I’m in rather a rush, so I’ll have to answer the above in point form:

1) If a nation’s citizens cannot feel guilt and sorrow for the past wrongs their country has committed, they also cannot feel pride for her past achievements, and without the latter no nation would continue to exist. If you cannot feel guilt about slavery, you cannot feel pride about Jefferson, Washingston or Lincoln, or indeed even your nation’s contribution to the defeat of fascism. You have no more real, literal connection with the good than the bad.

2) A nation like Japan that not only does not genuinely apologise for her past crimes but engages in denial is likely at some point to repeat them. The Holocaust could not have occurred without the almost complete co-operation of occupied Europe and the so-called neutral nations. One of the main reasons for the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe is because of its failure to face up to the active collaboration of many millions of her citizens in the Holocaust and the fever of Jew-hatred which has gripped Europe for many centuries. Because of this failure, the vast bulk of property that was stolen from the victims of the Holocaust remains in the hands of the gentile thieves of Europe. Because of this failure, Europe feels at liberty to dish Israel at every opportunity. Had Europe faced up to her crimes, I doubt very much whether in 1973 when Israel stood on the verge of destruction, Europe would have refused to allow the overflights of American planes rushing military aid to the Jewish state.

I also have grave doubts as to whether Japan has undergone much of a change at all: the rampant racism, jingoism and insularity are all very much still part of that nation.

3) A denial of crimes in many ways makes a person just as guilty as the individual who carried them out. Who could possibly refute the charge that most Holocaust deniers would have gladly participated in that genocide if they had had the opportunity?

4) In asking for an apology, China is saying to Japan that the wholesale whitewashing of history that she still engages in is an affront to the sensitivities of the survivors of the genocide Japan visited upon that and other nations in the region.

5) If Germany together with its German eduction system had embarked on a campaign of Holocaust denial and justification, Simon would be outraged. That he is not likewise outraged by Japan’s conduct here is more than a little sickening. Is the life of an innocent Chinese child murdered in Nanjing by Japanese fascists any less sacred than a Jewish child murdered in Lodz or Treblinka by a Ukrainian or Lithuanian collaborator?

6) Whatever the conduct of China’s communist party, that has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. Germany’s crimes in World War II are not diminished in any way because millions of her citizens were ethnically cleansed (and in many cases killed) by Poland. Germany and Austria’s rape of Poland is not somehow made less because of that latter nation’s vicious anti-Semitism or the collaboration of many of her citizens in the Holocaust. More pertinently, Germany’s manifold crimes against millions of Russia’s citizens in World War II are not diminished because Stalin and his henchmen murdered millions of fellow citizens.

7) Those who believe this is all due to the machinations of China’s political elite have no understanding of the great well of anger that still exists among China’s citizens about this issue.