THE LONG SHADOW OF WORLD WAR II

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. It has also been a year of increasing friction between Japan and two former victims of Japanese aggression, China and South Korea, over such issues as the islets of Takeshima (Dokdo) claimed by both Japan and South Korea, Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirô’s continuing visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and the content of a newly approved Japanese history textbook. Tensions peaked in April, when anti-Japanese demonstrations broke out in a number of Chinese cities. In Japan, meanwhile, these developments have triggered a wide range of discussions relating to this country’s role in the war and its attitude toward the past, a sampling of which have been translated for this issue of Japan Echo. Two of these, by Kimura Kan and Kawashima Shin (experts on Korea and China, respectively), discuss the historical perception gap between Japan and its neighbors and address the question of how far joint historical research can go in closing it. The third is a roundtable discussion on the issue of war responsibility and Yasukuni Shrine featuring historian Matsumoto Ken’ichi and political scientists Mikuriya Takashi and Sakamoto Kazuya.

To supplement this necessarily limited picture, I would like to provide a brief overview of the positions Japan’s representative newspapers have taken on these issues, as seen in their editorials.

Japan’s total newspaper circulation (excluding evening editions) is estimated at approximately 50 million, of which the national newspapers account for 28 million. The circulation for these national newspapers can be further broken down as follows: Yomiuri Shimbun, 10.0 million; Asahi Shimbun, 8.3 million; Mainichi Shimbun, 4.0 million; Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 3.7 million; and Sankei Shimbun, 2.0 million. With regard to the political slant of these papers, the Yomiuri is generally characterized as conservative, the Asahi as liberal, the Mainichi as centrist, the Nikkei as business-oriented, and the Sankei as rightist. For reasons of space, we will focus here on the editorials appearing in the Yomiuri, Asahi, and Sankei. It should be kept in mind that the Yomiuri and Asahi reflect mainstream attitudes in Japan, while the Sankei represents a minority of no more than 5%.

Let us begin with the issue of Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which have aroused controversy because the war dead whose spirits are enshrined there include so-called class A war criminals. The Asahi Shimbun takes a firm position against such visits. In a June 5 editorial, the paper attempts to answer those who ask, “What is wrong with grieving for those who gave their lives for their country in the past war? What could possibly be more natural than visits by the prime minister to pay reverence to such persons?” ⁽¹⁾ The editorial agrees that grieving for husbands, fathers, and sons who were sent out onto the battlefield and perished is indeed natural and necessary behavior. But it notes, “There is a need to draw clear lines between soldiers who had no choice but to obey the orders handed to them by superiors and the responsibilities of military leaders, politicians and others who planned and carried out the war.” In 1978 Yasukuni enshrined the souls of 14 class A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Tôjô Hideki. “This action,” the Asahi declares, “compounded the complexity of the issue of mourning for Japan’s war dead.” Furthermore, it points out, before and during World War II, the shrine served as a place to publicly display “both grief and admiration for those who perished in conflict,” thereby functioning “to enhance the will to fight and mobilize the populace for war.” And even now “there has been no change in its basic message of justification for the past war”; the Asahi points out that the shrine itself takes the position that World War II was an unavoidable conflict fought in self-defense and claims that the class A war criminals enshrined there were falsely accused by the Allied powers. For these reasons, the paper concludes that it is inappropriate for a prime minister to worship there.

An editorial in the June 4 Yomiuri Shimbun also takes an unequivocal position against Koizumi’s visits and in favor of the creation of a secular national memorial. ⁽²⁾ The editorial notes that on June 2, in response to a question by Okada Katsuya, president of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, Koizumi acknowledged that those who were convicted of class A crimes in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial) after World War II were indeed war criminals. In that case, the editorial states, he should not visit Yasukuni, which enshrines these war criminals along with other war dead. Some have proposed solving the problem by having the war criminals “de-enshrined” from Yasukuni and enshrined elsewhere. On this point the paper argues, “It is up to the shrine as a religious entity to interpret the contents of its rites, including whether it should enshrine the war criminals separately,” and it concludes that if the shrine decides it cannot enshrine these souls separately under its Shintô doctrine, then “the only way to solve the problem lies in building a national memorial that is nonreligious.”

In contrast, the Sankei Shimbun adopts a hard-line nationalist stance, praising Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits, opposing the de-enshrinement of class A war criminals, and slamming the proposal for a separate national memorial. In an editorial on May 26, it begins by reaffirming its position that China’s protests against Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits constitute intervention in domestic affairs. ⁽³⁾ It acknowledges that Japan agreed to accept the outcome of the Tokyo Trial when it signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, but it argues, “That issue is on a completely different plane from the question of how to comfort the souls of the so-called class A war criminals. Practices for remembering the dead reflect each country’s traditions and culture and are not a matter in which other countries should meddle.” In addition, in an editorial of June 7 it rejects the idea of a national memorial, claiming that such a solution merely caters to the demands of China and other neighbors and takes little account of “the feelings of the surviving families who continue to worship at the shrine each year or of the traditional sentiments of the people.” With regard to the de-enshrinement of the class A war criminals, it again accuses advocates of pandering to China and asserts that such a thing is “impossible under Shintô.” (With respect to this issue, I would refer the reader also to Matsumoto Ken’ichi’s statements in the roundtable discussion featured in this section.)

