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By Root 1096 0

Japanese judges, notably by Chinese plaintiffs including former “comfort women,” have so far been unsuccessful. Three cases have only recently been rejected by the Supreme Court. Perhaps the most striking example is that of slave labourers, of whom 38,935 Chinese were shipped to Japan, and 6,830 died. They were employed by thirty-five companies, of which twenty-two continue to trade, including Mitsubishi and Matsui Mining. In a recent lawsuit by former Chinese slaves against Mitsubishi, defence lawyers sought to question whether Japan had invaded China. Mitsubishi explicitly denies that it employed forced labour. A ruling in favour of the plaintiffs, said Mitsubishi’s counsel, would “impose an unjust burden on future generations of our nation, possibly for centuries to come.”

The wartime Japanese minister of commerce and mines was the grandfather of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s recent prime minister. Soon after assuming office in 2007, Mr. Abe publicly asserted that many Chinese and Korean comfort women volunteered for their role. Both the Japanese government and the companies targeted for litigation argue that any possible liability towards Japan’s wartime victims has lapsed with the passage of time and the September 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty signed by Japan and forty-eight Allied nations—though China was a conspicuous absentee, and the USSR declined to append its signature. Tokyo also asserts, less than subtly, that it is grotesque for a country with as deplorable a record of respect for human rights as China to seek redress for any past Japanese shortcomings in this field.

Both the policy of denial and the alternative doctrine of moral equivalence are unconvincing, when Japanese brutality was institutionalised for many years before the Allies commenced their own excesses, if excesses they were. Even LeMay’s campaign was designed to hasten the end of the war. Many Japanese actions, by contrast, including the torture and beheading of prisoners, reflected a gratuitous pride in the infliction of suffering. Wartime Japan was responsible for almost as many deaths in Asia as was Nazi Germany in Europe. Yet only a few modern Japanese acknowledge as much, and incur the disdain or outright hostility of their fellow countrymen for doing so. The nation is guilty of a collective rejection of historical fact. The treatment of subject peoples and prisoners described in this book is wholly unaccepted by most modern Japanese, even where supported by overwhelming evidence. This sustains a chasm between their culture and ours, which cannot be justified or dismissed by mere reference to differences of attitude between East and West.

Much Western criticism has focused upon the custom of modern Japanese prime ministers paying formal annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to honour the nation’s war dead, including its war criminals. This, I believe, is mistaken. The leaders of all societies which participated in great conflicts are expected to pay homage to those who fell in them, whatever the demerits of their causes. There is no reason why Japan should be excepted. It seems to me that dismay, indeed repugnance, should instead concentrate upon the refusal of the Japanese people, including their political, educational and corporate leaders, honestly to acknowledge their history. They still seek to excuse, and even to ennoble, the actions of their parents and grandparents, so many of whom forsook humanity in favour of a perversion of honour and an aggressive nationalism which should properly be recalled with shame. As long as such denial persists, it will remain impossible for the world to believe that Japan has come to terms with the horrors which it inflicted upon Asia almost two-thirds of a century ago.

“What comes next, then? What am I going to do?” And immediately he knew the answer: “Nothing. I’m just going to live. Oh, it’s marvellous!”

Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov after the

Franco-Russian campaign of 1812

A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE JAPANESE WAR

1931 18 September: Japan begins occupation of Manchuria

1933 25 March: Japan leaves