2018-09-15
The following article, which I also mentioned in the preceding chapter, ranked in three categories—Austria, Desk, and the Netherlands—in Ameba’s official hashtag rankings.
This, too, is a matter for mutual congratulation…because it is very good for Japan.
That, too, came to an end in August four years ago, but only after seventy years had passed since the war did we finally begin to understand the results of GHQ’s brainwashing…It was the reverse side of the Asahi Shimbun’s wartime slogan “Beastly Americans and British,” and GHQ embodied and carried out against Japan the very result of the prewar American propaganda that “Japan and Germany are beasts.”
In the face of the notion that “Japan and Germany are beasts,” there was not even the slightest understanding that Japan had gone 2,600 years without ever being invaded by another country and was a great nation possessing a continuity of culture without parallel anywhere in the world.
The Constitution and every policy imposed by such contemptible people were then treated almost as religious doctrine by the Asahi Shimbun, which, after yielding to the threat of being shut down, became an even more genuine embodiment of folly, and by contemptible figures such as Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami who continued to agree with it, and this foolish creed continued to be propagated until August four years ago.
One of the most foolish things done during that period was the Democratic Party government and the immediate, total shutdown of Japan’s nuclear power plants.
The following article also makes clear that it is no mere coincidence that this immediate and total shutdown of nuclear power generation has synchronized perfectly with China’s and South Korea’s national policies of becoming nuclear-power strongholds, nuclear-power superpowers, and major exporters of nuclear technology, while weakening and rendering Japan more vulnerable in exact inverse proportion.
Electricity is the foundation of the people’s lives and of industry…The only people incapable of understanding even so simple a fact are the truly childish and foolish pseudo-moralists and hypocrites classified as so-called Asahi intellectuals, including the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, Kenzaburo Oe, Jakucho Setouchi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Yet throughout the postwar period, Japan’s finest people joined regional electric power companies and, while maintaining a complete supply system of the highest standard in the world, made Japan’s miraculous postwar recovery possible.
These contemptible people…people whom it would be no exaggeration whatsoever to call traitors to the nation and sellers of their country…drove every one of those electric power companies into hardship.
The hardship was most severe in Hokkaido, where the prefecture’s foremost prestigious company was brought down by them, through Naoto Kan’s scheme, and the guilt of those who continued, astonishingly, to cooperate with this fool and traitor would, in China or on the Korean Peninsula, amount to a crime of overthrowing the state punishable by death.
The article below ranked 34th in Austria, 37th in Desk, and 62nd in the Netherlands in Ameba’s official hashtag rankings.
The following is taken from an article I discovered online earlier today, published on August 7, 2015, under the title, “Weekly Magazine Exposes the Methods of South Korea’s Anti-Japan Operations! A List of Japanese Traitors Who Received Money from South Korea Also Revealed…”
List of “Japanese Collaborators” Officially Recognized by the South Korean Government
The Dark Side of the “50th Anniversary of the Normalization of Japan–South Korea Relations”
A Former NHK Director, a United Nations Activist, the Head of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, Naoto Kan…
As the “50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations” approaches, South Korea is preparing events in an outward atmosphere of friendship, while at the same time intensifying its anti-Japan activities, including efforts to obstruct Japan’s World Heritage registration.
At the center of these overseas propaganda activities stands a government-affiliated foundation.
Its internal documents contained a list of Japanese people to whom it had given money and turned into “collaborators.”
June 22 marks fifty years since the normalization of diplomatic relations through the signing of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.
In South Korea, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se’s possible visit to Japan is being considered, and developments in both countries leading up to “that day” are being reported daily.
Yet at the same time, South Korea is energetically conducting anti-Japan activities.
The most conspicuous example is probably South Korea’s lobbying campaign against the registration of the Hashima Coal Mine in Nagasaki, commonly known as “Battleship Island,” as a World Cultural Heritage site.
