A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry expressed support for the decision at a news conference Wednesday. He added that China was closely monitoring the situation. An editorial in the state-controlled Global Times Thursday urged China to put pressure diplomatically and economically on Kawamura to apologize or resign.
Such actions are totally morally justifiable. Most of the reckless Japanese officials to deny history like Kawamura had paid their price. Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like micro-blogging service, made the incident "topic of the day," attracting more than one million related posts at the time of writing, with many choosing to interpret Kawamura's comments as Japan's official attitude on the Nanjing massacre and other historical issues between the two countries.
One comment from a user known as Sunnyzhouchufei read: "I was planning a trip to Japan in March, now after the incident I'm calling it off. In particular, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has always been pursuing "conservatism," has turned a deaf ear to the historical event.
The Japanese government's attitude towards the Nanjing Massacre has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and hindered the normal development of China-Japan relations. Today is a special day when we must understand that commemorating and remembering the historical tragedy of the Nanjing Massacre is of great significance to both China and Japan, and even to the world.
Some Japanese think that the Nanjing Massacre was committed by people before them, and later generations do not have to bear the blame. They think that denying or erasing the history of the Nanjing Massacre helps maintain Japan's dignity, while acknowledging and apologizing for it is an action of "self-abuse. However, it works the other way. It is Japan's deliberate denial of the historical crimes that has affected people's perceptions of the country in East Asia and the world. Only by admitting the crimes committed can they be accepted by East Asia and the world, thus truly safeguarding Japan's image.
Germany is a case in point. At the same time, Germany also offered apologies and various forms of compensation to the countries and people who suffered German aggression and slaughter during World War II. It is a story made up by the Chinese. New Jersey Hong Kong Network. Zhang, "History.
Prologue Battle of Shanghai Nanking Invasion. Overview Committee. What are their true intentions? Killing is just a method. In this holy war, you kill the Chinese in order to liberate them.
This is absurd, but logical. Just like physical punishment for students. They must make sacrifices. In the long term, they will benefit from it. Sooner or later, the Chinese will appreciate the Japanese and the Japanese Emperor…. Each generation of Chinese is getting worse and worse. But the Japanese are growing stronger year by year.
So we have to help the Chinese. Or Asia will be taken over by European and American powers. But how can mass killing and war crimes be seen as merciful methods to help China? Pan-Asianism, [ 20 ] is the idea that Japan should help to make Asia strong and united so that it can fight against the Western world. Japan did not need to treat countries like China and Korea well, for as Fukuzawa Yukichi says:.
Similar to the relations between our lips and teeth that they exist in an inseparable relationship , neighbouring countries shall assist each other. Currently, China and Korea have not even offered a single drip of assistance to my Japan…. It is our best strategy to leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with the civilized nations of the West. As for our approach to the treating of China and Korea, there shall be no special treatment just because they are our neighbouring countries.
Simply adapting the ways of the Westerners is sufficient. Those who cherish bad friends cannot escape the fate of being branded as a bad person. My heart and determination lie in the refusal of bad friends. Footnote 18 Since the Chinese are an inferior species, and not even human, the Japanese do not need to treat them equally. Japan uses it to sugar-coat and to justify everything inhumane they do to Chinese.
Therefore, the Nanking Massacre is nothing vicious but is merely a benevolent wake-up call to Chinese. But, how is it logical? We may find the answers in behavioural psychology theory. According to Dan Ariely, there are two types of dishonesty. When about to break the law, these people will calculate the risks of being caught and the potential punishment, and weight them up against the benefits.
If the result is worth the risk based on cost-benefit calculation, they will carry out the criminal conduct; otherwise, they will stop if the risk and the punishment are greater than they can handle. In short, law and punishment are external restraints that keep human instincts, desires, and impulses from deviating from social norms. The second type of dishonesty is conducted by people who think they are honest and do not know they are doing something dishonest [ 22 , —].
