Atoning for World War II, 60 years later

Collective memory of immense brutality
Not all of Asia is clamoring for further demonstrations of atonement. Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, all conquered by the Japanese, have mostly come to terms with the war and are more interested in close, lucrative ties with the world’s second-largest economy than in dwelling on the wartime past.

Yet, with the approach of Aug. 15, the day on which Japan marks the end of the war, it is clearer than ever that its critics — its victims, and world opinion at large — still have nagging doubts about the depth of Japanese remorse.

Those doubts can erupt into violence, particularly in countries that bore the brunt of Japanese expansionism, China and the Koreas. Anti-Japan riots broke out in China this year, triggered by the Japanese government’s approval of a history textbook that critics say glosses over atrocities in the 1930s and 40s.

The reasons for those doubts are many.

One is the awesome scope of Japanese brutality: Tokyo had already colonized Taiwan and Korea, and in the 1930s it ravaged parts of China. At its wartime height, Japan’s empire stretched from deep in the Pacific in the east to Burma in the west.

The Japanese assault was merciless. Civilians were bombed, doused with biological agents, machine-gunned and subjected to cruel medical experiments; tens of thousands of women were forced into brothels for Japanese field troops; prisoners like those in Hanaoka were tortured, executed, starved or worked to death. Those horrors left an indelible stamp on the region’s collective memory.

Politics are another reason for the lingering resentment. The battle against Japanese aggression is a pillar in the Communists’ claim to leadership in China and North Korea. China’s government especially is prone to bolstering its own nationalist credentials by fanning anti-Japanese sentiment over the war.

But at bottom, the Japanese themselves have not decided yet how much remorse they feel, and that ambivalence is reflected in myriad ways that undermine their statements of regret.

Enshrining war criminals
On April 22, while Koizumi was apologizing for the war to fellow Asians in Jakarta, at least one member of his Cabinet and more than 80 Japanese lawmakers visited Yasukuni Shrine.

Established in 1869 to honor the spirits of the country’s war dead, Yasukuni was a bastion of the emperor-worship anchoring Japan’s imperialist ambitions in Asia. Those militarist credentials were further solidified in 1978, when executed World War II war criminals were enshrined there.

The shrine, its coterie of Shinto priests, and its supporters are among the loudest proponents of a decidedly unapologetic attitude.

At Yushukan Museum on the shrine grounds, visitors learn that the conquest of Nanking in 1937 meant that residents “were once again able to live their lives in peace” — an assault otherwise known as the “Rape of Nanking,” in which Japanese troops killed some 150,000 people. Chinese estimates run to some 300,000 dead.

The shrine’s administrators feel the international outrage over the shrine is simply a misunderstanding.

“The nation decides these people are war victims and are appropriate to be enshrined here, so we have no sense that we are enshrining criminals,” said Akio Saka, a Yasukuni priest and director of Yushukan Museum.

Conservative elite send nationalistic message
Koizumi has gone there to worship four times since his election in 2001, the last time in January 2004, and speculation is rampant in Japan that he will visit again this year.

Yasukuni is only one of many ways that the Japanese conservative elite — its politicians, the bureaucracy, the increasingly vocal right wing — weaken Tokyo’s penitent stance.

An increasingly powerful clique of nationalist educators, for example, is encouraging a rollback of mentions of Japanese atrocities from wartime accounts in public school history books.

Comic book artist Yoshinori Kobayashi has sold millions of copies of works that rant against both the United States and Japan’s neighbors, loudly claiming that Tokyo’s apologies for the war are humiliating.

Even the verdicts of the war crimes tribunal that functioned in Tokyo from 1946 to 1948 are being prominently questioned. Ruling party lawmaker Masahiro Morioka proclaimed in May that the convictions were illegal, prompting swift criticism from China.

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