Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims?

IF YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE the newspaper narratives, the Japanese nation denies or chooses to ignore its behavior during the first half of the 20th century, while the Koreans were innocent victims of that behavior.

That might be the price one pays for choosing to swallow the mass media product, but then sometimes the antidote to that particular poison can be found in a surprising place—such as a Korean newspaper!

Here’s an example: Earlier this month, the Choson Ilbo of South Korea published an article titled Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims? The piece gives readers a glimpse of a reality more complicated than that usually presented in the popular press.

It is in fact a review of a book recently released in South Korea called A Metahistory of Korean-Japanese Disputes over Historical Awareness. (It doesn’t seem to be available in Japanese yet.) The newspaper (poorly) translated their own article into Japanese, and I’ve tried to render it into English because I think the information it conveys should be more widely known. Please keep in mind that what you see after the process went from Korean to Japanese to English (and in one excerpt from English to Korean to Japanese to English) is probably not what people higher up the linguistic chain got.

The Choson Ilbo chopped up the review into three separate pieces for some reason, so I’ve put them all into one place. I’m not sure how well-written the original was, but the situation is what it is. Hereafter, the voice is that of the reviewer, Yu Seok-je.

*****

A 19-year-old youth born in the colony of Korea volunteered to serve in the Japanese military. He rose to the rank of first lieutenant in the army and became a member of the kamikaze special attack squadron. Before leaving on his mission, he made a sound recording of his will for family members back home. The disc on which that will was recorded was discovered decades later. The voice cutting through the noise on an old record was by no means filled with sadness. It was the powerful voice of a first lieutenant in the Japanese army who pledged his loyalty to “His Majesty the Emperor”, and wished for the health of his parents. After his death in battle, he was enshrined with 26,000 other Koreans in the Yasukuni Shrine.

There was a surprising response to a television documentary broadcast three years ago that contained this information. Previously, one constant in Korean society was that the mention of the word Japan, with its negative image, would create a frenzied reaction. This time, however, there was no reaction at all.

Why was that? It was because these people were victims who, it was claimed, died an unjust death, while at the same time, serving as officers in the Japanese military and shouting Tenno Heika, Banzai! (Long live the Emperor!) In the decades-long debate about the faction friendly to Japan (during the colonial/merger period), dominated by the Korean-Japanese problem, there were no means available to offer an explanation about them.
　
The editors of this book are Kan-Nichi Rentai 21 (Korea-Japan Solidarity 21), a group consisting of Korean and Japanese intellectuals launched in 2004 to seek a new Korean-Japanese relationship appropriate for the 21st century. They are searching for a means to achieve solidarity by examining themselves and achieving a more mature viewpoint that transcends the antagonistic relationship that has arisen between the two countries. In brief, they now want to leave behind the intolerant nationalism with which one party views the other for a closer study of history. That’s why the authors of this book have chosen to step back from knee-jerk nationalism itself and develop a new viewpoint of their own through self-reflection.
　
The book So Far from the Bamboo Grove (In Japanese, Yoko’s Story) touched off a dispute about historical awareness last year. (Note: This is a semi-autobiographical novel by Yoko Kawashima Watkins describing a Japanese family’s escape from northern Korea at the end of World War II. The father was serving there as a government official during the colonial/merger period.) Commenting on the book, UC San Diego literature professor Lisa Yoneyama said, “Yoko’s Story closely resembles that of A Little Princess (a 1905 children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett). Both have the backdrop of a colonialist history that is not American and leave the impression that the United States is not connected with the history of colonial rule. That’s why mainstream American society appreciated Yoko’s Story as a book depicting the suffering of war. In this book, the historical background of Japanese colonial rule in Korea is wiped clean. This is related to the lack of historical awareness in the United States of their own colonial domination of others.”

Also commenting on Yoko’s Story was Professor Shin Hyon-gi of Yonsei University: “The dispute regarding this book began drawing nationalistic battle lines over the war in memory. Moreover, there was a sense of outrage that the Japanese, in their memories, considered themselves the victims. If you think about it carefully, however, (you’ll wonder) is it true that all Koreans were victims and all Japanese were always the victimizers? Talking about the experience of cruel persecution and ordeals is one way to achieve a collective identity. A clear line of distinction is drawn between the “good Korea” and the others, who are the villains. But crushing the memory of the Japanese does not mean that the memory of Koreans has won.”

Thus the book extends the horizon of thought into “troubling territory” that had been viewed as taboo in both countries. The victims in the victimized country have raised their voices to censure the victimizers in the oppressor country. But neither the victims in the oppressor country nor the oppressors in the victimized country are visible in this construct. No clear distinction can be made between victimization and victimhood, and the construct is both compound and multilayered. When the nationalism of both countries is in conflict, there is no place for one to stand in the rapids.

The Japanese wives have been forgotten by nearly everyone. Professor Kano Mikiyo of Keiwa College asserts that the problems of the past are by no means resolved. In the latter half of the 1930s, the policy of forming a unified whole of Japan and the colony of Korea (in Japanese, the naisen ittai policy) led to the strong encouragement of intermarriage. There were 5,458 marriages between Koreans and Japanese from the years 1938 to 1943, and of these 3,964, or 73%, were between Korean men and Japanese women. Most Japanese women stayed in Korea (after the war), and according to a 1975 survey, 73% of the remaining 956 women were in the economic classification of poverty or extreme poverty.