“At the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held in Germany from June 28, approval by more than two-thirds of the twenty-one member states will be required.
South Korea is desperately trying to increase the number of opposing votes.
Foreign Minister Yun visited Germany, the chair country, on June 12 and appealed for opposition.
Senegal, the vice-chair country, which had supposedly expressed support for Japan, appears to have switched to opposition after President Park Geun-hye met President Macky Sall on June 4 and agreed on economic cooperation.” (Foreign News Desk Editor)
Also on June 4.
The South Korean civic group known as the Citizens’ Association with the Grandmothers of the Volunteer Labour Corps Movement visited Nagasaki and plotted to land on Battleship Island and stage a performance opposing its World Heritage registration.
The plan ultimately failed because of trouble with the boat, but the opposition movement has continued to intensify.
What is South Korea seeking to achieve before this “milestone day”?
Our magazine’s reporting team flew to South Korea.
“Last month, we received support from a certain foundation and arranged an opportunity to hear testimony from people who had been conscripted and taken to Japan.
That foundation also provided financial assistance for translating the complaint in a lawsuit filed in Japan.”
The man who gave this answer to our magazine in Gwangju, southwestern South Korea, was Lee Guk-eon, permanent representative of the Citizens’ Association.
The “foundation” in question is the Northeast Asian History Foundation.
Regarding the foundation, which was established in 2006, a Japanese government official confided:
“It is something like the command center of South Korea’s historical war against Japan.”
The direct impetus for establishing the foundation came in 2005, when the Shimane Prefectural Assembly passed an ordinance designating February 22 as Takeshima Day.
“South Korea reacted furiously.
President Roh Moo-hyun, who at the time issued a message to the public warning that ‘a severe diplomatic war with Japan may be unavoidable,’ gave the order to ‘establish an organization to study policies for countering Japan’s distortions of history and territorial issues.’
By the following year, the foundation had already been established under the Ministry of Education as an organization with a large body of researchers and the appearance of a think tank.
In reality, it is not merely a research institute, but effectively a government agency, with staff seconded from the education and foreign ministries who are responsible for everything from policy planning to lobbying.” (The same source)
The foundation occupies four floors of an office building in central Seoul and has nearly one hundred staff members.
Its chairman, the highest-ranking official, is regarded as holding a ministerial-level post, and the position is currently held by Kim Hak-joon, who served as presidential spokesman under the Roh Tae-woo administration from 1988 to 1993.
The secretary-general, the organization’s number-two official, is a vice-minister-level senior bureaucrat from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while an “Ambassador for Geographic Naming,” responsible for issues such as the name of the Sea of Japan, is also seconded from that ministry.
According to the foundation’s business plan for fiscal 2014, its budget was approximately 19.1 billion won, or roughly 2.1 billion yen.
Ninety percent of that amount came from the South Korean government’s budget.
In addition to a historical research division dealing with such subjects as the comfort women issue, the foundation has a Dokdo Research Institute, using the Korean name for Takeshima, a Public Relations and Education Division that works with civic groups, and a Policy Planning Division that advances South Korea’s claims in the international community.
According to the Japanese-language edition of a March 18, 2014, article in the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, Chairman Kim Hak-joon said at a meeting with reporters that the foundation would “create scenarios for specific points of contention and respond preemptively.”
He also announced a policy of promoting joint South Korean–Chinese research into the comfort women issue, and in December 2014 the foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the archives of Jilin Province, China, which stores documents related to the former Japanese military.
In short, it is joining forces with China to construct a network of encirclement against Japan.
Emphasis on Propaganda
We visited the building occupied by the foundation.
In the basement is a “Dokdo Experience Hall,” built at a total cost of one hundred million yen.
It contains a giant diorama of the islands and booths where visitors can put on 3D glasses and watch three-dimensional images, all designed to implant in visitors what South Korea unilaterally presents as the “history of Dokdo.”
