“History must not be revised,” you say? How long are you going to act as though you are still the victors? The general who fought against Japan has revised it himself!
“That was a war of self-defense for Japan.”
The testimony of MacArthur, the opposing general, carries weight.
Shoichi Watanabe, Professor Emeritus at Sophia University
“History must not be revised,” you say?
How long are you going to act as though you are still the victors?
The general who fought against Japan has revised it himself!
One of the major characteristics of Prime Minister Abe’s second administration is that he stopped using “breaking away from the postwar regime,” a slogan of his first administration, and gave priority instead to the economic policies for overcoming deflation known as Abenomics.
I do not think this means that Prime Minister Abe became reluctant to change the postwar system or revise the Constitution; I think it was the result of careful reflection during his time out of office.
Because the postwar international order was established under American leadership, he probably realized that pushing too hastily to “break away from the postwar regime” would provoke opposition from the United States.
Indeed, some within the American government criticize Prime Minister Abe by calling him a “revisionist,” or a historical revisionist.
If he flatly rejected statements such as the Murayama Statement, China and South Korea would raise an uproar; yet the United States under the current Obama administration is extremely timid toward China and shows a marked reluctance to stir things up or cause problems.
Even on the Senkaku issue, it will go so far as to say, “The Senkaku Islands are under Japanese administration and fall within the scope of the security treaty,” but it will never say outright that they are Japanese territory.
I think Prime Minister Abe recognized that timidity in Obama.
Even so, he must heed what Obama, the president of the United States, says.
At the same time, however, he also seems to have observed clearly that people in the U.S. military think differently from Obama.
The fact that several top military commanders have stepped down since Obama became president is probably due to an incompatibility between Obama and the military.
That is why I get the impression that Prime Minister Abe is pursuing his policies while placing importance on discussions with the military.
Some people may therefore find his approach frustrating, but we must understand that he wants to break away from the postwar regime and restore Japan to what it should be, while carefully assessing how the United States will respond.
I think there is one clue to resolving this dilemma in Japan’s relationship with the United States.
It is MacArthur’s testimony, given when the end of the war was still relatively recent.
The content of that testimony clearly shows that MacArthur himself was a revisionist.
The fact that Shigeru Ishiba, who was serving as minister of defense, also made statements that mirrored the War Guilt Information Program exactly
Know MacArthur’s testimony.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also concealed the fact that the delay in delivering the declaration of war at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor was by no means Japan’s intention, but was caused by negligence among Foreign Ministry personnel at their overseas post.
Worse still, the ministry did more than conceal it: it was also Hisashi Owada of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who, by reinterpreting Article 11, first stated in an answer to the Diet that Japan had “accepted the trial of the Japanese state,” rather than “accepted the judgments against individual Class A war criminals.”
Afterward, Hisashi Owada steadily advanced in his career and has now risen to the top of the International Court of Justice.
Would it be mere speculation to say that this happened because he did not say anything favorable to Japan?
I am even tempted to speculate that, within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is an atmosphere or custom under which holding a view of history other than one aligned with the War Guilt Information Program would hinder one’s career.
If things continue this way, I fear that Japan may be becoming like Spain, a great power that suddenly lost its vigor.
Something that recently horrified me was this: my daughter teaches at a Japanese school in Geneva, and among compositions written by children educated in Japan was one saying that “Japan had only itself to blame for the atomic bombs being dropped on it.”
If things have reached this point, the War Guilt Information Program has been an unqualified success.
The fact that Shigeru Ishiba, who was serving as minister of defense, made statements that mirrored the War Guilt Information Program exactly is another example of that success.
For his appalling remarks, please refer to the June 2008 issue of “WiLL.”
Pay attention to Japan’s ominous career structure, in which making Japanophobic statements secures one’s position as minister of defense and allows one to become minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries in the next cabinet.
We must resolutely prevent this from succeeding.
We must dismantle it anew.
A government and prime minister’s office under which a member of the Self-Defense Forces can be dismissed the very same day merely for saying something contrary to the War Guilt Information Program are clearly wrong.
We must continue to challenge them without hesitation and defeat their arguments with arguments of our own.
From the perspective of other countries, too, it should be more reassuring to hear that “Japan was not an aggressive country.”
In his sworn affidavit at the Tokyo Trial, defendant Tojo argued, in essence, that “all of Japan’s actions were reactive.”
This was not merely his own belief: within about three years of his execution, MacArthur himself, whose authority had been the legal basis of the Tokyo Trial that executed him, testified in an official setting before the United States Senate that “Japan entered the war primarily for reasons of self-defense,” and gave reasons to the same effect as defendant Tojo’s argument.
I want everyone in the Japanese government to know this.
Especially those in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense.
(First published in the April 2009 issue of “WiLL.”)