Nanjing, Comfort Women, North Korea, and More: Japan’s Taste for Red Herring
Japan does pretty well for itself. It’s a wealthy, prosperous nation only a generation or two out of a devastating war and military dictatorship. It rose from being an isolated backwater to the lofty status of being an empire that could contend with the old Empires of Europe in a mere generation or two before the War. Japan’s great success came from a mixture of being willing to borrow and build upon foreign ideas and doing what worked - putting the practical ahead of ideological.
Japan is not in bad shape today by any means. It is not, however, on the rise anymore. Its future is not as bright as it once was. Some of this is due, of course, to there being not many places to go from the top. Some of it, though, is due to baffling decisions, a refusal to address the actual issues facing the country, and the entrenched power behind it all.
It seems that when most people outside of Japan, certainly outside of East Asia, think of Japan, they think of World War II. Manga and anime may be crowding the bedrooms of wannabe otaku throughout the Western World, Japanese cars and electronics may be so dominant that it’s hard to conceive of modern life without the produce of corporate Japan, businessmen may worry about the direction and state of that corporate Japan, but Japan is, as much as anything else, one of the bad guys from World War II.
For the most part, this is sad. The overwhelming majority of Japanese people today are no more responsible for what Japan did during the War than the average American alive today is. On the other hand, wartime issues in Japan can be maddening for those who like the country and want to see it do well across the board. This is because the default setting of a number of people in power in Japan seems to be to do just what bad guy Japan would have done: lie, mislead, deny - anything to defend the myth of infallibility that many people like to entertain about their own lands.
There is a great marlin circling Japan promising sustenance and wealth for the people. The fight will be long and hard, possibly dangerous, but the reward of catching that fish will be great. The other option is to cast around for junk fish that may or may not even be in the water. To go after the red herring. You can’t eat it, it doesn’t help you, and only morons will buy it, but that hasn’t diminished the ranks of Japan’s red herring fishing club.
Back in December, I published a brief history of the Nanjing massacre and, at the end, criticized China for playing into Japan’s hands by making the number of people killed the be-all and end-all of the issue. I criticized Japan for not only getting off topic by squabbling over the number, but by refusing to address the number honestly - tossing out random low numbers, for example.
“Japanese troops occupying Nanjing killed as many as 300,000.”
“No! 26,000!”
Just think about the thinking behind that. The defense is so desperate, the crime so atrocious, that apparently having slaughtered 26,000 people becomes bearable.
Even worse are the logical acrobatics we see in dealing with Nanjing. The publicity given last year to a book questioning the validity of the infamous photos of the massacre is a prime chunk of red herring. The argument essentially goes like this: some of the infamous Nanjing massacre photos were published in Japan before the fall of Nanjing, therefore they can’t be photos of the massacre.
Fair enough.
Other photos were cropped to focus on a child, leaving an adult out of the photo. Some show Chinese women smiling as they’re supposedly being dragged off into slavery. There are photos of Japanese soldiers giving things to Chinese people that weren’t publicized. Therefore, all Chinese are liars and the massacre never happened.
I’m not exaggerating. That was the argument put forth and, if the first section of this editorial gets attention, you’ll see the argument again.
What makes this frustrating is that the photo argument is all but irrelevant. It is not, as Nanjing massacre deniers would have you believe, a case of claims vs. evidence. It is not a criminal trial in which we have to assume that nothing happened until we see concrete evidence of a crime and concrete evidence linking that crime to a perpetrator. We have the miasma of history and enough incontrovertible evidence that something did happen that it is now incumbent upon us to sort it out.
It’s not worth talking to deniers, though, because deniers seem to believe that if any Chinese woman smiled at any time, she couldn’t have been in a bad situation. If any photo is fake, anyone who claims to have seen bad deeds done unrelated to that photo is lying. If the Chinese Government has developed a reputation for lying long after the massacre, and the victims of the massacre were Chinese, nothing happened because one Chinese group’s dishonesty makes all Chinese liars.
