Japan
But at this very delicate moment, the Land of the Rising Sun is an ally of Ukraine in the war against Russia
People take part in a fundraising demonstration to support Ukraine in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district on March 26. (Photo: Philip Fong/AFP)
It all started with a tweet from the Ukrainian government about a video that juxtaposed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini with Hirohito, the former emperor of Japan.
The original post shared on April 1 condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “contemporary Russianism” using images of the three personalities above with the caption: “Fascism and Nazism were defeated in 1945.”
The Japanese public reacted immediately, voicing their anger, so much so that the Ukrainian government had to apologize and remove the tweet. “We had no intention of offending the friendly people of Japan,” it tweeted.
Even Ukraine’s ambassador to Japan, Sergiy Korsunsky, apologized in a tweet, stating that the creator of the post did not know history.
We can imagine a long queue of Japanese government officials lining up to shake Korsunky’s hand and thank him for defending Japan’s honor on this one.
But we have to ask if the Ukraine ambassador is being honest about his knowledge of the pre-war history of Japan.
It would be hard to convince anyone who has a basic understanding of history that the government led by Hirohito could be described only as a mild form of autocratic government
We do know that usually ambassadors are not picked out of a selected few historians. But you don’t have to be an expert in probing classified documents to be able to assess if early 20th century imperial Japan can be considered despotic in its nature or not.
The opinion that imperial Japan was not a fascist state is probably shared by the Japanese alone, with a large minority who would probably prefer not to express an opinion given the delicate subject matter.
Just a few weeks ago this is how Chinese state media, The Global Times, reacted to a comment from former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe about the possibility of Japan acquiring nuclear weapons.
“As soon as the Japanese right wing’s madness is combined with its national capabilities, the consequences will be devastating … a complete release of its military capabilities and perhaps an escape of militarism from the cage that has trapped it for nearly 80 years.”
This statement only lacks the word “fascism” but the content is clear. Sure, it is Beijing’s leading newspaper but it gives you an idea about colonial Japan’s image in continental Asia in the early 1900s.
South Korea’s point of view is no different. They consider pre-war Japan a threat to humanity and would discharge all their diplomatic power to not see that happening again.
It would be hard to convince anyone who has a basic understanding of history that the government led by Hirohito could be described only as a mild form of autocratic government.
It’s no secret that the Japanese, just like the Germans and their Aryan philosophy, considered themselves racially superior to the other peoples of Asia: Koreans, Chinese, Malay, Filipinos.
To make sure that they didn’t misunderstand their will for power when they invaded those countries, and at the same time defeat the European colonies that for decades had governed them, they treated the conquered with the utmost brutality.
Everyone in the West had to sit through classes where they have been told that Japan was no less fascistic in its methods of overpowering weaker nations than the Third Reich or Mussolini’s Italy
In the words of Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of Singapore: “When Japan took over Singapore from the British, all of a sudden we had plunged into the Dark Ages.”
And that’s exactly what happened. We don’t want to go through all the war atrocities Japan committed; this is not the point of this piece. The point is that history cannot be whitewashed by deleting a tweet.
Everyone in the West had to sit through classes where they have been told that Japan was no less fascistic in its methods of overpowering weaker nations than the Third Reich or Mussolini’s Italy.
I will spare you the comments from the Western readers of English Japanese media who published the news. But just to give you an idea of the utter incredulity in the feedback section, they had to suspend the comments as they were getting vociferous, but above all in one direction only.
I can summarize with just one quote: “We are supposed to pretend that Japan wasn’t a fascist dictatorship before and during WW2?”
So let’s just state the obvious. The reason why the Ukrainian government was forced to foreclose on its tweet was not because they scrupulously dug out their notes from the history classes and understood the mistake, but because at this very delicate moment Japan is an ally of Ukraine in the war against Russia.
So it is a diplomatic necessity to “twist” the reality that everyone, even the Ukrainian ambassador to Japan, knows.
They say that truth is the first casualty in any war. And so we hope that the war will end soon so that not only lives will be saved but history too.
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
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