I came across an English-language article about the hinomaru flag recently. Briefly, a finance minister intends to display the hinomaru in his press briefing room and there is, naturally, controversy over the hinomaru's symbolism.
I find this particular political issue pretty fascinating. What do you think?
Should the hinomaru have been made Japan's official flag?
Is the hinomaru (with or without sun rays) a symbol of militarist Japan?
Is it ever offensive for a country to display its national flag?
Does the symbolism of the gesture change if it is displayed by a known rightist/nationalist?
Also, did you notice that Kiichi Miyazawa was quoted at the end of the article?
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8 months ago
3 comments:
Kiichi Miyazawa attended JASC????
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Politicians make ridiculously loaded gestures all the time. It seems silly to deny this particular gesture. Not to mention, collapsing the narrative of an entire nation onto one moment is deeply problematic.
If Japan's Minister of Defense were to plant the Japanese flag in Nanjing memorial grounds, that would be different.
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It strikes me that, to make an unfortunately extended and folksy metaphor, this is like closing the barn door after the cows have already run off.
An appropriate point to debate the symbolism of the hinomaru would have been 1999, when they made it the national flag. After that, objecting to the national flag being displayed at official government events is hardly getting at the real issue.
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Today on NHK news they showed Aso san with the hinomaru flag in the background... Bad bad bad.
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