Japan protests China news agency's call for emperor apology

Oh those chinese have some nerve. What are they going to do after their big 9/3 party turns into a big dud?

The question I have is why does the Japanese government feel the need to lodge an official diplomatic protest over everthing they read on a Chinese news website? Just ignore the trolls. Getting dragged down into a petty spat just diminishes and reflects poorly on the Japanese government.

The Chinese breaking diplomatic protocol. The Communists never did apologize for their slaughter of millions of Chinese people.I only hope the Chinese grasp that the Emperor did what he could to defuse the overly ambitious Prime Minister Abe.

The Chinese government/media will always find a way to bash Japan. It's win-win proposition. M3M3M3, I know what you're saying, but the Japanese government for it's own reasons feels the need to respond.

Does anyone have any historical Chinese aggression against other countries that the Chinese have never apologized for that can be pressed against them too?

Beijing has some nerve! The present Emperor was only a boy during WWII!!

Grow up!

Well in that case, China can get the hell out of Tibet which it invaded in 1959 and has been raping ever since. And then we wait for the official apology.

It seems that China is looking for another political card to accuse Japan because it will try to lead people to pay new attention to Japan after incredible warehouse explosions, sudden stocks depreciation,,,etc. Its government wants to lead people to bash Japan.

I would like an official apology from all members of the CCP politburo for their murder of American soldiers and other UN troops from 16 other nations on the Korean Peninsula. When is china going to apologize to the United Nations?

Pretty stupid on this Chinese media's part. The Emperor is one of the ONLY Japanese officials to have expressed some sort of GENUINE remorse, and to therefore put him and the royal family under fire isn't bound to invite a lot more openness or any more apologies. Fortunately the Emperor seems like a pretty down to earth guy and will likely, and rightfully, just ignore this.

As essentially a figurehead, the Emperor constitutionally cannot apologize for the nation on his own. That is the job of the elected government. The elected government can (I suppose) request the Emperor to apologize for the nation. But that would still not carry the weight of an official apology from the government of Japan.

The Emperor did the best he could to counteract Abe by expressing a personal feeling of remorse. This is different from an official apology because the Emperor was only speaking for himself, his own feelings. Even there, he was walking on a thin constitutional edge. Give credit where it is due. The Emperor is a good guy.

Whoever wrote that Chinese article does not understand the division of powers in nominally democratic Japan.

M3m3m3, good point! Japan should ignore the china propganda. Ignore the children having nth temper tantrum in print. Just ignore them.

Newsflash: the Japanese Emperor has already apologized. As did the government. Many times.

As others are saying: Japan should ignore the trolls.

Right after Xi apologizes for all the dead Chinese the Communist Party created.

Seems like Asia is inhabited by countries acting like children. China is just distracting attention from the current explosion in Tianjin, with another toxic pollution across the neighborhood.

I repent of all my sins and apologize to any one whom I have offended in the past for any reason.

China shows its low class by tossing this out, Japan shows its not too swift by taking the bait & providing fuel for China's fire, oops I mean parade!

Will these two EVER graduate from the sandbox!?!?!?! Likely not in my lifetime if ever.............

The Emperor did make an apology. Didn't they hear the 70th anniversary memorial speech?

Because saying sorry totally erases the past? It doesn't. plus, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, right? The Japanese today are not responsible for their ancestors' sins. Nor are the Chinese responsible for theirs. No one is. If they believe in karma, or any such thing, they should understand that what goes around comes around, and for the Japanese it has come around in many different forms.

smithinjapanAug. 29, 2015 - 09:03AM JST

Pretty stupid on this Chinese media's part. The Emperor is one of the ONLY Japanese officials to have expressed some sort of GENUINE remorse

Smith, with noted un-need for qualifier "some sort of", _i am happy to agree with you. I remember recently when both the emporer snd his son spoke up, regardless whether it was to rebuke Abe, and made (to me) sensible, considerate statements worth contemplation. Gawd, as a 12+ year bitter vet on thisese islands, those days and statements made me turn to those in my inner circle and state that I could be very wrong. Those two guys, with the specter of P. Masako reqired me to recontemplate several opinions -- negative -- i held.

China .. I am not jumping on any bash on either side (i am an unbiased basher), yes, smith, the c.off.media did not need to go there. care to craft out /co-write / post a note to them with me?

Looks like all the typical parties are jumping in to spin this story into a 100% pro-/anti- Japan/China propaganda. Let's try to analyze it with a little more complexity, shall we?

Chinese news agencies, like any other party anywhere in the world, have every right to demand an apology from the Emperor. If we believe in freedom of speech, we have to grant that. Japan in turn has every right to ignore this demand. Freedom of speech does not include the requirement that other people listen to you or take you seriously. You have to earn that.

