Through the ancient history of the Korean Peninsula, the historical presence of Wa and Mimana, the accounts of Isabella Bird and Charles Dallet, and the distortions of modern Korean historical consciousness, this essay sharply criticizes Japan’s masochistic view of history and its hollow moralism.
It powerfully argues that Japan must face the fascistic reality of its neighboring state and recover a proper awareness of its own intelligence and freedom.

2019-06-20
It would be far better to stop at once looking at Japan through self-tormenting emotions while soaked in “sanctimonious” moralism.
There is a fascist country next door, and this is an emergency in which there is not the slightest time to indulge in such foolishness…every moment counts.

This is a chapter I posted on 2019-03-12 under the title, “There is much barren land on the Korean Peninsula.
I have been to China, to Jeonju, and to South Korea more than twenty times, but still, Japan’s land is richer than Korea’s.”
This chapter as well must be reread by all Japanese people and by people throughout the world.
It was the Japanese who ruled the ancient Korean Peninsula.
Yojiro Sato.
Writer and Professor at Nihon University College of Art.
Not a few Japanese, though fed up with the mendacious habits of Koreans, still assume that much culture was transmitted to the archipelago by way of ancient Korea.
Do not be deluded by the newly coined term “Torai-jin.”
The blood of the Wa people runs in the royal house of Silla.
This is the continuation of the indispensable supplement Rekishi Tsu to the April issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, which all Japanese people must read.
“Quick to anger and full of vengeance.”　
Transportation at that time used sea routes.
There is much barren land on the Korean Peninsula.
I have been to China, to Jeonju, and to South Korea more than twenty times, but still, Japan’s land is richer than Korea’s.
Japan’s climate is also milder.　
Isabella Bird, the British woman travel writer born in 1831 who wrote Korea and Her Neighbours, says that “Korea is unmistakably a mountainous country, and has no plains worthy of the name.”
If a country is rich, its population increases, and naturally its national strength also grows.
Japan kept attacking the Korean Peninsula because it had that overwhelming national power.　
Or perhaps because Wa and “Mimana” actually existed on the peninsula, Japan was able to attack there repeatedly.
Is that not the natural way to think?
To say from the start that they never existed cannot be called scholarship or research.
It would be fair to think that such people have abandoned the matter from the outset.
“Mimana” appears many times in the Nihon Shoki, and also appears in the Hizen Fudoki and the Shinsen Shojiroku.
Its existence is also recorded in such texts as the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the Book of Song, and the Book of Liang.
The only place where there is no material is Korea.
The fact that it does not appear in Korean historical sources does not constitute proof that it did not exist.
Groundless rebuttals by those who rewrote or erased things only degrade history.　
As I wrote also in the opening, “history” can be traced back through written texts that were left behind.
There is also much physical evidence in the form of Japan’s distinctive keyhole-shaped tombs.
And there is also the “Gwanggaeto Stele.”
When written evidence and physical evidence coincide, on what basis can everything be denied?　
Unless they too present words and physical evidence in rebuttal, it cannot become constructive research.
Is it not rather Koreans who have distorted history by destroying keyhole-shaped tombs, erasing writings inconvenient to their own country, and forcing twisted interpretations?　
In China’s Book of Sui as well, there repeatedly appears similar wording such as “Shichisetsu Totoku Shira Gana Kara Shinkan Bokan Rikkoku Shogunji Ando Daishogun Wakoku-o,” recognizing that the King of Wa held dominion over the Korean Peninsula.
And in the Envoys to Silla Record from the beginning of the 600s there is the line, “Silla and Baekje both regarded Wa as a great country, revered it, and constantly exchanged envoys and goods.”
Silla and Baekje acknowledged Wa as a great power.
And yet despite that, it is said that they “came over” bearing culture and technology to a country they stood in awe of.　
Besides that, China’s History of the Northern Dynasties and Book of Wei also contain many references to Japan.
Japan was recognized from an early date.
Moreover, against a country that received hostages and tribute and had the power to dominate the entire Korean Peninsula, on what grounds can superiority be claimed?　
When one investigates the history of the Korean Peninsula, it quickly becomes clear that their tragedy and suffering lay in being squeezed between the two powerful countries of China and Japan.
Throughout recorded history, that continued without change down to modern times.　
The French priest Charles Dallet, born in 1829 and deceased in 1878, wrote in Histoire de l’Église de Corée, compiled from materials gathered by Daveluy and others executed in Seoul, that “Had the Japanese army not withdrawn from its conquered territories after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japan would probably have subjugated the whole of Korea.”　
