No, I’m not joking or exaggerating. That is exactly what they are saying, although bizarrely, there is no context, no explanation of why the official is saying these things of where he said them or to whom.
China urged Japan to take action to fulfil its promise on reviewing invasion war, and never do anything more to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman on Thursday.
“The Japanese side should fully realize the seriousness of this matter,” said Kong Quan, adding that Japan should earnestly win trust from the Asian neighbors and international community.
When commenting on Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s plea on his current visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, Kong said the responsibility for the current difficult relations between China and Japan does not lie in China.
A right-wing force in Japan has always beautified the invasion war launched by the Japanese militarism, and refused to admit the crimes of aggression, Kong said.
“Their acts severely hurt the feeling of the people of all Asian victimized countries, and violate the principles in the three political documents between China and Japan,” he said.
Will the foreign minister hold his breath until he turns blue if the Japanese don’t stop hurting his feelings? I can’t help but be reminded of this image.
What are they thinking when they put out idiotic articles like this? All it consists of is an official repeating the tired clichees of how mean Japan is. I’m not saying Japan is or isn’t mean, just that this story isn’t news.
1
By sun bin
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200510280131.html
finally someone who uses his brain to think.
and it takes a WWII veteran who had many of his colleagues KIA.
sigh, what is wrong with our Hero in WWII, the Americans!
October 28, 2005 @ 2:38 am | Comment
2
By sun bin
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200510/200510230016.html
and here for more details
October 28, 2005 @ 2:40 am | Comment
3
By sun bin
“What are they thinking when they put out idiotic articles like this? All it consists of is an official repeating the tired clichees of … ”
Great point! and it is not just People’s Daily.
October 28, 2005 @ 2:47 am | Comment
4
By bathrobe
Well, I think it is more a matter of bad translation. The point is, the Chinese feel ‘hurt’ (how else can you translate it?) when elements in Japan try to deny the suffering they caused in China or try to glorify or excuse the people responsible for that suffering.
I think the point is that China has a hard enough time getting over what happened in WWII without these unrepentant elements trying to make it sound like nothing happened, or gloss over what happened.
This is indeed a ‘cliche’ that doesn’t quite sit right in English. We Westerners are much better at coming up with reasonable-sounding cliches, like ‘friendly fire’, ‘downsizing’, ‘transparency’, ‘governance’, ad nauseum! Perhaps they should hire better writers/translaters/proofreaders.
How about ‘Japan should stop rubbing salt in Chinese wounds’?
October 28, 2005 @ 2:57 am | Comment
5
By richard
Fair enough, but why yet another article banging away at the same tired theme? Nothing new, no insight, no news, no event, just more outrage. Yawn.
October 28, 2005 @ 4:02 am | Comment
6
By Raj
Richard,
Because having anti-Japanese articles or ones that bring up the war and ask Japan to apologise shift newspapers. It’s a sad truth but people like to read them. It’s a bit like those newspapers with ISLAM IS A THREAT-type headlines.
Basically Beijing needs a boogyman to help deflect criticism away from its policies. It has a few, but the best one is “evil, imperialist Japan”. The CCP doesn’t directly incite hatred against Japan, but it makes capital out of it while it’s around.
In some respects China is still suffering from a victim syndrome (?), partly I think because it helps them to put all the blame for the 20th century on the shoulders of foreigners. Some Chinese people are very vocal about the Japanese war, or Opium War, but are strangely silent over the Civil War, Cultural Revolution, etc.
The Japanese did very bad things, but focusing on what someone else did is a lot easier than considering your own failings. As China as a whole still hasn’t faced up to what it did to itself, etc (and the CCP discourages talk of it in the media), it can’t do the latter easily.
October 28, 2005 @ 5:17 am | Comment
7
By Laowai 19790204
Actually, I think this sort of thing is much more constructive than the usual clap-trap that China lobs out to the world. It’s taking it down to fundamentals: we feel hurt. I mean, how much more basic is that? So I’m less cynical than you, richard, I think it’s a decent thing to do.
