Listen guy - you brought your background into this debate, not I. You claimed you were an American, and I was surprised because the way you wrote was more like someone from mainland China. Also I thought you mentioned you were Chinese in an earlier post. By the way, you admitted your English was poor. If I started posting on Chinese boards and tried to write in Chinese characters - I think people would quickly know I wasn't Chinese and probably from America. But I love how everyone has a theroy on what race and nationality I must come from. We have Japanese, Jewish, and Taiwanese. Or that someone I love is from there. Oh, and we have Cowboy too. Any others? Tibetian? I think we should start a new thread....
Yes I agree the ultranationalist Japanese are a minority, I think I said that a few times and I don't think that if the Japanese stopped official visits to the shrine or moved the Class War Criminals and removed the revisionist material from the museum and their text books most Japanese would really care. Of course no one likes to be criticized and criticism tends to harden views but the Japanese just need to look at the Germans to see that they can be honest about their past and still take great pride in their country. The post war Japanese do have a lot to be proud and its only in the narrowest of views that somehow means that they need to be proud of their militaristic and brutal past. Agree again that most Chinese don't know much about Japan and that cross cultural understanding would help alot that said though its not the Chinese that are forcing the Japanese to honor war criminals or engage in revisionists history. But there are moral lessons in history and one can make a moral judgement regarding the historical events. You can't just say oh well that was in the past so ignore otherwise why bother honoring war dead or trying to revise your history. So yes it is morally wrong to praise people or rewrite history about them that were war criminals and engaged in unspeakable brutality. Further living in an interdependent world the opinions of other countries do matter and it is in Japan's own interest to cultivate good relations with others. Then is it wrong for Neo-Nazis to honor Hitler, for the KKK to honor the Confederacy, for Serbs to Ratko Mladic, for Turks to honor those who carried out the massacre of Armenians and so on so on and so on. One can say that all they are doing is honoring patriots of their people but without also recognizing the full history of those people and the pain and misery they inflicted they will be forever doomed to keep on fighting those same battles. The onus isn't on China or the Chinese its on the Japanese since they are the ones that are honoring war criminals and engaging in revisionist history and they are the ones that flirt with regional isolation over this issue. This isn't a Chinese problem this is a Japanese problem.
You are acting more and more like bigtexxx, but he's much more knowledgable than you are. Just my observation.
Oh, that's not a personal attack is? Hmmmmm......anyway, I'm sure that comment adds a lot of value and isn't meant to express your frustration with my positions.
See, unlike ottomaton, I give you enough opportunities to clarify a claim you made involving a simple stat. I ask you one more time, do you have any linkable source to back up your statement that "16 Japanese lost their lives" in the confrontation in the latest Dokdo dispute with SK? Yes? No?
I think he's more interested with getting his quote, and figuring out if you're with American intelligence. You really should give him the quote, you know. Keep D&D Civil.
I haven't worked for the CIA in a long time "Upon arriving at Dokdo, the Japanese ships came under mortar fire from the Korean forces on Dokdo. The ships returned fire, but the Japanese lost one boat and suffered 16 casualties, including a number of deaths. Yet another such incident occurred on August 24, 1954. " http://www.geocities.com/mlovmo/page4.html
We simply have unreconciliable epistemic differences at this point, I fear. I simply don't see this problem, in the sense that I think the guilt and atrocities have been well documented, well propagated throughout the collective Japanese conscience, and the Japanese politicans do a good enough job expressing remorse toward the shrine visits and make the effort to explain why they do so. And the fools were all judged and most importantly dead/executed for god's sake. You simply cannot take away the right of someone to worship his own father. It's just.. I don't know how else to put it... irrational? This remains a problem, because China refuses to accept this level of remorse. They want more, how much more we will never know, since their officials seem to be never satisfied and bring it up at every instance. In other words, This isn't a Japanese problem, this is a Chinese problem because they choose to make it so. An analogy would be Chinese officials saying that Taiwanese independence (or refusing to submit to Chinese rule) is a Taiwanese problem. It isn't. China makes it a problem.
Personal attack? How so? I have to be honest with you. 2 days ago, I was rather frustrated with you, and I tried really hard to present you with all the evidence to share my thoughts with you. But you didn't listen, nor answer questions. I simply gave up. Today, I am just killing some free time at work. I am never frustrated with anyone's position, but rather with attitude from some.
Frankly Deckard. I do have respect for you. And I'm a little dissapointed. What I said to you directly and indirectly here and in another thread, a much longer post, may rough some feather. However, I do hope it provokes some thinking, including refelction, but not message board rivalry.
I don't respond when I feel like someone is over-personalizing things or starts asking me rhetorical questions. If you stay on the debate and seperate it from the person, you will get a response...
So, 1) the source is not wikipedia; 2) the incident occurred in 1953, some 50 years ago, not a current event; 3) "16 casualties, including a number of deaths" is absolutely not the same as "16 Japanese lost their lives." While you accuse others "exaggerate" on numbers, what do you think of yourself? Just to illustrate a point? Huh???
