Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead. I understand that this is his first visit, and first visit by any Japanese Prime Minister in seven years. It has triggered a predictable and very negative response from China and South Korea.
The controversy comes from the fact that the shrine explicitly honours men responsible for some of the most horrific war crimes of the twentieth century. In addition to being killed in action in the Japanese military or as a civilian in war, being executed by an Allied war crimes tribunal is grounds for enshrinement. Class B and Class C war criminals were slowly enshrined at Yasukuni over the 1960s and 1970s, and then Class A war criminals (including Hideki Tojo) were enshrined at a secret ceremony in 1978 (a decision taken by the high priest that apparently Emperor Hirohito did not approve of). All in all, 1,068 people convicted of war crimes are commemorated at the Shrine, out of a total of 2,466,532.
Abe has said that he simply wants to honour Japan’s war dead, and he means no disrespect to the people of Japan’s neighbours. After all, leaders around the world attend ceremonies honouring war dead very frequently. But it is not difficult to imagine the reaction if, say, German leaders continued to visit a memorial that commemorated Nazi leaders by name. My bigger concern is that the Shrine includes a museum that presents an…interesting…take on Japan’s involvement in the Second World War, for example, by praising General Iwane Matsui’s scrupulous treatment of the civilian population of Nanking. I recall feeling a similar sense of distaste visiting the Peace Museum at Hiroshima.
This is obviously a manifestation of a deeper issue. Abe is seen by his critics as a hardline Japanese nationalist, who has written a book calling for a stronger and prouder Japan. He has been involved with the Society for Textbook Reform, which takes a nationalist view of history, and denied that the comfort women forced to serve the Japanese Army had been coerced in a ‘narrow’ sense. This is probably why the Chinese and South Korean governments take a dimmer view of his visit to the Shrine than they did of Junichiro Koizumi’s (although they didn’t much like it when he went, either).
I have to say that the historical revisionism bothers me far more than the Shrine, or who visits it.
Shinzo Abe visits Yasukuni Shrine
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Túrin Turambar
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Without making any specific comment on the rights or wrongs of this event, I wonder why there is this discomfort with historical revisionism.
I am not a historian, but even from my lay perspective, I am aware that if I read a history book from the nineteenth century, and read a text that covers the same history, but is written in the twenty-first century, the latter will more than likely conflict with the former.
History is not absolute; it is written, not made. The Japanese were, undoubtedly, guilty of war crimes. So were the Germans. And the Russians.
And the British. And the Americans.
It is an incovenient fact for some (especially the defeated) that the victors in war decide, to a great degree, what the record of war is.
I find myself veering towards agreement with Henry Ford's appraisal: History is Bunk.
It's disturbing to find such a bedfellow.
I am not a historian, but even from my lay perspective, I am aware that if I read a history book from the nineteenth century, and read a text that covers the same history, but is written in the twenty-first century, the latter will more than likely conflict with the former.
History is not absolute; it is written, not made. The Japanese were, undoubtedly, guilty of war crimes. So were the Germans. And the Russians.
And the British. And the Americans.
It is an incovenient fact for some (especially the defeated) that the victors in war decide, to a great degree, what the record of war is.
I find myself veering towards agreement with Henry Ford's appraisal: History is Bunk.
It's disturbing to find such a bedfellow.
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Passdagas the Brown
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And then there is the phenomenon of applying false equivalence to historical actors. 
It is rather simple to say that both Germans and Americans committed war crimes, but a more difficult exercise to examine both the motivation, and scale, of those war crimes, and make an informed ethical judgment about which was the most egregious offender.
I will really start to worry when the Chinese and Korean publics no longer care about who visits what shrine in Japan.
IMO, ethical relativism is a steep and dangerous slope.
It is rather simple to say that both Germans and Americans committed war crimes, but a more difficult exercise to examine both the motivation, and scale, of those war crimes, and make an informed ethical judgment about which was the most egregious offender.
I will really start to worry when the Chinese and Korean publics no longer care about who visits what shrine in Japan.
IMO, ethical relativism is a steep and dangerous slope.
Ethical relativism may well be a steep and dangerous slope, but ethical absolutism does not enjoy any particular position of authority.
x kills a man
y kills 2 men.
