Originally published on July 9, 2019.
This passage is a forceful indictment of the reality that Japan, despite having faithfully carried out postwar settlements and compensation after the end of the Greater East Asia War, continues to face demands for apology and reparations.
By citing such matters as wartime copyright extensions, the still-unremoved enemy clauses of the United Nations, and the issue of massive outstanding loans to South Korea, it argues that Japan’s status as a defeated nation has never truly ended and expresses deep anger at the weakness of Japan’s diplomacy and domestic discourse.
It is a powerful call to reconsider Japan’s national pride and the proper way to assert its position in the international arena.

2019-07-09
Sixty-eight years after the end of the Greater East Asia War, despite having completed the payment of all reparations to the entire world, and despite having provided enormous sums of compensation that need not originally have been paid,
South Korea’s current outstanding loan balance from Japan as a state lender stands at 67.58 trillion yen, originally scheduled to be fully repaid in 1982.
This chapter was originally posted on 2018-11-29 under that title.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
*Postscript
In fact, this is not all.
For example, under copyright law, there is what is called a wartime extension, by which in Japan the rights to foreign works are extended by ten years.
In other words, the assumption is that Japan must not have protected copyright during the war.
But did the war even last ten years?
And by that logic, should the victorious countries not be treated the same way?
If one looks further, there are surely any number of other examples.
Japan’s position as a defeated nation has still not ended.
The enemy clauses of the United Nations have still not been deleted.
I want more people to know, as a matter of common sense, about the postwar burden that Japanese people paid for in blood and by squeezing themselves dry.
If they do, they will be able to take pride in being Japanese.
Because there is probably no other country that handled its postwar settlement as seriously as this.
After the First World War, Germany faced reparations so severe that it ultimately chose another war.
http://webtoy.iza.ne.jp/blog/entry/500202/
Sixty-eight years after the end of the Greater East Asia War, despite having completed the payment of all reparations to the entire world, and despite having provided enormous sums of compensation and assistance that need not originally have been paid, there exists next door a mad country that, based on fabricated history, still continues to demand apology and compensation.
Moreover, there are people who do not return to their own homeland, who parasitize Japan, who cry out anti-Japanese slogans inside Japan, and who continue to commit crimes while pretending to be Japanese.
Has not the patience of the Japanese people already reached its limit?
Is it not about time to draw a line?
Without repaying even the principal or interest on IMF-era loans and various other debts, how long are we supposed to let them keep saying, “Japan must have a correct historical understanding and offer sincere apologies and compensation”?
No matter how much money they extort, no matter how many members of parliament lacking any historical understanding apologize, they have declared that they will keep saying this for the next thousand years.
This is no joke.
Do they intend to make our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and those beyond them continue to hear this incomprehensible nonsense?
Would not such a response from Japan be regarded by the world not as kind-hearted indecision, but merely as cowardice?
No matter how much people speak within Japan of “Japanese pride,” “Bushido,” or “the Japanese spirit,” once you step outside the country you realize that such things are of absolutely no use on their own.
Unless one asserts what must be asserted to the fullest possible extent, the other side will never understand one’s true meaning and will.
That is international common sense.
Should we not bring such absurdity to a conclusion in our own generation?
South Korea’s current outstanding loan balance from Japan as a state lender stands at 67.58 trillion yen, originally scheduled to be fully repaid in 1982,
and there are also 8.9 trillion yen in private-sector financing,
yet even most of the interest has still not been repaid.
And on top of that, they continue to say, “Hand over the money!”
What they are saying is the same as the yakuza, no, perhaps even worse.
To be continued.