Dude Abides
Banned
They should rename the museum the Ministry of Truth.
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Japanese museum forced to remove wartime aggression exhibits
- Thread starter Kenshin001
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Zuhzuhzombie!!
Member
Its tendencies have definitely been coming back in style
Events like these are the reason why nobody takes any of Japan's apologies for World War II seriously. And while it doesn't matter that much on the geopolitical level, it creates an opportunity for any of Japan's opponents to beat them up on it. It also puts a kink into the Japanese-American alliance and how it impacts their neighbors.
The answer to this, when it comes to Japan, is usually "MacArthur".
Cato the Censor
Member
I work in the museum business - and a colleague just visitied japan. She was told it's basically either "objectively talk about Japan's role in WWII" OR "get adequate funding from the government".
Those two are mutually exclusive. Such a shame.
Those two are mutually exclusive. Such a shame.
While historical revisionism isn't popular among the Japanese population at large, it is popular with their political elites. And it's precisely these people who are in charge of the LDP and the Japanese government right now. I imagine that things will get worse on this front until Abe and his cronies are removed from office.
entremet
Member
Yeah. What's up with Japan of late?
cosmicblizzard
Banned
Question for those that know. Is Unit 731 taught in Japan's schools? Seen it in a few anime and manga at least.
vas_a_morir
Banned
This is a great point. Those were desperate times, and the US had to ally itself with some rather nefarious figures.
And, of course, the US famously coached PM/Dictator General Tojo to take all responsibility for WW2 and lie about the royal family's authority. In reality, Hirohito was indeed the shot-caller. If I were him, I'd keep a bedside photo of MacArthur and kiss it every night before bed. Did him a huge solid, lol
Japan is going through a conservative period. The current PM Abe seemingly embraces the title of "Japan's Ronald Reagan," His economic plan to try to ease the value of the yen is known as "abenomics." So, that's what they are dealing with. To be fair, Japan was definitely in need of some economic reform but beyond all else, they need to begin thinking of solutions to handle the declining population and birth-rate or else things will only ever get worse But that's just my opinion.
John Kowalski
Banned
it takes some balls to justify censorship as preserving academic diversity
It's not really a recent trend. What's happened is that historical revisionists have always had a strong voice among Japan's political elites. They've been steadily growing in strength until one of them, Shinzo Abe, got into the PM's office. The reason why we're hearing more about it is that Abe has been enabled by Obama's "Asian Pivot", which sets up Japan as a counter weight to China.
Japan doesn't spend much time on World War II at all. Certainly not enough time to go over more minute subjects like Unit 731. The only people who care about that period of history tends to be the historical revisionists.
It's really quite remarkable just how many of Japan's problems can be traced to MacArthur. He helped most of Unit 731 avoid war crimes trials as well.
The real question is what's going to happen when Abenomics fails. Going by Japanese political history, other than a new LDP PM, it's probably another decade of nothing.
Mr Fahrenheit
Member
Probably nothing important.
I find it mind-boggling that the Japanese government continues to whitewash its actions during WW2. What would it lose by acknowledging and apologising for the atrocities it committed in Asia?
The new generation of Japanese has the right to know the truth about the history of its country, and come to terms that it was an aggressor and not merely a victim of the war.
The new generation of Japanese has the right to know the truth about the history of its country, and come to terms that it was an aggressor and not merely a victim of the war.
vas_a_morir
Banned
Well, this thread has made me check out a few things. Here is a show where a professor who debunks Rape of Nanking photos comes on to discuss his findings while various news personalities (some you might recognize) debate whether they think it happened or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jWD5qpYnlk
Where this gentleman is correct is that indeed the Chinese have fabricated a lot of photos and claimed they were proof of the massacre at Nanking. Truth is, although there were no doubt many atrocities committed, there is little concrete proof to help verify once account or another. If the number of victims is low, you can say "well, that's war" and if it's high, you begin to wonder if it is a society-wide problem.
China claims an impossibly huge number; Japan claims an unrealistically low number. The truth lies somewhere in-between. I think it's a pointless debate, personally, because the truth of the matter is that people (myself included) believe that the Japanese committed atrocities because the behavior of the Japanese military elsewhere during the 20th century makes it clear they were quite capable of war crimes.
Part of the rhetoric game is how you differentiate between civilians and enemy combatants. IF the Japanese didn't touch a single hair on a civilian, what they did to the soldiers who surrendered ALONE is enough to make it a crime against humanity. And nobody denies that japan slaughtered bound soldiers like animals.
It's a classic defense tactic: When people throw 100 accusations at you, take the one that's not true and push it to discredit the rest. That being said, only the most naive person in the world would believe anything the Chinese government claims. They used these people as human shields and kept them there at gunpoint so they could escape, so they have a reason to obscure the truth as well.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Inexcusable....
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
Sounds like a real winner right there boy. Yikes!
SolicitorPirate
Member
Hey Matsui, my grandfather was kidnapped and nearly killed by the Japanese army when they occupied his homeland. Please tell me the diverse perceptions relating to that.
confidence in politics is very very low. like mentioned by another poster, this swing is part of a plan to gain military autonomy.
This in no way represents public opinion.
Just another day in Japan.
I'm not a fan of the love they have for their own country, generally speaking of course.
