Let the hyperbole begin

Congress has passed House Resolution 121, the "comfort women resolution," by unanimous consent — there were no nays voiced, and there was no roll call vote. According to one of my trusted correspondents, Congressman Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, introduced the legislation by suggesting that there is no statute of limitations on apologies for these crimes and that asking for this apology is not asking too much of Japan, a friend and ally. Said Lantos: "The true strength of a nation is tested when it is forced to confront the darkest chapters in its history. Will it have the courage to face up to the truth of its past, or will it hide from those truths in the desperate and foolish hope they will fade with time?"

H.Res. 121 is an exceedingly modest piece of legislation. Non-binding, it does not request that the administration take steps to pressure Japan by linking the issue up with another bilateral issue; it appeals to Japan's good conscience to do the right thing by history, to do its duty to ensure that its children are fully aware of their country's bloody past, a burden that must be carried by every country (as discussed in this post).

I have already documented some of the extreme rhetoric emanating from Japan's ultra-nationalists in advance of the resolution's passage, and that rhetoric will undoubtedly intensify in the coming days and weeks.

Non-Japanese critics of the resolution are vulnerable to the same rhetorical excesses as Japanese critics. Take this post by Matt at Liberal Japan, in which he asks, "Are we all Fascists these days? Imperialists?" Hyperbolic fulminations along these lines have devalued terms like Fascism and Imperialism to the point of being analytically useless; they are now little more than slurs.

Imperialism, Matt? Really? The US isn't occupying the Diet until the government apologizes. It isn't threatening to stop defending Japan, abandoning it to its fate, or slapping economic sanctions on Japan. The US Congress is making an appeal out of good conscience, from one democracy to another, for Japan to strive harder to ensure that the truth of Japan's past is not revised, relativized, or ignored — to ensure that Japanese children have a full appreciation of their country's wartime past. The time for debate about the hypocrisy of the US or whether it is within the duties of the Congress to pass such legislation is past; the resolution is on the books. H.Res. 121 is not the equivalent of the invasion of Iraq, Matt, but a simple piece of non-binding legislation that seeks historical justice, both because it's the right thing to do and because it will make Japan a better US ally.

This resolution's passage ought to mean the end of hysterical rhetoric about how the US Congress is bullying poor Japan. It won't, but it should. Instead, H.Res. 121 will no doubt find a prominent place on the list of wounds inflicted on Japan's precious self-esteem by the US.

For a review of this whole process and the resolution's implications, including its connection with US Asia policy, I strongly recommend this post by Mindy Kotler at The Washington Note.

Please explain, ambassador

Ambassador Kato Ryozo, facing the passage of the non-binding comfort women resolution by the House of Representatives, has reportedly sent a "blunt" letter to the House leadership warning about "lasting and harmful effects on the deep friendship, close trust and wide-ranging cooperation our two nations now enjoy."

(The Washington Post article breaking the story does not note whether he explained what harmful effects he foresees. If anyone has the text of this letter, or knows where to find it, I would be much obliged.)

Assuming that Ambassador Kato has not added any details to his dire warnings about how this resolution will harm the US-Japan relationship, I renew the question I asked when Ambassador Kato tried to scare the House Foreign Affairs Committee into voting against the resolution: is that a prediction or a threat?

As I noted then, Americans, public and elite alike, are generally sanguine about the state of the US-Japan relationship, and US elites seem to have no problem separating this thorny historical issue from the relationship. So it seems that if there is to be trouble after the passage of this resolution, it will not be emanating from the US. That leaves Japan.

So, Ambassador Kato, which is it? Are you warning that the Japanese government considers this an unfriendly act and will respond in kind? Or are you warning that it will inflame Japanese public opinion and undermine public support for the US-Japan relationship? Both are manageable, indeed, avoidable, if only Tokyo were capable of some perspective on this issue, instead of immediately becoming defensive, attempting to squash the resolution by whatever means necessary, and making dire predictions about worsening US-Japan relations (it must be the fault of those Democrats in Congress!).

Whatever the case may be, if there is one lesson that Americans should draw from this episode, in combination with the Kyuma affair, it is that clearly the US-Japan relationship has a long way to go before it can be called "normal" — and that there are plenty of history issues between the US and Japan that have yet to be properly confronted.

