One thing I want to make clear is I don't hate the Japanese. I dislike their government, esp. the right-wingers but I have plenty of Japanese friends and I know full well that not everyone thinks like the right-wingers do. Also, as I said I admire the current Emperor who unlike the ones acting in his name, acknowledges history. Also in the court cases by victims they are often supported by groups of Japanese people. Japanese historians have also done a lot to dig up the truth. For example, the government continued to deny deny the existence of comfort women for decades until a Japanese historian dug up proof of their existence and the army's direct role in the horrible events.
However, Japan as a country is torn. It is not like Germany where 99% of people fully accept history and Nazi atrocities are internalised. It is torn between those who accept history and those who don't. And unfortunately it seems that those who don't - as personified by Yasukuni are winning. Those who are prone to revisionism are in the positions of power (e.g. Aso's - our colonialisation of Taiwan was good for Taiwan! The next PM and current Foreign Minister). One of my Japanese friends told me that those who don't support this sort of stuff have fallen in power over the last decade (well a lot of them fell to corruption scandals unfortunately...) and the ones who are militaristic have risen to the top.
This is an important time for Japan. As the article says, soon all the survivors of WWII will be dead. There will be no more old men to stand up to the revisionists, to say, that "I was there. I fought. And what you are saying are lies. It wasn't glorious. It wasn't a victory." There will be no more old Japanese soldiers to insist that the Rape of Nanking took place - because they participated in it and saw it happen with their own eyes. There will be no more old Japanese men to admit that they cut Chinese and Korean prisoners open alive, to be testament to the brainwashing and extremism and racism of the time. It is these old men who keep the revisionists in check. Because they can say, "I was there. I suffered. I know the truth. I saw it with my own eyes." When they are gone, who will there be to oppose the Yasukunis, which already have government approval? If it was Germany I would not be worried as 99% of the people there accept history. They may feel that they shouldn't be blamed but they do not try to deny history. Acceptance of history is internalised in modern Germany.
However in Japan, even the official government war shrine is revisionist and refuses to accept history. With their mouths they say "Japan did wrong" to English speaking audiences but let us look at their actions not their words. It took decades for the Japanese government to even acknowledge the comfort women existed and they still refuse to pay any compensation. It took decades and court cases for them to even admit that they performed experiments on live human beings. Korean and Chinese men who were forced to go to Japan as slaves in WWII and who survived the atomic bombs were not until recently invited to any memorials or offered government assistance for their health. Non-Japanese who were forcibly conscripted into the Japanese army and were enshrined in Yasukuni - their families have been trying for decades to get the government to unenshrine them but they refuse. It is clear that the Japanese government is revisionist and only grudgingly accepts tibits of history if you push long enough (decades) and quite literally drag them kicking and screaming into the light. And then they will only admit the barest minimum that they can get away with. And forget about any compensation. Remember, barest minimum that they can get away with. When the old soldiers are gone and all the old victims are dead, what will be the force be that will spend decades to drive the Japanese govenrnment to admit to something, anything? What will stop backsliding? Western nations show barely any interest as it is now. The American government might be embarassed by revelations they helped cover up crimes after WWII so I doubt there will be much pressure from the West. The Japanese people, especially the young ones have not internalised history so I doubt that there will be substantial domestic pressure. What will stop the revisionism once the victims are dead and the court cases stop? There will be no international pressure because the West doesn't care. Only Asians will care and the Japanese like giving the finger to other Asians anyway. Domestic pressure will obviously not exist in substantial amounts, esp. since the revisionists are in power.
So it is important for changes to occur now, when the victims are still alive and the old Japanese soldiers are still alive to bear witness. Even now, the truth is barely holding on in Japan, mainly through the efforts of the old Japanese soldiers and the victims who spend decades fighting the government just to extract the bare minimum of acknowledgments. When they are gone, I don't see much hope. If Japan doesn't internalise the past now, it will never happen in the future once all the witnesses are dead.
Another thing is, if Americans think it has only to do with Chinese and Koreans, think again. If you read the Yasukuni shrine propaganda and you listen to right-wingers like the mayor of Tokyo you will see that America is as much the enemy as China or Korea. America is the evil enemy that conspired to bring Japan to war, dropped atom bombs on Japan, and executed its best and brightest in sham trials. America is evil. Americans throw Japanese babies into fires as a sacrifice to the God (well, not really, but you get the idea). Then America spent decades humilating Japan by ruling it under military oppression. For example an article from the mayor of Tokyo on the Asian Financial Crisis:
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Concourse/8751/riwa/aw101001.htm (this was original from Time Magazine - I trust that this is an accurate copy...)
LOOKING BACK ON THE panic triggered by the currency crisis in Thailand and the inroads made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we can see the subtle strategy America is employing to dominate the world. And we can discern the pathetic role that Japan is made to play. If things continue as they are, Japan and the other nations of East Asia will be nothing more than financial slaves to the U.S. The problem is, most are unaware of it.
Once America had overwhelmed its Soviet rival in the arms race, it came up with a plan to supplement military superiority with control of energy resources. This involved singling out Saddam Hussein of Iraq as the fall guy to win control over the world's largest oil reserves. The U.S. lured him into making a conquest of Kuwait, crushed the invasion and succeeded in its real objective - stationing over 100,000 U.S. troops in the region, mainly in Saudi Arabia.
Now America is embarking on a new phase of its conquest, this time by financial means. Besides its overseas ambitions, there is an important consideration which prompted the U.S. to come up with this step - the crisis in its economy. This was demonstrated a couple of years ago when then Japanese prime minister Hashimoto Ryutaro stated that Japan wished to sell off its U.S. treasury bonds. The next day Wall Street stocks went down on the news. But rather than follow up [its advantage], Japan deferred to its rival. Experts calculated that if Japan sold its entire T-bond portfolio, the dollar could plummet to a mere 50 yen.
http://www.ezipangu.org/english/contents/news/naname/ishihara/ishihara2.html
On why he hates America:
“The Americans could see that we were kids, but they would strafe us anyway, for fun. One day I had to throw myself into a barley field. As I lay there, the Grummans and P-51s came roaring over me, flying low, and I could see that they had pictures of naked women and Mickey Mouse painted on the fuselage. I couldn't believe my eyes! I was scared to death, and angry but I was also thinking what a place America must be, what a culture, and how different from Japan. Then I heard other planes but no machine guns this time; they were Zeros in pursuit, and their insignia was the Japanese flag. I felt like reaching up to embrace that rising sun.”
Oh and this guy has a 70% approval rating in Tokyo.
The rise of the militarism and nationalism in Japan will inevitably coincide with the rise of hatred to America. So don't be surprised if one day, America will once again ask itself as it does now with Muslims, "Why do they hate us? I never saw this coming."