“The foundation’s principal themes include the comfort women, Dokdo, textbook issues, visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and the naming of the Sea of Japan.
It is also responsible for the dispute with China over whether the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo belonged to Korea or China, but that issue has subsided as relations between South Korea and China have grown closer.
The foundation’s activities are now directed entirely at Japan.” (Seoul correspondent)
It would be fair to say that the foundation’s purpose is not purely academic research, but rather places its emphasis on external propaganda.
In 2009, it held a “Korea–Netherlands–Germany Sex Slavery Exhibition” in The Hague and promoted South Korea’s position on the comfort women issue to European public opinion.
According to Yoshitaka Shindo, a member of the House of Representatives from the Liberal Democratic Party and former Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, the foundation has already held nearly twenty seminars in Europe on the naming of the Sea of Japan.
“They invite researchers from various European countries and advance the South Korean argument that it should be called the ‘East Sea.’
In Europe, where there is insufficient information about the name Sea of Japan, such claims have taken root.
Countries such as Austria have even begun listing both names in their geography textbooks.” (Representative Shindo)
Looking at the foundation’s activities in Japan, it becomes clear that it has undertaken operations going far beyond public relations.
“At this year’s Takeshima Day commemorative ceremony held by Shimane Prefecture, researchers from the foundation attended together with officials from the South Korean Consulate-General in Hiroshima.
They also visited the prefecture’s Takeshima reference room and examined its materials.” (Shimane prefectural government source)
On the Takeshima issue, the foundation also attempts to conceal “inconvenient truths.”
“I have heard that people connected with the foundation are buying up old Japanese maps one after another in the secondhand book district of Kanda.
They are probably trying to ‘destroy the evidence’ because they fear that maps proving Takeshima to be an inherent part of Japanese territory may emerge.” (Representative Shindo, cited above)
＊This is a fact that perfectly demonstrates the true nature of a country of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”＊
A closer investigation revealed that part of the foundation’s budget was flowing to astonishing recipients.
“The foundation supports anti-Japan organizations within South Korea, including the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, but that is not all.
It also provides financial assistance to organizations and researchers in Japan.” (The government official cited above)
In 2012, the foundation published a non-commercial white paper entitled Beyond Conflict toward Reconciliation: Six Years of Activities and Direction of the Northeast Asian History Foundation.
It contained project-by-project lists of organizations and individuals supported by the foundation since its establishment.
It also contained a list of people invited as lecturers to symposiums and other events organized by the foundation, even when they had not received direct financial support.
Tracing these lists reveals the path by which this foundation, which may fairly be described as the South Korean government itself, selected Japanese organizations and individuals as targets and worked to acquire them as collaborators.
One of those individuals was Yuji Fukuhara, an associate professor at the University of Shimane in Shimane Prefecture, which has jurisdiction over Takeshima.
Fukuhara is also a member of the prefecture’s Takeshima Issue Research Group.
According to the list, in 2009 he received support for research entitled “An Examination of the History and Current State of Fisheries in Shimane Prefecture.”
In the same year, he also attended an academic conference in Seoul commemorating the first anniversary of the establishment of the Dokdo Research Institute, which is under the foundation, and even presented his research there.
“It is true that even within Shimane Prefecture’s research group, concern was expressed over his words and actions, including his use of both the names Takeshima and Dokdo.
Mr. Fukuhara argues that the fishing problems of fishermen from the Oki Islands who operated around Takeshima should take priority over resolving the territorial issue itself, and he has repeatedly made statements that benefit South Korea.
The fact that a faculty member of a prefectural university received such funding is not something that can be overlooked.” (The Shimane prefectural government source cited above)
How would the man himself explain it?
We visited Fukuhara.
“I conducted research for one year with funding from the foundation.
I believe it amounted to around six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand yen.
I studied the fisheries issue because I thought it might be useful to introduce the perspective of everyday life and that of ordinary citizens.
