March 12, 2019

When I was visiting Kyoto, Shiga, and Nara most frequently, among the places that I thought were wonderful no matter how many times I visited were Mii-dera in Ōtsu, its Shinra Zenshindō Hall, and Hōmyō-in, a subtemple of Mii-dera where Fenollosa’s grave is located.
Upon rereading the following chapter, published on March 12, 2019, I noticed something.
It concerned why it is called Shinra Zenshindō.
South Koreans discriminate against people from South Jeolla Province because South Jeolla Province was a region ruled by the Japanese—a territory of Wa.
That was what I realized.
That was the title of the chapter I published on March 12, 2019.
I am republishing it after correcting its paragraph structure and other details.
A well-read friend bought me the April special edition of the monthly magazine WiLL, Rekishitsū—202X: Countdown to the Disappearance of “South Korea”—saying, “It contains an academic paper that proves what you realized the other day.”
This issue is essential reading for every Japanese citizen.
Everyone must go to the nearest bookstore and purchase it immediately.
Everyone will surely nod in agreement.
Those who did not know these things will feel profoundly grateful.
It Was the Japanese Who Ruled the Ancient Korean Peninsula
＊That is the origin of anti-Japanese ideology on the Korean Peninsula.
In other words, Koreans are demonstrating both “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
South Koreans discriminate against people from South Jeolla Province because South Jeolla Province was a region ruled by the Japanese—a territory of Wa.
That was what I realized.
South Koreans know this.
In other words, they are lying through and through.
This is an unmistakable fact—in other words, history—and genuine friendship between Japan and South Korea cannot exist unless South Koreans begin by recognizing that it cannot be changed.
As long as they continue denying history, South Koreans will remain an abnormal people forever.
Will South Koreans continue living as such fools?
We must no longer stand by or sit idly while these fools and wrongdoers spread lies throughout the world to demean Japan.
Not only is it natural for me to condemn Kenzaburō Ōe and others, but the Japanese government must also demand enormous compensation from them.＊
Emphasis within the text, other than the headings, is mine.
Yōjirō Satō—Author and Professor at Nihon University College of Art
Although many Japanese people are weary of the Korean propensity for falsehoods, there are still quite a few who assume that a great deal of culture reached the Japanese archipelago by way of the ancient Korean Peninsula.
＊In the original, “HEKIEKI” was written only in katakana.
I believe many people, myself included, used to pronounce it “hekiheki.”
Out of gratitude to the author for correcting that misunderstanding, I have changed it to kanji and hiragana for this publication.＊
Do not be misled in your dreams by the newly coined term “torai-jin.”
Wa Blood Flowing Through the Silla Royal House
Many of the Japanese words we use today were translated or freely rendered after new cultures entered this country following the Meiji era, with intellectuals of the time, including Amane Nishi, Chōmin Nakae, and Yukichi Fukuzawa, taking their overall meanings and nuances into consideration.
For that reason, some do not correspond with the original meanings of the words.
Words also evolve and change in character with the times.
There is a word called rekishi—history.
In that word, the character reki means to make things rekizen—in other words, clear—while shi means writing.
History, therefore, means making things clear through writing.
Unless written words remain, history cannot be traced backward.
However, when it comes to myths, folk tales, traditions, and legends, even if written words remain, that does not immediately make them history.
Material evidence is necessary for something to become history.
History is written by the victors, and those acts are performed by human beings.
Moreover, human emotions are not straightforward.
Claims and exaggerations intended to establish one’s own legitimacy will undoubtedly enter into them.
But as the years pass, those who knew what happened disappear, and the means of verifying it become fewer.
It resembles a police interrogation: even if a suspect confesses, that does not immediately make him the perpetrator.
Only after investigators go to the murder scene described in the confession, discover material evidence, and confirm that everything matches does he become the perpetrator.
Because this is how I understand historical recognition, I believe the proper course is to investigate the surviving written records and then visit the actual places.
