Eideard

Nanjing Massacre Museum
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The Chinese city of Nanjing has suspended its sister-city relationship with Nagoya, Japan, after Nagoya’s mayor expressed doubts that the Japanese Army’s 1937 Nanjing Massacre actually took place…

The falling out began Monday, when Nagoya’s mayor, Takashi Kawamura, told a visiting delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials from Nanjing that he doubted that Japanese troops had massacred Chinese civilians. Most historians say that at a minimum, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in Nanjing in one of the most infamous atrocities of Japan’s military expansion across Asia in the early 20th century.

The falling out underscored how differing views of history remain a problem in Japan’s ties with the nations that it once conquered. While such denials are common by Japanese conservatives like Mr. Kawamura, they are rarely raised in such a public manner, or directly to Chinese officials…

Still, the Japanese government scrambled to head off a full-blown diplomatic quarrel. The top government spokesman restated Japan’s official position that the massacre did, in fact, take place…

On Wednesday, Mr. Kawamura remained unrepentant, saying that he did not intend to retract the statement or apologize…

Such disagreements between Japan and its neighbors have quieted from the early 2000s, when Junichiro Koizumi, then prime minister, angered many in China and South Korea by visiting the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo that honors Japan’s war dead, included executed war criminals.

I’ve written about this before. People in China haven’t forgotten. Why should I?

Candles float in the Motoyasu River before the Peace Memorial Park
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The United States has confirmed that the ambassador to Japan will attend a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Hiroshima atom bomb drop for the first time.

PJ Crowley, a spokesman for the US State Department, said it would be the first time a US ambassador will attend the August 6 anniversary.

About 140,000 people were killed or died within months when an American B-29 bombed Hiroshima.

Mr Crowley would not say if US officials would attend ceremonies in Nagasaki, where 80,000 people died after the United States attacked three days later. Japan surrendered on Aug 15, ending World War II.

Embassy officials from wartime allies and currently nuclear-armed Britain and France also plan to attend the event for the first time, state broadcaster NHK and Kyodo News said, citing unidentified diplomatic sources.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will also attend the ceremony this year, becoming the first chief of the world body to do so…

Many Japanese – including survivors of both atomic bombings known as “hibakusha” – hope Mr Obama will visit Hiroshima in November when he travels to Japan for a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

In a related note [does that sound diplomatic enough], I believe the people of China are still awaiting a visit from Japan’s head of state at the ceremonies honoring the anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre.

300,000 Chinese were murdered by invading Japanese soldiers – well before the United States entered the war in the Pacific.

Nanjing Massacre Museum
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The Japanese Supreme Court has decided in a final ruling to reject an appeal by the Japanese author and the publisher of a book on the Nanjing Massacre to pay a total of 4 million yen, or about $40,000, in compensation to Xia Shuqin, the Chinese plaintiff, for libel.

The Supreme Court upheld earlier judgment made by the Tokyo High Court and the Tokyo District Court.

The earlier ruling noted the book, entitled “Complete Investigation into the Nanjing Massacre,” damaged the reputation of Xia Shuqin, a woman survivor of the massacre by leaving readers with the false impression that she was not a victim of the notorious mass homicide during World War II.

Xia was 8 when her family were all slaughtered during the Nanjing Massacre. She was referred to in a document produced by an American priest. The book, however, denied the authenticity of her existence as a survivor.

On December 13, 1937, Japanese invading troops occupied Nanjing after fierce combats with the Chinese army, and then launched a six-week long massacre. Historical records showed that more than 300,000 Chinese people, not only disarmed soldiers but also civilian victims, were massacred in the holocaust.

Like deniers of other Holocausts better-known in the West, the point of this right-wing exercise is to build a case against admitting that any portion of Japanese genocide during World War 2 existed. Nibble away at the truth long enough – with lies that suit the mythology of imperial racism – and you can continue to claim the mantle of patriotism dear to the heart of reactionaries.