Regardless Regrets to War

Recklessly, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, once again added his record of exhibiting naïve recognition of history at the back stage of international economy forum. In the press briefing to European media before his speech in the World Economy Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Abe resembled the situation between Japan and China with that of Britain and Germany right before the World War I. U.K. media got furious on his comment. Abe keeps on losing national interest of Japan by alienating his nation in the world.

According to BBC, Abe said that like Britain and Germany in 1914, Japan and China were inter-dependent economists, trading partners with huge mutual interests. However, Financial Times reported that contemplation as a comparison of Japan-China tensions to the rivalry between Britain and Germany by remarking that it was a “similar situation.” It published an opinion strongly against Abe’s remark. “For Japan’s prime minister to allow any comparison with 1914 in Europe is chilling and inflammatory,” it said.

It is unlikely that Abe had studied details of history around the Great War. He graduated a college that did not required the highest academic achievement to the students, and later experienced business in a steel company. Then he helped his father, former Foreign Minister, before he started his career as a lawmaker. His way of collecting knowledge had been through verbal communications with his mentors. This time, he might have heard about the relation between Britain and Germany from someone around him and revealed his knowledge to unfortunately British journalists.

As long as his knowledge was instant, he was supposed that he had not known what kind of sentiment the British had against Germany. He did not care about how the British had suffered from the battle to protect Paris, and from Blitz in the World War II. If Abe resembles Sino-Japan situation to wartime Europe, the Europeans would send a concerted message: just stop it.

That was why the opinion of FT was very hard. “He would have resisted the temptation to visit Yasukuni. His recent calls for changes to Japan’s pacifist constitution are ill-timed and add nothing to the security of the disputed islands,” told it. It also required the United States to “make clear to Mr. Abe that he needs to refrain from nationalist posturing.”

The responses of Japanese media were ordinary ones. Some opposed Abe’s consecutive assertions as careless, while Sankei defended him as criticizing reports of European media to be misunderstainding his words. But it was not about carelessness, but distortion of history.