This special issue of WiLL Rekishitsu commemorates Shoichi Watanabe, a giant of Japanese intellect. Through firsthand memories of prewar and postwar Japan, it restores historical truth, cultural pride, and the lived reality erased by postwar narratives.

2017-06-11
This special issue is a book that every Japanese citizen should go to a bookstore and purchase.
The other day, when I went to a bookstore on the release date of Rekishitsu, the publisher, WAC Publishing, had released a special expanded July issue of WiLL Rekishitsu as a complete, single-volume memorial edition titled “In Memory of the Giant of Knowledge, Shoichi Watanabe,” intended as a permanent archive.
I myself began reading the works of Shoichi Watanabe, who came from Yamagata Prefecture, neighboring my home prefecture of Miyagi, only after August three years ago.
This special issue is a book that every Japanese citizen should go to a bookstore and purchase.
A friend of mine who had read ahead told me, “There’s a piece by Watanabe titled ‘Shōnen A,’” and pointed me to a certain chapter.
This year, for the first time in several years, I have been visiting and photographing almost every day a flower iris garden, where various irises bloom—flowers once cherished by Edo-period samurai as part of their cultivation and culture.
Needless to say, I was reading that chapter on the train during those trips.
“Fighting the Tokyo Trial Historical View.”
“My Life and Shōwa History.”
A grand commemorative lecture for the second anniversary of WiLL.
Shoichi Watanabe, Professor Emeritus of Sophia University.
To assume that prewar Japan was dark is a grave mistake.
Through personal experiences—such as the demeanor of soldiers returning from Nanjing and emotions at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack—he speaks of the true history of the Shōwa era.
Many people have written about Shōwa history after the war, but I have come to feel differently from most of them.
Most Shōwa histories begin with the premise that prewar Japan was a bad country, a militaristic and dark age.
They then go on to say that Japan became a bright country after losing the war.
That has been the prevailing tone of Shōwa history I have read.
However, I have absolutely no memory of prewar Japan being an evil country.
Some may think I must have been born into a privileged household, but that is not the case.
Neither my father nor my mother had elementary school diplomas.
My father’s side came from deep in the mountains of Tōhoku, where there were no elementary schools.
Yet my grandfather had some learning and could fluently write letters on scroll paper.
He and a Buddhist priest together taught the local youth.
As a result, my father knew many Chinese characters and had excellent handwriting, though he had no formal education.
My mother lost both parents as a child and endured great hardship.
Compared to what she experienced, the television drama Oshin was nothing.
My mother lost her parents in childhood, a difference beyond comparison.
She was placed with a farming household and had to work in the rice fields even as a child.
Prewar farm labor meant working bent over throughout the year.
By the age of ten, her back had become bent, but through therapeutic hot springs it straightened again.
She was then sent to work in town as a servant.
Both my father’s and mother’s families had fallen into poverty.
Yet I can say that I was fortunate to have been born in Japan.
To be continued.