Heritage, Not Hate

[Diocle]

.. an apology is not an easy thing to come by for the Japanese given the current system and political climate. It's basically political seppuku.

So, after having been nuked 2 times by Americans, the Japanese people should still ask the Americans for forgiveness?

Holy crap! This is Yankee National-Imperialism at its best!

[Roma_Victrix]

So, after having been nuked 2 times by Americans, the Japanese people should still ask the Americans for forgiveness?

Holy crap! This is Yankee National-Imperialism at its best!

No, not from Americans. Obviously I'm talking about the Korean comfort women who some Japanese soldiers/officers horribly abused on a systematic basis.

Also, nice Dr. Strangelove gif there. As a film reference, such a thing gives away one's age, though.

[Beckitz]

Diocle, that's exactly what the Japanese think, that because they endured the full scale of the horrors of total war in WWII that they are basically limited to that experience alone, and that they didn't also simultaneously partake in the experience of expounding those industrialized horrors onto nations and innocent peoples across all of East Asia. Well just because their brains are beaten into some myopic compartment now by the bombing of the mainland doesn't frankly change the reality in facts that Japanese soldiers and their commanders were pushing the brutalization of people all over Korea, China, the Indies, and the Philippines. Unless you proffer some ingenious cognitive psychology excuse to the effect that the Japanese are incapable of anything else, then there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to give a formal apology for any of the war crimes they committed in WWII. Go ahead and include the caveat that you had no part in doing it yourself. That's fine, what difference does it make to appreciating whether Japan's actions were right or wrong?

[Ludicus]

It however apologized- and compensate Japanese Americans for being interned

I know it.

No, not from Americans. Obviously I'm talking about the Korean comfort women who some Japanese soldiers/officers horribly abused on a systematic basis.

That's true. I'm not trying to downplay or ignore the consequences of trauma of victims of Japanese sexual trafficking.
On a side note, the French never apologized for the widespread practice of human trafficking in colonial Vietnam, during the French colonial rule. Vietnamese women and children were kidnapped, stolen, tricked into a life of servitude, and taken to China where they were sold in markets in Guangzhou, Longzhou, Beihai, English Hong Kong, and Portuguese Macau.The French's lack of concern over the plight of the Vietnamese women was a rally cry for Vietnamese nationalists.
-----
Back to the subject- I hope you enjoy reading this article, it's well worth a reading, Between Nation and Gender: The representation of former military Comfort Women in the Netherlands and South Korea Between Nation and Gender
Chapters: Japan’s imperialist ideology and the Geneva Convention; social-historical background and ideological viewpoints on prostitution influenced the creation of the Comfort Women system; the origins and racial components of systematic sexual servitude in Japan; a comparative history: South Korea in juxtaposition with the Netherlands.
Small excerpts,

... Lastly, there was a final influential component that contributed to the silence of the former Comfort Women in post-occupational South Korea. Due to the relative continuity of the Comfort Women system, under American military occupation, the reticence to inquire about the Comfort Woman issue endured long after WW II ended, as the South Korean government was wary of jeopardizing their alliance with the United States. As the war with Japan concluded, the United States had yet another war to fight with the USSR and its communist allies that politically divided the world in two ideological fronts.
...The ruling politicians in the United States were of the opinion that communist aggression and influence had to be contained until Korea could become a fully independent country, and therefore deployed its troops in Korea as political tensions were rising within Korea. While occupational troops arrived in Korea, there were already plans to establish military brothels to serve the newly arrived soldiers

... An American classified report stated that “a special military requirement is established for provision of individual venereal prophylactic units to individual members of the military service located beyond the limits of the continental United States where no standard prophylactic measures are taken” (Tanaka 2002, 88). It would appear provisional measures were already in place. In order to prevent sexual transmitted diseases, the US military controlled prostitution zones or provided ‘clean women’ to designated brothels

In this ironic turn of events, the ‘liberating forces’ of the allies would share similar traits as the previous invaders, which meant a new chapter of shame and servitude to many Comfort Women (Cho 2008, 94).

The USA and its allies benefited from a black page in Korea’s history as the nationalists complied to the wishes of the allies in order to avoid any friction by kicking the shins of its allies. The nationalists depended heavily upon the United States and Allies resources for their own survival thus the Comfort Women Issue was complicated further and silenced by diplomacy.

...In concluding, through examining historical events of South Korea and the Netherlands for the purpose of comparison, I have noted that although the divergent post-war conditions offer historical contrast between the two nations, the post-war struggles of both nations are similar in several aspects. While the Netherlands lost the colony of the Netherlands-Indies to independence and Korea experienced a division through political dissention, both nations experienced the atrocities associated with wartime legacies, especially concerning the representation of rape victims.

Both nations endured the Comfort Women system, although a distinctive difference was that while Korea was a Japanese colony from which “Comfort Women” were recruited, the Netherlands-Indies was invaded by a competing empire during WW II.
Thus, the Geneva Convention failed to protect the Dutch-Indies female citizens due to the conventional masculine oriented policies which overlooked the rights of non-combative women during wartime.