With that conviction, I have been visiting shrines for more than thirty years.
There are legends and traditions there that differ from the “official history,” and exploring them is a pleasure.
The relationship between the Korean Peninsula and Japan can also be seen from a historical angle different from the “official history.”
Because the Korean Peninsula and Japan are geographically close, they have sometimes been friendly and sometimes experienced discord while constructing their respective histories, but the historical perceptions of Japan and South Korea have diverged markedly in recent years.
I believe the foundations of democracy are openness, justice, and fairness, and the same applies to historical understanding.
Each nation has its dignity and pride, and this may lead it to refuse to acknowledge the other side’s claims, even when such refusal distorts its own history.
When taken too far, this becomes nationalism and gives rise to discrimination.
As with democracy, viewing overlapping histories openly, fairly, and impartially leads to an understanding of true history.
Incidentally, the character kō, meaning “public,” is said to represent a person raising both elbows.
When you raise your elbows, you cannot carry many things; in other words, you are not greedy.
By contrast, the character watakushi, meaning “private” or “self,” contains the grain radical.
It represents grain and, by extension, property.
The character watakushi represents someone who possesses that property and elbows others aside.
In other words, it means greed.
A person driven by selfish interests and desires cannot be a public servant.
Today’s politicians are overwhelmingly private individuals who repeatedly engage in corruption and illegal political donations, and perhaps that is why politics does not function properly.
It is also true that such rulers create history.
There may have been people with the aspiration to govern well for the benefit of everyone, but when society is peaceful and tranquil, history also remains calm, leaving little to be recorded.
Whether in Japanese or world history, what is listed consists almost entirely of abnormal events in society.
If we list the Taika Reform, the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, and the Meiji Restoration, we can see that politics and society were overturned.
History consists of those events being written down and passed on.
Today we can speak about history because various books, beginning with the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, have survived.
The Samguk Sagi is regarded as the official history of Korea.
Compiled by Kim Bu-sik and others under the imperial command of Injong, the seventeenth king of Goryeo, it is the oldest historical record on the Korean Peninsula, covering the Three Kingdoms period through the end of Unified Silla.
Its compilation began in 1143 and was completed two years later.
For the first official history ever compiled, that is remarkably recent.
It came more than four hundred years after the Nihon Shoki, completed in 720.
Older books may have existed before then and may have served as its sources, but they apparently no longer exist.
In the section on Talhae Isageum, the fourth ruler of Silla, who reigned from 57 to 80, in Book One of the Silla Annals of 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 Ahyo.
Talhae was born long ago in the state of Taba.
That country lies one thousand ri northeast of Wa.”
The original reads, “女王国東渡海千余里　復有国皆倭種,” meaning, “After crossing more than one thousand ri of sea eastward from the Queen’s Country, there is another country, and its people are all of the Wa race.”
A person from that country became Silla’s fourth king, and his bloodline flowed through successive generations of the Silla royal house.
It is also written that a man called Hogong, the supreme political commander of the time, “was originally a man of Wa.
Long ago, he came to Silla with a gourd hanging from his waist.
He was therefore called Hogong.”
Talhae appointed that man and governed the country with him, which means that Japanese people created the foundations of the state of Silla.
How would the people of South Korea explain the description stating that the Japanese created the origins of today’s South Korea?
They claim that “the Emperor is descended from Baekje” and that “Korea created Japan,” but where is the evidence?
“Torai” Is a New Coinage
Why, moreover, has the word torai been used so frequently in discussions of ancient history in recent years?
I cannot help regarding it as a historically questionable term.
The word torai-jin was advocated by Kim Tal-su and others on the grounds that kika-jin was inappropriate, and it subsequently became established, but I question this word, which appears in neither the Kojiki nor the Nihon Shoki.
The Nihon Shoki frequently uses the terms kika, raiki, raichō, and kichō, but I was unable to find the word torai.
Meanwhile, the Samguk Sagi contains the terms raitō, tōbō, and bōjin.