Professor Kano said, “The backdrop to the tragedy of these Japanese wives is the tacit acceptance of their fate in the patriarchal systems of both countries. In Japanese society, Korean men, who were ethnically weaker, were stronger both socially and culturally in gender terms under the patriarchy. Fixing up these men with the women of the stronger (Japanese) group exacerbated their self-esteem as males. Did this really achieve a balance by promoting equality?”

Considerations of the “troublesome territory” continue. Professor Lee Yon-hun of Seoul National University was critical of the explanation written in a South Korean history textbook that “Japanese imperialism stole 40% of Korean territory”.

In regard to the argument that the Class A war criminals should be separated from the rest of those venerated in Yasukuni Shrine, Prof. Takahashi Tetsuya of the University of Tokyo worries this would be a “dangerous scenario”. “After the Class A war criminals were separated, the war dead who were involved in Japanese invasions overseas before 1928, and who had no connection with the invasions after 1928, would remain enshrined. Once the Class A war criminals were removed, if the Yasukuni Shrine were to become operated by the state and visits by the Tenno (Emperor) were possible, it could be used as a device for supporting Japanese military activity.”

The critical weakness of this book is that the opinions and assertions of the 18 Korean and Japanese authors, and the logic of those assertions, are not unified. One possible interpretation is that the lowest common denominator for the authors is simply that they have removed themselves from the line of sight of nationalism, with which many people have been permeated. As the book itself states, if that is the case, as heated disputes with a multiplicity of viewpoints rage with no one offering a conclusion or a proper answer, its significance can only be discovered by considering it as one attempt to identify their common ground.

Endnotes

I’m not sure why Mr. Yu thinks the lack of a unified voice is a drawback; it is inevitable there will be a wide range of viewpoints in an issue such as this, and I think it is worth drawing attention to them.

The group Korea–Japan Solidarity 21 recently published a textbook examining the war that was written by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese historians. Nothing by that group is available on Japanese Amazon.com, however.

It is interesting to note that a textbook is apparently in use in South Korea with the claim that “Japanese imperialism stole 40% of Korean territory”. Who knew that such a textbook existed? Yet everyone knows about a Japanese textbook that glides over the same period in history–everyone except students in Japanese schools, because only a miniscule micropercentage of them even use it.

It is unfortunate that all the Japanese cited in the review are academic leftists; Prof. Yoneyama in particular seems to have permanently pitched a tent out in left field. Here is her profile on her university’s site, in which she tells us as much about her cat as she does her “partner”. The professor is rather upset at the success of So Far from the Bamboo Grove, as you can tell from this article in the English-language version of The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper. Here is a plot summary of A Little Princess; I haven’t read either book, but to think the two are comparable seems like something dreamt up by a college literature professor with an axe to grind and time on her hands. She’s offended that Ms. Watkins wrote the book, and she’s offended that Americans like it.

Extend the logic of her argument and one would expect her to be attacking Gone with the Wind for its portrayal of slaveholders on a plantation during the American Civil War.

It is worthwhile for people outside Japan to realize that viewpoints such as those of Prof. Takahashi exist, even though the scenario he postulates here is as likely to occur nowadays as a cow jumping over the moon. His Japanese language website describes him as an enthusiastic participant in the Peace Boat voyages to South Korea and Pyeongyang. (Members of their cruises also met several times with Yasser Arafat.)

The Peace Boat project was the brainchild of a group that included Tsujimoto Kiyomi, a member of the lower house of the Diet in the Social Democratic Party (formerly the Socialist Party). She was forced to resign in a financial scandal, and was later reelected through the proportional representation system. She is also suspected of, at minimum, having ties to the Japanese Red Army terrorist group. Others think she funneled them money.

It would be interesting to know if a wider spectrum of Japanese political opinion is represented in Korea-Japan Solidarity 21. There are other currents in contemporary Japanese-Korean relations, after all. For example, former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, a conservative/traditionalist, is the chair of the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians’ Union; an assistant executive director of the same group is former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo!

Mr. Honda goes to Tokyo

HERE’S A STORY that flew under everyone’s radar—in the English-language media, anyway. That wasn’t the case in Japan, where it’s all over the Web.

American congressman Mike Honda—perhaps Japan’s least favorite son after he pushed the comfort woman resolution through the U.S. House last year—jetted into Japan earlier this month. Did he come to see the Tokyo Tower, the temples in Kyoto, or the first sumo tournament?

He might have done all that, but he didn’t release his schedule to the media while he was here. The one stop that did become public knowledge, however, caused more than a few eyebrows to rise. Mr. Honda paid a courtesy call on Eda Satsuki (photo) of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, a former socialist who was elected last year as the president (presiding officer) of the Diet’s upper house.

The weekly magazine Shukan Shincho reports the two men met at about 5:30 p.m. on the evening of 8 January. Also present were two other upper house members from the DPJ and two from the Communist Party of Japan.

The magazine quotes a participant as saying the two chatted pleasantly in English for roughly 15 minutes (Mr. Eda has a law degree from Oxford) about the comfort woman issue and Japan’s death penalty, with no sign of acrimony. Mr. Eda also explained some of the artwork in the room.

Why would the two meet? The magazine offers the comment of an unnamed reporter who points out that the DPJ has submitted a “Bill Promoting the Resolution of the Comfort Woman Problem” to the Diet seven times since 2007. The legislation would provide for a formal apology and compensation from the government. The bill has had six sponsors, one of whom is Mr. Eda.

The upper house president also attended a gathering last March at which one of the comfort women was present. (That might have been Lee Yong-soo, who admitted to the House in her testimony last year that she went with a comfort woman recruiter voluntarily, but who told the Japanese while on a speaking tour here that the Imperial Army abducted her from her home at gunpoint.)

