This article examines Japan’s need to break free from a self-denigrating view of its history, addressing the continued adoption of previous administrations’ positions, the Kono Statement, multilingual communication abroad, Britain’s Education Reform Act 1988, UN reports concerning the comfort women issue, the enemy-state clauses of the UN Charter, and Japan’s financial contributions to the United Nations. It argues that Japan must respond resolutely to unfounded accusations.

August 31, 2020
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
CHAPTER FOUR
BREAKING FREE FROM THE SPELL OF A SELF-DENIGRATING VIEW OF HISTORY
Article V of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States:
“Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes.”
■ MEASURES AGAINST INFORMATION WARFARE—BE MORE RESOLUTE AND PROACTIVE
It is time to recognize how a self-denigrating view of history violates the duty of loyalty to the nation and is treated with contempt internationally.
To accomplish this:
(1) The government must stop automatically following the positions adopted by previous administrations.
The government’s official position has traditionally been one of “remorse and apology,” and successive governments have maintained that position.
This approach, however, has already reached its limit.
Whenever a problem arises overseas, Japanese diplomatic missions ordinarily receive instructions from Tokyo to explain that Japan has already apologized and to resolve the matter amicably.
Such an approach merely obstructs corrective efforts undertaken by the private sector.
From now on, the government should instead instruct its diplomatic missions to “make a stern protest and bring the matter prominently to public attention.”
At the very least, Japan must make the international community aware that the matter in question remains disputed and is filled with serious doubts.
(2) Whenever Japan is subjected to unfounded accusations, it should rebut them openly and confidently at every available opportunity.
It should be willing to create active confrontation and controversy.
Those around the person making such statements must never condemn that person.
International understanding lies beyond such confrontation and controversy.
It can neither be leapt over nor circumvented.
The most harmful response is the “calm and restrained attitude of an adult.”
(3) The author of the Kono Statement should personally withdraw it and declare to the world that “the statement was a falsehood intended to accept South Korea’s request and achieve an early political settlement.”
The names of the South Korean officials who were responsible for the negotiations at the time, as well as the content of their unofficial requests, should also be disclosed.
Even when government representatives and private organizations explain the facts in connection with the comfort women statue in Glendale, the comic-art festival in Paris, and UN human-rights committees, their explanations are rejected on the grounds that they contradict the Kono Statement and the apologies issued by successive Japanese prime ministers.
If this situation continues, the Kono Statement will continue permanently to insult Japan and the Japanese people.
(4) When disseminating accurate information abroad, it is important to continue patiently communicating in as many languages as possible.
The Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, of which the author is also a humble member, is currently the only organization in Japan engaged in providing such information in foreign languages.
Its database contains materials that can be put to highly effective use.
For domestic readers, a Japanese translation of President Herbert Hoover’s Freedom Betrayed, mentioned in the section concerning the implementation of the WGIP in Chapter One, should be published as soon as possible by some means.
It would be effective in curing the self-denigrating view of history held by many Japanese people.
■ EDUCATIONAL MEASURES—FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF BRITAIN’S EDUCATION REFORM ACT 1988
This issue must be approached as a century-long national undertaking, beginning with long-term educational reform.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology is considering introducing “modern and contemporary history” into school education, and that is entirely commendable.
The first issue is that of textbooks.
It goes without saying that there are problems with the anti-Japanese attitudes of some authors and with the approach taken in the textbook-screening process.
Nevertheless, even though reasonable textbooks are being produced, they are hardly ever adopted.
The most important issue concerns the authority to select textbooks.
Under the present system, even the heads of local governments cannot intervene.
Japan should follow Thatcher’s example and correct the system along British lines.
Historically, Britain possessed colonies throughout the world and engaged in exploitation.
Out of remorse for this history, Britain thoroughly instilled a self-denigrating view of national history in its schoolchildren.
The Education Act 1944, created under the leadership of the British teachers’ unions and the Labour Party at the time, was, so to speak, a law promoting a self-denigrating view of history.
Education based on such historical self-denigration was aggravating what became known as the British disease.
This was corrected in the twentieth century through the determination of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher stated that history has both light and shadow and that facts should be taught in a balanced manner appropriate to each stage of a child’s development.
She maintained that, when a guilty consciousness that one’s own country is a criminal state is incorporated into the foundation of the national spirit, that country becomes weakened and will eventually perish.
She encountered fierce resistance, however, from British teachers’ organizations.
Teachers resisted thoroughly, engaging in strikes lasting as long as six months and holding demonstrations directed at Parliament.
The “Iron Lady,” Thatcher, refused to yield and ultimately succeeded in enacting the Education Reform Act 1988.
Through this reform law, Britain made clear that the central government, rather than local authorities or individual educational institutions, would bear ultimate responsibility for determining and implementing educational content.
It thereby carried out two policies: improving educational standards and correcting education that was biased toward national self-denigration.
