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How to Count Dead Japanese People
Mar. 8th, 2006 08:17 amA little lesson in math, for anyone who might be a Chinese of the government official persuasion, on how to count dead Japanese people.
There are 14 convicted class A war criminals venerated at the Yasukuni Shrine.
This means that there are approximately 2,500,000 people who are not war criminals who are also venerated at Yasukuni. The shrine exists in order to honor those who have died in the service of their nation, regardless of how they did it. You may not agree with the founding principles (Lord knows that I don't), but that is the purpose of the shrine. It does not exist solely to commemorate war criminals. When Koizumi goes there he is doing two things, he is honoring the spirits of all those who have died in the service of their country, much like the Chinese themselves do, and he is provoking a heel-pounding, fist-beating, breath-holding temper tantrum from the Chinese foreign ministry. Honestly, the man can probably kill more Chinese officials by sending them into apoplexy than the US could if we carpet bombed Beijing.
So you've registered diplomatic complaints, non-diplomatic complaints, and rioting in the streets. We understand that you don't like it when he visits the shrine. We get it already. Keep issuing complaints as long as you want. But don't go into two-year-old temper tantrum mode every time he does it. It's not becoming. We could launch a similar complaint about Mao-despite currently policy, being Chinese and killing lots of Chinese does not exempt you from the judgment of history. Still, the CCP knows that we don't like Mao, they understand that, but they keep portraying him in a somewhat positive light regardless. We don't call them idiots in public because of it anymore, and we don't try and dictate to them what to do.
Maybe this could have been solved with some diplomatic wrangling earlier. Koizumi could go to the shrine, but also issue a call to have the war criminals removed from it. This has been tried before. Perhaps some sane conversation could have made all of this unnecessary. But all chances of a peaceful solution went out the window the moment you started making ultimatums. You cannot demand that a private citizen in an independent country stop honoring the war dead of his nation in proper manner simply because you do not like some of them. It does not work that way.
In other words, Koizumi is a big boy now. You can't expect him to do what you tell him to do. He's made it clear that he's going to keep going to the shrine to honor the war dead, and, according to his own words, to pray for peace. You may not like it. That's certainly your province. You can certainly complain about it. But please do not throw a temper tantrum every time he does this. I'm getting bored of it, and all you are doing is encouraging the nationalists.
And that makes me nervous.
There are 14 convicted class A war criminals venerated at the Yasukuni Shrine.
This means that there are approximately 2,500,000 people who are not war criminals who are also venerated at Yasukuni. The shrine exists in order to honor those who have died in the service of their nation, regardless of how they did it. You may not agree with the founding principles (Lord knows that I don't), but that is the purpose of the shrine. It does not exist solely to commemorate war criminals. When Koizumi goes there he is doing two things, he is honoring the spirits of all those who have died in the service of their country, much like the Chinese themselves do, and he is provoking a heel-pounding, fist-beating, breath-holding temper tantrum from the Chinese foreign ministry. Honestly, the man can probably kill more Chinese officials by sending them into apoplexy than the US could if we carpet bombed Beijing.
So you've registered diplomatic complaints, non-diplomatic complaints, and rioting in the streets. We understand that you don't like it when he visits the shrine. We get it already. Keep issuing complaints as long as you want. But don't go into two-year-old temper tantrum mode every time he does it. It's not becoming. We could launch a similar complaint about Mao-despite currently policy, being Chinese and killing lots of Chinese does not exempt you from the judgment of history. Still, the CCP knows that we don't like Mao, they understand that, but they keep portraying him in a somewhat positive light regardless. We don't call them idiots in public because of it anymore, and we don't try and dictate to them what to do.
Maybe this could have been solved with some diplomatic wrangling earlier. Koizumi could go to the shrine, but also issue a call to have the war criminals removed from it. This has been tried before. Perhaps some sane conversation could have made all of this unnecessary. But all chances of a peaceful solution went out the window the moment you started making ultimatums. You cannot demand that a private citizen in an independent country stop honoring the war dead of his nation in proper manner simply because you do not like some of them. It does not work that way.
In other words, Koizumi is a big boy now. You can't expect him to do what you tell him to do. He's made it clear that he's going to keep going to the shrine to honor the war dead, and, according to his own words, to pray for peace. You may not like it. That's certainly your province. You can certainly complain about it. But please do not throw a temper tantrum every time he does this. I'm getting bored of it, and all you are doing is encouraging the nationalists.
And that makes me nervous.