Prescription Given by Doc, My Third Blog and MM on More Japanese PMs

Last Wednesday, I received a call from the clinic, telling me that the doctor would give me a prescription so that I could refill my medication at public medical institutions, which should be cheaper. I met her today for the first time in many months. I updated her about myself, and it is always a reassuring experience to talk with her, who really knows and understands my conditions.

I thought about going to the SGH, which is not far from this apartment, before coming back home. But… when I got off Bus 174 at CK Tang, supposedly to change to 123, I walked back to Isetan to do some grocery shopping. Let me try to go to the SGH tomorrow.

I have started my third blog, “Anokoro no Nankai Hawks (The Nankai Hawks of Those Days),” to perpetuate records and memories, and for that I’ve been retaking photos now that I’m more familiar with the camera. This is more like a website rather than a blog. After I’ve uploaded information I have, there will be not many additional entries, even though I need to correct some information or add some more. I should have made it a “proper” website. But I don’t know how to create a site… And I wish I had an image scanner.

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Although he led one of the smallest LDP factions, Toshiki Kaifu became prime minister in 1989. He was a pleasant, gregarious man known as “Mr Clean.” While not as scholarly as Miyazawa, or decisive like Nakasone, or an infighter like Takeshita, he had a common touch.

Kaifu made the first break with the past in a memorable speech in Singapore in May 1990. He expressed “sincere contrition at past Japanese actions, which inflicted unbearable suffering and sorrow upon a great many people in the Asia Pacific region… The Japanese people are firmly resolved never again to repeat those actions, which had tragic consequences…” It was just short of an apology. He spoke with candour and realism.

I highlighted to Kaifu the difference between the Germans and Japanese attitudes to their war records… I suggested that the Japanese study the German way of educating the next generation on their history… He would look into the task of educating the young about the World War II and would revise their school textbooks. He did not stay long enough in office to follow through before he was replaced by Kiichi Miyazawa. (pp. 573-574)

… [Miyazawa] struck me more of a scholar than a politician…

The media had quoted me in 1991: letting the Japanese re-arm for UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia was like “giving liqueur chocolates to and alcoholic.” At a lunch with other LDP leaders in Tokyo shortly before he took over as prime minister, Miyazawa asked me what I had meant. I replied that it was difficult to change Japanese culture. The Japanese have a deeply ingrained habit of wanting to achieve perfection and going to the limits in whatever they did, whether in flower arrangement, sword-making or war. I did not believe Japan could repeat what it had done between 1931 and 1945 because China now had the nuclear bomb. But if Japan wanted to play its part as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, its neighbours must feel it was trustworthy and dependable as a force for peace. Miyazawa asked whether Kaifu’s expression of “contrition” was not in itself a catharsis. I said it was a good start but not an apology. (pp. 574-575)

As prime minister, Miyazawa’s first statement in the Diet in January 1992 expressed his “heartfelt remorse and regrets” at the unbearable suffering and sorrow the people of the Asia Pacific region had endured. … Miyazawa was a dove. He… was against any re-arming. His English was fluent with a wide vocabulary, making a frank exchange of views easy. He was quick to take up and counter any point he did not accept – but ever so politely…

… Most Japanese leaders believed that their arrangements with the United States would ensure security for 20 years. It was the long-term future that troubled Miyazawa and all Japanese leaders. Their unspoken fear was that one day the Americans would be unable to maintain their dominant military presence and would be unwilling to defend Japan. They were uncertain whether China would be a force for stability or tension.

Most Japanese leaders believed that in a crunch Asean countries would line up with Japan… However, they were uncertain how Singapore’s majority Chinese population and its future leaders would react under Chinese pressure. I do not think I succeeded in dispelling their doubts. (pp. 575-576)

… One outcome of this break I the LDP hold of government was that Morihiro Hosokawa became prime minister to admit in unambiguous language Japan’s aggression in World War II and apologised for the suffering caused. He did not have the LDP mindset, to hang tough over their war crimes. This unqualified apology came only after a non-mainstream party leader became prime minister.

The following year, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama of the Social Democratic Party of Japan also apologised, and did so to each Asean leader in turn during his visits to Asean countries. He said publicly in Singapore that Japan needed to face up squarely to its past actions of aggression and colonialism… He was the first Japanese prime minister to lay a wreath at Singapore’s civilian war memorial. We had not asked him to do so… The apologies of… Hosokawa and Murayama… irrevocably dented the hard-line no-apology stance of previous Japanese governments… (pp. 576-577)

When Ryutaro Hashimoto of the LDP became prime minister in 1996, he visited the Yasukuni Shrine in July that year, on his birthday… Hashimoto expressed his “deepest regrets” on the 52nd anniversary of the end of the World War II (1997) and his “profound remorse” during his visit to Beijing in September 1997. However, he did not apologise, as the Chinese and Korean wished Japan’s leader to do.

I do not understand why the Japanese are so unwilling to admit the past, apologise for it and move on. For some reason, they do not want to apologise. To apologise is to admit having done a wrong. To regrets or remorse merely expresses their present subjective feelings. They denied the massacre of Nanjing took place; that Korean, Filipino, Dutch and other women were kidnapped or otherwise forced to be “comfort women” (a euphemism for sex slaves) for Japanese soldiers at the war fronts; that they carried out cruel biological experiments on live Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, Russian and other prisoners in Manchuria. In each case, only after irrefutable evidence was produced from their own records did they make reluctant admissions. This fed suspicions of Japan’s future intensions.

… If the Japanese feel threatened, deprived of their means of livelihood as a nation by being cut off from oil of other critical resources, or shut out from their export markets, I believe they will again fight ferociously as they did from 1941 to 1945.

Whatever the future may hold for Japan and Asia, to play their role as an economic moderniser and UN peacekeeper, the Japanese must first put this apology issue to rest. Asia and Japan must move on. We need greater trust and confidence in each other. (pp. 577-578)