日中関係

この論説、誰が書いたか知らないけど、かなりいい加減ですな。アメリカって国は、東京大空襲や原爆で、無実の日本人の一般市民を大量殺戮していることを棚に上げて、内政干渉を行う中国や韓国の肩を持つような論を展開する輩が大勢いる。日本を批判するならば、アメリカも、あの戦争で数々の人道上の大罪を犯したことを素直に認め、日本に謝罪すべき。結局、戦争には人殺しはつきもの。敗戦国だけが戦争中の殺人に対する責任を半永久的に追及され続ける一方で、戦勝国が犯した数々の殺人行為だけが免除されるはずはない。

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/opinion/18tue3.html

Pointless Provocation in Tokyo
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Published: October 18, 2005
Fresh from an election that showcased him as a modernizing reformer, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan has now made a point of publicly embracing the worst traditions of Japanese militarism. Yesterday he made a nationally televised visit to a memorial in central Tokyo called the Yasukuni Shrine. But Yasukuni is not merely a memorial to Japan's 2.5 million war dead. The shrine and its accompanying museum promote an unapologetic view of Japan's atrocity-scarred rampages through Korea, much of China and Southeast Asia during the first few decades of the 20th century. Among those memorialized and worshiped as deities in an annual festival beginning this week are 14 Class A war criminals who were tried, convicted and executed.

The shrine visit is a calculated affront to the descendants of those victimized by Japanese war crimes, as the leaders of China, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore quickly made clear. Mr. Koizumi clearly knew what he was doing. He has now visited the shrine in each of the last four years, brushing aside repeated protests by Asian diplomats and, this time, an adverse judgment from a Japanese court.

No one realistically worries about today's Japan re-embarking on the road of imperial conquest. But Japan, Asia's richest, most economically powerful and technologically advanced nation, is shedding some of the military and foreign policy restraints it has observed for the past 60 years.

This is exactly the wrong time to be stirring up nightmare memories among the neighbors. Such provocations seem particularly gratuitous in an era that has seen an economically booming China become Japan's most critical economic partner and its biggest geopolitical challenge.

Mr. Koizumi's shrine visits draw praise from the right-wing nationalists who form a significant component of his Liberal Democratic Party. Instead of appeasing this group, Mr. Koizumi needs to face them down, just as he successfully faced down the party reactionaries who opposed his postal privatization plan. It is time for Japan to face up to its history in the 20th century so that it can move honorably into the 21st.