Mr. Eda’s office explained that some Diet members and people associated with NGOs asked the upper house president at yearend to take the time to meet with the American lawmaker. The upper house president himself offered the bland platitude that he agreed to see Mr. Honda because he thinks it is important to hear a wide range of opinions on different issues.

The journalistic style of most Japanese weekly magazines is in-your-face sensationalism, and they often have trouble with the truth. That wasn’t the case this time, however; Kamimoto Mieko, one of the DPJ parliamentarians present, posted two photographs of the meeting at her website, which you can see here. (The second and third links from the top, for non-Japanese readers.)

Considering the approach of the weekly newsmag medium and Shukan Shincho’s tilt to the political right, it was no surprise to see the publication indulge in some lurid speculation. They think Mr. Honda is in the pocket of the Chinese and quote a Washington correspondent speculating that he came to Japan to dig up some more dirt on the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731, the notorious biological warfare research team. Naturally, said the reporter, meeting an influential Japanese politician would be good PR.

The article concluded by expressing the wish that Mr. Eda had taken the opportunity to raise some objections with Mr. Honda about his behavior, rather than having a pleasant chat.

The strident, second-rate prose notwithstanding, Shukan Shincho does make a valid point. The perquisites of Mr. Eda’s job as upper house president include an official residence, a salary 1.7 times that of an ordinary upper house member, and the probable receipt on retirement of a medal in the grand cordon rank.

A man in such an important and visible position might have been more discreet about meeting someone as controversial in Japan as Mike Honda, even if they are ideological soulmates. A private conversation with no cameras allowed would have been easy to arrange.

On the other hand, if Mr. Eda is such a strong proponent of compensation for the comfort women, why shouldn’t he display the courage of his convictions and discuss his views more openly? Indeed, why not appear before the cameras in Japan with Mr. Honda to make his case to the Japanese public? If the issue means that much to him—and evidently it does—he should be willing to take the political and electoral heat for his beliefs.

The last thing he should do is pretend it’s no big deal—when it so obviously is.

Disinformation from the Christian Science Monitor

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson

The Christian Science Monitor is an independent daily newspaper, with news from around the world to help you understand this changing world.
- from the newspaper’s website

PEOPLE MIGHT UNDERSTAND THE CHANGING WORLD by reading the Christian Science Monitor, but they won’t understand anything about Japan by reading this article. It seems as if the author has hastily slapped together a pastiche of the usual half-truths, exaggerations, and falsehoods that float through the mass media.

It starts with the headline:

In Japan, Denial Over Nanjing Holds Sway

It’s tempting to complete the sentence with “…only in the Japan of the media imagination”.

The headline writers have to take the fall for this one. Even the author refers to the deniers as “a vocal minority”. That makes the publication itself responsible for the failure to perform its journalistic duties, rather than the individual author.

During the Rape of Nanjing, as the event is generally known, 300,000 people were killed, 20,000 women raped, and the city ravaged, say Chinese authorities. But 70 years after Japanese soldiers took the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937, battles over everything from numbers of casualties to the extent of the brutality in the six weeks after the Japanese marched in remain a point of contention.

Of course they remain a point of contention. Why would a journalist take the word of the Chinese authorities on Nanjing at face value?

No serious journalist takes the word of the Chinese authorities on the Chinese economy, political situation, military affairs, political corruption, social unrest, and anti-pollution efforts at face value. Why should they take the Chinese word about people some Chinese still consider to be their inferiors?

Japan has not, in its neighbors’ eyes, fully addressed past wrongs - the result, say some experts, of a postwar lack of examination of the emperor’s wartime role; an often-disdainful attitude toward Korea and China, which Japan occupied; and a lack of broad public awareness of wartime history.

Let’s keep this simple:

Anyone who thinks there has been a postwar lack of examination of the emperor’s wartime role does not have the qualifications to be considered an expert on Japan. If the author wants to say that it was the emperor’s fault, why not come out and say it? Plenty of Japanese do.

Anyone who thinks the Japanese attitude toward Korea and China is “often” disdainful has spent very little time in Japan and has paid scant attention to Korean and Chinese attitudes toward Japan.

Anyone who thinks that the Japanese public lacks a broad awareness of wartime history has never read a Japanese newspaper or visited a Japanese bookstore or library. They’ve also willfully ignored the survey results on the extent of historical knowledge in other countries:

In Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn’s 1987 report “What Do Our 17-Year Olds Know?: A Report on the First National Assessment of History and Literature,” it was found that the answer was little: One out of five students thought Watergate occurred before 1900 and only one-third could place the Civil War within the correct half-century. A 1993 Roper survey of American high school students (n=506) and adults (n=992) found that 38 percent of adults and 53 percent of high school students did not even know the meaning of the term Holocaust. Instances of collective amnesia appear not to be confined to this country: A 1977 study of over 2,000 West Germans aged 14 to 16 revealed that nearly half knew little about the activities of the Third Reich.

I couldn’t find a link for the survey of the number of young college-educated Americans who think FDR was president during the Vietnam War.

In March, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the military’s involvement in wartime sexual slavery, triggering an international uproar.

Had the author done some reading he would have realized that Mr. Abe denied the policy of military coercion, not military “involvement”.

In June, some 100 lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said that the number of those killed by Japanese troops during the Nanjing Massacre was closer to 20,000.

They might be right or they might be wrong, but the Christian Science Monitor doesn’t attempt to demonstrate the latter. So why bring it up?

To get up to date on the spectrum of Japanese thought on Nanjing, here’s a previous post on a paper by Prof. David Askew. It’s worth taking the time to read his paper.