Can anyone say straw man?

Komori Yoshihisa, defender of Japan's honor Sankei Shimbun's editor at large based in Washington, has "exposed" the alleged activities of Chinese-American groups in putting the screws on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA-12) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-8) to get them both to support rapid passage of the comfort women resolution.

Komori argues that Lantos, who was supposedly content with Prime Minister Abe's remarks during his visit to Washington in late April, has changed his mind due to pressure from Asian-American groups, including the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia and Chinese Americans for Democracy in Taiwan. He seemingly bases his argument on an article from the Bay City News Service in early June, in which Ignatius Ding, executive vice president of the aforementioned Global Alliance, complained about being ignored by Lantos and Pelosi, and that if Lantos did not change his course, "it would be time for new representation" in California 12, which the article notes is 33% Asian-American.

That is a very thin basis for claiming that the passage of the bill in Lantos's committee and its likely passage by the whole House is the product of the activism of Asian-American groups.

First, what is the basis for thinking that Lantos, who was re-elected with 76% of the vote in 2006 and has never be re-elected with lower than 66% of the vote, is concerned that an interest group has threatened to challenge him next year? Even assuming that Asian-American voters united to unseat Lantos, would that be enough to remove him?

Second, and more insulting, why does Komori not even entertain the possibility that perhaps Lantos came to see the merit in passing the resolution after a bunch of Abe's cronies chose to remind Washington why the resolution needed to be considered in the first place?

It is simply too easy a dodge to point at Asian-American activist groups and blame them for what Congress does, and it is fallacious to argue that Congress and its members are simply cat's paws at the mercy of lobbyists. H.Res.121 passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a 39-2 margin, with Congressmen Paul and Tancredo, the lone dissenting votes, opposing on constitutional grounds, not out of sympathy with Japan. H.Res.121 now has 151 co-sponsors from both parties and from all parts of the country. Are there some members who have signed on to this resolution because it is a risk-free way of (potentially) gaining the support of Asian-American voters? Sure. Is it all a conspiracy by Asian-American groups, acting in cahoots with Seoul, Beijing, and Pyongyang, to turn the US against Japan (a Manchurian resolution, in other words)? I, for one, am skeptical of this argument, which has been advanced in one form or another all across the non-Japanese Japan blogosphere. (Try here and here to start.) As hard as it is to believe, maybe members of Congress actually think that "Japanese public and private officials have recently expressed a desire to dilute or rescind the 1993 statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the 'comfort women', which expressed the Government's sincere apologies and remorse for their ordeal."

Maybe, just maybe, Japan has yet to make proper amends from its crimes, and that saying so does not necessarily make one a Japan basher. While at one point in this process it was reasonable to ask whether Congress should be sitting in judgment of history, now that the H.Res.121 has been passed on to the full House and waits in the pipeline, that question is moot.

Like it or not, Congress will consider this resolution — and if it must, I would rather it act on the side of historical justice than not act and shield the revisionists, relativists, and outright deniers of Imperial Japan's systematic crimes against its neighbors.

Learning to be self-reliant?

If I could draw, I would have drawn something exactly like this cartoon in today's Yomiuri:


The caption on this cartoon reads, "Troubles at home, worries in America," Abe's dual American "worries" being the looming comfort women resolution and Christopher Hill's nuclear bargaining.

It didn't need to be this way, did it? As I wrote last week, the confluence of the North Korea nuclear question and the comfort women issue is largely a product of the blundering of the Japanese government, which has failed to appreciate how the mood in Washington has changed and act accordingly. Instead, at every juncture Shinzo has relied upon his buddy George's promises, without asking what those promises are worth when Foggy Bottom is running North Korea policy and the Congress — riled by Japanese revisionism on comfort women — does not share the president's sanguine views of Abe's empathy (and I'm sure it doesn't appreciate being called a tool of China).

The Abe government is right that the practical impact of this resolution will be limited; the foundation of the relationship is sound, and, as noted Tuesday, both the American public and American elites are content with the relationship. It's nothing short of amazing that even with a report emanating from the Bank of International Settlements noting that the yen's decline is "anomalous," Congress is more concerned about comfort women, and on monetary matters has directed its ire at China.

