Thanks for the link. I also see hipocracy when Japan is accused of neglecting history by China (though less so from the protesters as from the government). Japan has a small legion of ultra nationalists that have excessive influence, but it is an open society. The Chinese government, meanwhile, does control information. Nevermind the Tiananmen massacare. If its state media cannot even report on events of two days ago, how can it be expected that state schools will accurately report history? They go beyond distorting history and actively distort current events. That couldn't be attempted in Japan.

Tom says, "Actually the link states that PM Koizumi agrees with the changes to the Japanese Constitution. Koizumi is hardly a fringe actor in Japan's political sphere."

You don't understand the situation in Japan. It is one thing for Koizumi (or any Prime Minister in Japan) to posture for political faction purposes, and quite another to be able to make something happen. Any Constitutional amendment in Japan must ultimately pass a referendum of the people, so what one (or any politician) says is hardly determinative of what will actually happen. When 90% of the people are dead set against militarism in any amount or form, such an amendment has little chance of being passed. (For example, just look at the hubbub caused when Japanese SDF troops were sent to Iraq only for reconstruction duties.)

Here is the relevant language of the Japanese Constitution on amendment:

Article 96: "Amendments to this Constitution shall be initiated by the Diet, through a concurring vote of two-thirds or more of all the members of each House and shall thereupon be submitted to the people for ratification, which shall require the affirmative vote of a majority of all votes cast thereon, at a special referendum or at such election as the Diet shall specify."

But again, your statement above does not refute what Ian Hamet said.


"The typical habit of the right wingers is to take certain events and turn them in to a fetish to pull out of their asses when they want to bash some one. This is exactly what Ian is doing in this case."

Your ideological blinders are impairing your understanding and judgment. Ian says, "Another nice bit of irony: one of the signs I saw read Tampering With Truth Is Blaspheming History, and yet nobody here has ever seen the Tiananmen Massacre, and most are unwilling to talk about it. Sometimes, if someone trusts you, he will ask you furtively what you know about it. Not often, though. And yes, I have vivid memories of seeing it on TV. Damn vivid."

There is obvious hypocrisy involved in criticizing the Japanese (with a placard reading "Tampering With Truth Is Blaspheming History") when the very same thing has been done in regard to the events at TianAnMen Square in 1989. But it's ironic (and not really hypocritical of the demonstrators) because the demonstrators don't know about those events because information about them has been suppressed and kept from the people. This is essentially what Ian is saying.

You can see how the government reacted in this regard at the time by reading "Summer of Betrayal" by Hong Ying, which was banned by the government and never published in China. Hong Ying participated in those events. And you can read about her background in her book titled "Daughter of the River."

It seems quite clear that you are the one who is the demagogue. And you pull your own fetishes and non-facts out of your ass and bash a lot. Then you talk about silliness as you call InstaPundit InstaParrot. Well, that comes out of your ass too, I guess. Most ideologically driven demagoguery does.

*snore* Observer (and Ian) make the claim that mainstream Japan has changed. That the folks who are looking to remilitarise the country are just the fringe. And somehow they decide that the PM elected by the people is just fringe as well. How quaint!

Both of you say it's hypocrisy to carry slogans denouncing one and not the other. Did these protestors carry signs saying they are happy with the CCP control of the flow of information? Are you saying that in Japan, the PM elected by the people is not representative of the people while in China the protestors are representative of the government officials doing the control of information?

And I understand that some would like to be able to claim the InstaParrot is less of a Party drone than a CCP aparatchik because he fits in to their ideological view, but you calling him names like "respected" doesn't make him any less of a hack. Let's face it, Glenn has had a few terms created in the blogsphere's debate dictionary (like disin-glenn-uous) specifically because he's not respected.

And yes, Ian and RogerLSimon do demagogue TianAnMen. To say that no one on the mainland knows of 6/4/89 is false. I watched a live broadcast on CCTV of a press conference last year where a German reporter asked the CCP leadership about the event and whether it'll be reviewed. The CCP might not push out the version of the story that you'd like to hear or that I'd like to hear (though I think your version and my version would also differ drastically due to your ideological blinders and wanting to use the event for your ideological purposes). But again you try to make it sound like the only source of information is the official party line. That banning a book eliminates it from circulation on the mainland.

