Rape of Nanking manga causes uproar in Japan

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-10-14 04:01pm

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getar ... 1014a3.htm

Shueisha Inc. said Wednesday it will halt publication of a "manga" comic featuring the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 in response to complaints by Japanese politicians who claim the slaughter never happened.The comic series "Kuni ga Moeru" ("The Country is Burning"), authored by popular comic writer Hiroshi Motomiya, is a fictional tale about a bureaucrat in the turbulent times of the early Showa Era (1926-1989).

Publication of the series, which has been carried in Weekly Young Jump magazine since November 2002, will be temporarily suspended from the Oct. 28 edition. Weekly Young Jump is popular among Japanese men.
In the magazine's Sept. 16 and Sept. 22 editions, the comic described Japanese soldiers massacring civilians in Nanjing, China.

Thirty-seven members of local assemblies protested to the publisher on Oct. 5, saying the massacre was presented as if it really happened. They say the story deliberately distorted history by using a photo whose authenticity they claim cannot be confirmed.

According to the assembly members, there is strong evidence that the massacre never happened and that there is no proof that it did.

A Shueisha representative said: "Some people say the photo used for reference in the drawing cannot be authenticated. It was inappropriate to use such material."

"The parts related to the use of the photo as pointed out will be edited or deleted when the comic book is published," Shueisha said in reply to the complaint.

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal concluded that more than 140,000 people were killed. Some Chinese historians put the death toll at 300,000 in Nanjing alone. Japanese accounts vary from several thousand to 200,000 dead.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-14 04:03pm

Those wacky Japanese and their amazing ability to spin it like they did absolutely no wrong in WWII or prior to it, ho-ho.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-10-14 04:03pm

Shueisha Inc. said Wednesday it will halt publication of a "manga" comic featuring the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 in response to complaints by Japanese politicians who claim the slaughter never happened.

Okay, that's as far as I've read. First reaction:

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-10-14 04:04pm

Don't be surprised, denials such as these are par for the course for right-wing Japanese politicians.

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » 2004-10-14 04:06pm

How do they get away with it when the Germans had their faces smeared into the Holocaust from day 1 of the peace?

Japan won't be able to change or grow has a nation until they admit what they did.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-10-14 04:11pm

people like that are jailed here.

Grand Moff Yenchin · Post by **Grand Moff Yenchin** » 2004-10-14 04:15pm

After the shameless On Taiwan we get this.
Thanks for the article, I'm gonna translate that... (Yes, no one mentioned it anywhere in the discussion boards. Fuck the Japaddicts.)

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-10-14 04:16pm

frigidmagi wrote:How do they get away with it when the Germans had their faces smeared into the Holocaust from day 1 of the peace?

Individual massacres have sadly been a part of war for a very long time. The Holocaust stood out in peoples' minds because of the sheer soulless automated methodical nature of it.

Grand Moff Yenchin · Post by **Grand Moff Yenchin** » 2004-10-14 04:17pm

I mean the discussion boards in TW...

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-10-14 04:19pm

frigidmagi wrote:How do they get away with it when the Germans had their faces smeared into the Holocaust from day 1 of the peace?

Japan won't be able to change or grow has a nation until they admit what they did.

I agree that it's massively stupid and ignorant of them, but it's not fair to say that the Japanese won't be able to change or grow as a nation without owning up to what happened. Japan really has changed quite visibly since the end of WW2 and quite a bit for the better. The problem is that no one does shame quite like the Japanese and they've got quite a bit to be ashamed about, and it is often dealt with by denial. This is a major problem with their culture that they are having trouble dealing with.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-10-14 04:29pm

How do they get away with it when the Germans had their faces smeared into the Holocaust from day 1 of the peace?

The U.S. is at least partially - though by absolutely no means entirely, or even mostly - responsible. We were never as hard on Japan as we were on Germany for its wartime atrocities. We even had the Japanese version of Mengele giving the army lectures on biological warfare (the Soviets, by contrast, treated his unit like the war criminals that they were).

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » 2004-10-14 04:30pm

Considering their rising sudice rate, I'm not so sure we can call them a healthy soceity, not when their young adults are leaping from buildings in record numbers.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-10-14 04:31pm

Germans like nothing more than to remind themselves of the Nazi regime and how evil it was and that we must never forget.
Sometimes they go a bit over the top with it. We had Hitler's Generals, Hitler's Admirals, Hitler's whatever and their mothers...

The Japanese seem to have chosen the other extreme...

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-14 06:05pm

You have to love the sheer hyprocrisy of this. With things like Grave of the Fireflies and not to mention plenty of museum/memorials to the atomic bombings it's a wonder the Japanese don't drown in their own hyporcisy; the least they could do is just admit what they did during the war. But according to them they were complete angels in the war, driven to it by all sort of crap.

I've said it before, Japan has serious issues of nationalism and national indentity.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-10-14 06:39pm

frigidmagi wrote:How do they get away with it when the Germans had their faces smeared into the Holocaust from day 1 of the peace?

Japan's surrender was handled differently than Germany's. They didn't get things like Nuremberg that forced them to face up to their crimes.

frigidmagi wrote:Japan won't be able to change or grow has a nation until they admit what they did.

