Washington post: a sloppy journalism?

The Washingtonpost article on March 23, distributed by AP, shows the regular ignorance of Tokyo news reporters who cannot back up what they say, and it also shows inability of Washington post to check what they are fed. Are they swallowing anything they are told? This reminds me of Steven Colbert, who told the journalists that their only job is "type what we say and publish and go home," (or words to that effect; you can check it by yourself on the video).

For one thing, I am not a fan of Nakasone Yasuhiro, even though I think most of his policies were okay. But he is a politician, and politicians' job is to sell words and make things look better than they are, or in other words, lie.

Of course if he has written in 1978 that he set up a comfort station in Borneo, then he set up a comfort station in Borneo. It could contain other family-oriented "go" activity center, but the main attraction should have the nature of adult industry. His book is known for years, and before 1991 when Kim Hak Sun (金学順) the first protesting prostitute came forward, comfort stations had no shadow of sins. Other Japanese narratives had similar flavors: they are parts of the real world and real war, they had lived such a life and accepted their lives. I will comment on this aspect, later.

"I never had personal knowledge of the matter," Nakasone told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan when asked about wartime sex slaves, euphemistically known in Japan as "comfort women."

"I only knew about it from what I read in the newspaper," he said, adding that such enslavement was "deplorable" and that he supported the Japanese government's 1993 apology to victims.

When Nakasone Yasuhiro says like this, probably he meant it. Because the story in newspapers are totally different from what he himself experienced in setting up comfort stations in Borneo, he only "knew about it from what I (Nakasone Yasuhiro) read in the newspaper." He has first-hand knowledge of how the prostitutes lived in the comfort stations, but he did not want to indulge in war of words because Nakasone would like to support Abe Shinzo for the greater good. That's it, and its is very simple.

My take on this article is not Nakasone Yasuhiro as a naval officer (海軍主計将校), but as a target of another hate speech Yasukuni Shrine (靖国神社). WP writes:

The former prime minister is known in Japan for his nationalist stance. In 1985, he was the first Japanese prime minister to visit a Tokyo war shrine after it began honoring executed war criminals. Visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders incense its neighbors, such as China.

This is a blatant lie.
Yasukuni enshrined "A class war criminal convicts" in 1978, and the fact became public in 1979. "BC class war criminal convicts" had already been being enshrined since 1959, by the way. PM Ohira Yoshimasa, PM Suzuki Zenko had already paid their tributes to Yasukuni after 1979. Nakasone Yasuhiro is the third PM who did the same thing after the A class enshrinement became publicly known. This is why critics of China claim that the "de-shrinement" of enshrined people does not help the diplomatic relationship between China and Japan: China's behavior does not correlate to events in history. Their behavior is not motivated by history and facts, but by Chinese internal/international political game. Perhaps everybody has to come to the conclusion that in China, everything is politics, even human rights or history.


Above is the reason why I seriously doubt the linguistic ability of JOSEPH COLEMAN, the writer: 5 minutes background check in Japanese literature would have saved him from becoming an illiterate or a liar.

Ex-Japanese PM Denies Setting Up Brothel

By JOSEPH COLEMAN
The Associated Press
Friday, March 23, 2007; 3:51 AM

TOKYO -- A former Japanese prime minister and elder statesman on Friday denied setting up a military brothel staffed by sex slaves during World War II, despite writing a memoir that critics say shows he did so while in the navy.

Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served as prime minister from 1982 to 1987 and was known for his friendship with then-President Reagan, described the facility he set up as a place for civilian engineers to relax and play Japanese chess.

"I never had personal knowledge of the matter," Nakasone told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan when asked about wartime sex slaves, euphemistically known in Japan as "comfort women."

"I only knew about it from what I read in the newspaper," he said, adding that such enslavement was "deplorable" and that he supported the Japanese government's 1993 apology to victims.

Historians say as many as 200,000 women _ most from Korea and China _ worked in the frontline brothels. Victims say they were forced into the brothels by the Japanese military and were held against their will.

The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a resolution that calls on Japan to make a full apology for the brothels, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stirred criticism earlier this month when he denied there was evidence the women were forced into service.

A Nakasone memoir published in 1978 said that when he was a sub-lieutenant in the navy, members of his 3,000-man navy unit in wartime Philippines and Borneo "began attacking women, while others took to gambling."

"At one point, I went to great pains to set up a comfort station" to keep them under control, he wrote. The essay was in an anthology of war accounts, "The Eternal Navy _ Stories to Hand Down to the Younger Generation."

In the 1990s, former Philippine sex slaves cited the memoir as further proof Nakasone was involved with enslavement, bolstering their demands that Tokyo compensate the victims. The Japanese government in 1995 set up a private fund for the women, but never offered direct government compensation.

A Nakasone spokesman in 1997 told The Associated Press that the brothel was operated by local business people and that the prostitutes worked there voluntarily and had not been forced into sexual slavery.

But on Friday, Nakasone was vague about the activities at the facility, skirting a question about whether prostitutes were active there.

"The engineers ... wanted to have a facility to relax and play `go,' so we simply established a place so they could have that," Nakasone said, explaining that the men _ civilian engineers _ needed someplace for rest and entertainment.

Nakasone's government, as all Japanese governments until the 1990s, denied any official involvement with the wartime brothels.

The former prime minister is known in Japan for his nationalist stance. In 1985, he was the first Japanese prime minister to visit a Tokyo war shrine after it began honoring executed war criminals. Visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders incense its neighbors, such as China.

© 2007 The Associated Press