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Cool, China is skipping the IMF meeting now because it's being held in Japan.
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Oct 10, 2012 11:23
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Wibbleman posted:Great except this isn't what you claimed. No, that is not what Abe said. In the alternative translations you cited in your quote, Wibbleman posted:Other translators have it translated as “It is a fact there was no proof to support coercion as it was initially defined” and a in context translation is “We must consider (the Kono statement about comfort women) on the basis that the (initial) definition (of coercion) had greatly changed.” Again, as I mentioned in my previous post, acknowledging the existence of a prostitution service, if that's what you mean by 'comfort women,' is not enough simply because it's the coercive, abusive, and lethal aspects that makes it uniquely comfort women; denying those aspects would be like denying the lethal aspect of the Holocaust while acknowledging the existence of housing blocks for the Jewish people. Also, what is this 'the initial definition of coercion had greatly changed' bullshit? Coercion is coercion. If we interpret this in the context of what you say below characterizing the mid twentieth century as a time of great and culturally accepted barbarism, it would seem like if something was so vicious it counts for coercion in those times, it surely would count for coercion today, no? Wibbleman posted:If you look into woman's history this is fairly common when woman have been treated as chattels and is abhorrent, but was legal at the time (and it is important when viewing history to take into account the societal norms of the time). The twentieth century is a time when women should be treated as chattel? And it was legal in Japan to do so? Not only is that untrue, it is completely irrelevant. Or did you intend that as a moral pass for what happened? Wibbleman posted:At no point have I claimed there were no abductions of woman for the "comfort woman" system. So why are you presenting the argument as if I am? Because it seems that you are saying Abe acknowledges the existence of comfort women. To me, it is inconceivable for Abe (or you, in your defense of him) to simultaneously hold these two positions: 1. Women were involuntarily abducted during WWII for sexual slavery 2. The comfort women program existed and there is no evidence of coercion If you agreed with me that women were involuntarily abducted during WWII as comfort women, and that this abduction characterized the program, then it would seem that you would also agree with me that Abe is denying the program's existence and instead affirming the existence of a fictional program that didn't involve coercion. I bolded the characterization part because that's what I think we might be disagreeing on. You mentioned that 50% of the comfort women were Japanese, which could lead to an image of the program as a legitimate prostitution operation with a few occasions of coercion; the reality is otherwise. I've cited third-party research papers that concluded the program was sexual slavery, nothing more, and as to the ethnicity of the participants, I've also cited sources (which you disagree on) that they were predominantly Korean and dead. Wibbleman posted:I think you are misquoting me or misinterpreting my point. I am not saying they didn't destroy any documents, but that it is patently obvious that some documentation exists, because there are websites with scans on them. To then turn around and say "they must have destroyed the worst stuff" is fine, but unless you can back that up with evidence it doesn't move the discussion anywhere. And the premise that the IJA had the wherewithal to be able to destroy all incriminating evidence gives them a bit too much credence, after all they were unable to destroy the documentation from Unit 731 and that stuff is far worse. I'm not turning around and saying they destroyed the worst stuff, that's what I meant in the first place - I mentioned that I'll allow that the Japanese didn't destroy every shred of evidence, but they were destroying evidence with the intention of absolving their war crimes. Here's an explanation from that US interagency research group on war crimes I cited in my previous post: Page 8 posted:An estimated 8 million pages of documents were declassified under the Nazi War The 100,000 papers found, compared to Germany's 8 million, points to a very thorough cleaning of data. Wibbleman posted:Except we are talking about the specific group of comfort woman in the comfort woman system, and not the raped and killed woman. So I am not sure what your point is again, that the IJA were a bunch of horrific shitheads? I won't argue that point because they were. That was my point. I was mentioning that if you count the number of women who have been systematically raped and killed by the IJA, whose treatment was no different, or worse, than that of comfort women, the numbers add up pretty quick. Not counting them would be like excluding Jewish citizens raped by soldiers from the count of those raped by concentration camp guards when considering sexual abuse during the Holocaust. It's a correct, technical exclusion, but excluding it makes Japan's WWII rape culture seem much less vicious than it was. Also, we both know what the IJA are capable of when it comes to women; do you think they'll follow a bureaucratic process when they can procure women outside official channels? It'll take at least a day for the most efficient process to finish, whereas official policy states that you can go out and grab a woman without repercussion if you want. Wibbleman posted:At no point is Arahune claiming what the UN report attributes to him. He is repeating another parties claim, so there is a whole document chain based on hearsay. I am not sure what to say if you want to continue to rely on that chain of evidence. Especially if statements to the negative are taken as fact, and statements otherwise are taken as false. