March 4, 2018
The emphasis within the text is mine.
◆ Hiroshi Furuta, Professor at the University of Tsukuba Graduate School: The World of “If a Lie Works, So Much the Better”
September 20, 2012, Sankei Shimbun
The recent series of political actions by East Asian countries has, I believe, finally made it clear to the Japanese people that our Japan is surrounded by a troubling group of states: North Korea, the abductor; South Korea, the island thief; and China, the sea thief.
〈Seeking the Illusion of “Victory over Japan”〉
Since publishing East Asia’s “Anti-Japan” Triangle (Bunshun Shinsho) in 2005, I have repeatedly warned in this column that we would eventually face such a crisis.
In these countries, nationalism is layered upon a Sino-centric worldview that regards the self as absolutely righteous.
For this reason, viewing it from a Sino-centric perspective, they will forever resent the prosperity of Japan, which in the Middle Ages appeared to them to be a distant frontier.
Nationalism erupts from the strata of tradition in the form of anti-Japanese sentiment.
There were also problems with their independence after the war.
There was a country that was liberated by the United States without fighting the Japanese military (South Korea); a country that engaged in a little guerrilla warfare but suffered a crushing defeat and was made a Soviet puppet (North Korea); and a country that rested and replenished its strength in the mountains while others fought the Japanese military, then drove out those who had fought before it and became independent after the war (China).
These countries cannot create a national narrative without the false history that they achieved victory over Japan.
I once wrote here that they would continue to violate Japan’s sovereignty and commit acts of aggression in order to impress upon their people that they were constantly fighting Japan (Seiron column, May 8, 2009, “Are We Not Living in an Embarrassing Country?”).
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak set foot on the island his country had stolen and afterward said the following:
“If the Japanese Emperor wishes to visit South Korea, he should apologize to the Korean independence activists. If all he has to offer are words such as ‘deep regret,’ he need not come.”
Korea’s Sino-centric worldview is a small one, a “Little China” worldview belonging to a fox that borrows the might of the tiger called China, but even so, one can see that it is full of enthusiasm for insulting Japan.
(The remainder is omitted.)