The argument put forth by deniers is the same kind of red herring thrown up in rape trials: the victim is not a saint, not being a saint, we should assume she’s a whore, being a whore, she couldn’t have been raped. Case closed.
You tell me the difference.
The Nanjing massacre is not the only wartime issue to get the red herring treatment, though. Recently, comfort women have been all the rage. This one can be even more frustrating than the Nanjing issue because we have just as many red herring, but not even a sincere attempt to introduce evidence; just character assassination and desperate attempts to change the subject.
In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, Sankei Shimbun Editor Yoshihisa Komori, when asked why Prime Minister Abe would claim women had not been forced into prostitution or sexually enslaved, immediately begins splitting hairs. He argues, centrally, that the military itself never directly coerced women. He admits that the military may have contracted brokers, admits that the conditions under which the women lived (I would add: at least partially as a result of how they and their families were treated by Japanese occupation forces) may well have led to there being no choice but prostitution, but frames the argument as one over the extent of the military’s involvement, which is important, but not the central issue.
On April 27th, the Japan Times published an AP article explaining that coercion had been used in Allied brothels of the Occupation into 1946. This may be true, but it hardly changes anything. In fact, the allegations, quite possibly true, serve as further evidence of misdeeds on the part of Japan’s government.
First, the very articles that mention coercion in brothels set up for American troops include two salient points: that the brothels were set up by the Japanese government, and that the coercion in question was women enslaved for sexual purposes by Japan were then turned around and sold to the Occupation forces.
Recent articles about US participation in prostitution haven’t shed a lot of new light on the subject, but have garnered quite a bit of attention in the press and in the blogosphere. The tack of a number of commentaries seems to be that the Americans had sex slaves, just like Japan. Many commentaries go on to suggest that this means either that the US House should not adopt a resolution condemning Japan’s wartime activities or that what Japan did was really not extraordinarily bad.
This is the quintessential red herring. It diverts attention from the topic at hand by pointing to flaws in others, which may be flaws, but have no effect on the original topic. It then conflates or equates disparate elements.
The “America did it, too” argument is contemptible for two reasons. First, America didn’t do it, too. The allegation is really that the Japanese government essentially did it twice - enslaving women for their own troops, then enslaving women for the occupying troops to head off a wave of rape and violence that no evidence suggests would have actually occurred. Second, even if the American Forces had been outright, violent, serial rapists to a man, it changes absolutely nothing about the sexual enslavement practiced by either the Japanese Imperial Army or its contractors.
Repeating the assertion that there is no evidence to back up the claims of former sex slaves is even more abhorrent. First, most sex slaves claim to have been, well, sexually enslaved. There’s no reason a teenaged girl being abducted or coerced into often unpaid prostitution, or sexual slavery, being used by scores of men, who often beat or otherwise mistreated her, went hungry, and was living through the biggest war in the history of the world should be expected to remember for whom her original abductor worked.
Despite Japanese military documents that appear to describe exactly the sort of coercion being denied by Mr. Komori and others, despite the statements of former soldiers, and despite officials as high up as former Prime Minister Nakasone having said they themselves were directly involved in the construction of brothels, current Prime Minister Abe and his defenders are willing to say there’s no evidence to back up the claims of former sex slaves.
Why don’t they just come out and say it? Those women are liars. That’s what’s being said.
Just as the debate over the Nanjing massacre has gotten bogged down in numbers and a few photos to the exclusion of most other evidence, the comfort women issue has essentially become a payroll argument.
The real issues are, lest some readers should be led astray by red herring: Did the Japanese Imperial Army or did it not torture and kill noncombatants in Nanjing in December 1937 and January and February 1938?
And did the Japanese Imperial Army keep a number of involuntary sex workers throughout the War?
The frustrating thing is that there would be no real negative consequence to Japan’s owning up to past misdeeds. It’s not as if anyone not inclined to wear blinders in support of an infallible Japan believes the tripe of the current kantei or people such as Mr. Komori anyway. In the eyes of the rest of the world, Japan would probably get credit for coming clean and making a sincere attempt to make amends and move on. After all, the fact that wartime issues are still such dominant ones for Japan is primarily Japan’s fault.
