The problem with apologies
So, why is it that the West is so rankled over the concept of Japan apologizing or not apologizing for comfort women?
Well, here’s one for you, in question form. Why is there a movement in Japan to remove any reference to sexual slavery from textbooks?
Former education minister Nariaki Nakayama takes pride in an achievement he and about 130 fellow members of the Liberal Democratic Party took the past decade to accomplish: getting references to Japan’s wartime sex slaves struck from most authorized history texts for junior high schools.
“Our campaign worked, and people outside the government also started raising their voices, creating a national trend,” said the 63-year-old Lower House member from Miyazaki Prefecture, who also openly claims the 1937 Nanjing Massacre was a “pure fabrication.”
The debate in Japan seems to center around the difficulty of defining who exactly these comfort women were. One the one hand is the perception (widely held outside of Japan) that the women were forcibly taken from their homes and forced into sexual slavery. On the other hand is the belief that most women were prostitutes to begin with and therefore not doing anything they wouldn’t have been doing otherwise. Add to this a dearth of documents ordering the abduction and forcible sexual servitude of women versus the oral accounts given by victims and some say we have a “he said she said” type of situation . . . except that we now have hundreds of first hand accounts from women claiming to have been abducted and forcibly raped.
Nakayama claims the women were professional prostitutes at frontline brothels run by private agencies, and neither the state nor the army forcibly took the women there.
Some historians estimate the sex slaves numbered up to 200,000, including those in their teens, while others say the figure was much lower.
“(Working at the brothels) was their commercial business. They were never sex slaves,” Nakayama reckoned, challenging the public testimony of scores of aging Asian and Dutch women who recalled being forcibly taken, some in their teens, to the frontline brothels and being gang-raped by Japanese troops for little or no reward.
Why does any of this matter? I think it paints a picture of a segment of the population and/or the government that hasn’t fully accepted the now infamous 1993 “apology.” In fact, the 1993 apology makes no sense, if taken in the context of all these history books; future generations won’t know why the apology exists at all, if they aren’t taught its reason.
This Nakayama also seems intent on overturning the 1993 apology. So far, however, Abe seems to be holding firm. Although Nakayama asked Abe to investigate the apology–ie, determine whether or not it should be jettisoned–Abe is so for not indicating that he will do so.
“I have already said that I will stand by the 1993 Kono statement,” Abe said.
He also said he will no longer discuss his position with reporters, because his words “have not been correctly reported.”
I think this is unfortunate. Abe has a chance to elaborate, to reiterate the apology, to help make the apology part of the Japan’s history and policy–not to mention its educational goals–and I think he’s sadly failing to capitalize on the strides the Koizumi administration made. As for why the west in “picking on” Japan in this way; a poster suggested it may be to help drive a wedge between two allies committed to the war in Iraq. I say that the ramifications of the “apology” are greater than the Iraq war. East Asia is catching up with Japan in terms of prosperity and technology. All these countries (Korea, Japan, China, etc.) will need to reconcile their pasts and I suspect the West and the US is under pressure to try to help this along.
I am curious to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for posting this, lifted my day.
This was generally a good though-provoking post on the issue. It is unfortunate that these geezers are acting in the way that they are. Even if we assume for a moment that their assertions are correct, they are at the very least being very insensitive in terms of how they are expressing their arguments.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:26 amThat said, it strikes me as counterproductive to have any changes in attitude demanded by representatives of the West and the United States (as opposed to those in other Asian countries). Given the fact that there is still much that Western countries should apologise for and acknowledge with respect to their own histories, I just can’t see the Japanese government or people willing to listen to such calls without being overwhelmed by the rank hypocrisy being shoved down their throats.
An excellent post on this subject can be found here: http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2006/05/hypocritical_we.html
As I mentioned before, apologies are considered meaningless and insincere if they are not backed by strong action. Koizumi apologises personally and his successor as Prime Minister first denies sexual exploitation of comfort women then downplays the Imperial Government’s responsibility in those events.
The apologies keep coming partly because the LDP has no party discipline or official stance on these issues and because either the government or successors take actions that render their heartfelt apologies as insincere.
