it's not just our government....

[lagilman]

TOKYO, March 31 — In another sign that Japan is pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II, new high school textbooks will no longer acknowledge that the Imperial Army was responsible for a major atrocity in Okinawa, the government announced late Friday.

The Ministry of Education ordered publishers to delete passages stating that the Imperial Army ordered civilians to commit mass suicide during the Battle of Okinawa, as the island was about to fall to American troops in the final months of the war.

The decision was announced as part of the ministry’s annual screening of textbooks used in all public schools. The ministry also ordered changes to other delicate issues to dovetail with government assertions, though the screening is supposed to be free of political interference.

“I believe the screening system has been followed appropriately,” said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has long campaigned to soften the treatment in textbooks of Japan’s wartime conduct.

The decision on the Battle of Okinawa, which came as a surprise because the ministry had never objected to the description in the past, followed recent denials by Mr. Abe that the military had coerced women into sexual slavery during the war.

The results of the annual textbook screening are closely watched in China, South Korea and other Asian countries. So the fresh denial of the military’s responsibility in the Battle of Okinawa and in sexual slavery — long accepted as historical facts — is likely to deepen suspicions in Asia that Tokyo is trying to whitewash its militarist past even as it tries to raise the profile of its current forces.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/world/asia/01japan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin



Clio is tapping her foot and getting pissy, she is.

Comments

[debg.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I'm wondering if Clio might not like to borrow my crossbow, to use on these asshats. Because Euterpe, with whom I do the bulk of my hanging out, isn't using it...

[deire.livejournal.com]

The irony is that the government simply ends up looking like a herd of liars. It doesn't help their image, it harms it. Not unlike our current government. Which cannot seem to remember that torture kills the legitimacy of those practicing it and helped destabilize several governments, such as in the Philippines and in Iran. :currently reading A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, by Alfred McCoy, in horror but with no surprise whatsoever:

This is nothing new...

[(Anonymous)]

There were expressions of anger a while back, when Microsoft edited copies of Encarta aimed at the Japanese market to remove reference to the Rape of Nanking by Japanese troops in WWII. Folks were pissed at Japan for demanding it, and at Microsoft for acceding.

But it's not confined to the Japanese: China has done this sort of rewrite of history for as long as it has existed. And there are stirrings of it in Germany as young Germans express displeasure over the continual attention to bad things done by their grandparents.

We all have things we'd prefer not to admit to, as individuals and as nations. The problem with such efforts at revising history is the risk of forgetting so well that it happens again. (Cue Santayana's famous comment...)

Incidentally, interested parties might wish to look at David Bergamini's "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy". The usual take is that Emperor Hirohito was a figurehead, manipulated by Tojo and the rest of his cabinet during WWII, and ignorant of what was actually going on. Bergamini contends Hirohito was a full partner in the conspiracy, and knew of and actively approved what his government was doing. Bergamini believes the Allies knew that, but thought about the consequences of deposing and executing Hirohito for war crimes, decided they didn't want to go there, and came up with a face saving cover story that would let Hirohito keep his throne and life, and make it easier to deal with Japan post war.

Everybody rewrites history to serve their own aims.
______
Dennis