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© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019.Yasukuni Shrine vandalised by man claiming to be Chinese
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sensei258
OMG, I saw this on the news last night. With the sheer numbers of police who responded you would have thought there was a mass shooting or something.
Samit Basu
What do they mean by "claiming to be Chinese"?
Isn't it obvious if the man is a Chinese national or not with simple fingerprint matching, because Japanese authorities would have collected his fingerprint upon arrival, no?
oldman_13
No justification for such vandalism.
The shrine memorializes many Japanese war dead, and not all of them were class 'A' war criminals (14 in fact are interred there).
Voice your opposition all you want to the fact that those criminals are interred there, but Japanese have a right to honor their war dead like anyone else around the world.
Samit Basu
@oldman_13
And 14 A-class war-criminals, who according to Japanese laws aren't criminals at all.
Just remove nameplates of Tojo Hideki and 13 others and Yasukuni is kosher again.
But as long as Japan's 14 A-class war-criminals' names remain at the Yasukuni, no Japanese Emperor or Prime Minister may set a foot in there.
Dango bong
Have you ever heard of sovereignty? No foreign country has a right to tell anyone who they can respect.
BertieWooster
Supposing Yasukuni was a war museum and shrine in Germany and featured such stars as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, et al.?
Don't you think other countries would have something to say about it?
alwaysspeakingwisdom
"Don't you think other countries would have something to say about it?"
They can say whatever they want to about it. but they can't commit a crime.
alwaysspeakingwisdom
But as long as Japan's 14 A-class war-criminals' names remain at the Yasukuni, no Japanese Emperor or Prime Minister may set a foot in there.
Says who? OR What?
Seth M
I have more respect to this guy than those koreans keeping their heads down on the street and hating Japan on internet
commanteer
Supposing Yasukuni was giant chocolate soft cream? That's about as relevant.
Ganbare Japan!
Give him a big fine (10 million yen), deport him, and ban him for life from entering Japan. He is getting off very lightly. If Japanese citizens vandalized statues of Chairman Mao, they would be summarily executed.
Joe Blow
A. Political activism
B. Sanity
Choose one.
roughneck
Try going to China and throw ink at Mao's photo. Or Protest against Chinese ongoing brutality in Taiwan, Hong Kong, on the Uyghurs. You will vanish without a trace. It is our generosity that these are in news. We could also swallow these cheeky foreign protestors.
BertieWooster
There is no glory in war. It's mass insanity.
rcch
no big surprises here... moving on...
Norman Goodman
When you enshrine class A, B and C war criminals your odds of getting vandalized rise considerably.
nandakandamanda
Oldman_13 “...class 'A' war criminals (14 in fact are interred there).”
No. Just to be clear. There is no-one buried or interred there. Just a list of names.
Toasted Heretic
Only going to stir up more hatreds, this act. Maybe the Shrine should be redesigned or made less controversial by interring the remains of the war criminals elsewhere?
This is the Trump era, though. Such diplomacy and etiquette has been vanquished.
nandakandamanda
Yasukuni Shrine is not a cemetery.
AlexBecu
Annoying. Yes
Compare to South Korea? It's Nothing!
Those who support Korea love to see bad relations between Japan and China. They don't like the good relations between Japan and China.
Read the comments from the anti-Japan crowd. See a connection.
pacificwest
What was wrong with this? As usual the censor allow the usual tropes but refuse an informed rebuttal.
@BertieWooster
You, like many others, just don't get it.
It's more like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints posthumously baptising everyone who died (apparently they baptized Hitler, so he has been saved and can go to heaven, and 300,000 and 400,000 Jewish Holocaust victims, although perhaps they won't go to the same heave?). They are not worshipped as gods and so on.
And, FYI, the so called "Class A War Criminals" weren't according to International Law at the time either because the laws/crimes they were accused of did not exist which was Radhabinod Pal's ignored position.
The Tokyo Tribunal was a garbage showcase piece of propaganda theatre by a party with no moral position to do so. No one takes it seriously except for anti-Japanese racists.
It's worth reading Pal's summation.
As, indeed, it is worth reading some of, say, Tojo's speeches.
Did we find out if the perp was, in fact, Chinese or just attempting to pass the blame onto the Chinese?
hachikou
More specific?
Exactly who do you suggest to be Japanese Hitler to Chinese people?
Among A-class criminals judged by the US, only these 4 people below were the ones convicted for the damage and atrocities to Chinese people.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E7%B4%9A%E6%88%A6%E7%8A%AF
板垣征四郎 Seishirō Itagaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seishir%C5%8D_Itagaki
土肥原賢二 Kenji Doihara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenji_Doihara
松井石根 Iwane Matsui https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwane_Matsui
広田弘毅 Kōki Hirota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dki_Hirota
So, removing these 4 out of a honoring list should fix the problem?
