A court yesterday ruled the Japanese military had a role in wartime mass suicides in Okinawa, rejecting a libel suit by former soldiers against Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe.
The suit was filed in August 2005 against Oe and the publisher of his 1970 book of essays Okinawa Notes, which mentioned how Japanese troops ordered islanders to kill themselves in 1945 rather than surrender to US invaders.
The Osaka District Court threw out the ¥20 million (US$200,000) suit by a 91-year-old former soldier and another soldier's family, as well as their demand that the book be suspended from publication, a court official said.
The military was deeply involved in the group suicides during World War II, the Osaka District Court said in a closely watched ruling.
The suit was one of the reasons the central government had cited last year for its controversial decision to change school textbooks to delete references to the military forcing islanders to commit suicides.
The 83-day Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest in the Pacific war, left 190,000 Japanese dead, half of them civilians on the southern island chain.
While many perished in the all-out US bombardment, local accounts say mainland Japanese troops forced residents of Okinawa -- an independent kingdom until the 19th century -- to commit suicide rather than surrender.
Locals have said the troops even gave them grenades for suicides while nationalist academics have insisted that the suicide pacts were voluntary.
The central government's decision under former nationalist prime minister Shinzo Abe sparked furious protests in Okinawa, including a mass rally.
Abe stepped down in September.
Under pressure, the education ministry in December restored references in history textbooks to note that Okinawans "committed group suicides with the involvement by the Japanese military."
Oe, now 73, won the Nobel prize for literature in 1994 and is known for his pacifist views.
Also yesterday, Japan ordered schools to teach children to sing the national anthem in the latest controversial step to boost patriotism, a taboo since World War II.
The education ministry issued new education guidelines for children aged six to 15 to take effect in 2010 at the earliest.
At the moment schools teach the anthem as part of regular coursework but the new ruling emphasizes instruction "so that children can sing it," a ministry statement said.
Japan has been gradually embracing national symbols which were shunned by most except for nationalist activists in the decades since defeat in World War II.
Liberal teachers have led a campaign against the national anthem in Tokyo and other school districts that have required it to be played at school ceremonies.
The anthem, Kimigayo ("Thy Reign"), praises the emperor. Critics say it harks back to Japan's militarism under the Emperor Hirohito, who was considered divine during World War II.
The ministry also added a guideline saying that "love for our country and hometown, which has nurtured tradition and culture," should be part ot ethics classes.
Additionally, it asked that classes teach children the country's myths, which say the imperial family descended from the goddess Amaterasu. The story will be presented as myth.
The revision was done in line with a bill passed by parliament in December 2006 that patriotism be part of national education.
The parliamentary bill was a signature issue for Abe, an outspoken conservative who championed breaking post-World War II taboos.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS