The other night as our flight was preparing for landing upon return to Saigon from Bangkok, over the PA system the flight attendant announced that the Vietnamese customs declarations forms would have to obtained at the airport. A major drag but not entirely out of the ordinary for Vietnam Airlines. Behind me, a man demanded a flight attendant. He then proceeded to vent his frustration demanding that the airline apologize to him personally for negligence. The awkward exchange was further complicated by strongly accented Vietnamese-English and Japanese-English. The situation escalated. The man then extended the oversight of the airline to the cultural generalization that "Vietnamese people never apologize."

A quick search through the international press will yield a wealth of articles concerning the subject of Japan and apologies. Punch it in google and see what turns up. Query another for Vietnam and apology. You'll note that the world largely demands an apology FROM Japan and TO Vietnam.

Apologies are extremely sensitive. I won't go into detail about the arguments, you can do your own research - online coverage is widely available. I would rather begin an investigation into apology and blame as it evolves in the media. In general, history tells that the vanquished usually apologize to the victors. While many examples seem to follow this trend, the difficulty then becomes determining the victor and vanquished. Where Vietnam won its national struggle for independence and Japan lost its national conquest of Asia, it is Japan that remains one of the most politically and economically powerful nations in the world. So much that it is being considered for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

This bid for the security council seat coupled with the controversy over the release of new school textbooks for Japanese students has once again provoked the ire of Korea and China, who see the Japanese unrepentant in its apparent historical amnesia of war atrocities committed during WWII.

And now the Cambodians are joining in the tag team. A recent announcement on BBC reports that a Japanese firm is finalizing plans to market the Killing Fields through investments and improvements to the the genocide site- in effect transforming it into a revenue-generating tourist theme park (it plans to raise the admission price by 600%). This comes only months after Japan agrees to donate more than $US 21 million toward UN-backed trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia. The gift was at first met with international praise. That is, until Pol Pot Disney was announced. Was the offer genuine, or was it simply factored in the operating costs of other long-term investments?

But we need to take a step back. Is this current tide against Japan justified? Might people just be overreacting? Is bashing Japan a knee-jerk reaction? Is Japan becoming a scapegoat for Asia's problems? Is the sickness the effect of the symptoms or are the symptoms the illness? A person believes that an evil clown dwarf inside of him is eating his stomach. He might be so distressed by the fear that he manifests the symptoms- ulcers and internal bleeding. There are certainly many problems in Asia but are the causes what we believe them to be?

Hard to Say I'm Sorry? US: Don't.

Governments simply find it Hard To Say I'm Sorry. The disappointment with the late court dismissal of the Agent Orange case against the United States Government and certain chemical corporations on behalf of victims of agent orange poisoning is likely to find sympathetic ears by Koreans forced into institutionalized prostition whose own legal struggle for compensation and acknowledgement was thrown out of the Japanese courts. But what of the thousands of Japanese who suffered the aftermath of atomic fallout. Don't they deserve an apology too?

If the Japan has the inability to apologize, then what of the United States? Below is a list of ten international agreements that the the US has refused to recognize. Consider US global policy and war making and how they might be complicated by the recognization of such treaties.

(1) Convention on Discrimination Against Women (2) Convention on the Rights of the Child (3) Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (4) Kyoto Protocol (5) Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (6) Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty (7) Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (8)Chemical Weapons Convention (9) Land Mine Ban Treaty (10) International Criminal Court

* I used information regularly posted on ESWN in researching this post.