Japan Times
READERS IN COUNCIL
March 22, 2000
In response to Chris Whitney’s March 15 letter, “Humility would go a long way,” I would like to make it clear that I have never said that Iris Chang’s book, “The Rape of Nanking,” is the “work of a rightwing loony.” If Whitney had been paying close attention to my March 1 letter, “West has yet to apologize,” he would note that the rightwing loonies to whom I referred were those whom Gregory Clark, in his February 7 article, “The Nanjing number game,” was venting his understandable wrath on.
Furthermore, I have never said that the West needs to apologize to Japan for African slavery. For that matter, I have never demanded that the West should apologize (which it probably never will anyway) for the past acts of butchery and enslavement it unleashed upon other nations and peoples. Rather, I have stated that Britain and the United States have not apologized for past imperial acts of aggression and atrocities, and that if Clark was in such a crusading mood for justice, he should vent his indignation on the mainstream elements of British and American society as well as on the lunatic fringe of Japan.
Whitney should be aware that I found it perplexing that Clark had become preoccupied with the lunatic-fringe elements of Japanese society. Clark goes to the extent of saying, “While Germany today apologizes, Japan prevaricates.” This is simply not true. There are many educated Japanese who are aware of past aggressions that Imperial Japan committed and are cognizant of the burdens of history that the Japanese people will have to bear. Japan has officially apologized for its past aggressive actions, as can be seen from the statements of apology made by recent prime ministers such as Hosokawa Morihiro, Murayama Tomichi, and Hashimoto Ryutaro. In 1998, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo issued a written apology for Japan’s 35-year colonization of Korea. Last September, a Tokyo district court issued a statement acknowledging the responsibility of Imperial Japan for perpetrating the Nanjing Massacre. Whitney should note that Clark did not bother to mention about any of these points at all in his article and gives, in my opinion, a totally lopsided view of Japanese attitudes toward its imperial past.
KO UNOKI
Fujisawa, Japan
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