Asia Expats Forum

oOWOo · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 2 Location:

I am an expat living partly in HK and partly in China and currently the ambience down here is totally anti-Japanese. Despite that the violence used by some protesters is inacceptable, the Japanese incapability of facing its past also is.

How would the leaders of Europe or the US react, if German's chancelor Schroeder visited war shrines of SS generals and in some German school books they would teach the kids about the heroic German army and only mention 'the Jewish incident', while Hitler was a great leader?

Why is the Japanese society so incapable of aknowledging the crimes its society has produced in its past?

Alan Stepney · Centurion Joined: 05 Nov 2004 Posts: 853 Location:

There are some Germans who think and say exactly that.
A worrying (to some) trend is that the numbers are increasing.

oOWOo · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 2 Location:

Well, I can't deny that this kind of people don't exist in Germany (or elsewhere), but the political mainstream is not like this there. At least Germans get taught their own terrible past in school and the government appoligized sincerly several times for it and is trying to achieve forgiveness. I don't see anything close to it in Japan...

Mike · Site Admin Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 4512 Location:

Hewer · Centurion Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 545 Location:

Probably the latter Mike. It's unfortunate that the government feels this way. Just a few feeble acknowledgements and half-assed apologies will never cut it with China or Korea.

It's worth noting that the policies of the government don't reflect the will of the people. I should add that the government leaders don't specifically go to visit the shrines of dead war criminals. All of Japan's war dead are enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo (all 2.5 million of them), and a dozen or so of these are war criminals.

I have lived in both Germany in Japan. It's true that the two governments are like chalk and cheese in terms of educating their people and facing up to the past. Germany has a small but determined number of right-wing extremists and Japan has very, very few. Disturbingly, Germany has a vocal left-wing and Japan hardly has one at all uhm

One of the big issues to keep in mind is that although the Japanese army committed some awful atrocities, the country was also hit by two nuclear bombs in the same war. Perhaps the leadership has felt that Japan has paid its pound of flesh? I'm not arguing with the original poster - I really think that Japan should face the music Mad

It helps to see things from their perspective though when evaluating the situation.