Tag: Japan

Bronze tori gate in the park leading to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. This bronze tori is supposed to be the largest in the world.

For those that don’t know, the Yasukuni Shrine has been a source of friction between Japan and their Asian neighbors, most notably Korea and China, in recent years. Both countries regularly condemned Japan when former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would periodically visit the shrine because the shrine honors Japanese war dead including war criminals from World War II. Yasukuni enshrines the names of approximately 2.5 million Japanese who died during the Meiji era of Japanese history. Interestingly enough, something you won’t hear too many Koreans talk about, is that over 21,000 Koreans who fought for the Japanese Imperial military during World War II are also enshrined in Yasukuni. Think of it in the spirit of the Vietnam War Memorial, but instead of a wall a Shinto shrine is used. Korea and China believe the shrine should not include Japanese war criminals from World War II and Japan thinks otherwise.

Statue of Omura Masujiro who organized the Meiji military and promoted the modernization of the military in line with western standards. He was assassinated by discontented samurai in 1869, but his movement to modernize the military lived on.

Having been to the shrine myself, I don’t find the shrine insulting to China, Korea, or anyone else for that matter. There was no banners of General Tojo and other war criminals that the media would lead you to believe that this shrine is all about. In fact the shrine was actually pretty simplistic and underwhelming. The shrine was filled with old Japanese men, some wearing their old Imperial Japanese military hats, hanging out, bowing at the shrine, and then sitting down on the benches smoking their pipes, and maybe sharing memories of their time in the military with each other. These old guys seem hardly a threat to peace and stability in northeast Asia.

The reason the Koreans and the Chinese get so worked up by the Yasukuni issue is because politicians in each of those respective countries use the Yasukuni issue to deflect attention away from their own governmental short comings. George Will in this Washington Post article probably best explains the political dynamics behind both countries’ position on the Yasukuni issue:

Between that enshrinement and 1984, three prime ministers visited Yasukuni 20 times without eliciting protests from China. But both of Japan’s most important East Asian neighbors, China and South Korea, now have national identities partly derived from their experience as victims of Japan’s 1910-45 militarism. To a significant extent, such national identities are political choices .

Leftist ideology causes South Korea’s regime to cultivate victimhood and resentment of a Japan imagined to have expansionism in its national DNA. The choice by China’s regime is more interesting. Marxism is bankrupt and causes cognitive dissonance as China pursues economic growth by markedly un-Marxist means. So China’s regime, needing a new source of legitimacy, seeks it in memories of resistance to Japanese imperialism.

Actually, most of China’s resistance was by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, Mao’s enemies. And Mao, to whom there is a sort of secular shrine in Beijing, killed millions more Chinese than even Japan’s brutal occupiers did.

Another bronze tori gate before passing through a large wooden gate leading to the Yasukuni Shrine.

However, something a lot of people don’t realize is that their is more to the shrine than the shrine itself. Near the shrine is the Yushukan Museum that is supposed to chronicle Japan’s long military history. After visiting the museum and interpreting the displays from the minimal English language signs, I can safely say that the museum is something that I can see people getting worked up over. The museum’s view of history is vastly different from what is accepted as agreed upon history in the west. If the history being exhibited by the museum was so slanted in English, I can only imagine how bad the display’s signs in Japanese must be.

Most of the museum chronicles the various samurai wars during Japan’s feudal times and then into the Tokugawa era. I would have liked to read what was displayed for the Hideyoshi invasions of Korea between 1592 and 1598 but there was no English language signs available at the time. Really the vast majority of the museum is quite interesting until you get into the post Meiji Restoration years. For one the exhibit for the Russo-Japanese War claimed that the Japanese Army liberated the Korean peninsula from foreign rule and were greeted by an enthusiastic Korean populace as liberators. This is true to an extent because there was many people in Korea happy to see the end of the corrupt Chosun dynasty, however the exhibit made no mention of the brutal Japanese occupation that would follow the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The exhibit also maintained that the Japanese brought much industry and modernization to the peninsula. Once again true to extent, but it makes no reference to the fact that the modernization of the peninsula was implemented in order to increase areas such as rice production in order to ship the majority of Korean grown rice to Japan.

