Posted on 08/15/2018 7:01:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia.
From Homo erectus to the present day - more than a million years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.
For three hours a week - 105 hours over the year - we edged towards the 20th Century.
It's hardly surprising that some classes, in some schools, never get there, and are told by teachers to finish the book in their spare time.
When I returned recently to my old school, Sacred Heart in Tokyo, teachers told me they often have to start hurrying, near the end of the year, to make sure they have time for World War II.
[SNIP]
When we did finally get there, it turned out only 19 of the book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.
There was one page on what is known as the Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers blew up a railway in Manchuria in China in 1931.
There was one page on other events leading up to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including one line, in a footnote, about the massacre that took place when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing - the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing.
There was another sentence on the Koreans and the Chinese who were brought to Japan as miners during the war, and one line, again in a footnote, on "comfort women" - a prostitution corps created by the Imperial Army
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Mom told me that back in her day, Japanese history books started with Hiroshima.
Years ago, wife and I toured the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
On the Navy launch taking us out to the shrine were a dozen or more Japanese kids in their teens.
I asked one why they were on the tour. A young woman responded saying “We wanted to see what our fathers and grandfathers had done. The war is not taught much in Japan...”
The US has an opposite approach in teaching history.
They never teach anything favorable about the US.
That is unacceptable. The population of Germany, per the census just released, is 24% "of migrant background", because the government of Germany is actively and intentionally working to dilute and destroy German culture and German enthicity. The Germans have paid millions upon millions in reparations, scolded their military for using marching songs that are "too martial" and quiver in fear at the notion of someone loving their country "because nationalism."
Maybe the BBC should talk about Islam’s brutal history and what they leave out.
At least the Japanese don’t do it anymore.
Funny how these ‘historical’ articles, which are really common knowledge to anyone with a passing interest in the ww2 pacific theater, pop up when Japan is currently beefing up its military to counter the increasing threat of China. Perhaps a few articles on the seedier side of the chinese cultural revolution are in order.
Yeah, the Japanese were much like the Germans, in a way. They had an idealistic vision that they were “helping” by being imperialists, and almost all of them didn’t know about the atrocities the Japanese military were conducting overseas. When the Americans made the brilliant choice of forcing the emperor to surrender on radio, the veneer of all that idealism came crashing down.
The irony now is that both the Chinese and Koreans are flooding Japan with tourism. It’s quite annoying to see some of my old haunts in Kyoto now infested with Chinese tour groups that are not the most scrupulous of sorts.
Because Japan’s neighbors, for example, South korea’s lowlife politicians, need to use Japan-bashing as a distraction.
When I began visiting Japan in the late 80's, the #1 best selling book was a rewrite of WWII ending in a glorious Japanese victory. Most Japanese have no grasp of what happened in China, Korea, the Philippines or in any of the prisoner of war camps. I found it all shocking.
“The Japanese refuse to bow and scrape and wail apologies every day for things done by men who are dead. They refuse to actively destroy their cultural-enthic homogeneity.”
That is really one of the most retarded summations of what this issue is about, and why nations like China and Korea are still cold towards Japan.
I lived there 1951-1961.
Traveled Seattle-Yokohama and back via MSTS (the Army’s Navy.)
Bump!
Much is said about the internment of Japanese civlians in the US during WW2, but the treatment of civilian Americans in the Philippine interment camps were brutal. It’s not talked about much today.
Only America does bad things in today’s history books.
Imagine if German schools for the past seventy years had taught that Poland started the war by attacking them, that the twelve million dead in the camps and killing fields (6 million Jews and the rest a mixture of other ethnicities, religions, political groups, and "untermenschen") had simply never existed much less been killed on an industrial scale, or that Germany was the victim and not the aggressor.
I agree with you that the generational group guilt imposed on Germany till this day has gone on too far and too long, and has contributed to their idiotic policy of permitting an invasion of Muslim barbarism. But Japan went to the opposite extreme and has never acknowledged at all the crimes and atrocities committed on their neighbors.
What's your genius interpretation of the issue?
In 60s, 70s, Japanese public opinion was quite left leaning, pro-China, pro-North Korea, self loathing. There were several far left radical groups, including the Japanese red army.
They turned right in 80s, due to Regean’s cold war policy, America urged Japan to spend more on defense.
The culture is fascinating and I really enjoyed my time there. The willful disregard for history, though, is mind-boggling.
Radical blacks say that to whites: you still know nothing about how bad you were during the slavery era.
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