These words refer to leaving one’s land because of famine, poverty, or war.
People who left the peninsula in that way came to Japan.
Is it right to dispose of all of them with the single word torai-jin?
According to the Book of Song and the Book of Southern Qi, the King of Wa was recognized as the ruler of the entire Korean Peninsula.
It is difficult to believe that people from the peninsula would have come to such a powerful country bringing a new culture with them.
Originally, the word torai-jin means nothing more than “people who came across the sea,” but there must also have been people who fled persecution and those who settled in search of fertile land.
People living comfortably in their own country would have no reason to expose themselves to danger by coming.
It is reasonable to believe that people in many different circumstances came to Japan.
By contrast, kika originally derives from the Chinese worldview and means that people of another ethnic group are influenced by a sovereign’s virtue and submit to him.
Kichō means returning to one’s home country.
Although the Nihon Shoki preserves those words, torai and torai-jin have become dominant today, and we are attempting to view history through them.
What kind of education are historians attempting to provide by using this new terminology?
There were reasons why the words kika and kichō were used.
In ancient times, moreover, people must have attached greater importance to kotodama, the spiritual power of words, than they do today.
Many people know that kotodama and onryō, vengeful spirits, form the spiritual backbone of the Japanese people.
Those people repeatedly wrote kika, raika, and kichō.
Is it not reasonable to understand those words as expressing the consciousness that people had returned to Japan from the peninsula and had become affiliated with Japan?
It is absurd to attempt to explore history by using a word such as torai-jin, which appears not even once in the books of that period.
They wrote in that manner because Wa existed on the peninsula, together with countries associated with it.
When written words are treated lightly, history becomes distorted.
Chinese books contain many accounts of Japan, and they already describe its existence as the “state of Wa.”
The Lunheng states, “周時天下太平　倭人来献暢草,” meaning that during the Zhou period, when all under heaven was at peace, people of Wa came and presented changcao.
Changcao apparently refers to a medicinal herb steeped in alcohol, and the tribute is recorded in meticulous detail.
The Pu Shu and the Book of Liang state that the ancestors of the people of Wa were descendants of Taibo of Wu.
Repeated Invasions of the Korean Peninsula
Perhaps because of that influence, kimono are still called gofuku, or “Wu clothing,” today.
People in the region told me that if one boards a ship near the Yangtze River, the current will carry it to Kyushu without any effort.
If rice cultivation in Japan originated in Kyushu, it is possible to reason that those people brought it with them.
Considering that Emperor Jimmu’s “eastward conquest” began in southern Kyushu, it is also conceivable that people possessing advanced technology moved eastward.
Incidentally, “eastward migration” and “eastward conquest” have different meanings, but they too are used casually without careful examination.
“Conquering the east” and “moving the capital eastward” have entirely different meanings.
South Koreans claim that rice cultivation also spread from the peninsula, but there is little geographical, climatic, or oceanographic basis for that claim.
In the cultural sphere as well, the Book of Sui states, “大業三年　其王多利思北孤遣使朝貢使者曰　聞海西菩薩天子重興仏法故遣朝拝　兼沙門数十人来学仏法.”
It records that the King of Wa, Tari Shihoko, sent an envoy with tribute and stated that the Bodhisattva sovereign west of the sea was diligently reviving Buddhism and had therefore dispatched several dozen monks to study the Buddhist teachings.
The Japanese were already interacting with China and studying Buddhism two thousand years ago.
The Book of Sui and the Records of Wei state that the people of Wa used iron.
The use of iron arrowheads and implements surprised their authors and was therefore recorded, but the people of Wa were already producing iron two thousand years ago.
As far as the Chinese historical records are concerned, it is difficult to believe that Japanese culture, which studied Buddhism and acquired advanced technology, flowed into Japan from the Korean Peninsula.
As becomes clear from reading the Samguk Sagi, Kojiki, and Nihon Shoki, Japan has repeatedly invaded the Korean Peninsula countless times since the beginning of recorded history.
