Japanese politician: rape was necessary during WW2

[Anomalocaris]

But look at what happened to them in 2011 when the tsunami hit, they were destroyed without China needing to lift a finger.

I wouldn't go there. The 2008 Szechuan earth quake ranked right up there with the 2011 tsunami in death and property destruction.

[ideologue08]

But look at what happened to them in 2011 when the tsunami hit, they were destroyed without China needing to lift a finger.

I wouldn't go there. The 2008 Szechuan earth quake ranked right up there with the 2011 tsunami in death and property destruction.

Maybe so, but if you look at the population of Japan and China for example, there's no question that relatively speaking, Japan suffered much more, and economically as well. But you're right, I don't think it's wise to traverse that path.

[Anomalocaris]

I wouldn't go there. The 2008 Szechuan earth quake ranked right up there with the 2011 tsunami in death and property destruction.

Maybe so, but if you look at the population of Japan and China for example, there's no question that relatively speaking, Japan suffered much more, and economically as well. But you're right, I don't think it's wise to traverse that path.

Schadenfreude is unbecoming of china where natural diseasters are concerned, even if the epicenter is in Japan. Even relative to her population, china lost far more people to natural disaster since 1900 than Japan did. Just the 1976 earth quake at Tongshan killed more Chinese than did all of Japan's natural diseasters since 1900 combined, including the 2011 tsunami and the much more deadly 1923 Kanto earth quakes. Yet despite kill more than did all of japan's natural disseasters in the last century, the tongshan quake would not even rank in the top 5 most deadly natural diseasters to strike china during the last century.

For what past chinese crimes and misdeeds do you suppose this superabundance of deadly natural diseasters is the comeuppance?

[Minimalist]

The Chinese used to call it "The Mandate of Heaven."

[Violet]

Maybe the gods are angry about that whole Tibet thing?

[Creed of Heresy]

I wonder what arbitrary line must be crossed for the gods to intervene? I wonder at which point Tibet became the favored geopolitical-border-contained landmass of the supernatural god-beings-

*OCCAM'S RAZOR STRIKE!*

That or it was just natural disasters that are a result of billion-year-long geothermal and geological processes and have no basis in being used as something to claim judicial equality.

I don't care if Japan was completely fucking inundated by tsunamis and their entire population wiped out, it wouldn't make up for THEIR OWN AGGRESSION and savage brutality in WWII and the subsequent years to the present day where they openly venerated some of the most disgusting, vile humans to ever walk the face of the fucking earth! What nature does and what humans do are two different fucking things and one does not balance the other!

[Minimalist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Tsuji

Masanobu Tsuji (辻 政信 Tsuji Masanobu?, 11 October 1901 – ca.1961[1]) was a tactician of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War and later a politician. While he was never indicted for war crimes after World War II, subsequent investigations have revealed that he was involved in war crimes throughout the Pacific war including the massacre of Chinese civilians in Singapore, the executions of numerous surrendered prisoners of war during the Bataan Death March, the executions of government officials of the Philippines, and other war crimes in China.

[Anomalocaris]

At the end of WWII, the US as the sole occupying power in Japan made a careful calculation that cultivating the established right wing political and economic interests in Japan that had supported Japanese aggression before and during WWII would make American occupation easier, and would more closely align Japan to those of American interests after Japan regains sovereignty. A similar calculation could not have been made in Germany because the US shared occupation with the Soviet Union and France, and in any case US domsestic opinion gave US more latitude in conducting postwar Japan policy vs German policy.

This was the reason why war crimes was never prosecuted with similar vigor in Japan as in Germany. This was also the reason why there was never any policy comparable to the "denazification" that was carried out vigorously in Germany, and why the first postwar Japanese civilian government was made up of the same elite that had populated the Japanese wartime government as well as the aggression promoting pre-war governments.

So it is why Japanese domestic politics after the war was never built upon repentence of policies leading up to war and its crimes during the war the same way German domestic politics had been.

[Creed of Heresy]

If FDR had been alive around that time I can't help but imagine post-war Japan would've been a lot different...and not at the benefit of the Japanese ruling class, either.

[Gabriel Syme]

Well they were atom bombed as you said, so that was punishment enough in my opinion. If you include all the earthquakes and tsunamis as well, they took a beating.

Hi there

The above (in bold) is fair enough.

But what I dislike is that - Japanese children do not learn of their nations death camps, the medical and military experiments carried out on humans, the millions of murders, massacres and atrocities they committed against civilians and POWs, the rapes, the beheadings, the slavery (including sex slavery) etc etc - all in the name of Imperial Japan.

Their schools books do not always feature these things, or feature them accurately.

http://spice.stanford.edu/docs/134
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Mark-Selden/3173

Worse, their Government to this day insists they violated no forms of international law.

German children learn all about the Nazis and the holocaust. Other nations (American, Britain) teach their children about crimes they have committed - colonialism, slavery etc. Catholic schools study the crusades and all the bloodshed which went along with those.

So, why do the Japanese get to simply wash their hands?

If humanity is to avoid mistakes, surely we must learn from the mistakes? Which includes acknowledging them and talking about them.

I understand that they got a bit of retribution with atom bombs - but that was not intended as "punishment", but that was simply to save the lives of Allied troops by avoiding the need to physically invade the Japanese home islands. (I am sure the chance for American to test out its new shiny atom bombs - as well as send a public message to the Soviets - had some influence too).

Teaching their kids about Japan in WW2 would not be "punishment" either, this would be part of "reconciliation" (which is a good thing).