Is y twice the criminal of x?
I think the single most criminal act of WWII was the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki.* The bombadier on the aeroplane that dropped that bomb was directly, and personally, responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people. No other individual act, other than the Hiroshima bombing, has had such immediately fatal consequences.
Is the bombadier from Nagasaki 40,000 times more criminal than x?
*I choose Nagasaki oover Hiroshima, even though the death count in Hiroshima was greater, because it is argued that the atomic bombing of Japan was to demonstrate the potential for annihilation, and to force surrender.
Whilst I believe there is some justification for Hiroshima to support this argument, Nagasaki was gratuitous, and I conclude that it was a warning to Russia, and the Japanese had become pawns.
x kills a man
y kills 2 men.
Is y twice the criminal of x?
I think the single most criminal act of WWII was the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki.* The bombadier on the aeroplane that dropped that bomb was directly, and personally, responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people. No other individual act, other than the Hiroshima bombing, has had such immediately fatal consequences.
Is the bombadier from Nagasaki 40,000 times more criminal than x?
*I choose Nagasaki oover Hiroshima, even though the death count in Hiroshima was greater, because it is argued that the atomic bombing of Japan was to demonstrate the potential for annihilation, and to force surrender.
Whilst I believe there is some justification for Hiroshima to support this argument, Nagasaki was gratuitous, and I conclude that it was a warning to Russia, and the Japanese had become pawns.
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Passdagas the Brown
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While it was undoubtedly an awful thing, and while I believe there were other options to be exhausted (such as a demonstration for Japanese officials on a remote island, etc) it ultimately pales in comparison to the number of civilians killed by firebombing.
And though it was not a single act, I believe most would agree that the deliberate murder of millions of Jews, Roma (gypsies) and other "social outcasts" by the Nazis, with the primary motivation being hatred of who those people were at birth, was a far more heinous and morally reprehensible act.
The bombs were visited upon an aggressively imperial nation allied with one of the most murderous imperial nations in history. The civilians killed did not deserve it, IMO, but their own government brought it upon their heads just as much as the Enola Gay did. It was a war, with weapons, and America was fighting a nearly implacable enemy. So they used the most powerful weapon they had. And to single out Nagasaki - the Japanese did not surrender after Hiroshima. It remains very difficult to argue that they would have if the Americans had patience.
How that was morally less defensible than the ethno-religious murder of over 6 million innocent people by Nazi Germany is beyond my limited imagination.
And yes, I believe there are certain ethical absolutes - some Kantian categorical imperatives.
One of those is: murdering innocent people solely because of who they are is amoral.
Killing thousands of civilians in the pursuit of defeating an enemy combatant that attacked you first - there's a lot more grey area there (even if Truman was simultaneously communicating with Stalin via the bomb, and preventing the Soviets from occupying northern Japan). It was an awful moment in human history, but I'm not quite sure if it was amoral.
Hardly makes me an ethical absolutist.
And though it was not a single act, I believe most would agree that the deliberate murder of millions of Jews, Roma (gypsies) and other "social outcasts" by the Nazis, with the primary motivation being hatred of who those people were at birth, was a far more heinous and morally reprehensible act.
The bombs were visited upon an aggressively imperial nation allied with one of the most murderous imperial nations in history. The civilians killed did not deserve it, IMO, but their own government brought it upon their heads just as much as the Enola Gay did. It was a war, with weapons, and America was fighting a nearly implacable enemy. So they used the most powerful weapon they had. And to single out Nagasaki - the Japanese did not surrender after Hiroshima. It remains very difficult to argue that they would have if the Americans had patience.
How that was morally less defensible than the ethno-religious murder of over 6 million innocent people by Nazi Germany is beyond my limited imagination.
And yes, I believe there are certain ethical absolutes - some Kantian categorical imperatives.
One of those is: murdering innocent people solely because of who they are is amoral.
Killing thousands of civilians in the pursuit of defeating an enemy combatant that attacked you first - there's a lot more grey area there (even if Truman was simultaneously communicating with Stalin via the bomb, and preventing the Soviets from occupying northern Japan). It was an awful moment in human history, but I'm not quite sure if it was amoral.