The reverse is almost nonexistent.
The only example I know is the Ōei Invasion, when Joseon Korea attacked Tsushima for approximately ten days during the Muromachi period, but were there any others?
Wokou incursions were so numerous that people ceased living along the Goryeo coastline.
In the Ōei Invasion, forces assaulted Tsushima, which had become a base for the Wokou, destroyed ships, and freed hostages.
Apart from that, however, Korea repeatedly surrendered hostages and sent tribute to Japan.
Furthermore, relations between the two states became limited after the Battle of Baekgang, in which Japan was defeated by the allied Tang and Silla armies, despite Japan having invaded Silla so frequently before then.
Japan’s Southern Capital Six Schools of Buddhism and the new Buddhist schools of the Kamakura period were influenced more by Tang China than by Korea.
Cultural imports must also have come from China through the Japanese missions to Sui and Tang China.
As can be seen in the Book of Sui, the theory that culture entered Japan from the Korean Peninsula is difficult to sustain, and it is also difficult to believe that various forms of culture flowed in from a country that had been subjected to attacks since ancient times.
Even if both a Yangtze River route and a peninsula route existed, it is wrong to claim that the Korean Peninsula possessed greater national power and a higher cultural standard than Japan.
If they insist upon saying so, they must present evidence; otherwise, it belongs to the category of “a lie repeated one hundred times becomes the truth.”
Japan did not create its ritsuryō system or court ranks by imitating Korea.
Nevertheless, regarding the Bunroku and Keichō campaigns, Shin Il-chol, born in 1931, who served as a Korea University professor and president of the Korean Philosophical Association, stated: “Japan, which was a culturally backward country in East Asia, plundered such cultural assets as movable type, books, paintings, and ceramics from Korea and abducted many technicians and scholars.
At the same time, Korean Neo-Confucianism was transmitted to Japan and exerted a major influence on Japanese culture.”
He said this despite the fact that the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki already existed four hundred years before the Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa, and that even older Chinese historical records describe what kind of country Japan was and what position it occupied.
Japan persistently attacked Silla because minerals were available there.
The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, compiled in 845 by the Arab Ibn Khordadbeh, states: “Beyond China lies a mountainous country called Silla, ruled by various kings, where large quantities of gold are produced.”
It also states that Muslims had already settled there in search of that gold.
Silla was also a land of gold.
The Nihon Shoki likewise states that Empress Jingū and others attacked because gold was there.
That is why Japan repeatedly invaded.
This is written not only in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki but also in the Samguk Sagi.
Will South Koreans deny even their own “official history”?
Before making statements about Japan, they should read their own country’s “official history.”
At the very least, it states repeatedly that Wa attacked them.
Such a country could not have been the culturally impoverished nation they claim it was.
If Japan crossed the sea and attacked over the course of many centuries, there is no reasonable conclusion other than that Japan was a great power.
“Quick-Tempered and Filled with a Desire for Revenge”
Transportation in those days was by sea.
Much of the Korean Peninsula consists of poor soil.
I have traveled throughout China and have visited South Korea more than twenty times, but Japan’s land is still more fertile than South Korea’s.
Japan’s climate is also milder.
Isabella Bird, the British woman travel writer born in 1831 who wrote Korea and Her Neighbours, said that “Korea is unmistakably a mountainous country” and has no “plains worthy of the name.”
A prosperous country’s population increases, and its national power naturally grows.
Japan continued attacking the Korean Peninsula because it possessed such overwhelming national power.
Alternatively, Japan could repeatedly attack because Wa or “Mimana” actually existed on the peninsula.
Is that not the natural conclusion?
Declaring from the outset that it never existed cannot be called scholarship or research.
It cannot be helped if such an approach is regarded as abandonment from the beginning.
Is it not the role of historians to investigate and determine whether it existed?
“Mimana” appears frequently in the Nihon Shoki and also appears in the Hizen Fudoki and Shinsen Shōjiroku.
