Based on a chapter originally published on October 20, 2015, this passage responds to anti-Japan criticism seen in the San Francisco city council and American textbooks by confronting historical facts that the United States has not sufficiently faced, including indiscriminate bombing in the final stage of the war, the atomic bombings, and sexual crimes during the occupation.
It criticizes the Asahi Shimbun for having supplied the world with material to attack Japan through false reporting on the comfort-women issue and the Nanjing incident, while arguing that what is now at stake is the very level of American intelligence, fairness, and democratic sincerity.
The passage also refers to a review of a scholarly French work describing the Normandy operation as also involving sexual violence by American soldiers against French women, thereby exposing the distortion of trying to place wartime guilt one-sidedly on Japan.
Recalling that Japan refrained from anti-American denunciation for seventy years after the war, the chapter warns that if further insult and vulgar anti-Japan accusations continue, the United States itself could become the object of historical judgment.

2019-04-22
There was a review of a book by a French specialist scholar saying that the Normandy operation…
Was at the same time…
Also a history of American soldiers violating French women.

This is a chapter originally published on October 20, 2015.
Americans are broad and rough, both in a good sense and in a bad sense.
In that respect they resemble the Chinese, I recall being told by a person whose father was a famous university professor in China, who graduated from Doshisha University in Japan, and who was working in Japan.
But the conduct of the San Francisco city council and the descriptions in McGraw-Hill textbooks are not matters that can be dismissed on that level.
What is being questioned is the level of American intelligence, American fairness…
And, more than that, the genuineness of American democracy.
Do the people connected with the San Francisco city council not even possess the judgment and imagination that any ordinary person has?
The twentieth century was the century of war.
The United States did not view favorably Japan, which, as the first yellow race, defeated Russia, then a great power among the imperial nations, and joined the ranks of the powers.
Why?
Because the United States, which among the powers was late in wanting to expand its interests in China…
And Japan’s movement to liberate colonized Asia…
Were bound to collide.
The age was…
The age of oil…
The century of war.
The United States and Britain finally began an oil embargo against Japan, a country without resources.
In other words, they economically blockaded Japan.
In response, “Brutal America and Britain”…
Strike them at once, begin the war at once, public opinion was violently inflamed,
And what drove even the talented men in the military, who knew the recklessness of facing the United States, then overwhelmingly the richest nation in the world, into a situation from which they could no longer turn back…
Was the Asahi Shimbun…
That newspaper which you now mistake for the conscience of Japan…
Though it is now like a left-wing gangster paper.
Into ideas brainwashed by GHQ…
Left-wing ideology and pseudo-moralism became jumbled together…
And it is no exaggeration to say that it is a newspaper company that has sunk to a level of stupidity below even kindergarten children.
They treated it as ideal material with which to attack Japan and the Japanese government…
They leapt upon the words of a man who seemed born to tell lies…
And created the lie called the comfort-women issue.
Including the times when they treated it as a major scoop…
They published it sixteen times and sent it out to the world.
Besides that, they created numerous lies, headed by the three hundred thousand victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
As a result of the complete success of GHQ’s occupation policy…
People claiming to be former soldiers…
Began speaking lies like those of Seiji Yoshida.
Because they knew that the Asahi Shimbun…
Would eagerly leap upon them…
As ideal material for attacking Japan and the Japanese government.
But do you people have no knowledge, no imagination?
That the American occupation forces, in a very short period…
Continued committing enormous numbers of sexual crimes.
It was only because MacArthur, who was also one of history’s greatest dictators…
Covered it up and did not allow it to be made public.
In the readers’ column the other day, there was a review of a book by a French specialist scholar saying that the Normandy operation…
Was at the same time…
Also a history of American soldiers violating French women.
Even setting those matters aside,
No matter how…
The Japanese military may have been the most disciplined and strongest in the world…
Once all military supplies had been cut off, nothing could be done…
And in the final stage of the war, when defeat was obvious to everyone,
People connected with the San Francisco city council,
Your country carried out indiscriminate bombing against 127 cities across Japan, attacks contrary to humanity.
In those attacks, about three million people were killed in a very short period.
The vast majority were, needless to say, noncombatants.
That is, women, children, and the elderly.
Not only that, using incendiary bombs, themselves weapons contrary to humanity, your country reduced 127 cities to burnt wastelands.
Still not satisfied, your country dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki…
And turned those beautiful cities into hell in an instant.
We passed seventy years after the war without uttering a single complaint to you.
Not only that, it is no exaggeration to say that we have been the nation that has loved your country the most, myself included.
China and South Korea fabricate obvious lies, or leap upon the lies of the Asahi Shimbun…
And persistently…
Defame Japan all over the world…
Even demanding reparations.
If we…
Were a people like them, what would become of your country?
Would it not be unable even to survive?
Just think about it.
If your country goes on brandishing stupidity and rudeness any further…
We may have no choice but to convene, before the world, a Tokyo Tribunal concerning the two matters mentioned above.
What that would bring about would not remotely be contained within amounts such as the reparations extorted from Toyota through the absurd and false bashing of recent years…
It would bankrupt your country, and your country would never rise again…
There would be condemnation and claims for damages for one of the greatest crimes against humanity in human history.
On the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese…
A matter you do not know at all…
From the final installment of the major essay series “The Chinese Who Learned ‘Modernity’ from Japan,” serialized in the monthly magazine Voice by Sekihei, a true elite from China who graduated from the philosophy department of Peking University, studied at Kobe University in Japan, and was naturalized in Japan twenty-eight years ago…
I will introduce his splendid argument in the next chapter…
For the members of the San Francisco city council.