The Korea Times is reporting that the Korean Supreme Court has reached a landmark decision concerning the nation’s sexual harassment laws. . .
Squeezing a person’s nipple or hitting their genitals with the back of one’s hand does not constitute sexual harassment if the incident took place in military barracks, the Supreme Court recently ruled.
Glad they got that straightened out.
Via The Marmot’s Hole.
Japan’s defeat in World War II was a huge emotional blow to the country which is still felt today. Although more than sixty years have passed, the subject of the war is still in many ways “taboo,” and not discussed very often outside of certain specific situations. (Kind of reminds me of growing up in the 1970s and asking what that Vietnam War thing was all about…no one seemed to want to tell me.)
One interesting mechanism the Japanese have evolved to allow them to deal with the subject of war has been an unlikely one: animation. While the traditional image of a “soldier” used to be tied to black and white photographs from the historical Pacific War, this has changed somewhat after three decades of popular culture in which the idea of “war” was more likely to be defined in sci-fi terms, such as the One Year War of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, in which spacenoids living in orbital colonies fight for independence from Earth.
While it’s not generally possible for Japanese to wax romantic about the real war, which they lost, you can probably find fans within a certain age range who could tell you about the First Battle of Jaburo between Char Aznable-lead Zeon forces and the Federation in great detail, or a Space Battleship Yamato fan who can get misty-eyed about the Battle of Saturn, when dozens of Andromeda-class battleships were destroyed by the Comet Empire.
If you asked Japanese who they considered the most respected “military heroes” of the country were, you might find some who would answer Amuro Rei or Bright Noah or Captain Okita/Captain Avatar, the legendary characters from these war-oriented anime series. It’s not unlike the original Star Trek, which was able to tell stories about race relations and other difficult topics that couldn’t be discussed in the 1960s unless they were disguised as science fiction tales far off into the future.
Reuters is reporting on the release of the Global Peace Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The report is based on 24 indicators including U.N. deployments overseas, respect for human rights, levels of violent crime, and arms sales.
The Group of Eight economic powers ranked as follows: Japan (5th), Canada (11th), Germany (14th), Italy (28th), France (36th), Britain (49th), U.S. (97th), and Russia (131st), out of 140 ranked.
Iceland ranked first.
The bottom 5 included Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Israel, and Iraq.
In a Reuters article a few weeks back, I got a history lesson on four disputed islands north of Hokkaido. The article discusses these sparsely populated islands and their history. A few tidbits:
Remember the story of the U.S. Marine in Okinawa who was accused of raping a 14-year old girl that we reported on here, here, and here?
The Marine claimed he merely forced a kiss on the girl and charges were later dismissed by Japanese authorities when the girl dropped charges against him.
Though it looked like that would be that, the U.S. military apparently has decided, pressed charges or no, the Marine’s actions were serious infractions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and must be punished.
U.S. military charges against Staff Sgt. Tyrone L. Hadnott include rape of a child under 16, abusive sexual conduct, making a false official statement, adultery and “kidnapping through inveigling,” or trickery.
No date was set for the court-martial. The charges were made Monday, but the military did not announce them until Friday.
Big thanks to RTN for sending this in.
The story of the murder of a Japanese taxi driver has been in the news since the March 19th crime. This Washington Post article has more information on the murder and its alleged perpetrator who is a U.S. serviceman and intriguingly a Nigerian citizen. The article also discusses the backstory about the U.S. military presence in Japan. This whole episode brings up many issues. A few weeks ago in his podcast (and in a follow-up) Edward discussed the alleged rape of a Japanese teenage schoolgirl by another U.S. Serviceman and the dropping of those charges and (correctly, I think) discussed how few incidents there really are considering how many military people there are here (50,000). Nevertheless all incidents become high profile, as should be expected given the high level of anxiety the U.S. military seems to cause. Should the U.S. still be in Japan 60 years after WWII? Should Japan stop hysterical press coverage of crimes, especially those committed by foreigners (not that the U.S. press is any better)? Why does the U.S. have a Nigerian (or any foreign nationals) in its ranks?
The New York Times has a quartet of articles related to Japan.
One article deals with a lawsuit regarding WWII forced suicides. I have not heard much about this issue before and it is quite interesting. The topic of revisionist history is a universal one. In this particular case an author wrote about these suicides and was sued for defamation but the lawsuit was just thrown out.
A Japanese court has rejected a defamation lawsuit against Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, agreeing with his depiction of deep involvement by the Japanese military in the mass suicides of civilians in Okinawa toward the end of World War II.
The defamation lawsuit, filed in 2005, was seized upon by right-wing scholars and politicians in Japan who want to delete references to the military’s coercion of civilians in the mass suicides from the country’s high school history textbooks. Last April, during the administration of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister at the time, the Ministry of Education announced that references to the military’s role would be deleted from textbooks.