October 28, 2005 @ 6:33 am | Comment
8
By chinazombie
I would like to know what China wants Japan to do. Chinese will often bring up the many steps Germany has taken to clense itself of its past as some sort of benchmark for post-war repentance. But Japan isn’t Germany. Different place, different culture, different people. Japan has done things in its own way, and although one is certainly free to argue that it hasn’t done enough, who decides what is “enough”? One simply can’t say that Japan hasn’t acknowledged its past wrongs, and apologized repeatedly, not just to China but to the whole world. Neither more money, nor more public apologies will reverse what happened in Nanjing, nor will a farkin’ cessation of shrine visits. Demanding more from Japan simply isn’t going to accomplish anything. In fact, the more China badgers with these idiotic “official statements” as was posted, the further they push Japan away and look more and more like a country and culture of weakling whiners. If anyone is rubbing salt here, and keeping the flames fanned, it’s China. Every couple if months they’ll release YET ANOTHER statement, just to make sure their countrymen won’t move on. They should just shut up, take Japan’s investments and grants, take all the foreign direct investments, continue to grow the economy, and focus on becoming a great, respectable nation. That would be the best way to even the score against Japan, wouldn’t it?
I suspect that the well-known Achilles heal of both cultures, the idea of “face”, will end up (as usual) hurting both countries, but especially China. If only Buddhism or some other humane, principled philosophy had taken a firmer grip here… when it had the chance…
It’d be neat to just ask China for a list of demands from Japan. I can imagine number 04: “And every year you have to pat us on the back and tell us how much you like us and respect us, and how if it wasn’t for you, the 20th century would have been ours. Oh, and also you have to make the rest of the entire world like us and respect us as much as they respect you. Otherwise we’ll yell and scream and tantrum and graffiti your embassies. We may throw some eggs too. So take heed! We will now go back to our rooms and continue our Long Cry.”
October 28, 2005 @ 7:11 am | Comment
9
By Laowai 19790204
I totally agree. A list of concrete requests would greatly help the overall peace process.
October 28, 2005 @ 8:59 am | Comment
10
By nausicaa
“Japan has done things in its own way, and although one is certainly free to argue that it hasn’t done enough, who decides what is “enough”?”
The victims, with input from the international community.
“Neither more money, nor more public apologies will reverse what happened in Nanjing, nor will a farkin’ cessation of shrine visits.”
Well, I don’t know, the cessation of shrine visits might just help. It probably woulnd’t make a difference to the CCP, which has its own agenda to push, but to the average PRC joe, perhaps. Or at least, Koizumi could issue a statement clearly stating that by visiting Yasakuni, he is not endorsing the views of the right-wing revisionists whom his government has put to be in charge of the Yasakuni site.
And the implication that because history can’t be rewritten, reparations are therefore useless gets a F for faltering rationale.
“If only Buddhism or some other humane, principled philosophy had taken a firmer grip here… when it had the chance…”
Right. Because Confucianism isn’t a humane, principled philosophy, and because centuries of institutionalized Confuciansim wasn’t enough to count as a “firm grip”.
Oh and by the way, Buddhism isn’t a philosophy, but a religion.
…
Sorry, I know I’m being a bit of a bitch, and yeah, the ridiculous article posted isn’t at all favorable to China’s cause, but Richard, when you write that “Fair enough, but why yet another article banging away at the same tired theme? Nothing new, no insight, no news, no event, just more outrage. Yawn.”, couldn’t I direct the question back to you?
Why yet another post banging away at the same tired theme [China whinges way too much]? Nothing new, no insight, no news, no event, just more disdain?
October 28, 2005 @ 9:25 am | Comment
11
By richard
Yeah, but I’m a blog, not a national newspaper. I comment on the media and what strikes me as odd or amusing, as I see fit. This article struck me that way (odd and amusing) , especially the “you hurt our feelings” stuff. I hadn’t seen words like that before; they were new to me. So I posted it.
Look, Atrios goes on day after day about how bad Bush is, Instapundit goes on about how great things look in Iraq. We as bloggers write about what we see as reinforcing our beliefs or what challenges them. Newspapers are supposed to have a higher ideal and purpose, and thus we have paid copy editors and ombudsmen to keep them in check and avoid redundancies and idiocies. When they fail in their job, as a service to my readers that’s when I step in to set things straight. And I do it for free.
