Mistake

I have to be sorry because I made a mistake. I found the mistake in one of the articles I posted here, about the unavoidable four pains in Buddhistic view. A book on Buddhism, I have finished reading recently, illustrates the true meaning of the pains, "duhka" in the original language. Some Buddhistic books written in about 100-200 BC showed the pains referred to the unavoidable pains. But the book reveals "duhka" means the situation in which you have to think more or in which you are so ignorant that you see a phenomenon in terms of binary oppositions. Sorry.

Japanese textbooks

Etymologically, "history" means "one who sees or knows," and, in Latin or Greek, "learning by inquiry." That is, "history" is a subject for those who are not content with what they have learned, and think they have to know more. Let me tell you Japanese people has got a biggest information about what happened around Japan from 1900 to 1945 because they've been required to face up to what their grandfathers did during the war, and have had to ask themselves, "why has Japan been blamed for what it did during the period?"

We know invasion is so bad, and if our grandfathers did it to the Koreans and Chineses we ought to feel sorry for that, as our grandfathers would do so. But we cannot help starting with "but...". Because our survey on many records and reports about the war, available to us now, has compelled us to wonder why only Japan has been criticized so bitterly as to be called the evilest country that had ever existed in the history of the Earth. Japan was bad, indeed, to colonize Korea and assault China, and to make the surprise attack on the American army at the Pearl Harbor. But let me ask you if other countries including China did not do anything harmful or cheating during that period. Our survey reveals the war was not so simple. The situation was so complicated. The textbooks to be adopted in Japanese school, called nationalistic in some medias in the world, referred to what other countries did during the war, to describe the world as it was, so I don't think it is trying to legitimate what Japan did during the war. It just wanted to give children as accurate an description of the world in the first half of the 20th century as possible.

Another big difference

Available through the internet to me are more than 50 newspapers, domestic and foreign, which let me find several perspectives, from which an event is retold and reiterated to me. Looks like a possible whole picture of it comes to me, though a perfect view cannot be drawn by a human being, I guess.

Japan is an isolated island country, into which many of Japanese were so confined that I felt as if we were prohibited from assuming a wide view over what was happening the world. I might be sensitive, but I always feel uneasy when thinking about the small island country in the big world.

It seems I may be a little bit dissed....

To Koreans and Chinese whom it may concern,

Let me explain how Japan seems to have justified what it did during the war. It's because it has begun to distinguish between wrong and non-wrong things that it conducted during the wars from 1900 to 1945. We began to do that because we don't want to commit wrong things again. In order not to do that, we need to know the exact reasons. In another expression, the awareness of the reasons would not lead our children to make the same mistake our grandfathers made before. Therefore, some of us began to distinguish between them and trace the causes of the wrong deeds only. More important, the war should be seen as it was; otherwise, we will not be able to know the true causes.

But we don't think Japan was right in invading your countries. We agree with you that, whatever reason, Japan should not have followed the imeperialistic policy even if it was adopted by several Powers, against which Japan was fighting except you two. But Japan found no other way but to follow that. Therefore, the government has apologized for that, and many of us don't think the government should withdraw the apologies it has expressed to you.

In short, Japan has done two different things at once recently. It has apologized for what it did against you during the war, and tried to find the true reasons why it committed the wrond deeds because we don't want our children to reap the causes when they grow. This might be fullfilled when the war is seen as it was. And some of the Japanese deeds have been found that do not seem to be so wrong. But again, we're not going to justify what our grandfathers did against you. In other words, apologies cannot be enough to show our determination of not making the same mistakes.

Korea is different from China

Some of the riots in China to protest againt Japan 1) making a bid for a permanent seat for the UNSC, and 2) allegedly distorting some of the descriptions in the textbooks adopted in Japanese schools have been reported in the world, but some of the mass medias fairly pointed out that that was a fake. Most of Japanese were relieved to see the news. I hope China would understand cheating and unfair propaganda would make China look a second-rate country.

Korea has also been protesting against Japan for the same reasons, but this country is different from China, you should notice. Korea has been struggling to change. Some of the professors in Korean universities are beginning to admit that Japan was not quite evil in invading Korea. That is, they are beginning to know how the war looked not only to Korea but also Japan. A war is not so simple as to be attributed to one single cause. Japanese invasion over Korea was also caused by complicated circumstances.

different interpretations.

There has been much conflict between Korea and Japan, concerning some of the descriptions in Japanese history textbooks. This is attributed to the difference of the system in which textbooks are adopted in school. In Korea, the government chooses the one single description about a historical event, while in Japan the government is prohibited from intervening in the process. In the beginning, event cannot be an event without being articulated; therefore, an event reflect a certain view. Historical events will be open to different interpretations. Japan was defeated, but Korea cannnot attribute all the sufferings they experienced during the war time, to Japan.

Intelligence

I thought Gulliver's Travels was written just for children. But I have to admit I was mistaken. One of the remarkable phrases in the work is "Reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot either. So that Controversies, Wranglings, Disputes, and Positiveness in false or dubious Propositions, are Evils unknown among theHouyhnhnms."

I saw the report by the commission ordered by President Bush to trace the misjudgement about the weapons in Iraq. After reading that report, I brought myself to wonder why we need intelligence. It should be used to judge troubles beyond our knowledge. If they don't judge, that failure of such a magnitude may be avoided.

But this is also incorrect. President Bush would tell me that not all of the human beings have had reason, so we need to get accurate intelligence timely.