The great pleasure of scholarship lies in making discoveries from new points of view.”
—Is there no problem in receiving funding from a South Korean government-affiliated foundation whose purpose is propaganda?
“I find it regrettable that the money should be regarded as politically colored.
Fundamentally, a scholar does not take the side of any particular country, but clarifies matters that remain academically unknown.
Even if the Institute for Japanese Studies at Seoul National University sought to increase the number of pro-Korean people, I would apply if it offered research funding and allowed me to conduct my research freely.”
Cooperation with the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management
The name of a museum in Nishi-Waseda, Tokyo, also appeared on the list.
It was the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, known as wam.
The amount cannot be determined from the list, but it states that in 2008 the foundation supported the production of a map concerning the comfort women.
Wam was established to carry on the wishes of Yayori Matsui, a former Asahi Shimbun reporter who played a central role in reporting on the comfort women issue and, after leaving the newspaper, served as a co-representative of the organizing committee of the “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal,” which found Emperor Showa guilty.
Matsui died in 2002.
The museum’s current director is Eriko Ikeda, a former NHK director, who is also known for her close connections with the Korean Council, including frequent co-sponsorship of symposiums.
When we visited Ikeda, she refused a face-to-face interview and asked us to submit our questions in writing.
After we sent detailed questions, we received an email rejecting the interview on grounds that included our supposedly differing understanding of the Northeast Asian History Foundation.
The most internationally known name on the foundation’s list is probably that of former lawyer Etsuro Totsuka.
“In 1992, he asked the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to take up the comfort women issue and became the first person to advance the claim that the comfort women were ‘sex slaves.’
He is fluent in English and deeply familiar with the organizations of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
His activities at the United Nations began before South Korea raised the comfort women issue in the international community, and it can be said that he created the foundations upon which Japan would later be subjected to unjustified criticism.” (Former Foreign Ministry official)
According to the list, in 2010 support was provided for Totsuka’s research entitled “A Reconsideration of the Process of Japan’s Annexation of Korea.”
In a paper published that same year under the title “The Origins and International Law of the 100th Anniversary of the ‘Annexation of Korea,’” Totsuka wrote, “I would like to express my gratitude for the grant provided to this research by the Northeast Asian History Foundation.”
Totsuka responded by email to our magazine’s request for an interview.
While stating, “I feel no desire to grant an interview,” he nevertheless argued as follows:
〈When a problem is so serious that it may be described as a grave violation of human rights, there are cases in which neither the Japanese government nor Japanese society can resolve it on their own.
In such cases, it may be possible to promote a resolution by, among other things, asking the United Nations to mediate.
In the long term, this ultimately serves Japan’s interests, but from a short-term perspective, or when viewed solely from the Japanese side, it may appear to be ‘anti-Japanese.’〉
He then readily acknowledged receiving support from the foundation.
〈In South Korea, as you point out, I received a grant from the Northeast Asian History Foundation, and I also received assistance from Seoul National University.
However, I have always taken care not to accept support from perpetrators or from organizations whose ethical conduct has been called into question.〉
The foundation’s targets were not limited to researchers and civic groups.
Its white paper states:
〈The year 2010 was a period of political upheaval in Japan, as government changed from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party of Japan.
Taking this as an opportunity to resolve disputes over historical perceptions between South Korea and Japan, the foundation cooperated with Japan’s Matsushita Institute of Government and Management to hold the “Korea–Japan Symposium of Public Opinion Leaders.”〉
The claim that the foundation cooperated with the Matsushita Institute in order to approach the Democratic Party administration was also discussed in an interview with former foundation chairman Chung Jae-jeong published in the December 20, 2010, issue of the South Korean magazine Weekly Chosun.
〈On July 27, we held a symposium in Seoul attended by members of parliament from both countries.
From the South Korean side, Lee Sang-deuk, chairman of the Korea–Japan Parliamentarians’ Union and the elder brother of then-President Lee Myung-bak, participated.
