Japan Times Caves To Shinzo Abe

The Japan Times joins NHK, Asahi Shinbun and the Yomiuri Shinbun  in capitulating  to Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic party in reporting on the many controversial policies and war crimes committed by the imperial government and the imperial army.  Shinzo Abe Japan's current Prime Minister has worked diligently to alter how the Japan's war time history is portrayed.  From out right denial to historical revisionism.  Perhaps, that's due to his grandfather (His hero) former Prime Minister Kishi, who was a member of Tojo's wartime cabinet. Serving as Minister for Arms Procurement.  

At the bottom of an article the Japan Times published following a court decision on forced labour in Seoul which ruled in favour of the plaintiffs. 

In a decision that critics said aligned it with the conservative agenda of the prime minister, Shinzō Abe, the Japan Times said it had used terms “that could have been potentially misleading” when reporting on the contentious subjects.

It was the latest media row about how to define notorious parts of the country’s wartime record.

The Japan Times said: “The term ‘forced labour’ has been used to refer to labourers who were recruited before and during world war two to work for Japanese companies. However, because the conditions they worked under or how these workers were recruited varied, we will henceforth refer to them as ‘wartime labourers.’”

The explanation appeared at the foot of an article about the South Korean supreme court’s decision this week to order Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate 10 former forced labourers. The ruling, and a similar decision last month, have soured ties between Tokyo and Seoul, with Japan’s foreign minister, Tarō Kōno, calling them “totally unacceptable”.

Japan's rising right-wing nationalism

Meet the people trying to make Japan great again

Like many other countries, Japan has seen the rise of nationalist movements in previous years. Although these Japanese movements coincide with their American and European counterparts and indeed share similarities, they are inherently and ultimately different.

This is largely in part because fringe right-wing nationalist movements in Japan have yet to create a narrative with populist appeal. Makoto Sakurai, the founder of the Japan First party, is trying to do just that. However, the nationalist sentiments that his party embodies can already be found within the platforms of Japan’s establishment politicians.

200 protest in Tokyo against APA Group over Nanjing Massacre book in hotels

When the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regained power in December of 2012 it meant, not only the return of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe but his odd beliefs on history.   Abe like many of the LDP's members are historical revisionists and war crimes deniers.   This is especially true of Japan's military aggressions in the 1930's and the various war crimes committed during that time and through World War II.   For these men and women incidents like the Nanjing massacre,  comfort women and the execution of prisoners of war by the Imperial Army just didn't happen.  It's all part of a larger conspricy to undermine Japan.   That these beliefs persist into the 21 century is alarming.  Recently a Japanese hotel chain began placing  books written by the company's president in the rooms which deny the Nanjing massacre ever took place.

About 200 protesters marched through the streets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district on Sunday carrying banners to protest a hotel chain under fire for books its president wrote denying the Nanjing Massacre in wartime China ever happened.
Tokyo-based hotel and real estate developer APA Group is at the centre of a furore over books by its founder and president, Toshio Motoya, which contain his revisionist views on history and are placed in every room of the company’s 400-plus APA Hotels.
Motoya, using the pen name Seiji Fuji, wrote of the Nanjing Massacre that “these acts were all said to be committed by the Japanese army, but this is not true.” He also denied stories of Korean women forced to work as prostitutes in wartime military brothels, the so-called “comfort women”.

Shinzo Abe Picks Defense Minister Whose A Historical Denier Surprised? Don't Be

So, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has chosen as Defense Minister a person who like him and a majority of the Liberal Democratic Party's members are war crimes deniers,  historical revisionists and deniers of actual war time Japan's military history.  Every August Tomomi Inada travels to Yasukuni shrine  to pray for Japan's war dead. The fact that 14 class war criminals are also interred there seems to escape them.  Reactions from South Korea and China are quite predictable as might expect having suffered tremendously under Japanese military occupation.  

Party members like Tomomi Inada deny that the Nanjing massacre ever took place or that the imperial army had sex slaves and conducted unnecessary medical experiments on people of various nationalities and  prisoners of war.    The optics of these rather stupid positions seem to escape the LDP and its membership.

Tomomi Inada, a former reform minister who most recently held one of the top posts in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, replaced Gen Nakatani as defense minister. She's the second female to fill the post.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe changed more than half of the 19-member Cabinet in a bid to support his economic and security policies, as well as his push for a revision of Japan's postwar constitution.
While keeping the economy as the top priority for the Cabinet, Abe said he would do his "utmost to achieve the revision during his term," which ends in September 2018.
A lawyer-turned-lawmaker, Inada is one of Abe's favorites. She is a regular at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals, a gesture seen by neighbors as an endorsement of Japan's militaristic past.

Abe says it is his duty to revise constitution

Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party gain a majority of seats in the recent upper house elections giving them, when including New Komeito and smaller nationalist parties a 2/3 majority. Abe's first turn as Prime Minister ended when he was forced to resign over his insistence of revising Japan's constitution to the detriment of other pressing issues facing the country.  Shinzo Abe and his allies think in the long term and now they may have achieved their long sought after goal. Restoring Japan to its pre World War II status as a major economic and military power.

