By: Editors
June 2005 - EditionTwo
Editor’s Questions are different items presented by a different Editor every edition. Thought provoking, and hopefully something that will stimulate some minds.
| Editors Question: “What is your view on the current China-Japan relations?” |
Repond to this question below. Your response, along with the editors’ will be visible to other viewers as well.
June 2nd, 2005 at 12:25 am
To begin, my view may be bias as I am Chinese. Many people I believe mistake the reason for why the Chinese people ( as well as koreans and others ) are angered at the Japanese people. It is not entirely because of their genocidal acts during WWII, actually that is a very small part of the reason. The reason is that they don’t take responsiblity for their actions and they have not recognized that what they did was grotesquely inhuman.
Now many people argue, “That was 50 years ago, give it a break. The Japanese now did not do those things.” I agree, I feel it is unfair for the people of China and Korea to prejudge Japanese people now because of the past, however the only reason things are like this is because the past generation of Japanese people did not step up and take action over their acts. China and Korea will not forget the War, but more importantly what they wont forget is how Japan acts as if it is not their problem and wishs to “sweep the problem under the rug.”
Now I do understand that the Japanese government has done a few things including public apologizes, however these small acts hardly persue the people of China and Korea because it is quite clear Japan, despite what they say, does not feel that way. They still have yet to add this section of history into their textbooks. Young Japanese who did not learn of these historical events in class but instead from the current events feel that China and Korea are treating them unfairly, but again that is a fault of the Japanese government to educate them about history.
Japan needs to start taking its own morals seriously. Japan is known for the huge importance put on honor. Yet what sort of honor made them rape and kill so many defendless people in the War and then were too afraid to take responsiblity for it? It is simply Hypocritcal and cowardly.
June 8th, 2005 at 2:36 am
I think that the violence is unnecessary and unjustified on the part of the Chinese. I think that no matter what, violence isn’t justifiable, especially if it generated by anger. I do feel however, that Japan needs to take responsibility for what they have done. It is not to say that admitting to their actions will make things better, but it will definitely not make things worse.
It is unfair to the victims, the Chinese and the Japanese that such an incident is being wiped out in history. It is doing no one any good. The first step is always to acknowledge the mistake and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
June 15th, 2005 at 1:47 am
The Chinese have every right to be pissed off over the things that Japan is doing. An entire generation of people were lost due to their actions. THe Japanese have subjigated and oppressed Koreans and CHinese in the past and are not owning up to that fact right now. Trying to rewrite history for their youth is not the proper thing to do. Japan, even though defeated after WWII emerged as a powerhouse in Asia, while Korea and CHina has floundered around. Now that Korea and CHina are starting to wake up from those many years of being occuppied by the Japanese, they find out that the Japs are now rewriting history to make themselves look better. They can all go to hell.
June 24th, 2005 at 2:37 am
I’m mixed Japanese/Canadian, living in China. Fortunately because of my looks, most locals here see me more as a regular “laowai” and seem to be quite happy to discuss their opinions about current Japan-China relations. I do, however, try to have anyone who talks to me understand that I do have a very Japanese background since I was born in Japan and lived there for over a decade.
There are several key issues that have come into light recently (or have simply just gotten more attention) - PM Koizumi’s Yasukuni Shrine visits, the new middle school history textbooks, and the lack of adequate apology or actions for the war crimes commited by the Japanese militaty in WWII, seem to be the key issues. (There may be more, but these are the most pressing issues that I’m personally aware of.)
I think it is every nation’s leader’s right and duty to honour those who died for their country. That said, Koizumi’s is going about it the wrong way. He says that he is going as an individual not as head of state, but unfortunately once you take that position as PM you do have to take on the role of representing your nation, even if it is what you do in your personal time. What do people think of Americans just because of what Bush says or does?? But I digress. I think something needs to be done about the graves and the memorial, like move all the identified war criminals to a different site. Those who died with honour should still be honoured by their descendants.
The new middle school textbooks came to print, I believe, about four years ago. Japanese textbooks are reviewed every four years, and 2005 being a review year is why it is such a hot topic. These new textbooks were published by extreme right-wing groups, and in previous years were only used in fewer than ten schools, schools for handicapped children in regions where the powers-that-be had more say in the selection process. The vast majority of schools chose other textbooks, which is why so few people were so unaware of the existence of these new ones. Unfortunately, the right-wing groups involved are trying very hard to get these books into mainstream education, but there are many dedicated Japanese people fighting it. I think that the existence of the book isn’t necessarily the problem - what would happen to freedom of speech if all text were censored of personal opinion? But forcing texts with untrue information on youths who are learning history for the first time is totally inexcusable. Publish the book, fine, but don’t authorize it as a textbook.
Finally, the (in)actions of Japan after WWII to make right all the crimes commited. I don’t know what I can say about that. Japan has made public apologies, and I know there have been many court cases in the past decade to try to compensate the victims (my mother has been volunteering tirelessly especially for the rights of Korean and Japanese “comfort women”). It’s not something that can be solved with money, I know. And probably saying sorry isn’t enough. One way, perhaps, to show that Japan is truely sorry about what happened is to include facts about the Nanjing Massacre, the human experiments in Harbin and other atrocities into Japanese textbooks.
The anti-Japan demonstrations, though, were pathetic. I couldn’t believe the pictures I saw and the first-hand accounts of some of the events. People were handing out leaflets saying that buying Japanese products meant you were supporting Japan as a military nation. People were throwing bricks into Chinese-owned Japanese restaurants. Most of the people who participated in the demonstrations were there because they were passing by and got caught up in the mob mentality. Scary when you get 1.3 billion people in a mob. And the majority have no idea what the issues were. Unlike you and me, most Chinese people have no access to freedom of speech (even on the internet, new regulations were passed recently so all domain owners must be registered with the government, and words like democracy and Taiwan are banned from Chinese MSN blogs), and are not sophisticated enough to find information creatively.
Yes, there are problems that Japan has to face, mostly internally. The way Japan’s leader is behaving as the face of Japan isn’t helping. But the people who are angry about it don’t have access to information and aren’t attacking the issues in the right way.
Responses welcome. Sorry if any of my facts are messed up, and that I rambled.