Current Events – Page 99 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

Fascist wannabes in Japan fight back against Chinese protests

These fascist wannabes are the same guys who hire yakuza wannabes to drive around in silly trucks and forced a manga publisher to withdraw a piece of historical fiction that depicted the Nanjing Massacre. I really hope that the far more reasonable majority has the guts to stop paying attention to these morons.

On April 12, a man called a broadcasting company in Fukuoka saying there would be an explosion at the Chinese Consulate General in the city later in the day, Fukuoka police said.

The caller said he had planted 10 kg of explosives that would go off at 7 p.m., police said.

The consulate the same day also received a razor along with a letter of protest over the anti-Japan demonstrations in China, and a razor blade was also sent to another consulate in the city of Nagasaki, the Chinese Embassy said.

Police searched the consulate’s premises and found no explosives, and are investigating the case as a malicious hoax.

On Friday, an envelope containing harmless starch-like white powder was sent to the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo in an apparent anthrax threat, police said over the weekend.

Also that day, a mailbox doorplate and intercom at the Tokyo residence of Chinese Ambassador Wang Yi were found sprayed with red paint.

Quotes from the Tsukurukai text

A quick look at my last posts made me realize I forgot why I was posting: to show excerpts from the new textbooks!

It’s important to remember that the vast majority of the protesters in China and Korea have not read them for themselves. The Tsukurukai realizes this and plans to post free Chinese and Korean translations online in the near future.

Recent arguments I’ve seen characterize these textbooks as “not glorifying war but merely deviating from leftist doctrine that Japan invaded other nations just for the sake of invading.” However, these aren’t scholarly texts, they’re meant to be read by 14-year-olds who have to be told what to think. The fact that Tsukurukai has made texts for such an impressionable audience guarantees controversy and makes it difficult to deny that they are tools of persuasion. And picking battles such as the Nanjing massacre, comfort women, et cetera is like kicking someone when they’re down and belies the more extremist beliefs of the authors.

Anyway, trying to analyze all this is making my head spin. Let’s take a look at some excerpts. I got these from the online newsletter of The Marxist Faction of the Revolutionary Communist Union of Japan (so take it with a grain of salt!):

These “history” textbooks erase both the comfort women and the forced march of Koreans from history, and treats the Nanjing Massacre, the gravest sin of the “imperial army”, as if it substantively didn’t happen with such lines as “There were several killed and wounded among the Chinese army and civilians,” “There is disagreement on the actual number killed” et cetera. Throughout it regards The Japanese Empire’s invasion of Asia as the “Emancipation of Asia”, and makes claims that “Japan’s actions bolstered the people’s of Asia” to “quicken the pace of independence movements” in Asian countries. This text seems to know no bounds for scandal. What’s more, in the “Civics” textbook, the “Constitutional Reform” section romanticizes the Constitution of the Japanese Empire (the Meiji Constitution), comparing it favorably to the “imposition of the GHQ” as our current constitution is characterized. It goes on to rationalize worsening the constitution, emphasizing the rationalization of “the right to self defense” and “the duty of national security”.

↑Seems to repeat the same problems from 2001.

Ministry of Education Instructs revision to say “Takeshima (Dokdo) is illegally occupied by Korea”

They didn’t stop there. The Ministry of Education instructed the textbook publishers to revise the caption “Takeshima, the island over which We are in territorial confrontation with South Korea” under a picture of Takeshima/Dokdo, explaining that “there is a fear that there would be misunderstanding over territorial rights”. As a result, the publishers revised it to say, “This is Japan’s exclusive territory, but South Korea is illegally occupying it.”

That’s all for now. Coming up: choice quotes from Japanese editorials on the subject and the right wing’s reaction. Also I might take a look at Wiki Japan, not sure. Stay tuned!

Looking at “Tsukuru-kai”

It looks like Japan-China tensions just might become a dominant theme of 2005. Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse after Foreign Minister Machimura returned to Japan empty-handed, a Tokyo court rejected claims for compensation of Chinese victims of Japan’s chemical warfare in WW2. Although China has offered to pay for damage to the Japanese embassy caused by hands-off approach to security, it has no plans to let up pressure on Japan to give as-yet unspecified concessions. While there was a message on Chinese TV calling on Chinese not to take part in “illegal” demonstrations, there’s no guarantee that China won’t authorize a new round of legal protests.

