japan museum review

i traveled to japan recently!

what a place. although i havent been very many places, at all, i still feel fairly sure that tokyo is about as different as you can get from australia while staying within the developed world.

and talk about developed! in every direction the city stretches unbroken into the distance. for all the millions upon millions of people the place is oddly quiet. the only traces of nature you will see are the manicured trees in the infrequent and highly organized parks, or the crows that seem to be far more numerous than pigeons. 

impressive, too. the air was far cleaner than i would have thought and the public transport system, although confusing to the point of tears for a gaijin like me, seemed first rate.

the reason i write about my visit however is not to gush. there are two aspects to japan that are far from great.

ill start with the less-bad one: smoking indoors.

what the fuck! it's gross as heck, makes your clothes stink (and skin, if youre a naturally oily feller like me) and it's probably no small part of the reason why so many japanese had bad skin. apparently it's unhealthy too.

but it is a forgivable error. as much as i do not care for it, and as much as it seems backwards and gross, it really isnt such a big deal. a lifestyle choice.

the second bad thing about japan is considerably worse: they have constructed their own revisionist history in the extreme.

if you are in tokyo and wish to see this for yourself then a visit to the yushukan military museum is a must.

here's my review

i was, without exaggeration, stunned by what i saw there. in fact, i felt physically sick as i was leaving, but then i have always been something of a nerd for history.

the museum is set out so that as visitors tour the building they are taken on a roughly chronological journey ranging from the end of japan's self-imposed isolation up until its defeat at the conclusion of the second world war.

it seems to start out innocently (and accurately) enough. there are displays dealing with the fighting that took place within japan during the end of the isolation period, along with fascinating accounts of perry's watershed forcible opening of japanese ports to trade.

 this is followed by an equally fascinating summary of the ways in which japan undertook its remarkable journey of rapid modernization; doing things like encouraging the population to eat meat (which was until then illegal), establishing a nationwide system of schools in a matter of years and massive state investment in things like manufacturing and infrastructure.

it is at this point in the museum that modernizing japan beings to involve itself in various wars; and things become a little uneasy.

now i am certainly no expert on the history of japan in the early 20th century, but at this stage nothing in the exhibits stood out to me as being blatantly false. instead, it was the chest-thumping and flag-waving way in which the museum recounted japan's early martial performance that stood out.

the human tragedy of the fighting is never mentioned, nor are the real reasons for conflict ever explored (a constant throughout the museum). instead, heavy emphasis is placed on the heroic performance of japanese sailors and infantry against the chinese and russians, along with a focus on the victories won, and of course, the fact that japan defeated russia at all (becoming the first non-western power to defeat a european nation in the modern era)

suspicious, intrigued, but still faithful that i was in a real museum, i entered the next section, which deals with "the china incident" - known to the rest of the world as the second sino-japanese war.

"china incident" set the alarm bells ringing. the largest war to have happened in asia that century, in which well over 20 million chinese perished, was classified as an incident. (almost apologetically, a small section at the bottom of one display explains that it is referred to as an "incident" because japan never technically declared war on china... uh huh)

at first you come across various exhibits demonstrating the persecution which japanese civilians suffered in china, along with several sections explaining the peaceful intent behind behind japan's rapid expansion into greater asia (to make a sphere of peace, to save their fellow asians from western domination)

it was at this point that i came across the first (but by no means last) undeniable, blatant, smack-in-the-face falsehood in yushukan "museum".

in the west it is known as the mukden incident; basically the japanese army secretly planted and detonated a small bomb on railway tracks and blamed it on the chinese as a pretense for a complete invasion of manchuria. (a kind of nazi-excuse-for-invasion-of-poland kind of deal)

however, in the bizzaro world of japanese history the culprits of the "manchuria incident" bombing are of course the hateful chinese looking to kill as many japanese civilians as possible; the exact same line they played in 1931. implicitly the invasion is justified, and explicitly the japanese military is portrayed as innocent. 

from this point on the revisionism comes quick and fast:

the japanese badly wanted peace and only continued invading as a means to bring the chinese to the negotiating table! which of course the obstinate chinese refused to do!

