2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations
They were sparked off by a number of issues, including the approval of a Japanese history textbook and the proposal that Japan be granted a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Across China, businesses with connections to Japan were vandalized by protesters, as were billboards advertising Japanese goods and stores stocking Japanese-made products.
In March 2005, demonstrations were organized in several cities in the People's Republic of China, including Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Shenyang, Ningbo, Harbin, Chengdu, Luoyang, Qingdao, Changsha, Hefei, Beijing, Wuhan, Fuzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai.
State-owned media in the PRC nevertheless carried extensive coverage of anti-Japanese demonstrations in South Korea, as well as distant but related events, such as the European commemoration of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In the second half of April 2005, the People's Daily published several articles to calm down the protesters, and the Ministry of Public Security declared that "unauthorized marches were illegal".
Nevertheless, more and more people canceled their travel plans to China, and some doubt was raised about the 2008 Summer Olympics, scheduled to be held in Beijing.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange recorded a sharp plunge on Monday, April 18, and correlations between the demonstrations and Sino-Japanese economic ties are raised in the financial industry.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed his "deep remorse and heartfelt apology" for the suffering that Japan caused other Asian nations during World War II at the Asia-Africa Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia on April 22.
However, 81 Diet members visited Yasukuni Shrine hours before, causing more controversy inside and outside Japan about the true attitude of Tokyo on this subject.
[citation needed] In late April 2005, peaceful marches and rallies concerning Japanese war crimes during the occupation of Hong Kong took place.
In early 2005, news of the Japanese government's re-authorization of the "Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho" led to multinational public protest demonstrations.
[citation needed] The United Nations Human Rights Commission, the United States House of Representatives, the European Parliament and the Dutch and Canadian Parliaments have issued reports and passed resolutions calling on Japan to take clear, full and open responsibility for the war crimes of the Japanese military against women who were forced into prostitution during World War II.
The Japanese textbook in question only briefly mentions the atrocities committed and refers to Nanjing Massacre as follows: While the use of the word "incident" is standard Japanese historiographical terminology for focal events, such as Tiananmen "Incident" (天安門事件) rather than massacre, it is objected to by Chinese as a deliberate playing down of the events in question.
Another contribution to the spark in anti-Japanese sentiment in 2005 was Japan's bid for permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
[citation needed] Japanese Foreign Minister Aichi first applied for permanent member status in 1969, but failed to win support from the international community.
In September 2004, the G4 nations (Brazil, Germany, India and Japan) issued a joint declaration supporting each other's bids for permanent membership status on the UNSC.
On one side, some groups in Japan claimed that prior to Japanese expansion, brothels always existed in the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia in order to service European and American sailors and merchant vessels.
According to Bradley Martin, a journalist and expert on Korean history, claims the majority of comfort women actually volunteered to work in the brothels, as employment in the occupied areas was very limited.
On the other side, most of academia, especially of nations outside Japan, assert that the majority of comfort women were young girls abducted from their homes and forced into prostitution by the Japanese government and Imperial Japanese Army as sexual slaves and demand Japan take responsibility and formally apologize and educate the next generation about such an atrocity.