On the Japanese side, Machimura’s visit has been described as Japan’s “last card” and the government wants the textbook issue to be seen as a domestic problem, off limits to negotiation. Here’s how I see it: China and Japan are not foolish enough to let this affect their economic relationship, let alone place sanctions each other or God forbid fire on each other (Of course I could be wrong, the CCP is unpredictable and I know very little about it — comments welcome). China simply sees the run-up to the September vote on UNSC expansion as perhaps the weakest point in postwar Japanese diplomatic history. Japan will likely the support of 90 Why miss the opportunity to shake a few concessions out of Japan while you’ve got them by the balls? And of course it is very much in Japan’s interest to make a compromise because a permanent UNSC seat will give Japan a much stronger diplomatic position in the future. (Although with the new developments it looks like many nations want to stall for time, citing contempt for “artificial deadlines”).

But enough about that — I’m here to talk about the current sticking point in Japan-China relations, the 新しい歴史教科書を作る会 (the “Make new history textbooks association”, or “Tsukurukai” for short). These are the people making the offending textbooks (Published by Fusosha) that have caused thousands in China to protest and some people in Korea to cut their fingers off. Their tenets:

1. Assert — renew Japan’s history textbook to give an appreciation for Japan’s traditions and history to the children.

2. Fight “masochism” — Don’t let outside countries influence our textbook inspection system (citing the first instance of such, in 1986 as being the result of “misreporting”), get rid of “foreign pressure” and make textbooks for JAPAN, not other countries.

3. Action — call for public support to “fix” an unjust history such as the uncritical acceptance of the idea that the comfort women were forced into service. On a side note, much of action they take to gain support is actually pressure on those who disagree with them. The recent lawsuit against a Chiba library that refused to accept the textbooks brought by the Tsukurukai is just one example of this. Another is the pulling of a manga depicting the Nanjing Massacre.

4. Passing inspection — Making the necessary changes to get the textbooks approved for use in classrooms. The site, from 2001, says that it will make the necessary changes to help “achieve a balance in the quality of Japan’s self-image”. Again, the Tsukurukai places a huge amount of pressure on the inspectors, which I cannot document presently but would like to.

5. Implementation — Get the textbooks used. It’s been noted that they haven’t been too successful in this regard, but as other have commented it has had an effect as well.

６．Agreement — This is, I believe, the main goal of this Association. That is, make enough noise to create a “fair and balanced” textbook industry. No textbooks refer to a Nanjing “Massacre” but instead a Nanjing “Incident”, which is a pretty clear-cut win for Tsukurukai.

A lot of people (especially the protesters in China and Korea) are saying: why the hell doesn’t Japan change its textbooks? Japan’s government does guarantee free speech, so it is somewhat defensible for them to avoid stepping in themselves. However, there is a recent precedent for holding people accountable for causing “meiwaku” (a nuisance) to the Japanese government because of stupid things they were doing — the Iraqi hostages. There was even talk by one government official (Koizumi, I think) of making them pay for their own ride home, a sentiment shared by probably a majority of people.

But where is the popular movement condemning the bothersome actions of Tsukurukai? Aside from the obvious bullying and pressure that would come from reproaching the rightists, one of the reasons I don’t expect to see many cries of ‘meiwaku’ is the way the issue is being formed as a ‘domestic’ issue that Japan should be defensive about. Japan is asking CHINA to apologize (although Koizumi said he’d stop that at the summit next week) not the publishers.

I hate to say it, but the fact that the govt and media are giving the rightists a free pass on this one might have something to do with the fact that their ideas resonate with a large part of the government and the people themselves. Criticism by the Chinese only seems to back up
the validity of the textbooks’ claims. And as much sense as it makes to compare this to the Iraq hostage situation, sentiments like that are strictly a one way street — when some leftist wackos embarrass the govt (Iraq) they are stupid, when some rightist wackos stand up for Japan, they’re all but heroes.

Anti-Japan Protests Spread to Vietnam

From Reuters Japan:

Anti-Japanese Protests Held at Japanese Embassy in Vietnam
Apr. 17, 2005 7:03pm JST

HANOI (4/17, Reuters) Anti-Japanese protests were held in front of the Japanese embassy in Vietnam’s capital city Hanoi.

Wearing headbands, the participants shouted anti-Japanese slogans into bullhorns and waved banners written in English and Chinese characters. One of the banners read “Japan get out!”

The demonstrators are said to be expatriate Chinese living in Vietnam.