Hardly makes me an ethical absolutist.
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axordil
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A good discussion of events is available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
My takeaway:
Even in retrospect, it's unclear exactly how much each of the particular events in August 1945 contributed to the end of the war in the Pacific. The top echelon of the military and civilian authorities were divided, even after the bombings and the invasion of Manchuria. The failed coup d'etat that attempted to take possession of Hirohito's recorded surrender speech indicates how out of touch with reality--or perhaps how willing to impose their own suicidal reality on the nation--the hard-liners were.
At the time, there was even less certainty. Just biding time and waiting for collapse would have allowed the Russians to invade all of Korea and Hokkaido, and the events in Eastern Europe since V-E day were already suggesting that Russian occupation and conquest were indistinguishable.
It's notable the "Big Six" council was evenly split on surrender *after* Nagasaki and the Russians invading Manchuria. It took another five days of fruitless attempts to negotiate away the most distasteful aspects of the Potsdam declaration before Hirohito's desire to end things overcame resistance in the council.
What a lot of people don't know is that Japan had a nuclear program too, and had given up on it. The known difficulty of building a bomb led to the assumption after Hiroshima among senior officials that the US only had the one bomb. Nagasaki was designed to show otherwise. In an ironic display of the "usefulness" of torture, a captured US fighter pilot confabulated his way to survival by telling the Japanese the Americans had 100 atom bombs and that Tokyo was the next target...as it probably would have been, as we didn't have 100, but we did have one ready to go within a week.
Would the war have ended without Nagasaki? Sure. Would the results have been better? I don't think so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
My takeaway:
Even in retrospect, it's unclear exactly how much each of the particular events in August 1945 contributed to the end of the war in the Pacific. The top echelon of the military and civilian authorities were divided, even after the bombings and the invasion of Manchuria. The failed coup d'etat that attempted to take possession of Hirohito's recorded surrender speech indicates how out of touch with reality--or perhaps how willing to impose their own suicidal reality on the nation--the hard-liners were.
At the time, there was even less certainty. Just biding time and waiting for collapse would have allowed the Russians to invade all of Korea and Hokkaido, and the events in Eastern Europe since V-E day were already suggesting that Russian occupation and conquest were indistinguishable.
It's notable the "Big Six" council was evenly split on surrender *after* Nagasaki and the Russians invading Manchuria. It took another five days of fruitless attempts to negotiate away the most distasteful aspects of the Potsdam declaration before Hirohito's desire to end things overcame resistance in the council.
What a lot of people don't know is that Japan had a nuclear program too, and had given up on it. The known difficulty of building a bomb led to the assumption after Hiroshima among senior officials that the US only had the one bomb. Nagasaki was designed to show otherwise. In an ironic display of the "usefulness" of torture, a captured US fighter pilot confabulated his way to survival by telling the Japanese the Americans had 100 atom bombs and that Tokyo was the next target...as it probably would have been, as we didn't have 100, but we did have one ready to go within a week.
Would the war have ended without Nagasaki? Sure. Would the results have been better? I don't think so.
None of this has anything to do with the atrocities the Japanese have committed on the mainland, which reportedly included testing chemical and biological weapons, as well as mass murders by more conventional means. Moral relativism is just a foreign phrase to the survivors and their immediate families.
People in the West tend to forget how recent these events are, how raw in many memories.
The Japanese are entitled to express their own grief and outrage at the bombings, but that doesn't erase their previous deeds, certainly not to the victims.
People in the West tend to forget how recent these events are, how raw in many memories.
The Japanese are entitled to express their own grief and outrage at the bombings, but that doesn't erase their previous deeds, certainly not to the victims.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
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Passdagas the Brown
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It has a lot to do with it, IMO. One of the many reasons people feel that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, is that the nation of Japan was led by a fanatically imperialist government that had reigned terror over Northeast Asia - and that was not likely to give up very easily. Less extreme measures were deemed unlikely to lead to a swift surrender, which was further complicated by fear of Stalin's eastern expansion.
Looking back, there were certainly fissures within the Japanese government that the fog of war obscured, and would have been possible to exploit had the Allies enjoyed better intelligence. But that's the luxury of hindsight.