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 war criminals are memorialized with the rest of Japan’s war dead, infuriated China and Korea…

Yes. And?

…as have textbooks that experts say whitewash atrocities.

Though the same experts never say the textbooks are used by fewer than 1% of students nationwide.

The article even has some unintentional humor: Note the last sentence.

Hiroshi Oyama…served as a chief attorney for Chinese compensation cases related to the war and whose civic group held symposia this year on Nanjing around the world. He was named one of the most impressive people of 2003 in a poll of Chinese media and the public.

If the Christian Science Monitor gets something this easy so wrong, why should anyone believe they get anything else right?

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Durf, I found out the story now has a byline: It was written by Japanese journalist Takehiko Kambayashi. It is astonishing indeed to see a Japanese journalist writing an article such as this.

A search of the articles that Mr. Kambayashi has published at Japan Media Review makes things much clearer.

The best way to describe it is to use the example of Jeane Kirkpatrick. A lifelong Democrat, she gave the keynote address to the 1984 Republican national convention in which she slammed what she called “Blame America First” Democrats.

Based on his published work, Mr. Kambayashi’s philosophy seems to be “Blame Japan First”. Take a look at the first article, in which he interviews political analyst Minoru Morita. Some of his criticisms of the Japanese media and government interference might be valid, but nowhere does he mention that Mr. Morita is a strong supporter of the opposition Democratic Party. Nor does he mention that Mr. Morita detests former Prime Minister Koizumi, and has an even lesser opinion of former Prime Minister Abe.

Indeed, Mr. Morita tends to foam at the mouth when discussing those two men. He even went so far as to claim that Mr. Abe would start a war in Northeast Asia. (In English on his website, I think.) Perhaps one reason editors in the media put a damper on Mr. Morita is that he is an extreme partisan.

To read more about him, try this September 2006 interview in the Japan Times.

Here’s how it ends:

I believe a change in regime is necessary for Japan, and that an Ozawa Cabinet would be good for Japan.

Why is that?

Because extremist politics would end. Koizumi and Abe work by extreme means. They’re rough. By comparison, Ozawa pursues symbiosis. By symbiosis, first of all, I mean world peace, living in harmony with other countries and not antagonizing China or South Korea like Abe and Koizumi. And, of course, in harmony with America.

I also refer to the natural environment, to the natural world and humanity coexisting. Ozawa aspires to this, and so his politics will be far and away better than [the current] fighting politics.

All this brings up the question of why CSM chose Mr. Kambayashi to write an article. They undoubtedly knew what they were going to get. Why would they want it to begin with?

And the content of the article brings up an interesting point. That Mr. Kanbayashi is given a platform both in Japan and overseas to air his views tends to vitiate his claims.

Ecoutez on Kamm on Tibbets

TEN DAYS AGO, I wrote a short post linking to three Oliver Kamm pieces on the death of Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets.

Mr. Kamm took author Gar Alperovitz to task for assertions the latter made about the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan. In a private e-mail to me, reader Ecoutez took Mr. Kamm to task for what he says are misrepresentations of Prof. Alperovitz. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read Prof. Alperovitz’s book.)

Ecoutez has kindly agreed to allow his e-mail to be posted here. I’ve removed the personal remarks and included the information relevant to the issue. Here’s what he had to say:

Kamm on Tibbets

BRITISH PUNDIT Oliver Kamm has an excellent (though somewhat densely written) post on the death of Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets called The Cranks Emerge. He skewers extremists on both the right and left who would impugn Tibbets and the task he willingly undertook.

It is a followup to two recent posts he wrote on the same subject, here and here.

I’ve disagreed with Mr. Kamm before, but not this time.

BTW, sorry for the atypical blog-style posts, but I’ve got work to do!

Did FDR bankrupt Japan?

NOW HERE’S A SERENDIPITOUS FIND—while searching for something else on the site of an Internet merchant, I discovered a recently-published book that looks intriguing. It’s called Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor.

According to the publisher’s blurb, the main points are as follows.

1. American government experts thought the war in China would bankrupt Japan, but didn’t realize that Japan had a supply of dollars hidden in New York.
2. When the Americans found out about the money, Japan tried to repatriate it. President Roosevelt moved to block them by using the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act to freeze the assets and forbid the sale of Japanese gold to the U.S. Treasury (the only open gold market at the time).
3. Some Washington bureaucrats “thwarted” the plan, however. (The blurb does not say how.) Dean Acheson, the man Roosevelt selected to implement this plan, managed to prevent Japan from getting the money.
4. The author examines an OSS-State Department study of conditions in pre-war Japan that found the measure created economic hardships for Japan. Those hardships contributed to the country’s resolve to maintain the aggressive course that led to Pearl Harbor. Apparently, no one in the U.S. government had bothered to analyze the policy’s impact on the Japanese economy.

The publisher’s promotional copy is not well written and might lead a reader to think the OSS study was conducted before the war. As a poster on this History Channel discussion board notes, however, the OSS did not exist at the time. The book’s author, Edward S. Miller, responded to the note by stating that the OSS study was conducted in 1943 and was a retrospective look at Japanese economic conditions in the 1930s. He used this to extrapolate financial conditions in Japan had it not launched its attacks in 1941.

Mr. Miller is now retired, but has served as the chief financial officer at two companies, so he seems well qualified to understand financial operations of this sort. He is also the author of a book called War Plan Orange, which analyzes American war plans devised over the early part of the 20th century to deal with a potential Japan-U.S conflict. That book won five awards.