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Arahune's actual statements or what he is sourcing from, so I can't chase that chain down even if I wanted to. But dismissing it as hearsay is a pretty biased thing to do when it's not even that unreasonable. As I mentioned before, his figures fall well within the range of conservative Japanese estimates of comfort women numbers. Wibbleman posted:Except it is a strawman, because you are building up a position that no one is holding just to break it down. BTW occidentalism.org is by a Austrialian and Ampotan is a American. So at no point is this what is taught at Japanese highschools. Stop crying strawman. I never accused you of holding that position, in the very quote you had above your accusation. Let me repeat what I said about civilian casualties: quote:Jesus Christ, and all this is just about comfort women. That's 200,000 people; we haven't even started discussing general Chinese and Korean civilian casualties yet. There is some serious, serious Overton window poo poo going on here. We're discussing the least debatable details of coerced prostitution and an internationally recognized human rights disaster. We're arguing over poo poo like whether prostitutes can go shopping when the reality is they were sex slaves. We're arguing over whether sex slaves happened when it's part of a bigger system that committed genocide that, when I broach it in the slightest manner when I mention the Three Alls policy, gets called a strawman. I was mentioning that this issue is a small part of the greater issue, and it's relevant to boot. How is the willingness of the IJA to kill and rape not a part of the issue when the whole comfort women scheme is an integral part of IJA operations? I didn't say you don't believe the IJA didn't kill and rape people anywhere in there; I mentioned that the Japanese war system merited discussion. Also, glad to know occidentalism.org is Australian, I would hate to see Japanese students learn stuff like occidentalism.org posted:For example, a commenter going by the name of “Void” wrote that the salary of a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army was only 110 yen per month, which means that the women would have been receiving almost triple the salary of a Japanese army lieutenant. (This is from your source stating that comfort women were paid for their time because the advertisements said so.) Good thing it's only a commenter and they're totally not spreading rumors that make these women look like egotistical greedy bitches! The sources you've provided are terrible, terrible denialist poo poo. Why the gently caress would you cite something that tries to play up how much money these comfort women earn when you also acknowledge that they don't earn jack and are sex slaves? Wibbleman posted:Except there isn't a law to stop hate speech in japan, so what law are they above again? Also it is a bit disingenuous, Abe got roasted in the Japanese press and by the rest of the diet for his comments, so it is far from representing the country. Wibbleman posted:I am not sure how much more genuine the Japanese Government can get.
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Oct 10, 2012 16:51
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flatbus posted:
There are multiple definitions of coercion under Japanese law. A wide and narrow definition. This is all of course in the context of responding to a US congressional resolution that many in the Japanese government viewed as historically inaccurate. I'll just quote my older post PrezCamachoo posted:Abe was arguing the semantics of the word "coercion". Whether it was a narrow or wide definition.
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Oct 10, 2012 17:44
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PrezCamachoo posted:There are multiple definitions of coercion under Japanese law. A wide and narrow definition. This is all of course in the context of responding to a US congressional resolution that many in the Japanese government viewed as historically inaccurate. You're seriously trying to say that comfort women, widely acknowledged as sex slaves, don't fit a narrow definition of forcible coercion? Here's a testimony from a 'comfort woman': quote:All I knew ― all I thought I knew ― was that I was going to work in a factory to earn money. I never dreamed that this could involve danger. … We arrived at Kunbuk station and transferred to a train. It was a public slow train, and traveled slowly down to Pusan, where we boarded a boat. The man who had brought us this far left us, and a Korean couple who said their home was in Shanghai took charge of us. The boat was huge. It had many decks, and we had to climb down many lights of stairs, right to the bottom of the boat to find our bunks. It was a ferry and took many other passengers. The crew brought us bread and water, and we sailed to Nagasaki. At Nagasaki, a vehicle resembling a bus came and took us to a guest‑house. From that moment on we were watched by soldiers. I asked one of them: “Why are you keeping us here? What kind of work are we going to do?” He simply replied that he only followed orders. On the first night there I was dragged before a high‑ranking solder and raped. He had a pistol. I was frightened at seeing myself bleed and I tried to run away. He patted my back and said that I would have to go through this experience whether I liked it or not, but that after a few times I would not feel so much pain. So, how narrow of a definition of coercion do you propose Abe had in his mind when he was talking about experiences like this? A woman was raped and prevented from running away, and continually raped after that. It was gut-wrenching to look at the date and realize the IJA started doing this to her in 1937. Also, it's disingenuous to post the rear end-covering apology from Abe and say it was from 'around the same time' he denied coercion being used on 'comfort women.' Of course it was around the same time, he was trying to cover himself for the diplomatic row he caused.
