Published on January 17, 2020.
Drawing from Masayuki Takayama’s work, this article discusses the reparations imposed on postwar Japan, demands from the Philippines and the Netherlands, European resentment toward Japan, and the self-abasing criticism of Japan by Asahi-style “cultured intellectuals.” It criticizes those who look down only on Japan while refusing to see the realities of China and Europe.

January 17, 2020
Quirino of the Philippines followed suit and demanded from Japan an extraordinary sum of eight billion dollars. When Japan refused, he threatened it by hanging fourteen Japanese Class B and C war criminals who had been held in Muntinlupa Prison.
The following is from the work of Masayuki Takayama listed below.
This chapter, too, proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Those Who Pose as “Cultured Intellectuals” Are Often the Lowest in Quality
My family home stood around where the Metropolitan Expressway branched from Tameike toward Ichinohashi.
From there, one could go down the steps commonly called Yanagi-dandan and descend toward what is now Ark Hills.
At the bottom of the steps, a row of small houses spread out.
Though small, each had a garden in the back and flowerpots in front.
A kamishibai storyteller came to the vacant lot.
Starch syrup twisted around disposable chopsticks cost five yen.
In summer, an ice candy also cost five yen.
There was also a staircase on the opposite side of Yanagi-dandan, and when one climbed to the top, there stood Reinanzaka Church.
As Christmas approached, I became a sudden believer and went to Sunday Mass.
They forced me to make an offering, so I took out a one-yen bill bearing Ninomiya Sontoku.
On Christmas Eve, I received the present I had wanted, but the impression that remained was a very stingy one.
Even as a child, I think I clearly sensed why Christian churches do not take root in Japan.
Incidentally, Yamaguchi Momoe later held her wedding ceremony here.
She, too, was probably “only this once.”
Next to the church continued the white wall of the residence of the U.S. ambassador.
At the time, MacArthur lived there.
The postwar years for children were like that, and with five or ten yen a day, things were not bad.
For adults, however, it was not so easy.
In the last war, Japan drove out the Western powers that had colonized Asia.
Thanks to that, after the war, the colonies became independent, and the suzerain states were driven back to their small homelands in Europe.
Unable to stomach that, the Netherlands pressured Sukarno of independent Indonesia to repay the six billion dollars it had spent building canals and oil bases.
Sukarno, troubled by this, came to shake down “aggressor nation Japan.”
Japan paid reparations and even added Madame Dewi.
Quirino of the Philippines followed suit and demanded from Japan an extraordinary sum of eight billion dollars.
When Japan refused, he threatened it by hanging fourteen Japanese Class B and C war criminals who had been held in Muntinlupa Prison.
The shameless ones were not only former colonies; Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands also lined up to demand reparations.
For that reason, adults had no time to stand amid the burned ruins.
They worked more than twice as hard as before the war and continued paying reparations.
In 1959, the wedding ceremony and Chōken-no-gi of the present Emperor and Empress Michiko were held in a temporary room on the second floor of the Imperial Household Agency, because the palace remained burned down.
Reparation payments continued into the 1970s, but by then, partly because Japan had severed its relationship with annexed Korea, which had imposed a heavy fiscal burden, there was finally a little room to breathe.
Overseas travel was also liberalized.
But abroad, the wind against Japan was strong.
The EC at the time insulted the Japanese in a report as “workaholics living in rabbit hutches.”
French Prime Minister Édith Cresson declared in front of the Japanese ambassador, “The Japanese are yellow ants. No matter how many times you crush them, they come back.”
Because of Japan, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and British Burma had all disappeared.
The European countries, reduced to mere poor nations, created the EC in order to help one another.
It is understandable that they would want to say at least one resentful thing about Japan.
Today it has developed into the EU, but that mentality has not changed.
When European newspapers see groups of Japanese tourists who drove them into poverty, they feel like writing a word of contempt.
The Japanese, though puzzled, said unnecessary things meant as compliments, such as “The EU spirit of helping one another is wonderful,” and irritated them again.
In the other day’s Asahi Shimbun, an Asahi-style cultured intellectual wrote about that period, saying, “The Japanese were not polite from the old days.”
The Japanese, too, were terrible in the past, he said.
“They pushed leftover ekiben food and garbage under the seats,” and “Japanese tourists caused trouble around the world,” and so on.
Therefore, he says, do not laugh at the terribly bad manners of today’s Chinese.
“Any ethnic group will improve its behavior as time passes.”
It is the same old self-abasing line we are always made to hear.
And only Japan is criticized from above.
Everything else, including China and Korea, is looked up to from below and written about warmly.
They are convinced that this is the basic attitude of a cultured intellectual.
They should look at those countries from above, just as they do Japan.
If they did, they would see that the Chinese will not change no matter how many years one waits, and they would also see the resentment behind European statements.
However, if one looks at things that way, one also begins to see the foolishness of slogans such as “relief for the weak” and “opposition to nuclear power.”
That is why cultured intellectuals do not think.
Like Torigoe Shuntaro, they can fulfill their role simply by repeating by rote phrases such as antiwar and peace, like senile old people.
August 4, 2016 issue.