There is a long-held belief in some quarters that President Franklin Roosevelt baited Japan into attacking America to give him an excuse to enter the wider war. One quoted passage in the review, however, suggests it was his intention to “bring Japan to its senses, not its knees.”

That in turn suggests Roosevelt’s idea might have backfired by exacerbating rather than defusing Japan’s aggression. In other words, the attack on Pearl Harbor might not have been the result of a deliberate Roosevelt strategy, but a Roosevelt miscalculation.

But as Sherlock Holmes said, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,” and I just discovered the book’s existence this week.

Here’s the page on the publisher’s website.

Okinawans: Were they pushed, or did they jump?

IT WASN’T THE ORIGINAL PLAN, but this has turned out to be interview week at Ampontan. I’ve got several different posts underway, but keep getting interrupted by other good stories.

Today in Okinawa Prefecture, citizens will hold a rally protesting the decision by the Japanese Ministry of Education to remove a section from textbooks stating that the mass suicides of civilians during the Battle of Okinawa at the end of the Second World War resulted from “military coercion”.

We already know without being told what narrative the world’s media will adopt for this story—resurgent Japanese nationalism and militarism, denial of brutal behavior, failure to come to terms with the war, and–one suspects–a failure to recognize one’s place and stay in it.

Hidden behind this narrative is a different picture of Japan, and one that is all the more compelling because it is the truth—the Japanese conduct the most robust and wide-ranging debate on the planet about their role and behavior in the Pacific War, and always have.

The Japanese media, regardless of their political orientation, will sometimes present the other side of the story. In the Nishinippon Shimbun this morning, I read an article on the rally that went into detail about the textbook controversy and military involvement in civilian suicides.

In other words, none of this information is hidden in Japan. All anyone has to do is pick up a newspaper.

Next to the article was an interview with Toru Oto, a member of the Okinawan prefectural assembly. (On the left in the photo, in good company) How could anyone in Okinawa support the government’s position? You’re about to find out.

As with the other translations this week, this one was uncredited and not on line.

The Okinawa Prefectural Assembly has twice adopted unanimous resolutions calling for the restoration of passages in school textbooks stating that the Japanese military compelled the mass suicides of Okinawan civilians during the Battle of Okinawa, which had been removed from the textbooks during the Ministry of Education’s certification process. Why are you opposed to those resolutions?

Several municipal assemblies adopted the same resolutions, and there were increasing calls within the prefectural assembly for our own resolution. The opposition parties wanted it written into the resolution that the mass suicides occurred due to “military orders or coercion”. I was opposed, however, and one reason is that a court case on this issue is pending. Opinion was divided even in the Liberal Democratic Party. In the end, they settled on the expression, “military involvement”. When the second resolution was adopted, I left the chamber.

The pending court case is the lawsuit in Osaka in which the family of the former Japanese commander of the military forces on the Kerama Islands (next to the main Okinawan island) is suing (author) Kenzaburo Oe and publisher Iwanami Shoten, claiming there were no military orders. They are seeking to prevent Oe and Iwanami from publishing the book. It is odd for the assembly, a legislative body, to politically intervene in an issue that is being contested under civil law.

If there were no military orders, why were there mass suicides?

Before the Battle of Okinawa, during the Battle of Saipan (where many people from Okinawa had moved), residents of the island committed suicide after the American military landed by jumping off a site they called Banzai Cliff. The newspapers incited this occurrence by referring to them as “magnificent Japanese” (rippa na nihonjin). The residents of Okinawa at that time had a strong fear of being taken prisoner. People in the upper levels of the local Okinawan government likely cooperated with the military. I wonder about the idea of blaming everything on the military without questioning the beliefs held by Japanese at that time.

The citizens of Okinawa have filed an objection seeking the restoration of the expression “military coercion”, and the movement has spread throughout the prefecture. As a backdrop to this, what about the deep-seated hatred of the Japanese military, which persecuted the residents during the Battle of Okinawa by either killing them or confiscating their food supplies?

Yes, that exists, but today in Okinawa this has become a political issue rather than a historical issue. Public opinion was manufactured by a series of reports in a media campaign, and as a result those who do not criticize the Education Ministry or the Japanese military are branded as being “anti-prefecture citizens” (hikenmin). The conditions are the same as before the war, when there was no freedom of speech. Even Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, who was initially hesitant about joining the rally, was unable to turn them down.

What effect will the certification issue have on Okinawan society?

A considerable number of prefectural citizens are under the mistaken impression that the Education Ministry eliminated the textbooks’ references to mass suicide altogether. Even some of my supporters have asked me, “There were mass suicides, weren’t there?” The mass media have changed the points of the debate to manipulate public opinion.

Both the special attack squadron at Chiran (kamikaze pilots at their base in Kagoshima) and the battleship Yamato were thrown into the final battle, (because it was known that) if Okinawa fell, it was over for the main islands as well. But high school students believe that Okinawa was abandoned like some rock, or that it was sacrificed for the sake of the main islands, because that’s all they’re taught. As a result, the certification issue has increased the animosity of the prefectural citizens toward the military, the government, and the main islands.

Yasukuni: The sound of one hand clapping

THE EYES OF EAST ASIA and many journalists around the world were focused on the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo on August 15th, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945, to see whether Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would pay a visit. The scrutiny was inevitable now that so many have invested so much emotional energy in the boogeyman of resurgent right wing Japanese nationalism.

One wonders why they bothered. It had been almost a foregone conclusion that the prime minister wouldn’t appear. One of his first acts after taking office was to meet with the leaders of both China and South Korea and smooth the waters that former Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi roiled with his annual Yasukuni pilgrimages. Mr. Abe wasn’t about to squander the goodwill he created, particularly now that his political position is in severe jeopardy after the recent upper house elections. He also wasn’t about to court additional controversy, even though any controversy that would occur would largely occur outside of Japan.

