Game That’s More Than a Game : Computer ‘replay’ of World War II points to a larger problem in Japan

Among the hottest-selling computer games in Japan these days are those that replay the Pacific phase of World War II and reverse its result: Japan wins, the United States and its allies lose.

The enormous popularity of this series--one game alone has sold 3 million copies since 1990--might be attributed to nothing more than relatively harmless fantasizing by a generation of younger people who lack any personal memories of the war. But such fantasizing loses any claim to innocence when Japan’s official refusal to deal honestly with the harsh truths about its aggression in Asia is taken into account.

Japan as a nation has never fully accepted responsibility for the war it waged or the atrocities its forces committed, as Germany has. That determined act of denial continues to worry Japan’s neighbors. It worries thoughtful Japanese no less.

Critics, among them pacifists and some historians, condemn the computer games for their lack of reality as well as for the utter insensitivity to subject peoples they often show. In one game, Japanese troops are given a three-day leave in Saigon. Their commander issues the order, “Comfort.” The implications are his men will be free to enjoy themselves with local women who were forced under the Japanese occupation into sexual slavery, a category that has come to be known as “comfort women” in Japan.

Because of the evasiveness, ambiguities and outright silence that typically characterize the depiction of many World War II events in government-approved Japanese textbooks, postwar generations have come to maturity knowing far too little about a vital part of their country’s modern history. The computer games can be seen as a lucrative extension of this ignorance.

Ugly facts disturb and repel. Witness, in our own history, the inability of many whites to deal with slavery’s degrading human and spiritual implications both before and after it was forcibly ended as an institution. That turning away exacted a terrible price. Japan’s continuing refusal to face historical truths also will not be cost-free.