Another feedback on comfort women issue

The following is another feedback from BIBI, who has been living in Japan for several years and considers himself partly Japanese...


*************************************************************************************
I am very glad to see that one of your interests are related to this and other related issues. I was always reading avidly in Japan any news related to comfort women and I may try to inform some of my friends on this issue. My greatest interest though is to see that you engage in dialogue and bring reactions from some Japanese people. If I may, I encourage you to become more knowledgeable on the extent of the Japanese apology - or what I believe is rather a lack or absence of apology - to China and other neighboring countries.

Also, how about looking at the Chinese perspective following some abuses China perpetuated to neighboring Asian peoples itself. Is it satisfying and how far is China itself from making public apologies?

Also, is the value of an apology the same in both cultures? Is it realistic to compare the German attitude (or the French) to this case and could we expect a similar attitude from Japan for the only reason that both countries are well ahead in the 21st century (although their cultures are still so far apart)?

I don't think so, although I too would love to see Japan act with what my Western perspectives call civility. So if Japan made real apologies and expressed more consideration and empathy to the Governments of neighboring Asian countries, my sense of what is right would be flattered.

But my own perspective doesn't have much worth in the sense that I am not truly Japanese (only my heart is Japanese to some extent, the rest of me is French). There are other fields where I have the feeling that Japan is acting way behind our age and its rank in the world, one is the freedom of the press and another is the practice of long periods of pre-indictment trial in the Japanese judicial system (up to 23 days) during which I think risks of abuse are high. This is my French perspective, but is it relevant? To what extent is this Japanese practice consistent with the importance of giving a chance to detainees to make a confession? Probably to a large extent.

The point I am trying to make is that it is easy to miss an important aspect of the cultures we would like to see change "for the better". I don't think that the issue of comfort women is yet ripe for the japanese people.