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Wittgen posted:This article said the surviving comfort women were angry that the agreement didn't involve Japan taking legal responsibility. Can someone explain this because I don't really understand what legal responsibility would entail. All the people whose committed those crimes are surely long dead. What difference is there between ambiguously and unambiguously taking legal responsibility besides semantics? Reparation payments to the survivors and their families would probably be on the table if Japan took official responsibility for the comfort women. IIRC Japan actually made a few payments right after the war, but they were small and they basically disappeared in the post-war chaos.
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Dec 29, 2015 01:15
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Rochallor posted:Reparation payments to the survivors and their families would probably be on the table if Japan took official responsibility for the comfort women. IIRC Japan actually made a few payments right after the war, but they were small and they basically disappeared in the post-war chaos. Wasn't there a secret agreement/payment made in the 80s, which the South Korean government (a dictatorship at the time, IIRC) promptly plowed into state businesses rather than repay victims or something? Edit: sounds  as heck and I'm trying to find a source, but Google results are now swamped with the most recent news.
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Dec 29, 2015 01:21
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Wasn't there a secret agreement/payment made in the 80s, which the South Korean government (a dictatorship at the time, IIRC) promptly plowed into state businesses rather than repay victims or something? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Basic_Relations_between_Japan_and_the_Republic_of_Korea quote:The documents, kept secret for 40 years, recorded that the Japanese government actually proposed to the South Korean government to directly compensate individual victims but it was the South Korean government which insisted that it would handle individual compensation to its citizens and then received the whole amount of grants on behalf of the victims.[8][9][10]
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Dec 29, 2015 01:52
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mystes posted:Wasn't this the 1965 agreement? That's definitely what I was remembering, thanks.
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Dec 29, 2015 04:13
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Rochallor posted:Reparation payments to the survivors and their families would probably be on the table if Japan took official responsibility for the comfort women. IIRC Japan actually made a few payments right after the war, but they were small and they basically disappeared in the post-war chaos. Wait, so the 8.3 million dollars Japan has pledged for the care of the survivors aren't reparation payments? Or would being legally responsible mean more money? If the survivors are going to just hold unreasoning, eternal hatred for Japan, that's completely understandable. I just want to know if there is something actually lacking about the apology.
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Dec 29, 2015 06:59
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mystes posted:Wasn't this the 1965 agreement? Yup, that's the one.
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Dec 29, 2015 07:04
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Is the Korean political right as awful as the Japanese? I suspect it is, but just to confirm
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2015 07:20
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Wittgen posted:Wait, so the 8.3 million dollars Japan has pledged for the care of the survivors aren't reparation payments? Or would being legally responsible mean more money? How many survivors does that 8.3 million get split between? Is it enough for them each to get an "I got some sweet reparations ¥" t-shirts, or do they have to share?
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Dec 29, 2015 07:23
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Toshimo posted:How many survivors does that 8.3 million get split between? Is it enough for them each to get an "I got some sweet reparations ¥" t-shirts, or do they have to share? The article said of the victims who have come forward, only 46 are still living. A couple hundred thousand dollars seems like not enough for what they went through. But then again, what would be enough? It does seem like enough for a very old woman to live comfortably for the rest of her life.
