By international standards, Japan’s handling of its history is actually above average. Unlike Turkey with the Armenian Genocide, the Japanese government is not in a state of denial. Nor does Japan, as the Chinese Communist Party does, put a mass murderer (Mao Zedong) on its banknotes. General Tojo’s soul shares Yasukuni with millions of soldiers and sailors in relative obscurity, but Lenin, founding father of totalitarianism, lies mummified in a mausoleum in the heart of Moscow. Western democracies have dealt with what would today be labeled crimes against humanity, such as the slaughter of native peoples in the New World and in their colonies, slavery, and other deeds, in varying ways, including ignorance, indifference and negation.
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