generalspeaking

Probing The National Spirit

The Japanese have a dreadful legacy of brutal occupation of Korea and China in the first-quarter-to-mid-20th Century. These are countries from whose traditions and culture, religion and language Japan historically borrowed heavily to invest in their own over the centuries, which Japan has barely acknowledged. On the other hand, Japan had a militant and aggressive stance toward its neighbours and for a small island nation made surprisingly effective inroads into domination of the geography.

During the Second World War, when Japan was part of Nazi Germany's Axis of aggression, it spared and aided Jews desperate to escape the horrendously Jew-lethal juggernaut of Third Reich Judaism-annihilation. Yet this same nation oppressed and slaughtered countless of its neighbours in its quest to dominate and occupy their countries. During that same time of conflict there were over 200,000 women, mostly of Korean descent, who were abducted for use as sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Their suffering and the atrocious abuse they suffered has never been forgotten by their countrymen and women. There are few of these 'Comfort Women' left alive, but the stinging knowledge of what they suffered is kept alive by women from Korea, China and the Philippines, whose nationals were forced to service Japanese servicemen in occupied foreign territories. About three-quarters of those women forced into sexual service died as a result of their travails.

Survivors were left eventually to live out their lives of personal shame, most left infertile by sexual trauma or disease. Marches in support of the memory of the Comfort Women, initiated in 1992, as "Wednesday marches" take place in various cities around the world, so that the horrendous experiences of trafficking and sexual slavery of Asia Pacific women at the hands of the Japanese military will not be forgotten.

The Japanese are proud people, strong-willed and most admirable in so many ways. Personal and national honour is vitally important to them. While they are not outwardly religious people, they have a deep-seated spirituality. They are an orderly, law-abiding, and now-mutually-respectful nation. And they are proud of their national social cohesiveness. It is a nation more attuned to honouring their past and their ancestors than indulging in introspective self-criticism.

It seems to go against the national grain to admit that they were responsible for the subjugation and the human rights abuses imposed upon others. So although there was a quiet, muted admission of implicit responsibility for wrong-doing by a former government administration, an admission given under duress, those who were wronged insist on an explicit, heart-felt declaration of responsibility, regret and sorrow.

Japan did recently express its responsibility and regret for its treatment of interred foreign prisoners of war during the Second World War, that made a mockery of human rights and the Geneva Convention. That included the dreadful treatment of Canadian soldiers captured during the Battle of Hong Kong. Those few living veterans who experienced internment and miserably dreadful conditions are not too forgiving.

Without doubt, reason will prevail, and Japan will eventually capitulate, realizing a sincerely felt acknowledgment of the great wrongs they imposed on helpless women created a dreadful blot on the nation's conscience which facing up to will help ameliorate.

Labels: Heritage, Human Fallibility, Human Relations, Human Rights, Japan, Justice

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 15, 2011