Nikon axes comfort women photo exhibition

[shiro_kuro]

Ahn Sehong had his Photo exhibit canceled By Nikon

Here is a link to the full story :

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/AJ201205240049

"Nikon Corp. officials canceled a photo exhibition of former "comfort women" in Tokyo but denied the decision was the result of angry protests that spread from the Internet to the camera manufacturer."


Images can be seen here
http://ahnsehong.com/gallery/layerbylayer_2012/

[kbg32]

It's a shame.

[Lund]

Nationalism is often a very ugly thing. As any strong us/them ideology.

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I worry that an influential block of Japanese just can't come to terms with the realities of history.

[Roger Hicks]

Gosh, what a surprise.

Cheers,

R.

[Robert Lai]

This persistent denial of the Japanese by the crimes of the Imperial Army before and during WWII is probably the number one reason why they continue to be resented and hated in Asia.

I had family in Burma, China, and Singapore during the war.
The brutality of the Japanese was no propaganda. It was real.
It took some courage of Nikon to allow the exhibition to be scheduled in the first place. Then, cowardice took over.

[FrankS]

The japanese are not the only group guilty of brutality during war.
And not all Japanese are guilty of this brutality, or of not accepting it as truth.

[Leigh Youdale]

True, Frank. But on the scale of 1-10?

[flip]

Originally Posted by Leigh Youdale

True, Frank. But on the scale of 1-10?

I think his point is that if you pick your people and moments in time, every culture has produced more nastiness than the human race can be proud of.

I, for one, say shame on the humans. Long live the peaceful apes.

[FrankS]

On a scale of 1 to 10 how racist is the dislike of a whole race of people, most of whom are individuals innocent of the cause of the hatred?

This is no longer a photographic discussion. There is a forum for this.

[JMQ]

There is a memorial dedicated to the Comfort Women here in Northern NJ, in the town of Palisades Park. Just recently, the Japanese Consulate tried to have it removed. When that didn't work, members of the Japanese government came, and also tried. When the township refused to budge, they resorted to denial -- that the Comfort Women did so voluntarily. I applaud Palisades Park for standing up to what it believes.

[JMQ]

It's a shame that Nikon surrendered to cowardice or pressure. I looked at the link that ShiroKuro posted, and the images are powerful.

[Frank Version Two]

Thank goodness we have moderators to tell us how to think properly, some discussions would be too difficult for us primitives to handle.

The fact is, that more than any other modern First World country, the Japanese have managed to avoid and forget their history. Young Japanese get a filtered, distorted history of World War II and the run-up, which can't be good in the long run. Contrast that to the German experience.

[FrankS]

Think however you like Frankv2.

[Frontman]

Since the end of the war, the Japanese have gradually whitewashed what happened. Textbooks and history books have become written in a more passive way, and subjects like comfort women, treatment of POWs, and Unit 731 are often not mentioned at all.

At every anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs there are protests and speeches by right-wing nuts screaming that the use of atomic weapons and the following US military occupation were unjustified. And if you were a student nowadays reading Japanese history as it is written, you would likely agree.

But my grandfather fought in the Pacific during the war for the entire duration. He fought the Japanese on the Philippines, and was one of the handful who were evacuated with General MacArthur. He later participated in the battle of Manila, and was present at the signing of the surrender on the battleship Missouri. After 4 years of fighting, he was one of only two survivors of the original troop deployed to the Pacific.

Comfort women were also used after the war, but they were intended to serve the US occupation force so as to prevent US soldiers from fraternizing with ordinary Japanese women.

There are Japanese who are quite honest about what happened during the war, and I have seen fights break out at the yakuza-organized right-wing rallies. Ordinary Japanese suffered under the former government before and during the war, and expected worse things to come after the surrender. To their surprise, the change brought about after the war was good. When I meet older Japanese who experienced the war and post war years and tell them that I am an American, they often thank me.

But other Japanese are ashamed of their history, and prefer that it not be brought up. This is wrong, it denies the sacrifices, good and bad, of those
who fought and suffered, making them all for nothing. I'm rather ashamed of Nikon for canceling this exhibit.