They either convince themselves that a dishonest thing they have done is honest or not that dishonest, or they sincerely believe that something dishonest they have done is actually honest. As Mazar, Amir and Ariely say:. We hypothesize that for certain types of actions and magnitudes of dishonesty, people can categorize their actions into more compatible terms and find rationalizations for their actions.
As a consequence, people can cheat while avoiding any negative self-signals that might affect their self-concept and thus avoid negatively updating their self-concept altogether. Everyone has a moral standard. Things within this limit are undoubtedly considered to be honest. For example, waiting at a red light in the middle of the night when there is no traffic.
However, not everything is within the limit. Sometimes our moral standard will be challenged. A moral code, moral standard, or self-perception is an internal examiner that checks if our behaviours are out of range. Ideally, our self-perception can regulate our behaviours every time since no one wants to be labelled as dishonest by others or by themselves.
However, the same psychological mechanism also manipulates us to lie to ourselves because most people want to believe they are honest even they have done something dishonest. In other words, self-perception maintenance mechanism is meant to make us feel good about ourselves. Once our self-awareness of dishonesty gets lost and our self-perception maintenance mechanism takes control, it may induce self-deception, as Mazar and Ariely point out:.
Therefore, self-deception can be successful even in the most extreme cases: For example, doctors who participated in genocide in Nazi Germany managed to convince themselves of the rectitude of their actions [ 27 ].
Memory is flexible and docile. We may change the facts in our memories to hide our true intentions or justify our behaviours to persuade ourselves and others that we are good people. Sometimes you know you are lying when you are lying, but, sometimes, you are not even aware you are lying if you truly believe that you are doing something benevolent.
Dan Ariely talks about an experiment to test if people will lie about the number on dice they toss in order to win the money. In an interview about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a company claiming it had created a machine that could test for every possible disease with a single drop of blood.
Dan Ariely mentions that the polygraph can only detect your lies when you know you are lying. If, however, you sincerely believe that what you are saying is a truth, the lie detector cannot point you out.
In another version of the experiment, we do the same thing, but people pick a charity. For a good cause. What do you think happened, people cheat more or less? People cheat more. And the lie detector stops working.
Because what does the lie detector detect? The lie detector detects a tension. Therefore, for the sake of helping China transform, Matsui Iwane will sanction all the necessary means even though they are evil. It is not that Matsui Iwane does not know the atrocities done by Japanese soldiers are evil.
It is that he believes that if evil deeds are done for good purposes, they should no longer be considered evil. Judging if an action is evil or not is determined by the nature of the action and what the action can achieve. Black Sun — The Nanking Massacre shows us how Japanese soldiers justify their killing based on the idea that, if the evildoings are for good purposes, they are not evil anymore. However, logical this may be, it is still absurd.
Human beings are the only species that has a moral sense among all the living creatures on the planet. Something cruel can be done by nature, or by God, or by wild animals, without attracting moral criticism, but cannot be done by human beings, such as natural culling. Compensations will only be made for the damage caused by actions or accidents which can be predicted and prevented by human minds. If someone or some country executes a culling process, the individual or country will be sentenced by law as guilty of mass killing even though it might be for a good cause.
Therefore, the Nanking Massacre and the Holocaust ought never to have happened no matter what the reason was. It is also a legal principle on which all of the above-mentioned international laws are based.
Morals and laws are consistent on the point that they cannot be overruled by any unratified international agreement, even by a rescript from the divine Emperor.
They debate about what methods should be used to defeat China and the Chinese people even though they both agree that this so-called holy war, the second Sino-Japanese war, is necessary. If a sword is only used to destroy, it will become evil, even though swords are made to protect oneself against evil and to fight against it. Takayama uses a story of swords as an analogy to persuade Nakajima to stop killing.
Even though he fails, his story still acts as a strong opposition against the justification of mass killing and other inhumane behaviours. The leaves passing through the sword were all cut into halves.
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