VAWWNet SupporterThis photo was taken at a VAWW press conference before the end of the trial.

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Did a search on google news to find out how net newssites reported/commented on this. I just typed in "NHK" and saw what came up.

Is it just me or are a lot of the papers Google news japan picks up local or rightish? Does not seem to pick up the major newspapers... Anyway, here a digest:

:-((　
These people say Abe is cleared and tell Asahi to do a proper job reporting in the future! http://www.worldtimes.co.jp/syasetu/sh070131.htm

:-((
　This frightening commenator thinks the verdict is bad because it limits NHK's editorial freedom and - concludes the real problem is that NHK should not made a program on such a topic to start with! ;-(( http://www.sanyo.oni.co.jp/sanyonews/2007/01/31/2007013109111265011.html

:-\
this commentary in the local ehime shinbun mentions the topic of comfort women in the first line, and says the problem is the system where NHK is financed by viewers participation fees, but the budget is approved by politicians.
http://www.ehime-np.co.jp/rensai/shasetsu/ren017200701318329.html

More:
http://news.google.co.jp/news?hl=ja&ned=jp&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1106178311

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I did a quick review of mainstream reporting on the case.
I noticed:

- All the major newspapers put it on the top page on the jan 30 morning edition, in the prime spot.

- None of them mentioned the exact nature of the changes made to the program, notably what was edited out, especially the guilty verdict for the emperor. This is a kind of double silencing...! the vaww-net website details the omissions: http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/backlash/statement_by_vaw...

- The Asahi carried Abe's comments that this verdict cleared him and that asahi should retract their allegations of direct interference. Instead, Asahi gleefully reiterated them. :-)

- Some papers carried abbreviated versions of the verdict, which is quite detailed on the reasons why the program was changed, including pressure from right wing groups. this is in my mind the most pertinent point and was not mentioned in any of the articles. most headlines focused on the fact that NHK was influenced by politicians. Thinking about why that is:

- Remember that there is a debate going on about the future of NHK, with the commercial broadcasters (to which the newspapers are linked) wanting to weaken, if possible abolish it. One tactic is to discredit NHK as 'state broadcasting'! So they put this on the top page not to redress some of the injustice done, and bring awareness to Japanese people about the sexual war crimes issue, as VAWW-net had hoped, but to kick a competitor in the media market. :-((

- Of course nobody mentioned that none of the private broadcasters would even try to cover such an issue...

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background info:
☆　 What is the Women's Tribunal?
http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/womenstribunal2000/whatst...
☆　VAWW-Net Japan http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/index.html
☆　Why do we sue NHK? http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/backlash/whydowesue.html
☆　Article in Harvard Asia Quarterly by Lisa Yoneyama, one of the historians who contributed to the program.

"The altered program presented the Women’s Tribunal in a distorted manner and disgraced the survivors who appeared in video footage as witnesses. This was done in two ways. First, by adding a suggestive caption in the relevant frames insinuating that the women who testified at the Tribunal were making false assertions about having been enslaved against their will. The second was by interpolating segments of an interview with Hata Ikuhiko, a conservative critic who has gained worldwide notoriety for his extremist views and his denials of the Japanese military’s involvement in the “comfort station” system. Hata is also one of the chief promoters of the recent controversial textbooks that sought to whitewash Japanese colonialism and militarism, and glorify conservative family values. His association’s history textbook was certified by the Ministry of Education, but was adopted by only a handful of schools following a campaign of mass protest by citizens and scholars in 2001. "

""Failure to fully prosecute military sexual violence against women [in the post-war Tokyo Trial] allowed similar cases of violence to remain invisible in subsequent decades..."

" by law the government is not allowed to interfere in NHK programming. NHK is a public broadcasting corporation that is funded by the fees it collects from viewers. The budget must be scrutinized and approved by the legislators but is not managed by the government. "
http://www.asiaquarterly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=110&Itemid=5

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At the bottom of this article in Fuji Sankei, NHK are quoted as saying they changed the program to present a 'politically balanced content' and emphatically rejects the judgement! i.e. they are going to appeal (even though this is already the second time they've been found guilty, and this time harsher!).

But that is really a joke: they did not notice that it was unbalanced until abe and friends told them? and then they made sure a lot of space was given to arch conservative commentators and edited other footage out of recognition? im sorry but that sounds like a lot of baloony. here the details: http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/backlash/statement_by_vaw...

Unfortunately it is impossible to tell exactly how they changed it because they somehow 'lost' the earlier versions.!! VAWW-net also turned up evidence that the producers (of the sub-contracted production company) were not only pressured from their bosses, but received threats from right-wing groups. afterwards, right-wing groups boasted (in their mailing lists and on their webpages) that they had silenced the comfort women nuisance. one of the vaww-net spokeswomen also commented that the threats to them and the producers (one of whom had come out last year saying there clearly was political interference) by right-wing groups stopped after abe became confirmed as prime minister. 'i guess we were a stepping stone for abe and his friends. Next, they used the abduction issue' she said.