Slate.com, one of my favorite websites, has an article on Hiroshima which I found disappointing. It’s long (very long — whatever happened to being concise?), unfocused, and somewhat pointless. Despite that, it does raise a few thought-provoking questions and makes a couple of interesting observations even while rehashing a lot of old material. Points of note include the banality of much of modern day Hiroshima (Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds, etc.), comparisons to current issues of 9/11 commemoration, and why A-bomb victims deserve special recognition over other war dead. You won’t miss much if you give this article a pass, but if Hiroshima and its place in history interests you, give it a quick read.
After weeks of Japanese indignation, editorials condemning out of control U.S. soldiers, images off U.S. military commanders bowing deeply in contrition before the governor of Okinawa, and even an apology by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old Okinawa schoolgirl by a U.S. Marine. . . the girl has dropped her criminal complaint and the local district prosecutor has dropped all charges.
Japanese authorities are portraying the dropping of charges as being in consideration for the feelings of the young victim.
According to the prosecutors, the girl said to them, “That’s enough, leave me alone.”
“We must give maximum respect to the will of the victim,” Yaichiro Yamashiki, chief prosecutor at the prosecutors office, said at a press conference. “In keeping with legal procedure, we dealt with the case in this way [by not indicting him] because the accusation was retracted.”
“We’ve determined that it isn’t appropriate to indict the suspect by applying charges…out of consideration for the victim’s feelings,” Yamashiki added.
But with all of the furor generated by the incident, it is logical to assume that prosecutors would have pushed hard to have the Marine put behind bars if there had been any physical evidence at all to indicate that a sexual assault actually had taken place.
I wonder if the people of Okinawa plan to make a formal apology to the Marines.
Andy Young who runs Siberian Light - The Russian Blog, writes in to point us to his post about a long forgotten battle fought between Japan and the Soviet Union in the opening days of World War II. Forgotten, but so significant that it literall altered the course of history.
In August 1939, just weeks before Hitler invaded Poland, the Soviet Union and Japan fought a massive tank battle on the Mongolian border - the largest the world had ever seen.
Under the then unknown Georgy Zhukov, the Soviets won a crushing victory at the batte of Khalkhin-Gol (known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident). Defeat persuaded the Japanese to expand into the Pacific, where they saw the United States as a weaker opponent than the Soviet Union. If the Japanese had not lost at Khalkhin Gol, they may never have attacked Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese decision to expand southwards also meant that the Soviet Eastern flank was secured for the duration of the war. Instead of having to fight on two fronts, the Soviets could mass their troops - under the newly promoted General Zhukov - against the threat of Nazi Germany in the West.
In terms of its strategic impact, the battle of Khalkhin Gol was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War, but no-one has ever heard of it. Why?
A new movie out of Japan named The Truth About Nanjing attempts to claim that the Nanjing Massacre never happened.
According to Satoru Mizushima, the film’s director, “There is one indisputable fact: there was no massacre at Nanjing. We don’t want our children to grow up thinking Japan is a barbarian country.”
A preview of the highlights of the film, which is backed by ultra-conservatives including Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, included newsreel footage of Japanese Imperial army officers entering Nanjing on horseback while soldiers stand to attention.
“The entry of the Japanese military brought peace and order to the people of the city,” read the subtitles.
Japanese veterans who served in the area at the time were shown denying any large-scale violence against civilians.
The film is based on the writings of Shudo Higashinakano, who asserts that the Nanking Massacre story as invented by Americans and Europeans who were living in Nanjing at the time.
Director Mizushima is also on record claiming that Japanese war criminals martyrs sacrificed to atone for the sins of Japan, making them similar to Jesus Christ.
They resemble Jesus Christ who was nailed to the cross in order to bear the sins of the world. They died bearing all of old Japan’s good and bad parts and headed for the gallows.
It’s been revealed pressure from the United States got then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to relent on his contentious claim before a Diet committee in March that there was no proof Japan Imperial forces were directly involved in forcing women into sexual slavery during World War II.
After Abe’s remarks, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer told a senior Japanese government official the U.S. would not be able to continue to support Japan over the North Korean abduction issue if Abe did not back down. After deliberations with other government officials, Abe altered his position and announced that he stands by Japan’s 1993 official statement of apology to the sex slaves, which were referred to as “comfort women” during the war.
The 1993 statement, issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, acknowledges and apologizes for the Imperial forces’ involvement in forcing women and girls to work in frontline brothels in Japanese-occupied areas in the 1930s and 1940s.