Looking back, there were certainly fissures within the Japanese government that the fog of war obscured, and would have been possible to exploit had the Allies enjoyed better intelligence. But that's the luxury of hindsight.
Well, being German - so also from the "bad" side of WWII, I can only tell how difficult it is.
I think that as long as soldiers on any side are seen as "heroes", it will not change. I know how weird it feels to me when I see on facebook postings on veteran days about their marvellous grand-fathers who were in the RAF during WWII.... when like me you have grown with a story of your grand-mother fleeing through a totally bombed Germany with five kids under 9 among which two toddlers, embarking for Denmark on a boat which was bombed by the British and while it did not sink - if it had sunk like some others, I'd not be there to tell - my uncle was so traumatised after the bombings that for months he did not speak and in that night lost all his hair and became completely bald - at the age of 8... Matthias mother lost her twin brother in the Berlin bombings. But you never talked about it as a suffering. It was (and still is, although it has very recently changed) a hug taboo to talk about German suffering after WWII. And often even now, the reaction is, that the Germans should rather look for the victims they have caused. So, Frelga, I cannot agree with you either. You are not so easily entitled to express your grief and outrage when you are on the side of the guilty. The atrocities comitted towards Germans seem like justified by the horrors they committed themselves. We never talked about my grand-father's role in the army, if he was good soldier or not. He never came back from that war. But you could not say something like that he has fallen for his people ro bravely fought for his family.
War is atrocious. There is no good in war. Not a single thing.
There is no crime in humanity that compares to the Shoah, I think. It has changed the idea of evil, reached a degree of inhumanity like no other event before or since. Including other genocides.
I don't know what the answer is.
Sorry, this became very personal.
I think that as long as soldiers on any side are seen as "heroes", it will not change. I know how weird it feels to me when I see on facebook postings on veteran days about their marvellous grand-fathers who were in the RAF during WWII.... when like me you have grown with a story of your grand-mother fleeing through a totally bombed Germany with five kids under 9 among which two toddlers, embarking for Denmark on a boat which was bombed by the British and while it did not sink - if it had sunk like some others, I'd not be there to tell - my uncle was so traumatised after the bombings that for months he did not speak and in that night lost all his hair and became completely bald - at the age of 8... Matthias mother lost her twin brother in the Berlin bombings. But you never talked about it as a suffering. It was (and still is, although it has very recently changed) a hug taboo to talk about German suffering after WWII. And often even now, the reaction is, that the Germans should rather look for the victims they have caused. So, Frelga, I cannot agree with you either. You are not so easily entitled to express your grief and outrage when you are on the side of the guilty. The atrocities comitted towards Germans seem like justified by the horrors they committed themselves. We never talked about my grand-father's role in the army, if he was good soldier or not. He never came back from that war. But you could not say something like that he has fallen for his people ro bravely fought for his family.
War is atrocious. There is no good in war. Not a single thing.
There is no crime in humanity that compares to the Shoah, I think. It has changed the idea of evil, reached a degree of inhumanity like no other event before or since. Including other genocides.
I don't know what the answer is.
Sorry, this became very personal.
"nolite te bastardes carborundorum".
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Passdagas the Brown
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War is one of the worst things people do to each other.
And it has also been instrumental in creating the societies we live in today. Had Napoleon Bonaparte not gone on a megalomaniacal offensive against most of Europe, is it not quite possible that we would all still be living under monarchies today?
War is awful. But sometimes progress is made possible by it. Either inadvertently or otherwise. Whether we like it or not, in the wake of destruction, new life can emerge. Is it always as glorious and pure as a rising Phoenix? No, it never is. But if we see opportunity in its wake, we can turn great evil into good.
-PtB
P.S. Nin - my grandfather was also on the "wrong" side of WWII (at least at first), fighting for fascist Italy in North Africa, and later in Italy proper. Friends of his were killed by both the Allies and the Nazis. In his later years, I remember him saying to me: "If you ever detect even the hint of fascism, fight it. It almost ruined our country, and the entire world." While he didn't quite appreciate the differences between German Nazism and Italian fascism, he fully placed the blame on the Axis powers, despite his initial allegiance. He greatly empathized with the suffering on both sides, but always asserted that the suffering was primarily (or even solely) the fault of the Third Reich and the Mussolini government (Japan never really entered his consciousness).