The last bronze tori gate before entering the Yasukuni Shrine.

The World War II exhibit was also quite provocative. According to the museum, World War II is known as the Asia Co-prosperity War where the Japanese single handedly liberated one Asian country after another from foreign colonial occupation and the Asian people were all happy to be liberated. No mention of the atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. Additionally the museum blames the US for the attack at Pearl Harbor. Since the US implemented a trade embargo on the Japanese, the militarists felt that an attack by the Americans against Japan would only naturally come next. The museum even alleges that the United States even had a plan to attack Japan in the works and would have been executed if Japan had not pre-empted the American attack by conducting the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The American President Franklin Roosevelt was committed to an attack on Japan as a way for the US to escape the Great Depression. One theme I have picked up on at the museum is that every attack the Japanese conducted was only executed because of foreign colonizers threatening Japan and its neighbors. Japan never wanted to colonize any country, they just wanted to liberate Asians from foreigners.

An elderly couple pay their respects at the Yasukuni Shrine.

This is of course nonsense. I posted before on this, but the Japanese felt modernization of Japan and the colonization of nearby countries were the best way to expand Japanese power and to compete against western rivals. The Japanese had no altruistic reasons of freeing oppressed Asians from European colonizers; it was simply about building Japanese power and influence and the attack on Pearl Harbor was where they over reached in spreading their power and influence. The problems with the museum are to numerous to list here, but the shrine organizers now have a plan to fix it.

Statue outside the Yushukan museum honoring the kamikaze pilots of World War II.

Ampontan has a great posting on the hiring of a former Japanese diplomat, Hisahiko Okazaki, who’s job it will be to reinterpret the historical displays at the Yushukan museum. Unfortunately it appears Mr. Okazaki is just reinterpreting the history in a different way that is equally as distorted as the prior historical displays. Mr. Okazaki in his new interpretation of history has found a new way to blame the US for the Japanese involvement in World War II. Instead of President Roosevelt provoking the war in order to escape the Great Depression, there is a new boogie man, the Hull Note:

The Hull Note of 1941 was, however, meant to close negotiations, so I did not raise any objection to a new quotation from the Stimson Diary, which said that all that was left after the issuance of the note would be to wait for Japan to attack.
It is a historical fact that Roosevelt induced Japan to carry out a first strike. The indication of this fact does not cast aspersions on Yasukuni Shrine’s intellectual integrity.
In his book Diplomacy, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote, Roosevelt must have been aware that there was no possibility that Japan would accept (the Hull Note). America’s participation in the war was the great achievement made through the extraordinary efforts of a great and courageous leader.

Fortunately Ampontan shoots down this claim rather quickly:

What Okazaki fails to mention is that the Hull Note was issued on November 26, 1941, fewer than two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese strike force had already set sail the day before (American time, but also the 26th Japanese time). They could have been recalled, but the Hull Note made it certain that they wouldn’t be.

Mr. Okazaki must have taken some notes from the anti-American Korean nationalists that use the obscure Taft-Katsura Agreement to bash the United States with. You would think a country like Japan that is so advanced in areas like democracy, human rights, technology, business, etc. would be mature enough to settle this history dispute between them, China, and Korea instead of relying on changing distorted history with revised history. Every country has history that it would rather forget about. You wouldn’t believe how many different countries I’ve been to and people have asked me if Native-Americans still live in teepees and if we have any plans of wiping the rest of them out. Or how many times self righteous foreigners preach to me about the horrors of General Custer and why the US government should condemn him as a war criminal. As annoying as these claims are, not once has someone claimed to me that the US government is trying to cover up the injustices committed against Native-Americans.

Japanese World War II Zero in the Yushukan museum.

By interpreting history the way the Yushukan museum does, it keeps alive the perception that the Imperial Japanese of World War II is still what represents Japanese policy in regards to its Asian neighbors today. This perception is what allows the political demagogues in Korea and China to use anti-Japanese sentiment to deflect attention away from their own political short comings. I just don’t see how Japan will be able to seek a position on the United Nation’s Security Council if it can’t work out an agreement to solve this distorted history issue with its neighbors. If Japan cannot work out an agreement to this issue, how will Japan ever have international creditability to deal with much larger and important issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian issue? Until these issues are solved Japan will never have the credibility and influence in the world that it’s population and economic might should render it.

