This chapter introduces Masayuki Takayama’s hard-hitting analysis of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “70 Years After the War” statement and the global reactions it provoked. By revisiting U.S. atomic bombings, Stalin’s Siberian internment, Chiang Kai-shek’s alignment with Roosevelt, South Korea’s historical narratives, and the role of John Dower, the Frankfurt School, and the New York Times in sustaining the “aggressor Japan” image, the essay argues that Abe’s elegant yet sharp wording quietly pierced each country’s historical hypocrisy and reveals the true strategic environment surrounding Japan today.

As the eyes of the world were upon him, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a statement marking the 70th year since the end of the war.
It seems that, in fact, every country in the world was watching with bated breath.

October 16, 2015
When I was reading this month’s “Seasonal Notes” (Orifushi no Ki) at the beginning of the monthly magazine Seiron, I thought, “Wait, isn’t this an essay by Masayuki Takayama?”
The reason was, first of all, that he consistently uses the term “Shina” for China, and also because the essay itself was the very embodiment of a man of iron backbone.
The emphases in the text and the passages marked with ＊～＊ are mine.
As the eyes of the world were upon him, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a statement marking the 70th year since the end of the war.
It seems that, in fact, every country in the world was watching with bated breath.
For example, the United States.
They wondered whether Prime Minister Abe might suddenly say something like Russian lawmaker Franz Klintsevich did, namely, that the atomic bombings were a war crime on par with the Holocaust.
That same Russia had its arrogant Stalin, acting like the king of Babylon, enslave 700,000 Japanese in Siberia and has long concealed that atrocity.
They took them prisoner and have not even apologized.
Shina (China) is the same.
Chiang Kai-shek bowed before Franklin Roosevelt, abandoned Asia, sided with the white powers, and kept dragging Japan down.
Roosevelt, as a reward, told Chiang that he would give him Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
How he approached Oliver Stanley, the British Colonial Secretary, in Chiang’s stead appears in C. Thorne’s book The Pacific War for America and Britain.
The President asks, “You didn’t really buy that properly from Shina, did you?”
It is a hint meaning, “You bullied them into ceding it in the Opium War, so give it back.”
“It was around the time of the Mexican–American War, wasn’t it?” the Colonial Secretary replies.
In other words: “You also used some pretty filthy tricks yourself.
Don’t put on airs, you Dutch bastard.”

＊Which means, I thought, perhaps Franklin Roosevelt’s family line is Dutch, so I searched and found that this was indeed the case.
Truly, Takayama’s iron backbone and his insider’s grasp of these matters are so impressive that one cannot help but laugh.＊

So Hong Kong was given up, and because De Gaulle glared at them over Vietnam, in the end Chiang had to be content with Taiwan alone.
If Prime Minister Abe were to point out this betrayal of seventy years ago, Xi Jinping’s lie that “the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan was the first victory over a foreign invader in modern times” would be blown away.
The same goes for South Korea.
Even Britain and America, blinded as they were by territorial ambitions, were appalled at the low level of its national character; the United States brushed aside the pleas of the Yi Dynasty’s Korea, quickly closed its legation in Keijō (Seoul)—in other words, cut off diplomatic relations—and withdrew.
Japan, having no choice, took care of this people abandoned by the world, treated them as part of “Japan and Korea as one,” built schools, brought in electricity, and laid railways, only to be met now with complaints of colonial rule, forced labor, and abuse.
Prime Minister Abe might possibly expose such a disgraceful past.
Koreans have kept telling such persistent lies that, even if he did, they would have only themselves to blame.
As every country watched, holding its breath, the statement was delivered with a typically Japanese elegance.
The United States, having had its misdeeds—such as the atomic bombings and the imposed constitution—virtually passed over, expressed relief, saying, “Indeed, it is wonderful.
It has dignity and gravitas,” according to J. Przystup, a senior fellow at a U.S. strategic research institute.
However, the statement was by no means harmless; it contained words stealthily aimed like a dagger at each country.
It pointed out to South Korea and Shina (China) their lack of “the basic values of freedom, democracy, and human rights,” and strongly criticized the viciousness of Russia’s Siberian internment.
More interesting still were the various international reactions to the statement, which made Japan’s present strategic surroundings much clearer.
According to Kent Calder, professor at Johns Hopkins University, ever since the war the United States had celebrated September 2, the date of the surrender signing on the USS Missouri, as V-J Day with festivities as grand as Independence Day.
It was Truman who proposed this, but when he died in 1972, they abolished the national holiday from 1976, after his third death anniversary, and returned it to an ordinary day.
“The majority of the public no longer even remembers that we once fought a war against Japan,” he said.
In other words, those who still insist that Japan is an aggressor nation that committed something like the Nanjing Massacre are only people such as John Dower and those connected to the Frankfurt School, and their house organ, the New York Times.

＊Here, those who, like me, have lived their lives in the real world, in the business world, will naturally wonder, “Then, what exactly is the Frankfurt School?”
That will be addressed in the next chapter.＊

This essay continues.