National apologies are just empty words
- Source: Global Times
- [22:29 January 12 2010]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Xiao Zhengyu
There have been rumors recently that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama would visit Nanjing in June to apologize for the massacre conducted by the Japanese army in 1939. The French newspaper Le Figaro broke the story, and the followup reports in the Japanese and Chinese media soon triggered a war of words between fenqing (angry youth) from the two countries.
The cause of the trouble was the word "apology" in media reports.
Apology has different shades of meaning in all three languages, which prompted a further round of arguments, and brought plenty of readers for the Chinese press covering the story. For a while, the event was the most searched for story on the Japanese Internet. I thus started to ask myself old questions again. Why do we pay so much attention to "apologies?" Is an apology really useful?
I'm neither a writer, a historian nor a politician. I'm just an ordinary Chinese citizen. And I can only try to answer the questions from my own perspective. If Hatoyama really comes to Nanjing to apologize, I'll be glad as long as my commute is not blocked by his police escort. His apology might do something to dispel the infl uence of Japanese rightwing forces, but who knows how much truth there is in the rumor anyway?
However, I can't get excited about Hatoyama's apology to the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre. The gap between ordinary Chinese and Japanese is still so wide that "political forgiveness" appears groundless.
The right wing in Japan still demands more evidence for the massacre, or denies its existence entirely. Many young Japanese don't doubt or discard the lies spread by ultranationalists.
The attitude of some anti-Chinese forces in Japan has erected a stubborn barrier in the hearts of Chinese, which cannot be broken down just by an apology.
Consequently, what on earth can an apology change? For people in these two countries, the war isn't distant enough to allow objectivity, and both sides haven't developed a strong dependence upon each other.
The attitude of Japanese ultranationalists has reminded many Chinese once and again that the massacre did not happen in some remote corner of the world, but to our relatives decades ago. How can an apology break through this and allow objective reflection?
The word "apology" is indeed useless and draws no benefits. If Hatoyama ought to apologize, should other Japanese come to apologize? Before the Japanese army arrived in Nanjing,
Koreans serving in Japanese army had already rampaged in the city. Therefore, Koreans also owe us a serious apology.
In history, the Eight-Nation Alliance attacked Beijing during the Boxer Uprising (1889-1901). Thus the British, Americans, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Hungarians, French and Russians should also say "we apologize" to us. The French started the rumor this time, so they should apologize twice.
As to other countries, Indonesians should apologize for once massacring ethnic Chinese. Australia's anti-Chinese forces should apologize for impertinent remarks toward us. Africans frequently burn Chinese businessmen's shops, so why shouldn't they apologize to us?
If we live like this, we'll spend our whole existence demanding and arguing about apologies. And not only that, we'll have to spend all our time apologizing to everyone else for the things we did to them in the past too.
Ever since I was a child, I remember trains being late, or breaking down on the tracks. Every time, the sta. would put on a recorded announcement, apologizing for the inconvenience.
I was invariably depressed at such moments. Besides being bored, wanting to go to the toilet, and the stale air, I could do nothing. Since then I haven't really needed other people's apologies.
The author is an automobile engineer in Nanjing. globaltimesopinion@yahoo.com
