Originally published on April 22, 2019.
This essay condemns China’s attempt at the United Nations to revive the poison gas issue in order to extort money from Japan once again, while also exposing the hypocrisy of Britain, which had just warmly welcomed Xi Jinping, and the traitorous media posture of Asahi Shimbun in defending such conduct.
It further reflects on the realities of international politics leading to the Pacific War, Britain’s strategy toward the United States, the historical meaning of Pearl Harbor, and the author’s own growing disillusionment with British culture, weaving these together into a broader indictment of power and hypocrisy from the twentieth century to the present.

2019-04-22
What a vicious country it is.
Immediately after receiving an enormous sum of money from Britain….
It now seeks once again to extort and sponge off Japan….
A weak Japan with no nuclear weapons….
A Japan forced by the GHQ to renounce war.

This is a chapter I originally published on October 24, 2015.

A friend said to me.
“Did you watch the NHK morning news?”
When I answered no….
He said, “At the United Nations, that Chinese ambassador or whatever he was, with a face like evil incarnate, has now started saying that they are suffering because of poison gas left by the Japanese military.”
“What a vicious country it is.
Immediately after providing Britain with an enormous amount of money….
To weak Japan….
A Japan with no nuclear weapons….
A Japan forced by the GHQ to renounce war….
They are once again trying to extort and feed off it.”….

Even as he spoke in anger….
My friend also saw through something else.
Just as Britain seemed to be in financial difficulty….
China too, in truth, must be running short of money, he said.

What it meant to see Queen Elizabeth warmly welcoming Xi Jinping….
The leader of China, a one-party Communist dictatorship, and in effect a modern Mao Zedong himself, in the sense of being the successor to Mao’s worst side….
Even placing him in the royal carriage for the sake of money….
Was that this was the reality, or the truth, of international politics, unchanged from the prewar era.

In the century of war, they acted in the manner of a century of war….
They did the same sort of thing then as well.
At that time, Britain incited the United States to impose an oil embargo on Japan.
In other words, the United States, then basking in prosperity as the richest country in the world….
Was living within elegant isolationism….
And had absolutely no intention of entering the war, even while Hitler was ravaging Europe.
Indeed, men like Lindbergh were openly proclaiming anti-Semitism.
Those voices were the louder ones.
So the United States had no reason to enter the war against Hitler.

Britain, which had no prospect of defeating Hitler on its own….
Regarded bringing the United States onto its own side and into the war as a strategy on which the fate of the nation depended.
To bring America into the war….
It had to make the United States impose an economic blockade on Japan, drive Japan into a corner, and induce Japan to begin war against the United States.

Driven to the wall by the oil embargo….
Japan’s newspapers and radio, led by Asahi Shimbun….
Cried “Brutal America and Britain.”….
“Begin war at once.”….
“Defeat America and Britain.”….
And whipped up the people….
The military too now had no path but war….
But Japan, without oil, could only hope to win by a short decisive battle….
And thus came Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor….
Moreover, its results were so thorough as to be astonishingly successful.
On top of that, a strange time lag arose before the declaration of war was conveyed to the United States….
So that it was perceived as if Japan had attacked without a declaration of war….
And American public sentiment swung all at once toward entering the war.

Had there been no Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor….
Would the United States have entered the Second World War at all?
Hitler had no intention whatsoever of taking on the United States.
The Soviet Union was a communist state that the United States detested.
No matter how much Hitler struck it, America would not have moved.

International politics moves only by national interest and stratagem.
And the age was the century of war.
Indeed, it was the first half of the twentieth century, the century of war begun by Europe.
Japan began the war for self-defense, not for purposes such as the slaughter of Jews, as Nazi Germany did.

Japan, which had long continued paying the largest enormous share of contributions to the United Nations, was once again subjected to the utmost insolence through the stratagems of an evil country whose essence is “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
In response, voices rose throughout Japan demanding that contributions to UNESCO be halted immediately.
Any adult would think so, naturally.
My friend, for one, said in genuine anger that Japan should stop payments to the United Nations itself.

And in response to this….
Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper company more like a band of traitors than any other in the world….
Once again aired reporting no different from outright treachery on “Hōdō Station,” the program of its television subsidiary.
The British reporter whom Asahi had put on the air the other day….
Exactly as Asahi intended….
Criticized our entirely natural adult way of thinking….
As “childish.”

A country that, for the sake of mere money….
Eagerly seats a dictator of historic proportions in the Queen’s carriage….
With what face can it call us “childish”?
A country that in no time arrests more than 200 perfectly ordinary lawyers and throws them into prison….
That oppresses the Uyghurs so thoroughly that they are left with no path but suicide terrorism….
That now engages in such childish behavior in the South China Sea—though this is no longer something that can be dismissed as childish, but rather a country brazenly committing aggression against other nations….
A country that so warmly welcomes the dictator of a one-party Communist state….
Is it not lower than a child?
I was reminded too that Britain was at first conciliatory even toward Hitler.

As for me….
Having lived a life not in the form promised to most men….
I have lived with the Beatles, especially John Lennon, and in the latter years George Harrison as well….
But now I feel as if my feelings toward the Beatles….
Or perhaps toward British rock itself….
Have truly and suddenly gone cold.

So that is it….
British rock….
Was, after all….
Nothing more than a pressure valve for the working class….
In Britain, the very embodiment of class society….
That is what I think.

John Lennon, who sang, “If you talk about Chairman Mao, you can count me out,”….
What would he think if he saw Britain eagerly welcoming the very modern Chairman Mao?