Folks...
When you think of Japan, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
You may think of a modern and advanced country with a rich culture...
Many will also think of manga, video games or samurai...
Basically, you’ll likely have a very, very positive image of the Land of the Rising Sun.
However, as you know, all countries have positives and negatives.
Therefore, with this video, on VisualPolitik, we’re going to talk about a subject that’s
hardly ever mentioned in the media: Japan’s historical revisionism.
But… what exactly does that mean?
See, we could say that revisionism is the denial of historical events, usually negative,
of course, that happened in the past.
Many countries that have had hard-to-digest pasts strive to hide the truth, or try to
change the official version of the events.
And Japan, is definitely one of them.
Let's turn this around a bit…
When we think about Japan and its history, what comes to mind?
Probably Samurai, geishas, perhaps the double nuclear attack from the United States or,
the Pearl Harbor attack – at least because of the movie.
To us, knowing about these events is normal.
But folks, do we really know how the Japanese Empire was at the height of its power?
Do you know exactly what this means for the Far East?
Why do you think that the countries that Japan victimized, such as China or Korea, are still
very susceptible to this issue?
Listen up.
(THE JAPANESE EMPIRE, THE EMPIRE OF TERROR)
You heard that right.
During the first half of the twentieth century and, especially during the 30s and 40s, Japan
was an imperialist power that dedicated itself to invading neighboring countries as if there
were no tomorrow.
And they did so without the slightest hint of mercy.
And when we say without mercy, we mean it, it was truly inhumane.
Throughout those years, Japanese troops committed some of the most heinous abuses to human integrity,
life and the identity of people we could ever imagine.
Almost all of the worst things we could imagine a country doing, Japan did to its colonies.
We’re talking about terrible things, such as enslaving people to work in Japan’s industries
and mining; Enslaving women to work in brothels on the
war front, not to mention the 731 squad experiments,
in which they used living people to conduct chemical weapons experiments...
In the Chinese city of Nanjing alone, in barely two months, the Japanese killed 300,000 people
and abused more than 80,000 women.
It really gives you goosebumps.
Once it invaded a country, the Japanese empire forcibly imposed its culture, its language
and Japan’s political and legal system.
It even forced people to change their names.
As you can see, we’re talking about a dark era of uncontrolled and unlimited fear, atrocities
and violence.
The soldiers and middle managers could do as they wished.
As a result of all this, at least twenty million people in Asia lost their lives at the hands
of the Japanese Empire.
Twenty million people!
In fact, the data on the Japanese army’s lack of scruples during the war would give
you goosebumps.
Check this out, 40% of the American prisoners of war who fell into the hands of the Japanese
didn’t survive.
40%!
To give you an idea, in Europe that number was less than 2%.
And don’t think this was a coincidence, not at all.
The explanation lies in the ancient Japanese culture known as bushido, a culture that despises
soldiers who surrender in combat.
This, folks, also explains why the Japanese soldiers were so famous for fighting until
the very end.
But... having said that, let’s close the history book.
Since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s rise to power in 2012, Japan has surprised the world
with a revision and denial policy of its history that is very disturbing.
But...
What does it consist of?
What is Shinzo Abe doing to change or sugar coat the story?
Are today's Japanese really aware of their past?
Listen up.
(SHINZO ABE: REVISIONISM, IN THE INSTITUTIONS)
Shinzo Abe is already a well-known face.
He’s been running Japan since 2012 and is famous, particularly because of his economic
policy program, better known as Abenomics.
Now, there’s a much more controversial aspect to Shinzo Abe that isn’t mentioned much
in the West: Abe is an openly convinced revisionist.
And the truth is that he’s always been one.
Since he first entered the Diet, Japan’s parliament, in 1993, Abe has promoted laws
and reforms that seek to sugar coat how the history of the Japanese Empire is shown to
society.
For example, in his first and brief term as Prime Minister, between September 2006 and
September 2007, Abe approved a Fundamental Law of Education reform to establish a more
patriotic vision with more traditionalist moral values in the Japanese education system.
That is, Pure Nationalism in Education System.
And not just that.
Shinzo Abe himself is a member of Nippon Kaigi, a Japanese ultra-nationalist group founded
in 1997 that openly defends historical revisionism to exculpate the Japanese Empire from its
crimes.
Basically, it’s as if Angela Merkel belonged to an ultra-radical far-right group in Germany.
But, do you think Abe hides his involvement?
Not at all.
(U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says.
The New York Times)
In fact, folks, Prime Minister Abe not only modified the Japanese Education Law to change
educational content, but also openly criticizes how Japan's history is addressed in other
countries.
Basically, makes no effort to conceal his bias.
(Abe's revisionism nets own goals at home and away.
