Cenotaphs, shrines, and an obituary of Japan democracy

History will remember the first time a POTUS and a Japanese PM stood together in Hiroshima more than their empty words.

Hiroshima mon amour

As expected, Shinzo Abe delivered one of his trademark, crocodile-tearful, "History is harsh" speeches*, sparing us his usual fake excuses, because this time, he was not required to provide any. Today, Barack Obama chimed in by using similar smoke screens. And of course, without apologizing.

Yes, 'we have a shared responsibility to look directly in the eye of history', but don't count on us for saying that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong, or that Imperial Japan committed war crimes that also need to be remembered.

The choice of a G7 host city is a fantastic opportunity to push a political agenda, and Hiroshima was a finalist for Shinzo Abe, who wants everybody to remember Japan as a pure victim, and to forget that it committed atrocities under the fascist regime he has, along with fellow members of Nippon Kaigi, pledged to restore ("Imperial Japan v. Japan"). Sorry, Mr Abe, but "No, you can't honor A-Bomb victims in Hiroshima AND War Criminals in Yasukuni".

In his wildest dreams, this incurable provocateur would have selected Yasukuni, but the international community would have condemned him vehemently. He settled for another controversial Shinto shrine he loves to visit as frequently as possible: Ise Grand Shrine doesn't honor war criminals, but it is also led by a eminent member of Nippon Kaigi. And a Japanese government is supposed to respect the separation of State and religion...

Don't forget that as far as extremist lobbies go, Abe follows Shinto Seiji Renmei as well as Nippon Kaigi, and that as a fundamentalist, he wants the restoration of State Shinto, and of the Emperor as the supreme religious and political leader. 

A few Japanese voices raised objections regarding the choice of Ise, but who's listening to the dwindling resistance of the local democracy?

blogules 2016
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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* for last year's two masterpieces, see ""History is harsh" and other sick jokes" and "Decoding the Abe Statement: "why apologize for crimes Japan never committed?""

Red blogule to US - Japan erasers

As they celebrated the 60th anniversary of liberation from Japan and listened to Koizumi repeat the same empty excuses for an excuse as his predecessor ten years ago, Koreans learned why they couldn't get the proof of major wartime atrocities committed by Japan.
They knew the proof was in the US, they now know why it landed there in the first place : the US purchased all data related to Japan's sick medical experiments on civilians of occupied countries. Actually, they bribed the perpetrators to get the exclusivity and even granted them immunity for this favor. This completed the scandalous Hiroshima-Nagasaki cleanup : you don't sue us for using weapons of mass destruction against your civilians, we don't sue you for committing atrocities on civilians from other countries. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty put an ultimate lid on this sick stew between one of History's most fascist regimes and the World's most cynical country.
Sixty years have passed and Japan is just realizing it may have to postpone its claim for a permanent seat at the UN council. Ten years from now, all witnesses and survivors to their atrocities will have vanished. Japan's radical old guard too, but they've made sure younger generations got overwhelmed by their forgetful propaganda and textbooks.
The US ? Don't worry about them : they know propaganda by heart. Hell : it didn't take them sixty years to have most people believe they defeated the Nazis singlehandedly (if it weren't for another master in propaganda - Vladimir Putin - who would remember the lighter side of Uncle Joe ?). And if you ask US citizens about the use of WMDs or torture against civilians, they point the finger to some far away Evil.

Red blogule to Hiroshima-Baghdad parallels

How will the Bush Administration spin on the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima & Nagazaki bombings ? Over 150,000 civilians got killed in Hiroshima within days. "Only" 25,000 died within two years in Iraq, and mostly by the hands of opponents to the US army invasion.
Yet. A sick parallel could be done - the "overall, lives were saved" kind of parallels, the "democracy has a price" kind of parallels.
Just like with Hiroshima, the people of Baghdad well-foundedly feels victimized : the people is paying for the leaders. Unlike the Japanese people, the German people did admit his guilt for the country's extremist past and yet, the people of Dresden feels just the same.
The fact is the bombers never truly said they were sorry. They never asked for forgiveness.
It's high time for the Allies to do it, to admit their share of the crimes committed during WWII.
Should the United States do it for Hiroshima's 60th anniversary, they necessarily would have to do it for their Iraq aggression. Can the Stubborn Again Christian leading this country truly make an act of contrition ? I doubt it.
Too bad : the US proved they could liberate people, but they also proved they didn't care for the long term consequences of the liberation of unhuman forces : dropping atomic bombs on civilians then, gassing fighters with agent orange in the 70s, torturing detainees today.
"What do I do when lightning strikes me ?" Bush answered wrongly. Among other things, he forgot those were the lyrics of a song called "Sorry seems to be the hardest word".