[flip]

Originally Posted by Frank Version Two

Thank goodness we have moderators to tell us how to think properly, some discussions would be too difficult for us primitives to handle.

The fact is, that more than any other modern First World country, the Japanese have managed to avoid and forget their history. Young Japanese get a filtered, distorted history of World War II and the run-up, which can't be good in the long run. Contrast that to the German experience.

I'll be pedantic.

FACT: a piece of information presented as having objective reality.

It would be difficult to empirically prove to me that the Japanese whitewash *more* than the U.S..

The world is full of nations and organizations that behave badly. Is this conversation making it any better? If you think having the exhibit shown would make it more so, I think a better use of energy would be to write to those who made the decision and voice your disappointment rather than to argue about who should win the international turd of the century competition.

Positive, not negative, action.

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I rather think that any conversation, where people state their views and listen to those of others, will help to make things better. Of course, if no-one listens, then the whole thing is a waste of electrons.

[Haigh]

I guess the Japanese do not want to know about their darker side in WW2.

[Haigh]

Some years ago we were watching a TV program on one such woman and when we saw on TV her house we recognised it as being in our district. That brave woman told of her ordeal as a forced comfort woman and it was degrading to say the very least, both mentally and physically. She had kept it quiet for decades but then I guess as part of the healing process went public.
A remarkable woman and as it turned out, a with a remarkable husband.

[steveniphoto]

i saw charlie kirk post this too. i was very disappointed.. i think these women deserve to have their story shared.

[FrankS]

Originally Posted by Haigh

I guess the Japanese do not want to know about their darker side in WW2.

It would be more accurate to say that some Japanese people do not wish to be reminded of some aspects of the war.

General, broad-brush statements about a large group or whole race of people are certain to be incorrect at the individual level.

[David Hughes]

Hi,

The trouble is that history usually gets distorted, often by politicians. Just look how many believe those stories that the USSR looted Contax. Worst still, look how many refuse to accept, or just cannot believe, that the USSR and the USA were fighting on the same side.

One of the things I like about RFF is that so many here have open minds and act reasonably. But I guess that's because us film and RF users are yet another minority and know how hard it is to get the truth over to some people...

Regards, David

[noimmunity]

A pity that Nikon did not go through with the exhibit. But then again, it would have been a little like Daimler Benz putting on an exhibit of photos of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The real problem of course is that the historical legacy of 'comfort women' remains largely unresolved.

Part of the reason this legacy remains unresolved is because of complicity from the postwar US-occupation. As in so many other areas of Japanese life, where elements of the wartime establishment were mobilized to support US policy of domination in Asia, comfort women were used on a very wide scale by US occupation forces during the initial stages of occupation.

[sevo]

Originally Posted by noimmunity

A pity that Nikon did not go through with the exhibit. But then again, it would have been a little like Daimler Benz putting on an exhibit of photos of the Warsaw Ghetto

German corporations generally will support exhibitions of that type - companies of Daimler-Benz scale usually even have researched and published their own involvement in Nazi age atrocities, and have some program to at least symbolically compensate their victims.

[noimmunity]

Originally Posted by sevo

German corporations generally will support exhibitions of that type - companies of Daimler-Benz scale usually even have researched and published their own involvement in Nazi age atrocities, and have some program to at least symbolically compensate their victims.

Thank you for the clarification and for insisting on the often merely symbolic nature of reparations.

Once again, the issue of U.S. complicity is significant.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East established in 1946 was supposed to be a counterpart to the Nuremberg Tribunal... Conspicuously, absent from the tribunal's list of defendants were representatives of the zaibatsus. The situation of Japanese national guilt is complicated by the seeming pardon of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito for war crimes and the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Further American intervention against Communism in East Asia required a stable Japan. Prosecuting former militarists would harm the Japanese economic recovery and was contrary to the American national interest.

from http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/levy...war_crimes.htm

Although Nikon was involved in the armaments industry, I have not read of any allegations of forced or slave labor. There is documentation however of widespread used of forced Korean labor in Japan during the war.