My experience has been that most are aware of it. They may try to gloss it over, but they do know it happened. I've only encountered one person that dismissed it all as propoganda. Various Japanese PM's have issed apologies for what happened during the war.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-10-14 06:53pm

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » 2004-10-14 07:08pm

And yet they don't teach this in their schools. It's one thing to admit to a forgein government, it's another to teach it has history and admit the facts to your own people.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-14 07:10pm

It would seem the current administration is a little more right-wing and revisionist than previous ones.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-10-14 07:16pm

frigidmagi wrote:And yet they don't teach this in their schools. It's one thing to admit to a forgein government, it's another to teach it has history and admit the facts to your own people.

I'm not an expert on the Japanese school system, so I'm not aware how it is handled. I've heard all the sensational news reports on the issue, but I've also heard from people I know that they did cover things like Nanking. As I've said, pretty much every Japanese person I've spoken to has been aware of their countries war record.

What level are we talking about it not being covered at though? Is it high school? I know that school here doesn't cover some of the nastier things the British did in the Boer war. Likewise I'm not aware if the US schooling system covers events like Mai Lai (not to compare the two on the level they occured at). I've heard the "its not covered" claim many times, but have spoken to people who said they were told about it in school, which makes me curious. Maybe its simply not covered unless you take some subjects further, as some topics are here? As I said, I'm not an expert on Japanese schooling.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-10-14 07:20pm

Stormbringer wrote:You have to love the sheer hyprocrisy of this. With things like Grave of the Fireflies and not to mention plenty of museum/memorials to the atomic bombings it's a wonder the Japanese don't drown in their own hyporcisy; the least they could do is just admit what they did during the war. But according to them they were complete angels in the war, driven to it by all sort of crap.

I've said it before, Japan has serious issues of nationalism and national indentity.

I agree that Japan has failed to deal with the crimes of it’s imperial past but I don’t think that you can lump Grave Of The Fireflies in with this. The protagonists in the film are children who suffer mainly at the hand s of comparatively well-fed JAPANESE adults, foreign aggressors barely figure in the film, which is mainly about selfishness on the home front and how the innocent suffered.

Do bear in mind that Miyazaki the co-head of (and dominant partner within) Ghibli is a card carry Marxist, his films are consistently anti-nationalist and anti-militarist he simply wouldn’t allow an nationalist apologetic to be produced by his studio. What he would do and did is encourage the production of an ANTI-WAR film about how war harms innocents such as the unfortunate brother and sister in the film in question.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-10-14 08:20pm

Do bear in mind that Miyazaki the co-head of (and dominant partner within) Ghibli is a card carry Marxist, his films are consistently anti-nationalist and anti-militarist he simply wouldn?t allow an nationalist apologetic to be produced by his studio.

It's odd then how the film made no mention of the Japanese militarism and aggression that started the whole fucking war.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-14 08:22pm

Sharp-kun wrote:Mostly on Korea, but there have been various admissions from the government.

Fifteen statements in over half century doesn't amount to much.

Japanese schools are no doubt as varied as any nation's, however the fact is that a lot of them don't teach or teach a distorted veiw of WW2. One only has to look at this crap to realize that they've got a serious problem with a good number of people just not believing history. And this is not an isolated incident in the least, there have been university proffessors, politicians, and all matter of people that have said the same.

Plekhanov wrote:I agree that Japan has failed to deal with the crimes of it’s imperial past but I don’t think that you can lump Grave Of The Fireflies in with this. The protagonists in the film are children who suffer mainly at the hand s of comparatively well-fed JAPANESE adults, foreign aggressors barely figure in the film, which is mainly about selfishness on the home front and how the innocent suffered.

I've seen the movie; and you're right about the suffering coming from other Japanese. It's definitely not an apologist movie; at times a bit excusive of the role the japanese people played but not apologist persay.

However I find it terribly hypocritical that Japan can make monuments, museums, and yes films about it's national tragedies but starts this crap any time anyone brings up the utterly pointless barbarism it inflicted on others. They seem to feel that it's entirely appropriate to lament their tragedies but they seek to deny their complicity in their atrocities. I find it appalling that the Japanese right wing can utterly deny what they did and attempt to supress anyone that says different.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-10-14 08:22pm

Joe wrote: It's odd then how the film made no mention of the Japanese militarism and aggression that started the whole fucking war.

Why is that necessary in the film? It doesn't make it not anti-war.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2004-10-14 08:24pm

Joe wrote:
Do bear in mind that Miyazaki the co-head of (and dominant partner within) Ghibli is a card carry Marxist, his films are consistently anti-nationalist and anti-militarist he simply wouldn?t allow an nationalist apologetic to be produced by his studio.
It's odd then how the film made no mention of the Japanese militarism and aggression that started the whole fucking war.

Just wondering Joe after all your second hand criticisms of Bowling for Columbine, have you actually seen the film you’re now critiquing?

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-10-14 08:26pm

Sharp-kun wrote:
Joe wrote: It's odd then how the film made no mention of the Japanese militarism and aggression that started the whole fucking war.
Why is that necessary in the film? It doesn't make it not anti-war.

No, but it does ignore the fact that Hiroshima bombing came after more than a decade of military agression on the part of Japan. When it laments a Japanese tragedy, and never mind that the Japanese in large part brought it down on themselves, to the exclusion of all else it rather narrows the focus.