Ikuhiko Hata

Ikuhiko Hata (秦 郁彦, Hata Ikuhiko, born December 12, 1932) is a Japanese revisionist historian. He published many books and interpretive studies in both Japanese military and modern history.

Education and career

Hata was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture. He graduated from University of Tokyo in 1956, and later studied at Columbia University. During the four-year bachelor program in Tokyo, he interviewed many former Japanese army officers, including A-class criminals in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After graduation, he joined Ministry of Finance and later transferred to the Defense Agency, where he engaged in historiographic works of the Japanese financial and military history. His collaborative study at the Japan Association of International Relations is later published as Road to the Pacific War. Also he published some dictionaries from the University of Tokyo Press. He taught as a guest professor at Princeton University, and served as a professor at Takushoku University, Chiba University and Nihon University.

Political and academic activities

He often writes for conservative-leaning publications but distinguishes himself from other political pundits by having substantial academic publications under his name. Some of his controversial claims include a lower death toll for the Nanking massacre (at max 40,000 civilians, based on his argument that the execution of plain clothes guerrilla soldiers is legal under international law and that both Chinese and Japanese violated Geneva convention making the applicability of the convention moot), and the claim that there was no organized effort by the Japanese military to forcibly recruit comfort women and that any abduction which took place was done either by renegade front line commanders (especially in South East Asia) who violated military directive or by civilian recruiters that were not part of Japanese military or government. He first came to public prominence when he outed Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to have abducted Korean women as Japanese officer, as having forged his claims.^{[citation needed]} He was one of the leading participants in the historical debate over Japanese war time atrocities, which took place mainly during 1980s and 1990s in Japan.

While admitting that some individual incidents of atrocities did indeed occurred, Hata claims that there was no organized forced recruitment of comfort women by Japanese government or military, and one of his long term goals is to revise or completely retract the Kono statement.

“There were at most 20,000 comfort women. None of them were forcibly recruited (by Japanese military). Forty percent of them were from Japan, the most heavily represented nation. Many were sold to brokers by their parents. Some responded willingly to brokers’ offers; others were deceived.” I would add that, on the average, living conditions in the comfort stations were practically identical to those in brothels set up for American troops during the Vietnam War".

Criticisms

Hirofumi Hayashi has made many remarks criticizing Hata. Regarding Hata's book “Comfort Women and Sex in War” (“慰安婦と戦場の性”, Hata, 1999) professor Hayashi said,

“(Hata’s) handling of documents is faulty. For example, there was a document about a 1938 request from the army to (Japan’s) Home Ministry which led to the recruiting of comfort women. In (Hata’s) book, this inquiry sent from a section chief to a bureau director in the Home Ministry is disguised as instructions to various government offices. Furthermore, it allocates the number of comfort women in five prefectures, but the number of people (in Hata’s book) is nonsense. (Hata’s) numbers show 650 (comfort women) even though the document lists the total as 400. He even arbitrarily changed the wording of quotes he used.”

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Ikuhiko Hata, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 120+ works in 220 publications in 5 languages and 1,700+ library holdings.

• 日中戰爭史 (1961)
• Reality and Illusion; the Hidden Crisis between Japan and the U.S.S.R., 1932-1934 (1967)
• 史錄日本再軍備彥(1976)
• 戦前期日本官僚制の制度. 組織. 人事彥(1981)
• 昭和史の軍人たち彥(1982)
• 官僚の研究不滅のパフー1868-1983彥(1983)
• 裕仁天皇五つの決断 (1984)
• 中華人民共和国・朝鮮民主主義人民共和国職官歴任表 (1987)
• Japanese Naval Aces and Fighter Units in World War II (1989)
• 昭和史の謎を追う (1993)
• 盧溝橋事件の研究 (1996)
• 現代史の争点 (1998)
• 慰安婦と戦場の性 (1999)
• Hirohito: the Showa Emperor in War and Peace (2007)

References

• Road to the Pacific War, 1-7. Tokyo: Japan Association of International Relations, Asahi Shinbun, 1963

External links

• University Tokyo Press (Japanese)