nationalism

I am going to present here the entire text of resolution 121 along with associated comments. I realize I am a day late and dollar too short on this topic. After all, the resolution is a done deal.

How will the recent election affect US-Japan relations? I hope to have a lot to say about this in the future, but for now just a little bit regarding the war on terror ...

In this entry I discuss LDP's utter and complete lack of a real foreign policy ...

[Update: I have updated this entry by adding some more news stories. Anything new in this entry is preceded by an asterisk [*]. No English editorial from Asahi or Japan Times yet. Asahi does have an editorial in Japanese. Two S. Korean editorials have been added! Couldn't find anything in English language Chinese newspapers yet ...] I want to review some of the reaction in the media to the passage of resolution 121, the comfort women resolution, by the Foreign Affairs Committee. I've already written my own reaction here. I am still in the process of working on this entry, but wanted to forward what I've got so far.

House Resolution 121 (H.RES.121), the comfort women resolution, has cleared the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US congress by a vote of 39-2 and is now on its way to the full House where all members will vote on it. [link] I am not sure when this vote will take place. The bill's fortunes were greatly aided by an ad placed by Japanese lawmakers in the Washington Post against the measure. Many lawmakers were so upset with the ad, that this has virtually assured it of smooth sailing. Update: Trans-Pacific Radio has also now reported about this, noting quite correctly that the ad in the Washington Post was like pouring gas on fire and instead of convincing anyone to vote against the bill inspired quite a lot of people to support it.

Comment: I do not support this resolution and think it is based on numerous false premises. Let me list them:

This morning I expressed my dissatisfaction with the comfort women resolution that will soon be put to a House vote in the US congress. [link] I really like the Trans-Pacific Radio blog, and I remembered that I had read an opinion there about the comfort women issue. I decided I wanted to review what they had written, and did so this morning. I started writing out a comment that became quite long and ... oops ... a little tedious. I decided that given the length of my comment, I'd better publish it here instead of in their comment section ...

Recent News:

• 10 teachers lose 'Kimigayo' lawsuit against Tokyo, The Japan Times; "The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit by 10 high school teachers who were denied postretirement employment after they refused to sing the national anthem during graduation ceremonies in March 2004 ... Presiding Judge Hiroyuki Samura ruled 'the directive does not deny the plaintiffs' rights.' Samura ruled that singing the national anthem in school ceremonies does not force reverence of a specific ideology because it is a 'ritual practice.' He also said the annulment of the teachers' re-employment contracts was a 'legitimate exercise of discretionary power" because the plaintiffs had committed a violation of their duty.'"

Opinion:

The judge has rejected the plaintiffs claim because singing the national anthem is a ritualistic activity. So it's not an ideology. You know, in a kind of bizarro world like this, we can pretty much pick and choose whatever we want to be an ideology. How about if my child rearing philosophy precludes having my children engage in rituals? Especially those that promote group solidarity to a symbolic Emperor, who was in the not so distant past considered a God? Issues like this just can't be solved so long as education is nationally centralized. While I go so far as to support home education, at a very minimum people in their local area need to decide this, not centralized bureaucrats with an obvious far right ... well, ideology.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, one of my favorite historians writes an excellent review for the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun's watershed publication, Who was Responsible? From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor. Here is a link to the review: Who is Responsible? The Yomiuri Project and the Enduring Legacy of the Asia-Pacific War

On NBR's Japan forum the issue of modifying Japan's constitution came up, and this lead to a few posters asserting that Japan is now a peaceful country and therefore having a normal military is not a problem. For them, the idea of Japan getting involved in an aggressive war is simply a silly idea. In general, there are two choruses of sheep that bleep every time this issue comes up. One bleeps, "Japan is a modern democracy, and the Japanese people are very peaceful. So its only racism or culturism to talk about Japan waging an aggressive war." Another bleeps, "if given the chance, Japan will quickly militarize and wage war. We've seen Japan's aggressions in the past, so we know it could happen again. Japan has yet to show genuine remorse for its past military aggressions." Views like this are often given in the media, where there's little interest in digging below the surface. However, whether Japan engages in an aggressive war in the future is not something that would be easy to divine. It could happen or not happen depending on a lot of conflicting forces. Without harping on Japan's militaristic past, I want to show how genuinely easy it would be for Japan to slip into an aggressive war. Here are three different scenarios which would draw Japan into an aggressive war:

• 2007/06/19 Ruling party lawmakers dispute 'Rape of Nanking' death toll, AP via IHT; "A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan's ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthslong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous 'Rape of Nanking' has been grossly inflated."

Nariaki Nakayama an ex-education minister under Koizumi Junichiro and 100 other lawmakers have produced yet more evidence which shows the death toll at Nanking was no where near the 200,000 to 300,000 usually reported -- and instead was more like 20,000. Their new source of evidence is a document submitted to the League of Nations by the nationalist Chinese government condemning the Nanking killings. This document places the number of those killed at 20,000. Nariaki Nakayama is current head of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, an organization once headed by Shinzo Abe, that has continuously called for less masochistic history text books in Japanese schools. This year marks the 70th year anniversary of the slaughter and several films are set for release concerning it. As I write this, the Associated Press story concerning this has already appeared nine times at Google news (link). The story in Japanese, appears only once at Yahoo! Japan news. My guess is this story will get carried far and wide in the foreign press and then will get more air time in the Japanese press. The story in the Japanese press will mostly consist of the foreign reaction, and not the actual claims made. We'll see how this develops.