Chinese media are reporting on an incident with strange resonance in Hiroshima, where on October 18, at about half past midnight Beijing time, a 37-year-old Japanese man attacked the Peace Memorial in an attempt to erase the words “wrong/mistake” (错误)from an inscription, screaming something along the lines of “Things we have done were not wrong!”
“自己做的事情没有错” is how the Chinese render it, which I suppose is what really matters here.
Hiroshima has been pretty quiet in the Chinese news of late, even in spite of the rumblings about a 2020 Olympic bid with Nagasaki, to which China is certainly internally plenty opposed. Chinese audiences got some basic education about the number of civilian deaths in Nagasaki, anyway, when former prime minister Abe Shinzo Taro Aso went to the Peace Park there this past August. However, note that Xinhua didn’t bother to send a photographer, relying instead on the French AFP for images.
The BBS comments on the Hiroshima story are being kept quite light, but here are a few roughly translated retorts from the Chinese netizens:
纪念碑不应被毁，该毁的是靖国神社！这人糊涂啊 [Sure there is a memorial which needs to be destroyed: destroy Yasukuni Shrine! This guy is a real muddle-head.]
And then, accosting his fellow commenters, this fellow steps up: 你们的国民就是人了？怎么没想到到南京献花？[Are you citizens really human beings? Why have you not thought to go to Nanjing to lay a wreath?]
We will see how this develops.
And speaking of Nanjing, here is Kobayashi Yoshinori’s moderating voice (scans from my own collection):
Oh, fortunately there is some good news, though it has yet to be reported in Xinhua. Black is back in in Tokyo. (Was it ever out?)
Adam Cathcart 
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