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Apr. 25th, 2005

  • 10:49 PM
naanima: (id - lady_silver)
The whole China-Japan situation makes me angry and very close to hating people. It isn't pretty, it isn't nice, and it is too damn complicated for people to throw mud in any direction. But I am Chinese, and I'd be lying if I said the whole situation isn't getting to me. It is all nice to say that you can't live in the past, that you have to move on, but you can't do either when the past is not even acknowledged. So, stop making damn judgements about China when you don't have relatives who still remember the Japanese occupation. Don't make damn snipe comments about the past actions of the Chinese government when, at the present time, it is the Chinese people who are angry. And for damn sake don't compare the China-Japan situation to Germany and its treatment of the Holocaust. Japan have not acknowledged the actions of its own army during WW2. Several generations of Japanese does not know their own history because their government decided to delete a section of their history. There are people in China, in Korea, in Thailand, hell, in most of the South East Asian countries who does remember. So, please, don't make a damn judgement when all you know is that 'Japan did some bad things to other Asians during WW2.'

I'm so sick of the people who don't know anything, who have no personal investment, being all high and mighty. Forgiveness does not come from you. So, back off.

Comments

dreamlessness: (Default)
[personal profile] dreamlessness wrote:
Apr. 26th, 2005 04:37 am (UTC)
like [livejournal.com profile] issen4, i can't bring myself to even say anything japanese in my older relatives' presence... some of them can still vividly remember their experiences during the War. they've passed on their stories to me and i intend to make sure they are never forgotten. but the sino-japanese ordeal distresses me greatly, especially so soon after i read about nanking. i feel like the chinese have a right to their anger, and that the boycotting of japanese goods and the protests outside the embassy are understandable, though i hardly feel that the attacks on innocent japanese citizens is justified. there was news of a filipino family killed off in beijing because they were mistaken for japanese citizens. only two members of the family were able to come home alive.

i was also angered to hear one of our representatives claim that we as a people bear no ill-will toward the war criminals of japan. the only ones who still do, the official said, are the comfort women. he said that so dismissively, like comfort women were no longer part of our current population. we are a forgiving people, he said... and i'm almost guilty for feeling sad about that, because it's true. even my grandmother remembers that there were some japanese soldiers who were kind to her and her children, therefore she couldn't keep any bitterness in her heart.

PS: i've been out of a the loop for a few days. the last i heard was that koizumi has apologized for the to-do regarding the textbooks. are there any significant developments?
[identity profile] code-renegade.livejournal.com wrote:
Apr. 26th, 2005 04:49 am (UTC)
From what I see of the papers, everything has gone to hell. The Japanese Foreign Minister has turned around to attack the Chinese textbooks for perpetuating the mindset among the Chinese only one perspective - that of the sufferings of the Chinese. Whatever Koizumi has said is going to be spit in the wind if the Foreign Minister doesn't retract what he says soon.

Personally, I find that remark to be very wrong. In the first place, China was invaded by Japan. Because of the war, they had little outside communication and all that and had to deal with the brunt of the Japanese forces during the early days of the Pacific War. It's unrealistic to expect the people to think and consider - "oh, the Japanese civilians must be suffering too!" when you see your own daughters being taken away and your sons drafted into a futile battle. Furthermore, Japanese civilian sufferings never reached any significiant proportion to the amount of killings they had done of civilians overseas until the 2 A-bombs were dropped.

To be fair to the Japanese, though, they are the only nation to have experienced the A-bomb first hand, so perhaps in that way it'd not be fair to neglect saying that their civilians had seen hardship. But the whole glossing over of the wartime atrocities? I'm not going to stand for that even though my grandparents were quite safe and most of my PRC relatives I just don't really know them really.

But just... urgh. Why on earth did that stupid guy have to turn around and accuse Chinese textbooks of being biased? It's among the stupidest diplomatic moves since the new century, I swear.
[identity profile] naanima.livejournal.com wrote:
Apr. 28th, 2005 01:12 am (UTC)
Ditto. I'm very weary about anything I say in the presence of my older relatives. About the boycotting of Japanese products; I think this have gone too far, in many ways it seem to have gone beyond simple anger, it has began to feel more and more like a popularity contest. And complete agreement on the attack of Japanese citizens. I think it is wrong, and downright sick. You do not go after innocent citizens who knows nothing about the war. In addition, riots againsts Japanese stores in China make me cringe and very shamed. The news about the filipino family make me sad, tired and more than a bit angry. I'm sorry seem so little in this type of situations.

On the point of your grandmother, I belief everything is personal, the fact that your grandmother experienced something favourable and that make her perceive the Japanese as kind than I see no wrong with it. Hell, this is more of a points for the soldier in question. It isn't anyone that can keep rational thoughts in situations like the war.

Koizumi have apologised (a first on the matter of WW2), but as [livejournal.com profile] code_renegade said, the Japanese Foreign Minister have screwed up any chance of, 'let's do a hand shake and move on,' by attacking Chinese text books being biased, that is, talking about the sufferings of the Chinese. You can guess how that went down.

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[personal profile] naanima
witty, somehow

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