Its existence is also recorded in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the Book of Song, the Book of Liang, and other works.
South Korea alone lacks such documents.
The absence of references in Korean historical materials does not prove that it did not exist.
Groundless objections from those who rewrote or erased history serve only to demean history itself.
As I wrote at the outset, “history” can be traced backward through surviving written records.
There is also abundant material evidence in the form of keyhole-shaped burial mounds unique to Japan.
There is also the Gwanggaeto Stele inscription.
When written records and material evidence correspond, on what grounds is everything denied?
Unless they present their own words and material evidence in response, their objections cannot become constructive research.
Are not South Koreans the ones who are falsifying history by destroying keyhole-shaped tombs, erasing words disadvantageous to their country, and presenting distorted interpretations?
The Chinese Book of Sui also repeatedly contains similar descriptions, including “使持節都督新羅仟那加羅秦韓慕韓六国諸軍事安東大将軍倭国王,” recognizing the King of Wa’s right to rule the Korean Peninsula.
The early seventh-century Record of the Mission to Silla also states, “新羅百済皆以倭為大国球物並敬仰之恒通使往来.”
Silla and Baekje recognized Wa as a great power.
Nevertheless, it is claimed that people came to the country as torai-jin, bringing culture and technology to a nation they revered.
Many other accounts of Japan also appear in China’s History of the Northern Dynasties and Book of Wei.
Japan was recognized from an early period.
On what grounds can superiority be claimed over a country that received hostages and tribute and possessed the power to rule the entire Korean Peninsula?
An examination of the Korean Peninsula’s history quickly reveals that its tragedy and suffering arose from being caught between the great powers of China and Japan.
This continued throughout recorded history and remained unchanged until the modern period.
The French priest Charles Dallet, who lived from 1829 to 1878, compiled materials collected by Bishop Daveluy and others who were executed in Seoul into Histoire de l’Église de Corée.
He wrote: “Had Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s death not caused the Japanese forces to abandon the territories they had conquered and withdraw, Japan would probably have subjugated the whole of Korea.”
Isabella Bird also wrote: “There are only two classes in Korea—the robbers and the robbed.
The official class recruited from the yangban are licensed vampires, while the lower classes, who easily constitute four-fifths of the population, are literally lowly people whose reason for existing is to provide blood to the vampires.”
She continued: “Everything in Korea exists at a low, impoverished, and wretched level: class privilege; exploitation by nobles and officials; the complete absence of justice; the instability of income, which bears no relation whatsoever to labor; a government that has repeated the worst conventions relied upon by the governments of unreformed Oriental countries; scheming, thieving officials; and a government weakened by confinement within the royal palace and its small inner court” (Korea and Her Neighbours).
The country had decayed from within and collapsed as a state.
Dallet’s Histoire de l’Église de Corée states: “They are quick-tempered, but are equally filled with a desire for revenge.
For example, forty-nine out of fifty conspiracies are exposed in advance by some of the conspirators.
These exposures are almost always intended to satisfy a personal grudge or to retaliate for some slightly bitter words spoken in the past.
If they can bring punishment down upon the heads of their enemies, it means nothing to them that they themselves will be punished.”
It also states, “Koreans are generally stubborn, difficult, quick-tempered, and vindictive,” which sounds as though it were describing contemporary South Korea.
Park Geun-hye said, “Even after one thousand years, the resentment will not disappear,” but when the nation’s highest leader possesses such an outlook, it is obvious what the future will bring.
A country that once imitated Japan under its enormous influence now repeatedly alters, fabricates, and distorts history, ignores written and material evidence, and voices resentment.
The 1996 edition of South Korea’s high-school textbook National History, Volume I, states: “We were able to achieve victory in the Japanese invasions because of the superior potential of our people.
In other words, although our national defense capabilities at the level of the government forces lagged behind Japan’s, at the level of the entire people we surpassed Japan.”