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Dec 29, 2015 08:11
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Sure Japan has apologised, but it doesn't help Japanese relations with its neighbours when its Prime Minister is part of a massacre denial group Issuing an apology and then going to Yasukini the next day with a bunch of law makers will make people mad. And you get poo poo like this http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33754932 posted:Mr Abe does not deny there were Korean women serving as comfort women near the frontlines in China and South East Asia. Then there are fringe events like textbook revisionism and all. caberham fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2015 08:15
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caberham posted:Sure Japan has apologised, but it doesn't help Japanese relations with its neighbours when its Prime Minister is part of a massacre denial group Yeah but by this point surely the Koreans understand the Japanese right is never going to drop the revisionist idolization of the pre-1945 regime. If their plan is to never ever ever work with Japan that's fine but then the demands for apologies are sort of just concern trolling. The Japanese right would have to denounce the entire Imperial period, its society and political regime, and they're never going to do that icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2015 08:18
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caberham posted:Sure Japan has apologised, but it doesn't help Japanese relations with its neighbours when its Prime Minister is part of a massacre denial group That may not be technically incorrect, specifically in the case of Korea. In China on the front lines etc women were basically rounded up as spoils of war, but in Korea where things were more stable it was by most accounts basically prostitution. This doesn't absolve Japan of guilt in any way, especially since they were still a colonial occupier, but it puts their sins in Korea more in line with all the other imperial powers of the era. The Japanese military in Korea probably really didn't do much if any large scale rounding up or coercing of women, but they sure as hell contracted it out to others, such as existing prostituation networks etc, and obviously didn't give many shits about whether the girls there were found via legitimate means or were kidnapped or sold by destitute parents or whathaveyou. So basically the likely reality was still extremely lovely, but it adds in the additional element of collaborators and pre-existing groups exploiting women, and in general goes against the Korean far-right narrative that the Japanese are a special type of monster, rather than the normal type of imperial rear end in a top hat. Note again this is separate from China where things were overall vastly more hosed up in every way.
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Dec 29, 2015 09:23
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icantfindaname posted:Is the Korean political right as awful as the Japanese? I suspect it is, but just to confirm Kill all right wingers. Thanks. Oh and the Chinese communist party are secretly fascists.
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Dec 29, 2015 10:16
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caberham posted:Kill all right wingers. Thanks. Oh and the Chinese communist party are secretly fascists. I agree, but it would be nice to have more detailed knowledge about the ideological character of Korean politics. I don't know very much beyond the whole dictatorship thing icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2015 10:20
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icantfindaname posted:Is the Korean political right as awful as the Japanese? I suspect it is, but just to confirm Yeah more or less. They're also absurdly pro-corporate, somewhat pro-immigration oddly (the Korean left is generally the more racist side), and ultra evangelist Christian.
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Dec 29, 2015 14:46
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you always hear about the racism between the Chinese/Koreans/Japanese, what're the racists' views on other Asian countries such as Taiwan and SE Asia?
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Dec 29, 2015 15:04
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shrike82 posted:you always hear about the racism between the Chinese/Koreans/Japanese, what're the racists' views on other Asian countries such as Taiwan and SE Asia? They (meaning East Asians) don't like brown people. The browner they are the less they like them. So you get a sort of sliding spectrum from NE Asia down to India, from what I've read
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Dec 29, 2015 15:22
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shrike82 posted:you always hear about the racism between the Chinese/Koreans/Japanese, what're the racists' views on other Asian countries such as Taiwan and SE Asia?
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Dec 29, 2015 16:23
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that CNN feature on enjo kosai is something special
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Dec 29, 2015 17:22
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Kilroy posted:Japan and Taiwan get along well enough, relatively speaking. The Taiwanese natives (as in, not the Han refugees) like the Japanese because they were benevolent colonial powers, at least compared to the GMD Chinese that came after them.
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Dec 29, 2015 18:05
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computer parts posted:The Taiwanese natives (as in, not the Han refugees) like the Japanese because they were benevolent colonial powers, at least compared to the GMD Chinese that came after them. Isn't it really more like the Han that lived there already, as opposed to the later refugees? When you say natives I think of the aborigines, who as I recall kinda got hosed over by the Japanese in general.
