by Simone Arcigni
As a deep lover of Asian culture, this moment had to come sooner or later. I thought my knowledge was enough. I thought I was ready. But I was only at half.
It all started on the streets of Nagasaki. I don’t remember how, but I remember very well the reason for what happened next, the reason for this article. I had a great desire to tell a lot of truths, to find someone able to listen and talk without getting angry.
It all begins, as it should, from the beginning, from what I know and from some simple doubts. The word kanji (漢字), if we separate the two symbols, literally means “Chinese [漢] symbol/character [字]. But do the Japanese know this?
You will think, “Of course, it is their language.” But, actually it is not. Plus, their awareness of the truth and facts of their language and culture are very different from what they really know. Or that they are willing to know. This is where my little investigation starts. After a few questions around, the first answers on the question of “Chinese and Korean derivation of Japanese culture” slip through my fingers. Because they are obvious. And for this reason, avoided, I think. For example, it is not mentioned that, in the genetic (and consequently cultural) construction of what the Japanese are today, today’s Japanese are nothing more than a mixture of Yayoi (those coming from the continent, i.e. China and Korea) and Jomon ( the natives of the island, who in turn are a mix of ethnic groups, mostly Eurasian and American). And in this mixing, the Yayoi are certainly those who have had a higher influence (in numbers and “contagion”). And the counter-proof is precisely the diffusion of that continental culture through the centuries, which is proof of the first contact, of the first intertwining.
To be honest, however, it is necessary to specify that in modern Japanese, as per studies, not enough elements have been found to affirm that it comes from Chinese or that Korean, Chinese and Japanese (along with other Asian languages) belong to the same initial root. To avoid giving the impression that the people of the Land of the Rising Sun originate from Chinese and Koreans (and are therefore in some subtle way subordinate to them), the schools (brace yourselves) deliberately omit this historical detail, replacing it with a more generic “God created man and “scattered” him throughout the world. Some of them came from the mainland and began the creation of the Japan we know today.” This is what I was told school teachers teach. It is not specified where these infamous ancestors come from, nor the propulsive cultural importance they bring in their movements.
This is not denialism. It is not historical revisionism. It is total unmotivated censorship. It is, give me the term, omissionism. It is propaganda in the most shocking form. It’s dictatorship. It is as if, given that some Muslims are terrorists, we said in schools that all European peoples were related to each other already 40,000 years ago, but not to those who in reality were the fulcrum of the genetic expansion of the entire European continent, indeed, the Arabs.
My colleague points out that all Japanese should be aware of the fact that their culture, in the first place, derives from Chinese culture (but he never mentions Korean influences). Ignorance regarding this specific part appears to be personal and self-imposed. What is most firmly omitted is certainly the mixture of the initial ethnic groups. Which is probably even more serious, considering those (Hitler, between others) who, with similar ideas, decimated the population of half of Europe in the XX century.
But this is antiquity, Simone. Let’s go further. But ask yourself a question: have men ever learned from their mistakes? No.
So as you can understand, things are not improving. We are talking here about a censorship on historiography that goes back centuries, centuries fixed with proud roots on the flanks of the country, until older generations.
With these premises it is necessary to imagine that the subsequent “mistakes” (or horrors) committed by Japan can only have received the same treatment.
Let’s go back to homeland, let’s go back to Gunkanjima, where this research of mine began. As mentioned, something was wrong during the visit. The speaker’s voice told only half of the story. Yet there is much talk about the fact that the island is a UNESCO Heritage Site as an image and symbol of industrial development in the Meiji period. Another great Japanese find. To obtain UNESCO’s approval against the opposition of the two (united) Koreas, Japan half-admits in 2015, saying it is aware of the problem represented by the island’s history (without specifying the topic of which they are aware) and then retract their own ambiguous words immediately after the withdrawal of the Korean protests and the green light from UNESCO.
Intrigued by the omissions of an intire island turned into a concentration camp, once I returned to Yokohama, I explained the story of Gunkanjima to my colleague, who turned 48 in June, coming from a family that, at the time of his great-grandfather and grandfather, was considered wealthy, fresh from university of Economics. He knew nothing about it. I showed him the photos, the testimonies of the Koreans translated into Japanese, of the American officers who landed on the island. “知らない” (shiranai, I don’t know), was his response. “We don’t talk about the bad things Japan has done. And if it has done so, the mentality is “やるってじゃない, やられた” (yarutte janai, yarareta) that is, Japan has never acted (yaru, active form) to do harm . Japan has always suffered (yarareta, passive form of the verb yaru) from outside, from others, from foreigners, and for this reason it has had to defend itself. That’s why Japan did the things he did.”