when the japanese captured nanking they were strictly ordered to behave themselves! and they did!

again and again the chinese would not negotiate!

what is also striking is what is not mentioned; absolutely no mention of any possible atrocities by japanese forces. no mass executions of soldiers and civilians, no sadistic sexual games, no beheading competitions, no medical experiments on abducted civilians, no pillaging of chinese resources.

the crimes committed by the chinese against the japanese, however, do rate a mention. again and again in fact.

as you move further along you then read about how japan was also forced into attacking america and britian, and that furthermore a vast conspiracy existed amongst the western powers to bring down up-and-coming japan.

it is interesting to see these displays struggle to convey the legitimate western suspicions of japan at this time without delving in any way into the reasons these attitudes existed.

once the museum gets into the second world however war the whole thing suddenly becomes quite sad.

by this time, rather than shaking your head at the pseudo-history with mouth agape, you begin to reflect on the fact that the giant museum is full of japanese tourists working their way through the building, many quite innocently basing their entire knowledge of japan's military history solely off these unashamedly patriotic and militaristic lies.

and let me be clear about this: whole sections of the museum are indeed lies. lies is the only accurate word that would apply. these are not merely different interpretations of debated events, some kind of post-modern version with an absence of objective truth, rather they are a calculated attempt to whitewash the sickening history of japan's militaristic past, government funded.

the kamikaze pilots who flew off to their fiery deaths are not lamented as the naive sixteen-year-olds caught up in the mindset of an insane military dictatorship they were, instead they are lauded as heroes who selflessly sacrificed their lives for the nation. 

some exhibits were downright petty. for instance the section dealing with the battle of iwo-jima boasts a scoreboard of american and japanese casualties (iwo jima was the only engagement in which us casualties exceeded those of the japanese) and the accompanying text stresses the remarkable achievement of inflicting such an honorable casualty ratio.

never mind that iwo jima was one of the most one sided battles of the entire war, with literally no hope of the japanese forces achieving victory ever EVER, or that the number of american fatalities was one third that of the japanese. never mind all that, says the exhibit, look how many american soldiers our brave boys managed to hurt.

the insane conventional and nuclear bombing campaign which the japanese cities suffered (one aspect of the war in which japan could surely claim to have the moral high ground) gets but a single one sentence reference. i felt really stupid for expecting some sort of summary of damages or casualties inflicted.

yushukan is the single worst museum i have ever been to. far worse than the national museum of australia even. yushukan is not even a museum in the proper sense. rather, it is a deliberate attempt to portray imperial japan as brave, industrious, honorable, and ultimately innocent. it cements the modern japanese to their abhorrent past rather than seeking to distance themselves from it. 'house of lies' or 'propaganda house' are closer to the mark.

and it could be so different! it would be so easy to have been truthful about the past while still conveying the unique bravery and ferocity of the japanese soldiers who died, and killed, all throughout the period.

and it's also sad as fuck. as you leave you walk past thousands of photos of the youthful japanese war dead with the knowledge that their descendants are that much more likely to repeat the exact mistakes they made by virtue of the great yushukan museum.

after a visit to yushukan you get the feeling that the people who took japan down the war-path must still be the ones in charge. how else could you explain it. why would a nation so uniquely advanced as japan try so hard to hide and reconstruct their past?

one of the primary responsibilities of history is to accurately convey the pointlessness and needless suffering of war. yushukan strives to do just the opposite.

from the english guide book regarding the purpose of yusukan:

How did the noble spirits proceed to their battles? What battles did they fight in? While learning about the noble spirits from the panel and understanding their historical circumstances, let us strive for a greater appreciation of their true heartedness.

i suppose if you design a museum primarily to showcase the 'true heartedness' of what was one of, if not the most, brutal and criminal armies of modern times you have some hard decisions to make about what content to include and exclude.

my review of yushukan: awful, crappy. embarrassing. dangerous to japan's future. zero stars out of one hundred / two thumbs down. fairly hard to find as well + entrance fee