I do not deny that the Japanese committed atrocities. For instance, as DC said, the case of Doctor Shiro Ishii was indeed horrible. This is one of the cruelest case. There will be no Japanese, I think, who dares to deny it though some Japanese minimize it. In Indonesia Dutch women were forced by Japanese servicemen to engage in prostitution.



A group of South Koreans, all intellecutal and of a rather good social standing, were surprised to hear from Prof. James Auer of Vanderbilt University last year that there were Japanese confort women and far more of them than Korean comfort women. They accuse Japanese of no contrition without knowing the truth such as that Korean women were usually sold by their poor parents or that they had been seduced with lies by pimps. It is known at least in Japan that those Korean women had US soldiers after Japan was defeated and the comfort women was used to refer to them in South Korea until around 1990.



School history textbooks of a few East Asian countries were compared by a group of people from Stanford University. The Japanese textbooks were most controlled and least nationalistic and received the highest ratint. The Chinese textbooks were simply the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party. The Korean textbooks were a aational fantasy story at least in my judgement. You can get to the short summary of the study at "Comaparative Study of School History Textbooks of Asian Countries by Stanford University, from where you can also read a long PDF report.

I would like anyone interested more in these to read my four comments to YaleGlobal Online/ Alistair Burnett/War Drums in East Asia: Back to the European Future?/Feb. 11/2014 (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/war-drums-asia--back-european-future) and my comment dated March 10, 2014 to project-syndicate.org/Asia's Democratic Drama by Prof. Lehmann.



George F. Kennan was known for his policy of Soviet containment. If interested in his U.S. policy suggestion toward Japan in 1941 before the outbreak of the Pacific War, please read my comments to The Diplomat. com/Zachary Keck/Only Realists Spread Democracy (http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/only-realists-spread-democracy). Prof. Buruma said, "the history of Japan's glorious war to 'liberate Asia.' You will see that Japan did not the intention at all of liberating Asia. You will see that Japan wanted to avoid war with the United States. You will also see that it also wanted to get out of the bottomlessness of war with China. Japan's war first with China and then with the United States and Great Britain was not the result of strength but the result of weakness. If the Japanese civil government had contained the Army and put it under control, Japan would have averted escalation of the Sino-Japanese war which arose from a minor incident of July in 1937 and the so-called Japanese militarism would have die away. Prof. Buruma's view is that of a Japanese extreme left, though widely shared among many Japanese.

There was and is a deep schism in Japanese politics in pre-war Japan and today as there will be in any country which came under the influence of Marxism. The influx of Marxism-Leninsm was tremendous in Japan after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It engulfed almost the whole of the academic world. Its effect has not died down yet.



Prof. Buruma also said, "(Abe) is driving his country into further isolation... he will be without Asian friends." His view entirely falls in line with that of Japanese lefts.

Abe's security policy has been welcomed not simply by the United States but also by most East Asian countries. These East Asian countries have long wanted Japan to strengthen its ties with the US. To add, they of course do not want to see Japan increase its defense effors all alone and on its own; they want to see Japan do it only in cooperation and coordination with Washington.



It is often said that Germany was contrite enough while Japan is not. Though I do not want to make this long comment still longer, it is not Japan but Germany that stealthily got the bill of indulgence without anybody noticing it. I want to say a little bit about this some other time if occasion presents itself.