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Oct 10, 2012 19:47
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Why do you keep saying that Abe denied that comfort women were coerced? Abe never once denied that coercion was used on comfort women. He was arguing about the definition of coercion as it appeared on previous Japanese government apologies. He was talking about whether women were systematically coerced at gun point with the threat of violence (narrow) or through other coercive methods (wide). Either way, it's all irrelevant because once in the system, the coerced girls were defacto sex slaves until they paid off their "debts" and this is why Abe reiterated previous government statements of apology and issued his own additional apologies for the pain and suffering the women had to endure. The English translations that imply that Abe denied that comfort women were coerced are so far removed from his original Japanese statements as reported in the Japanese press as to suggest either. 1. a grossly incompetent translator 2. a willful mistranslation. I'm truly sorry you fell for that. PrezCamachoo fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 21:00
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PrezCamachoo posted:Why do you keep saying that Abe denied that comfort women were coerced? I, too, am truly sorry that every English source I've looked for or have been given by the posters here mistranslated Abe's comments. Could you please source an English translation of Abe's comments that supports your assertion?
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Oct 10, 2012 21:16
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flatbus posted:I, too, am truly sorry that every English source I've looked for or have been given by the posters here mistranslated Abe's comments. Could you please source an English translation of Abe's comments that supports your assertion? The original debate. http://www.japan-press.co.jp/pdf/special-2006-november.pdf
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Oct 10, 2012 21:30
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PrezCamachoo posted:The original debate. Thanks for posting that. All quotes below are from your source, emphasis mine. Abe questioning posted:I said that nothing substantiates the fact of coercion in the narrow sense of the word. So Abe in fact denied that there was a coercive element (a 'narrow' coercive element, to satisfy sex slave nitpickers) involved in the 'comfort women' scheme. This document explicitly states what all the other English translations have stated. Subsequently, Abe gets caught by the questioner on this and he squirms around and tries to deflect the question but he never flat-out says yes, there is coercion. Abe questioning posted:Shii: You have just said that the allegations about “coerciveness” in the narrow sense of the word are groundless. The “coerciveness in the narrow sense of the word,” I think, implies the coercion that was present in relation to the transfer of comfort women. However, the "Kono Statement" pointed out that there are many cases of women being recruited against their will. This is part of the government findings. Do you still deny everything including what you call cases of coercion in the narrow sense of the word? So Abe in fact denied that coercion was used on comfort women, and never owned up to an actual repudiation of his comments when he was further questioned on it. He puts on a nice show of changing subjects and referencing different statements to get out of the bind. It's important to note that this questioning happened after Abe mentioned that the Kono apology was false and irrelevant, which was mentioned in your source as well. Here, Abe says something that would but him at odds with the Kono apology, but insistently says he follows it. This is a clear contradiction, and given his history of questioning the apology I would say he's definitely not following it. flatbus fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 21:54
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No The translations of Abe's remarks were "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion,'' There is nothing about his distinctions between the narrow and wide definitions. And the western press was not bringing up the finer details of the minutes from his 1997 meetings that the communist party member brings up. PrezCamachoo fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 22:08
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PrezCamachoo posted:No Which, as I just pointed out, is completely irrelevant. How humanely narrow can your definition of coercion be such that it cannot be applied sexual slavery? It's coercion plain and simple, and the more you try to narrow the definition of coercion the more it fits. Threatening use of weapons? Check. Forcible violence? Check. Physical prevention of escape? Check. Even the idea that there exists a form of sexual slavery which can be non-serious enough that it falls under a wide definition of coercion and not a narrow one is disgusting.