I thought it was just misinformation from the new generation. I never imagined I would find systematicity in the omission of historical facts. Startled, I try to articulate a few more questions. You understand well that this new information explains even further the social, political and personal distrust that sometimes, not always, can be perceived towards those who come from outside. I’m not sure why, but Pearl Harbor comes up in the conversation. A surprise attack. I seize the opportunity and smash it in the face of my colleague who, however, this time, seems prepared for my attack. My colleague tells me that in Japanese schools (perhaps including today’s school system) the accident does not exist. It is not mentioned. Indeed, it is taught that it was a defense reflex for Japan (when everyone knows that a good part of the decision for the entry of the United States depended on the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor). He knows about it because he informed himself. Because he wanted to know. I will always think that thirst for knowledge is a blessing, not a damnation, also for these reasons…
With this umpteenth premise, the subsequent speeches sound like one novelty after another for my listener.
1937. Nanjing massacre. The Japanese invade the city, at the time the capital of China, and establish dominion over it. Normal war action. And I repeat. The main problem is not brutality (in fact, I believe it is almost brutally natural that during war, due to mentality and supremacy, almost everything is allowed, and also that during such periods human beings ALL showed their worst), but it is the cover-up of what happens during the capture of the city and all the other situations in which blindfolded people believe what they say. With the defenses already lowered, the city on its knees, the Japanese had fun. Rape, looting, killing of civilians. There are articles, later hidden or denied or withdrawn, written by Japanese journalists themselves, in which challenges between officers and soldiers are described over who, armed with a katana, could kill one hundred people in the shortest time. Photos depicting soldiers impaling newborns on the bayonet and then throwing them into the acid or in the ice of the Nanjing winter. Photos of naked women, raped several times, left in the snow with a bayonet stuck between their abdomen and genitals. This basically transpires only thanks to the testimonies of the “safe citadel”, a safe zone beyond the area of the city occupied by the Japanese, in which foreigners resided (mostly Americans, British and Germans), including many reporters, who on the other part of the bridges of Nanjing watched helplessly, while among those who enjoy the Japanese there is also a certain Yasuhiko. Pardon. Prince Yasuhiko (and this hurts me more since I’m an estimator of the idealization of the Emperor figure, as much as I am of the godly aspect of Egyptian pharaohs).
1937-1945. Unit 731 (七三一舞台). I’m sure they wouldn’t have taught this story in school anyway, so I didn’t ask. Here we are only talking about good old denialism and some other “-ism” to taste.
The unit was made up of Japanese soldiers and officers and was stationed in Pingfang, Harbin, China. The complex, which included two secret prisons, was a front for biochemical warfare experiments on humans under the Imperial Japanese Army. The (unofficial) purpose was to test the effects of a staggering number of weapons on humans to prepare effective countermeasures in the field for Japanese soldiers engaged on the various fronts. The real purpose? Torture. Favorite victims? Chinese, of course, Russians and Koreans.
The range of experiments and brutalities carried out in the name of science is mind-blowing. As in every concentration camp we have been accustomed to, people were dehumanized. Not with numbers here but calling them “log” in Japanese 丸太, (maruta, log, trunk). Seen as guinea pigs without humanity, therefore, from a semantic and moral point of view, everything was granted, doable. The most common experiments were vivisection on living bodies without anesthesia after infecting them with diseases (smallpox, plague, typhoid, cholera) to test the effects of stab wounds or on pregnant women to see the effects they had on the fetus), experiments with various types of gas (mostly mustard gas but also anthrax) and tests on the transmission of diseases between couples and/or fetuses.
One of the experiments that the Japanese liked most was to have women raped by soldiers suffering from syphilis until they contracted the disease and then vivisected them to see the effects. Or amputate limbs from men through a strong thermal shock (leaving the limbs at several tens of degrees below zero, for example), see the effects of the shock and then reattach the limbs in reverse to monitor the reaction of the subject’s body.
Returning to the experiments aimed more explicitly at war, tests were conducted with grenades and flamethrowers on naked prisoners, chained to wooden poles, and then the damage was ascertained. Others were exposed to puffer fish poison, others spun in huge centrifuges until death occurred, others to deadly doses of X-rays.
The peak was reached towards the end of the war, when, probably in panic at the imminent defeat and in an attempt to understand how to get rid of most of the evidence, a series of bombs containing typhoid fever pathogens were dropped on some cities of the province of Hunan, infecting hundreds of thousands of people (and animals, which then contributed to keeping the pathogenic strain alive in the following years).
