In my July 22, 2017 article, “With Each of These Events, the Postwar Intellectuals Were Reaching the End of Their Lifeline,” my criticism of Haruki Murakami had entered the stage of discussing the historical end of the postwar intellectuals themselves.
I cited Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami as representative postwar intellectuals in a way that would be easy for readers around the world to understand.
They had continued to take the position that the Japanese state and the Japanese military were unilaterally evil, while showing sympathy toward China and the Korean Peninsula.
As a result of that thinking, postwar Japan provided China and South Korea with financial and technological assistance on a scale among the largest in human history.
Japan’s support played a decisive role in saving China from the brink of collapse and pushing it upward into the economic power it is today.
The same is true of South Korea.
The conclusion of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, together with massive financial and technological assistance from Japan, supported the Miracle on the Han River and helped form today’s South Korea.
However, China and South Korea did not teach these facts to their people.
On the contrary, both countries disregarded international agreements with Japan and sought to continue binding Japan politically through the Nanjing issue, the comfort women issue, the wartime labor issue, and other matters.
Each time this happened, the ideological foundation of the postwar intellectuals collapsed further.
That is because they had lived within a framework that regarded China and the Korean Peninsula as well-intentioned victims and judged only Japan as the perpetrator.
In reality, however, China and the Korean Peninsula rose while revealing, just as Tadao Umesao had discerned, “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
Each time that reality became clear, the postwar intellectuals represented by Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami lost their ideological lifeline.
They did not know what Japan had done for China and South Korea.
Or else, they refused to know.
And they did not face what China and South Korea were doing to Japan.
As a result, their superficial morality, their Asahi Shimbun-like pseudo-moralism, and their historical awareness that continued to judge only Japan collapsed before reality.
At this point, I was looking at Haruki Murakami not merely as a writer, but as a symbolic figure of the end of the postwar intellectuals.
Each time China and the Korean Peninsula revealed their true nature, the foolishness of these intellectuals was also revealed.
They were continually being handed a scholarly and ideological death sentence.
My essays began with the criticism that Haruki Murakami’s writing was immature.
They then moved on to the criticism that the Japanese literary space elevating him was abnormal.
They became a criticism of him as a person intoxicated by Asahi Shimbun-like hypocrisy and cheap liquor.
They then developed into a criticism of him as someone who could be used for the Nanjing issue, the theory of eternal apology, and anti-Japanese propaganda.
And finally, they reached a civilizational criticism:
Haruki Murakami, alongside Kenzaburo Oe and others, is a symbolic figure of the ideological end of the postwar intellectuals.