Japan posted Sado Mine for UNESCO World Heritage without clearly apologizing or labeling Koreans as “forced laborers”. This action caused rising diplomatic tensions with South Korea on historical reconciliation with South Korea boycotting Japan’s first memorial event for victims. Yonhap…
Japan’s Gunma Prefecture has removed Korean forced labor memorial due to criticism over alleged political use. People argue that this decision can set a dangerous precedent for erasing painful historical truth and being a signal as a retreat from reconciliation…
“A record 40.4 pct of Japanese do not believe that their country’s relationship with South Korea is important, apparently reflecting bilateral conflicts over history issues, a Cabinet Office survey showed Friday.”
In late August, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced he would be stepping down due to medical reasons. Abe’s resignation has led some to question how his successor would handle sensitive issues such as visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and…
“Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on Tuesday and praised him for the “courage and sense of responsibility” he showed as a politician in addressing history when he was in the government in 1993.”
“South Korean Prime Minister Lee Wan-Koo on Thursday warned Japan it would face a “grim judgement” if it failed to address what he called the realities of history.”
“The acting chief of an expert panel on the World War II anniversary statement to be issued by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this summer said Friday it need not include the expressions “colonial rule and aggression” and “apology” used in…
“The head of a history think-tank has criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for referring to women forced by his nation’s military into sexual slavery before and during World War II as victims of “human trafficking.” … “It is absolutely unacceptable…
“Nancy Pelosi called for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to apologize for the Japanese military’s coercion of young Korean and other Asian women into sexual slavery during World War II.”
“As China prepares to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II with a military parade in Beijing in September, the state news media has been hammering away at a central theme underpinning the government’s narrative about…
“The passage of time is supposed to dull even the most vicious hatreds. One of the most disturbing trends in recent geopolitics is that, instead, it seems to be sharpening them…”
“The world should be increasingly vigilant to the wily Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his moves towards historical revisionism, as his expert panel set up by the government here on his war anniversary statement is nothing but a smoke…
“China apparently used the recent trilateral foreign ministers’ meeting as an opportunity to pressure Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to exercise restraint in the phrasing of his forthcoming statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II,…
History a battleground not just for East Asia: “The attempts to rewrite history are designed ‘to undermine the power and moral authority of modern Russia, deprive of its status of the country-winner [of World War II] with all the expected international legal consequences, as well as to…
Interview of Professor Ziegler with JBC, Feb. 17, 2015: “Next thing I know, I’m sitting in my office just like you and I are sitting here today — the door’s open, I have office hours. I was eating lunch. In pops…
“The Japanese government has tried to mislead the public by denying involvement in any acts of wartime aggression, former Russian ambassador to Japan told Xinhua in a recent interview.”
“Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned against whitewashing “past crimes of aggression” at a United Nations meeting, in a thinly-veiled barb at Japan’s nationalistic moves to downplay Tokyo’s wartime atrocities.” Click here for Kyodo News coverage. Click here for Yomiuri…
“Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ’s view of the past is the biggest cloud hanging over the future of U.S.-Japan ties, according to U.S. lawmakers visiting Tokyo this week…”
By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan “Global understanding does not come cheaply. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has budgeted ¥70 billion — yes, that’s more than $500 million — to help get the word out about…
19 U.S.-based Historians, members of the American Historical Association, issued a collective statement entitled “Standing with Historians of Japan,” strongly condemning PM Abe’s recent efforts to revise depictions of ‘comfort women’ in a history textbook published by McGraw-Hill (“Tradition & Encounters:…
“A 17-year-old Korean girl tortured to death for opposing Japanese colonial rulers nearly a century ago has become the latest touchstone of the nationalism that is shadowing Asia’s economic rise… Textbooks have become part of the front line in East Asia’s…
Analysis of current “recrudescence of self-righteous nationalism under PM Abe Shinzo,” by Jeff Kingston (Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan) and other scholars.
Article from the New York Times, October 12, 2014: By Michael Fitzpatrick TOKYO — Japan’s simultaneous embrace of nationalism and cosmopolitanism is generating ambiguous signals from its education policy makers. They are rewriting textbooks along what they call “patriotic” lines, alienating…
This article in the Japan Daily Press looks how textbooks will likely change to reflect the Japanese government’s position on territorial disputes.