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Dec 29, 2015 19:29
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LimburgLimbo posted:Isn't it really more like the Han that lived there already, as opposed to the later refugees? When you say natives I think of the aborigines, who as I recall kinda got hosed over by the Japanese in general. They did. The initial suppression of the aborigines was brutal. The Hakka and other "Chinese" minorities ended up reaping the benefits of living in the port cities and weren't forced to assimilate like the Koreans were. A good degree of it is nostalgia and propaganda. The history of Taiwan is marked by waves of people attempting to get away from somewhere or someone else and then being conquered by outsiders. The outsiders are all unpopular but the more immediate wave is less popular than the one barely anyone remembers. It's not like the island was mostly Polynesian tribes as well, it was the frontier and wild west from at least the Han Dynasty until the Japanese conquest. Even then it was still the frontier.
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Dec 29, 2015 19:56
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Random q but is there any country founded by colonists which hasn't mistreated its indigenous population?
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Dec 29, 2015 20:00
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shrike82 posted:Random q but is there any country founded by colonists which hasn't mistreated its indigenous population? I think New Zealand is commonly acknowledged as being the least nasty; the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi isn't perfect but the very fact that it gave the indigenous population rights equal to that of British citizens and recognized their ownership of their land, and, thanks to the 1867 Maori Representation Act, gave them designated seats in Parliament, was and still is revolutionary. Really Big Caveats: - The Treaty wasn't signed by all Maori parties - Lots of nasty land wars and land confiscations - Major population drop from 86,000 in 1769 to, at its lowest point, 42,000 in 1869, as the result of disease, war, assimilation, land loss leading to alcoholism and general poor health, etc. All of which 
Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2015 20:28
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Combed Thunderclap posted:I think New Zealand is commonly acknowledged as being the least nasty; the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi isn't perfect but the very fact that it gave the indigenous population rights equal to that of British citizens and recognized their ownership of their land, and, thanks to the 1867 Maori Representation Act, gave them designated seats in Parliament, was and still is revolutionary. Other caveats would include the Treaty itself being written and signed under highly questionable (at best) circumstances, including the document itself being a self-contradictory mess, not to mention the significant inconsistencies in the translations between the English and Te Reo Maori versions that give considerable credence to the belief that the Treaty of Waitangi was basically a con perpetrated on Maori. edogawa rando fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 00:53
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Vagabundo posted:Other caveats would include Those are also really important, thank you for going more into depth. 
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Dec 30, 2015 01:02
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Something like the British in Aden or the Trucial States might be better, but those weren't colonies so much as they were naval bases which bribed local rulers into going under British suzerainty. And of course the everyday citizen of those places didn't have many rights, though it wasn't the British who were keeping them down so much as said local rulers.
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Dec 30, 2015 01:29
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It should be noted that Taiwan was a model colony since it was Japan's first and during a period of time where the Japanese elites wanted to be accepted by the Great Powers. This is also the same reason Japan behaved incredibly well during the Russo-Japanese War because they felt it was another opportunity to show how great they were. This all went out the window though after Japan was blocked from getting what they wanted after the Russo-Japanese War and increasing attempts by the other powers to contain their ambitions. Edit: Japanese colonialism is pretty weird and distinct because it was only done on a small scale was either run by often idealistic technocrats, Taiwan, or the military, Korea. The Pacific islands were an exception because there were so few people on them the Japanese didn't really have any policy since they were almost nonentities. Japan was also such a chaotic and schizophrenic place during the interwar years as well that it's hard to get a clear picture of how anything was handled since it changed all the time. If anything, the Taiwanese benefited from neglect and indecision while the Koreans suffered under the ambitions of fascistic military governors. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 03:03
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It should be noted that Taiwan was a model colony since it was Japan's first and during a period of time where the Japanese elites wanted to be accepted by the Great Powers. I guess this answers my question, which was going to be "why doesn't the right wing obsess over the period where Japan was doing OK and not the period where they bit off way more than they could chew and then got all their poo poo wrecked?"
