The following is an excerpt from a serial conversation between Gyo Tsutsumi and Hiroyuki Kubo entitled "The Logic of Yang Jiechi, Thief, Robber, Murderer," which appeared in the June issue of the monthly magazine Hanada.
As I have already mentioned, Gyo Tsutsumi is a senior at my alma mater.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people all over the world.
P126
Japan Has Lost Sight of the Enemy
Tsutsumi
I heard that Katsunobu Kato, the Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare, only verbalized the Japanese branch of Pfizer and did not sign a formal contract.
You have to make a contract with the head office for tens of millions of doses by when.
I'm saying that we should create a specialized quarantine agency to avoid amateurish mistakes.
To paraphrase what Kubo-chan just said in my own way, postwar Japan has lost sight of the existence of its enemies.
After all, there is a sentence in the preamble of the Constitution that says, "We have determined to preserve our security and survival by placing our trust in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world.
I wonder if China is included in the "peace-loving peoples."
Kubo
The idea is that as long as Japan does nothing, there will be no war, and peace will prevail.
Tsutsumi
In general, there are wars to be waged as well as battles to be waged.
The last war was a war that Japan was initiated into by Franklin Roosevelt.
When I interviewed Nobusuke Kishi, then Minister of Munitions, for five and a half hours, I asked him, "Why did you go to war like that? He said, "We were driven to the point where we had to fight."
Kubo
In the February 19th edition of the Asahi Shimbun, an opinion piece titled, "'War,' even if it's the new Corona," asks intellectuals about the pros and cons of likening the fight against the new Corona to a war.
In short, the use of the word "war" is unpardonable.
There used to be a folk song called "Senso wo Shiranai Kodomotachi" (Children who don't know war), and the purpose of Asahi's project was to say that post-war Japanese people should always remain in the mindset of "children who don't know war.
Yang Jiechi also has "even thieves have their reasons."
Tsutsumi
So you don't think about war, you lose sight of the enemy, and finally, you start word-hunting to stop using the word "war" as well.
I guess they want to pretend that what they don't want to think about doesn't exist.
Michitaro Tanaka, a master of Greek philosophy, once wrote in the opening essay of Bungei Shunju, "If war does not come as long as you advocate Article 9 of the Constitution, you should write in the Constitution that earthquakes and typhoons should not come.
Isn't it a perfectly fitting phrase?
Would we write in the Constitution that we don't want viruses to come too (laughs)?
Human rights and opposition to racial discrimination are now keywords in the politico-cultural movement.
As a matter of fact, Japan was the first country in the international community to advocate these issues head-on.
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Japan proposed a bill to abolish racial discrimination.
It was U.S. President Wilson who killed it.
He overturned the resolution decided by a majority vote, saying that such an important bill must be unanimous.
It was because he was worried about the treatment of his black slaves.
I wonder if this series of events is appropriately taught in schools today.
The Showa Emperor's Monologue begins with a discussion of the distant causes of the last war.
"If we ask the cause, it lies far away in the content of the peace treaty after World War I. The other countries did not accept Japan's insistence on racial equality, and the feeling of discrimination between yellow and white still remained. The refusal to immigrate to California was enough to make the Japanese people angry. It is not an easy task to suppress the military once it has risen against the background of such public anger."
Kubo
At a meeting between the top U.S. and Chinese diplomats in Anchorage, Alaska, Yang Jiechi, who was pointed out for the Uyghur issue, referred to the killings of African-Americans and "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) and said that "many Americans have little faith in their own democracy" and that "the U.S. has a human rights problem. He retorted that the racial discrimination problem that the U.S. is facing is not a story of the past few years. It is wrong to make people pay attention to China's human rights problems to cover up the human rights problems at home.
This rhetoric was the same as what Japan used to say to the Western powers before the war.
This rhetoric was not convincing in the international arena because of the wrong impression of the annexation of Korea and the 21-point demand to China, even though Japan had its own arguments.
Yoshimi Takeuchi once said, "Before the war, Japan had seven to three reasons against the Western powers, but less than three to seven against Asia."
Personally, I think there is a 50-50 reason against Asia.
As Yang Jiechi says, the United States' massacre of the Indians and oppression of the Philippines were horrendous. Considering the opium wars waged by the British against the Chinese, there is even a "third reason" in the argument as to how dare you can criticize China.
On the other hand, as the saying goes, "even thieves have their reasons" if you think that Yang Jiechi's objection justifies the human rights violation of Uyghur and the oppression of Hong Kong, it is precisely the logic of a thief, robber, and murderer.
Biden describes the fierce struggle between the U.S. and Chinese regimes as "a battle between democracy and tyranny (totalitarianism).
However, when we look at the hate against Asians and the criminal acts against Asians currently taking place in the U.S., we can't help but be reminded that there used to be an opposing concept of West vs.Asia.
Will it collapse and be repainted as a conflict between regimes based on what Biden calls "democracy vs. tyranny (totalitarianism)"?
Are there values that Japan and the U.S. share that go beyond economic interests and security ideals?
Is it possible to continue to confront China with such universal principles?
What kind of answers will the Japan-US summit between Suga and Biden provide to these questions? ......
I don't have much hope for them, though, judging from their caliber (laughs).
