Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is once again stirring Asia's cauldron of national rivalries and historical resentments. This time, he has instructed a committee of historians to reexamine the official apology delivered in 1993 to World War II-era sex slaves held in Japanese military brothels. It is clear from various recent statements that some of Abe's closest advisers believe that the apology was not in order, so the committee might well conclude that Japan was never officially involved in prostitution, and that its "sincere remorse" should therefore be withdrawn.
What perverse reason could Abe have for pursuing such an outcome?
Glossing over, or denying, dark chapters of national history is not unique to Japan, of course. There is no room for Stalin's mass murders in the kind of "patriotic" education favored by Russian President Vladimir Putin. And the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to name but one bloody event in China's recent past, has been officially forgotten.
Still, Japan is a democracy, with freedom of expression. The official apology made in 1993 was prompted by a Japanese historian's discovery of documents showing that the Imperial Japanese Army had been directly involved in setting up, though not necessarily in running, what were known as "comfort stations." One of the official reasons was that widespread rape of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers was provoking too much resistance among the local population.
Various means were used to stock the brothels with young women. But, because there was no escape, the women, once ensnared in the system, were effectively slaves.
This has been officially admitted, so why reopen the ghastly business now, at a time when rescinding the apology would make Japan's already-strained relations with China and South Korea many times worse?
If Abe and his allies were cosmopolitan in their outlook, with a deep understanding of, or concern for, other countries, the decision to revisit the 1993 apology would indeed be extraordinary. But, as is true of many political leaders, especially on the nationalistic right, they are chauvinistic provincials whose concerns are almost entirely domestic. In their efforts to revise the historical record, they are not really thinking of Koreans or Chinese, but of political adversaries at home.
The views of the Japanese on their country's wartime history are deeply divided, reflecting political battle lines drawn in the immediate aftermath of the war, when Japan was under Allied occupation. The United States, which ran the occupation, was keen to reform Japanese society in such a way that another war would be unthinkable. Worship of the emperor was abolished, though Hirohito remained on his throne. Education was purged of all militaristic and "feudal" elements, including favorable references to the samurai spirit. A new pacifist constitution, written by the Americans, banned the use of armed force. And Japan's wartime leaders were tried in Tokyo by Allied judges for "crimes against peace" and "crimes against humanity."
Most Japanese, heartily sick of war and military bullying, were happy to go along with all of this. But there was always a right-wing minority that felt humiliated and resentful of the loss of national pride and, more important, national sovereignty, for Japan's security would henceforth have to depend entirely on the protection offered by the US.
One of the main leaders of this group of disgruntled nationalists was Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather. Kishi's aim was to regain Japanese pride and sovereignty by revising the constitution and reviving old-fashioned patriotism, thus undoing some of the American educational reforms. He failed, because most Japanese were still allergic to anything that smacked of militarism.
Until not long ago, there was a strong left-wing current in education and some of the media that used Japan's horrendous wartime record as an argument against any kind of revisionism. But, as long as the Japanese left used history to make this political argument, the nationalists pushed back by claiming that stories of wartime atrocities had been greatly exaggerated.
Books about the infamous Nanking Massacre of 1937, or the enslavement of "comfort women" in military brothels, were denounced as "historical masochism" or dismissed as "the Tokyo Trial View of History." The left was accused of being complicit in spreading foreign – Chinese, Korean, or American – propaganda.
This, then, is the modern Japanese version of populism: the "liberal elites," by falsifying the history of Japan's glorious war to "liberate Asia," undermined the Japanese people's moral fiber. Because the ideological collapse of left-wing politics in Japan has been as precipitous as in much of the Western world, the so-called liberal elites have lost much of their former influence. As a result, the voice of the nationalist right has grown louder in recent years.
That is why Abe can get away with appointing cronies to the board of NHK, the national broadcasting company, who openly claim that the military brothels were an entirely private enterprise and that the Nanking Massacre was a foreign fabrication. Historical truth is not the point; political mastery is.
Japan's prime minister is playing a risky game. He is upsetting allies in Asia, embarrassing the US, and making bad relations with China even worse. Like Putin, he is driving himself and his country into further isolation for entirely domestic reasons. In a region increasingly dominated by Chinese power, he will be without Asian friends.
And that is where Abe's behavior becomes truly perverse. After all, a Japan that is isolated in Asia will be even more dependent on the US, the wartime victor, which Abe and his nationalist allies hold responsible for the postwar order that they seek to revise.
(Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College.)
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| Chris D. Nebe |
In Chinese, just as in English, quotation marks can indicate attribution, doubt, or dismissiveness. And just like in the United States, terrorism is a sensitive issue in China, where disaffected citizens have at times used violence for political ends. In such an environment, employing quotation marks around a highly-politicized word like terrorism can be combustible.
