Photo/Illutration Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike speaks to reporters at the headquarters of the metropolitan government on May 8. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Sept. 1 marks the centenary of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike is set to again skip sending a eulogy to an annual memorial ceremony to be held in the capital on that date to mourn the thousands of Koreans who were massacred in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster.

Koike should realize the responsibility she bears as the top administration official and clearly express the determination on this landmark date for keeping lessons in mind, that the mistake should never be repeated.

The ceremony has been held by groups including Niccho Kyokai (Japan-Korea association), in a park in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, every year since 1974. Successive governors of the capital, including Shintaro Ishihara, used to send memorial statements in the governor’s name.

Koike also issued a eulogy in 2016, the year she was first elected to the governorship, part of which said: “The case, in which so many ethnic Koreans in Japan faced unreasonable sufferings and were killed, is a really heartrending incident that has few parallels in the history of our country.”

But she stopped sending similar condolences from the following year.

“I have been expressing my condolences to all victims of the great earthquake,” Koike told a news conference on Aug. 18.

However, deaths from a natural disaster are one thing and a massacre committed by human will is quite another. The way Koike mixes both under the single word of “victims” indicates she is turning her eyes away from the reality of history.

“It is up to historians to delve into what is an obvious fact,” she told the Tokyo metropolitan assembly in February.

The way she stops short of stating clearly that the massacre took place could be taken as a sign she is being indulgent of arguments that negate the fact.

It is an incontrovertible fact that the massacre was committed by those who believed in false rumors of the sort that Koreans had “thrown poison into water wells.”

A report of the central government’s Central Disaster Management Council says there were “killings and injuries inflicted by humans.”

“Tokyo Hyakunen-shi” (Centenary chronicle of Tokyo), issued by the metropolitan government in 1972, also says that some people were “nearly killed” and others were “slaughtered” just because they looked Korean or spoke less than articulately.

The spread of social media has facilitated the intentional circulation of misleading information. This and other developments have, in a sense, increased the risk of a similar mistake recurring.

The governor should take the initiative in expressing the intention to prevent a recurrence. That is the role she should be playing as the leader of the local government.

We are afraid the ambiguous stance she is taking could gradually shift the general mood.

Last year, a metropolitan government official blocked the plan of an organization affiliated with the metropolitan government to screen, during a special exhibition on human rights, a film containing a scene wherein an interviewee refers to the massacre as a fact.

The official’s email of disapproval mentioned that Koike has not been sending a eulogy to the ceremony.

That set a bad example showing how the stance of a local government head could prompt the negation of a historical fact.

Events related to the massacre are being held in different areas of Japan this year.

The Korea Museum in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward is exhibiting an old picture scroll that shows people who are likely Koreans being assaulted by presumed vigilantes.

Civil advocacy groups are also organizing tours of memorial monuments and lecture sessions in Yokohama, Chiba Prefecture and elsewhere.

There is so much significance in these and other efforts to pass down lessons from the past and reflect on them from a contemporary viewpoint.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 26

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