Last Updated: Saturday, 16 April, 2005, 11:04 GMT 12:04 UK
The row over Japan's past and future
By William Horsley
BBC News, Tokyo
Japan's decision to approve new school textbooks,
criticised by some for glossing over the country's
wartime record, have promoted demonstrations in
several Chinese cities. But as William Horsley
discovers the row between the two countries concerns
the future as well as the past.
The most striking thing about
the Yasukuni Shrine is its
massive and forbidding black
"torii" gate.
A distinctive symbol of the
Shinto religion, a gaunt
silhouette beneath which, on a
bright spring day, I watched
Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to the shrine were criticised by
men and women of all ages
China
streaming in to pay their
respects to ancestors, or to admire the enchanting display of
cherry blossoms on the tree-lined avenue.
Each family group would pause, shut their eyes and pray in
front of the open-plan wooden building where the souls of
two-and-a-half-million Japanese war dead are enshrined.
Those war dead include Hideki Tojo, Japan's wartime prime
minister who was later hanged with a dozen other top
leaders as a war criminal.
Japan's present leader, Junichiro Koizumi has made regular
visits to Yasukuni Shrine in spite of furious complaints from
China, South Korea and other neighbouring countries that in
doing so he was condoning Japan's aggressive war in the
1930s and 1940s.
And now, the news from China is bad, very bad.
Demonstrations
Last weekend an angry crowd
gathered in Beijing to throw
stones at the Japanese
embassy.
In other cities young people
have attacked Japanese shops
and businesses.
Demonstrations over the text-books have extended to South
In Shanghai two Japanese
Korea
students were badly beaten up in a restaurant.
Chinese leaders say Japan will not deserve a permanent seat
on the UN Security Council until it faces up honestly to its
wartime misdeeds.
An e-mail doing the rounds in China calls for a mass boycott
of Japanese goods. "Send this on to other Chinese people",
the message says, "and we won't need to go to war!"
History
This stream of invective against the Japanese is not new.
Some Asia watchers see it largely as a device by Chinese
leaders to extract more Japanese aid or divert attention from
their own failings.
It is alarmingly reminiscent of the age of the Communist Red
Guards.
The Yasukuni Shrine remains a potent symbol
But on this trip to Japan I
of how the Japanese, intoxicated by fascism and
could not avoid the conclusion coerced by military rule, once collectively lost their
reason and were fed fantastic myths, of racial
superiority and the Emperor's divinity
that a new mood of
nationalism has also begun to
take hold in this country which has been publicly devoted to
peace and economic prosperity for so long.
One sign is the Japanese authorities' approval of several new
school history textbooks written by known right-wing
scholars.
One book which has angered the Chinese failed to make any
assessment of the number of Chinese civilians killed in the
infamous Rape of Nanjing.
The internationally accepted view is that hundreds of
thousands died in an orgy of sexual violence and killing by
Japanese troops.
And Japan's largest national newspaper, the Yomiuri
Shimbun, in what I take to be blatant disregard for the
known facts, has called on its readers to celebrate, because
the new textbooks have cut out all mention of one of the
greatest of all the humiliations inflicted by Imperial Japan on
its neighbours: the use of large numbers of women in
conquered Asian countries as sex slaves for the Japanese
army.
It was right to set the record straight, I read, because the
accusations "had been shown to be untrue".
Surely I thought modern Japan could not give in to the
poison of such deceit and hypocrisy ever again.
The Yasukuni Shrine remains a potent symbol of how the
Japanese, intoxicated by fascism and coerced by military
rule, once collectively lost their reason and were fed fantastic
myths, of racial superiority and the Emperor's divinity.
'Bitter dispute'
I had come to see the recently expanded Yasukuni museum
of Japanese history.
For 100 years Japan has been number one in
I found that its 18 galleries of
Asia. Now China, with 10 times Japan's population,
is in a hurry to take over that role
high-quality displays, maps
and texts amount to a lavish
and expensive re-write of the history of Japan's imperial age,
to show the Japanese as innocent victims of a conspiracy by
the Western colonial powers, to thwart Japan's ambition to
lead East Asia and force Japan into war.
By this account annexing Korea, setting up a puppet regime
in Manchukuo, the step by step takeover of China, each was
done in self-defence, aiming only to bring peace.
As for Nanjing, I found no mention of Japanese soldiers
killing civilians.
Instead, these words: "The Chinese were soundly defeated,
suffering heavy casualties. Inside the city, residents were
once again able to live their lives in peace."
However you look at it, that will not do as a record of what
happened.
By chance I came across this testimony of a Japanese army
veteran who was there.
"No matter how young or old, none of the women we
rounded up could escape being raped. Each one was
allocated to 15 or 20 soldiers for sexual intercourse and
abuse."
Afterwards "we always stabbed them and killed them.
Because dead bodies don't talk."
The bitter dispute now raging between Japan and China is
both about setting the record straight and about a struggle
for power.
For 100 years Japan has been number one in Asia.
Now China, with 10 times Japan's population, is in a hurry to
take over that role.
And as with highly-geared racing cars sharing the same
circuit, it is the moment of overtaking that brings the
greatest risk of a crash.