Like I mentioned before, Hideki Tojo has nothing to do with China because he joined the cabinet after Japan attacked China, and he was guilty for Perl Harbor.
Black Sabbath
Just to be clear, it's much worse than that:
The shrine enshrines and, according to Shinto beliefs, provides a permanent residence for the spirits of those who have fought on behalf of the emperor, regardless of whether they died in combat. 1,068 of the enshrined kami were POWs convicted of some level of war crime after World War II. Enshrinement typically carries absolution of earthly deeds.
Get that? Non combat war dead have been absolved of their evil deeds.
So, Muto, who was rightfully convicted for atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war in both China and the Philippines, and was executed by hanging on 23 December 1948, is 1) considered a "war dead" and 2) absolved of his evil deeds.
That is wrong. I don't care who you are or what country you come from. It is wrong. It's wrong on so many levels. It is wrong mix in thugs and criminals who murdered innocents far from battle with the soldiers who died fighting honorably for their country. It is wrong to absolve them of their evil deeds, and it is wrong to have done all this without consulting the people of Japan. All of it was done secretly.
Just to be clear: whether the criminals bones are in Yasukuni or not is NOT the problem. Sullying the honor of all those who died fighting by mixing those thugs in with them is the main problem. And "absolving" them of their crimes goes against Japan's treaty with the US, common decency and common sense.
pacificwest
Let's get one thing straight. The political killings after the Tokyo Tribunal, along with the dismantling of the civil service, the forced redistribution of land and dissolution of titles etc was not about "justice", it was about destroying national leadership ability.
As is attempting to destroy their repuations and examples today.
It was a military strategy that has been probably practised through all time but at least we can be sure for the last 2,000 years or so, by all conqueror or imperialists.
A cutting off of the head (those with alternative leadership skills to the conqueror), to kill or control the beast (the people). A privilege of the victor who may well have done precisely the same or even greater, eg you mention the Philippines, was the US is any moral position to accuse anyone after its conduct there?
Your understanding of Shintoism is faulted. Again, as I wrote somewhere else, tainted by a foundation in a Judeo-Christian world view.
Firstly, Shintoism is not a monolithic, universal religion. What the Yasukuni does, it is business. Not universal practise, not representative of the nation. It was established to provide solace to the living.
Does anyone here really think the priests believe there are little dots of light or spirit souls dancing in the building?
Do you really believe that a priest saying a prayer really changes the nature of a dead person?
Do you really believe in life after death, let alone punishment after death?
Do you even believe in religion? If not, why bother about people who do?
These words and concepts you are using like absolution, evil and enshrinement are all far too colored by a foreign perspective. You should really start be asking what is truly going on here what was the purpose of it prior to the politicization of it.
The priests of the Yasukuni believe that all and any souls can be purified. That's the service they provide.
To demand that they don't purify an impure soul, in order that that impure soul might remain impure for eternity would appear to me to be as irrational as the old "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" arguments the Christians used to have.
Where does Christianity stand on "forgiveness"? Is it a limited or unlimited offer?
Do the "evil" not need the most prayers to save them?
If you want to find someone to blame for any "brutality" in the Philippines, blame the Chick Parsons and Colonel Whitneys of the world - all of whom had considerable personal financial interests in the islands as had the US - for whipping up, funding, arming and training criminal guerilla resistances, to which Japan responded commensurately.
Whites dividing and ruling Asians by making them fight.
As with identical influences in China, without them the IJA would not have reacted as they did.
The problem Japan had, and the US and Allies exploited, was that it was a formal army, attempting to follow internationally law, fighting against foreign and foreign funded guerrillas carrying out irregular warfare against them.
You need to get your Chicks and your eggs in the right order.
I think the problem with foreign views is that they were never educated about the chickens who laid the eggs in the first place.
Simon Foston
etc etc etc. Victor's justice. No more or less fallible than any other kind of justice, e.g. what passes for it in Japanese criminal courts, and never very nice from the losers' point of view. If you don't like it don't start wars you can't possibly win.
Simon Foston
pacificwestToday 03:34 am JST
Never mind, plenty of Japan's wartime leaders did escape trial and they were helped by the US to regain leadership positions. Then, unlike Germans who would go to prison for doing the same thing, they were free to peddle the kinds of myths of Japan's blamelessness that the likes of you continually espouse. However if the goal was to destroy national leadership ability then a few generations down the line it's certainly been achieved.
bass4funk
This has absolutely nothing to do with Trump, nothing at all. Just has everything to do with Japan and how it’s neighbors perceive it and with they have gone through over the last 70 plus years. If you want to talk about diplomacy and etiquette vanishing, there are a multitude of reasons for that. Anyway, whatever grievance this person had, there was no justification in vandalizing the shrine. Wonder what the damage amount will come out to?
bass4funk
Hmmmm, that makes about as much sense as a blind dog driving a car. Lol
mmwkdw
Pathetic attempt by an individual to have his moment of Fame...