Decidement, les relations nippo-chinoises comme les nippo-nord-coreennes au demeurant, semblent devoir encore tourner en rond au XXIeme siecle, comme elles l'ont si souvent fait durant le precedent.
Ainsi donc, deux informations du jour nous rappellent qu'entre ces deux nations, il y a eu une guerre, et une sacree meme puisqu'on ne finit pas d'en sortir pour mieux y revenir.
Des chinois contre la personne du JaponUne association, non pas de victimes de la guerre, mais de victimes des sequelles de la 2eme guerre mondiale, vient a ce propos, d'intenter un proces a l'Etat nippon pour n'avoir pas nettoye a temps la Chine des armes chimiques que le Japon avait utilise durant le conflit mondial. En effet, il y a quelques annees, un groupe d'ouvriers chinois du batiment avait ete expose par accident au gaz d'attaque qui se trouvait dans un conteneur militaire abandonne par l'Armee Imperiale sur le champ de bataille, evenement malheureux qui devait entrainer de serieux consequences sur le plan de la sante a pres d'une cinquantaine de personnes presentes le jour du drame, et meme des morts si l'on s'en remet aux declarations des familles des victimes supposees.
D'autres associations du meme type en debut de procedure ou n'ayant pas encore este en justice, sont suspendues aux conclusions de la Cour qui doit trancher dans cette affaire epineuse, attendant qu'une ouverture se cree a la faveur d'une condamnation hypothetique, pour se lancer a leur tour dans des procedures a l'encontre de l'Etat japonais...
(cf. article 1 ci-dessous).
Deuxieme pomme de discorde du jour.Un realisateur cinematographique japonais, Mizushima Satoru, vient d'annoncer son intention de tourner un long metrage intitule "La verite sur Nankin", oeuvre censee faire la lumiere sur le "sac de Nankin" qui reste comme une arete dans la gorge du gouvernement chinois, ce derniers declarant que le massacre de ses ressortissants durant la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale dans cette seule ville, se sera eleve a pres de
300.000 victimes. Le Japon a toujours officiellement conteste cette version, et d'ailleurs les chiffres retenus par les historiens internationaux tourneraient plutot autour du montant - deja horrible - de
150.000 morts. Cela dit, certains courants de pensee au Japon refusent meme ce chiffre, arguant que Nankin au moment des evenements connus sous le nom de "sac de Nankin" ne comptait pas meme autant d'habitants en son sein... Bataille de chiffres, de preuves, de documents, de temoignages de part et d'autres... Une sale affaire qui rappelle d'ailleurs un peu la blessure toujours vive qui existe entre la France et l'Algerie, douloureuse plaie qui se refuse a se refermer semble-t-il...
Pour la Chine, le "sac de Nankin" et les visites gouvernementales nippones au Temple Yasukuni, sont autant de vraies blessures historiques que des leviers qu'elle agite regulierement pour faire pression sur le Japon, moyen commode pour obtenir de ce dernier, diverses concessions politiques et economiques. Aussi, il n'est pas impossible que la sortie d'un livre chinois a destination du public international intitule "Nankin, l'holocauste oublie de la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale" (par Iris Chang) puis d'un documentaire egalement a destination du public international intitule tout simplement "Nankin" soient des eruptions concomitantes totalement fortuites, ce qui en tout cas aura decide le realisateur japonais a prendre la camera pour "contre-attaquer" egalement sur la scene internationale. D'ailleurs, le cineaste est d'ores et deja soutenu activement par les membres ordinaires de sa famille de pensee mais aussi par des universitaires et des parlementaires...
Le tournage du film de Mizushima Satoru devrait etre boucle pour aout 2007, la distribution pouvant ensuite demarrer assez rapidement. La question est tout de meme pour ceux qui s'interessent a ces questions d'Histoire et de geo-politique transversale, de savoir si le "documentaire" de Mizushima sera disponible en Europe, et notamment en France ou la Loi Gayssot pourrait rendre l'oeuvre introuvable car clairement qualifiable de negationniste. Une affaire en tout cas, qui devrait connaitre de nombreux rebondissements dans les mois a venir...
(cf. article 2 ci-dessous).
Pour en savoir plus, voyez les articles publies ce jour dans le quotidien national japonais
MAINICHI SHIMBUN:
[ I ]
Chinese victims of Japanese chemical weapon sue governmentA group of Chinese plaintiffs sued the Japanese government Thursday over the sickening of 44 people -- including one who died -- when construction workers broke open a barrel of poison gas left behind by Japanese troops in World War II.
