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いつもこちらの人たちには助けていただいてばかりで、恐縮する一方だったのですけど、 珍しく私も情報提供ができそうです(^^ゞ 「赤旗」で紹介された記事の原文です。
7月31日付英タイムズ紙「日本の戦争犯罪についての暗黒博物館」 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2-524-1715012,00.html
英紙フィナンシャル・タイムズ7月19日付「アジアの騒ぎ――まさに地域経済が統合されるときに、ナショナリズムが高まる」 http://news.ft.com/cms/s/fb1604d0-f7f0-11d9-9f64-00000e2511c8.html
USAトゥデー紙6月23日付「東京の神社がアジア中の怒りの的」 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-06-22-tokyo-shrine_x.htm
ニューヨークタイムスの記事は有料でしか見られなくなっているので、長くなるけどコピペします。 ニューヨークタイムス6月22日付「日本のために無罪判決を求める戦争神社」
New
York Times June 22, 2005 A War Shrine, for a Japan Seeking a Not
Guilty Verdict By NORIMITSU ONISHI TOKYO - One recent rainy
morning, a couple of dozen vehicles belonging to the Patriotic Youth
League and other Japanese right-wing groups gathered inside the
grounds of Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto memorial to Japan's war dead.
"Revere the Emperor," read a slogan on one truck. Others alluded to
enemies unnamed: "Love and Protect our Motherland" and "Kill one,
one at a time." At 12:30 p.m., the caravan spilled out onto
Tokyo's streets, destination unclear. But the targets are usually
the same: the Chinese Embassy, the liberal media, anybody daring to
challenge the argument that Japan's wars were legitimate and that
their leaders were not criminals. Yasukuni Shrine is the symbolic
center of Japan's efforts to revise its militaristic past, and lies
at the heart of worsening relations between Japan and its neighbors.
Not only right-wing extremists, but now also mainstream politicians
and the news media are more openly arguing that the 14 war criminals
enshrined in Yasukuni were not guilty - and, because they were not,
Japan's wars could not have been that bad. In a face-to-face
meeting on June 20, for example, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
steadfastly resisted the entreaties of President Roh Moo Hyun of
South Korea that he stop visiting the shrine and build an alternate
one that would be more acceptable to China and the Koreas, all of
them victims of a brutal Japanese colonization. While the
Japanese have received the bulk of the criticism for the shrine,
they are not, however, the only ones to have manipulated the meaning
of Yasukuni and its war criminals. So have the Chinese, the
Taiwanese and the Americans, each according to their own interests.
During America's six-year occupation of Japan after World War
II, Americans spent the first half democratizing the country and
prosecuting war criminals. In the second half, with Communists
controlling China and the cold war bearing down, Washington reversed
course: wartime leaders were rehabilitated overnight in an effort to
make Japan strong. Some Class A war criminal suspects, after barely
escaping the noose, became postwar Japan's political and business
leaders; one, Nobusuke Kishi, even became prime minister. The
mixed messages from America - as well as the highly politicized
Tokyo Trials that tried the Japanese leaders but avoided mentioning
Emperor Hirohito, whom America had decided not to depose - laid the
seeds of confusion here. They also left open the door for the
Japanese to argue that the overall verdict - that Japan had led a
war of aggression - was also false. "It was a war of
self-defense," Yuko Tojo, the granddaughter of the wartime prime
minister who was executed as a Class A war criminal and is enshrined
in Yasukuni, said in a telephone interview. "China claims it is
unforgivable that the head of state visits Yasukuni, where those
responsible for causing trouble by conducting a war of aggression
are enshrined. But if we agree with China, it would mean that we
recognize it as a war of aggression. So we can't" Visits to
Yasukuni have long been regarded as coded endorsements of
conservative nationalist views like hers. Indeed, when Mr. Koizumi
said two weeks ago that he actually recognized the validity of the
Tokyo Trials, the nation's largest-selling newspaper, Yomiuri
Shimbun, which does not, was flabbergasted. "With what view of
history has Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine
in the past?" it asked in an editorial, adding that if Mr. Koizumi
accepted the trials' rulings, "then Koizumi should not visit
Yasukuni Shrine." Yasukuni Shrine was built in 1869, as part of
Japan's drive to create a nationalistic state religion centered
around a divine emperor. By the end of World War II, almost 2.5
million soldiers would be enshrined here for giving their lives for
the emperor. Except for two civil conflicts, the other nine wars in
which the soldiers died all revolved around Japan's advance into
China, the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan and, ultimately, its attack
on the United States. Yasukuni's war museum argues that America
forced Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor as a way of shaking off the
Depression, saying that "the U.S. economy made a complete recovery
once the Americans entered the war." A video shown at the museum,
called "We Won't Forget," describes America's postwar occupation of
Japan as "pitiless." But the museum makes no mention of Japan's own
occupation of Asia. As for the Rape of Nanjing, the museum blames
the Chinese commander and adds that, thanks to Japanese actions,
"inside the city, residents were once again able to live their lives
in peace." In a written statement, Yasukuni officials said, "The
exhibition is not based on any special historical viewpoint, but is
based on clear evidence." Yasukuni's view of history is one that
few Asians or Americans would accept. But like Japanese politicians,
foreigners also appear to recognize the shrine's political value.
Shu Ching Chiang, a Taiwanese lawmaker who is pro-independence
and anti-China, visited Yasukuni in April. Taiwanese soldiers who
served Japan's Imperial Army during the Japanese occupation of
Taiwan are also enshrined in Yasukuni. "Every country has the
right to pay respect to its war dead in the way it chooses," Mr. Shu
said in a recent interview in Taipei. Like many Japanese, he
compared Yasukuni to Arlington National Cemetery. Arthur Ding,
an international relations expert at National Chengchi University in
Taipei, decoded Mr. Shu's trip: "He delivered a message to Japan
that his party wants a close relationship with Japan and to China
that they are for Taiwanese independence." While the Chinese and
the South Koreans have legitimate reasons to oppose the shrine, they
have been accused of using it to shore up domestic support by
appealing to nationalist sentiments. Noticeable in its silence
on Yasukuni and the verdict on the Class A war criminals is the
United States. As the nation that defeated Japan, occupied it and
still has 50,000 troops deployed here, America is the one country
that Japan may still listen to on these subjects. America is hardly
a disinterested observer, after all, because Yasukuni deifies
Japanese who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. American
officials raise an eyebrow at Japanese comparisons of Yasukuni to
Arlington National Cemetery. But they tend to defend, albeit
somewhat uncomfortably, Japanese visits to Yasukuni, or maintain a
studied silence. The cold war may be over, but China's rise alarms
America just as much as did the rise of Communism in the 1940's. So
better a strong, remilitarized Japan, no matter what the Japanese
say about Yasukuni or war
criminals.
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