As if nothing happened

On Friday, March 1, 2013, two U.S. Navy sailors convicted of raping and injuring a woman in Okinawa in October 2012 were sentenced to nine and 10 years in prison. The crimes resulted in strong protests, especially in Okinawa, against the frequent crimes and sexual assaults involving members of the U.S military forces in
Japan.

Even though the Americans in this case expressed remorse, it will certainly not be easy for the victim, a Japanese woman in her 20s, to easily erase that nightmare incident from her memory. Indeed, as numerous so-called wartime "comfort women” (Imperial military sex slaves) and rape victims of members of the U.S.  forces have testified painfully, the awful experiences they underwent dominated the rest of their lives.

Here in Japan, unfavorable or shameful aspects of the nation's history are routinely passed over as if nothing happened.
Incredibly, even the Great Est Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, and the subsequent, ongoing catastrophe at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, are already fading from citizens' minds. Instead, the idea that “We, Japanese, should unite together” -- epitomized by widespread use word kizuna
(bond) is being promoted on the pretext of overcoming the tragedy.

“As if nothing happened …”; this attitude toward so much in Japan has been repeated without reflection for so long as if to almost become a national mantra.
Yet how any people recognize the existence of quite different histories currently existing in the nation known as Japan?

For instance, the southernmost and the northernmost islands, the Ryukyus (Okinawa) and Ezo (Hokkaido), were only integrated into Japan proper following the post-feudal Meiji Restoration in 1868. Then, in the Tokyo government's pell-mell modernization drive to compete with the Western imperialist Great Powers, Okinawa and Hokkaido were effectively used as guinea-pigs for Japan's colonization program soon to be launched in Korea, Taiwan, and then China.

Strangely, both Okinawa and Hokkaido are now the most popular tourist areas of Japan. But ironically, as visitors sing their praises, the local people's agony remains -- though neither tourists nor Tokyo appear in the least interested in the inconvenient histories behind that agony.

As news from around the world reminds us daily that colonialism and militarism are still rife, we hear similar voices, too, from Okinawa.
Listening to them, and remembering, will help to chart the future.

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