This essay examines John Dower’s use of American male privilege in postwar Japan, drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s critique and a dialogue among Takashi Ito, Yoshitaka Fukui, and Michio Ezaki. It challenges the Tokyo Trial historical view and explores the distortion of history through so-called revisionism.

I learned that he fully exercised the privilege of being an American male in Japan at that time.
2016-12-13
Regarding the person called John Dower, subscribers of the Asahi Shimbun should have known only his name, but the Asahi Shimbun has never conveyed what kind of person he is.
Through the erudition unique to Masayuki Takayama, I learned that shortly after the war, while working as an English teacher in Kanazawa, he fully exercised the privilege of being an American male in the Japan of that time, which was dominated by the “Give me chocolate” atmosphere.
At that very moment, I also understood what kind of person this individual was.
This was because Takayama’s words were spoken precisely because he could not stomach the outrageous statements that this man is now making toward Japan in the United States.
This is a criticism possible only for Masayuki Takayama, directed at a single outrageous individual, like that of King Enma.
How utterly foolish this John Dower is.
That the root of the abnormality of reporting on Japan by newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post lay in this man—
“Rekishitsu” has made this clear through a special dialogue feature article by Takashi Ito, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, Yoshitaka Fukui, Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, and the critic Michio Ezaki.
All emphasis within the text other than the headings is mine.
Question the “war responsibility” of the victorious nations!
When will we be liberated from the Tokyo Trial historical view?
Ezaki
Prefatory text omitted
The views recently advocated by the Asahi Shimbun and others claiming that the Japanese Constitution was by no means imposed are, in a sense, “historical revisionism” directed against the established theory known as the “GHQ imposition theory.”
However, is this not fifty steps away from the strange “historical revisionism” that claims there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz?
It might even be called “historical falsification” (laughs).
Conversely, the fact that the “Red Purge” of McCarthy (U.S. Senator), who had been derided as an agitator, has come to be regarded as having a factual basis through the disclosure of “Venona,” which deciphered intercepted communications of Soviet spies, can be called correct historical revisionism.
Regarding the presence of Soviet spies within the Roosevelt Democratic administration, translations have been published of The American Communist Party and the Comintern: Records of Underground Activities by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Firsov (Gogatsu Shobo), and Venona: Decoded Soviet Ciphers and Spy Activities by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (PHP Institute), and regarding “historical revisionism” in the United States, it is also introduced in my book The Falsehood of the Tokyo Trial Historical View Seen from the American Side (Shodensha Shinsho).
Fukui
In my book The Cutting-Edge “World History” That Japanese Do Not Know (Shodensha), I also touch upon “historical revisionism.”
I pointed out that the post–Second World War conventional theory that Germany alone bore responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War has in recent years been undergoing revision.
Revising historical understanding based on newly discovered materials and evidence is a perfectly natural thing.
In that sense, the “Tokyo Trial historical view,” which holds that Japan alone was entirely at fault for the last war, should also rightly be revised based on facts.
Ito
However, recently the abdication of the Emperor during his lifetime has become a topic of discussion, and when listening to what is conveyed as the words of the current Emperor, one suspects that he may hold the “Tokyo Trial historical view.”
Furthermore, Prime Minister Abe’s “Seventieth Anniversary Statement” was also fundamentally based on the Tokyo Trial historical view.
With authority bestowed by the Emperor and successive prime ministers, the Tokyo Trial historical view remains dominant in the Japanese Historical Association and the mass media.
I think that properly revising this historical view will require quite a difficult task.
My book Inside and Outside Japan, which details the illusions and disillusionment of communism in modern history, was completely ignored (laughs).
Up until the First World War, Japan aimed to become a nation that could contend with and stand alongside the Western powers that dominated the world.
In 1920, the League of Nations was established, and Japan became a permanent member alongside Britain, France, and Italy.
However, I believe that from that point on, international society entered an era of struggle against communism, and in the latter half of Inside and Outside Japan, I place major emphasis on conflicts with international communism and Comintern subversive activities surrounding Japan in the twentieth century.
However, from the perspective of communists and pro-communist liberal progressive intellectuals, this becomes an unforgivable form of historical revisionism.
They do not want it to be touched upon.
There was no criticism, but there was also no evaluation.
It was completely ignored.
Even with regard to Venona, which you two often take up, there are not many researchers in Japan who mention it.
If one mentions this document, one is labeled a revisionist.
Ezaki
Gogatsu Shobo has gone bankrupt.
The PHP books are out of print, difficult to obtain at used bookstores, and cost around 100,000 yen.
They have become phantom masterpieces that cannot be read even if one wants to (laughs).
Fukui
Professor Ito, from an early stage, introduced fresh winds into the historical academia strongly influenced by Marxism, and from the latter half of the 1960s through the 1990s published Studies in Early Showa Political History (University of Tokyo Press) and Politics of the Showa Period and Politics of the Showa Period [Continued] (Yamakawa Publishing).
The new historical perspective presented there has not grown outdated even now.
Against the majority who readily concluded that the prewar Showa period was a fascist state, he empirically pointed out the lack of grounds for such claims.
However, thereafter, it seems that modern Japanese historical research has regressed.
It also seems that the Tokyo Trial historical view has become increasingly solidified.
Ito
When a peace treaty is concluded, war clears away undesirable past relations.
However, issues such as “comfort women accompanying the military” and the Nanjing Incident have increasingly been problematized afterward.
What is also strange is that even though the “authority” of communism collapsed long ago, in Japan as well, albeit among only a portion, young people are deeply immersed in the Tokyo Trial historical view and even show a tendency to reinforce that view.
There are such people even among graduates of my seminar (laughs).
I think they are bad revisionists.
This essay continues.
The portions concerning John Dower will be addressed in subsequent chapters.