On the evening of March 1, a group of knife-wielding assailants dressed in black burst into a crowded railway station in Kunming, the capital of China's southwest Yunnan province, and slashed travelers, passersby, and police, killing 29 and injuring 143, including children and the elderly. Police shot dead four assailants at the scene, and say they have captured all the surviving suspects. Eleven hours after the attack, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency announced that based on evidence found at the crime scene, separatists from the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang are behind the terrorist attack. (So far, no groups or individuals have claimed responsibility, and Beijing released the name of one alleged perpetrator.)
Following the Xinhua report, many major Western media outlets covering the event, including The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, BBC, and CBC of Canada, used quotation marks around the word "terrorism," some in the article's headline, some in the body, and some in both. Chinese Internet users and domestic media were quick to notice this punctuation choice, and a storm of anger against perceived Western biasquickly brewed on Sina Weibo, China's largest microblogging platform.
While some Weibo users interpreted the quotation marks as attribution to the Chinese government's official statements, which most Western media outlets usually take with a grain of salt, many detected sympathy with separatist aspirations in Xinjiang, or what one called an "obvious agenda." Another wrote that some of the articles about the Kunming attacks ended "with the Han Chinese's invasion of Xinjiang's religion and culture," which "turned the carnage of civilians into a political game." (Xinjiang became part of the People's Republic of China in 1949, after Communist troops entered the region.) Tech entrepreneur Luo Yonghaotweeted to his 5.8 million followers that "uniformed thugs indiscriminately killing innocent civilians undoubtedly constitutes terrorism." He wrote that he had always admired the West, but "cannot stand" the way Western media first reported the Kunming attack.
Chinese state media did not sit on the sidelines. The People's Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, also took to Weibo to demand an explanation from Western media for their "blindness and deafness" and "intentional downplaying of the violence and sympathy toward the assailants." "China sympathized with the September 11 terrorist attack," itwrote in a popular tweet. "But some American media harbored double standards regarding the Kunming terrorist attack. Why?"
A post by the official account of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing fueled the outrage. It did not, as many Chinese had hoped, characterize the attack as terrorism, but instead called it a "senseless act of violence." Almost all of the more than 50,000 comments left on the postaccused the U.S. Embassy of a double standard when it comes to violence in China. "If the Kunming attack were a 'horrific, senseless act of violence,'" the most up-voted comment reads, "then the 9/11 attack in New York City would be a 'regrettable traffic accident.'" (The United Nations Security Council released a statement late Sunday condemning "in the strongest terms the terrorist attack.")
Some of the fallout from the embassy's statement stems from an unfortunate translation. "Senseless violence," a common diplomatic phrase the Obama administration has also used to describe the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, which killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, read as "meaningless violence" in Chinese. Many Chinese web users, likely already attuned for signs of disrespect, took that to mean the U.S. sympathized with the assailants. The violence did not serve its supposed purpose, the message seemed to say, but the assailants' goals could be achieved by some other means.
Perceived bias from Western media has roiled Chinese public opinion before. In the spring of 2008, Western media drew widespread criticismin China over coverage of ethnic clashes in Tibet and Xinjiang that many Chinese believed underplayed violence perpetrated by ethnic minorities. In the run-up to the August 2008 Beijing Olympics, many Chineseseethed against Western coverage of the Olympic torch relay, which often focused on the disruptions of the relay by human rights activists. In early 2008, some young Chinese Internet users set up a website called Anti-CNN to call out what they believed was biased reporting on China and, according to China's foreign ministry, to reflect grassroots "condemnation" of some Western media's "distorted and exaggerated" views.
These developments are troubling for U.S. - China relations, but not entirely surprising. In a digital age, it's relatively easy for wired citizens of one country to peer into the media environment of another. But old-fashioned cultural, political, and linguistic barriers remain. Even -- perhaps especially -- at times of tragedy, the combination often spurs more pique than understanding.
AFP/Getty Images
This picture is of the 3 warning lines set up by the police on Beijing Road which leads to Kunming Train Station, prohibiting all vehicles from entering. 
This picture is of one of the passengers at the scene still in shock. 
A group of riot police on route to the scene. 
On the night of March 1, scattered luggage outside one of the ticket booking halls of Kunming Train Station (photo taken by cellphone). Photographed by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ling Yiguang. 
On the night of March 1, the police cordoning off the scene outside Kunming Train Station. Photographed by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ling Yiguang. 
On March 2, before dawn, the wounded receiving medical treatment at Kunming City No.1 People's Hospital. Photographed by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ling Yiguang. 
On March 2, before dawn, a wounded man receiving medical treatment at Kunming City No.1 People's Hospital. Photographed by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ling Yiguang. 
This picture is of a wounded person receiving emergency medical treatment at the hospital. 
This picture is of KunMing Train Station. 