The issue of authority over textbook selection:
Jun Hasegawa, “The Inside Story of Textbook Selection,” Seiron, 1997.
■ MEASURES CONCERNING THE UNITED NATIONS—JAPAN MUST DEMAND THE WITHDRAWAL OF, AND AN APOLOGY FOR, INSULTING UN RECOMMENDATIONS
At present, the UN organizations concerned with human rights have become a stage upon which Japanese people display a self-denigrating view of their own history.
Among the principal organs of the United Nations, the Economic and Social Council and the various commissions under it are permitted, under Article 71 of the UN Charter, to consult directly with qualified nongovernmental organizations.
In particular, as already described, the Human Rights Council has issued humiliating and even threatening recommendations in connection with the Coomaraswamy Report on the comfort women.
Separately, numerous anti-Japanese left-wing organizations and other groups participated in an NGO hearing held by the Human Rights Committee, a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly, in July 2014.
They included female students from Korea University in Japan wearing chima jeogori and claiming that the exclusion of Korean schools from the tuition-free high-school program constituted a human-rights violation.
They also included organizations claiming that Japan was violating human rights through the State Secrecy Protection Bill and in relation to the comfort women issue.
If the United Nations takes up such matters, it clearly constitutes interference in Japan’s domestic affairs.
Human rights are an important issue in a democratic nation.
Decisions concerning them must be made by the Diet and the government, which represent the sovereign people.
They are not for the United Nations to decide.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council—hereinafter simply referred to as the Security Council—remains incapable of playing any role in Asian security issues.
Japan has not even been permitted to become a permanent member of the Security Council.
Furthermore, under Articles 53 and 107 of the UN Charter, Japan is still positioned as an “enemy state.”
The principal organs of the United Nations are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat.
Article 71 of the UN Charter, concerning nongovernmental organizations, provides:
“The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations concerned.”
The enemy-state clauses of the UN Charter:
Japan and Germany proposed the deletion of the enemy-state clauses at the UN General Assembly in 1995 and obtained majority approval.
Nevertheless, the deletion has still not been realized because the necessary ratification by two-thirds of the member states—128 countries—has not been obtained, and there is no prospect of its realization.
Japan remains threatened by Charter provisions that can be interpreted as permitting UN member states to impose military sanctions without the authorization of the Security Council if a former enemy state acts contrary to matters settled as a result of the war or takes action that revives a policy of aggression.
Regrettably, this is the formal position under the United Nations Charter.
Despite these problems, Japan bears a large share of the UN budget, the second-largest contribution after that of the United States at the time discussed in this article.
The conscientious Japanese government has obediently paid the entire assessed contribution every year without delay.
Such conduct does not earn respect in the international community.
It merely causes Japan to be taken lightly.
Japan has already received insulting recommendations in the field of human rights.
The comfort women issue as described in the Coomaraswamy Report and the McDougall Report, which advances a similar argument, is filled with factual errors.
Even if, for the sake of argument, those allegations were assumed to be true, they concern events from more than seventy years ago, and no comparable problem is occurring in Japan today.
If the United Nations has time to devote to such matters, it should properly address the ongoing repression of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China’s invasion of Tibet, the massacre of civilians in the Syrian civil war, terrorist acts committed by Islamist extremists in the Middle East, the class-action lawsuit brought by Korean comfort women who served around US military bases against the South Korean government, and other human-rights violations in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Japan must resolutely demand that the United Nations withdraw both reports and issue an apology.
If the demand is not accepted, Japan should demonstrate a sufficiently firm position to reconsider whether it should continue paying its assessed contributions and maintaining its present participation as a member of the United Nations.
Japan’s assessed contribution to the UN regular budget:
Although Japan’s assessed contribution has declined with the reduction in its GDP, it still amounted at the time to approximately 11 percent, or about 277 million US dollars, making it the second-largest contribution after that of the United States.
This was about half the contribution of the United States and approximately three times that of China, which ranked sixth in fiscal 2014.
The assessed contributions of the five permanent members of the Security Council were as follows:
United States, 22 percent; United Kingdom, 5.6 percent; France, 5 percent; Russia, 1.7 percent; and China, 3 percent.
The McDougall Report:
This is the report on wartime sexual slavery adopted in August 1998 by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the UN Commission on Human Rights, now the Human Rights Council.
The rapporteur was Gay J. McDougall, and its formal title was Final Report on Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like Practices during Armed Conflict.
Its principal subjects were the war in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide, but it also addressed the Japanese comfort women issue in an appendix.
Following the Coomaraswamy Report, it characterized the comfort-station system as a product of sexual slavery and as a system of “rape centres.”
It asserted that the system constituted a grave violation of women’s human rights and a war crime and that the Japanese government should punish those responsible and compensate the victims.
Japan should demonstrate a sufficiently firm position to reconsider whether the payment of its assessed contributions ought to continue.
Japan’s doctrine of placing absolute faith in the United Nations merely causes the country to be taken lightly within the organization itself.
(End)