Sorry guys, but the informal flow of information is at least as important, if not more so, than the formal flow on the mainland. And check the page at SimonWorld and you'll find ESWN's poll numbers for Hong Kong, which proves this point about the informal flow of information from survivors to their offspring. I know it doesn't fit in to your narrative of events, so you'll claim it gets pulled out of my ass, but the data is there. If you choose to ignore it, then we'll know who ignores reality and is blinded by ideology. And it's not me.

The Hong Kong Poll and Tom's Claims

In a previous post, Tom Legg claims that Chinese demonstrators are aware of previous events like that in 1989 at TianAnMen Square because of "the informal flow of information from survivors to their offspring" in spite of any governmental control of information. He further states that that survivor to offspring flow of information is proved by the recent Hong Kong poll results that ESWN posts and discusses.

According to ESWN, SCMP reported: "Most Hongkongers think Japan should not have approved new history textbooks that gloss over wartime atrocities, according to a recent survey. Ninety-three per cent of respondents said they found the situation unacceptable." Others report that "85% said that they were paying attention to the current affair," and "94% said that Japan's revisionist approach to its history textbooks was unacceptable."

ESWN then states the following:

"These survey results may be uncomfortable to some people, who believe that the overly emotionally and intellectual irrational responses by the mainland Chinese was due to the indoctrination in their own history textbooks on Sino-Japanese relationships. But shouldn't Hong Kong be a different case, since its history textbooks are presumably more liberal and fact-based? Yet, the responses of the Hong Kong survey respondents are still overwhelminglingly against Japan's decisions with respect to the new history textbooks."

Notice that in all of this there is no mention whatsoever of any survivor to offspring flow of information. In fact, the poll results indicate that the source of information about the textbook issue in Japan is the media, which the respondents say they are paying attention to (as a current event dealt with in the media). Nor do the results of this poll justfy concluding that mainland Chinese know about related things from their survivor parents. In fact, at issue is not what happened in 1989 or 60 some years ago, but what is going on in Japan today in regard to textbooks -- something that parents and grandparents, either in Hong Kong or mainland China, do not have any special knowledge about.

ESWN's reasoning is seriously flawed, but Tom Legg isn't engaging in reasoning at all. He's making up things and trying to peddle them as facts that support his position. In other words, he's being dishonest. The Hong Kong poll clearly has nothing to do with the source of information that people have in mainland China, and it proves nothing about that -- and not even by any perversion of logic either.

ESWN attempts to show that because Hong Kong's "history textbooks are presumably more liberal and fact-based" than those in mainland China, and because public opinion in Hong Kong and in mainland China are very similar (and against Japan), public opinion on Japanese history textbooks is (not necessarily) due to governmental control of information in textbooks in mainland China. In other words, even without such governmental control, people in Hong Kong have the same opinions as those in mainland China.

But there are assumptions being made here that are not justified, or at least not proven. One is that the media in mainland China have not reported about the Japanese textbook matter, and if there has been reporting, what is reported is different from what has been reported in the Hong Kong media. Given reporting of the same or similar content in the media in both places, it is no wonder that public opinion is very negative against Japan in both places (and probably any other place that the same content is reported).

Given that content, however, even those without any "indoctrination in their own history textbooks on Sino-Japanese relationships" (as in the case of people in Hong Kong) will see and react to the severe unfairness and injustice of a revisionist textbook in Japan. Nobody needs any indoctrination to see that and feel the same, although having such indoctrination will tend to color reactions to and perceptions of things reported in the media. The Hong Kong poll results merely show that Chinese people (whether in Hong Kong or mainland China) are very offended by what they have been told in their media.

As various other non-Japanese websites have pointed out, however, there is a real problem in what is believed by most Chinese people, especially in mainland China. How many have been informed that there is only one revisionist textbook? How many of them are aware that much less than 1% of the schools use that textbook (somebody has reported that it is 17 or 18 schools)? And how many are aware of the actual content of that textbook? How many direct quotes have been provided? Unlike South Korea, the Chinese do not contest actual statements or language in the textbooks, and it is not clear whether copies of it have even been distributed in China. The Chinese would do well to learn from the South Koreans in dealing with this issue.