Sayonara, Mata Ashita

Japan should be a democratic and free country, at least in ideal of the constitution. But looking at things have happened recently, it seems like that Japan is going to be undemocratic and losing freedom of expression. The move is not so drastic but does exist. If I pick up recent issues about such movement from the side of rightwings and revisionists, it would be two news about a court decision and a movie.

The first, it is a court decision that was handed by Osaka district court on March 28th. Rejected appeal was filed by a former military officer and relatives of another officer. They accused a book of defamation and sued the book’s author and the publisher. They were demanding compensations from author/publisher and suspension of the book. The name of the book is “Okinawa No-to(Okinawa Note)” written by Mr.Oe Kenzaburo who won novel prize in 1994. I haven’t read the book yet, but it is said that the book said Japan Imperial Forces gave citizens an order to kill themselves on islands of Okinawa near the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Mass suicide of people happened on March 28th on Tokashiki-Island which is one of islets of Okinawa. More than 300 people killed each other by using grenades distributed by the Army. The court decision says that Japanese Imperial Forces deeply involved in the mass suicide, the expression in the book has based on rational information and reasons, and the book is not defamation against the military officers. The former officers have already appealed to higher court.

So far, the process looks like the case of “100 Beheading Game”; books or articles about Japanese military’s wrongdoings are sued by military members’ relatives. Plaintiffs say “What is written in the book is not true, such incident did not happened, and it is defamation”. This kind of allegations are welcomed and supported by rightwings and revisionists who believe Japanese Army had been right. It seems that they are trying to rewrite history and stop criticisms against war and Japanese military. For their purpose, identifying as defamation is a way to knockout people who are criticizing Japanese militarism’s wrongdoing which brought miserable consequences for not only Japanese but also for Asia Pacific region.

In this issue, it is said that education and military’s pressure that Okinawans should be “The Emperor’ people” really affected the occurrence of mass suicide. Okinawans had had their own culture and languages long time ago, before conquered by Japanese. But I don’t have enough knowledge about this. Anyway, deaths of more than 300 people are real. No one can deny it. Therefore, rightwings are trying to shift the problem towards particular topic. What they insisting is that there is no evidence that the army gave people an order to die. If the military really ordered it, it is unknown that the order was words on mouth or written in paper. And it is a common knowledge that Japanese Army erased things that can be evidence about what they did at the end of the war, for example, by burning documents. Since the island is not wide, and islanders and soldiers were always together, if there had not been an order, I think the military should be responsible for the deaths. But rightwings and revisionists want to minimize the responsibility of the military. So they are insisting that there are no evidence of official order to die.

Picking a particular thing that is just an aspect of whole story, and concentrates arguments on it; this is often the case when you cannot deny the existence of a terrible incident by Japanese Imperial Forces. For example, “Nanjing Massacre”; what rightwings says is that number of victims is not clear. “Comfort Women”; they say it is not clear whether it was forced or not. “Mass Suicide in Okinawa”; they say that official order could not be found. These kinds of excuse are repeated over and over. Since I don’t have time to continue to write today’s post, so let me conclude that it is more important to know how miserable the war is more than to hide the responsibility of the army. To make this country peaceful and free society, I think I should do something. I don’t have time to write about the second topic, but I have written it a little already, so I just stop writing here.