A steam engine that actually operated on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway made famous by the movie, A Bridge On the River Kwai.

A recent topic of dispute among commenters at the Marmot’s Hole is the alleged American sell out of Korea to Japan with the mutual signing of the Taft-Katsura Agreement. This piece of history, little known to everyone else in the world, is treated with almost Dokdo like reverence in Korean society. This agreement is often used by Koreans to blame the US for the Japanese colonization of Korea. You think I’m exaggerating? Let me remind everyone what the South Korean Unification Minister had to say on this subject:

A hundred years ago, the Philippines became a U.S. colony and the Korean Peninsula a Japanese one owing to the Taft-Katsura Agreement” of 1905, Chung said. The division of the nation and Korean War were not our will either, nor was the failure of the Gwangju Uprising. A century later, Chung promised a hot summer in which our fate will be decided not by North Korea, China, the United States, Japan or Russia, but by our own pride and self-determination.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, July 2005

I will focus this posting on just the Taft-Katsura Agreement, though much of the rest of Minister Chung’s comments are just as equally ridiculous as blaming the US for Japanese colonialism. This view is so indoctrinated into Koreans that many foreigners in Korea end up believing it as well because they hear it so often from Koreans they work with. So is this Korean claim true? To determine this you have to first look at the historical context of the era.

The Japanese had been effectively interfering with Korea’s internal affairs since the 1880’s, but China continued to wield the most influence over the country due to it’s protectorate status over Korea. The Japanese were eager to gain a main land Asian colony to where natural resources could be accessed in order to continue the Japanese modernization of both it’s economy and military. The Japanese felt quick modernization was needed in order to prevent the western powers from exploiting and colonizing Japan like they had China. Gaining control of Korea’s natural resources was critical along with securing strategic territory that had long been used as an invasion point into Japan. Plus acquiring a Korean colony would send a huge international message that Japan was a nation ready to colonize, and not be colonized by anyone.

Map of Sino-Japanese War troop movements

The Sino-Japanese War (June 1894-April 1895) between Japan and China was Japan’s first attempt to forcibly wield it’s new power. It is important to note the long time Korean ruling class, the Yangban, did not want to lose their privileged place in Korean society and had long tried to keep Korea isolated from the rest of the world. Thus the term the “Hermit Kingdom“. They feared that the opening up of the country and the economy would dilute the power they wielded within Korea.

Plus the Yangban suspicious of a military coup that would end their power, had not raised and funded a strong national military and had instead relied on their long time protectors the Chinese for national security. The strategic incompetence of not forming a strong domestic army became quite evident when in 1871 American Marines defeated Korean defenders of Kangwha-do island at the mouth of the Han River and occupied it for a short time. This embarrassment of the Korean military eventually led to the signing of the 1883 Jemulpo Agreement between the US and Korea. This treaty confirmed friendly relations between the US and Korea. The easy defeat of the Korean military by the US Marines is probably what began to give the Japanese rulers ideas of an easy conquest and colonization of Korea.

The 1894 Donghak Rebellion, a peasant uprising in the Cheolla province of southern Korea, was used by the Japanese government as an excuse to deploy 8,000 combat troops to Korea to quell the uprising. Before quelling the uprising the Japanese troops seized the Korean capitol of Seoul and captured the Korean emperor. Obviously the Chinese government was not happy about the Japanese power play to gain influence over Korea and began to deploy a force of soldiers to Korea. While this was going on the Japanese installed pro-Japanese Koreans to run the government who legitimized the Japanese use of force to protect Korea from the Chinese. Thus this began the Sino-Japanese War.