Next, let us examine the newspapers’ views on the more general question of Japan’s culpability with respect to the war. The Sankei Shimbun is silent on this issue, but the Yomiuri tackles it in an editorial dated August 15. ⁽⁴⁾ The Yomiuri notes that, though Japanese people’s memories of the war are fading, the issue of the enshrinement of class A war criminals at Yasukuni has not diminished. The editorial questions whether it is enough simply to relegate responsibility to these war criminals as a group given the complexity of the situation. It notes the diverse levels of involvement of those convicted as class A war criminals. It points out that among the 14 such people enshrined at Yasukuni (including the 7 who were executed) is Tôgô Shigenori, the former foreign minister “who attempted in vain to prevent Japan from going to war and explored ways to bring about an early peace after the war began.” It mentions another class A war criminal (one not enshrined at Yasukuni), former Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, who was paroled and, in addition to serving again as foreign minister, became Japan’s first delegate to the UN General Assembly—which body offered a silent prayer for him when he died. Another factor complicating the issue is the controversial nature of the Tokyo Trial. Judge Radha Binod Pal, who represented India during the trials, was of the opinion that the tribunal itself was “ ‘a ritualized vengeance’ by the winner against the loser,” notes the Yomiuri, “and concluded that each of the accused must be found not guilty and should be acquitted on all charges.” The paper also cites the view of former US Supreme Court Justice William Douglas that the trial was “not a judicial tribunal but merely a tool for political power.”

Yet however problematic the Tokyo Trial may be from the standpoint of international law, the Yomiuri declares, “there is no denying that the war caused awful suffering to the people of East Asia, leaving Japan to live with a sense of historical guilt,” in addition to causing “great misery and pain for the Japanese people.” Nonetheless, the paper questions whether the Tôjô cabinet was solely responsible for the war: “What about the responsibility of the preceding cabinet [of Konoe Fumimaro]? Who should shoulder responsibility for the Sino-Japanese War that led to the war against Britain, the Netherlands and the United States? . . . What about the responsibility of those who allowed the toll of victims at home and abroad to grow by blocking Japan from making peace at the earliest possible date, despite the worsening state of the war for Japan?” If the Tokyo Trial is open to accusations of unfairness, it concludes, then surely it is for the Japanese people themselves to reexamine the question of who bears responsibility for the war.

The Asahi echoes the Yomiuri on this crucial point, even though it arrives at it from a different angle. In an editorial dated August 14, it notes that Japan’s defeat was certain as early as 1944 and asks why the conflict dragged on as long as it did. ⁽⁵⁾ Some Japanese military staffers expressed their conviction that the war was a lost cause after US forces landed on Saipan in June 1944. The following month, senior statesmen close to the emperor succeeded in ousting Tôjô from power with a view to bringing the war to an early end. In February 1945, former Prime Minister Konoe told the emperor that defeat was inevitable and proposed that the war be brought to an end. Yet even this failed to bring decisive action. “The key question,” the Asahi states, “is just who was then acting as leader of the government, and who was actually setting the course of national policy.” In the end, the Japanese government did not surrender until both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been A-bombed and the Soviet Union had joined the war against Japan in August 1945. Following the war, moreover, “there was no real opportunity for the Japanese people themselves to track the responsibility of the wartime leaders. The reluctance to probe events can be blamed in part on the fact that pursuing accountability would have uncovered episodes that could have tarred the investigators with the same guilt.” The Asahi notes that Prime Minister Higashikuni Naruhiko’s call, immediately after the war, for the entire nation to “confess its sins” was a convenient move to sidestep the issue of assigning responsibility to specific people.

The implicit answer to the problems raised by the Asahi editorial is clearly the same as that advocated by the Yomiuri: that the nation as a whole revisit and reconsider the issue of responsibility and culpability with regard to the war and its crimes. Indeed, underlying all the issues concerning Japan’s role in World War II, including the controversies over Yasukuni Shrine and Japanese history textbooks, is this question of responsibility. Whether the Japanese people can undertake such a review and come to a broad consensus, and what sort of consensus they come to if they do, will determine how they deal with this episode in their history in the years ahead.

Also of interest in this context is the reaction of the international press to the rising tensions between Japan and China over this issue. A report just published in Gaikô Forum looks at international media coverage of relations between Japan and China from mid-March through late May, centering on the spell of anti-Japanese demonstrations in Chinese cities.⁽⁶⁾ According to the report, which was based on a survey by the International Press Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, press coverage of the textbook and Yasukuni issues in the United States and Britain tended to criticize Japan for a lack of effort, but very few assigned responsibility for China’s anti-Japanese demonstrations to Japan, and many criticized China’s own distortions of history and attacked Beijing for using the demonstrations to achieve its own political ends. In Asia, Singapore’s Straits Times (April 7) blamed the deterioration in relations on Japan’s unyielding stance toward China. In contrast, the Manila Times (April 21) wrote as follows: “It took Japan over half a century of measured and cautious steps to win the respect and admiration of Asia and the world. . . . To keep bringing up crimes of the past that present generations have abjured is to poison the ground for fruitful cooperation.” The author of the report comments that of all the articles examined for the survey, this editorial left the deepest impression on him. (Shiraishi Takashi, Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

(1) The quotes are from the translation of the editorial that appeared in the Asahi Shimbun’s English edition on June 6, titled “Koizumi’s Yasukuni Visits.”

(2) Quotes are from the English translation that appeared in the Daily Yomiuri on the same day, titled “Govt Must Expedite New War Memorial.”

(3) The Sankei does not have an English edition; quotes have been translated by Japan Echo Inc.

(4) “Time Ripe for Review of War Responsibility,” Daily Yomiuri, August 15.

(5) “Why Did World War II Fighting Go on for So Long?” Asahi Shimbun, English edition, August 15.

(6) Matsumoto Kôichirô, Sekai ga mita Nit-Chû kankei 70-nichikan—Demo hassei kara shûsoku made no Nit-Chû kankei hôdô o chûshin ni (Seventy Days of Japan-China Relations as Seen by the World—Focusing on Coverage of Japan-China Relations During the Period of Demonstrations), Gaikô Forum, September 2005, pp. 72–77.

© 2005 Japan Echo Inc.