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Oct 10, 2012 22:15
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Yea who cares about what actually happened with the comfort women? Maybe the Japanese government should simply accept all blame leveled at it including the crimes that are not directly attributed to them. After all, aren't friendly relationships with neighbors and allies more important than any scholarly interests in finer details? Scholarly debates could continue in its own circle. But what harm is really done if the general public ends up believing in a falsified simplified version of history? Those who are interested can always find the more nuanced facts of the comfort women system on their own. You do realize that Abe is only arguing how women got from A --> B while still saying that B is sexual slavery and horrible? PrezCamachoo fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 22:38
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PrezCamachoo posted:Yea who cares about what actually happened with the comfort women? You just revealed some suspicions I had about the reasoning behind right-wing Japanese nationalism. Looks like if I dig at the beliefs of denialism deep enough I get to see its terrible axioms firsthand. Do you disagree with any of the following: 1. Comfort women, and other currently existing, surviving victims of atrocities don't matter and no one cares about what actually happened with them. 2. The actions of the Imperial Japanese Army is not directly attributable to the Japanese government. 3. A near-decade's worth of sexual slavery and genocide that affects an existing population and has human victims who are still alive and recall those events firsthand is irrelevant scholar fodder. 4. The public is not harmed by a version of history which ignores or diminishes the atrocities its government has committed in the past. 5. Human atrocities should be left to be discovered only by those who are interested in it. All I've done is reword the sentiments you've expressed in your quote as statements instead of rhetorical questions. If you disagree with any of the statements above, congratulations, you've got yourself a contradiction you need to sort out before you start making GBS threads on people's suffering and telling their families that no one cares about what happened. fake edit: PrezCamachoo posted:You do realize that Abe is only arguing how women got from A --> B while still saying that B is sexual slavery and horrible? That interpretation did occur to me. Abe could have been saying that using fake factory jobs, for example, to trick women into going to rape centers was not coercive. Similarly, I suppose you could say that tricking men and women into 'shower rooms' in concentration camps is not coercive either! If they volunteered under false pretenses and was subsequently coerced when they discovered those pretenses were false, it's... in that gap between 'wide' and 'narrow' coercion, right? Following your goalposts out of the field and into the parking lot, and applying the most liberal interpretation of Abe logic, his statement is still victim-blaming and counterfactual. real edit: You mentioned that for the sake of friendly relations, China and Korea should drop the comfort women issue. Unfortunately, the comfort women issue, along with various other WWII crimes that Japan continuously ignores or denies, is the cause of difficult relations. It's a bit strange to ask other countries to drop their grievances so that Japan can have good relations with those countries. Also, removed the  I had going since it wasn't necessary.
flatbus fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 23:20
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What Abe is saying is that there is no historical evidence that the Japanese military went around themselves and systematically rounded up women against their will at gun point to be shipped off to the front to serve as 慰安婦(comfort women). This is what he means by the narrow definition of coercion. Abe does say that women were coerced - that most comfort women were tricked into being comfort women by local civilian agents acting on behalf of the military who generally lied about what kind of work the girls were going to do. Please note that he is only talking about how most women became comfort women. Not what happened after they became them. There is no debate on the horrors that comfort women were subject to after they became comfort women. PrezCamachoo fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Oct 11, 2012 |
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Oct 11, 2012 00:16
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flatbus posted:
That's not what I said. Please re-read it.
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Oct 11, 2012 00:21
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Final post: gota do stuff There is overwhelming historical evidence that Abe's view of the coercion of comfort women was what really happened and the Japanese military did not systematically go around Korea kidnapping random girls to ship off to be sex slaves.
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Oct 11, 2012 00:24
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PrezCamachoo posted:Final post: gota do stuff So there is overwhelming historical evidence that the Japanese military did not systematically kidnap Korean women to be sex slaves, but instead, through random non-systemic interactions, hundreds of thousands of Korean women blundered into Japanese camps where they became sex slaves? I see we're back to this again. Where is your overwhelming historical evidence? Let's cut the nitpicking bullshit. Here's my historical evidence (it would be overwhelming had the documents not been burned): Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, emphasis mine: Page 18 posted:James Lide summarizes the war-crimes–related materials located in the recently declassified records at NARA. His focus is on the limited number of documents pertinent to war crimes and their often vague or incomplete information. No large corpus of documentation remained classified on the Nanjing massacre, the “comfort women” issue, or Unit 731, although scattered references to bacteriological/chemical warfare and the kidnapping of women and girls by Japanese troops were noted. Page 60 posted:However, newly released State Department records include several valuable documents that help illuminate postwar policies regarding clemency granted to convicted Japanese war criminals in the 1950s. In addition to records documenting discussions between Japan and the United States regarding procedural issues, the new State Department materials also include memos relating to conversations between the United States and its wartime allies. It's unfortunate that the Allies struck a deal to hide a lot of the information. Well, there's a little bit more we can gather: Page 69 posted:There is very little in the new OSS records relating to forced prostitution, with the exception of a few documents that report the kidnapping of women and girls. These include a translation of a 1943 Chinese newspaper describing the Japanese occupation in Singapore that reports Japanese forces had taken four hundred Chinese women. 