The plaintiffs -- 43 people injured in the 2003 accident and five relatives of one who died -- are demanding a total of 1.43 billion yen (US$11.8 million), according to Akira Ibori, one of their lawyers.
The suit, filed at Tokyo District Court, also demands that Japan cover medical costs and income losses due to health problems blamed on the accident, which happened in Qiqihar city, northeastern China, Ibori said.
"Our ultimate goal is to get the Japanese government to set up a long-term relief fund," Ibori said. "We hope the lawsuit prompts the government to come to a realization about the seriousness of the damage from the abandoned chemical weapons."
Tokyo has agreed to pay 300 million yen (US$2.7 million) in one-time compensation to the Qiqihar victims. But the plaintiffs say that amount would not cover their medical costs and income losses, their lawyers said.
The plaintiffs have complained of painful blisters, weakened vision, coughs and chronic fatigue.
"It's been more than three years since the accident and the Japanese government has not provided a satisfactory response," said plaintiff Ding Shuwen, 27, a former construction worker. "That makes us angry." Ding was in Tokyo to file the lawsuit.
The abandoned chemical weapons are part of the legacy of Japan's wartime conquests in East Asia that still complicate Tokyo's relations with Beijing.
At home, Japan spends some 3 billion yen (US$24.8 million) annually to provide free medical care and other social benefits to about 4,500 Japanese who worked at three chemical weapons factories during the war, the lawyers said.
Two other lawsuits, both filed by smaller groups of Chinese victims of the abandoned poison gas, are pending at a Japanese high court.
A 1997 international convention requires Japan to remove thousands of chemical weapons it abandoned in China by 2007, but Tokyo has asked for a five-year extension.
Japan has removed 37,000 chemical weapons, but at least 700,000 are believed to remain. (AP)
January 25, 2007
[ II ]
Japanese director announces production of Nanjing film to deny massacre sue governmentWhen Japanese troops conquered the then-capital of China in 1937, historians agree they slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in an orgy of violence known since as the Rape of Nanking.
But a Japanese nationalist filmmaker announced Wednesday that he is working on a documentary with a very different message: the massacre never happened.
The film, to be called "The Truth about Nanking" and completed in August, will be based on testimony from Japanese veterans, archival footage and documents that proponents say prove accounts of the killings are nothing more than Chinese propaganda.
"This will be our first effort to correct the errors of history through a film," director Satoru Mizushima said at a Tokyo hotel, joined by a group of conservative lawmakers and academics who support the project.
Mizushima, president of a rightwing Internet broadcaster "Channel Sakura," said he hoped to enter the film in international festivals later in the year. He is aiming to raise about 300 million yen (US$2.47 million) for the effort.
The film is part of a gathering wave in Japan of "massacre denial" projects, mostly books, that attempt to debunk a slaughter that historians say killed at least 150,000 civilians. China says the death toll was as many as 300,000.
The film was certain to rile audiences in China, and opponents say it would only cause embarrassment for Japan.
"They say the film will transmit the truth about Nanking, but they will be only spreading shame for Japan," said Shinichiro Kumagai, a civil activist studying the massacre in Nanjing -- the current name of the city -- and supporting Chinese war victims.
"The move only reveals their inability to face Japan's wartime past by looking the other way," Kumagai said.
The film is based on the work of Japanese historian Shudo Higashinakano, whose work includes two books published in the late 1990s that claim the massacre was a hoax.
A Chinese court last year awarded a Nanjing Massacre survivor 1.6 million yuan (US$200,000) in compensation after ruling against Higashinakano and another historian for claiming she fabricated her account of the atrocity.
The massacre, brought to a worldwide audience in English by Iris Chang's book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," is widely seen as a gruesome symbol of Japan's bloody conquest of East Asia in most of the first half of the 1900s.
The massacre is a cause celebre of Japan's increasingly active nationalist groups, which are pushing to cull references to it in public school textbooks and discredit accounts of the slaughter.
Japan's rightists argue Nanking's population was too small to have suffered such a huge massacre, and they claim doctored photographs and exaggerated witness accounts have created the false image of Japanese soldiers as craven and bloodthirsty.
Wednesday's announcement coincides with this week's showing of the documentary "Nanking," a study of the brutal Japanese occupation of the city, at Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
Mizushima said his project was aimed at countering that film, among others planned this year marking the 70th anniversary of the disgraced past.
"Keeping silence to a film like this would allow anti-Japan propaganda to spread around the world as universal knowledge," he said, adding that such works contribute to anti-Japanese sentiment by portraying his countrymen as "brutal barbarians."
January 25, 2007