In the articles of March 8 and 9, 2017, my criticism of Haruki Murakami moved further into the concrete problem of historical awareness.
The description of the Nanjing Incident in Haruki Murakami’s full-length novel Killing Commendatore had caused a major stir online.
Although it was dialogue spoken by a character in the novel, the fact that it referred to the figure of “400,000,” exceeding even the “300,000” claimed by the Chinese side, had a meaning that could not be overlooked within the international information war surrounding Japan’s modern and contemporary history.
An article in the Sankei Shimbun also pointed out the possibility that the Chinese side would evaluate this description positively and use it politically.
At that time, I became convinced once again of the correctness of what I had written about Haruki Murakami up to that point.
What I had found strange was the way Haruki Murakami wrote his works while staying at the finest resorts and hotels around the world.
Of course, one cannot determine anything from that fact alone.
However, from the common sense of information warfare, it is entirely possible that China and South Korea, which have used anti-Japanese propaganda as part of maintaining their regimes, would pay attention to a Japanese writer with worldwide name recognition and seek to use his statements and works.
The issue is whether Haruki Murakami sufficiently understood that kind of international context.
If a person called a world-famous writer speaks about Japan’s modern and contemporary history while holding uncertain historical awareness, it does not remain a mere literary expression.
It may end up providing material for the anti-Japanese propaganda of China and South Korea.
In my article of March 9, 2017, I saw that structure in an even broader way.
Haruki Murakami, Kang Sang-jung, editorial writers of the Asahi Shimbun, opposition party lawmakers, so-called cultural figures, human-rights lawyers, and writers in certain parts of the publishing world and weekly magazines.
Although each of them is a separate existence, within the discourse space of postwar Japan they have distorted Japan’s historical awareness in similar directions.
I saw there something of the same nature as the structure in the United States, where anti-Japanese propaganda by China and South Korea has exerted influence by targeting particular politicians and opinion leaders.
For a long time, I had felt something deeply strange about the way Haruki Murakami, who was merely an ordinary translator, merely a translator of Raymond Carver, was somehow elevated into “a great writer representing Japan.”
That sense of something wrong took a definite shape within me through the controversy over the Nanjing Incident description in 2017.
What I was criticizing was not merely the presence or absence of Haruki Murakami’s literary talent.
It was the fact that, without sufficiently knowing Japanese history, he had become someone who, from the position of a world-famous writer, circulated historical awareness disadvantageous to Japan.
That was a problem of Japanese literature, and at the same time a problem involving Japan’s national interest, Japan’s honor, and Japan’s historical awareness.