stubborn refusals to admit to former atrocities in China and to compensate Chinese and Korean individuals enslaved during the war years. As both the Chinese and South Korean leadership have pointed out, actions are more important than words, and so far Tokyo's actions have not been impressive.

That the Western media have largely gone along with Tokyo's claims over Yasukuni is further proof of just how easily they accept distorted views of China. Other examples include the Tiananmen massacre myth (check the now declassified cables from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at the time for the true story), the claim that China's claims over Taiwan are expansionist (check the terms on which every major power has accepted Beijing's sovereignty over the island), or Beijing's constant reference to Taiwan as a "renegade province"(check the English-language Web sites for the main Chinese newspapers to find the reality). And so on.

It's time this important nation was taken more seriously.

Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat specializing in Chinese affairs, and vice president of Akita International University. A Japanese translation of this article will appear at www.gregoryclark.net

 

You need to make the font larger... I can't read it!




Keep D&D Civil.

 

I guess it was intended for those who are unwilling to read anything agrees with China. One will not be infected with "commie virus" by reading.

 

Matt 7:3-5

6:41 Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 6:42 Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

 

Then US should just shut up on everything because there is log in its eyes.

Seriously, everyone should just SFTU because nobody is perfect.

 

No

My intention is to set the facts straight, as offered by Westerners who were there, a UK Correspondent stationed in New Dehli and a Western diplomat whose job it was to monitor the border skirmish.

 

I was joking about the font thing.

Some will first lable that guy as "pro-China", then dismiss the whole thing without reading. That's how it works.

 

Still doesn't clarify the situation and doesn't change the fact that China advanced into Indian terrority killing Indian soldiers. That still constitutes aggression in my book.

Hamas claims all of Israel....but it doesn't mean attacking Israel and trying to get back it's land isn't aggression.