However, though Chinese news agencies have the right to make this demand, no one who wants to be taken remotely seriously ever should. Asking a powerless figurehead to apologize for what happened when he was a child exposes to the world that you have absolutely no concept of what you're outraged about, and you're manufacturing anger for the sake of being angry. If Japanese figures hadn't risen to the bait by reacting in outrage, China would have handed Japan a diplomatic victory. By reacting with anger, Japan gives an air of legitimacy to an otherwise illegitimate demand.

"The Emperor did make an apology. Didn't they hear the 70th anniversary memorial speech?"

Yes, but he should do it again and again for Abe and other non-repenting Japanese. After all, his father was spared from execution. He should be grateful to the US for sparing his dad's head, and spend rest of his life repenting, apologizing to the war victims.

What's so hard about giving apologies to the war victims? Just admit it; don't dwell on it by trying to rewrite history. It's okay to give apologies. Japan, move on.

katsu...

i think the 100%-ers got it. all you have done is to add their stances, generally, together, making you a 50/50%-er. not sure what revolation you have added to deepen the complexity/aroma/flavor .. but i will take care not to tred in it.

Not hard to see from outside that the emperor and his son do not agree with abe and his goons, so they are just trying to mix the pot. Childish for Japan to lodge a official complaint just looks petty and weak imho.

The Japanese govt. should just completely ignore their punk media.

They should also begin referring to China as "our lesser counterpart" from now on since they exhibit the maturity of infants.

Seriously Japan, don't feed the trolls. Put your pride to the side and just ignore them.

enjoy the present, look for the future, and forget the past

Fantastic, when you think China may in fact be learning something about international relations they find a way to sink even lower. Its not easy to keep some respect for the Chinese state. When are the Chinese people going to do something about their leadership?

Japan's yasukuni shrine and the whitewashing of its atrocities are proof Japan never was sincere in any spology - in fact, now it wants to revise history (and reawaken its dud army whose members may actually bolt after Abe's security bills are railroaded in an umconstitutional way).

China and Korea etc of course have the absolute right to demand a full clear message of total repentance from the Emperor.

How would Japan feel if China invaded Japan and slaughtered and raped tens of millions of innocents and no real apology has come but only self-righteous repulsive whitewashing?

If Japan really wants to make an apology China will accept, a full and detailed apology from His Majesty himself is the only thing I can imagine being satisfying to the feelings of many Chinese. Chinese know that whatever the constitutional legalities, His Majesty really does represent Japan in the deepest sense. I admired the Present Emperor's subtle way of differentiating his opinion from that of Mr. Abe in his remarks on the recent anniversary of the end of the War.

An apology is not primarily a means of helping the apologizer put his crimes behind him, but of making the victim feel that the apologizer is truly sorry, and repairing the shame of having been victimized. In my opinion, many Chinese feel more ashamed of their country's former weakness than many Japanese do of their country's aggression. Despite repeated apologies of various kinds from Japanese officials, many Chinese still feel that important people in Japan don't really feel remorse over anything other than losing the war. And neither the Present nor the Former Emperor has made an apology directly to China, as far as I can discover.

To clear the air, visits to the Toyokuni Shrine and historical revisionism (correct or not) are not the answer. They make it clear that many Japanese value their own pride over good relations with China. Now that China feels stronger, it will not let this go until it gets an apology on something approaching its own terms.

It is interesting to see posters calling the Chinese "childish." That sort of attitude is one of the reasons Chinese are not ready to forgive Japan. In Japanese popular culture, the image of Chinese people is not very positive, as far as I have seen. As a Chinese acquaintance told me, the reason there are hard feelings between China and Japan is "because we know each other so well."

Certainly the Chinese Communist Party has continually emphasized its image of having been the main force fighting against Imperial Japan during the invasion. Not all Chinese hate Japan, though. I'd say a majority of Chinese admire Japan's orderliness and industrial production and enjoy some of its popular culture. But it is fairly telling that the first reaction of one man in Tianjin when he heard the recent explosions was that Japan might be attacking.

By the way, I can't think of anything in the last hundred years that China needs to make this kind of apology for to people outside the country -- unless you think of Taiwan as not being China (2/28). Within the country, various crimes perpetrated under Mao are widely known and are criticized in official publications.

If we're talking about apologies, perhaps there should be an apology from the US for firebombing and dropping atomic bombs on cities in Japan. Have they ever made such an apology?

The Chinese are stepping on too many toes. They simply don't know the real meaning of respect. They really don7t want an apology. If an apology is given, they would insist for an honest apology. Why don't just they say they want a slice of Japan? And in turn Japan shld just give them Fukushima! (I'm not really hurting the pref. I do feel for the land and its people.)