31 and 32 are in-document citations to files I don't have access to, unfortunately. Anyway, want some more evidence? Here's a court case involving comfort women and Japan that were forced into sexual slavery at gunpoint, but the case was thrown out because the court, a US court, did not have jurisdiction. Judges did offer their sympathies though. Maybe that's too recent for you? Let's go old-school, to the original International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1948: Chapter VIII Conventional War Crimes (Atrocities) posted:In September 1941, the Japanese troops of the Sixth Division forced more than 200 Chinese prisoners of war to plunder large quantities of rice, wheat and other commodities. Upon their return, the Japanese soldiers, to conceal these crimes, massacred them by artillery fire. After the Japanese forces had occupied Changsha, they also freely indulged in murder, rape, incendiarism and many other atrocities throughout the district. Then they drove further down southward to Keilin and Liuchow in Kwangsi Province. During the period of Japanese occupation of Kwelin, they committed all kinds of atrocities such as rape and plunder. They recruited women labour on the pretext of establishing factories. They forced the women thus recruited into prostitution with Japanese troops. Prior to their withdrawal from Kweilin in July 1945, the Japanese troops organized an arson corps and set fire to buildings in the entire business district of Kweilin. And I think you'll probably dismiss the following one since it's a court case that was dismissed (for the sake of jurisdiction), but I found an interesting court case in which survivors sued a DC court for damages during WWII. Of course, the US tossed it out for jurisdiction reasons, but if you're willing to believe their testimonies, they do insist that they were kidnapped. Court case, the first court opinion: Hwang Geum Joo, et al v. Japan posted:The appellants allege that between 1931 and 1945 the Government of Japan abducted, Also, you have to stop saying one thing and then immediately saying another. PrezCamachoo posted:
PrezCamachoo posted:After all, aren't friendly relationships with neighbors and allies more important than any scholarly interests in finer details? Scholarly debates could continue in its own circle. Anyway, I've presented my evidence; where's yours? And I hope you come back to the thread, I'd like to know which of the five terrible beliefs I listed previously you disagree with, or if you subscribe whole-heartedly to whitewashing history. 
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Oct 11, 2012 01:30
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Remember that there is a difference between the formal comfort women system that was based on existing prostitution in Japan AND the ad hoc abuse of women in occupied areas. Comfort women were not rounded up by the military as an official policy directed by Japanese high command, as they are often accused. That doesn't mean that it didn't happen in occupied areas during the war. It just means that kidnapping at gunpoint was not the defining characteristic of the recruitment of comfort women. Can we agree on that? And let me point it out again - no one in Japan or on this forum is debating the abuses that happened after women became official comfort women.
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Oct 11, 2012 02:09
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I will reply to other posts later, but this needs a quick response.PrezCamachoo posted:Comfort women were not rounded up by the military as an official policy directed by Japanese high command, as they are often accused. That doesn't mean that it didn't happen in occupied areas during the war. It just means that kidnapping at gunpoint was not the defining characteristic of the recruitment of comfort women. Can we agree on that? Errr I wouldn't go saying that. After all one of the 8 Korean woman who won her lawsuit against the Japanese Government in the 80's because that is exactly what happened to her (she was abducted at gunpoint). Which is why Abe's comments are bullshit, but not because he is denying that comfort woman existed. edit because no one else has posted. flatbus posted:No, that is not what Abe said. In the alternative translations you cited in your quote, Your specific statement was the Abe denied that comfort woman existed. If your statment was that abe had made some horrific and stupid statements about them, I wouldn't have called you on it, because that is true. But at no point during the meeting quoted did he deny that they existed. flatbus posted:The twentieth century is a time when women should be treated as chattel? And it was legal in Japan to do so? Not only is that untrue, it is completely irrelevant. Or did you intend that as a moral pass for what happened? Except Slavery existed in Korea at the time of the Japanese invasion (Nobi), and woman were treated as chattel in some circumstances. Yes it is repungnant today, but you need to view history as a whole and not as isolated context's. Links because there are lots: http://www.asian-studies.org/absts/2006abst/Korea/k-116.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery#Korea http://eng.buddhapia.com/_Service/_ContentView/ETC_CONTENT_2.ASP?PK=0000594132&danrak_no=&clss_cd=&top_menu_cd=0000000808 quote:Such contentions invariably directed scathing critiques against the irrationality of Confucian androcentrism, which had reduced women to the state of chattel and to simple biological mechanisms for reproduction under the dicta of namjon yobi (respect men, depreciate women), yop'il chongbu (women should follow men), samjong chido (three rules of obedience), and ch'ilgo chiak (seven rules of divorce) And some woman are still treated as Chattel today. http://www.unicef.org/pon97/women1b.htm UNICEF posted:
