This article critically examines how remarks by intellectuals such as Shin Il-cheol and Lee O-young have contributed to confusion over historical memory and deepened distrust between Japan and Korea.
The writer strongly objects to claims that Japan traditionally revered Korea as a superior civilization, or that Koreans are inherently ahead of Japanese people, arguing that such views disregard historical fact and rely on careless historical language.
At the same time, the passage concludes that history is not a vehicle for resentment but a shared cultural inheritance of humankind, and thus calls for greater objectivity and humility.
It is a text that raises questions about Japan-Korea historical consciousness, the responsibility of intellectuals, and criticism of postwar cultural elites.

2019-03-13
Men of true discernment will understand without being told that Kūkai and Sugawara no Michizane would sternly rebuke figures such as Kenzaburō Ōe and Haruki Murakami.

What follows is the continuation of the previous chapter.

The previously mentioned Mr. Shin Il-cheol wrote the following in the early 1970s.

“Originally, within the cultural sphere of Northeast Asia, Japan, called the ‘Wa people,’ belonged to a remote and alienated ‘outer region’ far removed from the center of Chinese civilization, and for a long time there existed within it an inferiority complex of being a kind of cultural ‘illegitimate child.’
Since a rigid hierarchy of traditional culture had taken shape in the order of China, Korea, and Japan (Wa), from ancient times Wa revered Korea as a superior country.”

There is nothing to do but laugh.
Who among the Japanese, either then or now, would think such a thing.
This is exactly what it means to say one is left speechless in astonishment.
And this, we are told, comes from a philosopher and educator.

In the February 1982 issue of Monthly Chōsen, there appeared the following passage by Lee O-young, the author of The Japanese of the “Shrinking” Orientation.

“There are two great mysteries in the world.
When one goes to Japan and looks closely at Japanese people one by one, one feels that each of them is lacking something, and their appearance is only passable.
And yet, how is it that such people gathered together and built such a world-class economic power.
That is one mystery.
Conversely, there is another mystery in the exact opposite direction.
If one looks at them individually, Koreans are in no way behind the Japanese, and are rather people who are ahead.
Why then was the society formed by such admirable people in the past so weak that it was ruled by the Japanese.
That too is one of the mysteries.
In the end, the difference between Japanese collectivism and Korean individualism became the difference between the two countries today.”

Surely I am not the only one who wishes people would know more of their own country’s history.
How many times, after all, was Korea invaded by both China and Japan.
How many hostages did it send.
How vast were the tributes it offered.
And this continued for ages.
Do they not know, despite being scholars, the historical facts that in antiquity Korea was also subject to Japan.

To speak with so little care for words, and on the basis of conjecture and self-serving assumptions, is close to fabrication and distortion.
Many people will likely feel that the discourse of the Asahi Shimbun and opposition politicians has its roots in precisely this kind of historical consciousness on the Korean Peninsula.

To possess too strong a sense that one’s own country is superior to another is itself a revelation of historical inferiority and compensation.

I have shared drinks many times with Korean writers, and I also have Korean friends.
Personally, I am favorably disposed toward Korea, but recent words and actions go too far.
Excess damages friendship between nations.
I was once included in a minority-literature gathering of Japanese and Korean university professors, and drank fine wine together with them in Brazil.
I have also given lectures at Korean universities.
Yet after university symposiums, when I witnessed exchanges over Japanese and Korean historical understanding, I realized that many of them had not read the books related to themselves or even the “official history” of their own country.

So far as I know, Japan has not openly insulted Korea or verbally attacked it.
By contrast, though I say this reluctantly, Korean politicians and intellectuals repeatedly make hostile remarks to the media of their own accord.
That will never move politics forward.
Would it not be better to reexamine once more what the travel writers and missionaries of the time said, and what is written in the historical records of China and Japan.
If one has lost one’s own “history,” then one has no choice but to search for it through other historical sources.

A human being cannot see his own back.
If there is lint on one’s clothes or one’s shirt is out, one needs another person to point it out.
To show consideration for others and to become humble is a uniquely human privilege, and is that not a form of kindness.

Above all, Professor Shin Il-cheol should become strongly conscious of the fact that words create history.
If he is a philosopher, then he must speak while remembering the meaning of the word philosophy.
Is not philosophy, in Greek, the loving of sophia, wisdom, through philein.
Is it not the pursuit of the fundamental principles of things.

Nor can I believe that Lee O-young’s passage is worthy of an intellectual.
When one encounters such rough language, any Japanese person will naturally become guarded, and I fear that this will only deepen anti-Korean sentiment all the more.

In the first place, national tragedies are always part of history.
Japan too had atomic bombs dropped on it.
History cannot be constructed merely by looking backward with resentment.

History is a common cultural heritage of humankind.
It hardly needs saying that what is necessary is as objective a perspective as possible.
(First published in Rekishi Tsū, July 2015 issue.)

Men of true discernment will understand without being told that Kūkai and Sugawara no Michizane would sternly rebuke figures such as Kenzaburō Ōe and Haruki Murakami.