It's like if one section of society does something fucked up they have to pretend it didn't happen in order to deal with it.
Criticizing your own country is a form of love. Their are flaws in every country's history. Pretending the bad doesn't happen is fucked up.
I'm not a fan of the love they have for their own country, generally speaking of course.
It's like if one section of society does something fucked up they have to pretend it didn't happen in order to deal with it.
Criticizing your own country is a form of love. Their are flaws in every country's history. Pretending the bad doesn't happen is fucked up.
You truly are speaking from a position of ignorance if you think you're using "they" is proper in this case. Who were the "they" that built this museum in the first place to house records of war atrocities? Non-Japanese?
People speak like every instance of something happening in Japan is representative of the country on the whole.
Bomber Bob
Banned
why Japan try so hard at their historical revisionism?
I bet young people there don't even care or know about WW2
I bet young people there don't even care or know about WW2
Why do you think? It's incredibly obvious.
reggieandTFE
Member
I visited this museum in 2005 and thought it was excellent. It had exhibits that shined a spotlight on some of the more difficult times in Japanese history. It was also notable that it was the only cultural institution I visited that was so sparsely attended and of that small attendance, the majority were Western tourists.
In some Austrian history textbooks Hitler is now a German. In Switzerland we had very hard debate about our role in WW2.
To be fair, this kind of denial is absolutely representative of the current government of Japan. It's not a single isolated incident, so it's also absolutely fair to beat up on Japan over this kind of thing.
Japan is a country of people who don't care about this kind of issue run by people who do very much. There's no viable alternative to the LDP right now, so it's going to be a matter of when and if the LDP will change. The latter is certainly possible, but the denialists are in ascendence right now. The good news is that the denialists are also staking their reputations on risky economic policy, so there may be a backlash when Abenomics collapse.
I'm not talking about the people in the article. I'm talking about the average person you meet while living in Japan. That's pretty obvious from the way I worded it.
Your experience may differ and it's anecdotal, of course, but over a long period of time I've noticed a trend. It's one of the things I personally dislike about the country.
You are truly speaking from a position of ignorance if you are using people to include me. I've lived here 15 years now so I feel I've observed and interacted with enough Japanese people to generalize about something along the lines of how they feel about their own country. And when I say generalize, I mean generalize.
The new generations are politically apathetic. They shouldn't be though considering the conservative party's raging war boner. Seriously, what the fuck is with conservative governments and tricking people into going to war.
Theonik
Member
It's not just Japan, I think many countries have this exact same problem where their youth becomes completely disengaged from the political system and a big portion of the ones that still care, (not limited to young people) are nutjobs, noting that Japan itself is a very conservative society in general.
Yeah you get a little of that everywhere. I think because politicians are often seen as ineffectual this "what's the worst that can happen" attitude forms. Generally followed by things way worse than anyone expected.
Theonik
Member
That and I think newer generations have progressively become disillusioned by the democratic process and whether their vote even matters.
It usually takes for the shit to hit the fan before people wake up.
Exactly. For all the good stuff they've done since, trying to hide the past just makes them look so shady. This is the past we're talking about. There are no "opinions" on what happened or not, but actual facts. They should actually show all of that and maybe give it a "what we should learn from this, and be sure that it never gets repeated" spin.
But then again I could see South Korea and China being all shitty about it too, so eh...
rrvv
Member
They barely teach you ww2 related stuff. Most of it is simply dry information
Upsidedown Fuji
Member
It's time for vice to do an in depth documentary on the hard rightward push in Japanese politics and the whitewashing of WWII history.
This level of self censorship unheard of outside of Japan. Hashomoto and Abe should be internationally shamed.
This level of self censorship unheard of outside of Japan. Hashomoto and Abe should be internationally shamed.
Just heard about this. So fucking mad.
I have advanced teenage English students on the weekend, and last year we learned a lot about WWI and WWII. (Their English is good enough that we mostly learn other stuff in English rather than focus on the English itself.)
We planned a field trip to Osaka primarily to see this museum, but had to postpone it because of the renovations. My wife said, "Heh...I hope it's not because they're removing all that stuff about Korea." It started as a joke until we realized that, yeah, this might be happening.
And then I read this.
Even though we kind of expected it, it's infuriating. I told two of my Japanese adult friends and they don't understand the problem. One was indifferent and just like "Oh...huh...sou desu nee...heeeee?" That's it. The other said, "Well I think the change is OK because it can be another museum like Hiroshima."
Yeah because we don't already have a Hiroshima.
There are not enough desks for my head.
I have advanced teenage English students on the weekend, and last year we learned a lot about WWI and WWII. (Their English is good enough that we mostly learn other stuff in English rather than focus on the English itself.)
We planned a field trip to Osaka primarily to see this museum, but had to postpone it because of the renovations. My wife said, "Heh...I hope it's not because they're removing all that stuff about Korea." It started as a joke until we realized that, yeah, this might be happening.
And then I read this.
Even though we kind of expected it, it's infuriating. I told two of my Japanese adult friends and they don't understand the problem. One was indifferent and just like "Oh...huh...sou desu nee...heeeee?" That's it. The other said, "Well I think the change is OK because it can be another museum like Hiroshima."
Yeah because we don't already have a Hiroshima.
There are not enough desks for my head.
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