National symbols still divide Japan

`I would die, sir. I would rip open my belly and die." So said the trembling future Nobel Prizewinning author, Kenzaburo Oe, when asked as a child by his teacher what he would do if the emperor commanded him to die. It was with such devotion to the divine monarch of Japan that millions of soldiers went to war in the Pacific region, to kill and be killed.

This week these wartime memories resurfaced as bitterly-contested legislation was introduced in Japan to make official the national anthem and the Japanese flag. The Hinomaru, Japan's flag, and the Kimigayo, the anthem, have been national emblems since before the second World War, but their use during the war linked them with Japanese militarism.

While the resurgence of the flag is causing some grumbling, the anthem is creating rather more of a stir. The words of the Kimigayo are taken from a 10th-century poem and are written in an old form of Japanese with controversial references.

The anthem praises Japan's imperial figure with phrases such as: "May the reign of the emperor continue for 1,000, nay 8,000, generations". Lyrics of this kind hark back to the pre-war time when the emperor was all-powerful and children such as Kenzaburo Oe were fearful even to glance at his portrait on the classroom wall.

But the flag and the national anthem have not been the only issues to rouse passions over nationalism. On Sunday, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender in the second World War, senior politicians will honour the generals who plundered their way across Asia. The annual commemoration at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo has become a national controversy, with speculation running rife every year as to which noted figures will lay wreaths at the graves of the war dead.

The Asian states which bore the brunt of the Japanese war in the Pacific are forever keeping a keen eye on their powerful neighbour to see how it deals with its bloody past. China and South Korea, in particular, have consistently demanded an apology for war atrocities and government-level discussions between these countries and Japan have often reverted to this issue.

While China demands a clear apology, South Korea wants Japan to recognise and compensate the Korean `comfort women' - sex slaves used by the Japanese army when it invaded the Korean peninsula. Ceremonies incorporating flag. anthem and wreath-laying honouring those responsible for the deaths of millions of people is taken by other Asians to mean that Japan does not view what it did during the war as wrong.

Inside Japan the raging debate over the past centres on schools. The left-wing teachers' unions have resisted playing the national anthem and flying the flag. This becomes a public issue at graduation ceremonies and other formal occasions.

In February a school principal in Hiroshima committed suicide in a dispute involving the singing of the Kimigayo. Several teachers around the country have been disciplined for refusing to play it.

While the flag and the anthem remain unofficial, teachers have been able to refuse to use them. But now the ministry of education will have more power to compel teachers to use them. When the final vote was taken in parliament on Monday to introduce the Kimigayo and the Hinomaru, right-wingers in Japan took to the streets in trucks, blasting the national anthem from loudspeakers and waving the flag.

The Prime Minister, Mr Keizo Obuchi, said that the two emblems were enshrined in law to prevent problems in schools and so that the Japanese could get over their war guilt and move on. But Japan will have to do much more to convince other nations in Asia that it has truly come to terms with its past.