Japan Rewrites Its Manchuria Story
The New York Times
September 19, 2004
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
In Japan, the romanticizing of the Manchurian occupation reflects an ascendant conservative view in academia, the media and publishing that the country must get over its self-loathing about its imperial past and hold its head high. For his part, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi regularly pays his respects at Tokyo’s most controversial landmark, Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto temple dedicated to the war dead, including some notorious war criminals.
Japan’s use of a mythical pan-Asian struggle against colonial whites to justify it’s own (usually more brutal) racism reminds me of how many black leaders use the pan-African myth to justify any wrongs that “blacks” commit. Thank God they don”t control a powerful nation state.