From the Japanese side, Chairman Kozo Watanabe participated.
I have not spoken about this elsewhere, but we acted as intermediaries, and the event was arranged through the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management.
The institute is right-wing.
We believed we had to win over the right wing that moves Japan.
We contacted the head of the institute, invited him to South Korea, and arranged for him to give a lecture at the foundation.
We proposed that, as both countries marked the centenary, we should make efforts together.
There are dozens of members of the Japanese Diet who came from the Matsushita Institute, so we invited them and held a gathering of South Korean and Japanese parliamentarians.
We discussed reflection on one hundred years of Korean–Japanese history and a vision for the future.
The subject of Prime Minister Kan’s statement also arose at that meeting.〉
In August of that year, which marked one hundred years since Japan’s annexation of Korea, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan apologized to South Korea in the “Kan Statement” and went so far as to agree to transfer cultural properties, including the Uigwe royal protocols of the Joseon Dynasty.
Former Chairman Chung praised himself by saying that he was “proud to have made a certain contribution” to the statement.
〈At the time, support for the Japanese government was declining even as it faced an election for the House of Councillors, so politically it was a very difficult period.
Nevertheless, we persuaded the Japanese government and, as a result, brought about the Kan Statement.〉
President Park’s Operations Directed at the United States
Kazuhiro Furuyama, head of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, who was identified by former Chairman Chung as the point of entry for these operations, gave a lecture at the foundation on November 18, 2009.
We asked Furuyama about it.
“It is true that I gave the lecture because I was told that they sincerely wanted it for the sake of Japan–South Korea relations, but there was no ulterior intention on my part.
It was reported in South Korea in an extremely distorted way.
You might say that I was politically exploited.
I protested to the foundation and have had no relationship with it since then.”
—Surely you were aware of the nature of the foundation?
“I was aware of it.
But representatives of the foundation came and said that they wanted a frank discussion, so I merely agreed that we should have one.
I never cooperated with the foundation in any way.”
What about former Prime Minister Kan, the author of the statement?
When we requested an interview about his relationship with the foundation and related matters, he replied in writing with only two words:
“I don’t know.”
When we interviewed Kozo Watanabe, who was then chairman of the Japan–Korea Parliamentarians’ Union, he answered, “All I ever said to the South Korean side was that we should consistently adopt a future-oriented approach.”
A Foreign Ministry official, however, recalled:
“At first glance, it may appear that they merely invited people to Seoul and held lectures and symposiums.
But the transfer of the Uigwe royal protocols of the Joseon Dynasty was originally raised at the symposium for parliamentarians said to have been held in cooperation with the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management.”
When we requested an interview with the Northeast Asian History Foundation, it replied, “We cannot answer anything beyond what is published on our website.”
Professor Tsutomu Nishioka of Tokyo Christian University points to the danger of these operations by the foundation.
“In Japan, there is an idea that research should be conducted according to academic conscience.
This foundation, however, acts according to the explicit policy of ‘conducting the research necessary to win the historical war against Japan.’
It has nothing in common with Japan’s leisurely approach.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is proceeding with plans to establish ‘Japan House’ facilities to promote Japan’s appeal overseas, but simply advertising anime and Japanese cuisine will never be enough to counter the ‘historical war’ being waged by South Korea.”
President Park Geun-hye recently told an American newspaper in an interview that negotiations with Japan over the comfort women issue had “made considerable progress and are now in their final stage.”
Her words made it sound as though there were already prospects of extracting concessions from Japan, but the Japanese government had heard nothing of the kind.
President Park’s true intention is believed to have been “an operation directed at the United States, designed to create the impression that Japan was moving toward making concessions.” (Political reporter)
As June 22 approaches, the activities of the South Korean government’s “Japanese collaborators” should also be watched closely.
Shukan Bunshun, June 25, 2015 issue