The importance of this episode is, rather, in the intangible impact on thinking in Japan. Relations between states, like relations between people, is a learning process. States learn what to expect from others, especially allies, and begin to build upon these expectations. Japan has come to expect a US that will refrain from criticizing its most important partner "bar none." It has relied upon a network of friends to ensure that this understanding remained in place, particularly after Japan was subject to all manner of American criticism in the early 1990s. (Robert Angel's 1996 introduction to the Japan lobby remains especially useful in illustrating how this works.) But now, with Congress's digging into Japan's past and the administration bereft of friends, the old understanding seems to be under threat.

How will Japan respond? Defensively, with alarm that it is being betrayed and abandoned by its supposed "ally"? That is how Amaki Naoto views recent events in US-Japan relations. He connects the comfort women resolution, Christopher Hill's recent statement about a peaceful framework among four countries, Japan excluded, and — citing a question asked by my boss in the Upper House foreign relations committee — Admiral Keating's remarks about aircraft carriers while in China in May to suggest that the US is not Japan's ally. He writes: "As the above-mentioned sequence of events makes clear, the US will never see Japan as an equal ally...Conservatives, nationalists, left-wing ideologues, and pacifists, as well as the people as a whole, are beginning to find further subordination to the US unfavorable. The problem is that after achieving autonomy and independence from the US, how will Japan ensure its security?"

The question is the extent to which this kind of thinking has taken hold among Japanese elites and the Japanese people — and the extent to which it could take hold in the midst of the aforementioned "betrayals." I cannot answer that, but I suspect it is more prevalent than perhaps Washington realizes.

So here we are: because Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, and because the US does not particularly care that Japan is incapable of dealing with criticism, the future of the US-Japan relationship is murky, and will only get murkier as Japanese elites begin to assume that the US is not especially concerned about Japan's interests.

"No comment" — too little, too late?

The comfort women resolution has passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs by a vote of 39 to 2. It now moves on to the full House, where Speaker Pelosi has suggested it will be considered in mid-July, conveniently before the Upper House elections.

The Abe government's response: no comment. Adhering to the sensible position that the government will not comment on resolutions in the legislatures of other countries, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shiozaki said, "Since this will not truly shake relations between the US and Japan, hereafter absolutely nothing changes."

Now why could the Japanese government not have said that six months ago, and stuck to it? This is a textbook case of shutting the barn door long after the horses have broken out and gone stampeding across the countryside.

Meanwhile, it seems that Ambassador Kato's gloomy pronouncements about the impact of the resolution were completely overblown, and scared no one into voting against the resolution. How much Japanese taxpayer money has already been sunk into the campaign to see this resolution destroyed? And — despite the official "no comment" — how much remains to be spent in the next two weeks?

Whatever the appropriateness of Congress deliberating on this issue, there are much bigger questions now. This episode has been important in revealing how thinking about the relationship differs between Washington and Tokyo. Congress has never been particularly concerned about hurting Japan's feelings, and of late the White House seems particularly disinclined to defend Japan. (But why should it? Is there another US ally that is incapable of handling criticism from the US government?) Meanwhile, the Abe government and its sympathizers, acting out of a mixture of pride, arrogance, and the absolute certainty that they have "The Facts" on their side have grossly overreacted to this issue, clearly leading some in Washington to wonder just who exactly the US is dealing with in Tokyo. As such, how can the alliance survive if one party expects love to be blind, and the other is beginning to take a closer look at its partner and noticing imperfections that were ignored in the first blush of romance?

Maybe it's time for George and Shinzo to have a little chat about where this relationship is headed. Taking a break from each other? Seeing other people? It seems that's what Abe is doing, anyway.

Is that a prediction or a threat?

For the second time in the past week, the Japanese media has noted concern that the comfort women resolution will worsen US-Japan relations.

Last week, Kato Ryozo, Japan's ambassador to the US, warned, "This resolution, which is not grounded in objectivity, is not good for US-Japan relations."

Now Mainichi reports that in New York on Monday, on the eve of the scheduled passage of the resolution in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a group of Japanese-American leaders expressed their concerns about the resolution. Irene Hirano, head of the Japanese American National Museum, is quoted as saying, "When relations between the two countries worsen, the first to feel its effects are Japanese-Americans."

