By Theodore Shoebat
(Exclusive)
Imagine if 100 German politicians all declared that the Holocaust never happened. The protest would be universal. But this very holocaust denial is a reality in Japan, where 100 Japanese lawmakers collectively declared that the Japanese imperial empire never committed a holocaust of Chinese people in the horrific Nanking Massacre in 1937. Yet there is no uproar, no cry of “never again!” The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, denies the historical reality of the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of Asian women under the sadistic hands of Japanese troops during WW2, and the German Holocaust enthusiasts are for the most part silent about actual and current holocaust denial.
When Rabbi Robert Cooper asked, Toshio Mizobuchi, a Japanese veteran imperial soldier who took part in ruthless and sadistic human experiments on Chinese and Russian people, if he felt any regrets, Mizobuchi almost jumped out of his seat and screamed,
No… The logs [a reference to Chinese victims] were not considered to be human. (Peter Li, Japanese War Crimes, ch. 17, p. 297, ellipses mine)
This callousness and lack of repentance toward one of the worst holocausts ever perpetuated in human history, is alive and well in Japan. This absence of remorse indicates the aspiration of Japan to rise again to its former glory, thus foreshadowing the coming war with Japan.
The majority of voters in Crimea have cast their favor toward Russian rule, and while the US administration was agreeable for elections in Iraq, and openly accepted the democratic election of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it and numerous other super powers have rejected the decision of the Crimean people.
As the dispute over this collective decision continues on with all sorts of fiery argumentation, very few are focusing on Japan which, as our readers know, I have been intently focusing on. What is occurring in regards to Crimea, its resolution to join Russia and secede from the Ukraine, will have consequences connecting to Japan and China. This connection was partially mentioned by Bill O’Reilly just yesterday. When speaking on the after effects of Russian power ruling Crimea, O’Reilly stated what will happen between China and Japan:
China will likely seize a small island chain currently controlled by Japan.
The small island chain he is referring to are the Senkaku Islands, over which Japan and China have been disputing, and the tension is increasingly escalating to a concerning and significant point. The intensity of this dispute is so important and crucial, that Richard P. Cronin, Senior Associate and Director of the Southeast Asia program for the Henry L. Stimson Center, wrote of the dispute in connection with American interests as such:
The dangers to US interests posed by tensions between Japan and China that have substantive content are serious. For instance, rising tempers over the competing claims to the deep sea resources around what Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls Daioyutai, could lead to a future unwanted confrontation that could jeopardize both the US-Japan alliance and US relations with China.
The controversy over the islands is a result of China’s and Japan’s competition over resources in the East China Sea. Japan desires to extend its Exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which is sea zone specified by the UN over which a nation has the right to use natural resources. Japan desires to expand its EEZ closer towards Chinese sea territory to drill for resources, and at the same time use the islands as the basis for this industrial work. Cronin explains this point of the contention over the islands with some detail:
The islands dispute is important because Japan seeks to use its occupation of the larger of these rocks to as a basis for extending its EEZ further towards Chinese territory, which goes against China’s effort to claim the entire continental shelf off its shores, of which the islands are a part.
Both China and Japan are claiming the islands for themselves, but the US is siding with the latter of the two nations. This siding is, to a certain extent, due to an agreement between the US and Japan, called the Okinawan Reversion of 1972, in which the Americans and the Japanese agreed that the islands would go under the rule of Japan. Regardless of who takes control over the islands, China or Japan, the end result will be serious confrontation, with the US taking the side of Japan, and Russia siding with China. Japan knows that it can rely on America allying with it in the situation of a military encounter, as Cronin writes:
Depending on interpretations of the 1972 Reversion of Okinawa agreement, Japan could invoke the alliance and request US support in the event of a military conflict. Even without invoking what it sees as treaty obligations, Japan would expect US support. Either situation would present the United States with extremely difficult policy choices.
Just this month it was reported that Washington assured Japan that the US would “come to its defense in the event of a conflict arising in the region.”
With the value of fisheries and resources increasing in the East China Sea, it is quite unlikely that the dispute over the islands between China and Japan will pacify into peace. The hatred and animosity that the two nations have for one another, on account of atrocities committed by the Japanese and other violent encounters, is both zealous and far from being placated.