Through my research I have noted similar characteristics in both societies, pertaining to patriarchal traits.
An example of these traits is found in the treatment and portrayal of the “Moffenmeiden” whom were publicly shamed in a display of shaving their hair, a symbol of their femininity. In South Korea, women remained outcast after experiencing rape. Both examples contain aspects of male dominion and patriarchal ideology which enforced gender roles and expectations for the females in their respective societies.
Although South Korea exhibited stronger patriarchal traits, such as the Confucian influenced “three obediences”, the “Moffenmeiden” experience contained a “masculine disciplinary” reaction. Perhaps, patriarchal 37 mechanisms in society are not local distinctions.

Thus, patriarchal constructs in society, while historically ascribed to Imperial Japanese social structure as well as other Asian societies, are ubiquitously found through the characteristics of Western societies as well.

[Roma_Victrix]

That's true. I'm not trying to downplay or ignore the consequences of trauma of victims of Japanese sexual trafficking.
On a side note, the French never apologized for the widespread practice of human trafficking in colonial Vietnam, during the French colonial rule. Vietnamese women and children were kidnapped, stolen, tricked into a life of servitude, and taken to China where they were sold in markets in Guangzhou, Longzhou, Beihai, English Hong Kong, and Portuguese Macau.The French's lack of concern over the plight of the Vietnamese women was a rally cry for Vietnamese nationalists.

In this regard, yes, the French could muster an apology, but as bad as all of these things are, the magnitude of what the Japanese did just blows this away. The chemical and biological warfare research with lethal human experimentation they did in Unit 731 alone puts them on par or arguably frighteningly even beyond the sick depraved madness that Nazi doctor of death Josef Mengele was involved in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

To make matters worse, the US government offered many of these Japanese "researchers" immunity from war crimes charges and international tribunals if they shared their data with the US. So unfortunately this putrid stain on humanity is shared by the US, not just Japan.

-----
Back to the subject- I hope you enjoy reading this article, it's well worth a reading, Between Nation and Gender: The representation of former military Comfort Women in the Netherlands and South Korea Between Nation and Gender
Chapters: Japan’s imperialist ideology and the Geneva Convention; social-historical background and ideological viewpoints on prostitution influenced the creation of the Comfort Women system; the origins and racial components of systematic sexual servitude in Japan; a comparative history: South Korea in juxtaposition with the Netherlands.
Small excerpts,

Thanks for sharing!

[fkizz]

The real issue is if this hug game of apologies in domino scale solve any realistic geopolitics problem or is it just a naive feel-good party.

So, after having been nuked 2 times by Americans, the Japanese people should still ask the Americans for forgiveness?

To other countries I don't know, but forgiveness after 2 nukes on civilian cities, followed by a Stoic resilience of not routinely asking apologies to the US about it, or by for example, demanding US apologies for nukes by 2019, which they don't even demand, and instead carry on in the most Stoic manner possible, what else is to ask forgiveness for?

[antaeus]

I think the answer to the question "Why didn't japan come to terms with their role in WW2 like Germany" has less to do with comfort women and atomic bombs and the Soviet Union and whatever.

It's simply because Germany and Japan had differing experiences towards the end and immediately after the war.

Germany was completely dismembered and remained divided until the 1990s. It was thoroughly occupied by literal millions of foreign soldiers, it was politically shattered. It had virtually no governing infrastructure after May 1945. It had to be completely rebuilt institutionally from the ground up. This led to the ability to re-imagine exactly what sort of a country Germany was, and would become. Not only this, but Germany was confronted by what it had done during the war at every possible opportunity. Two of the occupying powers who had a say in how Germany would be re-crafted experienced the full force of the Holocaust and it's death camps. Both France and the Soviet Union experienced fist hand what Germany did. There was no chance that Germany was going to come out of that war without a cultural reckoning.

Japan on the other hand, came out of the war relatively politically intact. It's government, while in turmoil, still existed. As did most of the wartime institutions. And it took a period of months before the allied occupation began in earnest. Even when the occupation began, it depended entirely on Japanese police and military to help clean up. It depended on the Japanese military to manage it's repatriation from overseas. When the allied occupation kicked into full swing, it was not made up of large numbers of Chinese or Korean soldiers and Chinese administrators - those countries were in turmoil. Rather it was American, British, Commonwealth and Soviet soldiers. It was not an occupation by the victims of Japanese atrocity in the same way that the German occupation was (with all due respect to those American and British citizens who experienced Japanese atrocity) The Japanese government was restructured but not rebuilt from scratch. So while Japan was restructured with a pacifist constitution, it avoided the cultural reckoning that was thrust upon Germany.

[Heathen Hammer]

Pseudo-moralistic self-flagellation and self-hate isn't exactly a normal past-time for any country that is more or less sovereign or independent. The only side whose atrocities are remembered and constantly discussed are those of Axis powers, communist death toll is also discussed, but recently it is being gradually swept under the rug by left-leaning corporate media and academia, and we barely hear any mention of atrocities committed in the name of liberal democracy, from the horrors of French revolution to modern-day "exportations of democracy". So its not like Japan is any special.

[Big War Bird]

Japanese (though not as much as they used to) venerate their ancestors. So you don't just talk about Grandpa's service in China if there is nothing good to say.

[Diamat]

It's because Korea is Japan. You can't apologize to your own nation.