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Dec 30, 2015 06:51
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wdarkk posted:I guess this answers my question, which was going to be "why doesn't the right wing obsess over the period where Japan was doing OK and not the period where they bit off way more than they could chew and then got all their poo poo wrecked?" 1870-1945 is a long time period, they only really bit off more than they could chew in invading China. They probably could even have gotten away with taking Manchuria if they hadn't invaded China thereafter
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Dec 30, 2015 09:58
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icantfindaname posted:1870-1945 is a long time period, they only really bit off more than they could chew in invading China. They probably could even have gotten away with taking Manchuria if they hadn't invaded China thereafter Yep, up until the Mukden incident Japan wasn't really doing all that bad. Again typical imperialist bullshit but very much a norm for the time. Like literally everything that Japan is demonized for happens after the political breakdown of Japan and the Mukden incident when poo poo went crazy with direct military invasion into China.
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Dec 30, 2015 10:13
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LimburgLimbo posted:Yep, up until the Mukden incident Japan wasn't really doing all that bad. Again typical imperialist bullshit but very much a norm for the time. Like literally everything that Japan is demonized for happens after the political breakdown of Japan and the Mukden incident when poo poo went crazy with direct military invasion into China. Well, there's also Korea, Taiwan, and the whole right-wing authoritarian ideology that animated the modern Japanese state from very beginning up to the war. The point is that the problem with modern Japan/the Japanese right isn't just in its recognition of events that happened between 1937 and 1945, it's the entire 1870-1930 period icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 10:56
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nickmeister posted:Wow, yeah, exactly what I was thinking about. Have you played this game? Is it good, or just good ol' heavy-handed anime? It's Mobile Suit Gundam-style "we're trying to be a realistic military/political drama with fictional tech" anime. It also has an Italian guy who gets stuck with the "coward nationality" stereotype that Americans used to stick French people with, which I thought was an interesting thing to find in a Japanese game. It stands to reason that they wouldn't have the same European steretypes as we do, after all.
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Jan 18, 2016 08:23
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ocrumsprug posted:There is no apology that will ever be accepted, and Japan is running out of people concerned enough to keep trying. This isn't true on either count. The group which represents surviving comfort women would probably accept a settlement if it included legal responsibility. Japan doesn't want this because it would set a precedent where they might have to pay out damages to individuals from other countries like (horror of horrors) China. Also, as recently as 2012 a left-of-center party was in power in Japan, and seemed more willing to mend relations with China and Korea. Obviously things didn't work out then, but there have been a lot of left-wing protests recently and it wouldn't be terribly surprising if a coalition of opposition parties took the upper house in 2016. Abe's move to strike a deal with Korea is probably an attempt to resolve the issue before a more left-wing government makes a compromise that's "worse" (from a right-wing war-crime-denialist perspective). P.S. I don't know if it's your intention but you come across as defending the stance of Japan's right-wing. Japan; which during World War 2 forced women into sex-slavery, is currently run by politicians who deny this ever happened, and is trying to erase the event from their textbooks entirely (actually, other country's textbooks as well); is 100% not the wronged party here. icantfindaname posted:Is the Korean political right as awful as the Japanese? I suspect it is, but just to confirm Even worse than Japan. In particular more willing to use the power of the state to persecute those whose views differ from theirs. e: maybe "capable" is a more accurate description than "willing" Red and Black fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 02:38
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Chomskyan posted:This isn't true on either count. The group which represents surviving comfort women would probably accept a settlement if it included legal responsibility. Japan doesn't want this because it would set a precedent where they might have to pay out damages to individuals from other countries like (horror of horrors) China. Also, as recently as 2012 a left-of-center party was in power in Japan, and seemed more willing to mend relations with China and Korea. Obviously things didn't work out then, but there have been a lot of left-wing protests recently and it wouldn't be terribly surprising if a coalition of opposition parties took the upper house in 2016. Abe's move to strike a deal with Korea is probably an attempt to resolve the issue before a more left-wing government makes a compromise that's "worse" (from a right-wing war-crime-denialist perspective).
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Jan 20, 2016 09:14
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Chomskyan posted:Even worse than Japan. In particular more willing to use the power of the state to persecute those whose views differ from theirs. Or in other words, the Japanese ruling right-wing party was founded by former war criminals released after WWII and the Korean one was founded by an actual fascist dictator.