The guns-for-hire at Blackwater don’t just roam the streets of Baghdad and New Orleans. Turns out, they’re in Japan, too — protecting the country’s controversial ballistic missile defense systems.
In Shariki, a tiny village near the Sea of Japan, about 100 government contractors work with AN/TPY-2 radar, “which points high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies,” according to Stars & Stripes.
The contractors “work for Raytheon and Chenega Blackwater Solutions, who, respectively, run the missile radar and provide security at the base.” Two soldiers supervise the 100-person team…”
Source: Wired
Don’t know if there is any relation to the Japan surrender anniversary or not, but I just noticed that tonight’s nine o’clock TV movie on Tokyo’s chanel 12 is Bridge on the River Kwai.
Check out the THE JAPAN TIMES for a gripping account of the War experiences of Masamichi Shida, a man who was accepted into the Japanese Naval Academy at the age of 15 back in 1942, and eventually was slated for a one-way ride as a kamikaze pilot.
In March 1945, Shida himself graduated from the academy, and a week before being commissioned he and fellow pilots were handed a questionnaire asking: “Do you strongly desire to become a kamikaze? Or only moderately? Or not at all?”
Today, Shida takes great pains to explain what was going through his head when he chose certain annihilation. For starters, he’d worked hard up to that point and didn’t want to back out now. And he was about to become an officer in a navy that placed honor before all else. He and most of his fellow pilots answered: “Strongly.”
One comrade was rumored to have demurred and quietly left the unit in shame as the others looked on with a mixture of pity and contempt. The young man — this elite soldier — had disgraced himself. But before long, Shida would find himself envying his “courage” to resist the call.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense has announced plans to build a stealth fighter, with plans for the first test flight within five years. The reason Japan wants to build new jet fighter is the fact that the U.S. does not want to sell it the latest supersonic F-22 Raptors.
I wonder whether Japan really intends to develop its own fighter or if this is merely a feint to prod the U.S. to let loose of its technology. The reason I am skeptical is because the Japanese government likes to announce ambitious long-term technological goals such as this and then fail to come through within the allotted time. Postponement is followed by more postponement, until the project eventually sputters and fades.
Faced with the geopolitical realities of an emerging power in China and a certified basket case in North Korea, can Japan really afford to take the risk that this project also will fail?
The Japanese government is getting close to agreement that members of its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) on U.N. peacekeeping missions overseas should be allowed to use weapons to guard troops from other countries on the same missions.
Under the current rules of engagement, Japanese SDF personnel are not allowed to use their weapons to rescue foreign troops that come under attack. In other words, the Japanese military currently is legally obligated to stand by and watch as their allies are slaughtered rather than lift a finger to assist them.
That is one hell of a way to run a military, isn’t it?
The U.S. House of Representative has passed its resolution demanding that Japan issue a formal apology for forcing women into service as comfort women during World War II.
Though largely symbolic, the nonbinding resolution has caused unease in Japan and added tension to an otherwise strong alliance. Officials in Tokyo say their country’s leaders, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have apologized repeatedly for the Imperial Japanese Army’s forcing of women to work in military brothels in the 1930s and 1940s.
The resolution’s supporters, however, say Japan has never assumed responsibility fully for the treatment of the women.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., labeled as “nauseating” what he said were efforts by some in Japan “to distort and deny history and play a game of blame the victim.”
“Inhumane deeds should be fully acknowledged,” said Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “The world awaits a full reckoning of history from the Japanese government.”
The resolation demands that Japan “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner.”
After decades of denial, the Japanese government acknowledged its role in wartime prostitution after a historian discovered documents showing government involvement. In 1993, the government issued a carefully worded official apology, but it was never approved by parliament. Japan has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties.
I saw the Japanese trailer for akamikaze survivor documentary movie titled Wings of Defeat. The Japanese title is 特攻 (tokko) which literally translates to “special attack”, but in Japan, when speaking about tokko in the context of WWII, most people will imagine the Kamikaze pilots.
The Japanese on the front of the flier translates roughly as: “I wanted to live.” “I didn’t want to die.”
This movie looks really interesting. I’m going to have to drag myself down to the theater and pay the 1700-ish yen or so to see it! It starts July 21 in Japan.
By the way, a friend brought to my attention a book that is out of print, but available on Amazon called I was a Kamikaze. I have never read it, but it looks interesting.
Surviving suicide missions. . . That’s heavy. Apparently the author, Nagatsuka was a French literature major at Tokyo university, so he originally wrote this book in French, and later it was translated into English.
Even better, John W. Dower is in the movie. Dower wrote the amazing Japanese post-war history book, Embracing Defeat. This book is as fat as a textbook, but is so interesting it reads like a novel. Highly recommended!
