From: H-JAPAN-AT-H-NET.MSU.EDU (H-japan-AT-h-net.msu.edu)
Subject:      H-Japan (E): Azuma Shiro's lawsuit 
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1998 20:38:50 GMT


This message was originally addressed to AYELET ZOHAR 
and was forwarded to you by AYELET ZOHAR. 
 


                    ---------------------------------------- 
From: Hiromitsu Inokuchi <inoh-AT-iname.com>

                                    H-Japan
                               December 24, 1998


I would like to inform you about the recent decision (Dec. 22) on the lawsuit of Shiro Azuma, a former Japanese soldier who participated in the battle of Nanjing (and who appeared in the film In the Name of Emperor). He totally lost at the Tokyo High Court. T
he decision was first planned to made on November 26, but the court postponed the decision until Dec. 22. Many suspected that the court attempted to avoid the decision during President Jiang Zeming's visit to Japan. Azuma, of course intends to appeal to the S
upreme Court. I will write the details of the decision in the future post.

I briefly describe the content of the lawsuit. Since the late 1980s, many former soldiers have come out to confess the war crimes they committed, or witnessed, in the battlefield during Japan's aggression into Asian countries. Azuma wrote a book, _My Nanjing 
Platoon_ (Waga Nanking Puraton), which is based on his wartime diary and details the gruesome activities of Japanese soldiers in Nanjing. His book has been charged with libel, because, even though he used a pseudonym for the officer who conducted the inhumane
 killings, readers can identify the officer. The officer, Mitsuharu Hashimoto, supported by a veterans' organization (Kaiko-sha), filed the lawsuit against Azuma, at Tokyo District Court, and won in 1996. Azuma appealed the ruling to a higher court, where he 
would need to prove that what he wrote in his book concerning Hashimoto's conducts is true.

The attempts by the veterans' organizations overlaps with the current revisionist movement in the area of history. It is important lawsuit regarding the "truth" of the Nanjing Massacre, because if Azuma's book is regarded as libelous, it will be very difficul
t for other former soldiers to confess, write, and make public accounts of their war crimes. Such a turn would obviously benefit the right-wing and revisionist attempts to diminish the extent of death and suffering that occurred during the Nanjing Massacre.

Hiro Inokuchi

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