Originally published on October 17, 2019.
Based on a dialogue between Miyawaki Junko and Takayama Masayuki published in WiLL, this article discusses the criticism surrounding Shukan Post’s special feature on South Korea, reactions from Korean-Japanese writers and left-wing media, the problem of half-baked human-rights advocates, former Waseda University president Nishihara Haruo, former Supreme Court justice Sonobe Itsuo, postwar education, GHQ occupation policy, WGIP, and the intellectual rigidity of Japan’s intelligentsia.

October 17, 2019.
Is not one of them Nishihara Haruo, former president of Waseda University?
Nishihara speaks without understanding such historical circumstances.
The following is from a special dialogue between Miyawaki Junko and Takayama Masayuki published in this month’s issue of WiLL under the title, “The Thirty-Six Years of Japanese Imperial Rule Were Precisely Heaven…
Since Ancient Times, Korea Was Ignored by Everyone and Existed Like Something in the Shade…”
If readers compare the four monthly magazines to which I repeatedly refer with Asahi and the news programs of NHK and the like, they must all keenly feel that the difference in content is truly like heaven and earth.
Make Your Roots Clear.
Takayama.
Shukan Post, in its September 13 issue, ran a special feature titled “We Don’t Need South Korea,” and was attacked from all sides.
Miyawaki.
They said that “One in Ten Needs Treatment — The ‘Disease Called Korean,’ Unable to Control Anger” was hate speech.
Takayama.
In the 1990s, Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America in Illinois was sensitive about sexual harassment issues, and President Oinoue at the time repeatedly warned employees, “Do not buy Shukan Post.
Just possessing it becomes sexual harassment.”
Even so, the company was sued by the U.S. government.
It was an extortion lawsuit plotted by the money-grubbing Clinton, and they were forced to pay 34 million dollars.
It had nothing to do with Shukan Post. (laughs)
Miyawaki.
It would have been bad if the sealed adult feature had been seen. (laughs)
Takayama.
Well, perhaps that is the level of the magazine.
Even after reading this special feature, it is not at all a big deal.
It writes something quite ordinary.
Miyawaki.
Perhaps the phrase “we don’t need” was the problem.
Takayama.
If one looks at the history of Japan and the Korean Peninsula, one can clearly understand that it is “not needed.”
There has been no spirit of mutual assistance, and Japan has simply continued to be one-sidedly exploited.
However, the writer Fukazawa Ushio reacted to the Shukan Post article.
Her parents are Koreans in Japan, and she reportedly acquired Japanese nationality upon marriage and pregnancy.
But mentally, she is probably Korean.
From the standpoint of a Korean, it is only natural that she would say that reading such a thing feels unpleasant, but no one says that.
The writer Yu Miri also criticized it.
Miyawaki.
She is also Korean in Japan, is she not?
Takayama.
Yu Miri wrote on Twitter, “Did they not imagine what children of South Korean or Korean nationality living in Japan, and people who have Japanese nationality but have roots on the Korean Peninsula, would feel when they saw this newspaper advertisement?
Even if they could imagine it, did they think that because they are a minority it would not affect sales?
Is it enough if it sells, no matter what they do?” — September 2.
Also, although he is not Korean in Japan, Uchida Tatsuru declared on Twitter that he would not write for Shogakukan.
Miyawaki.
Mr. Uchida has published a book titled Japan as a Peripheral Country, from Shincho Shinsho.
He is someone who thinks that Japan is a peripheral country and therefore should continue bowing its head to those around it.
Takayama.
If Fukazawa and Yu Miri live in Japan, they should understand the problems concerning Koreans in Japan.
Even regarding the Takeshima issue and the comfort women issue, there was the fact that Asahi acknowledged that it had continued writing lies about comfort women by using Yoshida Seiji.
Yet at such times, they do not speak out.
They make no effort to dispel South Koreans’ misunderstandings for Japan’s sake.
They keep silent while wearing a Japanese face.
But when an article criticizing South Korea appears in a magazine, they say, “Our hearts have been hurt.”
Then they stop their serializations or say that they will not write for Shogakukan.
They should make their own roots clear before speaking.
Miyawaki.
The editorial department of Shukan Post published an apology, did it not?
Takayama.
To begin with, Shukan Post has a habit of apologizing. (laughter)
At the time of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, too, it quickly apologized.
In 1999, Shukan Post published an article titled “We Have Finally Grasped the Jewish Capital Network Feeding on Five Trillion Yen of Our Blood Tax in Long-Term Credit Bank,” and reported such things as, “Behind the transfer of the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan at the time to a U.S. investment company, the strong will of Jewish financial capital is at work.”