That is not the case.
The historical fact is that Korea relied upon Ming reinforcements to fight.
Reliance upon China remained unchanged into the modern period.
Isabella Bird observed: “For centuries, Korea was a vassal state of China and had no relations with other countries.
China’s influence upon Korea in religion, civilization, thought, and customs was therefore extremely great.”
The Korean people of that period diligently studied Chinese culture and education.
They themselves desired assimilation.
She continued: “They manufacture matchlock guns that appear fairly durable.
Although this country possesses copper of extremely high quality, everything they use is brought from Japan.”
“Yet strangely, despite this, the army is generally extremely weak.
Whenever they perceive even a serious danger, they think only of abandoning their weapons and fleeing in all directions.”
There is far too great a divergence between the missionaries’ testimony and the Koreans’ historical understanding.
They lacked technological capability.
The exploitation and oppression of the people weakened their loyalty to their rulers.
Moreover, the yangban—the aristocracy—were the first to flee.
Was it not because Hideyoshi’s forces knew this that they were able to occupy the country in the blink of an eye?
The Sorrow of Being Caught Between Two Great Powers
Since ancient times, Korea sent tribute and hostages to China and Japan.
When the Qing overthrew the Ming, Korea sided with the Qing, but afterward the Qing demanded tribute even harsher than that demanded by the Tokugawa shogunate.
〈Each year, the following shall be presented as tribute: one hundred ryō of gold, one thousand ryō of silver, ten thousand sacks of white rice, three hundred rolls of silk cloth, ten thousand rolls of ordinary linen, one hundred rolls of fine Korean hemp cloth, one thousand bundles of twenty sheets of large paper, one thousand sheets of small paper, two thousand sharp swords, one thousand water-buffalo horns, fifty sheets of patterned flowers, two hundred kin of dye, one hundred masu of pepper, one hundred tiger skins, four hundred beaver skins, two hundred blue rat skins, and so forth.
These offerings shall begin in the autumn of the year 1639.〉
With an estimated population of approximately seven million, Korea could not possibly have increased its national power under such conditions.
When we encounter such passages, we can see Korea’s underlying suffering as it was compelled to accommodate both the Ming and Japan, and we can also discern the severe pressure placed upon the lives of its subjects.
Korean history is filled with the sorrow of a country that could not survive without continually accommodating two great powers.
Regarding the Ming, it is written: “Every time a new king of Korea succeeded to the throne, he was required to dispatch a special envoy to the emperor to seek recognition of his accession.
The envoy was also required to report every matter concerning the royal house and every major incident occurring in Korea.
Conversely, because most Chinese envoys held a higher court rank than the king of Korea, the Korean king was required to leave the walls of Seoul to greet them and bow respectfully.
Moreover, he was required to enter Seoul through a gate other than the one through which the envoy had entered.”
Viewed from the standpoint of present-day sensibilities, even more humiliating things are recorded.
It is impossible to believe that Korea was treated as an independent country.
Is that not entirely different from what is shown in television dramas?
＊The fact that NHK and the other television networks continue even today to broadcast utterly fraudulent and laughable Korean television dramas—many of which plagiarize Japanese television dramas and films—is the clearest possible proof of how treacherously they have continued reporting since the war.
It is no exaggeration to say that television personnel are a collection of vulgar people.＊
Would people really have come as torai-jin, bringing culture and technology from such a country?
It is self-evident that economies and cultures flow toward the country possessing greater national power.
Moreover, the histories of China, Korea, and Japan record that the Japanese mainland was never attacked by the Korean Peninsula, while Japan alone repeatedly invaded the peninsula from ancient times.
I trust the Chinese historical records stating that Japan ruled the peninsula, and I also believe, on the basis of surviving written and material evidence, that the southern Korean Peninsula and part of Kyushu constituted Wa.
I therefore consider it entirely natural that people of the time used the words kika and kichō.