The Chinese ultimately lost the war and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 that effectively granted Japan imperial influence over Korea and parts of Manchuria without Chinese objections. With the Chinese military weakened after it’s bitter defeat by the Japanese; the European powers took advantage of the situation by occupying strategic areas of Manchuria before the Japanese could move in. Most notably the Russians who occupied a huge area of Manchuria and the entire Liaodong Peninsula. The occupying of strategic areas of Manchuria by the Europeans enraged the Japanese rulers who felt the plunders of their hard earned victory over China was stolen from them. The deployment of over 100,000 Russian soldiers into Manchuria after the 1900 Boxer Rebellion only furthered caused tensions to raise because the Japanese felt that the deployment meant that the Russians were there to stay. A series of treaties were signed between the Japanese and the Europeans in an effort to quell the building tensions in the area. These treaties gave Japan recognized control of the Korean peninsula to Japan while the Europeans would continue to control Manchuria and other areas of China.

Russian controlled Manchuria in dark red.

However, the tension did not subside and open warfare would break out between Russia and Japan. The Russo-Japanese War (Feb. 1904 – May1905) ended with the defeat of the Russian military and the destruction of nearly the entire Russian navy by the Japanese. This victory gave the Japanese undisputed control of not only the Korean peninsula but all of Manchuria as well. This victory had also showed the world that the Japanese were a country to be respected as the equals to any western nation with their defeat of the Russian military.

The Russo-Japanese War was officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in the United States between the Russian and Japanese representatives. It was few months before this treaty was signed that the Taft-Katsura Agreement so remembered today by Koreans was agreed upon. This agreement effectively recognized that the US would not interfere with Japanese ambitions in Korea and Manchuria and that Japan would not interfere with American ambitions in the Philippines. The US leaders wanted official recognition of this reality from the Japanese so they would not have to spend the money fortifying the US colony in the Philippines from possible Japanese attack.

Plus this agreement and the following Treaty of Portsmouth would ensure regional stability after a decade of constant warfare in northeast Asia. All this agreement did was recognize reality at the time. How is recognizing reality a sell out?

Russian and Japanese delegates meet to sign the Treaty of Portsmouth

Also Koreans often site the 1883 Jemulpo Agreement as not being a mutual friendship treaty, but as a defensive pact between Korea and the US. They feel that the US was obligated to come to the defense of Korea against Japan. Here is the passage in the treaty they try to argue is a defensive pact:

Article I.

There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the President of the United States and the King of Chosen and the citizens and subjects of their respective Governments. If other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively with either Government, the other will exert their good offices, on being informed of the case, to bring about an amicable arrangement, thus showing their friendly feelings.

Only in Korea is “exert their good offices” considered a defensive pact. Here is the meaning of “good offices” from dictionary.com:

1. influence, esp. with a person in a position of power: He got the job through the good offices of his uncle.

2. services rendered by a mediator in a dispute.

No where in this definition do I see defensive pact, but this is what many Koreans believe “good offices” means though the definition of it is quite clear. The only obligation the US had was to speak on Korea’s behalf if requested; no where in there does it say the US is obligated to deploy the 7th Cavalry to Korea to take Japanese scalps. However, this didn’t stop Koreans leaders after the signing of the Portsmouth Treaty to try and argue this same point that “good offices” meant a defensive pact with then President Teddy Roosevelt, but Roosevelt refused to meet them and discounted their claims. Can you blame him? Maybe he wasn’t showing “good offices” by refusing to meet them, but no where in the agreement does it say either that the Koreans have exclusive access to the American President. If the United States didn’t come to the aid of Korea during both the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War what made the Korean leaders think that the US would be willing to go to war with Japan now?

A defensive pact would be a formal document all in itself much like what the US and Korea has today, that lays out clear responsibilities of each side. Almost certainly if Korea wanted a defensive pact with the US at the time the US would have requested a military presence within Korea which the Yangban rulers did not want. The US did not have the naval ability that it has today or nearby colonies from which to quickly move troops to defend Korea from external attack thus the signing of a mutual defense pact would be pointless without a forward deployed American troop presence. Even if the Yangban rulers allowed a US troop presence I don’t think the US military could have supported it with it’s already large deployment of forces in the Philippines to put down the insurgency there from Moro guerrillas.

