Anger at the Coomaraswamy Report and the Reason for Rejecting Ceylon Tea—Masayuki Takayama’s Indictment of a Fabricated U.N. Human Rights Report—
Based on a chapter published on October 22, 2015, this passage introduces a section from a book by Masayuki Takayama that sharply criticizes the U.N. Human Rights Commission report associated with Sri Lankan official Radhika Coomaraswamy.
The author takes seriously Takayama’s view that the report was little more than a patchwork of Asahi Shimbun articles, Seiji Yoshida’s testimony, and George Hicks’s writings, lacking any real factual foundation.
It further points to the treatment as fact of fabricated claims that Japanese forces massacred comfort women in Micronesia, concluding that one of the worst possible failures occurred at the very moment when an international body should have been correcting falsehood.
Through Takayama’s remark that he therefore has no wish to visit Sri Lanka and does not drink Ceylon tea, the chapter vividly shows how one’s impression of a country may be formed by a single grave experience or judgment.
2019-04-22
That is why I have no wish to go to Sri Lanka.
Nor do I drink Ceylon tea.
Tea from Kagoshima has received the highest honor in Britain.
That is enough.
This is from a chapter published on October 22, 2015.
What follows is from a work by Masayuki Takayama, the ultimate man of principle and a true journalist, first printed on February 28, 2015, and in its fifth printing on June 5, 2015.
It belongs to the category titled, “I Will No Longer Be Deceived by the Asahi Shimbun,” and here too he fully proves that he is a true journalist and a true man of unbending principle.
The bold emphasis other than the heading is mine.
Why I Do Not Drink Ceylon Tea
One’s impression of a country is determined by intensely personal feelings.
For example, if one peers into the heart of a person who has come to love Brazil, at its core there is the memory of a samba-school dancer with whom he was involved, and around that memory is framed the bright coastal scenery of Ipanema where they met.
Even if, after getting lost, he was given a ride in a police car and then shaken down by the policeman for three times the taxi fare, he can still forgive it as part of the local charm.
But I dislike Sri Lanka.
The reason is Coomaraswamy.
This woman, under the title of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, investigated Japan and South Korea and issued a report in January 1996.
Its contents were nothing more than a patchwork of Asahi Shimbun articles, Seiji Yoshida’s wild tales, and the anti-Japanese Australian George Hicks’s The Comfort Women: Sex Slaves.
There was not a fragment of fact in it.
She also treated as truth a Korean fabricated story claiming that the Japanese military massacred seventy comfort women in Micronesia.
At the one moment when an international institution could have corrected falsehood and established truth, this woman did the worst possible job.
That is why I have no wish to go to Sri Lanka.
Nor do I drink Ceylon tea.
Tea from Kagoshima has received the highest honor in Britain.
That is enough.
