NEW YORK -- The New York Times has an intriguing take on Japan. The latest example is an article with the heading "Atrocity Amnesia: Japan Rewrites Its Manchuria Story" (Sept. 19).
Earlier, it ran a century-old photograph of a group of Japanese military officers in heavy overcoats lined up for a camera, with a naked, apparently tortured man lying face down on a makeshift cot or stretcher on the floor. The Times dug that out when news of Abu Ghraib prison abuse became headlines. Before then -- well, similar instances are too many to count.
Actually, the article about Manchuria, by Howard French, is a typical case of an eye-grabbing headline followed by a report containing less than advertised. Indeed, the discrepancy in this instance -- which comes with a large, grainy 73-year-old photograph of the Japanese Army marching down a narrow street in Manchuria -- is great enough to make me wonder if the editor, in choosing the headline, merely wanted to perpetuate the Times' view of Japan and its history.