Tag: Japan

The Japanese Defense Reform No One Is Talking About http://t.co/exLP9jm37D pic.twitter.com/OnFXCavn0u

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) May 19, 2015

It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.  I am willing to bet there won’t be much coming out of this publicly, but behind the scenes a few issues will probably be worked out:

South Korean and Japanese defense chiefs are expected to hold bilateral talks later this month for the first time in four years despite soured ties over historical rows, government sources here said Tuesday.

Defense Minister Han Min-koo plans to meet with his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani around the end of this month in Singapore on the sidelines of the regional security forum, the Shangri-La Dialogue, according to a source. The upcoming annual security forum is slated for May 29-31.

If held, it will be the first bilateral talks between the top defense officials in four years, as they have shunned such meetings due to deteriorated bilateral relations over history-related issues, including Japan’s refusal to apologize for its wartime atrocities.

Icy Seoul-Tokyo relations have taken a turn for the worse in recent months after the Abe administration renewed claims to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, and attempted to deny its wrongdoing during World War II, such as the forced sexual enslavement of Asian women, mostly Korean, for its soldiers. Korea was under harsh colonial rule by Japan from 1910 to 1945.

“On the table would be issues of mutual interest including how to work closely to deter and counter North Korea’s nuclear and missiles threats and the implementation of the revised U.S.-Japan defense guidelines,” another source said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Here is an article in the Christian Science Monitor that discusses how South Korean President Park Geun-hye could leave a legacy if she was able to work out a reconciliation with Japan over its World War II past:

Yet the South itself is sharply riven on partisan lines, between right and left. Disagreements are profound on how to interpret most of the past, including the autocratic rule of Park’s father, who served as an officer in the Japanese Army. Not until 2012, for example, could political agreement be gained to open the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which sits prominently at the Gwanghwamun Square rotary next to the American embassy. But inside, one subject does garner agreement: Korea’s unhappy occupation by Japan, a time when Koreans were forbidden to learn or speak their language.

“In 1905 Imperial Japan forced the Korean government to sign a treaty depriving it of sovereignty,” reads an opening script. Partway through is a photo display of the so-called “comfort women,” stating: “Women and girls were even victimized as forced laborers at the various places or as the military sexual slaves at the Japanese military camps.”

In fact, comfort women are just the tip of the iceberg for Korea’s outcry. It is Abe’s entire revision of the basic meaning of World War II that bothers Japan’s neighbors, many of whom see the prime minister as also trying to restore the honor of his own family. Abe’s maternal grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, a minister in Japan’s wartime cabinet who was arrested on war crimes charges and then released.

Indeed, many ideas that purport to restore Japan’s honor and dignity hearken to Meiji era propaganda, which helped form the basis for Japan’s colonial expansion and the war. For example: that Japan in the 1930s was only taking territory to keep it from Americans and other European colonials. That Japan was acting as friend to the nations it invaded. That Japan’s cause was just, and the atom bomb attacks made Japan the war’s victim.

“The problem for us is that Japan’s denial and revisionism is their actual position,” says Choi Jin-wook, president of the Korean Institute for National Unification.  “For them it is truth. They have drifted into believing that they were victims of World War II. For Japan, nothing is remembered. For us, nothing is forgotten.”

Prof. Choi points to another factor: Mounting strains between Japan and China mean that Abe cannot be seen as showing any weakness in northeast Asia.

Today, most historians and a UN investigation argue that some 200,000 women in Asia were forced into sexual slavery during the war. Yet Abe has questioned this, despite previous Japanese official apologies and the payment of compensation starting in 1992. Last November, Abe enabled a commission to “consider concrete measures to restore Japan’s honor with regard to the comfort women.”

The new Japanese position has emerged gradually. But its main points are this: Korean women were not rounded up and forced to service Japanese soldiers, as most history texts outside Japan suggest. Rather, the women were volunteers, willing participants – not coerced by Japan but offered up under Korean management.  [Christian Science Monitor]

In regards to the revisionism the Japanese use to justify the war, the Koreans are absolutely correct.  All one has to do is go to the Yushukan Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.  The Yasukuni Shrine gets all the attention because it honors all Japanese war dead to include those convicted of war crimes.  Having been there, Yasukuni is nothing compared to the Yushukan Musuem where World War II is called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere War.  Those who put the museum together believe that the Imperial Japanese were liberating Asian nations that were being colonized by Europeans and Americans.  Much of the history depicted at the museum is laughable.

As far as the colonial occupation of Korea I always recommend that people read Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
which dispels much of the myths about the occupation, like the one repeated in the article about not being allowed to speak Korean.  Koreans could speak their native language during the colonial period just not in schools or to hold government positions. People who have spent time in Korea know how much Koreans value education.  The Imperial Japanese understood this too and this was how they hoped to assimilate the Koreans into their culture over time.

As far the comfort women issue I always recommend that people read The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) which provides a lot of facts instead of emotional arguments on this issue.  The facts show that very few Korean women were forcibly conscripted by the Japanese Army to be comfort women.  The vast majority came from Korean brokers who either bought girls from poor families, tricked them, or sometimes kidnapped them to be comfort women.  The fact that after World War II this same system was in place to provide women to be camptown prostitutes for the US military further validates this.  The critics in Japan on the comfort women issue want people to believe they were just prostitutes that the Japanese military did not force into prostitution. With that said the Imperial Japanese would have known that these women were being bought, coerced, or kidnapped making them just as liable for the crime as the Korean brokers.