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Jan 20, 2016 09:43
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Chomskyan posted:e: maybe "capable" is a more accurate description than "willing" They're working on that.
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Jan 20, 2016 09:50
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Mr. Fix It posted:But wasn't the question of legal responsibility "resolved" by the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea? I mean, the Japanese right are horrible for being atrocity-denying revisionists, but it's not Japan's fault that the RoK government spent the reparations on infrastructure. If you ask Japan's right-wing they'll say that legal responsibilty was resolved with the 1965 agreement. Ask the actual victims of Japanese war crimes and they'll say that no, the matter is not resolved, because that agreement was negotiated by a dictator without their consultation. That's all there is to it. This matter will not be resolved until Japan is willing to engage with its victims (or all the victims die of old age). But why would Japan do that? Their victims don't care about money so much as justice, and wont bend on certain points that might put Japan in a compromising position (see: true legal accountability). It's much easier for Japan to negotiate with a morally flexible, pragmatic Korean government, and make "deals" that they can point to and say "look the matter has already been resolved X times and they're still complaining. It's the Korean's that are at fault." Meanwhile, just to add insult to injury, every deal they make contains deal breaking provisions which scream bad faith. For example, one provision of the current deal requires the Korean government to remove a statue honoring former sex-slaves which currently stands outside the Japanese embassy. Ask yourself, why would a government truly interested in making amends for its misdeeds insist on such a provision? Indeed the crux of the agreement is that the Korean government won't "raise the issue" of comfort women again once the deal is struck. Obviously I'm no fan of the Korean government either, and even the groups respresenting the surviving comfort women are not above criticism. However, Japan is the only actor with any real capability of resolving this conflict and it has consistently tried to worm its way out of any accountability. That saddest part is that this strategy might work. With most of the survivors more than 90 years old, all Abe and his coalition of war crime deniers have to do is wait until they die. Then they can fall back on their new agreement which takes the Korean government out of the situation and re-write history in any way they want. There won't be anyone left to press the issue then. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 15:30
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Chomskyan posted:If you ask Japan's right-wing they'll say that legal responsibilty was resolved with the 1965 agreement. Ask the actual victims of Japanese war crimes and they'll say that no, the matter is not resolved, because that agreement was negotiated by a dictator without their consultation. That's all there is to it. This matter will not be resolved until Japan is willing to engage with its victims (or all the victims die of old age). I think the right would say that even if they did engage the victims, that politicians in South Korea would still use the past crimes to drum up anti-Japanese sentiment. And what about the Kono Statement? There are nutters that tried to get it nullified, but it wasn't, and it seems like a pretty direct acknowledgment and apology. It being apparently forgotten in Korea just gives the Japanese right ammunition when they claim the continues complaints are just political. It does give me great pain the lengths that the Japanese right is going to whitewash crimes against humanity committed during the war. However I think attempts by politicians in countries that were victimized to drum up anti-Japanese sentiment for political purposes just plays right into what Abe and his ilk want: an image of a Japan surrounded by enemies that needs a real military and a strong authoritarian government to protect itself. My heart bleeds for the real victims who have, if not legal, moral grounds to demand something of Japan and are just used as pawns by unscrupulous politicians.
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Jan 22, 2016 06:07
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Mr. Fix It posted:Is there any legal basis for overturning a treaty because the ruler was a dictator? The 1965 aggreement is a legal and in-force treaty as far as I know. Would the RoK be willing to give back that money if it really is illegitimate? I understand the moral argument that Japan should do more, but there is no legal grounds for it. More interesting is the concept that a country is not responsible for what it does when it's not a democracy. Which would pretty much apply to Japan in this case as well for pretty much everything done until 1946 or whenever the first elections after the war were (which is why it is a stupid position to adopt).
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Jan 22, 2016 09:39
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