Japan Is Tired of Saying Sorry for Its Past

choi

Andrew Browne, 日本想甩掉 '战败国' 包袱. 华尔街日报中文版, Feb 12, 2014
cn.wsj.com/gb/20140212/and082245.asp


, which is translated from

Andrew Browne, Japan Is Tired of Saying Sorry for Its Past. Wall Street Journal, Feb 12, 2014, at page A10.
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579376312192093576

Quote:

"Yet it [that sentiment of Japanese] also helps to explain the visceral opposition to Mr Abe in China and South Korea, for whom Japan can never say sorry enough for its wartime savagery that cost almost 20 million lives in Asia, some 10 to 15 million in China alone.

Sitting prime minister Shinzō ABE's visit to Yasukuni Shrine "called into question Mr Abe's political judgment in Washington * * * But it did him no real damage in Japan. A recent poll showed that 41% of Japanese supported Mr Abe's visit to the shrine, while 46% opposed it. Not all supporters of his shrine trip in the poll were rightists, by any means. Rather, say pollsters and scholars, many were registering their objection to the idea that a sitting Japanese prime minister should be dictated to by China and South Korea, told where he can and can't go, and what he can and can't say. * * * Within the neighborhood, though, Japan is widely expected to be permanently contrite.

Note:
(a) The article in Japanese WSJ:

Andrew Browne, 過去への謝罪にうんざりな日本. Feb 12, 2014.
jp.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304204104579378190435424698.html

* translation of the title: The Japan that is fed up with apologizing for the past
* unzari うんざり (n,v): "tedious; boring; being fed up with <あの子にはうんざりする。 The kid is a pain in the neck>"
* The "な" (pronounced "na") transforms the noun "unzari" to an adjective--kind of similar to の (some nouns must use な; other nouns must use の).

(b) "In the words of Nobumasa AKIYAMA 秋山 信将, a Tokyo academic and commentator, Japan is fed up after all these years with playing the role of a 'good loser,' the country that bowed its head after defeat in World War II and accepted a forever diminished status as a nation. * * * 'Japanese nationalists are sick of Japan being treated as the "good loser,"' says Mr Akiyama, a professor at the School of International and Public Policy at Hitotsubashi University 一橋大学 [a national, or public, university]. 'We don't want to be losers anymore.'

good loser: グッド・ルーザー
(in katakana; pronounced "gūdō・rūza-; In Japanese pronunciation, there is no INDIGENOUS long vowel sound for "a": such as "ar" in the English noun "car")

(c) "Over the weekend, for example, General Toshio TAMOGAMI 田母神 俊雄, the former chief of staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force 航空幕僚長, grabbed a surprising chunk of 20-something voters in elections for governor of Tokyo. Despite a mournful expression and stiff bearing he finished a respectable 4th out of 16 candidates in the race, with a campaign that skillfully matched a far-right nationalistic agenda with splashy use of Internet videos and Twitter feeds—plus a bevy of cute female staffers dubbed 'Tamogami Girls' to lighten up his image. Mr Tamogami was fired from his post in 2008 for an essay that praised the achievements of Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula and its occupation of parts of China, and suggested that Japan was tricked into war by the US."