It has become all too common for people in North America and Europe to feel like they have to constantly apologize for being who they are. Particularly those on the liberal left seem bent on crying over every drop of spilled historical milk, and live in a state of constant shame that their country once encouraged the slave trade, discriminated against women or minorities and colonized other parts of the world, fighting natives and converting them to Christianity (perhaps the worst offense to the liberal mind). These are the sort of people who support burning the American flag, or in Europe those who think that modern day monarchs should crawl on their knees to some African dictator for having once colonized their country. In short, they're ashamed of who they are and have raised to the standard of a liberal doctrine their need to constantly humiliate their own country.
Strangely enough, I thought this was a problem limited only to European civilization, but it seems to reach across all of the liberal "First World" as it has even reached to the once proudly traditional Empire of Japan. I was shocked to discover that the one East Asian nation with a record of great success in modern times has become so ashamed of itself (at least among the liberal, educated elites) that they seem to consider even the most innocent displays of patriotism to be intolerable. Stories have become more common lately about school officials and students protesting against a government requirement that all official functions include the display of the national flag and the singing of the Japanese national anthem. Tied to this has been another unspeakable crime, the multiple visits made by Prime Minister Koizumi to the national shrine for Japan's war dead, including Japanese officers executed for war crimes after World War II. To make things worse, the Prime Minister has even stated he intends to visit the shrine again in the future.
Personally, although I know relatively little about him, I never thought of Prime Minister Koizumi, the shaggy-haired, Elvis loving friend of George W. Bush, to be what I would call a flaming reactionary, yet there seem to be a number of Japanese people who think this is just the case. To their paranoid, self-hating minds, singing the "Kimigayo" and displaying the "Rising Sun" flag is nothing less than imperialist militarism coming back to life in their peaceful islands. If this is enough to send waves of terror through liberal minds I can only imagine what they thought of Koizumi's decision to deploy Japanese troops overseas for the first time since the surrender of the Imperial army in 1945.
The fact is, every nation in the world has periods of dishonor as well as glory and every nation has things in their history for which they should be ashamed and things for which they should be proud. The Japanese flag and anthem are not like the swastika, adopted by a wicked regime around the time of the war, they go back as long as Japan has been a modern nation and the symbolism they portray go back even farther into antiquity. As for the warrior's shrine, I see that as no issue at all given that it is devoted to ALL Japanese troops who served their Emperor in every war; it's not as though it was built specifically to honor a bunch of war criminals. Anger at this shrine would be equivalent to saying that a monument to all American soldiers who fought in Vietnam would be evil because Lt. Calley of the My Lai massacre was an American soldier who fought in Vietnam and so would technically be one of those "honored" by the memorial. In short, it is absurd.
Modern Japan is no longer the nation it was during or even prior to World War II, and to remove everything that was used, seen or heard during the pre-war era would mean the complete erasure of all Japanese culture. No one in Japan should be ashamed of their flag or their national anthem, in fact they should perhaps look at the high standard of living they enjoy, the government stability that has allowed them to prosper, especially when compared to their neighbors in the Far East and just maybe be a little grateful for how things have worked out. In fact, those areas once ruled by Japan, such as South Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria, along with considerable suffering, also benefited from Japanese rule. In order to cut down on shipping costs Japan, alone among imperial powers, industrialized their colonies, leaving behind the building blocks for technological modernization. For years Manchuria was the only industrialized region in all of China, and remains largely so today. It is no coincidence that South Korea and Taiwan have had stronger economies than other countries in the Far East.
The people of Japan have a great deal to be proud of about their history and I feel safe in saying that those voicing outrage over flying the flag and singing the Emperor's song are simply the same sort of liberal children we have in this country who hate any form of patriotism and would go absolutely insane if they had nothing to protest, and so all to often have to invent non-issues to whine about just for the attention. These are the sort of people who hate history and traditional in general, regardless of what it actually is. If the United States can get past World War II and become friends with Japan, the Japanese should be able to do the same among themselves. |
