An excerpt from 35 Exhilarating Chapters to Awaken the Japanese People by Masayuki Takayama, examining the distorted historical narratives promoted by Kenichi Matsumoto and Asahi Shimbun. Through the Manchurian Incident, the fabricated Tanaka Memorial, and the uninterrupted continuity of U.S. anti-Japan strategy from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt, this chapter exposes postwar media deception and affirms Japan’s intellectual sovereignty.

2016-03-29
The following is taken from 35 Exhilarating Chapters to Awaken the Japanese People by Masayuki Takayama, the only truly singular journalist in the postwar world today, mentioned yesterday. I regret to say that I first learned of him only last year, but the very fact that he existed in Japan is itself irrefutable proof that Japan is a country in which the “Civilization Turntable” continues to turn.
All emphasis within the text, except for headings, is mine.
Chapter 2: The Strange Alliance Between Kenzaburō Ōe and Asahi Shimbun
Asahi Shimbun, Which Does Not Rejoice in Japan’s Revival, and the Folly of Kenichi Matsumoto
—Why China and Asahi, Once Supporters of APEC, Now Deride It
Critic Kenichi Matsumoto, in his book Japan’s Failure, concludes that “Japan was an aggressor nation” based solely on the statements of the Japan-hating racist Henry Stimson.
As supposedly irrefutable proof, he cites the Manchurian Incident of the early 1930s, claiming that Japan established a puppet regime in Manchuria, used it as a base to dominate China, opposed Soviet communism, and “took the first step toward a fascist revolution aimed at transcending Anglo-American imperialism” (p.99).
Is this not almost identical to the so-called “Tanaka Memorial,” in which Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka allegedly advised the Emperor to conquer the world?
Yet within the Tanaka Memorial, Yamagata Aritomo—long dead at the time—offers opinions, and even the location where Prime Minister Tanaka himself was attacked by a Korean terrorist is incorrect.
In short, it is all utter nonsense.
It was a forged document fabricated by Chinese to damage Japan’s reputation, and even the president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently admitted its fabrication, stating that “such a document never existed” (Sound Argument, April 2006 issue).
Nevertheless, Matsumoto adopts the same absurd narrative as this forged document, asserting that because “Stimson said so,” Japan must be labeled an aggressor nation.
He further claims, as if it were historical fact, that the United States viewed the Manchurian Incident as a military threat and moved to contain Japan, eventually leading to war between the two nations.
But how does he explain the fact that forty years before the Manchurian Incident, Theodore Roosevelt revealed a strategic vision against Japan—stating that in order to control Japan, the American flag must be planted across the Hawaiian Islands and a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans must be built (in a letter from strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan)—and that within a few years, the United States annexed Hawaii, colonized the Philippines, and deceitfully seized Panama to construct that canal, exactly as described?
Moreover, even a high school student with basic historical knowledge knows that this anti-Japan policy initiated by Roosevelt was passed uninterrupted to Woodrow Wilson, then through Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State Henry Stimson, and finally to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Incidentally, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt deliberately appointed Stimson, who had served as Secretary of State under a Republican administration, as Secretary of War.
Valuing him solely for the fact that “he hated Japan,” Roosevelt entrusted him with Japan-U.S. diplomacy in anticipation of war between the two nations.
To be continued.