2024-01-15
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, Henken Jizai: Who Buried Shinzo Abe?
This book is the latest volume in a series collecting his celebrated columns from Shukan Shincho, but the original text has been polished even further, making it still easier to read.
For this book alone, he deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people, but for people throughout the world.
The World Finally Found a Face Worthy of the Japanese
When the Japan Airlines plane crashed into Mount Osutaka, I was aboard a plane bound for Tehran.
It was still the height of the Iran-Iraq War, and I was on my way there to take up my post as a war correspondent.
After arriving, the first place I went was the bazaar.
I went there to buy pots, pans, and shampoo, but I was astonished by the smell.
First of all, the smell of spices was overwhelming.
Food, clothing—everything smelled of saffron and cloves.
The body odor of Iranians was also strong.
Even my assistant, who said he was a clean person, took a bath only once every two weeks, so his body gave off a smell like socks on their third day.
Then there was the smell of gunpowder smoke.
Every night, Iraqi military aircraft flew in and dropped bombs.
The night before, a 250-kilogram bomb had fallen nearby.
As I was becoming thoroughly fed up with all those smells, the shopkeeper asked me, “Shoma, Chini, Korie?”
It meant, “Are you Chinese or Korean?”
I answered, “Na, Japone.”
I told him I was Japanese.
Everyone around me suddenly looked at me in surprise.
My assistant explained why their expressions combined surprise with respect.
The story went back to the days when the Shah of Iran was still crown prince.
A Japanese aircraft had once flown all the way to Iran to celebrate his marriage to Princess Fawzia of Egypt.
At that time, Iran was threatened by Britain and the Soviet Union, and in fact, the following year the country would be divided and occupied.
Then a Japanese aircraft arrived.
Japan was a country that had once defeated Russia and was still refusing to submit to the white powers.
The Shah asked the Japanese aircraft to take part in the celebratory flight, and its gallant appearance remained in the memories of many people.
Then war began.
A Type 96 land-based attack aircraft, the same type as that Japanese aircraft, sank the British battleship Prince of Wales.
The Iranian people once again remembered the image of the Japanese aircraft that had taken part in the celebratory flight.
After the war, the Shah of Iran held up “Japan in the west of Asia” as the model for industrialization.
The word “Japan” must have brought back all those old stories, but apparently they could not quite reconcile them with the small, lightly bearded Asian man standing before them.
Something similar happened when I went to a chaikhaneh on the outskirts of Syria.
When I told them I was Japanese, they thrust out their chins and clicked their tongues.
With an unmistakable gesture of denial, they said, “You are not Japanese.”
In their shared conception, Japan was an industrial nation somewhere near the American continent, associated with the image of “big white men.”
The roots of that impression went back to the Russo-Japanese War.
Gertrude Bell, the Middle East scholar who was also a trusted adviser to Churchill, wrote in The Desert and the Sown that at night, young Bedouin men guarding the pack animals would gather and speak passionately about the Russo-Japanese War then being fought.
In the Islamic world, where pilgrims to Mecca came and went, information traveled faster than one might imagine.
When Miss Bell joined the group of young men and told them that she had visited Japan twice, including in 1903, on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, they bombarded her with questions about Japan.
She wrote that they seemed unable to imagine what the Japanese actually looked like, but had created for themselves an image of the Japanese as intelligent, strong, and possessed of a powerful sense of justice.
During the days of British Burma, Tan Tat, professor emeritus at Rangoon University, watched a documentary about the Russo-Japanese War and said, “The Japanese looked like enormous giants.”
That was why he was astonished by the small stature of the Japanese soldiers who entered Burma during the last war.
Japan defeated Russia.
It created explosives capable of burning steel warships and produced the strongest fighter aircraft in the world.
Japan was not merely strong.
It advocated racial equality and overcame epidemics that had tormented humanity.
It created integrated circuits, compact diesel engines, and quartz technology, and made the world richer.
The Japanese have always accomplished extraordinary things.
Strangely enough, however, very little was known about what these Japanese actually looked like.
When former Prime Minister Abe fell, his face was displayed on the wall of a building in Abadan.
TIME magazine placed the same face on its cover, and the Taliban, seeing that face, also expressed their condolences.
The world finally found a face worthy of the Japanese who had led the world.
(Issue of August 25, 2022)