Both reports strike me as drastically out of proportion to reality. How exactly will relations worsen? What will be the practical impact of this resolution? Will the US somehow be less reluctant to cooperate with Japan on security? Will the US somehow be less inclined to engage in trade negotiations with Japan? No, the problem does not seem to be on the American side, which seems to recognize that allies can disagree without undermining an otherwise close relationship. In fact, MOFA conducted a poll of the American public and American elites in February and March this year, measuring the extent to which each group thought US-Japan relations were good. The survey found that 67% of respondents from the population at large thought US-Japan relations were good, while 86% of elite respondents answered in the affirmative. This was, of course, around the time that the comfort women issue blew up. And yet an overwhelming majority of elites surveyed still felt confident in the health of the US-Japan relationship.

Hence my question in the title. When Ambassador Kato talks of the resolution worsening US-Japan relations — in the face of overwhelming US contentment with the state of the relationship — is he making a threat, hinting at a more combative turn in Japan's stance in the relationship? Or is he making a prophecy as to how his compatriots will react to their government's being criticized by the US Congress? It seems to me that instead of assuming that the resolution will worsen relations, it is appropriate to ask whether Congress's passage of the resolution will worsen US-Japan relations, and if so, how and why. And if relations are to worsen as a result of Japanese defensiveness, then it is appropriate to consider how Japan can become less susceptible to overreacting in the face of relatively insignificant turbulence like the comfort women resolution.

Confluence of issues

It seems that in the aftermath of "The Facts" advert in the Washington Post, the House Foreign Affairs committee is prepared to move forward (Hat tip: Japan Probe) with the Honda resolution on the comfort women issue — and that there is something to the news emanating from Korean sources that Vice President Cheney in particular was unhappy with it.

At the same time, North Korea, having received its frozen funds, is reportedly ready to move forward on freezing the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and welcome IAEA inspectors — moves that Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill reportedly greeted with some enthusiasm.

And so here we are: at the same time that North Korea has signaled its readiness to move forward with the agreement, tension over the lingering Honda resolution — and Japan's clumsy reaction to it — is rising. This is the kind of confluence of events for which Pyongyang has no doubt been waiting. The time is approaching when the US will have to choose between sticking with Japan on the abductions issue and dealing with North Korea in pursuit of an elusive nuclear agreement (which will most likely be unable to achieve anything more than a nuclear freeze, and even that will not come cheap). With Japan lacking guardians within the Bush administration — and now having angered the one significant figure (Cheney) who could possibly resist Hill on Japan's behalf — the coming weeks will be essential.

It seems to me that we're seeing the product of a series of Japanese diplomatic mistakes: holding back from wielding its influence due to excessive emphasis on the abductions issue; failing to anticipate the extent to which the US is hungry for a "victory" in the six-party talks, no matter how illusory; and arrogantly thinking that Washington would be indifferent to statements intended to relativize or otherwise revise the historical record on comfort women.

As a result the Honda Resolution has gone from being on life support — on hold until after the Upper House elections or buried for good — to being rushed through the Foreign Affairs committee and put to the whole House before the end of June, just as the US looks ready to move forward, alongside China, Russia, and South Korea, in reaching an agreement with North Korea.

If Tokyo thought Chris Hill's agreement in Berlin was shocking, it ain't seen nothing yet. And this time there may fewer voices in Washington reminding the administration to be mindful of Japan's interests. Instead, we may find more people echoing the sentiments of that Washington Post editorial from March: why should we worry about your abductees when you refuse to acknowledge the victims of the Imperial Army's abductions.

The 'comfort women' issue explodes

The news today is that the Abe Cabinet, while apparently still respecting the 1993 Kono statement on the 'comfort women' issue, will not issue another apology, even if the US Congress passes a resolution calling for Japan to apologize.

As suggested by two articles in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo -- found here and here -- Abe's remarks last week may have nullified any progress he has made since coming to office in forging a rapprochement with Seoul.

Once again the failure of the postwar Japanese polity to account fully for the totality of Imperial Japan's crimes during the war continues to haunt Japan and cast a shadow over its efforts to become a more substantial contributor to regional and international security.

But Japan's failures still do not justify the US Congress passing this resolution. I want to respond to a comment made on this previous post, which challenges the view presented by Michael Green in the Yomiuri article I translated.