It's my understanding that the taboo of acknowledging the suffering of the German people (and even Italian fascists) is lifting. But the taboo of placing blame on Allied forces will likely never go away. It's a strong taboo - encased in moral steel. And IMO, it is a taboo that should not be broken. In Tolkien's words, that "ruddy little ignoramus" Adolf Hitler is responsible for all the suffering the world's population endured during those terrible years. He was as close to a devil as the modern world ever saw.
And it has also been instrumental in creating the societies we live in today. Had Napoleon Bonaparte not gone on a megalomaniacal offensive against most of Europe, is it not quite possible that we would all still be living under monarchies today?
War is awful. But sometimes progress is made possible by it. Either inadvertently or otherwise. Whether we like it or not, in the wake of destruction, new life can emerge. Is it always as glorious and pure as a rising Phoenix? No, it never is. But if we see opportunity in its wake, we can turn great evil into good.
-PtB
P.S. Nin - my grandfather was also on the "wrong" side of WWII (at least at first), fighting for fascist Italy in North Africa, and later in Italy proper. Friends of his were killed by both the Allies and the Nazis. In his later years, I remember him saying to me: "If you ever detect even the hint of fascism, fight it. It almost ruined our country, and the entire world." While he didn't quite appreciate the differences between German Nazism and Italian fascism, he fully placed the blame on the Axis powers, despite his initial allegiance. He greatly empathized with the suffering on both sides, but always asserted that the suffering was primarily (or even solely) the fault of the Third Reich and the Mussolini government (Japan never really entered his consciousness).
It's my understanding that the taboo of acknowledging the suffering of the German people (and even Italian fascists) is lifting. But the taboo of placing blame on Allied forces will likely never go away. It's a strong taboo - encased in moral steel. And IMO, it is a taboo that should not be broken. In Tolkien's words, that "ruddy little ignoramus" Adolf Hitler is responsible for all the suffering the world's population endured during those terrible years. He was as close to a devil as the modern world ever saw.
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Passdagas the Brown
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I agree that there has never been a "good" war. But just as there can be "unjust" peace, there can be "just" wars. IMO, the Allied cause of WWII was one of them, as was the military action against the Serbian government in the 1990s, and even the recent UNSC-authorized strike against the Qaddafi regime. And other more controversial examples that I won't mention now. I sit with Reinhold Niebuhr on this question.axordil wrote:Wars pay for the grievances of nations with the salt tears of the survivors. There has never been a good war, and only rarely a necessary one.
IMO, it will be dangerous day when we decide that the only war that is justified is a "necessary" one. No, it is not "necessary" to prevent a murderous regime from committing genocide against his or her people, or against his or her neighbors. But it may certainly be "just" to intervene, with force if that is the primary means of halting the action that precipitated the response.
The prevention, or halting of, genocide and mass atrocities is, IMO, the moral cause of the 21st century. If we proceed intelligently, and start by reforming international law to reflect the concept of "responsibility to protect," or "R2P," this cause may eventually be embraced by all liberal nations. Hopefully China and Russia will eventually come around.
Communal responsibility is a bitch. It comes down to that in the end, and all of us who think we live in free countries need to remember that.
That still has nothing to do with officials honoring those personally responsible for torturing and murdering innocent people.
That still has nothing to do with officials honoring those personally responsible for torturing and murdering innocent people.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
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Passdagas the Brown
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I'm putting that on a T-shirt as we speak.axordil wrote:I think one thing we have to come to terms with is that clean hands don't exist in this world, when it comes to nations with the capability to make a difference. If we wait for morally pure saviors, we will die waiting. The trick is often to convince the merely venal to oppose the truly depraved.
A dispassionate appraisal of war crimes is near impossible, I guess. Stalin had it right; one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic. But it is always qualified; a million of their deaths is a statistic. One of our deaths is a tragedy. Irrespective of the "our" and "their".