日本語の原稿を読むにはREAD　THE　REST　をクリックしてください。
Continue reading Anti-Japan Protests Spread to Vietnam

攻撃を受けた日本総領事館、中国国旗に換えられる More lame protests in China UPDATED

UPDATE 2: JANJAN has good coverage with lots of links to video (Japanese).

攻撃を受けた日本総領事館、中国国旗に換えられる
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UPDATE: Chinese protestors attack Shanghai Japanese Consulate, put up a Chinese flag:

Detailed video of Shanghai demonstrations (Japanese)

More pictures of the demonstration (With a nice Engrish wording of the Japanese reaction: “Holding the Beijing Olympics is impossible.”)

Saru, all bets are off: the protests went ahead on Saturday despite claims by the CCP that they would keep them in check. From Japan Today:

Thousands protest in China; Japan’s consulate, restaurants in Shanghai attacked

Thousands of Chinese marched on the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai on Saturday, hurling bottles and other objects as they accused Japan of distorting its aggression against China before and during World War II, and calling for a boycott of Japanese goods. Protesters vandalized three Japanese-themed restaurants before breaking at least nine windows at the consulate. They also broke the cash register at a “shabu-shabu” restaurant in Shanghai’s prime shopping district.

Unless they get out of hand, the protests don’t seem to mean much by themselves. I am interested to see what Japan’s reaction to all this will be.

日本とドイツが第二次世界大戦のことを共同謝罪すれば？と匿名希望の外交官たちが指摘する　Japan’s key to the UNSC: Japan and Germany apologize for WW2 together?

日本の安保理常任入りの鍵となるかも

米日刊新聞「ワシントンタイムス」の14日付の記事の中にこう書かれている：

日本が付けた傷を鎮め、将来に向かって取り組むのに、ドイツがどうやって過去の問題を処理したのかが大きな影響を与えるだろうと指摘する外交官が多かった。

匿名希望のヨーロッパ外交官がこう話している、「ドイツは快刀乱麻｛かいとうらんま｝を断つ刀を持っている。ドイツは日本が軍事、産業、機関作りを始めた時代から大きな影響力を持ってきた。ドイツが教える最後の指南は謝罪のしかただ。アジア人と欧米人は時間の計り方が違う。我々は5･10周年単位で記念日を祝うが、中国が60年の暦（還暦）をアジアに与えたのだから太平洋戦争からちょうど60年が経った。こんなシーンを想像してみよう－ドイツと日本はドイツの降伏記念日に当たる5月と、日本の降伏に当たる8月に一緒に深い反省を表現し、謝罪すればどうだ。」

Japan’s homework assignment for this month: Call German diplomats! An interesting article in the (Rev. Moon-owned) Washington times from UPI had an interesting suggestion for Japan:

Several respondents mentioned Germany’s role in dealing with its past as an opportunity for Japan to heal wounds and deal with the future.

The best answer came from a European envoy who told UPI, “Germany holds a knife that can cut the Gordian Knot.”

“The Germans have had big influence on Japan’s development going back to the early days of the country’s military, industrial, and institution building along Western patterns,” the envoy said.

“The last lesson Germany can show Japan is how to apologize,” the diplomat added.

The foreign representative noted: “Don’t forget Asians and Westerners measure time in different ways; we look at anniversaries in terms of five and ten years’ time passing- China gave neighboring countries a 60-year calendar which runs full circle this year.”

“Picture this scenario,” the diplomat said. “Germany and Japan together express remorse and apologize for the wrongs they did first in May (when Nazi Germany capitulated) then August (when Imperial Japan surrendered).”

The diplomat believes “joint apologies in Europe and Asia allow the Japanese an initial face saving measure and formula that could enable Japan to apologize on its own in the future.”

Perhaps. UPI notes that Sino-Japanese relations are at a critical impasse, with both sides entrenched and unable to break a destructive cycle of mutual bitter feelings that could destabilize the region unless something is done immediately.

Seems like a great idea, for Japan at least. Germany doesn’t have nearly as much to do to convince the world that it’s really sorry about World War II. Germany doesn’t have much to gain from associating itself with Japan’s method of apology. Looking at it from a cynical political perspective, Japan has to make it worth Germany’s while. That way Japan’s image will improve and maybe China would even support its entry to the UNSC. But I think Japan also has an obligation to express its regret and apology on the 60th anniversary of its surrender.

Quick links following up on recent topics

Here’s a few links that I have laying around, mostly related to things that I’ve been discussing over the past week. I’m a little too tired and sick to offer any commentary right now, but feel free to leave your own.

