1) "We have established a War Memorial friendship organization so that young people can support Yasukuni Shrine." Sadanari Hisamatsu, who heads the shrine's fund-raising organization, on getting more members to help alleviate the shrine's financial woes. (Shukan Shincho).
/shudder... as if the Japanese brought up memorising the Monbusho (Japanese Ministry of Education) - approved textbooks haven't been misled enough. It still shocks and disappoints me that the Japanese authorities have never admitted that they were voluntary aggressors in the war. Instead, they feed their young the falsehood that the Japanese were forced to go to war in order to survive in the face of rampant Western imperialism. So many Japanese don't know about the Nanking Massacre, about the brutality and cruelty of the Imperial Army both towards the people they conquered and towards Japanese citizens, of the ruthless state censorship from the 1920s onwards, of Imperial Army ambition and treachery in Manchuria and China etc etc.
The ideology of victimhood was fostered so strongly that the horrors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were used to reinforce Japan's definition of itself as "victim", instead of becoming opportunities for national self-searching and positive change. The volte-face from aggressor to absolute pacifist in the post-WWII period is also mostly superficial, as part of the victimhood ideology. Even today I suspect that the anti-war beliefs of most Japanese wouldn't stand up very long in the face of critical inquiry... I hope I am mistaken though.
The Japanese establishment refuses to thoroughly reflect on why Japan went to war. No wonder the rest of Asia is concerned about increased Japanese military presence -- those who don't learn from history will inevitably repeat their mistakes (to paraphrase Santayana). And when that happens...
In my honest opinion, Yasukuni is a sore on the Japanese national conscience. The military figures enshrined within stand for almost everything that is wrong, not just in Japanese society, but in any society today. Slavish adherence to authority, imperialist thinking with Japan at the top of the food chain, violent suppression of public dissent, abuse of women, no respect for human rights... That it still exists with official consent (the PM is obliged to visit the shrine to appease the nationalist right-wingers in the fragile, volatile Diet) is truly shameful!
If the shrine cannot get enough funds, it should either cut its costs or close down. If the Japanese people can't or won't remove the shrine through popular dissent, let simple economics do the work. Good riddance!
More importantly however, when will the debate about Japan's actions leading up to and during the war ever occur? When will the Japanese people be able to know and decide for themselves?
2) From JapanToday.com: "Will Pop Culture Be the Engine That Unifies Asia?"
Pop songs, manga (comics), anime (animated films), and television series are all forms of Japanese popular culture with a large following among young people throughout Asia.
Writing in the March issue of Chuo Koron article in "Will Pop Culture Be the Engine That Unifies Asia?" Masahiko Ishizuka, managing director of the Foreign Press Center, reports on how pop culture was received at the Asia-Pacific Journalists' Meeting held in Tokyo last fall by the FPC and on the influence of pop culture in regional integration.
He says that behind the popularity of Japanese pop culture in Asia lies the fact that, thanks to economic development, living standards in other Asian countries have now risen to levels similar to those in Japan.
Lifestyles and consumer culture in other Asian countries have also become much like those in Japan. And people in countries like China and South Korea seem to feel an ethnic and cultural affinity with the Japanese.
But none of this means that these people necessarily like or respect Japan, notes Ishizuka. Young people may not care at all where pop culture comes from, and hopes that pop culture will have a favorable impact on regional integration may prove overblown. One audience member at the journalists' meeting stated, "The closer you look, the more the idea of 'Asian values' appears to be a mirage."
While Ishizuka accepts that something positive may come from this new synthesis of pop culture in Asia as it undergoes globalization, he emphasizes the need to look at things more thoroughly in order to better discern trends. (Kyodo News)
March 5, 2003
I've been looking for the actual article, but oddly enough the copies of Chuo Koron in the Regenstein are all gone.
Even so, based on this secondhand article, Ishizuka's piece sounds soooooooo wrong... To even think that one's culture is capable of "uniting" different societies (particularly as incredibly large and diverse a diaspora as the socio-political construct the West calls "Asia") is ludicrous and smacks of Imperial Army rhetoric during WWII. I wonder if he really believes that Chinese (also a problematic definition -- do you include Overseas Chinese too?) and South Koreans feel an "ethnic and cultural affinity" with the Japanese?
How could anyone be this insensitive? Again, the roots probably lie in Japan's continued self-delusion.
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