Japan’s WW11 dilemma

S P SETH

Toru Hashimoto, the populist mayor of Osaka, Japan’s third largest city, made an outrageous statement recently justifying the systemic prostitution of Asian women by Japanese soldiers in WWII. He said, “ When [Japanese] soldiers are risking their lives by running through storms of bullets and you want to give these emotionally charged soldiers a rest somewhere, it’s clear that you need a comfort-women system.” Hashimoto is a prominent politician and a leader of the Japan Restoration Association with 57 legislators in parliament; and is considered a potential prime minister. He has since qualified his remarks but it doesn’t make things any better. He is not the only Japanese politician seeking to justify and/or whitewash Japan’s terrible wartime record. Indeed, there is a whole crop of them, particularly among the ultra-right, who believe that Japan was not the perpetrator of the war in Asia-Pacific but rather its victim.

Which is not to say that Japan didn’t suffer when Tokyo was virtually destroyed with the US dropping incendiary bombs on the city towards the close of WW11. Worse still, Japan was the first and the only casualty so far of the US atomic bombing of its two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite all the lame justifications by the US government for such bombing, like it was meant to bring the war to an end and save American lives, it seemed more like punishing Japan and in the process to test the new weapon live. Japan was already on its knees when it was hit with atomic bombs.

But there is no argument that Japan was the aggressor from the time when it started to invade and occupy Chinese territory in the 1930s; and that was before the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941that brought the US into the Pacific theatre of WW11. China was the early victim of Japanese aggression, followed by almost all countries of Southeast Asia. The argument sometimes proffered that Japan’s occupation of Asian countries was designed to liberate them from colonial rule or helped them in that direction, is absurd and insulting.

To this day, many Japanese are unhappy that Japan was branded an aggressor in WW11 with a long list of wartime crimes. Even present Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to question Japan’s description as an aggressor in WW11, maintaining that the definition of “invasion” was relative--- relative to what is not quite clear. Though the Japanese government was made to apologize under international pressure for systemic prostitution of Asian women by Japanese soldiers (in 1993) and in 1995 to nations that suffered under Japanese wartime aggression, it somehow seemed to lack conviction; considering that it took Japan so long, after the conclusion of the war in 1945, to reach that point.

As against this, successive governments in Germany were much more forthcoming to apologize about its Nazi past, particularly the Holocaust of Jews. Which would explain, partially at least, why its political and economic rehabilitation as a normal state happened so fast. And now it is the virtual leader of the European Union, while Japan is still involved in the semantics of its relative role as a perpetrator or a victim.

Even today, Japan’s ultra-nationalists are unhappy with their government’s apologies, back in the nineties, for war crimes. So much so that Prime Minister Abe’s recent comments about the relative nature of “invasion” has led some to fear that his government might seek to modify or repudiate the earlier apology that Japan proffered. It probably wouldn’t happen for fear of creating a political storm in the region. But this sort of revisionist Japanese politics, even if not affecting all of Japan’s political spectrum, remains a problem in Japan’s relations with its neighbors, particularly with China and South Korea, the first where Japanese army committed some of the most horrific wartime crimes dating back to the 1930s, and the second where Japan’s colonial record got even worse during WW11.

With both these countries, Japan is involved in maritime disputes. At a time when Japan’s maritime dispute with China in the East China Sea, simultaneously with Beijing’s disputes in South China Sea with its Southeast Asia neighbours, was creating a certain empathy between Japan and its Asian neighbours; Osaka mayor Hashimoto’s remarks justifying systemic prostitution of Asian women during WW11, and Prime Minister Abe’s equivocation over the his country’s apology for its wartime aggression, is likely to further tar Japan’s image.

It is difficult to comprehend that even after several decades of  wartime atrocities, some quite responsible Japanese politicians, and others not so responsible, keep insisting that Japan was somehow wronged or misunderstood about its role in WW11. Japan has also been involved in an ongoing acrimonious argument/dispute with its Asian neighbours over the revision of history textbooks, taught in Japanese schools, that tend to whitewash its dark role in WW11.

In the same way, visits by Japanese political leaders to the Yasukini shrine that houses the graves of Japan’s war dead, including those convicted of war crimes in WW11, tend to rile and provoke some of its Asian neighbours. Indeed, during his recent US visit Prime Minister Abe sought to justify such visits as a normal activity, like in other countries, to pay respect to their fallen soldiers. The difference, though, is that Japan’s cemetery also includes the graves of top Japanese generals convicted of WW11 war crimes. In other words, during their visits to the Yasukini shrine to pay homage, Japan’s political leaders are also venerating the convicted “heroes” who were responsible for Japan’s role in WW11. An apparent solution might have been to bury them elsewhere than in the national cemetery for all the war dead of all times. But this is not the case and it continues to be a provocative issue for some Asian countries.

As long as Japan with an important political constituency that seeks to sanitize Japan’s wartime role or even repudiate it,  it will continue to create problems in Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbours from time to time. And Japan will have no one else to blame for this than the inability of its over-charged politicians, like mayor Hashimoto, who continue to deny that Japan did anything wrong in WW11.