ABE AND HISTORY

ABE-HISTORY: PREMIER AGAIN SEEMS SET ON STOKING CONTROVERSY AND IRE

Jeff Kingston

The Japan Times, April 28, 2013

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is no stranger to historical controversy. Back in 2001 he pressured national broadcaster NHK to revise a documentary about the judgment of an international people’s tribunal regarding the war responsibility of Emperor Hirohito(posthumously known as Emperor Showa). And in 2007 he riled Koreans with his remarks quibbling over the level of coercion used in recruiting so-called wartime comfort women on the day that Koreans commemorate the 1919 uprising against Japanese colonial rule.

As a member of the Association to Consider the Future Path for Japan and History Education founded in 1997, Abe wants to promote an exonerating narrative of Japan’s wartime past. But Abe II and his deft handlers understand just how risky it is to unilaterally revise history, and he is now relying on Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga to do the heavy lifting onairbrushing the past.

There is widespread expectation that if the Liberal Democratic Party which Abe heads wins the Upper House elections in July, thus gaining control of both houses, he will work to remove constitutional constraints on the military.

(...) [article here]

JAPAN: COUNTERPRODUCTIVE DENIALS

JAPAN MUST FACE THE PAST

Jennifer Lind

The Washington Post, January 26, 2013

Jennifer Lind is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and a faculty associate at the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of “Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said he plans to revise — likely backtracking from — a 1993 statement that acknowledged government complicity in Japan’s World War II sex slave program. Around the world, advocates of truth-telling and atonement were outraged; at home, Abe’s conservative allies celebrated. Ironically, those conservatives should be among the most chagrined.

Japan’s conservatives increasingly worry about the danger brewing in East Asia from a rising China. But their denials and equivocations about the past undermine the political and military support that Japan will need to manage the troubles ahead.

Japanese conservatives value love of country as an important part of national strength. They argue that focusing on past misdeeds erodes domestic patriotism, so they prefer to emphasize positive aspects of Japan’s history. Conservative politicians and intellectuals have sought to blur distinctions between the World War II combatants; they argue that Japan, in its expansionism and human rights violations, behaved just as other countries did and so should not be singled out for criticism and demands for apologies.

But whether or not the “everyone was doing it” argument holds true, such denials are counterproductive: A country that has been a model global citizen for decades, should draw the clearest possible distinction between good behavior and bad. Instead, Japan’s denials keep its World War II-era crimes in the spotlight, obscuring not only the huge distinctions between the Japan of old and the Japan of today but also the distinctions between it and its contemporary rivals.

(...) [article here]