October 28, 2005 @ 9:31 am | Comment
12
By sun bin
not specific enough?
1. PM stop visiting Yasukuni, or move the 14 ‘heroes’ out.
2. Get rid of that stupid textbook.
now if there is new reason/excuse to complain, it won’t generate sympathy from Congressman Hyde
tired tone?
1. people’ daily just need things to fill its page, same way TPD does. if TPD can do so, why not ThePeople’sDaily?
2. because there is new koizumi interview in the news. so it feels like to repsond again
October 28, 2005 @ 10:48 am | Comment
13
By nausicaa
I don’t care about the textbook. It’s used in less than 1% of Japan’s schools, and is not endorsed by the government. If scholars can publish papers in America, a democratic country, about how the Holocaust was a “HollowHoax” (sick, I know), than Japan as a democratic country should be accorded that right as well, much as I dislike the notion.
But something clearly needs to be done about Yasakuni, yes. The same people who protest about how Koizumi’s visits are innocuous because Yasakuni is merely a site to “mourn the dead and remember for peace” and so on would surely support sun bin’s suggestion of finding the war criminals brand new digs.
October 28, 2005 @ 11:09 am | Comment
14
By Kevin
what i heard from several chinese youth, to the government, “oh, come on. our feelings are not that easily to be hurt.”
October 28, 2005 @ 12:27 pm | Comment
15
By sun bin
It seems Hydes is not the only man in US whose feeling was hurt.
Francesco Sisci suggested in his Asiatimes that Rummy “canceled his trip to Japan in implicit protest against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni and in response to difficulties over deciding the future of the US Okinawa bases”
Anyway, Sisi has another great essay on US-China issue, I expect Simon would give this a Must-read tag
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GJ29Ad01.html
October 28, 2005 @ 2:42 pm | Comment
16
By nausicaa
Sorry, just one more comment, not to this thread specifically, but to this debate as a whole:
To those posters who feel that China is being a big whinging baby and who essentially think “yeah, Nanking was a tragedy, but hey, Japan apologised, so get over it” and who suggest that the reason China keeps rubbing its war atrocities in Japan’s face is because of jealousy issues/inferiority complex/unwillingness to face its own failures/political agenda, I would like to remind you that while all that may be true to a degree, Nanking/WWII was our Holocaust. It’s been engrained into our collective memory, so YOU get over thinking that our anger is exaggerated or suspect or the result of CCP brainwashing. And if we have a victim complex? Heck, even though it’s far from healthy, I think after the last half of 19th century and the first half of the 20th, it’s completely understandable that we have one.
If a war memorial exists in Germany commemorating not only millions of innocent soldiers but also 14 Rudolph Hosses (director of the death camps), and the German president repeatedly visits it, and the government of Israel , not to mention Jews worldwide, erupts like a beehive in response and demands over and over again for Germany to rectify the situation immediately, would you even have the guts to voice an opinion along the lines of “oh, the Knesset, oh those Jews, playing the victim card again…the same old thing… such self-pitying weakling whiners, for god’s sake why can’t they just MOVE ON? They’re just trying to deflect the attention away from their own problems in Israel”? I’d guess no.
You’d be torn to pieces in mainstream media, and ostracized even in alternative media.
I mean, I’m a reasonable gal. I disapprove of CCP propaganda’s cultivation of blinding hatred towards Japan, I would be willing to let go of the textbook issue on grounds of freedom of speech in Japan (despite the fact that in Germany, publishing revisionist literature landed German national and Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in jail. ), and I’m more willing to hear critique of the Chinese government’s approach towards Sino-Japanese relations, as I agree that it has been lacking in many respects. But please, don’t be disparaging or dismissive towards our cause or our “feelings” (ha!) either, because by doing so you’re alienating the few of us who are willing to listen to criticism of the CCP and of China as a whole, and you’re the ones who ultimately end up sounding like apologists for Japan and looking callous and insensitive.
