Die Verfassung Japans.  Artikel 9 der Friedensverfassung
Source:  The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 15, 2015, April 13, 2015
Als pdf-Datei zum Download  (mit allen Links!)
Vergleiche auch:  Confessions of a foreign correspondent  |  Japan's prickly revisionists  |  Kido Eiichi

Testy Team Abe Pressures Media in Japan

Jeff Kingston
April 16, 2015

In an April 2, 2015 essay in the Number One Shimbun published by the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan, veteran German journalist Carsten Germis shares his experiences of being harassed by the Japanese government basically for doing his job. In his view, the Abe government is overly sensitive to criticism and responds aggressively in trying to suppress such views. Team Abe has been especially sensitive to criticism about what Germis terms, “a move by the right to whitewash history.” Germis served in Tokyo from 2010-15, but I only met him once very briefly and have not read his articles in German, so am not in a position to judge the content or analysis, but his allegations of government meddling with the press are serious.

16. April 2014  -  16. April 2015

Der Untergang der Ferry SEWOL bei Jindo, Südkorea
Source:  The Guardian, Associated Press in Seoul, Thursday 2 April 2015
Siehe auch hier
Hier ein Video in Erinnerung an den 16. April 2014 (7.4.2015, Facebook)
Und hier eine kleine Slideshow mit Fotos aus Facebook.
Die Petition der Familien
Die Ev. Mission in Solidarität (EMS) hat einige empfehlenswerte Beiträge zum 16.4. unter ALTUELLES von der Startseite aus.
Was man weiß vom Untergang der Sewol-Fähre

Families of South Korea ferry victims shave heads in compensation protest

Relatives demonstrate over government plans to start compensation process instead of launching fresh investigation into tragedy

Victims’ relatives shave their heads in protest, in Seoul, South Korea. Photograph: AP

Associated Press in Seoul, Thursday 2 April 2015

Dozens of relatives of victims of a South Korean ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people almost a year ago have shaved their heads in protest over government plans to provide compensation instead of a more thorough investigation.

The State Secrets Protection Bill (2013)

Censorship?  Self-censorship?
検閲? 自己検閲?

Thomas Ash and his documentary "A2-B-C" 
March 14, 2015
 
検閲? 自己検閲?
配給会社都合により、急遽「A2-B-C」上映中止せざるを得なくなってしまいました。

The Japanese distributor of 'A2-B-C' (WEBSITE), my documentary about children living in Fukushima, is cancelling all domestic screenings of the film.  They are also canceling the contract to distribute the film in Japan, despite there being more than two years remaining on the agreement.

It is not clear to me how much of this decision is the result of actual censorship and how much is self-censorship.  My feeling is that it is self-censorship based on the fear of a potential censorship problem at some point in the future.  If this is the case, then it is an example of the terrifying and wide-reaching effect of the Secrecy Law (INFO).  This law does not even need to be enforced for its effect to be felt: its mere existence causes people to engage in self-censorship, imposing on themselves the very crackdown that the drafters of the legislation had surely envisioned.

"Trostfrauen", "Comfort Women"

Erklärung über die Behandlung der "Trostfrauen"-Frage in Schulbüchern

Posted By Reinhard Zöllner On 10.2.2015
(For English version scroll down)

Als Historiker und Japanologen drücken wir unsere Bestürzung darüber aus, daß die japanische Regierung seit kurzem versucht, Feststellungen in Geschichtslehrbüchern in Japan und anderswo über die euphemistisch so genannten “Trostfrauen” zu unterdrücken, die während des Zweiten Weltkriegs im Dienst der japanischen Armee unter einem brutalen System sexueller Ausbeutung gelitten haben.

Historiker debattieren darüber, ob die Zahl der ausgebeuteten Frauen im Bereich von Zehntausenden oder Hundertausenden lag und welche Rolle das Militär bei ihrer Rekrutierung genau spielte. Doch die sorgfältigen Recherchen des Historikers Yoshimi Yoshiaki in japanischen Regierungsarchiven und die Zeugnisse von Überlebenden aus ganz Asien haben jeden Zweifel an den grundsätzlichen Zügen eines Systems, das staatlich geförderter sexueller Sklaverei gleichkam, beseitigt.

Als Teil ihrer Bemühungen, die patriotische Erziehung zu fördern, stellt die gegenwärtige Regierung von Ministerpräsident Shinzō Abe die gültige Geschichte der Trostfrauen buchstäblich infrage

The State Secrets Protection Bill (2013)
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 5, No. 1, February 2, 2015.
Hier geht's zur pdf-Datei
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Focus.

