Japan wins Unesco heritage status for Meiji sites after row over war history

Unesco on Sunday conferred World Heritage status to a number of sites representative of Japan’s industrial revolution under Emperor Meiji (1868-1910), as Seoul lifted its opposition to the listing following Tokyo’s promise to own up to the war history of the locations.

“Just inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: iron and steel, shipbuilding and coal mining,” Unesco announced via the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The Japanese bid to have them listed had touched off a diplomatic spat because South Korea and China say that seven of the sites became centres for deportation and forced labour during their respective Japanese occupations.

Beijing had also earlier opposed what the official Xinhua news agency called a “whitewashing” of Tokyo’s militaristic past.

In a statement to the UN cultural body, the Japanese delegation said it was “prepared to take measures that allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites, and that, during the second world war, the government of Japan also implemented its policy of requisition.”

It added that it was prepared to “incorporate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of (an) information centre”.