Okinawa protests; government response
On Saturday, one of the biggest protests I’ve ever seen took place in Ginowan City in the centre of Okinawa. Over 110,000 people attended the gathering at the Ginowan Convention Center, to protest to the government and particularly the Ministry of Education, against their plans to change the history textbooks related to the Battle of Okinawa during WWII. I have written about this issue before, but this is the biggest action people in Okinawa have taken against it. Members from all political parties (including the ruling LDP) too part, alongside, citizens, teachers & students from schools throughout Okinawa. On outlying islands there were also similar, albeit smaller, protests. A photo (but not a great one) showing the crowds is below, coming from http://english.donga.com.
Will this protest have any real affect to the government’s plans? Somehow I doubt it. Okinawa has always been the least favoured, “black sheep” of Japan’s prefectural family, and their thoughts and needs are rarely taken into account. News is coming out today though that the government is seeking, “Ways to soothe the outrage of people in Okinawa”. I don’t think soothing is what’s needed. What is needed is for the history books to actually state what happened, instead of trying to modify history so that it will only be the Okinawan people who, in a generation, know about the actions of some members of the Imperial Japanese Army on Okinawa during WWII.
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Hi Dave,
Was waiting for an update on this, it was even all over the Dutch news!
Good on you, you Oki’s! It’s one thing to piss off foreign countries about your way of history writing but to even be able to piss of your own citizines is quite a feat!
Another seemingly interesting thing happening in Japan right now is the privatisation of the Japanese postal service and a as a byproduct creating the biggest commercial bank in the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7021468.stm
Hopefully 110,000 people coming together to protest will have some effect in any case.