At no point does this excuse the Japanese from what they have done, but you seemed to express surpise that a Korean family would sell someone to the Japanese. An example of this is "Kim Gunja suspects that her foster father, a policeman, sold her for money or promotion." But that shouldn't exclude them from being apologised to either. flatbus posted:Because it seems that you are saying Abe acknowledges the existence of comfort women. To me, it is inconceivable for Abe (or you, in your defense of him) to simultaneously hold these two positions: Except as previously discussed, in Japanese law there exists two types of Coercion, at gunpoint, and other methods. He is incorrectly claiming that no evidence exists for the first, but it does exist for the 2nd. None of these things means that he denies the existance of comfort woman. I am not defending abe, I personally think he is irredeemable as a person. But I object to atributing quotes to people on things they didn't say. He has enough choice quotes to go down in flames on his own. flatbus posted:I'm not turning around and saying they destroyed the worst stuff, that's what I meant in the first place - I mentioned that I'll allow that the Japanese didn't destroy every shred of evidence, but they were destroying evidence with the intention of absolving their war crimes. Here's an explanation from that http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf US interagency research group on war crimes I cited in my previous post: Thats fine and well, but when you are specifally discussing the comfort woman system, and not how lovely the IJA is, it's kind of pointless. Yes they are roughly equivilent but they are different issues. flatbus posted:Unfortunately, I don't have access to Arahune's actual statements or what he is sourcing from, so I can't chase that chain down even if I wanted to. But dismissing it as hearsay is a pretty biased thing to do when it's not even that unreasonable. As I mentioned before, his figures fall well within the range of conservative Japanese estimates of comfort women numbers. the issue is that he was selectively quoted and skipped out on the "there are claims" part. Which changes the meaning of the whole sentence. flatbus posted:Stop crying strawman. I never accused you of holding that position, in the very quote you had above your accusation. Let me repeat what I said about civilian casualties: Well if you stop debating points no one is making, then I will stop crying strawman. flatbus posted:(This is from your source stating that comfort women were paid for their time because the advertisements said so.) Good thing it's only a commenter and they're totally not spreading rumors that make these women look like egotistical greedy bitches! The sources you've provided are terrible, terrible denialist poo poo. Why the gently caress would you cite something that tries to play up how much money these comfort women earn when you also acknowledge that they don't earn jack and are sex slaves? No one (edit)here(/edit) is calling them egotistical bitches, the (edit)blogs(/edit) are presenting the opinion that some of them were paid to be prostitues initially. How is that so terrible? Lots of woman do it. In most of the cases there would have been coercion of some degree, in some cases that would be finincal coercion in which there are examples. In no way does that diminish their suffering. flatbus posted:Yes, there aren't laws in place now. What I was saying was, if Japan wanted to, they could pass sensitive laws regarding this issue. Do you remember what Abe's remarks were triggered by? The US House of Representatives considering a bill censuring comfort women operations. I'm sure the Diet can do the same, and stick to it this time, no? I can't even be bothered by the bold bit anymore, your simply not debating in good faith. You keep falling back on things that were not said. Wibbleman fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Oct 11, 2012 |
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Oct 11, 2012 03:49
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No one is denying those crimes happened. (But I would like to read about it if you got a link) The argument in Japan is whether or not military abductions with the threat of violence were common enough to be the defining feature of comfort women recruitment. And whether or not the Japanese high command specifically ordered these abductions.
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Oct 11, 2012 05:48
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When did this become the Japanese thread about comfort women? I thought this thread was about China? Maybe you guys could start a thread about Japan and post in there instead of this massive derail?
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Oct 11, 2012 07:25
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imnotinsane posted:When did this become the Japanese thread about comfort women? I thought this thread was about China? Maybe you guys could start a thread about Japan and post in there instead of this massive derail? Japanese thread about comfort women? Why emphasize the Japanese aspect when there were Chinese victims on Chinese soil as part of a Chinese defensive war? It's a part of Chinese history. Hell, the general attitude of denialism, which is behind what we're arguing here, is part of the reasoning behind recent Diaoyu islands protests, so no, it's not a derail. I'm done arguing here though, it's pretty draining to argue with denialists who just ignore what you say and quibble about extremely minor details as if they were relevant or absolves their position of denial. flatbus fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Oct 11, 2012 |
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Oct 11, 2012 15:05
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I think in the end everyone here except flatbus can all agree that the whole "comfort women" thing was not a big deal and didn't really happen. I, like all the other members of this thread, do of course actively deny that this was ever anything but a bunch of money-grubbing bitches and whores just trying to make an extra buck once their easy ride with the Imperial Japanese Army was over by claiming they were coerced into 'rape jobs'. Guess we'll all just have to agree to disagree with you on this one flatbus!