The Daily Show’s comment on the anti-Japan protests in China, in streaming WMV. You know a story is big when the Daily show is making fun of it.

The Economist has a travelogue type article about life in a particular village in rural China.

Despite China’s increasing openness to prying foreign eyes, the dynamics of village life remain hidden away. Although the Chinese media report extensively on rural problems, foreign journalists require government approval to conduct interviews in the countryside (as indeed, in theory, they do for any off-base reporting in China).

In typical Chinese fashion, they only gave the reporter permission to visit one of the more prosperous rural villages, but that aside it’s still an interesting piece.

The Taipei Times is carrying an Associated Press report on how China is using the war on terrorism to supress the Uyghur’s Muslim lifestyle in western Xinjiang province.

Comparing the situation to Tibet, a report by the two groups said Muslims in the Xinjiang region are “concerned for their cultural survival” amid a government-financed influx of settlers from China’s Han ethnic majority.

ESWN translated a section of a very interesting article on how the Chinese government suppresses their own history. Amazingly the author of the article is in Beijing- I hope nothing bad happens to him.

When it comes to viewpoints about warfare and nationalism, the Chinese people are not better than the Japanese. “The winner becomes the emperor while the loser is just a bandit” is an age-old concept of warfare in China. The arrogance of the Han tribe about owning everything under heaven continues to live on today as nationalism. More particularly, the way in which the Chinese Communists have fabricated history and used lies to rule since seizing power is much worse than how the Japanese rightists are revising their history of invasion; the way in which the Chinese Communists have beautify their totalitarian rule is much worse than how the Japanese rightists have beautify militarism. The way by which the Chinese Communists have ruled with lies has created a basis by which Japan can revise its history in order to fool the new generation of Japanese.

This web site seems to be associated with the organization that created the controversial new textbook in Japan. They have a near endless supply of offensive articles written in Japanese, as well as a number in English so poor that they seem to have been translated by a computer. They also host a couple of articles contributed by a fellow with a Germanic sounding name, who manages to combine anti-Semetic and pro-Japanese Imperial sentiment.

The ancient Hebrews, however, have shown a propensity for mass enslavement and slaughter following victory. Since Jews have significant influence over U.S. military and foreign policy, perhaps some of these ancient lessons have been carried over into modern times. It would not be a stretch to suggest that American post-war policies may be an extension of the Jewish experience.

More rioting in China, this time not aimed at Japan

Reuters reported early this morning that rioting occured on Sunday in Huankantou village, Dongyang city, in Zhejiang province(just south of Shanghai).

More than 50 police were injured on Sunday and rushed to hospital, with five listed in critical condition, a doctor told Reuters. About four villagers were injured.

Police had tried to disperse about 200 elderly women who had kept a 24-hour vigil for two weeks at sheds and at a roadblock outside an industrial park housing about 13 chemical factories, villagers and local officials said by telephone.

Two of the women were killed, two villagers said. “They were run over by police cars,” one said.

A source with knowledge of the incident who requested anonymity said the two had died during an attempt to arrest them. He did not elaborate, but a statement from the city government denied that anyone had been run over and killed.

Thousands of villagers clashed with police in riot gear, overturned about 10 police cars and hurled rocks at officers holed up in a local high school, residents and officials said.

“Villagers knocked down the wall of the school and charged in,” one villager surnamed Wang said.

Residents also smashed the windows of about 50 buses which carried some 3,000 police, paramilitary police and security guards to the scene at about 3 a.m. on Sunday to try to disperse protesters, they said.

Some of their specific grievances included,

“We hate the people in command of the police. We are waiting for the government to respond,” a second villager said.

A third said: “We demand the provincial government send a team to investigate this case.”

Villagers told stories of withered trees and grass near the factories, inedible vegetables and undrinkable water.

“Give me back my land. Save my children and grandchildren,” read a banner hanging outside the industrial park.

Although this rioting occured on the same day as anti-Japanese riots in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities, it was triggerd by long standing grievances that the villagers had been peacefully protesting for some time. Perhaps the Chinese authorities decided that the dramatic anti-Japan protests in the city would provide sufficient cover for them to remove the demonstrating townsfolk?

Hong Kong based Asia Times reports that Beijing has imposed a domestic media blackout on the Japan protests, and speculates that:

Chinese leaders may fear, too, that continuous anti-Japan demonstrations could trigger protests about broader social grievances, speculated a university professor who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Just two months ago, Chinese communist leaders refused to let people come out and publicly commemorate the late Zhao Ziyang [the purged party leader who sympathized with the 1989 Tiananmen student demonstrators]. They know that wound is still fresh and could easily open,” the professor said. ‘. “They don’t want protests to turn against them.”