What Japan Needs to Do
Issue a formal, unambiguous apology, from the highest level, the Prime Minister himself, to be promulgated by the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the Foreign Minister, not only for atrocities committed during the War, but for obfuscation afterwards. Governments can and do apologize for the actions of their predecessors. The apology shold include a sincere statement of profound regret and remorse. There should be no qualifying statements in it whatsoever.
Renew the Asian Women’s Fund, to which the Government of Japan was the primary donor, and continue to allow private donations. However, make the role of the Government of Japan in the Fund explicit and public. Make it clear that the Fund is an inadequate attempt to make amends for something wrong that was done by the Government of Japan. In the event that a former sex slave who had filed previous claims has died in the interim, pay the same amount she would have received to an ongoing support fund for victims of similar crimes. (Perhaps the victims of human trafficking in Japan?) Make it clear that the money constitutes an admission of guilt and an apology.
Have the Prime Minister, on visits to at least South Korea and China, repeat the apology and express a hope that Japan and its neighbors can move forward into a new era having accepted the errors of the past. In China, make it explicit that this apology includes the Nanjing massacre.
Make donations to existing museums and monuments to the victims of Japan’s war crimes.
Make no attempt to censor or inhibit any media projects related to Japan’s war crimes, inside or outside of Japan, either through direct intervention or pressure.
Insist that public school history textbooks and school curricula addressing the War or issues related to it give equally proportionate space and attention to episodes of Japan’s wrongdoing as to episodes favorable to Japan. For instance, if the Battle of Okinawa gets two pages, the Occupation of Nanjing should get two pages. If the legacy of the atomic bombings gets three pages, the legacy of sexual slavery should get three pages.
Why Japan Should Do This
There are two main reasons Japan should thoroughly embrace its wartime guilt, both of benefit to Japan. The first is directly diplomatic and the second is also diplomatic, although less directly practical.
First, hearts and minds. A good public image helps diplomacy. While Japan’s neighbors, particularly China and the two Koreas will surely continue to use Japan as a useful diversion from domestic troubles, Japan could stand up and be the “bigger man.” By having the Foreign Ministry promulgate and promote the apology, sooner or later, even people in repressed countries will begin to hear of it.
Being the “bigger man” will make it harder for Japan’s opponents to legitimately oppose things Japan wants to do, such as gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Not that an apology would immediately remove a Chinese veto, but it would certainly not hurt.
Japan’s neighbors would surely like closer economic and even political ties. It is possible that such abject public remorse on the part of Japan would give elements within the Chinese and South Korean governments who would like to see a warmer relationship with Japan a little more ammunition.
In dealings with the West and other wealthy nations, Japan could set itself up as an example of humane governance and prove a genuine interest in an accurate view of history. In the public eye in other wealthy democracies, Japan would appear more responsible. This is the second diplomatic reason to apologize. If Japan is going to pursue a more assertive foreign policy, which it should, it helps to have its image be as positive as possible. It is not at the moment, and has not often been in its modern history.
Behind the scenes, Japan could begin to push harder for similar concessions from other countries. As it stands, Japan appears to be insisting on being no better than the lowest common denominator in terms of honesty. Pointing out the shortcomings and atrocities of other governments, including former colonial powers in Europe and the the current dominant power, the United States, is childish. It is very much like complaining that one was not the only driver speeding when stopped by traffic police. It carries no weight, is irrelevant, and appears petty. Why can’t Japan be the first country to take a bold step in the right direction?
Japan has long been a major donor nation and is the single largest direct investor in China. If Japan can put some of the mess of history behind it, it could more effectively and aggressively promote these facts to its diplomatic advantage.
Many inside and outside of Japan rightly think that Japan is an economic, cultural, and possibly even a military giant punching far below its weight. Encumbered with history, instead of supported by it, this will not change. As Japan takes a more active role on the world stage, it absolutely has to reassure other nations in the region that a strong, assertive Japan is not only not a threat, but a potential boon.
Oh, and apologizing is the right thing to do, of course.
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