It seems that Japanese politicians have a guilty conscience; in a move that seems to indicate that their contributions to UNESCO had always been a glorified bribe, Japanese officials are now threatening a halt to all the funding they provide for the UN body if it does not retract its usage of Chinese documents relating to the 1937 Rape of Nanjing in its Memory of the World list.
“We are considering all measures, including [the] suspension of our funding contributions to UNESCO,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday as cited by the Guardian, adding that “there is a big discrepancy of views between Japan and China, and the decision reflecting a unilateral view turns the issue into a political problem. The decision-making process lacked transparency”. “We were not even allowed access to the contents of the Chinese documents,” he said.
Huh, so you clearly have a problem with a UN body making a decision without asking on bent knee for your approval.
“It is extremely regrettable that a global organization that should be neutral and fair entered the documents in the Memory of the World register, despite the repeated pleas made by the Japanese government,” the Japanese Foreign ministry said.
Err… I think a neutral and fair organisation would enter documents from everybody, particularly once they had themselves determined the authenticity of the documents. Ironically, what the Japanese Foreign Ministry is in fact asking for is that the UN organisation behave in a biased manner in order to “earn” Japan’s money.
“The facts are not to be denied. History is not to be falsified. What the Japanese side has said and done once again revealed its reluctance to face history squarely, which is wrong,” Hua Chunying, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said in a statement cited by the Guardian.
Japan’s brib- I mean donation to UNESCO amounted to some 31 million dollars in 2014, or 10.8% of the organisation’s total funding.
I hear ya’ll, ya want to hear a long-winded and extremely disturbing historical lesson on the Rape of Nanjing that relies overly much on Wikipedia (because the Daily Beast does so too) borne of the author’s own curiosity/boredom that he will now forcibly impart to ya’ll so that ya’ll will understand the historical context of all of this and why China and Japan are kicking up such a fuss over the matter, right?
Ya don’t? Oh well, too lat-
SURPRISE HISTORY LESSON A Long-Winded Account of The Rape of Nanjing
The Rape of Nanjing was a 1937 genocide where Japanese soldiers were allowed to rape and murder any Chinese civilian or captured soldier they wished after they had taken Nanjing(duh), the former capital city of China. There is a reason the current capital is in Beijing. Estimates of the total death toll varies, and History.com places the figure in the “hundreds of thousands”. Japanese Historian Tokushi Kasahara states that “more than 100,000 and close to 200,000, or maybe more” were killed.
China claims that some 300,000 civilians had been murdered there, while Japan claims that the figure is highly exaggerated- an opinion they cannot back up because they had themselves destroyed or kept secret most of their own records of the horrific incident on the surrender of Japan in 1945.
One of the worst atrocities to take place there was a killing competition between two Japanese officers, which had been extensively covered by Japanese Newspapers which had also claimed that it was done in hand-to-hand combat. One of the officers would himself admit that he had killed the vast majority of his enemies by simply lining them up and executing them.
When both had exceeded the original goal of 100 kills, they decided to see who could kill another 150 people. Pleasant fellas.
Over 20,000 women and girls were raped, most in a systematic manner where:
soldiers would go from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang raped.[48]The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation[49] or by pentetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. Young children were not exempt from these atrocities and were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.[50]
Photographs, recounts and videos of the atrocities were made by foreigners who had stayed behind to help the Chinese.
The Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:
I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet … People are hysterical … Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.[51]
Other accounts of horrific murders were left out for brevity. I’d put in more of the Japanese side, but it can be summed up as varying shades of the admission of guilt, from “not at all” to “we’re really really guilty, sorry!”.
Sources: RT, History.com, Wikipedia, Museums.Cnd
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