A piece written on July 3, 2019.
While sharply criticizing what the author sees as the falsehoods of Koreans and the weakness of historical awareness within Japan, this essay fundamentally reexamines the relationship between the ancient Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago.
Introducing an article by Yojiro Sato published in the WiLL special issue Rekishitsu, it discusses the Japanese bloodline said to run through the Silla royal house, traces of Japanese rule on the ancient Korean Peninsula, and the historical questions that must be faced if genuine friendship between Japan and South Korea is ever to be possible.

2019-07-03
Even while growing weary of the Koreans’ habit of falsehood, there are still not a few Japanese who remain under the illusion that much of the culture of the archipelago came by way of ancient Korea.
This was a chapter I posted on 2019-03-12 under the title, Koreans discriminate against people from South Jeolla Province because South Jeolla was a region governed by the Japanese… territory of Wa… that is what I realized.
A book-loving friend told me, “There is an article published that proves what you realized the other day,” and bought for me the WiLL April special issue, Rekishitsu… Countdown to the Disappearance of “Korea” in 202X.
This issue is required reading for every citizen of Japan… one must go at once to the nearest bookstore and buy it…
Everyone will surely nod and say, indeed.
Those who did not know will feel profound gratitude.
It Was the Japanese Who Ruled the Ancient Korean Peninsula.
That is the very origin of anti-Japan thinking among the people of the Korean Peninsula.
In other words, the Koreans are proving “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
Koreans discriminate against people from South Jeolla Province because South Jeolla was a region governed by the Japanese… territory of Wa….
That is what I realized.
The Koreans know this… in other words, they are lying through and through…
Unless they begin by recognizing that this is an undeniable fact = history that cannot be changed,
true friendship between Japan and South Korea is impossible.
So long as they continue to deny history,
the Koreans will remain forever an abnormal people…
That is how they will go on living, as fools.
Needless to say, we can no longer keep merely watching or standing by
while these fools spread throughout the world lies meant to degrade Japan.
It is only natural that
I severely condemn people like Kenzaburo Oe as human trash,
and not only that, but the Japanese state must demand enormous damages from them as well.
Yojiro Sato, writer, professor at the College of Art, Nihon University.
Even while growing weary of the Koreans’ habit of falsehood, there are still not a few Japanese who remain under the illusion that much of the culture of the archipelago came by way of ancient Korea.
Do not be misled by the newly coined term “torai-jin.”
The Blood of the Wa People Flowing in the Silla Royal House.
Many of the Japanese words we use today entered this country after the Meiji period with new culture, and were translated or freely rendered by intellectuals of the time such as Amane Nishi, Chomin Nakae, and Yukichi Fukuzawa, with due consideration for the overall meaning and nuance.
For that reason, there are some that do not coincide with the original meaning of the words.
And words change and are transformed with time.
There is the word history.
The character reki in rekishi means to make things clear, that is, to clarify them, and shi means writing.
Therefore, history means to make things clear in writing.
And if no writing has been left behind, history cannot go back.
However, when it comes to myths, folktales, traditions, and legends, even if written words remain, they do not thereby immediately become history.
To become history, material evidence is necessary.
History is left in writing by the victors, and those acts are carried out by us human beings.
Moreover, human emotions are not simple.
Assertions and exaggerations of one’s own legitimacy will naturally enter into them.
But as years pass, there remain no people who know the matter, and the means of confirming it become fewer.
It is like police interrogation: even if a suspect confesses, he does not immediately become the criminal.
Only when he goes to the murder scene as he confessed, and material evidence emerges, and those things coincide, does he become the criminal.
That is how I think of historical understanding, and so I believe that probing from written records, and moreover visiting the place itself, is the true way to hit the mark.
With that feeling, I have been walking through shrines for more than thirty years.
There are legends and traditions there that differ from “official history,” and it is enjoyable to pursue them.
In the relationship between the Korean Peninsula and Japan as well, history becomes visible from angles different from “official history.”
The Korean Peninsula and Japan are geographically close, and so at times they have grown close, and at times come into conflict, thereby building each other’s history, but in recent years historical understanding between Japan and South Korea has diverged strikingly.
I believe that the foundation of democracy is openness, fairness, and impartiality, and that can also be said of historical understanding.
Each nation has its own pride and self-respect, so naturally it becomes unwilling to admit the other side’s claims, and if it does admit them, it may distort its own history.
If carried too far, it leads to nationalism, and feelings of discrimination also arise.
Just as with democracy, to look at overlapping histories openly, fairly, and impartially leads to knowing true history.
Incidentally, it is said that the character ko, meaning public, depicts a person raising both elbows.
If one raises one’s elbows, one cannot hold many things.
In other words, it means not being greedy.
By contrast, the character shi, meaning private, has the grain radical.
That represents grain, and by extension property.
To possess that property and jab others with one’s elbows is the character private.
In other words, it means greed.
A person driven by self-interest cannot be a public person.
Today’s politicians are nothing but private persons who repeat corruption and illegal donations, and is that not why politics does not function well?
It is also true that such rulers make history.
There must also have been people with the will to carry out good politics for all the people, but if the world is peaceful and calm, history too settles down, and there is little left to write.
Whether in Japanese history or world history, what is listed there is nothing but abnormalities in society.
If one lists the Taika Reform, the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, the Meiji Restoration, and so forth, one sees that politics and society were reversed.
The fact that such things have been handed down in writing is what history is.
Now then, the reason we can speak of history today is that various books remain, beginning with the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.
As the official history of Korea, there is the Samguk Sagi.
It is the oldest historical book of the Korean Peninsula, compiled under the imperial command of Injong, the seventeenth ruler of Goryeo, by Kim Busik and others, covering the period from the Three Kingdoms era to the end of Unified Silla.
Its compilation began in 1143 and was completed two years later.
As the first official history to be compiled, its date is in fact very late.
It is more than four hundred years after the Nihon Shoki, completed in 720.
There may have been older books before that, and it may have been written based on them, but they do not seem to survive.
In the section on the fourth ruler Talhae Isageum (reigned 57–80) in the first volume of the Silla Annals in the Samguk Sagi, it is written, “When Talhae ascended the throne, he was sixty-two years old. His surname was Seok, and his queen was Lady Ako. Talhae was born long ago in the kingdom of Tapabang. That kingdom lay one thousand ri northeast of Wa.”
The original text is “女王国東渡海千余里　復有国皆倭種,” and means, “If one crosses the sea eastward a little more than one thousand ri from the Queen Country, there is again a country, and they are all of the Wa race,” and yet a man from that country became the fourth king of Silla, and his bloodline flowed through the Silla royal house for generations.
Also, a man named Hoko, who was at that time the highest commander of politics, is described as follows: “Originally he was a man of Wa, and long ago he came to Silla with a gourd hanging at his waist. Therefore he was called Hoko.”
Talhae appointed that man and governed through him, and if so, the foundation of the state of Silla was built by Japanese.
At one period, I frequently visited the area around Miidera in Shiga.
Among those places, the one that most seized my heart was the mausoleum connected with Silla, located right beside the tomb of Prince Otomo.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the atmosphere emanating from that place was extraordinary, and I instantly perceived both the correctness of Mr. Sato’s observation and the meaning of that atmosphere.
How, then, do the Korean people explain the statement that the very origins of today’s Korea were made by Japanese?
They say, “The Emperor is Baekjean; Japan was created by Korea,” but where is the basis for such a claim?
To be continued.