But the war ends. The war is lost. The Russians are at the gates. And everything must be dismantled. Buildings are razed to the ground by arson, prisoners of the compounds killed, Japanese soldiers forced to kill themselves with doses of potassium cyanide. Only a few walls remain standing, many skeletons. No official documents survive in Allied hands. Unit 731 disappears from Chinese lands having killed (in the most barbaric ways) around half a million innocents.
The generals in command, those who do not follow the fate of their subordinates, are not punished (as happened in Nuremberg), but it is said that most of them returned to civilian life immediately after the Americans left the country, becoming after the progenitors of the Japanese political class. Class A criminals (same class as Hitler, highest for war criminals) as prime ministers of a nation. This could have been the scenery of Japan in the 50s.
The reason, for the historians, lies in the world’s attitude towards the matter. And the balance tips are the United States and Russia. The United States gave immunity guarantees to the 731 officers they captured in exchange for the unit’s achievements. Russia instead tried and sentenced all prisoners of war captured by Soviet forces.
In 1952, shortly after the Americans left Japan, suspicious deaths occur at the Nagoya psychiatric hospital. It is thought that it is actually one of the officers of the 731. And the problem is talked about again, without however any type of official admission. In 1997 it was decided by the Supreme Court of Japan that all the testimonies voluntarily given by the former officers and soldiers of the 731 (the only official evidence at the time, together with some ruins in the province of Hunan which serve as museums, of the operations of the unit) violate the Freedom of Speech and therefore any type of historical and legal value is canceled, with immediate removal from history books and from the educational program (present and future).
In 2002 there appears to be an opening by the government, which admits, in the most general form, that Japan was involved and took part in the development of mass chemical weapons. Obviously, with the change of government, these words came into question again.
In 2018, after an official request from Shiga University, the Japanese government made public more than 3000 names of people who took part in Unit 731, thus confirming, involuntarily or voluntarily, the real involvement of the Japanese government and the extensive possession of evidence in this regard.
Somehow I feel free, but incomplete. A sort of revolutionary spirit is born in me, typical of those martyrs of communication and information who do everything to open the eyes of those who have always been blinded by false news. But if the world now knows, the world around me still doesn’t. It is to them that I must address my revolution. My colleague asks whether what Japan has been doing for decades is not similar to what Germany could do with Nazism.
I reply that, although historical revisionism is a more widespread practice than it should be and varies in intensity between those who define themselves as victims and those who are accused of being executioners (we are talking about Turks and Armenians, Israel and Palestine, among others) as well as school programs and the national system, Germany only tried to deny what it had done in the first post-surrender years. But also thanks to Nuremberg and the dissemination of information (and the testimonies of those who printed those years on our skin) it was not possible to create a revisionist counter-propaganda that would cover everything up. Nonetheless, today there are more Holocaust deniers than they should be. In the end, however, willy-nilly, Germany left its citizens the right to decide, on the basis of facts and documents, which judgment to apply to the merciless actions of Nazi Germany. Did they just follow orders? Were they convinced of what they were doing? Was Hitler crazy? Or an enlightened strategist with an all-too-precise plan? These questions to think about can ONLY be asked as long as the basic information is disclosed. If what you need to reason about does not exist or is omitted or altered, not only can you not reason, but if you manage to do so, a distorted, ambiguous, inaccurate, sick thought will be created which will inevitably worsen the reasoning. Hawking’s information paradox seems to be more apt now than ever.
Furthermore, modern Germany (post-1960s), in all its federal states, has a strict educational policy regarding the topic: It is compulsory and addressed in a trans-didactic way (references to music, literature, biology, religion, etc.). For these reasons I felt like replying that the association, overall, did not hold up.
At that point, my colleague said a sentence of weighty and shocking truth. “So Japan is like Russia…”
It was as if he understood, for the first time, that the system he found himself in was not healthy. He looked at his hands, with the help of some external light, and saw only blood and mud…
I also ask a Japanese friend, 28 years old. I ask the same questions asking for a straight answer to each of them: do you know these events, yes or no? She replies that she has vaguely heard of Korean comfort women, but the topic has never been explored in depth. As well as the origin of the Japanese people. Every other topic is as if it never existed. She also adds that in her opinion, the reason for these obscurantist attitudes has to do with Japan’s school policy, which is based on a sort of axiom: don’t talk about your mistakes. I had vaguely imagined it.
I ask if, jumping back a generation, I asked her parents the same things, would they be able to give me an affirmative answer. She asserted that no, she does not believe that her mother and father have ever received teachings regarding these specific topics, therefore following the educational line I was talking about before.
