Professor Alexis Dudden, Professor of Modern Japan, Korea, and International History, recently published an op-ed in The Guardian. Titled “Japan’s rising sun has a history of horror. It must be banned at the Tokyo Olympics,” Dudden argues that the Japanese rising sun flag takes part in a “collective effort to cleanse the history of imperial Japan’s aggression” during WW2 and thus also causes “intentional harm” to those who suffered under Japanese rule. Dudden highlights South Korea as a specific example and writes that it is “unsurprising that the South Korean government is first to raise objections to the flag” being waved at the 2020 Olympics.

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