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Japan's Apologies to Korea
Muninn
http://muninn.net/blog/2005/04/japans-apologies-to-korea.html
It has been hard to keep up with all the renewed excitement generated by the anti-Japan protests in China. It has reopened discussion on all the classic issues in Sino-Japanese relations since the early 1980s.
In a series of blog entries (one on apologies to Korea, one on apologies to China, and one on revisionist gaffes by Japanese government officials), I think I want to collect some reference materials that might be useful to interested readers on this issue. I?m very busy with school so I won?t promise to be as thorough as I would like (nor can I say when I?ll finish all three) but would appreciate if others will consider emailing me with more material for inclusion in future updates to these entries. They will thus be in flux without the usual "UPDATE" marker.
These statements vary from blunt apologies to vague and ambiguous statements of regret. Some of them had an interesting aftermath which led people to question their sincerity and actual content. Keep in mind as you read that my own position on this issue is this: I?m frustrated at how pathetically uninformed many of the people who are discussing this issue online and throughout the media are. I think it is ridiculous to claim that Japan has never apologized, nor do I find such apologies particularly useful as such statements of national regret are of limited value to the victims of past aggression and violence. If you want to be angry about "whitewashing" the past, then this is not where your energies should be focused. On the other hand, I am equally frustrated by right-wing (and increasingly mainstream) Japanese commentary which seems to think that the story of apologies is one of repeated clear expressions of admitted responsibility and which fails to see how conflicting messages given by leading government officials, especially among the increasing numbers of conservative bureaucrats and politicians who read the revisionist accounts of Japan?s past war, can create a complete lack of trust among the agitated peoples of Korea and China in the genuine and sincere feelings of regret which are still felt (and when given the chance, expressed) by the majority of people in Japan.