Before I go respond, however, I must emphasize that I have deep sympathy for those who suffered at the hands of Imperial Japan, just as I have deep sympathy for the victims of each and every of the twentieth century's brutal regimes. That does not mean, however, that I want my representatives in Congress meting out historical justice. That is the issue with which I'm concerned, not the substance of the resolution.

So first, the poster -- who signs her post as 'Shrinegirl' -- launches an ad hominem attack on Green for being "quite uninformed" and lacking "understanding of the American political process." She accuses Green of "McCarthyism" -- that old smear -- for suggesting that some of the NGOs involved in pushing for the resolution having North Korea's backing. Having seen no evidence one way or the other, I'm not inclined to dismiss this immediately; it seems entirely plausible that at least one NGO involved in this debate has received support from North Korea. He did not name any organization in particular, so it's foolish to read that to mean Amnesty International or any other interested organization.

The poster goes on to write: "It is wrong to call it a history issue. The Comfort Women is among the many unresolved historical issues still having a profound impact on regional relations. Cooperation and stability is fundamental to ther success of the 2 Party Talks and to overall security. The US Congress has every right to be concerned about how its major ally in Asia represents itself, especially to other US allies like South Korea, Australia, and Singapore. In terms or women's rights this issue has very contemporary resonance."

I take exceptional issue with the argument that this is not a "history issue." That is all this issue is (or should be). The question of historical fact -- and judgments about historical right and wrong insofar as the behavior of foreign governments and peoples are concerned -- are not matters to be resolved by legislators, in any legislature. (Congress is free to apologize for whatever mistakes it feels the US government has made.) The twentieth century was a terrible century, perhaps the worst in human history in terms of the crimes committed by humans against others. I strongly doubt that a panel of US representatives is competent to determine which group of twentieth century victims is most deserving of justice (which also assumes that the US Congress is in a position to deliver "justice"). Who is to determine which cause is most worthy of congressional support? At the moment, it seems that the victims that are best organized get Congress's help in their pursuit of justice, as a similar dynamic is at work in a current debate on a similar congressional resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide, discussed in this Washington Post op-ed by Jackson Diehl. (It's strikingly similar: proposed by a Democratic congressman from a California district heavily populated by the aggrieved minority group, the Turkey resolution has prompted lobbying by the Turkish government, angry denunciations, and the potential for geopolitical consequences.)

This is a matter for the historians, because that is exactly what is at issue: Japanese leaders have yet to face up to the whole weight of burden of Japanese history. Japan's skeletons have been allowed to hang in the closet for too long, in part because after the war the Japanese people could tell themselves that they were victims too, because of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As described by Ian Buruma in The Wages of Guilt, his excellent book on German and Japanese efforts to cope with their wartime behavior, Japan's unique status as the only country to date attacked with nuclear weapons meant that Japan's wartime past was not dealt with openly in the same way that postwar Germany dealt with the crimes of the Third Reich.

One measly congressional resolution is not going to make up for six decades of failing to address Japan's past properly. That is a job for historians, ideally Japanese historians: to end the obfuscation of Japanese politicians, Japanese historians must not hesitate in documenting the facts of the war as well as possible. I know, however, that in recent years the academic environment surrounding Japan's wartime behavior has become decidedly unfriendly to those unwilling to toe the nationalist line -- but this means that Japanese historians will have to look abroad for venues in which to document the truth of Japan's wartime behavior. (A tiny disclosure: I have been assisting with one such effort.)

This congressional resolution has already had the unintended consequence of leading the Japanese government to dig in its heels in resisting the resolution, complicating efforts to put East Asian international relations on a more stable ground -- and surely making it less likely that Japan will fully accept the facts of its wartime misbehavior. (As this debate rages, Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro's film glorifying kamikaze pilots -- I Go to Die for You -- is on the brink of its debut.) I have no doubt that the groups pushing for this resolution are well-intentioned, but in politics good intentions can have disastrous consequences, and this may well be one such case.

Finally, this poster suggests, "The heart of the resolution is regional reconciliation, and Mr Abe successfully ended that." I don't disagree with the latter half of that statement, but I strongly dispute the former. Whatever the intentions of this resolution, it will not result in regional reconciliation. For genuine reconciliation requires that the parties involved want to be reconciled. Beyond Japan's failures in regard to its history, for all their moralizing about Japan's past, do Korea and China really want to be reconciled with Japan? Arguably both find the issue of Japan's history to be a useful safety valve for domestic discontent.