March 16th, 2007 at 1:05 amWhy is everyone so obsessed these days with receiving apologies? Russia has never apologized for the occupation of the Baltic States, and Iran never apologized for invading Greece 2,000 years ago. Can’t we just move on? If South Korea and
March 16th, 2007 at 6:47 amChina had any say in writing Japan’s textbooks, everything Japanese would have originated from Korea, and all Japanese would be sexual degenerates. There will always be politicians in Japan that will play the nationalist card to get votes, just as there will always be politicians in South Korea and China who will promote anti-Japanese feelings to get votes.
I agree with haafu. What’s the use of an apology? Whether things went down as Japan says or not, doesn’t really matter. It has nothing to do with Japanese people living today.
Not apologising completely is just a face-saving game on Japan’s part. Whether people were raped or not, modern Japanese understand that that would be wrong today. Just like modern Australians understand that stealing people’s children is wrong – sure it’s a terrible thing, but it doesn’t mean that today’s Australians are responsible for, or think doing such a thing would be ok. Are Mao’s descendants going to apologise for killing millions of Chinese? The best we can do is as worldwide community agree that doing such things today would be wrong. Apologies are irrelevent.
Get over it and start living in the present. Everyone’s bored of hearing about old wars and who was right. Everyone’s ancestors have contributed to terrible things. Most Japanese books, movies and video games just speak of how terrible war is. Isn’t that enough? Do you really need an apology?
March 16th, 2007 at 7:16 amPlease don’t include me in “everyone’s bored of hearing about old wars… “.
Thankyouverymuch.
March 16th, 2007 at 8:10 amApologies are useless. I rather have the Japanese government take actions that show it is working to resolve regional issues such as cultural exchanges, enhanced economic ties, joint history commission to resolve disputes, and avoiding questionable topics or sites as a high-ranking government official
March 16th, 2007 at 9:26 amtantan,
Yes I agree. If my neighbour broke into my house and stole all my stuff. And then if they later get caught, and fail to fully compensate me for my loss, less apologise properly, the important thing is that now they know they did the wrong thing (although I would only be assuming, and putting my faith in them that they have learned their lesson), and I should stop seeking for compensation and apologies as a sign that they have actually changed their ways.
I should be less seeking of the outward signs of their true repentance, less seeking of the compensation for the material losses. I should try my best to just forget about the losses and the stress that it has caused me.
I should be a more forgiving person.
Yes, the problem in this world is really that people aren’t forgiving enough and have no faith that people will not repeat their past miskates.
March 16th, 2007 at 9:31 amPersonally, I’m not really interested in the apology game, and for the record, I think the U.S. Congressional resolution is both stupid and arrogant. But the thing that disturbs me is not the apologies—or the lack thereof—but the denials that the crimes took place.
Sometimes, it seems Tokyo acts more like a defendant in court—”Comfort women? Prove it!”—than an interested participant actively trying to get uncover the historical truth.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:36 pm“Haafu,” of course, is spot-on. Apologies are completely meaningless!
Forget that contrition from Japan would help improve its relations with its East Asian neighbors, Japan has US soldiers to die for it the next time Japan pokes a stick in a Chinese or Korean eye.
You Americans – always butting into other countries’ bu…hey, get your boys over here so they can be killed! Our Chinese neighbors are being mean to us again!
March 16th, 2007 at 12:39 pmWell, what do you guys and gals think about the textbook issue? Because I actually think that is more troubling and more telling than pure debate over the apology.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:41 pm“Well, what do you guys and gals think about the textbook issue?”
March 16th, 2007 at 12:57 pmI am alarmed and distressed. The direction the Japanese politicians are taking is frightening. To my mind it’s a much bigger issue than ‘apologizing’.
“Well, what do you guys and gals think about the textbook issue?”
I’m not particularly well informed about this issue but as much as I appreciate many aspects of Japan, I have always gotten the sense that people in general (which is to say that there are always exceptions of course) have comparatively little interest in matters of history (in all areas – global, domestic, pop culture, and so forth). It seems that people are geared more towards effecting constant change in the social landscape. This can have positive economic effects but also limits discussions on serious matters to more recent topics.