So moral, or ethical, equivalence; acceptable? I don't really know. All I can really react to is how I feel, and I feel just as angry about Nagasaki as I do about Nanking. I condemn Bomber Harris as forcefully as I condemn Donitz, and his "wolf-packs".
It is nearly one hundred years since the outbreak of WWI, the Great War, the "War to end Wars" (OK, that's 103 years to Americans. Late again!
) and, to my horror, the outbreak of this war is being "celebrated". Surely it is only the end of wars that should be celebrated?
Worse, there remains this concerted politicisation of the war as a "just" war, in which Britain held the sword of justice and morality, and Germany was the personification of evil. I look at this, and it reminds me so much of all the other little wars I have seen during my lifetime. Iraq? Saddam was Hitler incranate, a baby-eating madman, a threat to all and sundry, 45 minutes from annihilating the West.
Nonsense.
And I honestly believe theses rationales for war are all nonsense, every last one of them. They have a kernel of truth, but that seed is a Monsanto seed, preyed upon, manipulated, corrupted.
I think Henry Ford, an odious man, was bang on the button.
History is bunk.
Edited to correct the most appalling typos...
So moral, or ethical, equivalence; acceptable? I don't really know. All I can really react to is how I feel, and I feel just as angry about Nagasaki as I do about Nanking. I condemn Bomber Harris as forcefully as I condemn Donitz, and his "wolf-packs".
It is nearly one hundred years since the outbreak of WWI, the Great War, the "War to end Wars" (OK, that's 103 years to Americans. Late again!
) and, to my horror, the outbreak of this war is being "celebrated". Surely it is only the end of wars that should be celebrated?Worse, there remains this concerted politicisation of the war as a "just" war, in which Britain held the sword of justice and morality, and Germany was the personification of evil. I look at this, and it reminds me so much of all the other little wars I have seen during my lifetime. Iraq? Saddam was Hitler incranate, a baby-eating madman, a threat to all and sundry, 45 minutes from annihilating the West.
Nonsense.
And I honestly believe theses rationales for war are all nonsense, every last one of them. They have a kernel of truth, but that seed is a Monsanto seed, preyed upon, manipulated, corrupted.
I think Henry Ford, an odious man, was bang on the button.
History is bunk.
Edited to correct the most appalling typos...
Last edited by jotnar on Tue Feb 11, 2014 1:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Passdagas the Brown
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Henry Ford was an expert at artificially simplifying the complex, and reducing the world to gears and predictability. History isn't bunk. History is evidence of a restless race - constantly, imperfectly, peacefully and murderously, seeking higher ground.
The Fir-Bolg are always there, but to our credit, we continuously seek new ways to channel their fiery energies towards the humane. Though I imagine that the 21st century will still require some of their murderous impulses to be forcefully confronted.
ETA: Though I agree with Ford that focusing on the present (and future) are preferable to brooding about the past. I'd rather go to Mars than twist myself into a knot about the Persians!
The Fir-Bolg are always there, but to our credit, we continuously seek new ways to channel their fiery energies towards the humane. Though I imagine that the 21st century will still require some of their murderous impulses to be forcefully confronted.
ETA: Though I agree with Ford that focusing on the present (and future) are preferable to brooding about the past. I'd rather go to Mars than twist myself into a knot about the Persians!
"History" does not exist other than as an invention of historians. It is not set in aspic, an incontrovertible truth. It is reliant on interpretation, manipulation, falsification. It is a gradation of lies, from the outright, brass-necked, to the subtle, insidious.Passdagas the Brown wrote:Henry Ford was an expert at artificially simplifying the complex, and reducing the world to gears and predictability. History isn't bunk. History is evidence of a restless race - constantly, imperfectly, peacefully and murderously, seeking higher ground.
The Fir-Bolg are always there, but to our credit, we continuously seek new ways to channel their fiery energies towards the humane. Though I imagine that the 21st century will still require some of their murderous impulses to be forcefully confronted.
ETA: Though I agree with Ford that focusing on the present (and future) are preferable to brooding about the past. I'd rather go to Mars than twist myself into a knot about the Persians!
And to risk dalliance with the ultimate in absurdism, truth itself is subjective; relative not absolute. It is as much an invention as Mîm the petty dwarf.
