2019-09-23

This article revisits Masayuki Takayama’s criticism of an Asahi Shimbun editorial concerning the Korean War, the Suita Incident, and claims of Japanese responsibility.
It examines the argument that Japan should have opposed logistical support for United Nations forces during the occupation and contrasts that view with Japan’s own wartime experience and the postwar survival of its industrial capacity.

2019-09-23
This is a chapter I published on September 18, 2019, under the title, “The Exception Was the 36 Years of Japanese Rule, When Agricultural Yields Increased, Slavery Was Abolished, and People Spent Their Days with Smiles They Had Long Forgotten.”
What follows is a chapter I published on this day last year.
Since August four years ago, I have stopped subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun.
At first, I continued subscribing while only glancing through it, because I thought it was necessary to monitor its biased reporting.
Eventually, however, I concluded that this was not my responsibility but the work of professional commentators and journalists, and I stopped my subscription completely.
Therefore, I now know virtually nothing about what the Asahi Shimbun is reporting.
Before and during the war, the Asahi Shimbun was one of the forces that drove Japan toward war with the United States.
Hotsumi Ozaki, an influential figure associated with the Asahi Shimbun who also participated in the Konoe administration, was a Soviet spy.
He worked not only to prevent Japan from going to war against the Soviet Union by directing Japan toward war in China, but also to defeat arguments for ending the Sino-Japanese War, prolonging the conflict and ultimately leading Japan toward war with the United States.
After Japan’s defeat, the Asahi Shimbun became a faithful servant of GHQ and continued publishing editorials steeped in a self-denigrating view of Japanese history.
Not content with that, it repeatedly published what I regard as fabricated reports, including its reporting on the comfort women issue and the Nanjing Massacre, thereby contributing to the anti-Japanese propaganda of the Korean Peninsula and China.
Even after bringing enormous harm upon Japan, it has never once placed advertisements before the international community explaining that those reports were its own fabrications and were not factual.
It is no exaggeration to say that the role of Japanese commentators and intellectuals should be to subject such outrageous Asahi Shimbun reporting to severe criticism.
In this respect, no one surpasses Masayuki Takayama.
In his regular column “Henken Jizai,” published in last week’s Shukan Shincho, he once again revealed an extraordinary argument made by an Asahi Shimbun editorial writer.
This article once again proves 100 percent that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
Emphasis within the text, except for the heading, is mine.
A Blessing Bearing the Mark of Korea
The Korean Peninsula seems either to be in turmoil or stagnation.
There do not appear to have been many good periods in its history.
The exception was the 36 years under Japanese rule, when agricultural yields increased, slavery was abolished, and people spent their days with smiles they had long forgotten.
But the moment that period ended, they began a war among themselves.
Japanese people had regarded this as a troublesome tendency.
However, an Asahi Shimbun editorial writer named Nakano recently introduced a curious view in his column, saying, in effect, “That is a complete misunderstanding.
Japan bears a great deal of responsibility for that war.”
The column begins by criticizing the way newspapers at the time reported, “Keijō Falls.”
It should not be called Keijō, he argues.
It should be Seoul.
Why, he asks, did newspapers insensitively use the colonial-era name?
One wonders whether this is really something worth becoming so angry about, but in any event, Keijō fell.
In response to the North Korean invasion, the deployment of United Nations forces was decided.
MacArthur became their commander, and “the U.S. occupation forces stationed in Japan” were mobilized.
Weapons and ammunition for the U.S. military were “unloaded at Kobe Port and transported by Japanese railway workers to Maizuru.”
Nakano presents this as evidence of how deeply Japan was involved.
But what, then, was Japan supposed to do?
Nakano apparently answers that question by citing the Suita Incident, in which “Zainichi Koreans and others” attacked the Suita railway yard, a base for military ammunition trains, threw Molotov cocktails, and set Japanese National Railways employees on fire.
The column quotes one of the Zainichi Koreans who participated in the disturbance as saying, “If we delay a military train by one hour, we can save the lives of one thousand of our compatriots.”
In other words, Nakano apparently believes that they should have carried out an antiwar movement like Beheiren.
But the “compatriots” whose lives would have been saved if ammunition had failed to reach the United Nations forces were North Korean troops.
Why should Japanese people living under occupation have opposed the United Nations forces?
That point is never explained.
Nakano simply praises the actions of the Zainichi Koreans who engaged in sabotage.
It is difficult to understand, but let us put that aside.
What catches my attention is the statement, “If we delay the train by one hour, our compatriots will be saved.”
Several years before the Suita Incident, U.S. forces attacked Iwo Jima, about 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo.
Eleven battleships and cruisers bombarded the island for three days so intensely that its very shape seemed to change, and the first wave of 30,000 American troops landed.
They wondered whether there were any Japanese soldiers left for them to kill.
Yet the 20,000 defenders under Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi remained in underground positions and fought tenaciously to the last man.
The U.S. military’s plan to annihilate them within five days had still not been accomplished after 30 days.
Why did Lieutenant General Kuribayashi and his men fight for so long?
If Iwo Jima fell, B-29 bombers, escorted by fighter aircraft, would be able to strike Japan freely.
Kuribayashi left words to the effect that, “If our children can live in safety for even one more day, then every additional day that we hold this island has meaning.”
The Zainichi Korean quoted above was effectively imitating those words.
If he possessed that degree of resolve, he should have returned to the Korean Peninsula, even by secretly crossing the sea, and fought for North Korea.
He could even have attacked a U.S. military base.
What meaning was there in remaining safely in Japan and directing violence against Japanese people?
Nakano shows no interest in that affront.
Instead, he continues by saying that during the Korean War, Japan “regained its sovereignty, its economy revived, and people even spoke of ten’yū — divine providence.”
What does he mean by criticizing the word “divine providence”?
His argument is that Japan was deeply involved as an aggressor in the Korean War that devastated the peninsula.
He concludes that Japan should remember this and provide assistance to North Korea.
It is a conclusion so narrow in perspective that it is almost painful to read.
But the Korean War can indeed be described as a blessing for Japan.
At that time, a demontage policy was being steadily implemented against Japan for having brought an end to white imperialism.
The objective was to dismantle Japan’s industrial capacity and reduce it to a level capable of producing little more than pots and pans.
Then, at precisely that moment, a war broke out immediately next door.
As Korean history has repeatedly shown, when war breaks out on the peninsula, it is ultimately left to another country to deal with — in this case, the United States and China.
The United States, drawn into the conflict, required Japan’s advanced industrial capacity as a logistical base.
As a result, that industrial capacity survived.
Japan’s involvement with Korea has brought little good.
But once in a while, something good does come of it.
We should simply be pleased about that.