The Japanese have overestimated China, but they are just a group of followers of power.
December 10, 2018
It was Masayuki Takayama who first told me about Junko Miyawaki.
With a background that includes Ise High School, Kyoto University, and the graduate school of Osaka University, Junko Miyawaki's academic achievements in her field of Mongolian studies are world-class, and her fellow alums of each of these schools and universities must be very proud of her.
The following is the preface to a book I learned about recently from a newspaper advertisement and promptly subscribed to.
The emphasis in the text is mine.
Preface to the new edition
Junko Miyawaki
When Businesssha published the original edition of this book in December 2015, I was surprised to see the cover, which was completely black, with the words "China's Decay" written in large letters.
Was the content of the conversation with Professor Miyazaki really that horrific?
I thought that the "result of a hundred years of unchanging corruption" was something I had talked about in the past, such as the essence of China, which has not changed in two thousand years, or the fact that the Chinese are historically a disparate people.
However, the words on the book jacket, "The horror of historical falsification and the dominance of Chinese characters—the time has come to fight the Chinese, whether we like it or not!" are true, and now, three years later, China is becoming an ever-greater threat to Japan.
We hear nothing but bad news from China.
The surveillance system for people using IT, such as smartphones, is only getting stricter, and the ethnic minorities in places such as Uighur, Tibet, and Mongolia are suffering under valid colonial rule.
It is becoming increasingly clear that China is the very imperialist nation that these people revile.
In August 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that "many reports are indicating that large-scale secret internment camps exist in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" and expressed concern that "more than one million Uyghurs and other people are being held in these camps."
At first, the Chinese government denied the reports, saying they were "complete fabrications." Still, when it became clear from satellite photos and other evidence that the camps existed, they changed their tune and admitted that they were forcing Muslims to undergo patriotic education.
They said that since this was China, it was enough to use only Chinese, that it was outrageous to use strange characters that weren't Chinese, and that if they didn't stop being Muslims, they would be considered terrorists.
One foreign journalist even called the whole Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region a "blue sky prison camp."
The reason why the Chinese are so crude is, as I explained in this book, because of the communication tool that is the Chinese character.
The Japanese invented katakana and hiragana in the 9th century. They could conveniently use ideographic Chinese characters because they had characters that could be written as spoken.
That is why Japanese people do not truly understand the Chinese, who only had Chinese characters with inconsistent pronunciation until the 20th century.
Subtle nuances do not apply to Chinese people.
They think that as long as things look the same, that's fine, that it's OK to lie if it gets you through, and that it's OK to explain that the firm won and that the heavens have decreed it.
The Japanese have overestimated China, but they are just a group of followers of power.
Even so, the Chinese have accumulated wisdom that has enabled them to survive in a society where the struggle for survival is fierce, and I am worried about the complacency of the Japanese these days.
It is not the time to relieve your worries by speaking ill of China.
After reading this book, you will learn what we can do to create a strong Japan that can stand up to China.
I also feel this way, and I hope that all readers will not ignore Japanese people who are helping to weaken Japan but will instead work hard in their own places for the sake of Japan's national interests.
October 2018
2024/12/8 in Kyoto