Anyway, NHK were found guilty of trampling on people:s rights (and cow-towing to politicians and cowering to right-wing groups) and still think they did nothing wrong. in fact they pretend that it is their 'editorial right' to be told what to broadcast by Abe and co.?
thats really scary.

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Finally, finally, FINALLY!!!

IT IS LONG PAST THE TIME WHEN JAPAN HAS TO ACCOUNT FOR IT'S WAR CRIMES.

PEOPLE IN CHINA, KOREA, THE PHILIPPINES, BURMA, AND OTHER COUNTRIES CONQUERED BY JAPAN BEFORE AND DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR KNOW WELL HOW VICIOUS THE JAPANESE IMPERIAL ARMY WAS; IT IS NOW TIME FOR THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN TO KNOW THIS AS WELL.

A LITTLE QUOTE FOR YOU ALL...

IN WWII, A WESTERN ALLIED SOLDIER CAPTURED BY THE
GERMANS HAD A 1 IN 20 CHANCE OF DYING IN PRISON. IF THE JAPANESE HAD CAPTURED AN ALLIED SOLDIER, HE HAD A 1 IN 3 CHANCE OF DYING.

EVERYONE CHECK OUT THE BOOK "THE RAPE OF NANKING" BY IRIS CHANG. IT IS AN EMOTIONAL BOOK, BUT ALL THE FACTS ARE THERE.

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Well, I think one point is that apologists for the wartime fascists, who number quite a few in the Liberal (HA!) Democratic Party--like cockroaches in the wall--have seen a setback. And a compliant media, afraid of loss of commercial sponsorship as well as political pressure, is on notice that they must stop perpetuating the crimes by censoring what gets said about history.

As to whether Japan was more brutal than Germany,I think this gets into the game of blaming the behavior on some sort of national or "racial" pathology rather than what it was and is: authoritarianism, imperialism, the same kind of capitalist expansion and domination that accounted for Germany's action, and that account for what my country did in Vietnam and is doing in Iraw, and probably soon Iran and Syria.

No surprise then that the US and Japan are using the bizzareness of North Korea (whose society looks not much different from Emperor-worshipping Japan) to justify a war footing in the form of missile defense (which will only provoke North Korea). And so the big news is that behind Japan's militarization, its re-imposition of pre-war like patriotic education goals,s its ever-increasing nationlism, stands the US patting its back.

We need to avoid assigning good and evil labels, but this does not mean everyone in war is equally guilty. We need to stop believing that somehow OUR governments are on the right side. Or as Bob Dylan sand, that God is on OUR side.

Many Japanese resisted the war machine. Many resist the move to force Kimigayo and the Hinomaru down the throats of kids and to punish teachers who won't comply. Tokorzawa HS students fought long and hard against their principal on that one.

Demonizing the whole country without differentiating between the leaders and the people makes it likely we will also fail to see the evil of Kissinger and Johnson and Regan and Bush...in fact the biggest mass murderer in this century is my own government.

Some reading that is better than Irish Chang-->

Remembering the Nanking Massacre

by Herbert P. Bix

http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2072

And, about another country which refuses to face its guilt for the past and present:

A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS:
From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan
Compiled by Zoltan Grossman
(revised 09/20/01)

http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm

Or this version-->

http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm
and

KILLING CIVILIANS TO SHOW THAT KILLING CIVILIANS IS WRONG

By Zoltan Grossman
http://www.zmag.org/grossmanciv.htm

His history of military resistance
(saying NO to the machine) and tribute to Ehren Watada is also worth reading
http://thankyoult.live.radicaldesigns.org/index.php?option=com_content&a...

More on history of biochemical weapons--see how often countries other than Japan are mentioned
http://www.tokyoprogressive.org/index/weblog/print/-history-of-biochemic...

Note that the point is NOT to excuse Japan, but to guard against the conclusion that somehow Japanese barbarism is a special type that makes ours look good. To reach that conclusion would be a mistake
and is disempowering.

One more

A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html

And

http://www.zmag.org/terrorwars/tw/TerrorInterventions.htm

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what strikes me about how this issue is discussed ALWAYS is how it usually misses the point that it's about WOMEN. VIOLENCE against WOMEN and SEXUAL VIOLENCE as a weapon. It's not about who committed the most atrocious war crimes. It's not even about the emperor system or the war machine. nationalists on all sides (who are not rarely also masculinists) just love to instrumentalize and/or demonize the comfort women movement. but as I understand it, the survivors came forward because they don't want this to happen to any other people, in any country under any circumstance. i.e. this can happen anywhere. it can happen to anyone if they are at the wrong place at the wrong time. as it has and will unless this is cleaned up. in the process, there needs to be acknowledgement and apology of specific cases like this system. but that is not an end in it self.

sexual violence should not be swept under the carpet. in any situation. violence against women should not be downplayed. under any circumstance.

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"i hope we can have more empowerment of those who are usually not heard than microphone hogging by a few aggressive types."

You mean, loudmouth spammers like Bob Ness of SF?

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Update: Supreme court threw out VAWW-net's case, June 12, 2008. VAWW-net is stuck with paying the court costs and returning the damages already paid to them.

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