This chapter exposes how postwar Japanese historians and literary scholars have promoted unverified claims that denigrate Japan while elevating China and Korea, particularly through the denial of mythology and ancient history.

This chapter critiques postwar Japanese academia for dismissing mythology and ancient history, arguing that unverified narratives hostile to Japan have been amplified by major publishers and media outlets.

2017-06-25
This is a continuation of the previous chapter.

Recently, a Man’yō scholar who received a major award published a theory in Iwanami’s journal Literature, claiming that the famous poet Yamanoue no Okura was a naturalized foreigner, which caused a major stir.

However, in the Manyōshū, there are poems by Okura praising Empress Jingu, who led the expedition against the Three Kingdoms of the Korean Peninsula.

There is also Okura’s poem praising Japan:
“From the age of the gods, handed down by word of mouth,
the land of Yamato, shining in the heavens,
is the stern land of the imperial gods,
the land blessed by the power of words…”

There is no way that someone composing such poems could have been a naturalized foreigner at that time.

He was surely a repatriate from the Korean Peninsula after the defeat at the Battle of Baekgang.

Failing to notice this means one has not even read the Manyōshū, which makes one a Man’yō scholar in name only.

Thus, postwar Japanese historians and literary scholars are saying things that are astonishingly crude and careless.

As Mr. Hasegawa has pointed out, if someone says anything that demeans Japan and praises China or Korea, Asahi Shimbun and Iwanami will pick it up without verification and shower it with praise.

That is the structure through which such claims spread among the Japanese people.

Postwar textbooks decided not to cover the Kojiki or the Nihon Shoki.

As a result, ancient history textbooks consist only of archaeology—Stone Age, Jōmon, and Yayoi periods.

If you look at the chronology published by the Historical Science Society of Japan, Emperor Nintoku does not appear, even though his tomb exists.

Hasegawa

Even though there is a massive keyhole-shaped imperial mound in Osaka Prefecture?

Watanabe

According to left-wing scholars, archaeology alone does not require it to be an imperial tomb at all.

Mythology is unthinkable to them.
They claim that only Chinese or Korean historical sources can verify the existence of Japanese emperors, and they begin writing history only when figures resembling Japanese emperors appear in those foreign records.

But by common sense, ancient Chinese or Koreans could not possibly have known what was happening in Japan.

So of course they would not have written about it.

What is admirable is that the first Japanese history chair established at the University of Tokyo in the Meiji era began with mythology.

It is not that one must believe the myths.
Rather, there are historical circumstances that cannot be explained if mythology is ignored.

They took the position that denying mythology makes subsequent historical explanation impossible.

Hasegawa

Her Majesty Empress Michiko clearly stated in her book Kakehashi o Kakeru (Building Bridges) that studying mythology is extremely important.

Myth itself is not reality, but it reflects something essential about Japanese society.

Watanabe

What makes Her Majesty Empress Michiko truly remarkable is that she has written somewhere that she sees herself in the resolve of Ototachibana-hime.
Ototachibana-hime threw herself into the sea to save Yamato Takeru.
Yamato Takeru lamented, “Azuma haya—my wife!”

Of course, neither Yamato Takeru nor Ototachibana-hime ever appear in left-leaning textbooks.
They claim that this period was not yet historical.

It does not matter that there is a place called “Azuma,” or that there is a city called Yaizu.

Because there are no Chinese texts that mention them (laughs).