Germany and Japan

Tokyo must learn from its European counterpart

Last week, Germany decided to increase government compensations for victims of Nazi crimes and sharply broaden eligibility for such payments. In Japan, would-be prime ministers were vowing to visit a militarist shrine honoring fallen soldiers, including 14 Class-A war criminals.

No two countries in the world would be so similar, and so dissimilar, as this pair. Both started and lost World War II, in which they perpetrated unpardonable crimes of killing and abusing the human rights of civilians in unprecedented scales. But their postwar repentance and efforts to prevent similar atrocities, including apologies and compensation for the victims, have been as far apart as heaven and earth.

Germany has already spent nearly $100 billion and is willing to do more to help the survivors of the Holocaust, who are “passing away on a daily basis … and needing more help than ever,” as a German official put it.

Japan has not even admitted the state’s involvement in and responsibility for cajoling and coercing hundreds of thousands of foreign women into sexual slavery for the Imperial Army. Tokyo, more often than not, appears set to wait out until about 60 former “comfort women” here are called to their eternal rest, hoping the issue will also be gone.

The Holocaust and sexual slavery are of course two different matters, as some Japanese complain. Behind Japan’s tenacious refusal to take government-level action, however, is the country’s subconscious ― and more recently, conscious ― thought of going back to what they see as the powerful and proud imperial days, as seen by the increasingly frequent reappearance of its militarist banner called the “flag of the rising sun” even on the uniforms of Japanese athletes in international competitions.

Few Europeans, including Germans themselves, could imagine a German team with a Nazi swastika symbol either in flags or uniforms.

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had ruled Japan for half a century and will likely retake power next month after a brief setback, will “normalize” their country by revising its Peace Constitution and reviving its regular army, getting rid of what conservative Japanese call “self-tormenting” historical views of continuing to apologize to its neighbors for its past wrongs. Yet most foreigners, especially Tokyo’s Asian neighbors, are watching with concern _ and pity _ the WWII loser forgetting what was wrong with its previous self so quickly and easily.

Even Americans, victors and long-time patrons, and other Westerners have begun to feel Japan’s brazenness problematic. Paying tribute to German efforts to acknowledge responsibility for Nazi-era crimes, a related U.S. official said, “It’s a very sharp contrast to what Japan has done in recognizing its responsibilities … it’s quite striking.”

These are words to which the rest of the world would sympathize and Japan should take heed. It is in the same vein that some U.S. cities are setting up statues and monuments to memorialize former sex slaves as the examples of most egregious abuses of women’s rights in history.

A nation which forgets its past so soon has no future. <The Korea Times>