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Hypocritical revisionism at heart of gripe over Nanjing Massacre’s UNESCO listing
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EDITOR’S note:
THE following are exerpts from Ian Buruma’s book, The Wages of Guilt. Shanghai Daily opinion writer Ni Tao has just translated his book into Chinese. Here “Nanjing” is spelled as “Nanking.”
THE Japanese government under the stewardship of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has once again found itself at the center of controversy regarding its tendency to whitewash its tainted military past, with the latest issue concerning Japan’s tactless opposition to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adding the Nanjing Massacre onto its Memory of the World Register.
According to UNESCO, the Memory of the World Register lists document heritage recommended by the International Advisory Committee, and endorsed by the director-general of UNESCO, as corresponding to the selection criteria regarding world significance and outstanding universal value.
Such listings serve as an indispensable means to protect, honor and educate the world on highly significant issues, with many of the physical listings, official written documentation and pictures and inscriptions heralded as tantamount to global national treasures. Some impart beauty and inspire goodwill, others the bleakest of tragedies.
Japan daring to dispute the facts of the Nanjing Massacre, which in 1937 saw Japan’s Imperial Army steamroll through the then capital of China and savagely murder 300,000 civilians and unarmed combatants in one of the bloodiest, most barbaric campaigns in history, is nothing short of churlishness and a reflection of the current administration’s ever-right leaning ideology and obsessive fixation with trying to rewrite history.
Unforgivable tragedies
“Senior politicians and bureaucrats connected to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have publicly declared their skepticism or outright denial that the Nanjing Massacre ever occurred and for those of us who speak with authority on matters of history and undertake our own independent studies to achieve the truth, while conversing with the best historical minds of the globe, such attitudes are disgusting,” pacific affairs research analyst, Laurent Sinclair, told Xinhua.
“The event that occurred in 1937 involving the hundreds of thousands of lives lost at the hands of the (Japanese) Imperial Army is one of the world’s most unforgivable tragedies and the massacre was well documented by global media including the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Chicago Daily News and other respected outlets,” Sinclair said, adding that refuting the massacre, the severity, or the numbers of civilians slaughtered is wholly undignified and a clear sign of Japan’s inherent inability to face up to its past.
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tried to politicize the issue, in a move that can only serve to further strain ties between Japan and its closest neighbors at a time when geopolitical tensions in the Asia Pacific region could heat up at any moment, following Japan’s unconstitutional passing of legislation to expand the role of its military. The ministry stated: “It is clear that Japan and the People’s Republic of China have different points of view regarding the issue related to the submitted documents in question, as has even been demonstrated in Japan-China Joint History Research, for example. Nevertheless, the submitted documents were based on the People’s Republic of China’s unilateral assertions, and the government of Japan believes that there are obvious problems with the documents’integrity and authenticity.”
“Thanks to the Internet and social media we can get a number of different perspectives on global issues, including historical ones and more of us are interested in talking about these and questioning and debating points we find contentious in a bid to find the truth,” Yasu Onishi, a history major at Waseda University, told Xinhua.
Political arrogance
“Many of us took part in the recent protests at the Diet building against the war bills; the bills were past unfortunately but we showed we have a voice and more importantly the will to search for truth independently from the government and regardless of what we were taught or not taught in schools. My understanding is that Japan’s current actions to do with its military expansion is unsettling the region and the shifting attitude to the right under (Prime Minister) Abe is breeding political arrogance. It is this arrogance that keeps the government turning its back on Japan’s wartime history,” the 22-year-old said.
Similarly, Sara Matsuda, 24, a post-graduate student of political science at Meiji Gakuin University said she believes that every country has the right to celebrate their shining triumphs and mourn their darkest tragedies. “Japan will never forget the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996,” she said.
“But while the nation mourns the lives lost there each year and the horrific ways in which so many innocent people died, as is this country’s inalienable right, I’m realizing now that the bombings happened for a reason, it wasn’t just a random act of brutality. It was a terrible tragedy and the peace park reminds everyone that such a devastating attack should never happen again...” Matsuda said.
Both students concurred that Japan protesting UNESCO adding the Nanjing Massacre onto its Memory of the World Register is as hypocritical as it is immoral.
“The Nanjing Massacre is as significant to China as the two atomic bombings are to Japan and from this point of view and for the future of relations between Japan and its closest neighbors, the Japanese government needs to confront its own behavior and empathize more with those it caused suffering to, as many around the world empathize with Japan’s own tragedies. Trying to hide or cover up history is cowardly and our generation doesn’t want to inherit this label just because of political arrogance,” Onishi concluded.
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