Sink the Asahi! The ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy and the Neo-nationalist Attack

How did Japan’s 135-year-old liberal flagship end up in the crosshairs of neo-nationalists?
David McNeill and Justin McCurry

Before last year it is doubtful that many Japanese knew the location of Glendale, California – an L.A. suburb with a population of 200,000 known for its large Asian population and the Big Boy fast-food chain. That’s changed, thanks to an unimposing bronze statue of a young woman installed last year in a local park that has become a microcosm of the toxic history war between Japan and South Korea.



The statue was meant to commemorate the suffering of women herded into wartime Japanese brothels – and to symbolize justice denied. Since the unveiling, however, the city has been targeted by diplomatic protests, hundreds of angry letters and a lawsuit demanding its removal. Japanese nationalist politicians even say the statue has triggered discrimination against Japanese schoolchildren in America.

The dispute took a farcical turn on Oct. 21 last year when Glendale City Council heard testimony from long-winded rightist video blogger Tony Marano. Marano travelled hundreds of miles from his home and took a break from warning against nefarious communists, Koreans who “eat dogs off the street” and President Obama’s plot to turn America into a Muslim nation, to pick up the cudgel against the hated memorial.

Hiroshima und Auschwitz
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 3, No. 1, January 19, 2015.
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Fpcus
Zum Download als pdf hier

Never Again: Hiroshima, Auschwitz and the Politics of Commemoration
もう二度と…　広島、アウシュヴィッツと記念の政治学
Ran Zwigenberg

Abstract:
Ran Zwigenberg makes a case for revising the history of Hiroshima and its global connections and importance. Focusing on the little known episode of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, he argues that the march was a unique point of convergence between multiple national narratives of victimization. The Peace March illustrates the emergence of a shared discourse of commemoration of WW II following the Eichmann trial and others, which agents like the marchers facilitated and which emerged from multiple Western and non-Western sources.

In 1962 a young Jewish American psychiatrist by the name of Robert Lifton visited the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Lifton described his visit to the museum in a letter to his friend David Riesman, “I had seen many such pictures before…but somehow seeing these pictures in Hiroshima was entirely different…we left this part of the exhibit reeling…Both of us anxious, fearful and depressed–Betty [Lifton’s wife] to the point of being physically ill.”1 Lifton decided to stay in Hiroshima and help its survivors. His research greatly altered our understanding of Hiroshima and the psychiatry of trauma. It would be hard to find similar responses by visitors today. The Liftons’ reaction to the museum was not just a function of their encounter with the horror of Hiroshima but of the heightened awareness of the importance of the city in light of the global tensions that would bring the world to the brink of nuclear war that same year. The museum and Peace Park today are far calmer places. Perhaps even too calm. The message of peace, felt so urgently by Lifton, has lost its edge in Hiroshima. Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani captured the mood of the place succinctly when he wrote, “In Hiroshima…even the doves are bored with peace.”2 The serenity and passivity of the memorial begins right at the entrance to the museum,

11. März 2011 - 11. März 2014 Fukushima in Nordostjapan
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 48, No. 2, December 8, 2014.
Hier download als pdf-Datei

Demystifying the Official Discourse on Childhood Thyroid Cancer in Fukushima
小児甲状腺ガンについての公式見解を読み解く
Piers Williamson

On 9 October 2011, Fukushima Medical University (FMU) started a two-stage programme of thyroid cancer tests for 368,000 minors in Fukushima Prefecture who were aged 18 or under on 11 March 2011. The first stage was the ‘Preliminary Baseline Survey’ and centred on residents in ‘high exposure areas’. The original plan had been to commence three years after the incident, but the testing was brought forward due to parental concerns.1 In April 2014, FMU started the second stage ‘Full Scale Survey’ of 380,000 minors. Participants are to be tested once every two years until they are 20 years old, and then every 5 years for the rest of their lives. The programme uses advanced ultrasound equipment and is unprecedented in scale. It is part of a wider Health Management Survey aimed at estimating the exposure levels of all Fukushima residents, approximately 2 million people. The first case of thyroid cancer was reported on 12 September 2012 after 80,000 children had been tested.2 Since then, the numbers have risen steadily. As of writing, 56 have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, 1 with a benign tumour, and a further 47 are suspected of having the cancer. This brings the probable total to 103 out of 296,026 minors examined.3 Thus far, nearly all initially ‘suspected’ cancers have later been confirmed as malignant.

A thyroid test