Philip J. Cunningham: Japan’s Revisionist History
From LA Times, via A Glimpse of the World:
The United States, ever quick to criticize China for human rights abuses, has of late been remarkably silent about Japan’s ethical lapses, current and historical.
Japanese politicians and publishers have made a cottage industry of denying the 1937 Nanking Massacre in which the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the old Chinese capital. This is an offense to Chinese sensibilities comparable with Holocaust denial in Europe. In recent months, major publishers and broadcasters have been bullied to conform and self-censor in accord with the rising tide of resurgent militarism. That tacit government approval is given to such xenophobic, right-wing thinking can be seen in the latest Ministry of Education-approved school texts that erase or evade critical lessons drawn from Japan’s bad behavior in its war of aggression.