This was because protests were made against that article, and at the same time pressure was placed on sponsors to stop placing advertisements.
Miyawaki.
There was concern that the uproar might become as large as with Shincho 45, but it will probably settle down.
Takayama.
But it would be bad if the fire of the South Korea issue were extinguished by this.
Asahi, Mainichi, and Tokyo Shimbun are working hard to criticize Shukan Post and defend Fukazawa and the others.
They are the three crows of fire-extinguishing.
Half-Baked Human-Rights Advocates.
Miyawaki.
The problem is Japan’s half-baked human-rights advocates.
Takayama.
Is not one of them Nishihara Haruo, former president of Waseda University?
Nishihara is an authority on criminal law and contributed to Gekkan Nippon.
According to him, Japan colonized Korea, oppressed and exploited it without consideration for the Korean people.
He claims that the typical example was the construction of the Government-General building in front of the royal palace of the Yi dynasty.
Miyawaki.
If one knows history, one understands that, because of the kings of Yi-dynasty Korea, the Korean people of that time were suffering in misery.
Takayama.
That is precisely why Japan left the royal palace as it was and built the Government-General building in front of it in order to create a modern Korean state.
Can it not be understood as symbolizing the history of democratizing a premodern state?
Miyawaki.
Japan used that Government-General building for only seventeen years, and South Korea used it for several decades afterward.
In the end, it was dismantled and removed as an eyesore.
Takayama.
Nishihara speaks without understanding such historical circumstances.
Another person I would like to name is Sonobe Itsuo.
He is a former Supreme Court justice and also an advocate of allowing a female-line emperor.
When he was a justice, in the issue of voting rights for Koreans in Japan, in the Supreme Court ruling of February 1995, he denied it in the main text, but attached an obiter dictum and made it say, “Voting rights for Koreans in Japan are a good thing.”
As for the reason, he said something to the effect that, “Before the war, Japan did terrible things in Korea.
This is compensation for that.”
Sonobe was born in Korea during the period of Japanese rule and grew up in Taiwan.
Since he was sixteen at the end of the war, he should naturally have known the local conditions.
Nevertheless, he does not even understand the difference between the reactions of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan.
Miyawaki.
Many of the people who were in those places when they were elementary or junior-high school students became dyed with left-wing thinking.
After returning from those places, they received the influence of postwar GHQ education and were brainwashed.
Director Yamada Yoji, who was repatriated from Manchuria, is exactly like that.
Those who were there saw, as children without understanding why, the terrible local conditions that differed from Japan.
But the cause of that terrible condition was not Japan, but was rooted in the problems of the local people, and they do not understand that point.
Takayama.
People say they were dyed by the War Guilt Information Program, or WGIP, but I myself had no such experience.
At the time of the Korean War, I was in Azabu, but I have no memory that my thinking was distorted by school education.
Miyawaki.
Perhaps that is because you belong to a different generation, after America’s administrative policy had changed.
During the first two or three years of the occupation, they taught that “Japan is completely evil.”
In order to accept the reason for defeat, they taught that the previous generation was evil and that their own generation was correct, and the children accepted it obediently.
However, after the outbreak of the Korean War, America’s policy made a 180-degree turn in order to make Japan an ally.
Takayama.
Tahara Soichiro says the same thing, and even Shiba Ryotaro, in Clouds Above the Hill, arbitrarily decided that once Japan had climbed to the top of the hill, everything afterward was downhill.
I think there were many opportunities to reconsider.
Miyawaki.
That is the difficulty of intellectuals.
Intellectuals have confidence in themselves.
Once they have accepted knowledge or a way of thinking, they do not easily try to abandon it.
They are reluctant to admit that there are errors in their own thinking.
Takayama.
What was certainly strange was that GHQ tolerated the Communist Party immediately after the war and, through GHQ’s power, even put Communist Party members into the Diet.
However, suddenly, even half a year before the outbreak of the Korean War, it made the party illegal.
What was that change of attitude around that time?
The American diplomat of the time, William Sebald, wrote in With MacArthur in Japan, published by Asahi Shimbun, “Why do Japanese people appeal to us not to permit the Communist Party?” — to that extent, the upper levels of America at that time were pro-communist.
Miyawaki.
Through the confrontation with the Soviet Union and the communization of China, America, too, awakened to the threat of communism.
They thought, “Ah, we were wrong.”
In that respect, America can still be said to have been flexible.
This article continues.