Shinzo Abe is a member of a prominent Japanese political family his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi served as minister of munitions during World War II was arrested and briefly imprisoned, released and went on to become Prime Minister.  His views on the Second World War come through his grandfather a man he greatly admired.  Like many of his fellow travelers he believes history has distorted Japan's imperialist history starting with the occupation and annexation of Korea, the invasion of Manchuria and the rape of Nanjing to Japan's role in the war.  Never mind that many in his party and cabinet believe the rape of Nanjing never took place or that the imperial army never committed war crimes.  In 1974 a group of politicians and like minded supporters formed a group whose goal is to restore the dignity of  emperor and Japan following the humiliation of its defeat in World War II and the imposition of its pacifist constitution by the United States.  That group with  30,000 members is now called Nippon Kaigi.

      

Less than two days after winning that election Shinzo Abe has declared that the most import issue facing Japan isn't its declining birth rate, aging population or a struggling economy. No, the most important issue is the revision of the constitution. Thus restoring Japan's supposed loss of dignity and allow Japanese military forces to once again in engage in military adventurism.

An emboldened Shinzo Abe called Monday for debate on Japan’s pacifist constitution, which he said it was his “duty” to revise after scoring a strong win in weekend elections.

Voters backed the hawkish prime minister, despite a lacklustre economic performance, handing his Liberal Democratic Party and its allies control of more than half of the upper house of parliament.

Analysts say with the support of small nationalist parties, Abe may now have the numbers to push through a change to the constitutional bar on Japanese troops waging war.

“We have always set a goal of revising the constitution…that is my duty as president,” Abe said.

“But the party does not have more than two-thirds of seats in both chambers by itself, so I don’t expect the draft would pass as is,” he said, referring to the parliament’s lower house as well, and suggesting compromise was needed. “So I hope debate will steadily deepen.”

Texas Daddy The American Loved By Japanese Nationalists

Tony Marano is an American living Dallas Texas producing right wing videos. What's unusual about Tony is that his views have been embraced  by Japanese Nationalists.   Even though Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would deny any association with these groups they share similar views on history especially  that of the Second World War.  One of the most contentious issues in East Asia concerns comfort women.  Mostly Koreans, but included women from many the territories Japan invaded during World War II.   Last December the Japanese government gave and the South Korean government accepted an official apology and monetary compensation dealing with the comfort women issue.  On February 3 of this year the Japanese government issued a finding to the United Nations stating there was no evidence of forced corrosion of these women to work at the comfort stations by the Japanese Imperial Army.   Except that there is clear evidence of just that happening.

Videos he posted from Texas made their way to Japan, where they developed a following.

He became more intrigued about Japan, conducting more research and posting more videos. His notoriety snowballed as more people began paying attention.

A publishing deal followed and within a few years, his Japanese supporters set up an office called the Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat. He has published seven books in Japanese and is set for more exposure with another three books this year, the office said.

Marano is a former telephone company employee who has spent about half of his life in Texas and put together a YouTube video channel called "PropagandaBuster." He speaks little Japanese.

Marano says his mission is to bolster a military alliance among the United States, South Korea and ally Japan, and to speak truth to power.

He has released more than 80 videos in the past year that run with Japanese subtitles provided by the Secretariat, which has seven translators and three editors to prepare the works for the Japanese audience.

South Korea accused of rewriting history in new school textbooks

The South Korean government complains all the time about history textbooks used in Japanese junior high and high schools. Saying that given the government's control of writing and publishing of the materials used by Japanese students that their perspective is skewed towards the conservative views and ideology of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).  To say that the political of the elites of the LDP aren't historical revisionists and war crimes deniers would be disingenuous. Because, that's exactly who and what they are.  Now South Korea will undertake a similar process thanks to the conservative government led by President Park Geun-hye whose father Park Chung-hee is the former military dictator of that country.


        Revisionism row intensifies as ministers push ahead with plans for state-issued texts to correct ‘pro-North Korean’ bias

The policy has become a bitter ideological battleground between left and right in South Korea, with the government claiming the changes are necessary to correct a “pro-North Korean” bias. Critics have accused president Park Geun-Hye’s administration of seeking to manipulate and distort the narrative of how the South Korean state was created.
Following an obligatory 20-day period to canvass public opinion, prime minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn and education minister Hwang Woo-Yea confirmed that from 2017 middle and high school students would each receive a single government-issued history textbook.
“We cannot teach our children with biased history textbooks,” Hwang said in a televised statement.

I love that quote:"We cannot teach our children with biased history textbooks, Hwang said in a televised statement."
So, what's the solution? Using biased textbooks from a conservative revisionist point of view to teach history to South Korean  students.

Battleground with multiple fronts

Arguments have focused on issues such as who bears most responsibility for the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean war, and how the textbooks should reference North Korea’s official “juche” ideology.
Deeply sensitive issues such as collaboration during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule are also strongly contested, as well as the violence that accompanied the move to democracy in the 1980s and 90s.

I'm sure like in Japan, Korea's conservatives will completely whitewash the military dictatorship era of the 20 century.

Melissa Harris-Perry Rips Bush For Revisionist History On Katrina

Former President George W. Bush actually had the gall to show up in New Orleans this week on the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and do his best to try to revise history and the disastrous legacy of his administration and the mismanagement of the disaster. George W. Bush, Visiting New Orleans, Praises School Progress…