The Japanese Rising Sun Flag is widely accepted and regarded as another national flag of Japan. Actually it is used as the maritime flag of the Japanese Self-Defense Force still now.
However South Korea is now insisting that the flag be banned from any international sport game since the flag was used by the Imperial Japanese military forces during the wartime. They claim that the Japanese committed war crimes under the flag during WWII and thus must be treated as equivalent to Hakenkreuz, the flag of Nazis.
However, the fact is that Hakenkreuz was merely a flag of some political party and never represented Germany or German people in toto originally. On the other hand, the design of the Rising Sun Flag had been used by the Japanese in their daily life since much earlier times and the flag is still being used by Japan as a nation officially. The flag represents the Japanese people as a whole even if their history contains both light and shadow. Won’t a denial of a flag of a nation lead to a denial of the whole nation including its entire history and people? Isn’t this the exact reason why national flags of any country must be treated with the highest respect always? Don’t the Japanese have the due right to demand the same respect to one of their national flags and confront any form of trials to disgrace it?
(Sometimes, hatred is directed also at the national flags of other countries, especially the flag of the United States, in South Korea. )
http://img.chinasmack.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/angry-koreans-protests-demonstrations-09.jpg
As for war crimes, which country is totally innocent? For example, South Korea has a dark history that they massacred 1.2 millions of civilians in the Bodo Leave Massacre during the Korean War.
If North Korea accuses South Korea of the crime insisting that South Korean flag reminds them of the horrible incident, must the South Korean flag be banned from international sport games?
How about the Vietnam War? It is told that Koreans massacred and raped so many Vietnamese civilians during the war.
If the Vietnamese complain about the flag of South Korea saying that the flag reminds them of the horrifying experience, must it be banned from international sport games?
Nonsense!
After all it seems to us that South Korea just wants to eliminate all things related to Japan from this planet. Must the rest of the world share the same hatred against Japan with South Korea just as they are wanting it to?
The same attitude can be seen in their silly claim that “Sea of Japan,” the internationally established place name of the body of water between Japan and South Korea must be replaced with their local name “East Sea.”
“J.Crew, Tsunami, Sea of Japan, and Korean Ethnocentrism”
When can the Japanese have mature neighbors and good friends on the other side of the Sea of Japan?