I will quote the New York Times editorial on Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso in full as I am 1000% in support of the stance of the NY Times.
Japan's Offensive Foreign Minister
Published: February 13, 2006
People everywhere wish they could be proud of every bit of their countries' histories. But honest people understand that's impossible, and wise people appreciate the positive value of acknowledging and learning from painful truths about past misdeeds. Then there is Japan's new foreign minister, Taro Aso, who has been neither honest nor wise in the inflammatory statements he has been making about Japan's disastrous era of militarism, colonialism and war crimes that culminated in the Second World War.
Besides offending neighboring countries that Japan needs as allies and trading partners, he is disserving the people he has been pandering to. World War II ended before most of today's Japanese were born. Yet public discourse in Japan and modern history lessons in its schools have never properly come to terms with the country's responsibility for such terrible events as the mass kidnapping and sexual enslavement of Korean young women, the biological warfare experiments carried out on Chinese cities and helpless prisoners of war, and the sadistic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanjing.
That is why so many Asians have been angered by a string of appalling remarks Mr. Aso has made since being named foreign minister last fall. Two of the most recent were his suggestion that Japan's emperor ought to visit the militaristic Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Japanese war criminals are among those honored, and his claim that Taiwan owes its high educational standards to enlightened Japanese policies during the 50-year occupation that began when Tokyo grabbed the island as war booty from China in 1895. Mr. Aso's later lame efforts to clarify his words left their effect unchanged.
Mr. Aso has also been going out of his way to inflame Japan's already difficult relations with Beijing by characterizing China's long-term military buildup as a "considerable threat" to Japan. China has no recent record of threatening Japan. As the rest of the world knows, it was the other way around. Mr. Aso's sense of diplomacy is as odd as his sense of history.
Gen,
I have come up with a hypothesis that "Aso" is the rather appropriate abbreviated Japanese rendering of "assh*le", given his recent trackrecord of, shall we say, undiplomatic outbursts which are not in the national interest.
yes Aso-san is a jerk, its just too bad the NYT continues to use Iris Chang level rhetoric and reasoning concerning the actions of Imperial Japan.
I don't know much about Aso-san, but I do know that China is in fact a long-term military threat to Japan. It's a short-term military threat to Taiwan, maybe. To reject that notion is to deny history, not so much in the specific context of China and Japan, but in the general context of totalitarian states and basically anyone in their way.
China, and let me say this as clearly as possible, is a Stalinist dictatorship. I for one still remember Tiananmen Square and millions killed by Mao. Has Japan been more aggressive in recent history? Yes, for a variety of reasons that no longer exist. Indeed, China today looks more like Japan of 1895 than vice versa.
Nascent modernization, dictatorship and rising militarism. Japan is a largely de-militarized democracy, with absolutely no history, post WWII, of any kind of bellicosity outside of the board room. And note that China historically was fairly aggressive when it had relatively meaningful military power.
I'm not wholly fluent with the reasons, but China was pretty backwards through the 1940s and 50s, and still is in some places, and didn't have the ability to project power. So it's kind of unknown what they'll do once they get any kind of heavy-lift capability to move forces around.
I'd be careful about agreeing with the NYTimes on international affairs. Their analysis is incredibly facile, and usually naive. They're in love with communist dictatorships too, and frequently write love-letters to lunatics like Castro, Chavez, the nuts that were running the Soviet Union back when. And of course they tend to largely ignore the flagrant evils in their midst.
cdg
I'm actually sympathetic to Aso. First of all, China is a threat to Japan. Its rapidly growing military capability, backed by its economy, which may now be the second largest in the world, under the control of a authoritarian government that pays little respect to basic human rights and and other freedoms is a clear threat to the other countries in Asia. Second, it is a historical fact that Korea and Taiwan benefitted in many ways from Japanese colonialism. This is NOT to say that Japan was justified in its actions, obviously, but if "truth" is what must be upheld, then the neighboring nations must face up to this, because you should not have double standards. Third, I don't know which account of Aso's statement regarding Yasukune Shrine is accurate, but one account indicated that he thinks that the Imperial Family was partly responsible for the war, and thus the Emperor should pay respect for the dead who fought for the country on behalf of the Imperial Family. That reasoning doesn't sound outrageous to me.
See a different take on this issue:
http://www.andresgentry.com/thoughts/2005/04/03_and_the_free.html
I am from China,and I wana tell you all this
"the biological warfare experiments carried out on Chinese cities and helpless prisoners of war, and the sadistic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanjing. "
is the truth!
and that is why we Chinese people ,mostly,do not like Japan.
I'm Chinese too. I agree with Bethetruth completely!!
We Chinese people are not accusing Japanese for doing all those awful thing decades ago. We just want them admit and teach their young people what they did back then, and say sorry just like the way Germany did. Then we can finally be true friends with Japanese people again. Isn't it what people usually do after they make a mistake, and say sorry, then everybody would say okay, just don't do that again? By the way, Japan just made a mistake...It was far more awful more than anything I know in my life!
If I were a well-known Chinese movie director, I will definitely make a film about the China-Japan war because people in the world really don't know what exatly Japan did in China.
The NYT editorial is OK, but this sentence is so glib that it is laughable:
"China has no recent record of threatening Japan. As the rest of the world knows, it was the other way around."
The flames of hatred of Japan burn strong in China, and the ones whose hatred is strongest are the young who never actually experienced the horror. A more diplomatic Japanese foreign minister might help, but Chinese hatred is not going to be slaked by anything that Japan can do.
Chinese hatred of Japan is caused by the denials and nonchalant attitude of Japanese leaders toward the war crimes Japan committed during the World War 2, such as the Hengyang Massacre.
If instead the Japanese leaders sincerely apologized for the war crimes, that would quell much of the hatred the Chinese have. For example, Willy Brandt's historical kneeling in front of a Polish monument mended the tensions between Germany and Poland.
Alphavision, thank you for your comment. However, the fact is that the Japanese government has apologized many times over 3 decades and the Chinese people still do not accept these apologies.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan
That's true, but many actions tend to go against those words of apology. Saying one thing and doing another is not going to persuade the Chinese people that the apologies were sincere.
References:
Koizumi's visits to the Yatsukuni Shrine
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2004-01/02/content_295421.htm
Refusal to pay wartime reparations
http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/003568.php
Japanese Rewriting of History Books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Society_for_History_Textbook_Reform
Alphavision, I don't disagree but I will qualify this point:
Koizumi does not represent all Japanese when he visited Yasukuni, just as Bush does not represent all Americans when he ordered the invasion of Iraq. I'm sure not all Chinese agree with everything the Chinese government decrees.