Thanks. And yes, I’ll go take a chill pill now.
October 28, 2005 @ 4:43 pm | Comment
17
By richard
Nausica, thanks for sharing your opinions so honestly. I understand the pain. I’m not even saying China should “get over it.” I do, hopwever, wish they’d find a more constriuctive method of getting their message out. If anyone thinks they are a whinging baby, it’s exactly because of self-parodying articles like this, full of sound and fury and repetition and, whether true or not, portraying China as hopelessly caught up in an inferiority-impotency complex, where it feels it must perpetually cry on the international stage about its plight of half a century ago. That’s all.
October 28, 2005 @ 6:46 pm | Comment
18
By chinazombie
nausicaa, I don’t want to be a bitch either, but you gave me an F, so. You know.
“And the implication that because history can’t be rewritten, reparations are therefore useless gets a F for faltering rationale.”
Apologizing and paying out aren’t reparations? Who said anything about reparations being useless? You get an “F” for your reading skills.
“Right. Because Confucianism isn’t a humane, principled philosophy, and because centuries of institutionalized Confuciansim wasn’t enough to count as a “firm grip”.
Yeah, lots of Confucianism going down in China these days… what happened? Thus the “firmer grip”… ayaa.
“Oh and by the way, Buddhism isn’t a philosophy, but a religion.”
Also false, failure; “F”. From Wikipedia and just about every major description of Buddhism: “Buddhism is a religion _and philosophy_ based on the teachings of the Buddha…”
Pointless, I know. Like complaining about who’s in what graveyard. But.
So there.
October 28, 2005 @ 9:42 pm | Comment
19
By ACB
Japan has been a pacafist country for 60 years and will never again launch a war of agression. This if anything should be ultimate proof that Japan is a reformed nation that is mindful of its repugnant history. Yet China cannot accept this.
This says more about Beijing than it does about Tokyo.
October 29, 2005 @ 8:00 am | Comment
20
By sun bin
china and korea just do not trust what you claim and said, ACB:)
i hope you were the PM, perhaps you would be more convinving than koizumi.
October 30, 2005 @ 3:21 pm | Comment
21
By Jeff
It was interesting thing to note that while the new Chinese spaceship went up in space, the chinese media had a fieldday about the ‘japanese-made’ camcorder that the astronauts brought with them on the trip.
Such is the extent of the stupidity and nationalism of the Chinese.
Yes, China is flaming hatred towards the Japanese in the guise of nationalism. Such blind irrational behaviour is reminiscient of the days prior to the break of WWII in Germany.
I dont think China intends to be seen as a big whining baby, rather, China exercises WAY too much control over its slavish citizens that proganda like this, albeit its poor quality, can have such effects as to lead to the riots in the Japanese embassy.
And you wonder why Taiwan shivers at the very THOUGHT of reunification…
October 30, 2005 @ 10:25 pm | Comment
22
By nausicaa
“Apologizing and paying out aren’t reparations? Who said anything about reparations being useless? You get an “F” for your reading skills.”
Read over your own post again, Chinazombie. You said that pretty much nothing, not more money, not more apologies, not cessation of shrine visits, etc is going to make Nanking go away. What other implication could there be?
“Yeah, lots of Confucianism going down in China these days… what happened? Thus the “firmer grip”… ayaa.”
My point was, if centuries of Confucianism doesn’t count as a firm grip, then there is no “firmer grip”. In fact, China’s problem was that it suffered from too much Confucianism. The subsequent descent into political chaos was in part a backlash.
“Also false, failure; “F”. From Wikipedia and just about every major description of Buddhism: “Buddhism is a religion _and philosophy_ based on the teachings of the Buddha…”
Wikipedia. Oh, what a credible source.
“Pointless, I know. Like complaining about who’s in what graveyard.”
Nice. Sorry, we Chinese do care about the kami of war criminals comfortably residing in Yasukuni with impugnity, and being worshipped. For us it’s not pointless. Excuse me for caring, and I’ll excuse you for being a callous fool.
November 1, 2005 @ 9:13 am | Comment