This essay, based on Masayuki Takayama’s latest Shukan Shincho column, exposes how Franklin Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway were deceived by Stalin and how Western intellectuals romanticized communism. It also dismantles the myth of French wartime “heroism,” revealing that France surrendered quickly, relied almost entirely on colonial troops, and later humiliated women as “Nazi collaborators” to disguise its own cowardice. Robert Capa’s famous photograph is shown to capture this profound French hypocrisy. The piece argues that Takayama stands as the rare postwar writer who illuminates hidden truths—fulfilling the true role of an artist—and underscores why his work is essential reading for audiences in Japan and around the world.

Franklin Roosevelt and others were utterly bewitched and continuously deceived by the small Georgian Stalin.
Ernest Hemingway was no different.
June 7, 2024.

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column that concludes the June 6 issue of Shukan Shincho.
This piece again proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Long ago, an elderly professor from the Royal Ballet School of Monaco—deeply respected by prima ballerinas around the world—visited Japan.
She spoke of the significance of artists, saying:
“Artists are important because they are the only ones capable of illuminating hidden truths and expressing them.”
No one would object to these words.
Masayuki Takayama is not only the one and only journalist in the postwar world; it is no exaggeration to say he is also the one and only artist of the postwar world.
As for Oe… I do not wish to speak ill of the deceased.
As for Murakami and other so-called writers who imagine themselves to be artists, many of them do not deserve the title at all.
Because they have done nothing but express the lies fabricated by the Asahi Shimbun, rather than illuminating hidden truths.
Such people exist not only in Japan but in every country.
Genuine artists are exceedingly rare.
This essay again demonstrates why I have long stated that, in our present world, no one deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature more than Masayuki Takayama.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese but for people across the world.

Cunning Frenchmen.

Communism was translated into Japanese as kyōsan-shugi.
Kyō connects to “madness” or “ominous.”
San evokes “miserable.”
Together they form “狂惨主義,” perfectly capturing the essence of communism.
The Land of Word-Spirits (Japan) intuitively sensed its nature and assigned such characters.
But in the English-speaking world, the word sounds rather respectable.
Franklin Roosevelt was completely enchanted and endlessly deceived by Stalin, the small man from Georgia.
Ernest Hemingway was the same.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and sided with the Red Popular Front.
The protagonist—his self-projection—is the young university instructor Robert Jordan.
That he is a “university instructor” well shows how American intellectuals longed for communism.
The mission given to the protagonist by the Soviet officer is to blow up a railway bridge.
To accomplish this, he seeks cooperation from an anti-Franco guerrilla group, where he meets Maria, a girl with short-cropped hair.
A young man who did not even know how to kiss comes to love her passionately, only to perish three days later together with the bridge.
In the 1943 film adaptation, short-haired Maria was played by Ingrid Bergman.
Her hairstyle, identical to Audrey Hepburn’s in Roman Holiday, became known as the “Maria cut” and was a major fashion boom of the time.
Why, then, did Maria have short hair?
Her home—the town mayor’s house—was raided by Franco’s soldiers.
They killed her parents, raped her, and finally shaved her head as an act of humiliation.
The Old Testament says, “A woman shall part her hair and bind it,” and goes on to warn that letting it flow loose is licentious.
God endowed a woman’s hair with the power to bewitch men, instructing only that its misuse be avoided.
Hair, revered even by God.
To shave it off is the greatest insult to a woman.
In a recent Tensei Jingo column, there was a story of a woman subjected to the same humiliation as Maria.
In June 1944, the Allied forces landed on Normandy and, shedding much blood, liberated Paris.
Parisians rejoiced after four years.
At the same time, they dragged out women who had consorted with German soldiers and even borne their children—“Nazi collaborators”—shaved their heads, and exposed them to public ridicule.
Tensei Jingo asks, “Where does justice lie—with the citizens or with the shaven woman?” while showing Robert Capa’s famous photograph.
The conclusion is an easy dismissal: “the ugliness of war.”
But is that all?
When France heard that the Nazis were invading, it lined up twenty thousand Senegalese soldiers in front of the Ardennes Forest.
These soldiers fought the German armored divisions and were annihilated.
Terrified, the French government quickly surrendered to the Nazis, abandoning “the defense of Paris” in name only.
Afterward, they lived comfortably under Nazi occupation.
The acclaimed film Children of Paradise was produced in Paris during this period.
Meanwhile, Allied forces were locked in bloodshed against the Germans in Africa and the Atlantic.
“But de Gaulle fought!” one might say.
He established a government-in-exile, fought in Africa, and his troops bled at Normandy.
But what of it?
Those who fought in Africa were colonial troops from Chad and elsewhere.
Those who landed at Normandy were almost entirely colonial troops—men from Chad, Morocco, Tahiti, and other colonies.
And what was de Gaulle himself doing?
During the war he devoted himself to preserving French colonies, busy drafting colonial subjects as soldiers.
After the war, he reclaimed French Indochina—independent thanks to Japan—and resumed exploitation in the name of “rebuilding the glorious France.”
The Vietnam War was inevitable.
“And the Resistance fought bravely!” some insist.
That too is a lie.
The Resistance rose up only after the German army had already departed Paris.
France left the fighting entirely to its colonial subjects.
They themselves courted the Nazis, confiscated the property of eighty thousand Jews, and sent them to concentration camps.
And then they shaved the heads of helpless women to pose as patriots.
The Tensei Jingo columnist surely does not know, but Capa captured precisely this naked French hypocrisy.