Too many Koreans confuse the US military might of today with the US military of 1905. In 1905 the US military was at the most equal to, if not weaker than the major European powers. If the Japanese had so decisively defeated the Russians whose country is located adjacent to both Korea and Manchuria, how can the United States located on the other side of the world, be expected to sail over to Korea and conduct a 1905 version of the Inchon Landing Operation?

To blame the US for Japanese colonization of Korea is ridiculous. Saying that the US didn’t do anything to help Korea I could agree with, but to blame the US for the Japanese colonization is just another absurd attempt at historical revisionism so prevalent in Korea today. If Koreans are looking to assign blame they should first look at themselves.

Shouldn’t the first responsibility of a government be to ensure national security? Obviously the Yangban were more interested in their own security than national defense. If the Korean government had opened up their economy and simultaneously built up and modernized their army after the embarrassing defeat to the Americans on Ganghwa Island over 20 years prior they may have been able to prevent what happened to them. Remember during the Sino-Japanese War only 8,000 Japanese soldiers were able to occupy Seoul and capture the government. 8,000 for crying out loud. Why should the US be expected to defend a country that isn’t even willing to protect itself from an invasion force of 8,000 soldiers? If the Koreans fought a protracted war against the Japanese to keep them out of Korea maybe the US would have done more to help the Koreans. As it turned out the Koreans did very little to expel the Japanese during both the Sino and Russo-Japanese Wars thus why would the US government feel an obligation to free Korea when it appeared they didn’t want to be free themselves?

The bottom line is that the corrupt and incompetent Korean rulers created the conditions that led to the Japanese colonization of Korea. In their quest to keep their own domestic status quo they ignored the changes in the power structure in northeast Asia, mainly that China could not be depended on to defend the peninsula from invasion. China could not even defend themselves from the western powers at the time, much less Korea. However, the Korean rulers kept their heads in the sand and did little to develop international relations and build their own domestic military to defend the nation. By gambling that the Chinese military would protect them was a bet that they lost. It was an even worse bet if they thought the Americans were obligated to come save them after that.

The Taft-Katsura Agreement is just one of a long line of historical revisionism endorsed by Korean politicians like Minister Chung I mentioned earlier that seek to blame foreigners, in particular the United States, for all the failings of the Korean government. If the failures of prior Korean governments was the fault of foreigners and the big, bad United States; then all the failures of the current Korean government most also be the fault of foreigners and the big, bad United States now. That is why the Korean government finds it so necessary to create a historical context in order to blame current problems on the US. So when the North Koreans detonate a nuclear weapon, who does the South Korean government blame for it? The United States of course, while totally remaining silent about the fact the South Korean government are the ones that financed the nuclear weapon by giving massive amounts of aid and hard cash to the North Koreans.

When the economy is sagging that must be the fault of the foreigners as well, so witch hunts against companies like Lone Star are undertaken in order to shift blame for the sluggish economy when in fact all this does is create further drag on the economy by drying up international investment into the country. That doesn’t matter though because the government has officially shifted blame once again to the big, bad foreigners. Don’t even get me started on Dokdo. I and others have shown over and over again how the Korean government has demagogued this issue for their own political advantage and once again Minister Chung was leading the way on this. Heck even the lack of English language skills, drugs, and defiling of women in Korea are blamed on “low quality foreign English teachers”. The list of outrageous claims against foreigners goes on and on.

What concerns me most is these backwards views are slowly but surely making it possible for history to repeat itself. Korean politicians today are becoming more and more like the Yangban of the Josen dynasty of the late 19th century. They are more interested in keeping the status quo and cementing their own power than ensuring the national security of the country. The current leftist government much like the Yangban are highly suspicious of the military and have thus sought to limit the power of the ROK military as much as possible. Thus you see massive cut backs in soldiers, a lack of national military strategy, along with deliberately causing a complacency within the ranks towards the nation’s main enemy North Korea.

Now combine this with the simultaneous steady degrading of the US-ROK alliance which may ultimately end up with the exit of US forces from Korea and you have a country that has exposed itself to an external military attack, much like in the late 19th century. There is one main reason why for over 50 years that northeast Asia has been so peaceful, the US military presence.

