It’s unclear to me how Japan, good industrial country that it is, thought it was a good idea to invade massive, Red China back in the early 20th century, and judging by the massive casulties and resulting fall-out of the goverments I think I can say it probably wasn’t the best option handed down by the gods.
Hawaii’s Governor: Hey, you know what would be great? Owning Texas.
Hawaiian people: Hooray! Get the coconut bombs!
The Chinese had been through enough wars with England that they couldn’t count them on one hand, and then Japan hiked up her skirt, stepped over the East China Sea and started ordering them around.
Japanese soldier: Hey, I hear you guys have opium.
Chinese peasant: What’s it to you?
Japanese soldier: Give it to me.
Chinese peasant: Make me.
Japanese soldier: Hey, I can’t shoot you if you don’t hold still!
So they chased the Chinese up through some forests and finally cornered a group of them in a ravine where they chopped off their heads. This is where Japan and China’s views of history differ.
Chinese Prime Minister: I can take you down to Nanking and show you the buried skulls.
Japanese Prime Minister: [fingers in ears] La-la-la-la.
Chinese PM: I can show you some of the crimes they committed.
Japanese PM:I’m pretty busy today visiting shrines of convicted war criminals. Look, here’s a history textbook in Japan. Do you see any Japanese soldiers chopping off people’s heads?
Chinese PM: What about that one? He’s–
Japanese PM:–cutting open a melon for his dying mother. The Japanese make good sons.
Chinese PM: I think you should talk about your horrible war atrocities in your school textbooks.
Japanese PM: I’m not going to and there’s nothing you can do about!
Chinese PM: Then I don’t think we should be friends anymore.
Japanese PM: [snaps textbook shut] No, I don’t think we should be friends anymore.
Early on in September I got quite a lot of flak for assigning students an essay about China and Japan’s convoluted relationship. I couldn’t really glean a lot of information from their prose, either. They mostly wrote that “things could be better” and “we all need to be nice”. And Crooked Teeth Sensei told me we don’t talk about such things in Japanese schools, so I’d best let the issue alone. Before I came here, when I was learning about Japan, I believed the Japanese had a habit of “omitting” certain “facts” about World War II that the rest of the world take for granted, but that their little Dementia moment had been cured. Surely children knew their country’s history. Then I taught in a Japanese classroom.
I like to think that Japan is just too close to these mistakes for comfort, that they have to cage it and poke ten-foot sticks at it to make sure it stays alive but isn’t terrorizing anyone because some of the generation that was a part of all the marching and slaying and raping is still alive enough that the Kidney Stealer has his eye on them.
Then, about a month ago, Japan got a new Prime Minister and either he’s getting pressured by the newly democrat-run Congress or he’s had enough of the Asian Brother’s bickering because he agreed Japanese and Chinese historians should work together on a study of wartime history. The results will be announced in 2008, most likely just in time for the Beijing Olympics, which will make it a pivotal international event. If Japan decides to keep its dirty little secrets China may throw a tantrum which could mean they’d refuse to allow their Olympians to play together. Seeing as it’s China’s slumber party, Japan may just not get invited.
The real losers of this will be the Japanese people, all Patriotic and riled for the event, lined up along Western Honshu, on the shores that look out over into China, trying to catch a glimpse of the world’s excitement.
