This essay traces how the concept of “atonement” was constructed in postwar Japan and gradually expanded into fabricated narratives such as forced mobilization and comfort women.

2017-05-04
I no longer believe this to be mere coincidence, but after August three years ago, I first came to know Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the University of Tsukuba.
As previously stated, he is one of the foremost experts on Korea and the Korean Peninsula of our time.
In the latest issue of the monthly magazine Seiron, released today for 840 yen, his serialized column “After Modernity,” spanning four pages in three-column format, contained an essay that perfectly proved the correctness of my arguments.
This is a fact that all Japanese citizens and people around the world should know.
[Omitted passage.]
At the dark depths of Seoul.
After that, I began to “think for myself,” but unlike before, this was not something that occurred lightly or intermittently; it was infinitely dark and bottomless.
Thus, when I met Asahi Shimbun correspondent Harufumi Kiyota around 1982 or 1983 through a mutual acquaintance, I was struggling unseen in the dark depths of Seoul.
Therefore, whenever I attempt to recall my memories of him, they all appear as negatives.
I do not know whether something had happened to him at the time, as he was still a young man.
However, when he quietly uttered truths such as “In my hometown of Shibamata, Asahi Shimbun is called the Red Newspaper,” I understood that he wished to convey the realities of Korea to Japan, and I took him around the slums and brothels, into the depths of Seoul’s night.
Repeating again and again, “Is it really all right to go to such places?” he appeared to be torn between curiosity and resistance.
At that time, Korea was viewed in Japan as an object of sympathy and atonement.
Sympathy was a natural feeling toward Koreans whose country had been devastated by the Korean War after the Japanese period and who remained mired in hardship.
Atonement, however, was different.
In the period leading up to the ratification and enforcement of the 1960 U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, leftist intellectuals, beginning around 1958, carried out intense propaganda to direct Japanese interest toward socialist countries in East Asia.
At that time, the Japanese people had only just begun to recover from the devastation of defeat, and when told of “atonement,” it did not resonate, as they themselves had suffered greatly.
Thus, the left initially used the term “ninzai” (acknowledgment of guilt).
This term first appeared in the June 1960 issue of the journal Sekai.
The era of leftist propaganda.
From this point onward, additional embellishments were attached to “atonement,” and falsehoods such as “forced mobilization” and “comfort women” were added one after another.
This process has already been described in Atarashii Kami no Kuni (The New Kingdom of God, Chikuma Shinsho, 2007), so those who are interested should refer to that work.
That book was cut off by Chikuma Shobo under President Toshiyuki Kumazawa, but today it can be purchased secondhand for as little as one yen.
To be continued.