This is just a case of holding the son accountable for the sins of the father. Get on with life and develop as a human being. Those who are ignorant-by-choice will remain so, and a lot of the rest of us are tired of people dredging up the past in an effort to strengthen their current personal agenda or prejudices.

I have in fact read this textbook, both editions, and while it may gloss over atrocities, it doesn’t necessarily either ignore them or deny them. The big one, the Nanjing Massacre, is mentioned with the comment that historians are still debating the number of deaths (very true). While it has problems as a textbook, it is far better than the more mainstream stuff these people put out for general consumption that would never get government approval.

from CNN

Almost every country in the world teaches its children a version of history that does not focus on bad things those particular countries did.

Official Chinese textbooks do not mention the millions who died because of Mao’s policies or Tienanmen Square, nor do Russian textbooks mention the tens of thousands of rapes committed by Soviet troops during the capture of Germany at the end of World War II. Likewise, American history textbooks do not focus on the horrific civilian casualties caused by US bombs in WW2 and Vietnam, nor do they mention the US occupation forces’ cooperation in the setting up of “comfort women” brothels for US troops in Japan.

Japan’s history textbooks are far from perfect, but one can at least appreciate that the postwar Japanese education system has made the Japanese population strong supporters of pacifism, rather than teaching them to bear grudges against other nationalities over historical issues.

——-

In any case, I’ve found that your user id and e-mail match a user I banned last year for posting identical comments directing readers of several China-related posts on JapanProbe to your personal Nanking-obsessed rant blog, so I’ve re-banned you.

I do not deny that the Nanking Massacre or Japan’s other internationally-recognized wartime atrocities took place. As I believe Overthinker pointed out, JapanProbe does not have many articles about Japanese war crimes because every educated person already knows about those events, and there’s no need for me to repeat what has already been written in hundreds of books and on thousands of websites.

However, I am opposed to allowing ranters to shamelessly promote their personal websites, especially when the website in question is lacking in any meaningful content related to a disccussion taking place on this site.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/04/japan.textbook/index.html

Sadly, I think you maybe right about China’s current nationalism becoming dangerous to peace in the region.

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan both raised extreme nationalism before entering the big war.
China(and Korea too?)’s current situation is very similar to them.

Often times I hear about Japan stealing this and stealing that from China, but for the most part Japan and Korea have far similarities than Japan and China. To be honest this has little to do with discussion is more an attempt to blame Japan for some other slight to Chinese national pride.

As for tarnishing the national pride of China, much of the blame for that lies with Emperess Dowager Cixi and her inability to cope with the times. Sure China started to modernize and produce its own armaments, but in the end her reluctance to follow the advice of some foreward looking nobles led to China’s downfall. Later on, Japan was taking part in the rage at the time, Imperialism, and found itself committing terrible crimes in China that rivaled those of the Nazis. This is all the truth. Its not as simple as saying Japan tarnished China’s reputation.

China’s status as a great naton was brought down by the very thing that made it a great nation, as well as a unified one to begin with; over-whelming power centralized in the hands of an Emperess. Ironically, it was the same sort of power, or rather the unquestioned respect of authority, that lead Japan down the road to war. The destruction of China by Japan was the rock bottom of a downward trajectory that began well before Second Sino-Japanese war. Many are to blame. The Japanese people of today are not among those.

As far as your victor/defeatee dichtomy is concerned, I’m not so convinced that your math is correct. The Japanese people at large had been subjected to many years of austere living during the war. They certainly were not the beneficiaries of immediate post-war aid from the US either. Even pre-80′s Chinese high school textbooks taught that like the average Chinese person during the Second Sino-Japanese, Japanese people were also victims of their own government’s aggressive actions. That speaks volumes of the PRC’s stance towards Japan during that era.

No one with a shred of credibility should deny that Japan caused great suffering to the Chinese people, but to say that Japan has been rewarded for their behavior during the war is silly. What Japan as a nation benefitted from was US protection and rebuilding plan that was similar to the Marshall Plan in Europe. Both of these plans were designed to turn their respective beneficiaries into bullwarks against the spread of Communism.

I understand where you are coming from, but in my opinion if I was Chinese I would be far more angry at Mao for starting the Cultural Revolution and bringing to life the war on the ‘Four Olds’ that can more account for Chinese being dispersed out into the war, for the destruction of present Chinese people’s appreciation of their own cultural past and history than Japan.

Overall, China’s story has been very sad. Being attack both from the outside and then from the inside has to be trying for a people. The fact is that China’s people have suffered more than just one defeat in the past century.