CCP must be bored and has nothing to do right now so let's call to JP emperor for an excuse... because they need it right now to prop their ego.

Setting aside the complexities of the China-Japan relationship when it comes to WW2, this exchange is one of those exercises in diplomatic protocols, I think.

So, the Chinese government wanted to get this message out, that the Emperor should apologize. However, for it to be done directly by a member of the government, like the Foreign Ministry, would have been an escalation of the rhetoric at an official level.

Therefore, they chose to use the STATE-CONTROLLLED news agency to put out this demand. Of course, this news agency is nothing but the mouthpiece of the Chinese government, but it does not officially represent China when it comes to diplomatic matters.

And I think that they wanted to see what Japan would do/how Japan would respond. If Japan left this demand unchallenged but the Foreign Ministry of China was asked to comment on the Xinhua demand, it would give them the opportunity to essentially endorse it without originating the demand. And this would then open a new chapter in official Chinese demands from Japan.

Thus, this is why I believe Japan could not let this stand unchallenged. They recognized it for what it was and that it had to be challenged to ensure that it did not become a new, ongoing demand from China in actual diplomatic terms.

Just my guess.

MrAbe said japanese people were not eligible to apologize due to those who born after 1945 and that included Mr Abe himself. The emperor was born before 1945, so China's remarks was appropriated to Abe's requirement.

Why did AFP pick the picture for this article of Emperor and Empress laughing? Not nice.

AJSPeikaiwaAUG. 29, 2015 - 12:06PM JST i think the 100%-ers got it. all you have done is to add their stances, generally, together, making you a 50/50%-er. not sure what revolation you have added to deepen the complexity/aroma/flavor .. but i will take care not to tred in it.

Well, then let me walk you through this basic idea. The 100% pro-/anti- Japan/China-ers are doomed to a dispute that can never end so long as they're allowed to dominate the discussion. The anti-Japan Chinese poke Japan, the anti-China Japanese poke back in outrage, so the anti-Japan Chinese are outraged that the anti-China Japanese poke back, and you get an ever-spiraling cycle of infantile rage.

So rather than deciding that actions are right or wrong because of who takes them as the pro-anti crowd does, the rational person decides that actions are right or wrong because of the innate characteristics of those actions regardless of who takes them. We believe in free speech and the right to criticize and petition anyone, so rationally speaking we must accept that there is nothing inherently wrong with people making a demand of the Emperor, certainly not simply because the people making the demand are Chinese.

You can join with the bigots who hate what a Chinese newspaper did because Chinese people did it, or you can join with the rational people who criticize what a Chinese newspaper did because it was an uninformed, pointless demand. If you join with the bigots, your only option is to lash back with equal anger and keep the wheel of hate spinning. Join with the rational people, and you have the tools to criticize the action without criticizing the entire country and move the discussion somewhere useful that maybe, just maybe, leads to an ending all parties involved can be satisfied with.

Of course, some people enjoy their daily 2-minutes' hate because they only know how to define themselves by their opposition to someone else. And when those people are allowed to wallow in their hate unchallenged, we end up in situations like the one we're in now.

China almost messing us about bygone Matter, we had been apologized enough for our mistakes, problem is we cannot accept the actions of China.

For crying out loud, just a couple of weeks ago the emperor expressed deep remorse for Japan's wartime atrocities.

"Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945. "

I wonder how much longer this surrender would have taken if the atomic bombs had not been dropped...

"If Russia hadn't joined in............likely longer and more messy."

The only result of the Russians finally joining the war against Japan was to steal their northern islands.

Ne PacificAug. 29, 2015 - 02:03PM JST Iff Japan really wants to make an apology China will accept, a full and detailed apology from His Majesty himself is the >only thing I can imagine being satisfying to the feelings of many Chinese

Sorry but there is NO apology of any kind that the Chinese dictatorship will ever find satisfactory, Continuing to denounce any given apology and to continue the anti-Japan agenda is their program and will remain so until China can break the US-Japan alliance. The "feelings" of the Chinese people are more directed at the Chinese economy.

Yes, the Chinese people will find a satisfying solution if Mr.Abe practice harakiri as an apology !

These constant demands for an apology from China really only boil down to one thing – the Chinese Communist government has chosen Japan as the “rival” to further two strategic objectives. First, to encourage nationalism, to deflect the Chinese populace from endemic corruption and denial of basic human rights, and second, to place Japan on the defensive with regards to territorial disputes in the East China Sea. It is not surprising that China upped the rhetoric this past week as it stock market tumbled and the populace starts getting restless and questioning the government.

Irrespective of all these demands, behind closed doors, the Chinese government actually doesn’t want a more thorough or sincere apology from Japan – that would make it more difficult to paint it as the “foreign devil” and less able to fulfill the adversary role the communist party has assigned it.