The Chinese will never forget the horrific massacres the Japanese committed in the 20th century, and Japanese politicians, like Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will never truly admit their nation’s crimes. With China never failing to remember history, and Japan boasting its glory days, there is no reason to expect peace between the nations, and the prospect of war is becoming more and more conspicuous under the horizon of humanity’s ways.
History is as scientific as cause and effect. With one nation, Japan, rewriting the history of its atrocities, it is a sign that it desires not to relinquish its evil ways of the past, but repeat them. The Ottoman Empire butchered millions of Christians, till this day Turkish politicians deny it, and this is only a sign that Turkey wishes to revive its murderers regime. Shinzo Abe has explicitly denied that Japan forced women to become sex slaves, the state of which has been called “comfort women,” rejecting the historical fact that they were coerced to have intercourse with imperial soldiers:
There was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested. That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there
Abe deems the Kono Statement, which was an official declaration on the part of the Japanese government repenting for having comfort women (although the genuineness of the apology is questionable when put against Japan’s actions), as dishonorable to the glory of Japan:
The Kono statement put dishonor on the back of Japan by indicating that the military stormed into houses, kidnapped women and turned them into comfort women
In 2007, 100 Japanese lawmakers affirmed that there was no massacre in the Chinese city of Nanking, in which 300,000 Chinese were horrifically butchered. One of the lawmakers, Tōru Toid, affirmed:
We are absolutely positive that there was no massacre in Nanking
This agreement between these 100 lawmakers, is the equivalent to 100 German lawmakers agreeing that that there was no Holocaust of Jews. Could you imagine the uproar if such were to occur? Such holocaust denial is a reality in Japan, and those who have cried out “never again!” in regards to the German Holocaust, have been quite silent in the Japanese denial of its genocide of millions of Asians. But Japan is exempted from moral objection in the West. Top Japanese politicians deny mass rape and murder, and the West is, for the most part, still acting as though they are a changed nation. And this is due to the US’ perception that Japan is its most trusted ally in the Far East.
Russia’s expansion over a willful Crimea has given the Japanese an opportunity to protest against Russia’s takeover of a body of islands, which the Japanese call the “northern territories,” during the end of WW2 in 1945. Russia is not willing to relinquish these islands back to Japan, although there is talk of prospects for Russian and Japan to better relations for the sake of trading the resources from Crimea. As Donald Kirk, a specialist on Far East politics writing for Forbes Magazine, states:
Russia to this day clings to the four southern Kuril islands just off the northernmost main Japanese island, Hokkaido, that Japan calls its “northern territories.” Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would undoubtedly like to improve relations with Moscow, but he’s no more likely to abandon his country’s historic claim than is Putin to hand over the islands.
Moreover, the AFP affirms that while there is talk of trade between Russia and Japan, the two countries will not have a peace treaty before of their territorial disputes:
Despite an important commercial relationship that is now much influenced by Japan’s need to buy fossil fuels and Russia’s desire to sell them, the two neighbours have failed to sign a peace treaty due to their territorial dispute
Abe “condemned” Russia for “violating the unity, sovereign and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” Abe continued on to say:
we are thinking about more (sanctions) against Russia
Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, made a statement in regards to Russia’s control over the islands that should alarm us:
Japan never overlooks an attempt to change the status quo through force.
On top of this worrisome statement, just today Japan, for unknown reasons, postponed the drafting of the Russian-Japanese agreement on the prevention of dangerous military activities. Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, stated:
We are surprised by this decision made by Japan, which until recently showed keen interest in the drafting of such a document. The Japanese military repeatedly contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for clarifications concerning different situations associated with the activities of the Russian Armed Forces in the region, and we always responded positively to such requests from our Japanese partners and provided exhaustive answers
Both Russia and China have expressed strong concerns over Japan’s attempt to liberate itself from restrictions on its military imposed by the US after WW2.
According to Jing-dong Yuan, Director of Research for East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and an Associate Professor of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a prominent Chinese analyst has listed the desires of Japan as such, summing the Japanese issues and goals that will spark conflict:
…its [Japan’s] desire to achieve greater independence of US control and to attain great power status, a growing emphasis on military power, fear of nuclear and missile threats in the region, as well as the rise of neighboring countries (such a China), and a revisionist approach to history. (1)
All of these goals and concerns are interconnected. The fanatic and dangerous reactionary ideas of Shinzo Abe and his ilk, which are promulgated through historic revisionism, cannot be accomplished without a powerful military; a powerful military with “great power status” is only possible with independence from the US; independence from the US can be obtained by Japan taking advantage of America’s fears of a rising China and North Korea, thus convincing the Americans to enable Japan to boost its military might in the name of defending itself against neighboring threatening countries.