Considering how repugnant the historical revisionism is in Japan I do not see any way that President Park Geun-hye can reach out to Prime Minister Abe without him first making significant concessions. First of all he should advocate for removing the war criminals names from Yasukuni and come out against the historical revisionism in the Yushukan Musuem.  He cannot force change because they are both private entities, but he can advocate for change which would be positive first step to reconciliation.  If he doesn’t make a significant first step I don’t see how politically President Park can move forward on this issue.

It seems like if Prime Minister Abe really wanted to showcase a “New Japan” he should do more on the historical issue front, but at least he said he stood by the previous Kono Statement that offered an apology for World War II atrocities:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe drummed up support for the new Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation in his address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday, and signaled a “New Japan” is ready to enter into a liberalizing trade agreement with the United States.

The prime minister’s speech, the first given by a Japanese leader before a joint session of Congress, praised the U.S.-Japan alliance for winning the Cold War and allowing Japan to grow and prosper.

But as the new defense pact goes into plan, Washington and Tokyo have agreed the U.S. military presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa will be diminished and relocated to places outside Japan.

According to Abe, Japan will provide up to $2.8 billion to help “improve” U.S. bases in Guam.

Tokyo, in turn, will expand its self-defense role in the Pacific to include deploying deterrence against potential missiles headed for U.S. territory, a historic reinterpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution…………………………….

“I will uphold the views expressed by the previous prime ministers,” Abe told the joint session of Congress, indirectly referring to the 1993 Kono Statement that acknowledged the Japanese military had forced comfort women to endure sexual slavery in brothels. [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

https://twitter.com/ZacharyKeck/status/592780225936805888

This document has been making the rounds in the Korean media, but really it doesn’t state anything we don’t already know:

Japanese police sexually abused female Korean protesters during the occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, an old report by an American missionary group shows.

The report details incidents where Japanese police stripped, tortured and even raped Korean women who took part in the March 1 independence demonstrations in 1919.

The Korean Methodist Church in New York on Saturday revealed the 27-page report compiled by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America detailing the abuses by Japanese police based on accounts from American missionaries in Korea at the time.

Titled “The Korean Situation,” it explains the historical background that led to the protests, as well as Japan’s brutal crackdown on protesters and changes in Tokyo’s colonial policies after the demonstrations.

The Korean Methodist Church in New York was established in 1921 and served as the U.S. support base for Korea’s independence movement. It discovered the report in its archive while going through old documents to prepare for a book to mark its 100-year history.

The report contains statistics on the brutal crackdown. It shows that 631 Koreans died from March 1 to July 20, 1919 as well as nine Japanese, mostly police. Some 28,934 Koreans were arrested — 5,156 jailed and 9,078 released after being whipped.

“Among the tortures and brutalities dwelt on by writers and especially emphasized by the American press were those dealing with young women and school girls who were stripped and examined, tortured and maltreated,” it says. “No charge is made of rape under these conditions.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

The article opens about the Japanese police raping Korean women, but according to the quote from the document it said no charge is made of rape so I don’t know what is true.  However, the fact that Japanese police were generally pretty brutal against protesters is nothing new.  I recommend everyone read this article about the March 1st Movement that provides a more balanced account of what happened.

What to Expect From Abe's US Visit http://t.co/hSSx3MBlN7 pic.twitter.com/lHGFLX0PzH

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) April 24, 2015

White House calls for 'final resolution' of Korea-Japan history issues http://t.co/orIcEB6tJZ

— Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) April 24, 2015

Here we go again with arguing over remorse and apologies by Japan in the Korean media:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed Japan’s “deep remorse” over World War II, but did not issue a fresh apology to the people of Asia.

Abe delivered a speech on Wednesday on the first day of the two-day Asian-African summit in Indonesia marking the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference.

Referring to the principles of peace laid down at the original conference, Abe said in his speech that “With feelings of deep remorse over the past war, Japan made a pledge to remain a nation always adhering to those very principles.”

However, Abe did not offer an apology to the people of Asian countries who suffered under Japan’s colonial rule and aggression.  [KBS World]

Well at least KBS didn’t make a claim about Japanese never apologizing for their past World War II actions.  Instead they are upset their wasn’t a fresh apology.  This is actually progress.  I think Abe is just playing to the sentiment of the Japanese public now that is probably hit apology fatigue with all the demands for more apologies after their government has already made a number of apologies. Really the only thing that would make the critics in Korea happy is if a wrecking ball took out the Yasukuni Shrine, Japanese textbooks were burned (even if the information is accurate), and Abe commits seppuku on top of Namsan. Since that isn’t going to happen we will be hearing about this for years to come.

It will be interesting to see how long this cooperation lasts:

Despite repeated attempts by reporters to bait him into dredging up lingering resentments against Japan, a senior South Korean diplomat bit his tongue, downplaying 70-year-old tensions at a trilateral meeting in Washington.

“Diplomacy is about trying to find a way to work together while we have healthy differences on issues,” South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong told reporters at the State Department on Thursday.

Cho said South Korea had not changed its stance “on the issues of history,” but understood that cooperation between Korea and Japan was “beneficial to both governments.”

The press conference played perfectly into Washington’s Asia rebalance strategy, which relies on the U.S. mediating differences between Japan and South Korea in order to better coordinate on China’s economic and military rise in the region.

“We have an extraordinary array of shared interests and that’s built on a foundation of shared values,” Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said during the joint press conference. “That was obvious to me in conversations we had over many hours today covering an extraordinary array of issues.”  [Foreign Policy]

You can read the rest at the link, but I will get excited about cooperation when I see something more tangible happen between the two countries.