This is one of the most important chapters in the author’s writings on Haruki Murakami.
The key figure is Joyce Carol Oates, one of America’s most distinguished writers.
For years, the author had been frustrated by his inability to recall her full name precisely.
When her name finally reappeared before him, his earlier intuition and hypothesis suddenly came together as one.
Through an original examination of the possible relationship among Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, and Bob Dylan, this chapter records the moment when the “vision” of an unmistakable genius reached “transcendence.”

2019-01-16
A chapter I published on November 29, 2018, under the title, “Japan’s Current Outstanding Government Loans to South Korea Amount to 67.58 Trillion Yen—Originally Scheduled to Be Repaid in Full by 1982,” has entered the top seven in Ameba’s search rankings.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
Passages enclosed by asterisks are mine.
Additional Note
In fact, that is not all.
Under copyright law, for example, Japan applies what is known as a wartime extension, under which the protection of foreign works is extended by an additional ten years.
The argument, in other words, is that Japan presumably failed to protect copyrights during the war.
But did the war last ten years?
And under that logic, should not the same rule apply to the victorious countries as well?
There are probably countless other examples, if one looks for them.
Japan’s position as a defeated nation has still not come to an end.
Even the former-enemy clauses in the United Nations Charter have yet to be deleted.
I want more people to know, as a matter of common knowledge, about the postwar settlement that the Japanese people paid for with their blood and squeezed out through their own suffering.
Then they would be able to take pride in being Japanese.
After all, there has probably never been another country that dealt with its postwar obligations so conscientiously.
After the First World War, Germany was subjected to such intolerable reparations that it ultimately chose another war.
http://webtoy.iza.ne.jp/blog/entry/500202/
Sixty-eight years after the end of the Greater East Asia War, Japan had paid every reparation demanded of it throughout the world.
Yet beside Japan there remains a country that, despite receiving enormous payments that Japan was never originally obliged to make, together with vast amounts of assistance, continues to demand apologies and compensation on the basis of a fabricated version of history.
Moreover, there are people who did not return to their homeland, who live off Japan, denounce Japan from within the country, pretend to be Japanese, and continue committing crimes.
Surely the patience of the Japanese people has now reached its limit.
Is it not time to settle the matter?
They have failed to repay loans extended during the IMF crisis, along with many other debts and even the interest due on them.
How much longer are we going to allow them to say, “Japan must possess a correct understanding of history and sincerely apologize and pay compensation”?
They have declared that, no matter how much money they obtain and no matter how many historically ignorant members of the Japanese Diet apologize, they intend to continue making these demands for the next thousand years.
This is no laughing matter.

＊The person who responded to this by saying, “That is right—Japan must continue apologizing forever,” was Haruki Murakami, whose actual role may, without the slightest exaggeration, be described as that of an agent for China and South Korea.
As I have already written, when I recently read his prose for the first time in Seiron’s series “Biographies of Japan’s Hollow Men,” I was astonished by the immaturity of his writing style.
I had suspected that Murakami might have written Norwegian Wood by drawing upon a major work by Joyce Carol Oates, the American woman novelist, Princeton University professor, and perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature—a work inspired by Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”
Now, while searching to confirm Joyce Carol Oates’s full name, I became convinced once again that my hypothesis may have been entirely correct.
That is because the intuition I was the first person in the world to express came to me in a flash when I encountered that fact in the Wikipedia article about Joyce Carol Oates some time ago.
Bob Dylan and John Lennon were figures of immeasurable importance to me as I lived what might be called a life of adversity—far more important than an ordinary person could understand.
One need only think of Yuming’s true once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece, “Hikoki-gumo.”
They walked through life together with me.
As I have already written, they were my closest friends, constantly encouraging and guiding me.
That is precisely why the realization came to me in an instant.
The publishing world, which had already begun its descent into becoming a completely declining industry, succeeded in turning Murakami into its darling because Joyce Carol Oates—the author of the novel that I believe lay behind his work—is the genuine article, and because that representative work was probably the masterpiece of her lifetime.
When I first heard “Minna no Uta” while driving, I was struck by how brilliantly it appeared to appropriate Bruce Springsteen, and I memorized it instantly.
People around me know very well that the song has remained in my repertoire ever since.
The same is true of its place among Keisuke Kuwata’s greatest once-in-a-lifetime works.
They prevent people from searching for facts that are inconvenient to them.
In this respect, the character of the Asahi Shimbun and that of people on the Korean Peninsula are remarkably similar.
Yet they never realize that, by doing so, they merely expose the truth more clearly.
Perhaps it was because my observation had struck precisely at the heart of the matter.
Distorted Harukists had deleted the relevant passage from the Japanese-language Wikipedia article on Joyce Carol Oates!＊

Do they intend to allow this incomprehensible nonsense to continue until the generations of our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and even beyond?
Would not the world regard such conduct by Japan, not as the kindness of an indecisive and good-natured country, but simply as cowardice?
No matter how often people speak within Japan of “Japanese pride,” “Bushido,” or “the Japanese spirit,” one discovers, the moment one steps outside the country, that such words are of no use whatsoever.
Only by insisting, relentlessly and repeatedly, upon everything that must be asserted can one finally communicate one’s true intentions and determination to the other side.
That is international common sense.
Should we not bring this absurd matter to a conclusion within our own generation?
Japan’s current outstanding government loans to South Korea amount to 67.58 trillion yen.
They were originally scheduled to be repaid in full by 1982.
In addition, there are 8.9 trillion yen in private-sector loans, yet even most of the interest remains unpaid.
And on top of that, they continue shouting, “Give us more money!”
What they are saying is no different from the language of gangsters.
No—it is even worse.
To be continued.