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Oct 11, 2012 16:02
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Fall Sick and Die posted:I think in the end everyone here except flatbus can all agree that the whole "comfort women" thing was not a big deal and didn't really happen. I, like all the other members of this thread, do of course actively deny that this was ever anything but a bunch of money-grubbing bitches and whores just trying to make an extra buck once their easy ride with the Imperial Japanese Army was over by claiming they were coerced into 'rape jobs'. Guess we'll all just have to agree to disagree with you on this one flatbus! FSAD, are you Prime Minister Abe and/or someone who has been participating in the 'comfort women' discussion? Because if you're not, then you should understand that, by virtue of not being in the discussion, I wasn't talking about you at all. But then you wouldn't be able to laugh at straw men and make humors, right? There's this thing that's been happening where people say other people never made certain claims when they have, literally just a few posts ago. Are you so blindingly self-righteous that you're willing to believe no one has made the argument that the 'comfort women' scheme was not a big thing, when just a few posts above you must have read this? PrezCamachoo posted:Yea who cares about what actually happened with the comfort women?
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Oct 11, 2012 16:29
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flatbus posted:There's this thing that's been happening where people say other people never made certain claims when they have, literally just a few posts ago. Are you so blindingly self-righteous that you're willing to believe no one has made the argument that the 'comfort women' scheme was not a big thing, when just a few posts above you must have read this? Wait, really? Are you telling us you mistook sarcasm for a real argument?
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Oct 11, 2012 22:19
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CIGNX posted:Wait, really? Are you telling us you mistook sarcasm for a real argument? I'd wait for PrezCamachoo to claim Poe's Law first. I don't see why I should mistake his statement for sarcasm when he subsequently tried to defend it.
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Oct 11, 2012 22:27
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flatbus posted:I'd wait for PrezCamachoo to claim Poe's Law first. I don't see why I should mistake his statement for sarcasm when he subsequently tried to defend it. It was obvious to me that he was being sarcastic, but he was still making terrible, hair-splitting arguments in defense of Japanese ultra-nationalists.
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Oct 11, 2012 22:32
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Silver2195 posted:It was obvious to me that he was being sarcastic, but he was still making terrible, hair-splitting arguments in defense of Japanese ultra-nationalists. Well, looks like I'll have to get my sarcasm detector fine-tuned. I mean, he did seriously advocate this position afterward PrezCamachoo posted:There is overwhelming historical evidence that Abe's view of the coercion of comfort women was what really happened and the Japanese military did not systematically go around Korea kidnapping random girls to ship off to be sex slaves. so you can see why I hesitated to treat his beliefs as sarcasm.
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Oct 11, 2012 22:40
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CIGNX posted:Wait, really? Are you telling us you mistook sarcasm for a real argument? Given that a few weeks ago he was claiming China was in the process of invading Japan, well, who knows?
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Oct 12, 2012 03:08
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Grand Fromage posted:I can't answer the opinion part, but Japan has made dozens of apologies to Korea. They even paid reparations, which Pak Chung-hee took and spent on building factories instead of giving it to the victims it was intended for. It was kept secret until quite recently, there's a lawsuit against the Korean government for it but most Korean people aren't aware of any of these and insist Japan has never apologized. The Korean government doesn't mention the truth at all since "gently caress Japan" is always a handy thing to throw out to distract people from internal problems. Grand Fromage posted:I don't know about China, but Korea absolutely did. This is from a page or so ago, but this is such a gross distortion of the Treaty of Basic Relations that a rebuttal is really necessary here. In the first place, Park Chung-Hee was a military dictator who, today's nostalgia notwithstanding, was widely viewed as illegitimate by large parts of the population of South Korea during his rule. There was a great deal of criticism of the Treaty of Basic Relations when its details were first made public- so much so that martial law was declared. The Japanese weren't idiots. They knew full well when they crafted this treaty who Park Chung-Hee was, and that this was a deal they could never reasonably expect to make under a legitimitate government. You can't expect Korean people, writ-large, to accept an agreement that was strongly protested at the time of its creation by blaming the corrupt dictator for misappropriating the funds. Probably half the reason they were protesting in the first place is because they were expecting him to misuse the funds and not actually do anything for the Lastly, Koreans aren't idiots either. They know that all of this is true of the 1965 agreement, at least to the extent that we also remember major cultural events in our country from forty-five years ago. It's just really irrelevant to the greater debate for the reasons I outline above. And even if you take the treaty at face value the reparations are pretty piss-poor- adjusted for inflation, it's a $15,000 lump sum if you can prove you were injured, $1500 if you can't. Contrast Holocaust survivors, who are paid a lifetime pension by the German government. edit: The existence of comfort women was not widely known at the time the Treaty was drafted, so they can only be grandfathered into its terms. Which makes the Treaty's significance to this discussion even less relevant. Immunity from prosecution concerning crimes on the scale of those committed against comfort women aren't something that can be bargained away in treaties, and it's very unlikely they would have even tried if comfort women were a part of the national discourse back then. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Oct 12, 2012 |
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Oct 12, 2012 09:16
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An interesting article I read: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/29/163622534/chinas-new-leaders-inherit-country-at-a-crossroads
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Oct 30, 2012 07:44
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Many of my college students here in China are unaware that they will soon have new leadership.