This is far from the first time that large scale rural protests have taken place in China. The Reuters article states that

More than 3 million people staged about 58,000 protests nationwide in 2003, according to the latest available official figures. The number of demonstrations jumped 15 percent from the previous year

This is also not the first time that such a protest has turned deadly and been reported in foreign media. Remember last year’s riots in Henan province in central China.

As many as 5,000 people fought with sticks and burned several houses over the weekend in violence between Hui Muslims and members of the Han ethnic majority, according to Langchenggang residents interviewed by phone.

The fighting killed seven people and injured 42, according to residents and the government. Langchenggang residents could not confirm a report by The New York Times of 148 deaths, including 18 police officers.

Authorities imposed martial law on the area in Zhongmou County near the city of Zhengzhou, residents said.

In a way, the simultaneous occurrance of these two very different protests speaks for the divide between the rich urban and poor rural areas in China. The city dwellers may have the luxury to protest atrocities that happened decades ago, but the bulk of the population in China seems to be more concerned with atrocities that their own government is committing against them every day.

Banned manga depicting Nanjing Massacre

This is a repost of an article from the Kyodo news service originally published on October 14th of last year.

Publisher pulls Nanjing Massacre manga after politicians protest
TOKYO — Major publisher Shueisha Inc said Wednesday it will suspend publication of a comic in a popular weekly manga magazine after Japanese local politicians claimed it “distorts history.”

Shueisha said it will not publish the comic “Kuni ga Moeru” (The Country is Burning) in the Oct 13 and Oct 28 editions of Weekly Young Jump, which is immensely popular with Japanese men.

“Some people say the photo used for reference in the drawing was fabricated. It was inappropriate to use such material,” a Shueisha representative said.

The comic series, authored by Hiroshi Motomiya, is a fictional tale about the life of a bureaucrat in the turbulent times of the early Showa era (1926-1989). It has been carried in the magazine since November 2002.

In the magazine’s Sept 16 and Sept 22 editions, the comic described Japanese soldiers massacring civilians in Nanjing in China, in reference to the Nanjing Massacre of 1937.

A group of 37 members of local assemblies protested to the publisher on Oct 5, saying the massacre was presented as if it were the truth in the form of manga and that it was deliberately distorting history by using a photo whose authenticity cannot be confirmed.

They said in a letter that there is strong evidence that the massacre never happened and no proof that it did.

“The parts related to the use of the fake photo as pointed out will be edited or deleted when the comic book is published,” Shueisha said in its reply to the complaint.

The Nanjing Massacre refers to atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army against civilians in Nanjing and its vicinity from December 1937 to January 1938.

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal concluded that more than 140,000 people were killed. Some Chinese historians put the death toll much higher at 300,000 in Nanjing alone. Japanese accounts vary from several thousand to 200,000 dead. (Kyodo News)

Here is a sample page from the original manga, chosen to show how graphically it actually depicts the Massacre. Do realize that this comes from the weekly manga magazine ‘Young Jump,’ whose primary audience is Jr Highschool boys-the same segment that the shitty rightwing textbook is supposed to be teaching.

The entire 20 or so pages can be found here.

I think that this backs up both of my points in my previous post; namely that firstly, the Japanese public at large is in fact exposed to and open to a range of viewpoints regarding history and are not opposed to the truth, and secondly that the ultra rightists, in their vocal attempts to stifle what the public sees, succeed in becoming the only voice picked up by international media. Still, it is most disturbing that there are a number ultra rightists who deny that the Nanjing Massacre ever took place. Of course their presence on the web is mainly in Japanese, but here is one example in English. Japanese readers may be interested in this detailed page trying to ‘prove’ that the photographs used in Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking are false. For the record, I find Nanjing Massacre-denyers about as credible as people who believe that we never actually landed on the moon. (To be clear, that means I don’t believe them.) It is very unfortunate that the Japanese public is willing to accept this kind of bullying by extremists.

What China doesn’t want you to see: the Japanese Embassy in China

Thanks to Mainichi:

20 broken windows, thrown water bottles, tomatoes, eggs, yakiimo, enough so that you can’t step without stepping on something.

In addition to the damage at the embassy, Japanese restaurants, businesses, even Japanese cars were attacked.

The Embassy released the pictures to the Japanese media after Chinese authorities banned foreign reporters from the Embassy area.