On August 15, the 80th anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender and at the end of World War II, is once again inscribed with the country’s past. Domestic debate in Japan is so stressed when it shapes the story about World War II that it is called “History War”.
Japan’s action during the war is a very pleasant place in international diplomacy. Both China and both north and south Korea have bitter memories of life under Japanese occupation and rarely miss the opportunity to remind the neighbor of their past.
Inside Japan, the voices of far-flung fringes have increased more prominently in recent years, denying the cruelty of Imperial Japan during World War II. Historical revisionist groups want Imperial Japanese victims in Asia and leave history in the past in the Pacific region.
“Aren is some people alive who experience war in any thesis countries, but I don’t think they will ever stop talking about it, an effective tool with which Japan is cursed,” said Hiromichi Motkeki, president of the Tokyo-based president Hiromichi Motkeki to spread historical facts, which promotes alternative statement of Japan’s works during world war.
He said, “They want to claim moral high base on Japan, but we remember what we want to do and our war is respected and taught the history of the nation to his small generations,” he told DW.
Historical denial in Japan
The organization of Motokeki wants to spread its message by translating Japanese nationalist works of historical revisionism into English.
In the article In Japan’s organization of the Journal of International Affairs of Georgetown University, which discovered historical revisionism in Japan, as part of the “small but vocal lobby group’s interlocking web” which emerged as part of the “refutable movement” in the 1990s.
Other groups with similar objectives include “International Research Institute controversial history” or “historical awareness research committee”.
For example, the group of Motkeki, the World War, states that there was not a war of aggression launched by Japan, but a self -defense function against the US and European countries that colonized Asia. It claims that Imperial Japan “freed” the countries on which it won.
Similar to other nationalist organizations, society, which emphasizes that the expressionists named “Comfort Woman”, most of whom were not kidnapped from Korea and were forced into sexual service, but were actually well paid prostitutes. So it is that the prisoners of the friendly countries of war were treated and the workers of Korea and Taiwan voluntarily postponed the mines, shipyards or factories during the struggle.
Demanding to make Japan ‘hunting’ of foreign conspiracies
At the same time, the group says that the US committed war crimes by dropping a atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of tests conducted by the Allies who prosecuted Japanese soldiers for war crimes were only “Victor’s Justice”.
“Thesis group shared a specific method of historical writing similar to the methods of Holocaust refusal,” Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Australian National University writes Professor Emerita of Japanese History at Asia and Pacific College.
“They consider historical documents that are often relatively unclear and cherish for information, which supports their thin content,” Morris-Suzuki wrote in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, “who are often relatively unclear and for information.
“Thesis issues are built in a resort, all encouraging scenes in the twentieth century Japanese history: one that presents Japan as a victim and presents the negative images of the Japan’s East-War-War and War-Year’s past to international propaganda conspiracies,” that continues.
The Georgetown report, published in 2021, stated that the “adequate numbers” of orthodox MPs belong to the lobby groups that spread revisionist ideas. “
Historical revisionist lobby groups have worked with diplomats on promotional efforts abroad, including opposing monuments of “comfort women” in countries such as the US and Germany.
History of Japan seen through the eyes of the victims
Yaji Hosaka is a professor of history and politics in South Korea, who has long been criticized to address his past honestly for Japan’s failure, or to teach Japanese young jeans to teach the truth about the war-time era.
“I see many rights in Japan that only want to forget about all the bad things that Japan occupy Korea and attacked China and Southeast Asia,” said. “These people often say that Japan brought development and modern technology to help these countries, but it only offends the people of Korea.”
Korean historian Largreen said that after anxia from 1910, Japan forcibly assimilated the Korean people, refused them their language, suppressed indigenous culture and exploited the land and its people. The intention was to make Korea a part of the Japanese Empire, which served thousands of Koreans in the Japanese army during the war.
Hosaka says Japanese history school books still shine on the atrocities committed by the Japanese army, often low or any mening massacre, killing hundreds of thousands of people in China, misuse of civil laborers and pows or other crimes, for which Japanese was killed after the war.
“Those who forget those essentially find the content in a similar situation again in the future,” Heer said. “It is important that Japan learns from the past.”
“In the past, Germany and France worked together to make general history books for their children,” hey said. “I believe Japan should reach Korea and China and do the same thing.”
For editorial in 7 July edition China Daily The newspaper announced, “This is the time when Japan faced its crimes and military past.”
For China, the Nanjing massacre continues to bear weight at the present time.
Agreements for Chinese historians, 300,000 civilians and soldiers were killed in six -week frenzy after murder, torture, rape, arson and the attack after the Japanese army invasion, then entered Nanjing, then entered Nanjing, then in the Chinese capital, 1937.
Japan should ‘stop apologizing’
Motkeyki and others say that Japanese leaders have expressed real regrets for what happened almost a century ago, but countries say forgiveness are insufficient or rebel.
“It never wants to change,” Motkyki said, who was born in 1941.
“Japan has to defend itself from these criticisms and oral attacks. But the time has come for Japan to stop apologizing because it is now meaningless.”
On August 15, the Emperor’s anniversary announced in a radio broadcast that Japan was surrendering, Motiki would go to the controversial Yasukuni pilgrimage in Madhya Tokyo to pay his honor for the war.
He will be surrounded by more than thousands of people who want to mark the anniversary, including the decreasing number of old soldiers, relatives of men who fight, and color the right groups in uniforms.
Yasukuni is the last resting place of more than 2.4 million military and civilian victims in Japan since 1869. For other countries, however, Yasukuni is a controversial symbol, as it respects more than 1000 people guilty of war crimes.
Edited by: Darko Jenjeevic