Another eerie similarity is the fact that Japanese agents had infiltrated and manipulated the Korean government long before the actual Japanese occupation in order to set conditions for the eventual take over of Korea by Japan to happen. The same thing is happening today as North Korean agents have infiltrated not only the government, but South Korean society as a whole in order to set conditions for a future North Korean take over of the country. The Japanese were infiltrating Korean society 20 years before the take over of Korea, imagine where South Korea will be in 20 years if North Korea is allowed to continue to manipulate the direction of the country.

If the North Koreans ever did invade and occupy South Korea 20 years from now long after the exit of US forces from South Korea; I can picture the Korean leaders coming to Washington demanding the US to come and save them though they ended the US-ROK alliance years ago and replaced it with a friendship treaty instead. Would the US president be morally obligated to help a country that independently chose to create the conditions that allowed their defeat to happen in the first place? There is plenty that can be learned from an objective look at history and unfortunately it appears that the current Korean government is only interested in following the path of the Josun Yangban at the expense of the national security of the country. If the Korean government reaps what it sows 20 years from now, any bets they will blame America for selling them out then too?

If I had to pick out one thing that sticks out overwhelmingly between Japan and Korea it would be the controversy surrounding the Yasukuni-jinja Shrine in Tokyo. Being in Japan has given me the opportunity to examine what all the fuss over the shrine is about. What is it about this place that causes so much hostility between Japan and it’s neighbors? Would I see hordes of brainwashed Japanese chanting anti-Korea slogans and preparing for the invasion of Dokto? I would soon find out.

When I reached the actual shrine I did not find any big banners of General Tojo and other war criminals that the media would lead you to believe that this shrine is all about. In fact the shrine was actually pretty simplistic and underwhelming. It is mostly just a place for old Japanese men to hang out, bow at the shrine, and then sit down on a bench under a tree and smoke a pipe.

Finding this place pretty boring I started walking down a path to the right of the shrine towards a large building. As I approached the large building, I discovered a statue honoring kamikaze pilots during World War II.

From the statue I headed inside the large building which ended up being a museum chronicling Japanese military history. The museum chronicled Japanese military history from feudal times all the way to the present SDF mission in Iraq.

The museum also had a gift store that sold loads of books, gifts, and accessories related to the SDF and the Japanese Imperial Army. You could even buy the old Japanese Army hats that appeared to be popular with the old folks that mostly populated the place.

The museum interestingly enough does not allow photographs, but I was able to take a few quick pictures of a few items in the museum during my tour.

The museum was actually quite interesting to read about the early feudal samurai history of Japan. Additionally the special exhibit they had honoring the Japanese victory over Russia during the Russo-Japanese War was also interesting to see.

However, the interpretation of Japanese history that has longed plagued relations between Korea and Japan began to jump out at me. The exhibit for the Russo-Japanese War claimed that the Japanese Army liberated the Korean peninsula from foreign rule and were greeted by an enthusiastic Korean populace as liberators. The exhibit also maintained that the Japanese brought much industry and modernization to the peninsula. This is true to an extent, but there was no mention of the brutal occupation and the anti-Japanese resistance by the Koreans against it.

Next was the World War II exhibit which I figured would also be quite provocative to see; I wasn’t disappointed. According to the Japanese history presented here, World War II is known as the Asia Co-prosperity War where the Japanese single handedly liberated one Asian country after another from foreign colonial occupation and the Asian people were all happy to be liberated. No mention of the atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops.

Additionally the museum blames the US for Pearl Harbor. Since the US implemented a trade embargo on the Japanese, the militarists felt that an attack by the Americans against Japan would only naturally come next. The museum even alleges that the United States had a plan to attack Japan in the works and would have been executed if Japan hadn’t pre-empted the American attack by conducting the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

One theme I have picked up on at the museum is that every attack the Japanese conducted was only executed because of foreign colonizers threatening Japan and it’s neighbors. Japan never wanted to colonize any country, they just wanted to liberate Asians from foreigners.

The museum continued on with many more outrageous claims and made it seem like the Japanese won every battle of World War II, but some how the Americans continued to move closer and closer to Japan without winning a battle if you are to believe the museum’s history. The Japanese interpretation of history is extremely ridiculous and completely devoid of reality.

