***Mirip orang Indonesia yang anti Indonesia, menyatakan hidup di zaman 
jajahan Belanda, lebih enak.

***Tapi, apakah si Taro berani katakan Indonesia beruntung dari penjajahan 
Jepang ? Tentu tidak. Nasionalisme dan patriotisme Indonesia nomor satu deh.

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 05 February 2006 1644 hrs

Japanese FM says Taiwan benefited from colonization

TOKYO : Outspoken Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso reportedly said it was 
thanks to Tokyo's colonization of Taiwan that the island today enjoyed such 
high education standards.

His remarks are likely to stir criticism from Taiwan and other Asian nations 
which suffered from Japanese wartime aggression and also follow comments by 
the hawkish minister that the Japanese emperor should visit a controversial 
Tokyo war shrine.

Aso said he believed Japan "did a good thing" to the island during its 
occupation, such as implementing a compulsory education system, the Kyodo 
News agency said.

"Thanks to the significant improvement in educational standards and literacy 
(during colonization), Taiwan is now a country with a very high education 
level and keeps up with the current era," Aso was quoted as saying to an 
audience in western city of Fukuoka.

"This is something I was told by an important figure in Taiwan and all the 
elderly people knew about it," Aso said.

"That was a time when I felt that, as expected, our predecessors did a good 
thing," he said.

Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years from 1895 until the end of World War II.

Aso last week said Emperor Akihito should visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which 
honours Japan's war dead including 14 World War II war criminals, triggering 
outrage from China and South Korea which see the shrine as the symbol of 
Japan's militarist past.

Japan's diplomatic relation with China have already been at low ebb as Prime 
Minister Junichiro Koizumi has repeatedly visited the shrine despite calls 
from home and abroad for him to stop.

Late wartime emperor Hirohito stopped visiting Yasukuni shrine after it 
enshrined top war criminals in 1978. Since becoming emperor in 1989, Akihito 
has refrained from going to the Shinto sanctuary which has become a thorn in 
relations with neighbouring nations.

Aso had said it would be "best" if the emperor visited the shrine instead of 
only Koizumi, who has angered China and South Korea with an annual 
pilgrimage there.

Aso said soldiers had gone to war saying "Long live the emperor" and not 
hailing the prime minister.

The Japanese government later signalled that Emperor Akihito was unlikely to 
visit the war shrine.

- AFP/ir

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/191746/1/.html




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