This post has gone on for far too long, but seeing as how this is the hot-button issue of the moment, a long post was required.

Yomiuri on Sunday

A couple articles caught my eye in today's edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun, both of which appear to be unavailable online. (Articles from Sunday's paper never seem to be posted online.)

The first was an interview with US Japan hand Michael Green, focused on the "comfort women" resolution, the title of which summarizes the interview fairly well: "Leave 'comfort women' to the historians." The points made by Green are more or less the same points I made in two previous posts on the congressional resolution. He argues, "The US Congress's involvement in this issue is a big mistake. In particular, for the Committee on Foreign Affairs there is a pileup of problems that should be dealt with, like North Korea's human rights violations and the challenge of a rising China." He also attributed Representative Honda's eagerness to push for this resolution to Koreans resident in California, as well as to the entanglement of North Korea-sponsored anti-Japanese and anti-American NGOs.

Published on the same page is an article discussing the outline of contemporary US-Japan-China strategic triangle, with reference to the new Armitage-Nye Report. I mention the article because I found an interesting phrase contained within: "Kim Jong Hill [キム・ジョン・ヒル]." The "Hill" referred to is, of course, Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state and representative at the six-party talks. This is the first use I've seen of such a phrase in English or Japanese, and a quick Google search revealed nothing. It certainly made me laugh, but there's a bit of truth in the quip.

In some ways, Hill -- and the agreement he helped forge in Beijing -- may be as indirectly harmful to Japan's interests as Kim is directly harmful, because the six-party agreement, essentially made between the US and China over Japan's head, forces Japan to choose between taking a stand on principle and isolating itself, or assenting to an agreement that does little to secure its interests. Of course, it's not really fair for Japan to blame Hill or the US -- the Bush administration is simply looking out for what it perceives to be US national interests.

Japan has no one to blame for its less-than-ideal decision except the Abe Cabinet, which has seemingly focused on the abductions issue to the exclusion of all else.

The US Congress, thought police?

So Prime Minister Abe has commented upon the US House Resolution 121 -- the so-called "comfort women resolution" -- currently under debate in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The resolution states that Japan

(1) should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II;

(2) should have this official apology given as a public statement presented by the Prime Minister of Japan in his official capacity;

(3) should clearly and publicly refute any claims that the sexual enslavement and trafficking of the 'comfort women' for the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces never occurred; and

(4) should educate current and future generations about this horrible crime while following the recommendations of the international community with respect to the 'comfort women'.

I'm not going to debate the facts of Japanese behavior during the war, but, rather, I'm going to question -- as Adamu of Mutantfrog Travelogue did in this post -- Congress acting as an arbiter of history, in part, it seems, due to pressure from ethnic groups in the US. My problem is not necessarily the usual "what would the US think if governments passed resolutions condemning American slavery," but rather the likely impact of congressional intervention in this matter.

I see two possible outcomes. The first is defiance. As noted in the BBC article linked above, Prime Minister Abe's response has been to question the historical facts. Rather than sheepishly accept the dictates of a foreign legislature, Japanese nationalists -- and perhaps even those who are not particularly fervent nationalists but still object to being told what to think about their history -- will likely stonewall, obfuscate, and fight the passage of the resolution, aggravating the issue, because no doubt the activists pushing for this resolution will redouble their efforts in response to Japanese defiance.

The other possible outcome is false acceptance, which at the moment seems less likely. But the larger point is that it is impossible to decree acceptance of historical wrongdoing. It is impossible to make people believe something they refuse to believe, regardless of the facts of the matter. Contrition that results from the goading of foreigners is, in my opinion, not contrition at all. Japan has a lot of historical soul-searching to do, but that soul-searching cannot -- and should not -- be the product of a decree from Washington.

Maybe the House Committee on, er, Foreign Affairs should spend more time thinking about the numerous problems in American foreign policy, instead of policing the thoughts of foreign governments; I'm not quite sure if that's what Tom Lantos had in mind when changing the committee's name.

And I wish someone could remind me where in the US Constitution Congress is empowered with the authority to dictate history to foreign governments. I keep flipping through my copy, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.