UNESCO’s Memory of the World
China’s new application to register for UNESCO’s Memory of the World, obtained!

Urgent Rebuttal by the Happiness Realization Party

“As suspected, Chinese documents do not show ‘the Nanking Massacre’ or ‘taking people by force'”

China submitted a new application to register “the Nanking Massacre” and “military comfort women” into UNESCO’s Memory of the World. Here, we will introduce the rebuttal made by the Happiness Realization Party.

 
China has been applying to register “the Nanking Massacre” and “military comfort women” into UNESCO’s Memory of the World. China submitted a new application to UNESCO after being pointed out its inadequacy in the documents submitted earlier this summer.

China hasn’t dropped its claim on these topics of controversy. What’s more, China applied to register a few more historical items.

The Happiness Realization Party [Party Leader: Ryoko Shaku] created a rebuttal document to counter China’s new application. HRP has created and submitted three rebuttal documents so far, with more than 100 scholars and supporters in total. On September 15, a representative of HRP visited the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and submitted the fourth rebuttal document, requesting to reject China’s application.

In this article, we will introduce the main points in the above document by the HRP.

China submitted a new application regarding “the Nanking Massacre” and “military comfort women” to UNESCO. However, the content of the application is quite poor; it’s no different from before. The application does not show any massacre or that people were taken by force. The final meeting is just around the corner, but HRP will keep arguing against China’s fabrication of history.

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In the new application, China included additional sources related to “the Nanking Massacre”—letters from Chinese in England and Germany to their friends in mainland China. Below is an excerpt of a letter from England that China included in the new application:

“According to yesterday’s newspaper, Japanese soldiers raped tens of thousands of women in Nanking, including a 12-year old girl. There were countless people killed after being raped. This is cruel and inhumane.”

But this is taken from a foreign newspaper. The one who wrote the letter did not witness the massacre himself. The historical fact is that Western countries, which at the time were aiming to expand their rights in the Chinese land, were attempting to degrade Japan by propaganda using the mass media.

Therefore, such a letter does not show any massacre. Not only that; it has no historical value. The fact that China can only offer such material in its new application proves that China does not possess any material showing a massacre, which means the massacre did not exist.

 

China’s Documents Do Not Show People Being Taken by Force

China also added new documents regarding “military comfort women.” One document is a written statement by 1,000 Japanese war criminals, investigated by the Communist Party of China. The content of the investigation is as below:

“Over 1,000 Japanese war criminals were investigated by the CPC administration, from 1952 to 1956. Out of those, about 8.5 percent admitted that they established comfort stations and 61 percent wrote that they had sexual relations with comfort women.”

What can be concluded by this, however, are that comfort women existed and that Japanese soldiers had relations with comfort women. These are common things. They do not show that people were taken by force or that comfort women were treated as sex slaves—which are what China truly wants to advocate.

Even if the statement did mention that people were taken by force, there is no guarantee what kind of circumstances the Japanese soldiers were in when they made their testimonies. China would need to show that the information obtained were from Japanese soldiers under fair conditions, with legal protection and a chance to give counterarguments.

 

Comfort Women Were Recruited and Purchased

Another additional document regarding “military comfort women” is the record of comfort women taken by the Japanese forces. This record is claimed to be possessed by the public record office in Jilin province of China. In China’s new application is the following explanation:

“There are 25 documents showing that the Japanese soldiers recruited comfort women. Listed in those are numbers of comfort women and Japanese soldiers, how frequent the comfort women were purchased in a span of 10 days and the record that the Japanese forces used government funds to purchase comfort women.”

This, too, shows that comfort women existed but does not show that people were taken by force.

In the explanation above, it says that comfort women were purchased, which means money was paid. At the time, such transaction was not a criminal act. It also says they were recruited, which means the comfort women were hired using legitimate means.

There’s yet another point to make. In one of the 25 documents is a report on the investigation regarding the restoration of public security in the area controlled by the military police corps in Nanking, a report compiled by Japan’s military police corps in Central China [photo right].

Even so, if you read the document carefully, you could see that the Japanese forces provided illness and injury treatment, free of charge, to Chinese people. It makes no logical sense for the Japanese to show goodwill to the Chinese while treating comfort women as “sex slaves.”

Furthermore, in another document, it shows there were Japanese comfort women too, not just Chinese ones. If comfort women were treated as sex slaves, the Japanese ones would’ve suffered as well. But there is no history of Japanese forces forcefully taking away fellow citizens.

China must explain the reason for these discrepancies.

 

China Is Violating the Rule of UNESCO

For those who know that both “Nanking Massacre” and “comfort women were taken by force” don’t exist through the research of the Japanese historian can understand the controversial points in these documents.

However, in the post-war international society, there is a vague understanding that they both existed. China is using this situation and filing seemingly plausible materials in order to convince UNESCO to realize the registration.

You can tell China’s motive in the new filing materials because compared to the one before, the tone of writing has become less extreme.

On the Nanking Massacre, the part where China introduced Japan and Nazi Germany is now deleted. On the comfort women issue, the term “sex slaves” has been deleted from the title and the content, except for one part.

But it should be noted that overall, it is claiming “Nanking Massacre happened” and “comfort women were forced to be sex slaves.”

In the new material concerning the comfort women issue, it says, “Comfort women are women who were forced to be sex slaves by the Japanese Imperial Army. Most of them were forced to be sex slaves by the Japanese army.”

However, the historical fact was that the comfort women were not forced but it was a prostitution business under legal protection. These kinds of institutions were set up in various countries during war and there was nothing special about how Japan used comfort women [photo right].

China’s application is violating the rule of UNESCO’s Memory of the World and the filing materials are not worth being registered.

It is not by coincidence that China is aiming to register these things this year, which is 70 years after the war.
China’s application is a political propaganda and is trying to get authorization from the international organization UNESCO on its claim of “massacre” and “forced taking.” China is indeed trying to use UNESCO in its political affairs.

To all the parties concerned with the UNESCO Memory of the World, we strongly urge to see the scheme behind this and reject the application by China.

 

The 4 main controversial points of the application submitted by China

1. A lack of authenticity (there’s a lie in China’s claim)
2. A lack of rarity (there’s no special value in China’s materials)
3. A lack of being opened to the public
4. A lack of copyright

* The National Archives of Jilin, China in Changchun city.

 

The Happiness Realization Party has objected 3 times in the past on the application by China. The images are our magazines that introduced that content. On the right are May issue, June issue and August issue.

After China handed in the application, the Happiness Realization Party did a demonstration on July 26, 2014

On May 26, 2015, the leader of Happiness Realization Party, Ms. Shaku visited the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and urged to deny the application from China [photo right].

On June, 10, 2015, Ms. Shaku, Mrs. Kuni Amako and Mr. Hiromichi Moteki held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo to appeal China’s fraudulence in its application [photo right].