This essay examines a suppressed historical truth revealed by a remark attributed to Douglas MacArthur: that Japanese could not read a certain book in their own language until the occupation ended. It explores how wartime propaganda shaped postwar narratives in Japan, the role of American media and academia, and how those distortions persist through the United Nations today.

“If the occupation does not end, the Japanese will not be able to read this book in Japanese.”
2017-06-10
The other day, a close friend of mine, an avid reader, recommended a book to me.
He knew that it resonated deeply with the work I am currently undertaking.
What follows is the opening of the book’s preface.
“On the Publication of the Complete Edition.”
“If the occupation does not end, the Japanese will not be able to read this book in Japanese.”
—Douglas MacArthur
(Letter to Rabel Thompson, dated August 6, 1949)
The original book, Mirror for Americans: JAPAN, was published in the United States in 1948, three years after Japan’s defeat.
That same year, the translator Momoyo Hara received a copy of the original from Helen Mears and obtained permission to publish a Japanese translation.
[Omitted.]
I have repeatedly pointed out how ignorant and vulgar the Democratic administration of the United States was with regard to Japan at that time.
This book proves the correctness of my arguments one hundred percent.
At the same time, it reveals how the extreme ignorance and vulgarity toward Japan,
propagated and written by the U.S. government, scholars, and media such as The New York Times,
served as wartime propaganda that is still being exploited today
by China and the Korean Peninsula, countries whose essence is bottomless evil and plausible lies.
Through them, the United Nations—of which Japan is the largest financial contributor alongside the United States—
has been manipulated into repeatedly issuing outrageous recommendations against Japan.
Despite this, Japan remains, in effect, one of the UN’s largest shareholders.
Readers of the Asahi Shimbun should readily recognize
that American wartime propaganda has become the philosophical foundation of that newspaper.
The Asahi Shimbun’s attitude toward Shinto—
namely, its persistent linking of Shinto, war, and the Emperor—
is presented as the very definition of Japan itself.
The Asahi Shimbun and the so-called scholars and lawyers who align with it
are, without exaggeration, utter fools who do not even know
that Japan is a nation which, long before and long after the 810s—
when Emperor Saga recited Chinese poetry while sharing tea with Kūkai on a boat at Ōsawa Pond—
has continued uninterrupted as a state with one of the world’s richest cultures and histories,
shaped by countless great figures and countless ordinary citizens alike.
One may rightly ask who these people really are.
To be continued.