The museum tour concludes into an area that houses pictures and names of the Japanese war dead over the centuries. I actually tried to find General Tojo among the faces but I couldn’t spot him. All the pictures were of the same size and no one stood out more than the other.

All in all Yasukuni is definitely over hyped by nationalist causes in each Northeast Asian country involved in the shrine controversy. Am I offended by the ridiculously false lies taught as history at the shrine? Yes, I am but not enough to set myself on fire or chop my fingers off.

Despite the underwhelming nature of the shrine; I recommend it to anyone with a few days to spend in Tokyo. The history and artifacts in the shrine are interesting to see despite the skewed history. Japan is not the first country to skew history in the region. Korea and China are not innocent themselves of reinterpreting history.

I never did find the Japanese nationalists worshiping the banner of General Tojo and plotting the invasion of Dokto at the Yasukuni Shrine. What I did find was also troubling and that is skewed history, but fortunately it appears that mostly only grandpas nostalgic for the old days are the only ones reading it.

The Chosun has a really surprising editorial condemning efforts by left wing Korean politicians who are trying to get the US to apologize for the Taft-Katsura Agreement signed in 1905:

In the secret accord, signed in Tokyo in 1905, the U.S. and Japan acknowledged the latter’s control of the Korean Peninsula and the former’s control of the Philippines. Korea was at the time already in Japanese hands as a result of Japanese victories in wars with both Russia and China. Calling for the U.S. to be held to account for the agreement is tantamount to asserting that it should have intervened on the Korean Peninsula even if that meant risking a war with Japan.

(…)

To blast the U.S. for failing to intervene in one instance and for intervening in another, for not seeing one attack on our sovereignty (by Japan) but seeing another (by North Korea) is tantamount to damning the U.S. if it does and damning it if it doesn’t. While anti-American acts may seem profitable gimmicks for our politicians and America-bashing is rewarded with popular applause, we should also think how such careless accusations make us look in the eyes of the international community.

It is hard to believe that this common sense dare I say, “pro-American” article, came out only a few days after the same paper published this piece of anti-American crap. Both articles are a great example of the love/hate relationship Korea has with the US. The left wing politicians really need to get over obscure history references that have little to do with Korea today. Stop focusing on the past and have a vision for the future. Actually the left wingers do have a vision for the future; unfortunately it involves tearing down the MacArthur statue in Inchon and replacing it with Kim Jong Il’s likeness. When that happens I don’t think anybody will care about the Taft-Katsura Agreement then.

The Japan Times is reporting that the Korean fishermen who were caught fishing in Japanese waters and were boarded by the Japanese Coast Guard, are accusing the Japanese Coast Guard of using excessive force.

Tokyo on Friday dismissed accusations that Japan Coast Guardsmen used excessive force when they boarded a South Korean boat suspected of poaching and roughed up one of its crew members.
“I think they acted correctly,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said when asked if the coast guardsmen had acted unreasonably.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that a member of the fishing boat crew was hospitalized with injuries after he was beaten by Japanese authorities during the confrontation Wednesday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said the coast guardsmen smashed the glass window on the door to the boat’s wheelhouse after the crew refused to unlock it and shut off the engine.

The order to cut the engine was a “necessary and minimum measure,” Hosoda said. “When the crew resisted, they got into a scuffle.”

South Korean patrol boats were summoned from off the southern city of Ulsan early Wednesday when Japanese patrol boats entered South Korean waters in pursuit of the fishing boat they said had been operating 8 km inside Japanese territorial waters.

The 77-ton eel boat Singpung-ho had refused JCG orders to stop and sailed off with two Japan Coast Guardsmen still on board. Japanese authorities contacted the South Korean Coast Guard, which helped stop the boat.

The similarities between this case and the 2002 subway incident continue. Make accusations of abuse and have pictures taken of you in the hospital to appeal to Korean nationalism to make it look like the big bad foreigners in this case the Japanese are beating down the Koreans again. A proven formula for getting out of trouble.