Continuing to denounce any given apology and to continue the anti-Japan agenda is their program and will remain so until China can break the US-Japan alliance.

After China breaking US-SK alliance, the next target will be US-Japan alliance. Unless US does not unilaterally demand Japan listen to China, the US Japan relation wouldn't be affected.

The "feelings" of the Chinese people are more directed at the Chinese economy.

With its worsening economy, China would intensify anti-Japan stance to distract the "feelings" of the Chinese people.

About picture: I'd bet KunaiCho handed out to show that imperial House couple don't follow China's direction.

Maybe China want JPnese voters will want security agenda to vote aye so that Japan can attack China? To destroy China this time? Last time, US won, not China.

Just my guess

Zones2surf. You have it guessed perfectly. This is "testing" the waters that Japanese government for decades have ignored.

Maybe China want JPnese voters will want security agenda to vote aye so that Japan can attack China? To destroy China this time? Last time, US won, not China.

If japan attack China, how many nuclear bombs need to be dropped on japan before japan surrender? less than 2 I guess .

toshiko, AFP does not ask IHA for a picture each time it writes an article. The caption says it's May picture, which AFP picked from its own picture file.

And Japan will never attack China. The new security bill does not allow Japan to attack any country.

It is absolutely legitimate to have the Japanese emperor to apologize for his dad who was directly involved in invading China and caused more than 20 million Chinese deaths 1931-1945. (Imagine 1/5 of current Japanese population) That's actually way too easy for the emperor or the PM to do to get the baggage off. By the way, to some of the fact twsiting blogger here, the IJA lost WW2 to the Allied powers with China as a big part of it on the Pacific side. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers not just to the americans. That is simply an undeniable historical fact.

decibel, Where is evidence of that? Stop exaggerate.

tinawatanabe, you won't find that in Japanese history books for sure. Go read some reliable 3rd party history book on WW2. Even google search on the web, wikipedia, brittanica encylopedia, BBC etc.

decibel, so you can't provide evidence. If it is true why didn't you say anything when the war ended? You guys keep increasing the figure even 7 decades after the war that there is no creditablity anymore.

At least you should provide the news paper articles of the time, not the things written long after the war.

decibel, so you can't provide evidence.

Decibel is already speaking of accepted history. If you have something to challenge the accepted history, it's your responsibility to provide it.

The myth of the Japanese emperor is being a living god still presists until today! Thats why someone here in this forum said China has "nerves " !

accepted history

Who accepted it without evidence? You should study further. Why do you think Mao Zedong was nice to Japan then?

Present Japan has witnessed how "history" was created by watching the American publisher McGlowHills include completely fabricated number and story of Japan's comfort women 7 decades after the war without even checking Japan's evidence.

China should stop this nonsense! It should first appologise to Tibet and withdraw from there before pointing a finger at Japan.

China should stop inciting young people into hatred!

tinawatanabe, it is recorded everywhere. It is printed in every history textbook in the world except Japan's. These are simply historical facts. All you have to do is just READ. http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/world-wide-deaths.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Does China have 21 nuclear bombs? I thought it is not 1945 now. Don't worry Japanese satellite can drop one powerful missile on China. Japan's satellite has been monitoring world every day for quite a while.

decibel, it is not historical evidence. China was constantly fighting civil wars before and after war with Japan. How many deads are from civil wars? Do you know Mao thanked Japan many times?

tinawatanabe, I heard Mao and Chiang both thanked the americans for taking decisive and strong actions to finish off the IJA and ended WW2 quickly so fewer lives would be lost. I believe the emperor and PM Abe should apologize to the Japanese people for all the pain and sufferings they had to endure near the end of WW2 as a result of Hirohito and his top brass's evil misdeeds. The emperor should also thank the americans for drafting such an effective constitution after WW2 so Japan finally became a normal country again.

decibel, could you show me the evidence that Mao and Chiang thanked USA, it is hard to believe concidering Mao thanking Japan, and Chiang's good relation with Japan. Chiang studied in Japan.

tinawatanabe, you really need to read some history books. Chiang Kai-Chek was the chinese leader who fought the Imperial Japan 1937-1945 the entire time. He was the one collaborating with the americans and the Allies to defeat IJA in WW2.

decibel, I only asked for the article that shows Mao and Chiang thanked USA. Do you want the articles that show Mao thanked Japan? It is well known so you can search yourself. You know history is not that black and white. Do you know Mao was delighted when learned that Japan kicked out the west powers from south east asia?

Picture says it all. Both Chiang and Mao celebrated with the americans as Allies defeating IJA in WW2 https://research.archives.gov/id/196609 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/lists/famous_political_handshakes/nixon_mao.html