What did happen at Yasukuni on the 15th? Nothing much–and that’s a lot more significant than a parade of some politicians arriving at the shrine in official vehicles wearing rented formal attire to show their faces.

Only one member of the Cabinet made an official visit. That was Sanae Takaichi (photo), minister in charge of gender equality and Okinawa-related issues. The shrine started receiving visitors at 6:00 a.m., but Ms. Takaichi waited until the afternoon to go (though she held a press conference to talk about it in the morning).

The disappointment of the professional rubberneckers was almost palpable. It must have been like hanging around the clubhouse doors at Boston’s Fenway Park to get an autograph from Daisuke Matsuzaka and having to settle for a glimpse of the third-string catcher instead.

Who else worthy of the media attention came? Former Prime Minister Koizumi put in his annual appearance, and he was cheered by a few hundred ultranationalists who came for the opportunity to perform their postmodern samurai sketch for the cameras, wearing costumes with wooden swords. That meshed with the story the media wanted to tell, so that’s the story the media told.

Most didn’t manage to find the space to talk about something just as important in today’s Japan–the 260 counter demonstrators who showed up to demand that Japan retain its pacifist principles and Constitution. That doesn’t mesh with the story the media wants to tell. As a result, the stories seen around the world strangely resemble paper dolls—a large sheet of paper with holes cut out in certain places to create the desired image.

It was even more difficult for the commentariat to make something out of nothing, but of course they tried. One example is Gordon Chang’s post in the blog Contentions presented by Commentary magazine. A China specialist who occasionally writes about Japan and other countries in East Asia, Mr. Chang inadvertently demonstrates that the wiser course for people who aren’t fully conversant with the issue would be to avoid it altogether.

His post is given the clumsy and insulting title, “Japan’s Bad Memories”. Such an inept double entendre: it suggests both that Japanese memories of the war are bad ones, and that the memory banks of the entire country shut down when the subject of their behavior in that war is raised. It’s the second clause that doesn’t belong—it is so incorrect that anyone who tries to make the claim has no business writing about Japan. But perhaps Mr. Chang did not choose the title himself.

The author’s floundering is evident throughout the post; it is difficult to conceal that one is writing about a non-event. He spends a paragraph on the ultranationalists and their greeting for former Prime Minister Koizumi. He does not mention the counter demonstration at all; likely he was unaware of it. He links to a Reuters article that uses even more space to shock/entertain us with the ultranationalists, and their article too fails to mention the counter demonstration. Unlike Mr. Chang, they were probably aware of it and chose not to mention it. It’s been a while since the name Reuters was synonymous with integrity in journalism.

Mr. Chang then starts one paragraph with this sentence:

Analysts will undoubtedly pore over yesterday’s events in Tokyo.

Undoubtedly they will. And their perusal will undoubtedly result in one or more of the following:

1. They will fail to see key events that occurred right before their eyes.
2. They will see that which does not exist.
3. They will misinterpret what they see that does exist.
4. And very few–if any–will manage to write something about “yesterday’s events in Tokyo” that is worth reading. How could they? They fail to grasp the importance of nothing important happening.

He continues with this sentence:

Many worry about rising nationalism in Japan.

Many also worry about alien abductions, but that doesn’t mean we have to spend any time taking them seriously.

Mr. Chang then proceeds with a litany of the by now predictable complaints. Mr. Abe is trying to instill patriotic education. Perhaps a contrived uno mundo education is more desirable? Mr. Abe is trying to strengthen the military. With China and North Korea in the same neighborhood, wouldn’t he be derelict in his duties not to?

It’s almost as if the author is playing a hand of bridge. He starts with the lower cards in this particular suit and then continues up the ladder to the face cards—the comfort women and then the Nanjing Massacre. Unfortunately, he overplays his hand by speculating (Mr. Koizumi might return to replace Mr. Abe as prime minister) and then using that speculation as a basis to ratchet up the crisis-mongering even further. (This would cause a further deterioration in East Asian relations.)

Apparently Mr. Chang thinks some readers still take seriously sentences constructed in the following manner: If X happens, then Y will undoubtedly happen. So it might. But since X has to happen first–and in cases such as these, the possibility is usually far-fetched—it’s pointless to bring the subject up.

Oddly, Mr. Chang seems to have selected the wrong link for the passage about Mr. Koizumi’s possible return. The link takes us instead to an article in the People’s Daily—such an impeccable source—about the attitude of Japanese young people toward Yasukuni and the war, not about Mr. Koizumi. It contains this passage:

Actually, young Japanese know that the invasion war was an indecent history (sic)…Most of them think they are unrelated with the evil history, so it is not their responsibility to apologize.

Now isn’t that an irony? Mr. Chang attempts to play his final card and fashion serious punditry out of this sow’s ear. Instead, he slips up with the link and is hoist by his own petard, demonstrating that this is in fact a non-story. Of course young Japanese (if everyone under the age of 70 can be considered young) know that the war was “indecent”, they had nothing to do with it, and it is not their responsibility to apologize. After repeated apologies by political leaders and peace treaties with both China and South Korea that should have ended the matter, why should they think otherwise?

Mr. Chang then concludes:

Tokyo and Moscow have never formally signed a peace treaty with each other to end World War II. Even if they do so—not likely, due to ongoing disputes over islands that Soviet troops grabbed at the end of the conflict—it does not appear that the war in Asia will be over anytime soon.

