The Shogun Apologizes, Who Is Next?

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by Anwaar Hussain

FBI in Puerto Rico

Today, the 15th of August 2005, a monster of the yore has finally decided to burry his demons. The demons let loose by the warriors of the Rising Sun in the fifty years prior to Second World War have finally been interred. Today, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the Japanese prime minister has at last apologized for the crimes committed against humanity by his country during that war.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed his “deep reflections and heartfelt apology” for Japan’s colonizations and invasions in Asia during the war. “Our country has caused great damages and pain to people in many countries, especially our Asian neighbors, through colonization and invasion,” he said. “We humbly accept these historic facts, and would like to express once again our deep reflections and heartfelt apology, and also express our condolences to all victims of the war, both at home and abroad. We will not forget the terrible lessons of the war, and will contribute to world peace and prosperity.”The Japanese barbarities peaked out during the World War II. During that war, the Japanese Imperial Army committed terrible atrocities against the people of China, and other Asian countries their forces occupied. On a moral scale, if not on numerical scale, these atrocities are comparable to those of the Nazi regime.

The most stunning example of these crimes is the Rape of Nanking (now called Nanjing) during which approximately 2-300,000 Chinese were murdered by Japanese soldiers. According to various historians, between 20,000 and 80,000 women were viciously raped during this time, including the organized adoption of “comfort women”. These Chinese women were kept in brothel houses to be used by Japanese soldiers. Thievery and fire-raising were a routine part of the Rape of Nanjing. Many Chinese homes were burnt to the ground by the Japanese with the inhabitants inside. The total number of victims of Japanese atrocities in other Asian countries runs into several millions.Despite these horrendous facts, the Japanese history books eulogized their Imperial past for a long time. As recently as this year, the debate boiled over into multinational public protest demonstrations with the publishing of an official Japanese textbook that critics argued downplayed or “whitewashed” the nature of Japan’s murderous past.

This particular book referred to the Nanjing Massacre as a mere “incident,” de-emphasized the subject of the Chinese and Korean comfort women, and avoided altogether the issues surrounding Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine in honor of dead Japanese soldiers. It is here that the entombed include the names of a number of convicted and executed war criminals. It goes to the credit of certain sections of Japanese society, though, that despite the official blessing, the textbook had been publicly denounced by Japan’s leading teachers’ union and was being used by only 18 of the nation’s over 11,ooo junior high schools. Right upto today’s apology, this textbook controversy regarding Japan’s wartime aggression remained on the front burners both nationally and internationally.

Perhaps the single greatest underlying factor for Japan’s expansionist past was nationalism. The same nationalism that was prevalent in pre-war Germany and Italy too. In Japan, specially, nationalism needed no fanning as a deep-seated concept in the sense of duty and honor, especially to the emperor, had been prevalent for centuries.

Although technically a monarchy, Japan was dominated by a group of militaristic leaders who did not shirk from using Japan’s modern standing armies to solve the nation’s problems rather than relying on diplomatic means. The centuries old respect, almost worship, for the Emperor played into the hands of those militaristic leaders of Japan. They exploited his name and image to create support for the war. Like using religious edicts, they used his name to silence the opposition to the war in Japan. A dangerous brew of militarism and nationalism in that Japanese society was the end result of this purposely nurtured fervor. That, in turn, resulted in the nation embarking on an escapade that left millions of victims in its wake.

Today America has been taken over by a similar species of leaders who are taking America down an analogous course. The fascist leaders of today’s America are no more a hidden entity. These leaders can now easily be recognized by their universal telltale signs. They promote a deliberate perversion of truth and fact, support a careful cultivation of seeds of discord among the saner portion of the population while encouraging hate and distrust of other peoples and religions. They claim to be super-patriots but would not hesitate to destroy every shred of liberty guaranteed by the Constitution to their fellow countrymen. They pretend to be champions of free enterprise yet are the most ardent agents of monopoly and control. The most obvious sign of such leaders, however, is that they are compulsive liars. In a masterful act of deceit and subterfuge, enchantingly camouflaged with fascinating religious plumage, these leaders will go to any length in using the state power and the market power to ultimately subjugate the common man in an eternal slavery. The contemporary Americans only need to check their premises.

Today with the sinister coalition of the corporate hooligans, the deliberate poisoners of public information otherwise called the mass media and the holier-than-thou right wing demagogues, the world’s entry into a similar dark era has almost been ensured. As the world’s only super power seems to have firmly decided to embark upon an imperialistic course and as a result the world now teetering on the brink of another gigantic disaster, it would serve us well to remember the rise and fall of the militaristic Japan.

Those fifty years of Japanese history were heavily impregnated with all the standard hallmarks of a typical fascist era. Powerful nationalism, dehumanizing of supposed enemies, a hateful disdain for human rights, ascendancy of the military, controlled mass media, an alarming obsession with national security, the intermixing of religion and government, unbridled nepotism and corruption, blatant state sponsoring of ethos of duty, honor and comradeship and a witch hunt of voices of reason were on a roll in that Japanese society of the yore–all brought to a cataclysmic end in two huge mushrooms of fire balls rising over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sixty years later, the Shogun apolgized.

When and where will the next mushroom clouds be rising for the Americans one day to apologize for their crimes? With the amplified kill power of the modern-day weapons, if two mushroom clouds and a sixty years lapse is the going rate, we are doomed. One shudders to imagine.



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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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