March 16th, 2007 at 1:52 pmI’m not very familiar with the Japanese education system, but I was under the impression that many teachers are rather left-wing and bitter about the role that the Emperor played during the war. They express themselves often in this respect by not singing the national anthem. Do these same teachers go beyond making symbolic gestures and actually take the initiative in teaching their students some of the historical events that cause them to hate what Imperial Japan represents in their eyes? Or are they limited by rules that force them to adhere strictly to a narrowly-defined curriculum or by pressures to “teach to the exam”? I honestly don’t know and would be interested in finding out more. It would seem that it shouldn’t be very difficult for a teacher who is principled enough to refuse to sing the national anthem at school ceremonies to at least briefly introduce some of these controversial issues using third-party resources (such as newspaper clippings, independent books, and websites). (All this is not to say that I don’t agree that the textbook issue itself is cause for some concern.)
I agree with RYO here. The history education that I had reveived during my junior high and high school was heavily left leaned.So the responsibility for the war went to the “Gunbatsu (Military clique)” and the “Zaibatsu (financial clique)”, and althoug it was not written in the textbooks, both of my teachers mentioned the emperor.
When you enter university and when you begin to read history on your own, then you find out that something is wrong in this explanation. Whether you became more progressive (left) or you begin to identify with what the right wingers are saying is up to each person, I think.
March 16th, 2007 at 2:12 pmOne problem of the right side LDP politician is, that they can’t recognize that in the comfort women problem the problem and politics of gender is involved. In prewar Japan, it was quite common that parents sold their daughters because of debts. This poverty and misery was one cause of major coup in prewar time, the 226 incident. But still such action was legalized in prewar Japan. But today it will be called sex slavery or forced prostitution.
Persons like Nakayama apparently think that it is enough to prove that no kidnapping by military and police occurred, and then automatically that the comfort women would be dissolved.
Tachibana Takashi has pointed out (in relevance of the Yanagisawa remark) that there is a problem that men about 50 years old in Japan can’t understand the gender issue properly and are stuck with very old values.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:15 pmwell. u know, none of this really matters becuse by year 2500, humankind will no longer exist on earth
or anywhere
but good post, Marie
March 16th, 2007 at 3:20 pmLuckily your prediction is so far off in the future, no one will be able to call you on it if you turn out to be totally wrong. . . Come to think of it, that seems to be true of all of the predictions about the environment, isn’t it!?!
March 16th, 2007 at 3:31 pmOh what a completely intelligent and interesting post, tomojiro! You bring up such an interesting point–never occurred to me, but what you say makes sense. Certainly we must be looking at a difference in generations–I hope young people care enough about these issues to make further changes down the road. When people talk about the gender problems in Japan, I wonder if they take the attitudes of younger people into account. I imagine that the data would come out very differently if they did.
This is turning into a really fascinating discussion. Thanks everyone for taking time to read and think about things so much!
March 16th, 2007 at 9:23 pmLacadutadegiganti-or-whatever-his-name-is seems to have fallen for the canard that Korea and China have more of a desire to resolve the issue than Japan does, instead of using it as a wedge like they’ve actually been doing.
As for the textbooks, the central government should remove itself from it completely. Education is a local issue.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:43 pmWhat do you suggest the US do, then, Paul-or-whatever-your-name-is? Whether it’s Japan that’s spoiling for a fight or wedge-wielding Koreans and Chinese, either way, if a fight happens, US servicemen will die protecting Japan. I, for one, would prefer not to see that happen.
How about you?
March 17th, 2007 at 10:27 amI don’t understand why the US got involved in this comfort women issue. Speaking as a US tax payer, it seems it’s none of our business. Are we sticking our nose to where we don’t belong yet again? Can anyone enlighten me?
March 18th, 2007 at 2:23 am[...] Marie Mockett’s thoughts on the problem with apologies and Joshua at OFK’s thoughtful insight on the worst friend and best enemy prompt me to respond about the shortcomings of American hegemony in East Asia. Marie Mockett concludes that “…Korea, Japan, China…will need to reconcile their pasts and I suspect the West and the US is under pressure to try to help this along.” Joshua at OFK I’ll quote at length: [...]
March 18th, 2007 at 4:49 pm