
In Textbook Fight, Japan Leaders Seek to Recast History - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/asia/japan-fights-a-political-battle-using-history-texts.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all
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capred
Does anyone really think the textbooks in the US are showing the barbarism our
country is displaying right now - let alone 70 years ago?

Civilian casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the 7 figures) would bring
war crimes indictments to the leaders of other nations. Indiscriminate drone
attacks in multiple countries have killed hundreds of children. You can call
everyone a terrorist but I think its fair to say being under 12 years old
should exempt you from being murdered.

Let me make my point more crisp if it isn't clear - the worse war crimes
committed by the US, French, British, Russian...etc are not Chapter 1 in the
textbooks of their own nations.

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berntb
I wonder from which textbooks you get your "facts"?

>> casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the 7 figures)

I assume that is from the Lancet reports? Highly doubtful, see the reality
check from the Iraq Body count [1] (never answered by the Lancet authors
afaik). At a minimum, it would require a big conspiracy _still_ controlling
information from morgues in the larger hospitals -- since any large hospital
would see a significant fraction of the official deaths for the whole Iraq, if
the Lancet papers are correct! And a conspiracy to (continue to) hide the
makers of prostheses for all the hidden maimed. And so on.

Now we can say, because of the later leaks of internal US military documents,
that if there were large conspiracies like these to do the needed coverups, it
would be known.

[2] is quite fun, btw.

Etc, etc.

(And don't even start explaining the logic of blaming a country U for what
people did to civilians, while _also trying to kill soldiers from U_... But
sure, I can agree that the Bush administration was criminally incompetent.)

[1] [http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-
checks/](http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/)

[2] [http://lancetiraq.blogspot.ro/2010/03/dubious-
polling.html](http://lancetiraq.blogspot.ro/2010/03/dubious-polling.html)

Edit: I answered a Karma 77 account, sigh. I need to stay out of the religious
hate wars people use these accounts for. [It was upvoted later, by himself?
:-) ]

Edit 2: But to support your point re Japan, US sources doesn't seem to mention
much that in Nagasaki they nuked the biggest church in Asia? (The remains of
the church is moved closer to the point below where the bomb exploded.)

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sanxiyn
"Textbooks would also be required to state that there is still a dispute about
whether the Japanese Army played a direct role in forcing so-called comfort
women from Korea and elsewhere to provide sex to its soldiers."

This is insane.

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detcader
This happens in the US to some extent; Texas schoolboards want the history of
slavery toned down, so the Big Four textbook companies just cater to them and
the whole country suffers

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kenshiro_o
That is just insane. I still don't understand why some Japanese leaders can't
seem to accept all the atrocities of the Japanese army during that period, and
just, you know, move on!

Germany and its leaders have been able to do so and I would believe the
majority of Japanese are pacifists but they seem worried about China's rise
thanks to hyper-coverage of frictions with China in the media. All this
greatly plays in favour of Abe's revisionist ambitions.

That is an appalling move from Abe's cabinet and I hope they will be stopped.

~~~
S4M
Yes, my wife is Japanese, but she doesn't seem to know much about the Japanese
massacres of Nanking. On the other hand, the Japanese learn at school about
the plight of the Japanese who were in China during the Second World War but
couldn't go back to Japan when it lost the war.

~~~
kenshiro_o
Why is this not taught in school? It is important that descendants of any
people be able to look back at actions from their predecessors in order to
acquire "historical experience" and not repeat the mistakes of their
ancestors.

Has your wife looked into the Nanking massacre since then?

I really like Japan (I am currently learning Japanese and would love to live
there for 1-2 years from 2015) but some aspects of the society or the politics
just make me cringe.

~~~
S4M
I don't know exactly what the Japanese schools are teaching, and the Japanese
crimes of war are not a frequent topic of conversation between us, but the
couple of times this was brought on she always says something in the lines of
"I didn't know..." or "In Japan we don't speak about that", and she hasn't
bothered to look at the history of the Nanking massacre.

> I really like Japan (I am currently learning Japanese and would love to live
> there for 1-2 years from 2015) but some aspects of the society or the
> politics just make me cringe.

I am in the exact situation as you, except that we don't know if we want to
move to Japan because of the radioactivity.

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namuol
Somebody should tell Japan's Leaders that you're only allowed to rewrite
history when you win the war.

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sbierwagen
Peter Lee has been covering Abe's efforts to make Japan a regional military
power pretty well. His latest post:
[http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2013/12/yasakuni-blues-
unde...](http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2013/12/yasakuni-blues-
understanding-shinzo.html)

~~~
snogglethorpe
Based on that, he's not exactly an unbiased source...

~~~
sbierwagen
Of course not. There's no such thing as an unbiased source in geopolitics.

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fit2rule
All countries do this. Most Australians have no idea about their holocaust.
Most Brits have no idea what they did to the Irish and other 'lower races'.
Most members of the Commonwealth have no idea the extent to which their
nations committed crimes against humanity (racial cleansing) in a lot of the
regions they call home today.

It should come as no surprise that a nation built on its national identity
should want to whitewash history. All the other nations - America included -
have been doing it for centuries ..

