In my September 10, 2017 article, “And Then They Would Make You Write That the Nanjing Massacre Was Real, and That It Was Not 300,000 but 400,000,” I discussed, in the most direct form, how the existence known as Haruki Murakami could be used within international information warfare.
Haruki Murakami is a person who was elevated by the publishing industry and the media as a worldwide bestselling author, and who obtained immense wealth.
Even if he drinks expensive wine and lives in luxury, if what lies at the root of his mind is Asahi Shimbun-like pseudo-moralism, masochistic thought derived from GHQ’s occupation policy, and the postwar discourse space brainwashed by Marxism, then that is precisely cheap liquor of the spirit.
What I questioned was not the luxury of his lifestyle.
It was the poverty of his historical awareness, and the danger that, from the position of a world-famous writer, he could transmit a historical awareness disadvantageous to Japan.
The Japanese media, though eager to chase entertainers and attack the government, did not seriously investigate what Haruki Murakami was doing at luxury resorts and hotels around the world.
In that sense, he was an existence isolated from the Japanese media.
However, from the viewpoint of Chinese and South Korean intelligence agencies, a person like him would be an extremely valuable asset to use.
A Japanese writer with worldwide name recognition.
A person whose name is repeatedly mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate.
A person whose statements on Japan’s historical issues could be quoted around the world.
If such a person could be made to speak a historical awareness that denigrates the Japanese military, or words demanding eternal apologies from Japan, it would be an unparalleled achievement for the anti-Japanese propaganda of China and South Korea.
At the time, I was extremely alert to that danger.
That is why I wrote that, if I were on the side of Chinese or South Korean intelligence agencies, there is no way I would overlook a person such as Haruki Murakami.
Honey traps, money traps, operations surrounding the Nobel Prize, and the expansion of influence through making him a bestseller in China and South Korea.
In the world of information warfare, these can be elementary methods.
Of course, I was not saying here that I had proven the existence of any specific operation.
What I was presenting was the danger that Haruki Murakami, treated as a world-famous writer, could be used for anti-Japanese propaganda, and the problem that the Japanese people were far too defenseless against that danger.
Within that context, making him write, “The Nanjing Massacre was real. It was not 300,000, but 400,000.”
Making him say that Japan and the Japanese people must continue apologizing forever to the Korean Peninsula.
For the anti-Japanese propaganda of China and South Korea, that would have an extremely great meaning.
In 2017, I had seen through that danger and sounded the alarm.
Here too, what I was criticizing was not the literature of Haruki Murakami alone.
It was the publishing industry that created him, the Asahi Shimbun-like media space that elevated him, and the very structure of international anti-Japanese propaganda that could use him.