In “Haruki Murakami Is Not in the Least an Outstanding Player Representing Japan, Nor Could He Possibly Be So,” dated March 13, 2017, my criticism had become even clearer.
Haruki Murakami is neither an intellect representing Japan nor an outstanding player representing Japan.
Those who support Japan are the people engaged in real business at corporate groups of which Japan can be proud before the world, the bureaucrats who are responsible for running the Japanese state, and the doctors who save the lives of others.
Those who earn their income through speech and writing must, at the very least, know Japanese history correctly.
And yet Haruki Murakami was far too ignorant of Japan’s modern and contemporary history.
His statements concerning the Nanjing Incident and the Korean Peninsula were not the words of someone who had correctly studied Japanese history.
At this point, I was criticizing Haruki Murakami even more severely as a symbolic figure of postwar Japan’s mistaken historical awareness and Asahi Shimbun-like values.
Haruki Murakami Is Not in the Least an Outstanding Player Representing Japan, Nor Could He Possibly Be So
2017-03-13
Haruki Murakami is not in the least an outstanding player representing Japan.
Nor could he possibly be so.
He is a man who graduated from Waseda University and ran a coffee shop.
After closing his coffee shop, he began translating Raymond Carver.
As for what followed, it is exactly as I have mentioned before.
I once told the world that Japan’s most outstanding players advance into three categories.
One is those who enter the corporate groups of which Japan can be proud before the world and walk the path toward becoming president.
One is those who go to Kasumigaseki and become Japan’s finest bureaucrats, taking part in the operation of the Japanese state.
Among them, many also go on to become politicians of the Liberal Democratic Party.
One is those who become doctors and save the lives of others.
People who become newspaper reporters, or so-called cultural figures who sympathize with them, are not at all Japan’s most outstanding players.
Even so, unlike almost all ordinary Japanese citizens, they earn their income through speech and writing.
In other words, it is no exaggeration to say that they do not engage in real business, but make their living through a kind of empty profession.
It goes without saying that such people must know Japanese history correctly.
So to speak, it is no exaggeration to say that reading books is their profession.
In this respect, Haruki Murakami is an especially low-grade man.
He knows nothing at all about Japanese history.
He does not even know the facts about the war that took place only seventy years ago.
Some years ago, he published in the Asahi Shimbun the unbelievably ignorant and foolish statement that the Japanese must apologize forever to the people of the Korean Peninsula.
And now, at last, in his new work, he has reportedly caused a great controversy online by treating the Nanjing Massacre as if it were a true historical fact, and by even bringing up the theory of 400,000 victims rather than 300,000.
Yesterday, on the train returning from Kyoto, I was reading the latest issue of the monthly magazine Rekishi-tsu.
In the major feature titled “Such an Unforgivable History Existed: The Tragedy of Siberia and Manchuria,” there was an essay by Takashi Hayasaka spanning ten pages from page 150 in three columns, and an essay by Miki Otaka spanning eleven pages from page 160 in the same format.
As I continued reading, when I was reading Otaka’s essay, I nearly broke down in grief.
At that moment, I was convinced.
At the time, I strongly criticized Haruki Murakami’s historical awareness and statements as, in effect, helping the anti-Japanese propaganda of China and South Korea.
It is no exaggeration to say that the same applies not only to media such as the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun, but also to people such as Kenzaburo Oe.
Haruki Murakami is neither an intellect representing Japan nor an outstanding player representing Japan.
Nor could he possibly be so.
What he lacks is something that comes before literary ability.
To know Japanese history.
To defend the honor of Japan and the Japanese people.
To see facts as facts.
When someone lacking these things speaks about Japan under the name of a world-famous writer, his words become dangerous for Japan.
This essay continues.