It is then the turn of the two most extreme positions. I ask the same questions to a 30 year old girl, a former student at Waseda, with extensive knowledge of English, with work experience abroad. But the reaction is absurd. The first thing that is pointed out is that Koreans like to rewrite history. (Who doesn’t like that?) And that she hates Koreans for it. The second point that I am objected to, is the use of the term “sexual slavery” in reference to comfort women. “They were the ones who offered themselves as prostitutes,” she says.
I check immediately. If, in reading articles, one actually notices a shift in the balance regarding a spontaneous offering of one’s bodies to the Japanese army, if we check the classified documents of the Japanese army made public in 1994, it becomes clear that, even if at first the brothels had been opened to control rapes and the transmission of venereal diseases, they had then ended up increasing both things, with obvious supervision by the army itself, as happened in Nanjing (in many historians believe that the ferocity of the Japanese soldiers was due to the complete abstinence required of them once they joined the army). And in neither case, it seems, did the Korean women involved have any choice.
But things get even more serious. She asks me why I’m doing this research. I reply that it’s for my blog.
“If it’s to help Koreans, I won’t help you.” I’m horrified. “Even if the article is in English nobody will read it. But I want to finish it. It is not to help Japanese or Korean. It is a tentative of critical talk. And I need your testimony, as objective as possible”. “Then you can’t help Koreans. Ask someone else…”, she replies. The conversation ends here, surprisingly, with more answers than expected.
Answers that I do not want to do again overseas. In fact, the grandmother of a Korean friend of mine, like many other women of that age, experienced firsthand what the Japanese struggle to pronounce even today. After she confided her story to me, 2 years ago, out of respect and also a little out of fear of losing her friendship, I never spoke about this story again. But we know that I know. And this is the strength of our silence.
The third girl I ask is Japanese, of Japanese descent but she never studied in Japan, but in France and Switzerland. When she starts, by pure chance, to say that she would like to return to Japan but then return to Europe BEFORE her daughter enters middle school, I understand that it is the right time to ask. I felt like she feel to know that the Japanese school system is something like a disease that is best not to come into contact with.
I ask her the same questions. Although she admits that no one taught her these things (and therefore her admission, due to my research, loses a bit of bite, but she discovered them because she was curious and passionate about history), she is aware of everything I have mentioned regarding the sins of the fathers. And speaking of fathers, she does not exclude that her parents, having traveled mostly outside Japan, do not want to talk about what I asked her but that they are aware of it, showing the usual reticence regarding the mistakes of the past but also a more adult awareness of what has been, and not of what has been made to happen.
So what are the conclusions? Why does it really continue along this educational line, of crazy indoctrination, following an idea of patriotism (which I appreciate) but in the saddest way possible? As mentioned, each nation uses a sort of historical revisionism, in a soft way, showing itself to be a little more victim when it loses and a little more sovereign when it wins. It is a historical relativism that in my opinion, to a certain extent, can be accepted. The thing that surprised me (despite starting from a general knowledge of the Japanese attitude towards certain topics and historical moments) was the reticence, the systematic alteration of information and its depth.
What is the real motive? Does honor have anything to do with it? Is it about the idea of having been mistreated by Europe during the Treaty of Versailles despite having been victorious? Is it about the continued desire to establish itself as a cornerstone of Asia, more than its surrounding brothers? Is it the result of an already present distrust or is it just a way to indoctrinate “modern soldiers” who are able to socially and politically maintain the defenses of their country, unarmed compared to those around them?
Some blame (not so much total misinformation but individual misinformation) the so-called “Heiwa-boke” (平和ボケ, “peace stupidity”), an extremely interesting concept. According to this approach, the absence of war in a country forged by them has weakened the spirit of the people, has actually made them stupid, making them gullible, without any kind of “wit”, deprived of all character changes and “positive” social issues derived from the need to face a conflict (national or international). Even today, some Japanese tend to say, in a disparaging tone, when a person is too naïve and is used to believing anything that is a “Heiwa-boke”. And this linguistic and social phenomenon is generally addressed to the new generations (who have never known war) through the mouths of generations who have fought more than one (and perhaps even someone in Europe would think the same way about the new conscription).
At this point a diametrically opposite reasoning comes to mind. And if the Japanese had become stupid and had closed their ears and eyes to the truth not because of the Heiwa-boke, but on the contrary, had become Heiwa-boke, numbed by peace, precisely because of the Japanese “school policy”, precisely because they have not been told part of their past as a nation? As if denialism had denied their very identity, making them feel lost, and therefore, weaker, more prone to a sort of social and historical stupidity?
The reasons can be infinite, depending on the eye of the beholder and above all the ear of the listener. As for myself, I hope to be able to learn more about it from the Japanese themselves, because history is to be taught and protected, in its good sides and also in its bad sides.
Heart of Nihon 