Taking advantage of a worrisome situation, like North Korea testing nuclear weapons, is an old and typical trick of every aspiring tyranny. A disaster, or distressful situation, can be used as, in the words of Machiavelli, “an opportunity” to “introduce whatever form” one thinks fit. (2)
After North Korea detonated a nuclear device as a test in 2006, the US and Japan came up with a resolution “that could have been cited at some future point as authorizing the use of military force” against North Korea. Russia and China produced their own resolution which actually defeated and overrode the proposition of the US and Japan.
This conclusion reveals two things: (1) Russia, regardless of current prospects of significant trade with Japan, comprehends the potential threat of a militarily enabled Japan; (2) Japan is using the perceived threat of North Korea and China to convince the US to remove the restrictions placed on its military defenses. This conviction is already ongoing. As Hiroko Tabuchi, a New York Times reporter in Japan, writes:
Washington has generally been keen for Japan to take on a more active military presence in the region to counterbalance China’s growing might.
The Japanese are stubborn and relentless in this issue. In April, a panel of Japanese government experts are expected to propose to Shinzo Abe a reinterpretation of the Japanese constitution in regards to weapons, in order to allow Japan to use weapons for defense against North Korea. Just last month, in February, Abe used the scenario of North Korea attacking the United States and Japan coming to its defense and using weapons to prevent arms being transferred to North Korea, expressing his urgent desire for a more militarily independent Japan. After picking the hypothetical situation of if “North Korea attacked the United States”, Abe said:
When the international community imposes economic sanctions, we also have to discuss whether we should prevent weapons and ammunition from being transported to North Korea.
Japan understands that it has to display a pro-American stance, a facade that it is truly looking after the US as a balancer in Asia and a defender against China and North Korea. If Japan wants to receive American military support against China for the Senkaku islands, the Japanese have to assure the US that it will fight side by side with the Americans. A member of an advisory panel related to national security issues for the Abe administration, made this point clear:
The United States does not want to fight for such islets …Unless Japan shows that it is prepared to fight together with the United States when the time comes, the United States will say to Japan about defense of its outlying islands, “OK, sayonara.”
Nonetheless, America’s willingness to defend Japan against China should not be belittled in any way. When China established an air defense zone over in the Senkaku islands, “the United States sent two unarmed B-52 bombers through the airspace, after which China appeared to backpedal from its threats.”
Shinzo Abe has increased military spending, shifting Japan, militarily speaking, to its most powerful state since the end of WW2. Hiroko Tabuchi gives us these details:
“Mr. Abe has also increased military spending for the first time in a decade, and loosened self-imposed restrictions on exporting weapons. A new defense plan calls for the acquisition of drones and amphibious assault vehicles to prepare for the prospect of a prolonged rivalry with China.”
And of course this is taking place under the watch of the US, who is enabling and allowing Japan to do so for the sake of keeping China in check, just as the US is empowering Turkey by arming jihadists in Syria in order to keep Iran in check.
Japan should not be underestimated. Their naval power is formidable enough, that James Holmes of the U.S. Naval War College, conceded “that there is a reasonable chance that Japan could defeat China in a naval conflict today—even if fighting all by itself.” (3)
As America continues to follow its current path, you will see a rising Japan under the red sun, and from a friend it will turn to a foe. With this you will also witness a rise in Buddhist fanaticism, just as in Turkey we are seeing the revival of Islamic fundamentalism. There are definitely similarities between both religions, and the two of them will give fortitude to the violent spirits of the two peoples, the Japanese and the Turks.
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(1) Jing-dong Yuan, Chinese perspectives on the US-Japan alliance, in David Arase and Tsuneo Akaha, The US-Japan Alliance, part 2, ch. 4, p. 93, ellipses mine
(2)The Prince, ch. 6, trans. Wayne A. Rebhorn)
(3) Justin Logan, China, America, and the Pivot to Asia, No. 717, January 8, 2013