At the very least, as far as the surviving written records can be followed, I cannot believe that advanced technologies and culture entered Japan from the Korean Peninsula.
＊The intellectual decadence of NHK Osaka, which continues broadcasting claims that the Korean embassies brought culture to Japan, is intolerable.＊
The aforementioned Shin Il-chol wrote the following in the early 1970s:
〈Originally, within the Northeast Asian cultural sphere, Japan belonged to an “isolated region” far removed and alienated from the center of Chinese civilization, where its people were called “Wa.”
For a long period, Japan harbored an inferiority complex arising from its consciousness of being a cultural “illegitimate child.”
The hierarchy of traditional culture was firmly established in the order China–Korea–Japan (Wa), and from ancient times Wa revered Korea as a superior country.〉
It can only be called absurd.
Who in Japan, either then or now, would think such a thing?
This is surely what is meant by being left speechless.
It is astonishing that the author was supposedly a philosopher and educator.
The February 1982 issue of the Monthly Chosun carried the following passage by Lee O-young, born in 1934, the author of The Compact Culture:
〈There are two great mysteries in the world.
When you go to Japan and look closely at individual Japanese people, each seems deficient in some respect, although their facial features are acceptable.
Despite that impression, how did such people come together and create such a world-class economic power?
That is one mystery.
Conversely, there is another mystery that is exactly the opposite.
Viewed individually, South Koreans are in no way behind the Japanese; indeed, they are people who are further advanced.
Why, then, was the society formed by such admirable people so weak in the past that it came to be ruled by the Japanese?
That is another mystery.
Ultimately, the difference between Japanese collectivism and South Korean individualism created the difference between the two countries today.〉
I am surely not the only person who wishes that they would learn more about their own country’s history.
How many times were they invaded by China and Japan, and how many hostages did they send?
How much tribute did they present—and for how long?
Although they are scholars, do they not know the historical fact that their country was ruled by Japan in ancient times?
Treating words so lightly and speaking on the basis of conjecture and speculation are tantamount to fabrication and distortion.
An excessively strong belief in one’s own country’s superiority over other countries exposes a historical inferiority complex.
I have drunk with South Korean authors many times, and some are my friends.
Personally, I am “pro-Korean,” but recent conduct has gone too far.
Excesses damage friendship between countries.
I was included among Japanese and South Korean university professors studying minority literature, and we once drank fine liquor together in Brazil.
I have also lectured at a South Korean university.
However, after witnessing exchanges concerning Japanese and South Korean historical perceptions following a university symposium, I realized that many of them had not read the books related to themselves or their own country’s “official history.”
As far as I know, Japan has not openly demeaned or verbally attacked South Korea.
By contrast, and I say this with due reluctance, South Korean politicians and intellectuals repeatedly make malicious statements of their own accord to the media.
Politics cannot move forward under those circumstances.
Why not reexamine the voices of the travel writers and missionaries of the period quoted here, together with what is recorded in the historical documents of China and Japan?
If they have lost their own “history,” they have no choice but to search for it through other historical facts.
Human beings cannot see their own backs.
If a piece of thread is clinging to us or our shirt is hanging out, someone else must tell us.
Consideration for others and humility are privileges possessed only by human beings, and are they not forms of kindness?
Above all, I want Professor Shin Il-chol to be acutely aware that words create history.
If he is a philosopher, he must remember the meaning of the word philosophy before he speaks.
Does philosophy not come from the Greek words philein, “to love,” and sophia, “wisdom”?
Does it not mean seeking the fundamental principles of things?
Moreover, I cannot regard Lee O-young’s writing as the words of an intellectual.
When Japanese people encounter such reckless language, anyone would become defensive, and I fear that anti-Korean sentiment will intensify even further.
To begin with, national tragedies are inseparable from “history.”
Japan also suffered atomic bombings.
“History” cannot be constructed merely by directing resentful eyes toward the past.
History is the common cultural heritage of humankind.
It goes without saying that we need to view it with as much objectivity as possible.