The Japan Times)
The Japanese Prime Minister even attacked the McGraw-Hill publishing house for the description
they made of how Japan forced women to prostitute themselves on the war front.
Women who, for him and the revisionists, were nothing more than volunteers who earned a
lot of money, although all the historical evidence claims they were slaves.
("I just looked at a document, McGraw-Hill's textbook, and I was shocked.
This kind of textbook is being used in the United States, as we did not protest the things
we should have, or we failed to correct the things we should have."
Shinzo Abe, Japan's Prime Minister)
And this wasn’t an isolated case...
Abe's Japan began when he started implanting the most extreme revisionism in the institutions,
driven by the ultra-nationalist group Nippon Kaigi.
In his speech during the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender, Abe, citing the 3 million
who died in the Japanese Empire, extolled their sacrifices and called them valuable.
At the very same event, by the way, the then Emperor Akihito also spoke.He, of course,
is Hirohito’ son, the Emperor who attacked Pearl Harbor and unleashed so many wars across
Asia.
Well, in contrast to Shinzo Abe, Akihito was somewhat more embarrassed by his country’s
revisionist inclination.
(“Our country today enjoys peace and prosperity, thanks to the ceaseless efforts made by the
people of Japan toward recovery from the devastation of the war and toward development, always
backed by their earnest desire for the continuation of peace.”
Emperor Akihito)
It’s curious that the Emperor himself had a much more conciliatory speech than the prime
minister regarding the empire's past... don't you think?
Well, there’s more.
Both Shinzo Abe and many of his party’s ministers, deputies and senators regularly
visit or send offerings to the Yasukuni Shrine.
Yasukuni, folks, is a Shinto shrine where 14 class A war criminals from the Japanese
Empire, among others, are honored.
War criminals that were declared as such in the Tokyo Trials, the Japanese equivalent
to the Nuremberg Trials for the Nazis.
But, folks, if you think this is all a matter or speeches, words and visits to controversial
places, you’re very, very mistaken.
Listen up.
(THE DREAM OF CONTROLLING EDUCATION)
That's right folks, it's no secret.
Every ruler who aspires to change history, for better or for worse, needs to influence
education.
We already mentioned that Abe modified the educational law for this purpose, but he didn’t
stop there.
One of his government’s biggest scandals was that of the Osaka Moritomo Gakuen's nursery
school.
See, this private kindergarten school, which has an ultra-nationalist ideology, - yes,
a nursery school - indoctrinated children in the purest Japanese Empire style.
They even made them memorize the so-called Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 every
day, a kind of manifesto with the Empire’s principles.
For five and six year-olds!
But, just a second, what does Shinzo Abe have to do with all this?
Well, in addition to publicly stating that he shared the vision of the director, Yasunori
Kagoike, Abe and his wife, who by the way was named honorary director of the nursery,
were immersed in a donations and favoritism scandal where public land was sold to benefit
the nursery.
The corruption scandal almost brought down Abe's government, although he managed to remain
standing in the end.
But, folks, besides the imperialist nursery scandal, there’s a kind of historical whitewash
throughout Japan’s entire educational system.
History teacher Tamaki Matsuoka, famous for having got 250 former soldiers from the time
of the Japanese Empire to admit to multiple war crimes, is an expert in analyzing how
Japan's past is tackled in modern schools.
And folks, his conclusions are very discouraging.
Matsuoka accuses the government of deliberately silencing the most negative historical events
of the Japanese Empire.
For example, in the textbooks that students use in schools, only one footnote is dedicated
to the Nanking massacre, which we talked about at the beginning of this video.
What can I say, 300,000 victims seems enough to become a relevant fact in history books,
don't you think?
But, the fact that this is happening raises an essential question;, what effects could
this historical silencing have?
Folks, even though here on VISUALPOLITIK we don’t really like looking too far back,
ignoring such an important part of history can be dangerous when making political decisions.
Especially in a region of the world that has so many national feelings.
To make matters worse, movies, books and series that the Japanese government itself promotes,
feed this idea of ​​changing people’s vision of the past.
I’m referring to works such as The Eternal Zero, a film that highlights the importance
of the Kamikaze pilots,
The case is that this growing nationalism, along with the political and commercial confrontations
that have been registered in this area of ​​the world, help explain the growing
suspicion with which young Japanese people have begun looking at their neighbors.
Sociological studies state that today 80% of Japanese people have a bad image of China,
and 60% of South Korea.
And that’s obviously not a good thing.
Folks, after knowing all this, what do you think about the way in which Japan is dealing
with its past?
Do you think this could have consequences?
Maybe Japan should learn from Germany about facing up to its history?
Leave your answer in the comments.
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