Mr. Chang should have used a different preposition. The Soviets seized the islands after the end of the conflict, not at the end of the conflict. They refuse to give them back, so it’s no wonder a peace treaty hasn’t been signed.

And of course, the last clause “…it does not appear the war in Asia will be over anytime soon…” is prima facie evidence of the author’s superficial grasp of this particular issue, despite the attempt to appear profound.

Political visits to Yasukuni are not a burning issue in Japan. As the People’s Daily article linked to in error indicates, most people just don’t care. Those people who visit the shrine are more interested in it as a memorial for all the thousands of spirits enshrined there, rather than those of 14 Class A war criminals. The ultranationalists could only rustle up a group vaguely estimated to be in the “hundreds” from an immediate metropolitan area of more than 10 million people, and they were countered by a pacifist group also numbering in the “hundreds”.

By now it should be obvious even to those who seldom pay attention that the objective of those politicians who do visit the shrine every August is not to revive the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They’ve said on many occasions that their intent is to reaffirm the desire for peace and to honor the service rendered to the country by their ancestors. (This is a Shinto institution, after all.) The implication that they’re lying and that Japan is anxious to reassert an aggressive military posture in East Asia is fatuous and reveals the vacuity of the observer.

What the politicians seldom say outside of Japan is that the visits are part of their wish to reestablish Japanese statehood (in the nation-state sense of the term). They think Japan lost this self-awareness with their defeat in the war. Of course other Japanese disagree, but no one in the country thinks this means the Yasukuni visitors want to colonize Mongolia, Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula again.

It also should be equally obvious that elements in China and South Korea aren’t refighting the war either. They are aware that peace treaties were signed more than a generation ago. Their focus is on the future, not the past. Those countries have chosen to define themselves as modern states by incorporating anti-Japanese sentiment, and to use history as a blunt instrument both to mold public opinion at home and to wield in their bilateral relations with Japan.

Perhaps one of these days those countries will realize the Japanese know what’s coming, keep dodging the blows, and that swinging harder won’t make it easier to hit them.

Perhaps one of these days, other observers overseas will take the time to actually examine what is happening in this part of the world instead of viewing it through a superficial anti-Japanese lens of conventional ignorance wisdom.

Their preconceived notions—or rather, unexamined prejudices precast in conceptual concrete—led them to write and broadcast about nothing happening in a way that suggests something actually happened at Yasukuni on August 15.

They should have just told the truth instead of sticking to the ragged, dog-eared script: Nothing important happened. That in itself is important enough.

The 15th of August in Tokyo

AT NOON ON 15 AUGUST 1945 IN TOKYO, NHK Radio broadcast a recording made by Emperor Hirohito at about 11:30 p.m. the night before accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and surrendering unconditionally to the Allied nations.

As this account in the Japan Times makes clear, however, that broadcast nearly didn’t make it to the air. The son-in-law of former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo issued a bogus order at about 2:00 a.m. for about 1,000 soldiers to seize the Imperial Palace and cut off communications with the outside. The aim of the cabal of about a dozen officers was to find and destroy the two records made by the Emperor before they could be broadcast to the nation later that day, overthrow the government, and install a new administration led by the War Minister to continue fighting.

The soldiers did occupy the Palace grounds, and about 40 or 50 entered the premises of the Imperial Household Agency. They hunted for the records for about 90 minutes without finding them. The discs had been placed there instead of NHK headquarters, which also was occupied, because it was thought to be a safer hiding place. One wonders how they knew to look on the Palace grounds instead of at NHK.

The coup leaders killed the head of the Imperial Guards after he refused their request to order the 4,000 troops under his command to join the revolt. Eventually, an officer of the Guards Division escaped and alerted General Shizuichi Tanaka, the head of the Eastern Defense Command (responsible for defending the capital) of the situation at the Palace. Tanaka convinced the Imperial Guard commander that the orders were not legitimate, and the commander confronted the coup leaders. They killed themselves shortly afterward, and the troops left the Palace grounds about 8:00 a.m., six hours after the plot got underway.

No Basis for Urban Legend

NHK’s official account of the events of the 14th and 15th, contained in their corporate history published on the network’s 50th anniversary in 1977, clears up another matter. There has been a persistent urban legend in Japan that the combination of poor radio reception and unfamiliarity with the language reserved for the Emperor led some people to believe that Hirohito had actually asked the people to fight to the last man. This cannot have been the case.

After the plotters were removed from NHK headquarters, the day’s broadcasts began at around 7:20 a.m., more than two hours behind schedule. There was an immediate and urgent announcement that the Emperor would address the nation at noon that day, and every citizen was urged to listen to the gyokuon broadcast. (Gyokuon is the Emperor’s voice, or literally, jeweled sound.) There were no daytime radio broadcasts in the regional areas of the country at that point in the war, so arrangements were made for a special hookup. This was to be the first time that most Japanese had ever heard their Emperor speak.

At noon, everyone in the country stopped what they were doing to listen. The recording was broadcast not only throughout Japan, but also over the NHK radio network in each of the colonized countries and territories in the Pacific. My mother-in-law’s family of well-to-do farmers were the only people in their neighborhood with a radio. She remembers everyone in the area coming to her house to listen.

Before the recording was played, the NHK announcer asked everyone to stand (to listen to the radio!) While it is true that the broadcast of the record was difficult to understand due to interference in some areas and the language used, there is no question that everyone understood what had just happened when the full broadcast ended some 37 minutes later. After the recording was played, the NHK announcer explained in simpler language that Japan had just surrendered, read the text of the Emperor’s broadcast again, and followed that with another explanation. After all that, it would have been unlikely that anyone would have thought the Emperor had asked the country to fight to the last man, and in any event, newspapers began publishing extra editions at 1:00 p.m.

