Japanese feel they have apologized enough, professor argues

Ian Buruma, a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College, spoke Wednesday about how Japanese nationalism has shaped Japan's attitude toward its history.

Speaking to a full audience in Jones Hall 202, Buruma began by asserting that Japan has sufficiently apologized for its role in WWII. Japan has not "swept history under the rug," he said, but has instead made a great deal of information available about its wartime conduct.

Japanese youth are more nationalistic than previous generations and "are tired of being made to feel bad about something their grandparents did," Buruma said. This attitude is conveyed by popular manga comic books that promote a revisionist view of WWII — one which deems Japanese wartime conduct acceptable — has become popular among a generation that is not intimately familiar with history, he said.

In Japan, "most of the debates on WWII tend not to be fought out or written about by professional historians," Buruma said, but rather by journalists or critics "who are not of a high intellectual caliber," but have loud voices.

There is popular consensus that the clause in Japan's postwar constitution outlawing the use of military force has caused the Japanese to "become like children," forced to leave issues of national security in the hands of others. This has resulted in the perceived "humiliation of the Japanese" in situations such as the Gulf War, in which other nations fought Iraq partially in an effort to keep oil flowing into Japan, Buruma said.

Military dependence has led to a change in the public opinion on official pacifism, he said, and many Japanese no longer believe it is realistic for a major power to have a pacifist constitution.

While the title of the lecture included Korea and China, Buruma only briefly addressed the topic of nationalism in those countries.

He said Japan has "been a catalyst as well as the source of a great deal of nationalism in East Asia."

Buruma said much of China's nationalism is fueled by bitterness toward the Japanese. "Many people in China still have very bitter feelings toward Japanese, and quite rightly so," he said, adding that the Chinese government has used this to unite their country.