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mindseye
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A Yankee living in Shanghai
Apr 1999
time: 13:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Time, place, and person who did the apologising on behave of the Japanese government.  |
Well, to be fair, Japan's leaders have not exactly been silent on the issue (as many Chinese believe).
quote:
The ways Japan has said sorry to its neighbours over the past. April 11, 2005.
(...)
Herewith some of the key statements by Japan on its past:
- June 1965: Japan establishes diplomatic relations with South Korea. Tokyo gives Seoul 800 million dollars in loans and grants. Seoul waives the right to compensation of Koreans who suffered under Japanese rule.
- September 1972: Japan normalizes relations with China. A joint communique says: "Japan is keenly conscious of its responsibility for the serious damage inflicted in the past on the Chinese people through war and deeply regrets it." China has refused compensation by Japan.
- May 1990: Emperor Akihito, the son of wartime emperor Hirohito, says during a banquet for visiting South Korean president Roh Tae-Woo: "I think of the sufferings your people underwent during this unfortunate period, which was brought about by my country, and cannot but feel deep regret." Then premier Toshiki Kaifu goes further in his summit with Roh: "I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere remorse and apology for Japan's acts that made people on the Korean Peninsula suffer unbearable agony and sorrow during a period in the past." He notably did not use the words "colonial rule" or "aggression."
- October 1992: Emperor Akihito on a historic visit to Beijing tells a banquet hosted by president Yang Shangkun: "In the long history of relationship between our two countries, there was an unfortunate period in which my country inflicted great sufferings on the people of China. I deeply deplore this."
- November 1993: Morihiro Hosokawa, the first Japanese prime minister in more than 37 years not to come from the Liberal Democratic Party, says on a visit to South Korea: "I would like to offer my heartfelt remorse and apology as assailants for the unbearable pain and sorrow people on the Korean Peninsula experienced when they were deprived of being able to learn their mother tongue and forced to change their names to Japanese ones and through the recruitment as comfort women, forced labor and various other ways."
- August 1995: In a landmark statement, prime minister Tomiichi Murayama - only the second socialist to head a Japanese government - apologizes on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. "During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensure the Japanese people in a fateful crisis and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian countries," Murayama says. "In the hope that no such mistakes be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humanity, these irrefutable facts of history and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology."
- June 1996: Prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, in a meeting with South Korean president Kim Young-Sam, apologizes for sexual enslavement of "comfort women." "Nothing injured the honour and dignity of your women more than this and I would like to extend words of soul-searching and apology from the bottom of my heart," Hashimoto says.
- October 1998: Prime minister Keizo Obuchi apologizes in a joint statement with South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung. Obuchi says in the statement that Japan "sincerely recognized the historical fact that our country inflicted tremendous damage and suffering on the people of South Korea through the colonial rule during a certain period of the past and expressed deep remorse and a heartfelt apology over this." Obuchi said later that he spoke on behalf of the Japanese government and Kim said the statement should settle the countries' troubles over their past.
- November 1998: Obuchi repeats Murayama's 1995 apology during a summit with Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The two countries issue a joint statement in which Japan expresses its "deep remorse" over its past.
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Source: EastSouthWestNorth, an excellent blog.
These may not be full-on official state apologies, but I think they qualify for something more than "none, zilch, nada."
While we're on the topic, it's interesting that Chinese are so fired up about Japan's textbooks, but don't comment much on the distortions in their own textbooks, which leads to an entire population actually believing things like China has never started a war of aggression.
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
what Japan did in Asia is a still a searing memory - its amzing really because it made European colonialism seem not so bad - we get off lightly |
Talk to the Indians about that. There's a movement in India to replace Ghandi as the country's greatest hero with Chandra Bose, the collaborator who raised a Japanese sponsored "Indian National Army" during WW2.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:35
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I understand why the Chinese are complaining about the Japanese text books and if Chinese consumers want to boycott Japanese goods, that's their right.
The Japanese government created this mess and now they are making it even worse by authorizing today, gas drilling rights in a section of the East China Sea that is claimed by China. Of all the stupidity! This is throwing gas on a fire.
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mindseye
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A Yankee living in Shanghai
Apr 1999
time: 13:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Um, no. There's no expletive there. |
quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Lets see. The first "character" look like the letter "Y," which isn't Chinese AFAIK. Okay, it can be a very badly written ya. The second one is indeed bi. However the term ya bi doesn't mean anything. OTOH, bi and the last character ("die") makes sense together. |
My dictionary says the first character is "ya", meaning something like "low status", as in "ya tou" (slave girl). The second character is "bi", which means "vagina" or "c*nt", as in "niu bi" ("ox c*nt, a common enough Chinese curse term).
The phrase "ya bi" literally means something like "low-down c*nt", but the way it's used in Chinese is probably closer to American English "f*cker" or "b*astard". It's a strong expletive, I just confirmed this with one of my students.
So my original translation of "Ya bi wang!" as "Die, f*cker!" next to Koizumi's X-ed over face was correct. 
You know, I teach English to Chinese everyday, but it's not often I teach Chinese to a Chinese! 
Last edited by mindseye on 13-04-2005 at 20:40
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mindseye
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A Yankee living in Shanghai
Apr 1999
time: 13:35
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I've been reading so much on this lately, I can't recall if it's been mentioned yet in this thread: less than 0.4% of Japanese schools have adopted the textbook in question.
From what I can gather, the voice of the Japanese ultra-rightists is amplified by the international press to something well beyond their actual influence. I would love to hear from those who know something about this.
Last edited by mindseye on 13-04-2005 at 22:15
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:35
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Here is a link to the history of Bose, known as Netaji, who died at the end of the war in a plane crash. (He was a leader of the Indian National Congress who initially went to Germany in 1941.) http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/...rra407-439.html Apparently, the Brits put officers of the Free Indian Army on trial at the so-called Red Fort. (The Free Indian Army was primariy composed of POWs from the British Indian Army.) News of the trial spread throughout India and the prisoners national heroes to all those who wanted an end to British rule. This also made the Brit controlled Indian Army unrealiable and an armed revolt seemed possible.
"Apart from revisionist historians, it was none other than Lord Clement Atlee himself, the British Prime Minster responsible for conceding independence to India, who gave a shattering blow to the myth sought to be perpetuated by court historians, that Gandhi and his movement had led the country to freedom. Chief justice P.B. Chakrabarty of Calcutta High Court, who had also served as the acting Governor of West Bengal in India, disclosed the following in a letter addressed to the publisher of Dr. R.C. Majumdar's book A History of Bengal. The Chief Justice wrote:
You have fulfilled a noble task by persuading Dr. Majumdar to write this history of Bengal and publishing it … In the preface of the book Dr. Majumdar has written that he could not accept the thesis that Indian independence was brought about solely, or predominantly by the non-violent civil disobedience movement of Gandhi. When I was the acting Governor, Lord Atlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing the British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor's palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to him was that since Gandhi's "Quit India" movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji. Toward the end of our discussion I asked Atlee what was the extent of Gandhi's influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Atlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, "m-i-n-i-m-a-l!"[46]
Majumdar, R.C., Jibanera Smritideepe, Calcutta, General Printers and Publishers, 1978, pp. 229-230, (quotation translated from original Bengali).
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13-04-2005 07:26
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