It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with “restorative justice”. Those issues were settled long ago–treaties signed, reparations paid.

Just because someone who wasn’t born then comes along 60 years later and decides to meddle and right all the wrongs in the world to feed their vanity and get 15 minutes on stage as the Grand Peacock of Universal Morality doesn’t change that.

I have about 10 other things to do right now–including a translation with a deadline–so you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel like getting into some long discussion in the comments section of a website, about an issue I’ve never written about, with someone who insists that everyone talk about what he wants to talk about on his own terms.

My point was that Will et. al. prefer to represent the problems at Yasukuni as politically inexpedient rather than as issues of restorative justice. They do not want to recognize that there are still individuals whose lives have been irrevocably damaged by Japanese actions and that these people make political demands. As a consequence, they do not talk about these individuals. This is what I have been saying consistently throughout this thread.

Before casting aspersions on peoples’ ability to read carefully, you should bother to understand what they’re saying first.

That said, Ampontan, again, what is your position on individuals who want to have their ancestors dis-enshrined?

I once read that he was totaly shattered when the soviet union colapsed.

Nishibe Susumu（西部邁）was also an radical activitist during the so called 安保闘争(anti movements against the mutual security treaty between Japan and USA).

I once saw in a discussion show in which an attendant pointed out that he was once a marxist himself.

He became quite angry and unpleasant mumbling that he joined the marxist movements with intention to “expose” their falsity.

It was quite clear that this “unpleasant history” still remains for him a kind of trauma.

There are a lot of others.

This is very interesting. Can you tell us more?

We understand the basic fact that Japan was anything but a Santa Clause in the colony.At least that’s what we have learned in textbooks at school….

Okazaki have a nickname陽気なタカ派 “a jolly hawk”.For he has pretty open personality unlike of many rightist(and Japanese man of his generation) in Japan.I’ve met him once.So I know.
Most of the rightist in this country are ex-left wing and very twisted in their way of dealing other people.While Okazaki,his grand father was a famous politician,Okazaki Kunisuke,in late Meiji and Taisyo period and a cousin and former secretary of Mutsu Munemitsu,the founding father of the modern Japanese diplomacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_Munemitsu
With these blue blooded family roots,Okazaki didn’t have to go through the usual twisted ideal turnaround to be a conservative figure.

Good thing is Yasukuni chose man like Okazaki for advisory,instead of some real freaks of the right.
Bad thing is Yasukuni can have these changes without any proper and open nationwide discussions.Just like When Cleric Matsudaira suddenly decided to enshrine class A war criminals without any national consensus.And as Durf said we’ve gotta demolish that creepy museum along with other Sasakawa donated statue and all.

The Korean schools were allowed to operate, but they were in the Confucian style of memorizing Chinese classics and were filled with the yangban class. They were also not considered public schools and recieved no public funding. The lower Korean classes could not attend these schools. Thus to get an education they had to go to the Japanese public schools. Which was good because this allowed a class of people to get an education which was denied to them before, but it created a system to where at a young age the Japanese could indoctrinate Korean children into Japanese language, culture, and customs.

Additionally any yangban that attended these schools had to get their long hair cut, often in front of the other students. Those children that continued to attend the Confucian schools some of their parents were faced with intimidation by the Japanese police in order to get the children to attend the Japanese public schools. Though the Confucian schools were not banned the Japanese actively promoted and did everything they could to get Korean students in the modern Japanese schools.

The modern schools of the time were all operated by the Japanese and the head positions were all Japanese with the teachers split between Koreans and Japanese. However, Koreans were not allowed to teach in Korean. Depending on the authorities where they taught, this highly determined the punishment for Korean teachers who were caught teaching in Korean or anything to do with Korean nationalism. One teacher was exiled to an island, others were sent to jail and tortured. If the Japanese’s main motive was to educate Koreans than why didn’t they allow the Korean teachers to teach in Korean? The bottomline is that education was secondary to asymilation.

Something else I hear people often say is that the Japanese built modern infrastructure in Korea. Yes they did, but not for altruistic reasons to help Koreans. For example they built dams so rice production could increase because fields would not be washed out by floods. They then built paved roads so rice from the fields could be transported easier and faster. The farmers thought the improved infrastructure the Japanese built was incredible until they found out that they had to give up 70% of their rice per year to the Japanese to send back to Japan in exchange for the infrastucture. They ultimately were left with less rice which breeded contempt for the Japanese.

Not everyone from Japan that came to Korea during the occupation though was bad. Japanese teachers in the Japanese schools are highly remembered as having worked very hard and cared a lot about educating their students. There was even stories of some very kind police officers that helped some Koreans avoid authorities that were looking to arrest them. There was plenty of good Japanese people who came to Korea along with plenty of bad ones as well.

Overall though making the arguement that the occupation was some how some kind of enlightened occupation that helped the Koreans is absurd. The Japanese occupied Korea in order to expand national power to compete against the western powers. The Korean peninsula as well served a strategic territory for the Japanese and was their gateway into the real mineral riches of Manchuria. There was a lot of reasons for the Japanese occupation of Korea and the welfare of the Korean people was not at the top of the list.