対イラク武力行使

「あ然とさせる発言」麻生外相を米紙が痛烈批判

　 【ニューヨーク＝大塚隆一】１３日付の米紙ニューヨーク・タイムズは、靖国神社参拝や植民地統治をめぐる麻生外相の発言を痛烈に批判する社説を掲載した。

　 問題にしたのは、天皇陛下の靖国参拝が望ましいとした発言や台湾の教育水準の高さを日本の植民地政策と結びつけた発言。同紙は、アジアの人々の怒りをあおる「あ然とさせる発言」で、「外交感覚も歴史感覚もおかしい」と評した。

　 同紙は、事実関係について議論がある問題では中国、韓国側の主張に沿った記述が目立ち、この日の社説でも従軍慰安婦と南京事件について、それぞれ「韓国の若い女性の大量拉致と性的奴隷化」「中国の民間人数十万人の嗜虐（しぎゃく）的な大量殺りく」と断じた。

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　 麻生外相は１４日の閣議後の記者会見で、「（ニューヨーク・タイムズの社説を）読んでいないから、何とも言えない。批判は自由ですから」と語った。
（読売新聞） - 2月14日13時58分更新

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20060214-00000503-yom-int


たまにはこの路線のトピずれもよいだろう。問題の社説の原文を入手した。Timesは従軍慰安婦、南京大虐殺を全て歴史上の「事実」として認識しているらしい。海外紙が歴史上未だ事実として確認されていない事柄をもとに他国の外相を批判するとは珍しい。しかし実は最近Timesは日本人記者が担当していることが多いのでこの社説も、元の記事をこの日本人記者が書いた可能性はある。


Japan's Offensive Foreign Minister

Published: February 13, 2006

People everywhere wish they could be proud of every bit of their countries' histories. But honest people understand that's impossible, and wise people appreciate the positive value of acknowledging and learning from painful truths about past misdeeds. Then there is Japan's new foreign minister, Taro Aso, who has been neither honest nor wise in the inflammatory statements he has been making about Japan's disastrous era of militarism, colonialism and war crimes that culminated in the Second World War.

Besides offending neighboring countries that Japan needs as allies and trading partners, he is disserving the people he has been pandering to. World War II ended before most of today's Japanese were born. Yet public discourse in Japan and modern history lessons in its schools have never properly come to terms with the country's responsibility for such terrible events as the mass kidnapping and sexual enslavement of Korean young women, the biological warfare experiments carried out on Chinese cities and helpless prisoners of war, and the sadistic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in the city of Nanjing.

That is why so many Asians have been angered by a string of appalling remarks Mr. Aso has made since being named foreign minister last fall. Two of the most recent were his suggestion that Japan's emperor ought to visit the militaristic Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Japanese war criminals are among those honored, and his claim that Taiwan owes its high educational standards to enlightened Japanese policies during the 50-year occupation that began when Tokyo grabbed the island as war booty from China in 1895. Mr. Aso's later lame efforts to clarify his words left their effect unchanged.

Mr. Aso has also been going out of his way to inflame Japan's already difficult relations with Beijing by characterizing China's long-term military buildup as a "considerable threat" to Japan. China has no recent record of threatening Japan. As the rest of the world knows, it was the other way around. Mr. Aso's sense of diplomacy is as odd as his sense of history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/opinion/13mon3.html?_r=1&oref=login


日本担当記者NORIMITSU ONISHIによる最近の記事

In Japan, Justice Is Not Only Blind, It Holds a Stopwatch
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/internation