This essay examines how Japan, after the war, bore enormous reparations, confiscation of overseas assets, occupation costs, and even later economic assistance, asking how fully it has already met its external obligations.
It brings to light the reality of postwar settlements that textbooks and the media have failed to convey, and forcefully questions the historical awareness and national stance that the Japanese people should reclaim.

2019-07-10
Just as with the enormous tax expenditures and preferential treatment directed toward Okinawa, there are other things as well that textbooks and the media do not tell us.
The following is a chapter I published on July 25, 2018, under the title “Japan Paid Reparations Even to Italy and Switzerland.”
Today, July 25, 2018, I came across this laborious and valuable work online.
I am deeply impressed by this person, and I praise his work from the bottom of my heart.
https://blog.goo.ne.jp/yamanooyaji0220/e/10f78d33a2d00c1cc5293849122389f8
2013-06-01 09:32:49 | Materials
From the blog “A Country That Lost the War”
Japan Paid Reparations Even to Italy and Switzerland.
Just as with the enormous tax expenditures and preferential treatment directed toward Okinawa, there are other things as well that textbooks and the media do not tell us.
That is, how greatly Japan sacrificed and how it carried out its postwar settlements.
These are precisely the facts that should be taught in detail in textbooks, and that the media should convey whenever the occasion arises.
[Japan Carried Out Its Postwar Settlements Sincerely]
Not only in China and on the Korean Peninsula, but also in America and Europe, there are still people who speak of Japan’s war responsibility.
And even among Japanese people, there seem to be many who carry a sense of guilt, wondering whether Japan’s postwar settlements toward foreign countries were insufficient.
But was Japan’s response really insufficient?
In fact, Japan carried out postwar settlements by paying sacrifices to the fullest extent possible.
Moreover, these were not terms devised by Japan itself, but even unreasonable terms decided by the other countries were accepted and carried out.
The first thing I would like to confirm is that in any war, it is impossible to go on making amends forever.
At the very least, in relations between states, that is resolved by the conclusion of some kind of treaty, and this then leads to the establishment of diplomatic relations.
(Unless, in particular, the treaty explicitly states that postwar settlements remain unresolved.)
Japan fulfilled that faithfully.
It determined the terms of reparations through treaties with each country, and it paid them.
Even if one calls it negotiation, this was after defeat, and Japan had absolutely no power, so it seems there were many cases in which matters proceeded just as they demanded.
To use a harsh expression, one might say that Japan, unable to resist, was stripped bare exactly as they wished.
A list of those reparations is given in Note 1.
Please do take a look at it.
I am sure many people will be astonished.
Even Switzerland, which ought to have been a permanently neutral country, and even Italy, which ought to have been an ally, demanded and received reparations.
In addition, there are countries such as Greece and Argentina and others that make one tilt one’s head in puzzlement.
When did Japan ever go to war with Greece or Switzerland?
Beyond that, all of Japan’s overseas government and private assets, totaling 379.499 billion yen in 1945 value, were confiscated.
In particular, the assets on the Korean Peninsula and in Manchuria amounted to enormous sums.
For reference, the starting salary of an elementary school teacher in 1952 is said to have been 5,850 yen.
If one infers from that, would their value today be roughly 25 to 30 times greater?
That would mean assets worth well over ten trillion yen were confiscated.
The confiscation of these overseas assets was, at least with regard to private assets, a violation of international law.
• Confiscation of private assets is strictly prohibited under international law (Article 46 of the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land).
• Public and private assets in neutral countries are likewise strictly protected from confiscation.
It can only be seen as Japan, unable to resist because of defeat, being plundered at will.
In the occupation period that followed, Japan was also forced to bear the expenses of the occupation forces.
These included the costs of golf courses, mansion construction, luxury items, and the like, and they amounted to one-third of Japan’s national budget.
Moreover, assistance such as food aid, which is often thought of as American goodwill, was all demanded back with interest, and it became the largest item in postwar settlement expenditures.
*Furthermore, to present-day China, in the form of ODA, Japan had provided by the end of fiscal 2003 approximately 3.0472 trillion yen in yen loans, about 141.6 billion yen in grant aid, and about 144.6 billion yen in technical cooperation.
*Postscript
In fact, that is not all.
For example, in copyright law there is what is called the wartime extension, under which in Japan the rights to foreign works are extended by ten years.
In other words, the reasoning is that Japan must not have respected copyright during the war.
But were we at war for ten years?
And by that logic, should that not also apply to the victorious countries?
If one looks, there are surely countless more examples.
Japan’s position as a defeated country has still not ended.
The enemy state clauses in the United Nations Charter have still not been removed.
I want more people to know, as common knowledge, about the postwar settlements that Japanese people paid for with blood and by squeezing themselves dry.
If that happens, they will be able to take pride in being Japanese.
Because there has probably never been another country that carried out postwar settlements this seriously.
After the First World War, Germany, faced with reparations so severe, 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 worldwide, there still exists next door a deranged country that, while having received massive aid and enormous compensation that should not even have been necessary in the first place, continues to demand apologies and compensation on the basis of fabricated history.
Moreover, there are people who do not return to their mother country, who parasitize Japan, shout anti-Japanese slogans within Japan, and continue committing 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 even repaying IMF-era loans and various other debts, or even most of the interest on them, how long are they to be allowed to go on saying, “Japan must possess a correct view of history and offer sincere apologies and compensation”?
No matter how much money they extort, and no matter how much politicians lacking any historical awareness 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 still further generations listen to this incomprehensible nonsense?
Would not Japan’s response in such a situation be judged by the world not as kindhearted indecision, but simply as cowardice?
No matter how much we speak within Japan of “Japanese pride,” “Bushido,” or “the Yamato spirit,” once we step outside the country we learn that such things are of absolutely no use at all.
What must be asserted should be asserted thoroughly, to the utmost, again and again, and only then are one’s true intentions and will conveyed to the other side.
That is international common sense.
Should we not bring such foolishness to an end in our own generation?
As for South Korea, the current outstanding balance of loans extended by the state is 67.58 trillion yen, which originally was supposed to be fully repaid in 1982, and private-sector lending amounts to 8.9 trillion yen, yet almost none of even the interest has still been repaid.
And even on top of that, they continue to say, “Give us money!”
What they are saying is the same as the yakuza, no, worse still.
To be continued.