They understood in Tokyo. A stream of people passed by the bridge leading to the Imperial Palace to bow in its direction. This continued for the rest of the day.

They understood in Seoul. This was Liberation Day for Korea, and the sound of fireworks and gongs were heard almost immediately. The colonial government broadcast a plea asking for cooperation from the citizenry until the occupation army arrived, and they apparently got it.

They also understood on the other side of the world. It was midnight on the East Coast of the United States. Those people listening to a late-night live broadcast of Cab Calloway on the Mutual Broadcasting Network were among the first to find out.

Linguistic Note

One tricky aspect for students of the Japanese language is the bushel basket full of personal pronouns available in the language, combined with the common practice of omitting personal pronouns entirely. When pronouns are omitted, people usually can tell who is talking about whom from the context, but even the Japanese have to stop and ask each other every now and again.

For centuries, there was a specific personal pronoun meaning “I” reserved for the exclusive use of the Emperor, with its own kanji character. Hirohito used the word that day in his broadcast. The word is chin.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Chinpo or chin-chin are two of the less refined expressions for penis (and the latter is used mostly by grade-school boys), though it is written differently. Anyone who has taught English to 10-year-old boys in Japan, pointed to the end of his jaw, and called it his chin knows to wait a couple of minutes for the hysterical laughter to subside.

I’m not an anthropological linguist, so I have no proof or knowledge that there was a connection between these near-homonyms centuries ago. Still, it does offer fertile ground for speculation.

As Sherlock Holmes put it, I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph on the subject.

The ninth of August in Nagasaki

NAGASAKI IS A CHARMING AND ATTRACTIVE CITY. I’ve been there several times over the past 20 years—one of my brothers-in-law lives in the bedroom community of Isahaya. With a population of 447,000, it has all the appeal of an urban area without the disadvantages of a crowded metropolis. If San Francisco could be described as convex because of its sharply rising hills in the districts downtown, then Nagasaki could be described as concave, because it lies at the bottom of a basin-like area. Regardless of the direction of the curves, both cities have steep hillsides that can make it difficult to maintain one’s balance when walking.

Tourists love Nagasaki. There are several sites providing excellent views overlooking the city, particularly from Glover Garden and another that is accessible by ropeway up the side of a mountain. As in some San Francisco neighborhoods, parts of the city have an ambience that makes one think the date is 1927 instead of 2007. Both have a Chinatown district, though Nagasaki’s is much smaller. (And the food isn’t quite as good.) Decades-old streetcars are still used for public transportation on cobblestone streets downtown. The authorities are in the process of restoring Dejima, a former artificial island built during the Edo period that was once the only place in Japan where foreigners could legally reside and was Japan’s sole connection to the West for trade and cultural exchange. (It’s no longer an island—Nagasaki Harbor was later rebuilt and Dejima was then connected to the city by landfill.) If my wife suggested we move to Nagasaki—and she just might—I’d immediately agree.

As pleasant and appealing as it is today, however, you wouldn’t have wanted to be there 62 years ago on August 9, particularly at 11:02 a.m., when the second atomic bomb fell.

What was it like to be in Nagasaki that day? The Nagasaki Broadcasting Co., or NBC, (a small regional TV and radio network), has placed translated excerpts of interviews with survivors on their website. Here’s just a sample.

“…we made our way through the ruins to the site of our house, only to find a man from the neighborhood, Mr. Matsumoto, lying dead at a gateway. His eyeballs were hanging out, and his tongue was stretching from his mouth. His presence here indicated that we had found the approximate location of our house. In front of the entrance we found a corpse under the broken remains of a cart. When we turned the corpse over, we recognized the face of our sister, which alone had escaped the flash of heat. Her body was so thoroughly burned that her black flesh crumbled at the slightest touch…”

Or

“As my own wounds were on my head, from the face to the neck, and upper body, I had many layers of bandages that had to be changed over and over. The pain I had when they would peel off two or three layers was so great that I couldn’t think straight. By the time they came to wrapping on the new bandages, I had lost all my strength and felt like an empty shell. For about two hours I would be screaming because it was so painful, and then it would be time for another treatment. This was repeated over and over again. The gauze had been soaked in Lybanol and when it dried it would shrink up, forcing the burnt flesh up through the holes in the mesh.
“The treatment from the nurses at the naval hospital was rough. They would grab the edge of the gauze with tweezers and rip it right off, causing so much pain that I cried out, ‘Just kill me!’ over and over. Just hearing the call ‘Treatment!’ was enough to start some of the patients crying. If there were some way that experience could be replayed, exactly as it was and without hiding anything, I would really like everyone to see what it was like.”

Or

“As time passed my burned flesh began to rot and fall away. I was lying on my front, so the flesh fell down at my sides and piled up there. Every day they had to come time and time again to clean that up. I think I suffered a lot more of this loss of flesh than the others. When you get a serious wound like the one I had, you would usually expect insects to gather. But at the worst stage, not even flies would come near me. My body smelled of burns and rot. Even now I can still recall that smell; it is always in the back of my mind. Every day I called out in pain and agony for someone to kill me…”

Whether you want to ban the bomb or think the type of weapon used isn’t the problem…whether you think the decision to drop the bomb was entirely justified or driven by racism…if you’re one of those people who thinks Japan didn’t learn anything from the war…and especially if you’re from China and South Korea…

You owe it to yourself to read these stories.