This book is arguably one of the very few balanced looks at the subject of the Nanjing Massacre.

Daiqing Yang has a couple other articles out in publications dealing with the subject of Anti-Japanese sentiment as well.

The way my Chinese friends and acquaintances have explained it to me, it goes a little something like this:

Much of Japan’s traditional culture was imported from the Middle Kingdom in the past, including things that at first glance seem very natively Japanese, including kimonos, karate, origami, cherry-blossom viewing and whatnot. (I was extremely skeptical about this at first, but research seems to corroborate their claims.)

Then, they feel that Japan has irrevocably tarnished China’s pride by not only invading a large part of it, but also by committing such atrocities as the Nanking Massacre, the workings of Unit 731 and the whole comfort women debacle.

And when Japan was finally defeated, when they thought justice was finally going to be delivered, Japan got off scot-free and even received American aid in rebuilding their nation and their economy whereas China had to fend for itself following an invasion and a civil war.

Fast-forward fifty years and it seems like the roles of victor and defeatee have been completely reversed: Japan is praised worldwide as being an exotic and prosperous nation with a unique culture and China is scorned upon by all for being dirty commies (though the trend seems to have slowly abated nowadays, being increasingly replaced by growing dread of its rising power and influence).

From what I’ve gathered, it looks like the Chinese (at least those living and educated in the West; I haven’t had many chances to speak with mainland Chinese about such touchy topics) are resentful that the status of their civilization in the minds of people worldwide has been “usurped” by Japan, as well as the fact that the latter seems to enjoy playing this to its advantage.

Apparently, while some Chinese still vie for retribution, most know that it’s unrealistic to hold today’s Japanese accountable for past events, but still must carry the burden of having their national pride shat on during the better part of the past two centuries. It’s very hard to hate the innocent.

The contemporary controversies of Yasukuni and the textbooks are supposedly merely outlets for those who must express their discontent and most Chinese supposedly don’t much care what kind of education the Japanese are getting.

The silent majority/vocal minority rule applies no matter where you live, I guess.

I’ve seen some pretty angry comments here directed at the Chinese in general. To those concerned, I certainly hope you aren’t stupid enough to believe that all Arabs are terrorists.

Anyways, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting the full story here, so if anyone can fill me in on the rest, it’d be much appreciated. The Japanese people I’ve spoken to don’t seem to know that much about the Pacific side of things during WWII and we end up talking about Japanese concentration camps in America and whatnot. =/

Long comment, I know. Thanks for your time.

I too recommend you read “China” by Susan L. Shirk.

http://www.amazon.com/China-Superpower-Internal-Politics-Peaceful/dp/0195306090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197108420&sr=1-1

Give me a break, have you actually compared Chinese and Japanese textbooks?

True history? Who are doing the most sophisticated studies about war crimes during WW2 in Asia?

Chinese, Koreans or the Japanese (US historians base their arguments in many cases on studies of Japanese historian)?

Sorry, Shari but I don’t think that I am the one here who has to read more books to understand the “true” history.

By the way, there are countless apologies by Japanese politician. Every prime minister does this when he meets Chinese or Korean top leaders.

The Japanese in many cases react to their Asian neighbors as if there were no meaningful consequence to their stance regarding their actions against them in WW II. Incidents like this show that they can be put in a position where it does matter and they can’t arrogantly assume that economic interests will over-ride long-held bitterness over their actions. Up to now, that has been pretty much the case. With the Olympics looming, maybe Japan will be compelled to reconsider their attitude as complete victims of WW II (and not aggressors) and as the top of the heap among Asian countries.

Part of me feels it’s pathetic that the politicians in Japan put the athletes in this position because they must continue to pander to the rightists and extremists. If they’d print true history in textbooks and stop visiting Yasukuni shrine, this would clear up.

And this is the country where Confucianism and Daoism came from. All those years of great philosophy and education, wasted…

The fact is that by fanning flames of anti-Japanese sentiment they are only making their nation look like animals.

Justified my ass. Grow up, China and get over yourselves.

Any professor who would take marks off for disagreement (expressed civilly) probably deserves a disciplinary hearing. Your college presumable doesn’t have the room or budget to hire a Japanese specialist, which is not uncommon. However he should stick to the subject he is supposed to teach.

I remember Chinese students in Tokyo laughing about the Koreans, saying “Icredible childish! They still bitch about something that happened even before you were born!”

That was in the early 90ies.

Several years later,after Jiang Zemin came to power that changed all.