This essay rejects the notion that Haruki Murakami represents Japan’s finest cultural achievement, arguing instead that his ignorance of Japanese history and alignment with anti-Japanese narratives exemplify a deeper failure within Japan’s media and intellectual class.

March 13, 2017

Haruki Murakami is in no way a top representative of Japan, nor could he possibly be so.
He is a man who graduated from Waseda University and ran a coffee shop.
After closing the coffee shop, he began translating the works of Raymond Carver.
As for what followed, I have already discussed it elsewhere.
I have told the world that Japan’s top representatives advance into three categories.
One path is to enter the corporate groups that Japan proudly presents to the world and rise toward becoming a company president.
Another is to go to Kasumigaseki and become a top bureaucrat involved in the administration of the Japanese state, from whom many later become politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party.
Another is to become a doctor and save the lives of others.
Journalists and so-called cultural figures who align with them are not Japan’s top representatives at all.
Even so, unlike the vast majority of Japanese citizens, they earn their income through speech and writing.
In other words, it is no exaggeration to say that they do not engage in real industry and instead make their living through empty pursuits.
It goes without saying that such people must correctly understand Japanese history.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that reading books is their profession.
In this respect, Haruki Murakami is particularly the worst kind of man.
He knows absolutely nothing about Japanese history.
He does not even know the basic facts about the war that ended only seventy years ago.
Some years ago, he published in the Asahi Shimbun an astonishingly ignorant and foolish statement claiming that Japanese people must apologize eternally to people of the Korean Peninsula.
And now, in his latest work, he has gone so far as to treat the Nanjing Massacre as historical fact, introducing not only the figure of 300,000 but even a theory of 400,000, thereby igniting major controversy online.
Yesterday, while on a train returning from Kyoto, I was reading the latest issue of the monthly magazine Rekishitsū.
Within a major feature titled “The Tragedy of Siberia and Manchuria,” which describes an unforgivable chapter of history, there was an article by Takashi Hayasaka spanning ten pages from page 150 in three-column format, and another article by Miki Ōtaka spanning eleven pages from page 160.
As I continued reading, when I reached Ōtaka’s article, I felt as though I might break down in tears.
At that moment, I became convinced.
That it would not be an exaggeration to say that Haruki Murakami is an agent of China and South Korea.
And that it would not be an exaggeration at all to say the same of the Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, and even Kenzaburō Ōe.
This series continues.