For one, it's pretty reductive to call them 'Japanese who've done bad things' when who you're talking about is dead or on their death beds. That's not who the monument is for or about.

Historical monuments aren't for attributing the sins of grandparents to their grandchildren. It's about humanzing the victims and teaching people of this generation what was allowed to happen in the past. It's about teaching them the dangers of complacency and the complicit nature of being a bystander.

If it's worth anything, 4,300 people signed a petition against the removal and many protested in person.

Yes, Japanese people as a whole are severely lacking when it comes to acknowledging the atrocities committed by their country. No, Japanese people today are not personally responsible for them. The better we are at separating acknowledgement from responsibility, the easier time we will have convincing people to remember them.

[–] nekandro@lemmy.ml 45 points 9 months ago

This would be valid if Japan didn't continue to deny their role in atrocities. The Japanese people of today are entirely responsible for the lack of recognition of their role in the atrocities of yesterday.

[–] rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml 36 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think the person you're responding to already knows that and the implication of "the bad things they've done" is that they mean "the bad things their nation has done." It's a problem that Japan (or more specifically, Japan's government throughout the years) seems to have more than other nations because it's historically made a big show of its status as the only nation to ever suffer the use of nuclear weapons, and has plenty of memorials and museums to remember the event, while militantly denying, internally and externally, its own history of incredible violence and cruelty towards neighboring countries.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 26 points 9 months ago

You're over analysing things for no reasons as my choice of word is perfectly appropriate when you take half a second to figure out the context.