I would think that breaking the window of the boat to get the Captain to stop the boat would be reasonable since the boat was escaping with the Japanese Coast Guardsmen still on board. Plus when they did get in the cabin I’m sure the Captain wasn’t to helpful and resisted stopping the boat thus leading to the injuries he received. If he would of stopped the boat like he was directed he could of avoided any alledged injuries. He couldn’t do that though because then he would of been caught in Japanese waters.

So it was better to run with the coast guardsmen on board and get back into Korean waters where he knew nothing would happen to him and he could appeal to Korean nationalism against the Japanese, go to the hospital, claim abuse, and I bet he yelled “Dokto is Korea’s” at some point too for added emphasis of his innocence. I hope they make him pay the illegal fishing fine but that is about as likely as someone being arrested in the 2002 subway abduction.

Plunge has put together a great series of posts about the use of atomic weapons against Japan by the US during World War II. Here is a summary of the article:

Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki ended the war with Japan and saved millions of lives, both Allied and Japanese. The bombing of these two cities forced a surrender that was nearly unfathomable to the military leaders in Japan at the time. If it wasn’t for the atomic bomb, the US likely would have been forced into a long, deadly struggle to end the war with Japan, a struggle that might have been far too long and difficult for the American public to have accepted. While Japan would still have most likely surrendered, in my opinion, it would have been a negotiated surrender that would have meant more war in the future.

Read the entire series that validates the above summary.

My thoughts have always been that World War II was a conflict that was fought with the “Total War” doctrine where the bombing of cities was justifiable to break national will power to gain “Total Victory”. After World War I no total victory was ever achieved which led to World War II. If the Japanese had not surrendered and just negotiated an end to the war who is to say they wouldn’t just rearm and 15 years later start fighting again which would take more lives?

I visited the Atomic Bomb Memorial in Hiroshima 4 years ago and it makes the US look really barbaric for nuking Hiroshima. They parade all the school children into there to indoctrinate them about why the US was wrong for nuking Japan. Seeing the pictures of all the melted bodies on display the kids looked at me like I was some kind of devil. No mention is made at the memorial about the US rational for using nuclear weapons or the mention that Japan started the war to begin with.

After the battles to take Iwo Jima and Okinawa it was becoming very clear that any battle to take over the Japanese home island would cost many American lives. The nuclear bombing was a way to get Japan to surrender without having to endure heavy US casualties. When I was in college I actually debated this point with a Japanese classmate who countered that the US should of nuked a nearby coastline to display the might of the atomic weapon. The display of the power of the atomic weapon would have surely caused the militarists to surrender. That is probably what the Japanese educational system taught him as kid as he toured the A-bomb Memorial. I countered his claim by simply stating that nuking Hiroshima didn’t get the Japanese to surrender. It took two nukes to get Japan to surrender. They didn’t get the message after one nuclear bombing what would have a display of the power of a nuclear bomb have done? Plus the US only had two operational nuclear bombs at the time. They couldn’t afford to expend one on a show of force. I always felt that if the US was so barbaric and just looking to kill people the US could of just as easily nuked Tokyo or Kyoto. Instead the US chose smaller, militarily significant cities to hit. So in short yes it was right to use nuclear weapons in that conflict.

However, this topic gets me thinking to why didn’t the US just nuke Pyongyang and Beijing during the Korean War to break the North Korean and Chinese will to fight. The Korean War wasn’t fought by the “Total War” doctrine which General MacArthur was used to playing by during World War II. The Cold War and the creation of nuclear weapons had made the “Total War” doctrine obsolete because the amount of destruction that would result on both sides would make any war to costly to wage.

General MacArthur couldn’t learn to play by the new “Limited War” Doctrine and was ultimately fired by Harry Truman because of it. The use of nuclear weapons during the Korean War had the possibility of bringing the Russians into the war which the US did not want to have happen. A combined fight against the Chinese and Russians in the mountains of Korea was the wrong war at the wrong time for the US. Preventing World War III was determined to be more important than achieving Total Victory.

History has shown that Truman was right and the “Limited War” doctrine did prevent World War III but the lack of Total Victory during the Korean War continues to cause problems here on the peninsula to this day and probably for many years to come.