Isabella Bird also wrote, “There are only two classes in Korea: those who steal and those who are stolen from.
The official class recruited from the yangban are licensed vampires, and the lower people, who make up fully four-fifths of the population, are literally inferior beings whose reason for existence is to provide blood to those vampires.”
She also wrote, “In Korea everything is low, poor, and miserable.
Class privilege, exploitation by aristocrats and officials, the total absence of justice, income instability bearing no proportion whatever to labor, a government that has repeated the worst customs relied upon by Eastern governments still ignorant of reform, thieving officials full of schemes, and a government weakened by shutting itself up in the palace and its little harem” (Korea and Her Neighbours).
It was rotting from within and collapsing as a state.　
Dallet’s Histoire de l’Église de Corée says, “They are quick-tempered, and to the same degree full of revenge.
For example, forty-nine out of fifty conspiracies are exposed beforehand by some of the conspirators.
These are almost always motivated by the desire to satisfy a personal grudge, or as revenge for some slightly biting word spoken in the past.
If they can bring punishment down upon the heads of their enemies, then their own punishment means nothing to them.”
It also says, “Koreans are generally stubborn, ill-tempered, quick to anger, and deeply vindictive,” and it sounds exactly as though it were speaking of modern Korea.
Ms. Park Geun-hye said that “even after a thousand years, resentment will not fade,” and when the highest leader of a state has such a mentality, it is obvious what the future will be.　
A country that imitated Japan under immense influence keeps repeating falsification, fabrication, and distortion, ignoring documentary and physical evidence and doing nothing but nurse grievances.　
In South Korea’s 1996 high-school textbook National History (Part I), it is written, “We were able to achieve victory in the Imjin War because the latent strength of our people was superior.
That is, while in terms of national-defense capability at the level of the official army we lagged behind Japan, at the level of the entire people we surpassed Japan.”
That is not so.
The historical fact is that they fought by relying on Ming reinforcements.　
And relying on China did not change even in modern times, and Isabella Bird observed that “Korea had for centuries been a dependency of China and had no relations with other countries, so China’s influence on Korea in religion, civilization, thought, and customs was extremely great.”
The Koreans of that time studied Chinese culture and education with all their might.
They themselves desired assimilation.　
Furthermore, she continues, “They make matchlock guns that seem rather sturdy.
Although this country possesses very fine copper, everything they use is brought from Japan.”
“And yet, strangely, despite that, the army is generally very weak, and as soon as they perceive any serious danger, they think only of throwing away their weapons and fleeing in all directions.”　
There is far too great a gap between missionary testimony and their historical consciousness.
They had no technical capacity.
Because of exploitation and oppression of the people, loyalty toward the rulers had become weak.
On top of that, the yangban, the aristocrats, fled first of all.
Because Hideyoshi’s forces knew that, were they not able to occupy the place in no time at all?
This installment continues.
The following is from a chapter I posted on 2012-08-28 under the title, “To Junji Tateno, Asahi Shimbun, Chief of the American Bureau.”
On page 8 of this morning’s Asahi Shimbun, Mr. Junji Tateno, chief of its American bureau, has an editorial article of his own that also serves as an introduction to the contents of the proposal to Japan issued on August 15 jointly by Armitage and Joseph Nye in the United States.
At its end he concludes, “I think that a true second-rate country is one that cannot even draw its own self-portrait.”
But…
once again, astonishingly, the country he has in mind is surely…
Japan, criticized through nakedly masochistic historical views born of “sanctimonious” moralism, or perhaps moralism itself.
Mr. Tateno.
Would you not first, as I did yesterday, search for “Republic of Korea” on Wikipedia…
read it, and then speak?
Even now in the twenty-first century there is a fascist country, and though people abandoned that country because it was hard to live in and emigrated to the United States, those educated as fascists in Korea continue persistently to attack Japan all across America.
That is what should be treated as the problem.
No, this is the great problem.
Mr. Tateno,
a true second-rate country is not merely one that cannot even draw its own self-portrait…
it is Korea, which has fabricated its self-portrait and exists in the twenty-first century as a fascist country.
You should stop at once looking at Japan through self-tormenting emotions while soaked in the “sanctimonious” moralism of the sixty-seven years since the war.
Why?
Because there is a fascist country next door,
and this is an emergency in which there is not the slightest time to indulge in such foolishness…
every moment counts.
This indeed is the struggle against fascism…
and your task is to convey to America and to the world the terrible reality of Korea, this unforgivable fascism…
whereas to go on indulging in self-denigration of Japan, a true democracy possessing the highest intelligence and freedom in the world alongside the United States…
would mean that your mind is sixty-seven years out of date.