This article examines why Yoko Kawashima Watkins’ So Far from the Bamboo Grove has been banned in South Korea and China and targeted by Korean-American groups in the United States. The book recounts the brutal reality faced by Japanese civilians fleeing northern Korea in 1945—facts deeply inconvenient for narratives portraying Koreans solely as victims and Japan as absolute evil. The essay also criticizes Japanese media for suppressing the book and highlights a broader pattern: Korea loudly amplifies fabricated issues such as the comfort women narrative while silencing truths that contradict its political aims.

They exaggerate and fabricate the comfort women issue and loudly propagate it, while attempting to suppress anything inconvenient to them.
2019/3/18
The following is from the blog of someone who is currently reading my blog.
This too shows that true journalism now exists on the Internet, and that the Asahi Shimbun or NHK tell absolutely none of the real facts and instead engage in malicious information manipulation unworthy of a news organization.

Regarding “So Far from the Bamboo Grove,” I had seen the name in an essay by Masayuki Takayama, but I knew nothing about its content.
If even I did not know, then almost all Japanese people must certainly have been unaware of it.
Just how atrocious is the Japanese mass media?
Its conduct is beyond appalling, and until August five years ago, it had been manipulated at will by China and the Korean Peninsula—this is unmistakable proof.

I am truly proud that the author of So Far from the Bamboo Grove, a book that every Japanese citizen should read, is from Aomori Prefecture, and as a fellow Northerner I hold her indomitable spirit in the highest respect.
I am also astonished at how this relates to what I wrote today about the people of the Tohoku region.

The Thirty-Eighth Parallel of Death, “The Futsukaichi Relief Center” (Chikushino City, Fukuoka Prefecture) — The things Japanese people must never forget…
There are no Japanese orphans left behind on the Korean Peninsula; do you know why?

“So Far from the Bamboo Grove”
In South Korea, this book was banned as an “evil false historical account that portrays virtuous Koreans as demonic murderers while beautifying the wicked Japanese Empire,” and it was banned in China as well.
Although it was adopted as ethics teaching material in American schools, Korean-American groups protested fiercely, saying, “Do not show this devil’s book to American children,” and to this day they continue a thorough campaign of denunciation and attempted book-burning.
Yet there have also been movements to re-adopt the book, and although the Korean organizations’ efforts have not been entirely successful, the pressure continues.

Why such a movement?
Because the Koreans portrayed in this book appear in ways that are extremely inconvenient for those who wish to condemn Japan as absolute evil and continue portraying themselves as perpetual victims.

Yoko Kawashima Watkins —
Born in Aomori in 1933.
At six months old she moved with her family to northern Korea (now Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, North Korea) where her father worked for the South Manchuria Railway.
In August 1945, in the midst of defeat, she fled Nanam with her mother and sister, leaving a note for her absent father and sister, and boarded a hospital train as advised by Sergeant Matsuura.
Near Seoul, the train was bombed, forcing them to disembark and continue on foot.
The peninsula was already a hellscape:
Japanese were slaughtered indiscriminately by Korean communist forces cooperating with the Soviets; bodies were stripped and robbed of gold teeth; all property was confiscated; Japanese women—from little girls to young women—were raped without distinction.

In America, the book has been highly evaluated as an excellent work conveying the horrors of war and used as school material.

But Korean-American groups launched a campaign to have it removed from textbooks.
Although efforts to reintroduce it exist, resistance continues.

Why?
Because the Koreans in the book are depicted in ways that contradict Korea’s desired narrative of being eternal victims and Japan being eternal villains.

They exaggerate and fabricate the comfort women issue and loudly propagate it, while attempting to suppress anything inconvenient to them.
This is what Koreans do.

2024/8/26 in Onomichi