Reflecting on Masayuki Takayama’s New Year column, this essay reexamines the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Britain’s support for Japan, and the historical debt that continues into the present.
A meditation on gratitude, history, and Japan’s responsibilities today.
January 1, 2019

A Happy New Year!

The chapter I posted on Ameba on December 29, 2018, titled “Compiled by Motoki together with interpreters Baba Sadayoshi, Suenaga Yoshimori, Narabayashi Takami, Yoshio Nagayasu and others,” has now entered the official hashtag ranking at No.52 for Nissan.
Masayuki Takayama’s column in the New Year special issue of Shukan Shincho also proves that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
Readers must have read it with hearty laughter and admiration.
Yet all those with discerning eyes cannot forget the weight of this essay.
They must surely be grateful that such a man exists in Japan.

In gratitude for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
The first encounter between Japan and Britain came in the early nineteenth century with the incident of the British warship Phaeton storming into Nagasaki harbor.
The Japanese were astonished that such a violent country existed.
In order to consider how to deal with it, they first created an English-Japanese dictionary titled “Angeria Gorin Taisei.”；Note 1
Later, when Americans speaking the same language but even more ferocious arrived, this proved extremely useful.
Though somewhat a negative lesson, Britain in fact did many good things.
At the end of the Tokugawa era, the Russian warship Posadnik came to Tsushima, ravaged villages, and demanded port lease rights and the offering of women.
Had the shogunate responded poorly, occupation of Tsushima was possible.
Indeed, in 1875, a similar Russian vessel came to Sakhalin and made the same threats.
Japan could not resist alone and Russia obtained Sakhalin.
When Tsushima was also in danger, British minister Alcock dispatched two warships and drove the Russians away.
It was a favorable outcome for which gratitude cannot suffice.
When Japan again confronted Russia across Korea, Britain concluded a military alliance with Japan.
Japan needed only to fight Russia.
If Germany or France, both hostile to Japan, had aided Russia, Britain promised immediate entry into the war to defeat them.
No one wished to fight the world’s strongest Britain.
Before entering the Sea of Japan, the Baltic Fleet was to rest at Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina, but the French government, fearing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, refused entry.
The exhausted sailors then clashed with the Combined Fleet off Tsushima without recovering from their long voyage.
Roughly twenty percent of the great victory that annihilated the Russian fleet was thanks to Britain.
That alliance later disappeared due to American cunning and the folly of Kijuro Shidehara.
Partly because of this, the subsequent war occurred and Japan was defeated.
Postwar Japan was at the mercy of American domination, yet even then Britain treated Japan in an entirely normal manner.
The United States crushed Japan’s aircraft industry so that it could never again challenge white nations.
Operation, manufacture, and even academic study of aerodynamics were banned.
The same applied to the automobile industry.
Manufacturing and research were prohibited, and local production by Ford and GM was halted.
Heavy industry was also slated for complete dismantlement, but the Korean War broke out at just the right time.
Japan survived as a rear base for U.S. forces and retained its industrial power.
At this moment Britain became the savior of Japan’s automobile industry.
Austin concluded knock-down agreements with Nissan, and Hillman with Isuzu, filling the postwar vacuum.
The earlier war had begun when the United States cut off oil.
Japan’s postwar energy situation had not improved.
The government considered introducing nuclear power, but the United States firmly refused.
They feared that if Japan possessed nuclear technology it might someday avenge Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Again Britain extended a hand.
Japan obtained and operated British graphite-moderated reactors.
Cheap natural uranium sufficed as fuel.
This shocked the United States.
Graphite reactors could produce plutonium usable for nuclear weapons.
Japan could quickly obtain nuclear arms.
The United States hastily changed policy.
In exchange for scrapping graphite reactors, it provided light-water reactors.
These could not produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Thus Japan was able to realize a certain degree of energy self-sufficiency.
Japan also acquired nuclear know-how and has now reached the point where Hitachi exports light-water reactors back to Britain in return.
Britain, struggling after leaving the EU, would surely benefit.
Yet Hitachi says insufficient investment funds force it to abandon the plan.
The government hesitates to assist, perhaps fearing harassment from anti-nuclear Asahi Shimbun.
Japan once wasted twenty percent of its national budget for thirty-six years on that Korea.
Would it not suffice to allocate even one-thirty-sixth of that toward Britain?
It would repay at least a fraction of the debt engraved in history.
Unlike Korea, it would surely become something meaningful.

As I reread this magnificent essay by Masayuki Takayama, I found myself unable to hold back tears on several occasions.
A man like him is what one calls a true patriot of the nation.
Those represented by figures such as Kenzaburō Ōe and Haruki Murakami, by contrast, must be called betrayers of their country—or even enemies of the nation.
They are among the most deplorable Japanese in the history of Japan.
Ōe Kenzaburō, as if flaunting his association with Shūichi Katō, once boasted in a dialogue with the foolish Hisashi Inoue that Katō had declared there were only two geniuses in Japanese history: Kūkai and Sugawara no Michizane.
Yet the decisive moment when the Japanese people should have realized that there are no individuals more deserving of contempt from Kūkai and Sugawara no Michizane than Ōe and Murakami arrived definitively in August four years ago.

Note 1. Angeria Gorin Taisei (諳厄利亜語林大成) was the first English–Japanese dictionary compiled in Japan, with Motoki Shōzaemon (Shōei) serving as its central editor.
It was completed in Bunka 11 (1814).
Shocked by the 1808 Phaeton incident (Bunka 5), the Tokugawa shogunate acutely recognized the necessity of studying Britain and ordered Dutch interpreters to learn English and compile the dictionary.
Under the guidance of the Dutchman Jan Cock Blomhoff, who had experience residing in Britain, approximately 6,000 words were included, and their pronunciations were written in katakana.
The achievement of compiling the first English–Japanese dictionary was of great significance, but its pronunciations bore strong Dutch accents and thus had certain shortcomings.
In addition to Motoki, the compilation was undertaken by interpreters Baba Sadayoshi, Suenaga Yoshimori, Narabayashi Takami, Yoshio Nagayasu, and others.