Response to:

Teresa Poole: Japanese film reopens old war wounds

The Independent supplement supplied with The Daily Yomuiri, Sunday, 1998

"China has been infuriated by a Japanese film which Paking says is "white-washing" aggression and singing the praises of Hideki Tojo, Japan’s wartime prime minister, who was executed for war crimes in 1948.

This begins a strong article on the movie Pride - the Fateful Moment it is focused on the reply from the Chinese. The China Daily reported that the movie "distorted historical facts," particularly portraying the charges made at the trial against the Japanese troops "as almost frame-ups based on hearsay and over-statement."

The article reports "Zhu Bangzhou foreign ministry spokesman, said the new film effectively whitewashed the history of Japanese aggression against China."

Zhu said " Such an act is bound to be strongly condemned by people who face up to history and who love peace, including the Japanese people."

Zhu said "The crimes committed by the Japanese troops are proved by a mass of iron-clad and irrefutable evidence, and a just verdict was reached by the international community a long time ago. Hideki Tojo was the chief criminal of that war of aggression "

Zhu’s statements the writer makes clear must be seen as a reflection of the background where a "thorough apology" has never been made for the "wartime atrocities" between is 1937 "invasion"[sic] and 1945. What a thorough apology would be and what has been offered are not topics an article this size can offer, but it notes the Japanese investment into China over the past 20 years, and that the "Chinese propaganda machine" put a lot of effort into last July’s 35th anniversary of the resumption of diplomatic ties/60th anniversary of the beginning of hostilities known to the writer as "the Japanese invasion of China." She also notes that China has in contrast downplayed its own Tiananmen Square incident/massacre.

In other words an article which as a bilateral article covers most of the bases, if briefly [ but which largely consists of quotes: which I felt no compunction to avoid re-quoting]. There is little attempt to make much of as case for the war crimes trial itself, other than giving the famous examples of war crimes. Let us not remember that this was a court of Nuremberg style, affixing blame in a war. A court of ours which began to recount the evils of a system of war, of unchecked militarism, of a barbarism we all would find unbearable to consider in depth even now.

P.S. Her interesting interpretations of the 1937 developments as an "invasions" suggest someone who didn’t do/didn’t really want to do Chinese history when she was in High School. Of course the forces that started these conflicts were already on Chinese soil, and had been there policing the 1900 agreement, and of course Japan’s agreements with Britain in 1902 and 1906 were based on areas of influence in China. On the other hand it was in effect and style exactly that: an invasion….

"that would defeat the purpose… to score by any means." Michael Jordan. NBA finals, after Game 1 June 1998
© TR 7th/6/98


© Teal Ray... (with acknowledgement to Steve Hartley, Uzbekistan and the camels for inspiration)...


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