This essay argues that Japan’s unprecedented postwar assistance to China and Korea was met not with gratitude but with sustained anti-Japanese propaganda, a trend that was neither challenged nor corrected by major Japanese media, thereby distorting historical accountability.

2016-03-04

Betrayal repaid for kindness—this too has been Japan’s postwar experience.

The Asahi Shimbun nurtured such people and such countries.

Japan provided China and South Korea with what can be called the largest amounts of financial and technological assistance in human history.

And yet, the conduct they have displayed to this day—the behavior of China’s one-party communist dictators and that of South Korea—can only be described as subhuman.

Even if it is certain that, for them, King Enma awaits in hell.

There is something I must tell them.

That what Japan accomplished was possible only because the Japanese people—rare in human history—were formed by the spirit of Bushidō.

In just thirty-five years, Japan poured more than 20 percent of its national budget into the Korean Peninsula, which had been among the poorest regions in the world, transforming it almost overnight into a modern nation-state.

There were only single-story houses, and every mountain was barren.

A remarkable British female traveler of the time wrote that Seoul was the dirtiest city in the world.

She also wrote that only Beijing could be compared to it in filth.

And yet, in just thirty-five years, it was made into a modern nation.

A modern city.

The mountains of the Korean Peninsula were reforested.

Dams were built.

Railways were laid.

Schools were constructed across the entire land.

The establishment of Seoul National University preceded that of Nagoya University.

To obtain these enormous Japanese assets for free, the Korean Peninsula exploited Japan’s defeat and employed every conceivable sophistry.

This course of events is historical fact, easily verified by a simple internet search.

To obtain them for nothing, they began anti-Japanese propaganda typified by anti-Japanese education.

That is Nazism itself.

They have continued this for seventy years after the war.

The Asahi Shimbun has never once criticized this—on the contrary, it has encouraged it.

The behavior of China’s one-party communist dictators is exactly the same.

The only difference between them and South Korea is that China has continued to use the Asahi Shimbun for its anti-Japanese propaganda.

To be continued.