Japan should take a correct attitude toward its history and
strengthen relations with China, Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman and
editor-in-chief of Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun, said in
a recent interview with Xinhua.
Watanabe, 81, said he was happy that the Chinese version of a
history book on the Sino-Japanese War seven decades ago was
published by Xinhua Publishing House in China, adding that it is
important for Japan to approach its war history in a serious
manner.
So far, a total of 95,000 copies of the book, From Marco
Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who was responsible, have been
sold in Japan, he said.
"On issues such as war responsibilities and the Yasukuni Shrine,
Japan's main media have already reached an important consensus,"
Watanabe said.
The book, whose Chinese language version contains 350,000
characters, was written by journalists of the War Responsibility
Reexamination Committee set up by the Yomiuri Shimbun
after 14 months of research and interviews starting in 2005.
Watanabe said the book also includes more than 100 photos taken
by Yomiuri Shimbun photographers during the war, with most
of them first published in China. They are of instructive
significance in terms of telling the Japanese people the true
nature of the war, as most of them have no wartime experience.
As for the issue of the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5
million Japanese war dead including 14 class-A war criminals,
Watanabe said Japanese leaders' frequent visits to the shrine are
"an absolutely intolerable matter."
"From now on, whoever takes up the post of prime minister should
make a promise not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine," he added.
Watanabe said most war-related exhibitions and items exhibited
in the Yasukuni Shrine's War Memorial Museum, or Yushukan, are
designed to distort the nature of Japan's war of aggression, and
are meant to make people believe that it was a war for survival and
self-defense.
"Yushukan is a poisonous place that should be abolished," he
said.
The China-Japan relations were at the lowest point over the past
years because of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated
visits to Yasukuni Shrine.
Watanabe said a worsening relationship between Japan and China
is harmful not only to both countries, but also to Asia as a
whole.
"It is very dangerous for the Japanese people to lose their
moral judgement," he said. "The Japanese should be allowed to know
how the war broke out and what crimes the war criminals committed,"
Watanabe said.
Many Japanese, including quite a few politicians, are not clear
about the aggressiveness and atrocities of the war, Watanabe
said.
Watanabe, who was forced to become "one of the Imperial Japanese
Army's last group of privates," said he knows the brutality of the
army.
"In order to let them (the Japanese people) know the extreme
atrocities of the war, it is of great significance to publish this
book," he said.
Japan should also "investigate, determine" and publish some
books on the miserable sufferings of people in some Asian
countries, including China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and
India, during the war, Watanabe said.
On the relations between Japan and China, he said the two
neighbors should strengthen ties in economy and security.
"Therefore, books such as From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl
Harbor: Who was responsible should be published continuously,"
he said, explaining that it is of great importance in liquidating
the war history.
The book "can be viewed as the first step Yomiuri
Shimbun has taken to pinpoint Japan's war responsibilities,"
said Bu Ping, director of the Institute of Modern Chinese History
of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a recent forum on the
book's publication.
Bu said "it must have taken a lot of courage for Yomiuri
Shimbun to start the project that transcended narrow-minded
nationalism at a time when neo-nationalism in Japan is rising and
its politics is sliding to the right."
Meanwhile, some Chinese scholars said the research team has not
delved deep enough and their findings are limited and at times
erroneous.
For instance, the book largely lays the war responsibilities on
some individuals, which is neither integrated nor scientific, and
the Chinese cannot agree with the book's conclusion on the number
of Chinese civilians and soldiers killed in the Nanjing
Massacre.
This year is the 70th anniversary of the start of the War of Resistance Against Japan and the Nanjing
Massacre.
According to China's official records, some 35 million Chinese
died in the eight-year war, including 31.2 million civilians.
China has long complained that the Japanese government has
failed to properly recognize its responsibility for the war and to
make a formal apology.
Also, some reports said the book did not mention the notoriously
sexual exploitation of "comfort women" by the Japanese military
during World War II.
Watanabe, editor-in-chief of Yomiuri Shimbun, said he
had noted Chinese readers' criticism that the book is scant in
information when it comes to documenting Japan's brutal war crimes
in foreign countries.
An estimated 200,000 women were forced to serve as sex slaves,
known as comfort women, for the Japanese troops during the war, and
most of them came from countries that suffered Japanese aggression
at that time.
However, many Japanese politicians have constantly denied the
crime which has been widely criticized by Asian countries.
On Monday, in a move viewed as a public censure of Japan, the US
House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill demanding
Japan's apology over the issue of "comfort women."
The resolution, which was passed by the full House without
objection, urged the Japanese government to formally acknowledge
and accept responsibility for the issue.
(Xinhua News Agency August 6, 2007)