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Oct 30, 2012 07:52
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This weeks' Sinica is a totally pro-click. Seriously. Go on iTunes and search Sinica podcast. It will take you 10 minutes. It's all about the upcoming leadership transition and just how completely opaque everything is. The world has virtually no information about the Chinese leadership of next year, nor is there any available. There's some hope that the princelings will rule better than the current group of cautious consensus-builders who have proven so ineffective in a system with so many entrenched stakeholders. It's just hope though. There are guesses as to what the factions are and who belongs to what faction, but they are based on the thinnest shreds of evidence. Main takeaway: nobody, anywhere, knows anything about the incoming leadership of China, the 2nd largest economy in the world. Not even the Chinese. Especially not the Chinese.
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Oct 30, 2012 09:05
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Here in Shenzhen police+military is randomly having checkpoints (at subway stations, train stations etc.) to check Chinese people ID:s. Is this happening in other cities? As a foreigner they were not interested in me so I just danced past them. Wondering what is the purpose of it and if it is for the party meeting... then why even bother?
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Oct 30, 2012 09:32
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I don't know about anyone else but I got a "yearning for ol' left" years from people interviewed in that NPR article, or at the very least a movement toward the left again (economic). I'm not sure why, I mean China has been doing very well.Longanimitas posted:Many of my college students here in China are unaware that they will soon have new leadership. I was ironically talking to one of my Chinese friends here about the politics in China. She was actually talking about their upcoming "elections". punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Oct 30, 2012 |
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Oct 30, 2012 09:33
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punk rebel ecks posted:I don't know about anyone else but I got a "yearning for ol' left" years from people interviewed in that NPR article, or at the very least a movement toward the left again (economic). I'm not sure why, I mean China has been doing very well. There will be elections. Just normal people have nothing to do with it. You need a big belly, bad teeth, black Audi and an outdated hairstyle to vote who will be in TV for the next ten years. I like to think of it as kind of a reality show.
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Oct 30, 2012 10:21
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punk rebel ecks posted:I don't know about anyone else but I got a "yearning for ol' left" years from people interviewed in that NPR article, or at the very least a movement toward the left again (economic). I'm not sure why, I mean China has been doing very well. I mean, if you wannna aim for something why not the best? You certainly wouldn't want to emulate a failed state like the US. Or maybe it's just that they're missing having an actual working ethical framework for society instead of just rampant materialistic capitalism?
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Oct 30, 2012 17:13
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Or maybe it's just that they're missing having an actual working ethical framework for society instead of just rampant materialistic capitalism? The idea that China needs some sort of "new" ethic framework for society though has being around for literally the last ~100 years, starting around the May 4th movement (or even earlier) when old Confucian values showed itself to be clearly obsolete for the modern world. So you had the 1920s and one version of nationalism (and a million other ideas), but that failed, then you had Marxist-Leninism in the 1950-1979, and that went out the window. So in some ways China never really got over the exactly same question which was asked in 1919, which is what exactly is suppose to replace "traditional Confucian values".
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Oct 30, 2012 17:54
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Arglebargle III posted:This weeks' Sinica is a totally pro-click. Seriously. Go on iTunes and search Sinica podcast. It will take you 10 minutes. Love Sinica Podcast, those guys are good and almost always talking about interesting and relevant China news. You can also get the podcasts on their site here if you don't use iTunes.
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Oct 30, 2012 18:05
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Typo posted:I feel this statement could be made for a number (ok every other) country that's not China. Typo posted:The idea that China needs some sort of "new" ethic framework for society though has being around for literally the last ~100 years, starting around the May 4th movement (or even earlier) when old Confucian values showed itself to be clearly obsolete for the modern world. (I'd personally start the attempt at making a modern national ideological thang at the 100 day reforms, as it was the first large scale organized answer to the perceived backwardness of then modern Confucianism, but to each his own).
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Oct 30, 2012 18:31
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Nooot sure what your meaning is there dawg.
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Oct 31, 2012 00:37
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