There's been a lot of talk about historical revisionism in Japan lately, given the history textbook controversy and other attempts by rightists to gloss over past aggression in favor of a Reaganesque, feel-good imagining of history.
As such, it was rather interesting to see a trio of Americans -- Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ben Affleck -- take a similarly ambiguous historical tack at a recent Tokyo press conference.
"It's an honor to be invited to Tokyo," was how Affleck started off. "I'd like to say how it's caused me to reflect on what a wonderful relationship our two countries have now in light of a movie about a war that was fought 60 years ago, in part between the U.S. and Japan. And I'd like to say that we certainly made every attempt to be fair and honest and accurate and to represent the Japanese soldiers and government as having been put in a position where war was inevitable, by the U.S. and the political realities of the time. We hope that the Japanese audience here feels respected and understood."
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