Taiwan should not bar Japanese cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi from visiting Taiwan as the nation's image as a democracy would be shattered, warned Tokyo-based national policy advisor Alice King (金美齡) in Taipei yesterday.
"China is thought of as a country without any respect for human rights or basic freedoms. However Fukuda Yusuke, the Japanese author who co-authored the book China is the Enemy with me, can visit China freely and continues to criticize China. China has never banned his entry," King said at a press conference.
"But Taiwan is a democracy ... Kobayashi hasn't thrown a bomb or staged a demonstration here, nor did he criticize our government," said King, who has resided in Japan for the past 42 years. "But the government banned him from visiting because of a book [he wrote]. How will people see Taiwan in comparison with China?"
PHOTO: HAKU HUANG, TAIPEI TIMES
The Ministry of the Interior held a review committee meeting last Friday and decided to bar Kobayashi from visiting Taiwan, saying his comic book On Taiwan (
The most controversial episode in the book centered on the statement, attributed to local business leader Shi Wen-lung (許文龍), that Taiwanese women volunteered to work as sex slaves, or as so-called "comfort women," for the Japanese army during World War II.
This provoked severe criticism from opposition legislators, historians as well as women's rights groups. Some demonstrators, led by New Party Legislator Elmer Feng (
King condemned the book-burning protest as a U-turn for Taiwan's democracy, saying she wondered if those who lashed out at Kobayashi's work had ever read the book properly.
King recalled that Kobayashi told her at a fundraising event in Tokyo after the 921 earthquake that he had a limited knowledge of Taiwan, but his interest in the island was growing.
"Like the majority of Japanese, he said he knew very little about Taiwan. Despite going sightseeing in Taiwan many years ago, he didn't have any impression of Taiwan," King said.
But after he decided to produce a book about Taiwan, the right-wing Japanese cartoonist, through King's assistance, visited Japan's former colony twice.
The important figures Kobayashi interviewed in Taiwan included former president Lee Teng-hui (
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