China should pay its respects at Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, says Taiwan author Ko Bunyu
Author backs Japanese revisionist view of second world war history by denying war crimes, comfort women, the Pearl Harbour attack and the Nanjing Massacre
Controversial Taiwanese author Ko Bunyu has claimed the people of his homeland regret Japan's defeat in the second world war and insists China should "pay its respects at Yasukuni Shrine".
In an essay published in the historical magazine and republished by Japan's nationalistic Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, Ko said Japanese people should feel no sense of guilt for the 1937-1945 war with China, and he insists that "most intellectuals" in Taiwan are of the belief that "Japan's only sin was that it lost the war".
Ko is already a controversial figure and his opinions have frequently attracted criticism.
Ko believes that Japan was simply subjected to victor's justice by the Western powers that it had attempted to eject from the colonies in Asia. And China, in particular, should be grateful, instead of repeatedly stating that Japan was responsible for aggression, massacres, rape and pillage directed against the Chinese and other Asian peoples.
"The Chinese may hate Yasukuni Shrine, but actually it's the Chinese above all who must bow and pray before the precincts of the shrine in gratitude to the Japanese soldiers who died to bring them peace," Ko writes. The Yasukuni Shrine is the last resting place of more than 2.4 million of Japan's war dead, including a number of men convicted of Class-A War Crimes after Japan's surrender in 1945.
Ko's position is a direct reflection of that of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, which has long promoted the claims that, among other things, China triggered the Sino-Japanese war in August 1937, there was no massacre of civilians in Nanking four months later, the United States provoked Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and "comfort women" were not coerced across Asia and the Pacific to serve as prostitutes for Japan's soldiers.
"Stopping the civil war, famine-relief and relief for farmers, preventing China's dismemberment by the great powers," Ko wrote. "No matter how you look at it, China should be thanking the Japanese rather than criticising them.
"Accusing Japan of waging a war of aggression on China is nonsense," he added. "Instead, China should show gratitude to Japan, a country which was burdened by its foolish neighbour."
Ko also uses the essay to accuse China of "meddling with Japanese history" and trying to in political and diplomatic spheres
"This is really Japan's own fault, the natural consequence of its inability to unambiguously say 'no' to China, but still, China's imposition of its own version of history on other nations is originally the product of the self-righteous way of writing history prevalent in China itself," he said.
