wow ... another great piece from Andre Vltchek. Left me speechless. All I can say that Japan is digging a hole for itself by isolating itself from its Asian neighbours.
As always, with these kinds of articles, I ask one question: Is this democracy? Would you consider Japan a democratic country when you come to know that a sizable majority of Japanese are against militarization of Japan & want nothing to do with America?
I specially loved the quotation from a Japanese philosopher, Tenshin Okakura, that “the average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another instance of the thousand-and-one oddities which constitute the quaintness & childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.”
That's always been the way for the West. You are a disease to the world as long as you are doing something good for your own people & which might be going against the wishes of the West, but you are civilized & appreciated profusely, if you are slaughtering thousands, as per the wishes of the West. Current case in point is full American support for Saudi Arabian war against Yemen. Past examples include American & British support of Saddam Hussein when he waged war against Iran, or the full support of Uganda's Idi Amin.
And there are many, many more examples of the West's full support of terrorists & despots around the world as long as the actions of those terrorists & despots support the vision of the West. As soon as those "terrorists" stop being subservient to the West, they are removed from power & replaced with another thug.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Japan is ready to change its post-war pacifist constitution; it is rapidly arming itself to the teeth, building battleships & purchasing fighter jets. Recruitment posters are everywhere. Meanwhile, Japan is standing - obediently & loyally - by its occupier & closest ally, the United States.
In light of the situation, one has to wonder what is really ‘nationalist’ about Abe? His loyalties appear to lie towards the West, particularly the US. Definitely not towards his own country & the Asian continent.
All that the US desires, Japan supports. Washington is dreaming about a ‘Pacific Century’, in which it would play a decisive role; it is relentlessly promoting its ‘Pivot to Asia’ doctrine, which envisions Japan firmly by its side, militarily & demagogically; it is pushing for 12-nations Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), & Japan claps.
Kuril Islands dilemma
In Wakkanai - the northernmost city in Japan from which the Russian island of Sakhalin can be seen - military radars & surveillance systems are humming & coastguard ships are standing by in the historic harbor, ready for action.
...
From the window of my hotel I can see Sakhalin, if weather allows. During the summer, two mighty sea vessels are shuttling Japanese tourists between Wakkanai & the Russian town of Korsakov, situated on Sakhalin Island. Russian fishing boats regularly visit Hokkaido Island, where there are cultural exchanges & even some trade.
In the Pechika restaurant, delicious Russian food is served, beer flows & Russian songs are sung (a popular tune is ‘A million red roses’). Across from the parking lot, the Fukakō-ichiba complex proudly displays old black-and-white photos from the days when Sakhalin, & in fact all of the Kuril Islands, belonged to Japan.
The islands constitute an issue that has never been resolved. Japanese propaganda is constantly repeating the claim that the Soviet Union grabbed the Kurils at the end of WWII. For decades Japan has been demanding their return.
But even in Wakkanai, not everyone is convinced that Russia should be compromising on the issue. A captain of a small Japanese fishing vessel explains:
“We have an extreme-right-wing prime minister here in Japan. He is very close to the US, a country that is antagonizing, & in fact most likely wants to destroy, both Russia & China. If the Kuril Islands & Sakhalin go back to Japan, they would be immediately converted into another Okinawa; full of US Air Force & naval bases, very near the Russian mainland.”
Some 3,000km away, the former ancient kingdom of Okinawa is living a continuous nightmare of occupation & consequent militarization. From here, thousands of US & Japanese aircraft regularly provoke China & North Korea. At the same time, local residents are outraged at the occupation as massive demonstrations shake the islands; people are demanding an end to the US military presence & want the US bases dismantled. But Abe’s government wants more US hardware, more runways & more war games.
I worked in Okinawa on 2 occasions. The last time was in 2013/14 when I was involved with a documentary film about the American bases, ‘Battle of Okinawa’, for South American network TeleSUR.
Douglas Lummis, an ex-US Air Force pilot who is now a writer & professor, explained the situation to me in the city of Nahu:
“Okinawa hosts about 75% of the American troops & American facilities in Japan. It's out of sight & out of mind of most of the Japanese people on the mainland. Okinawa is a thousand miles away from Tokyo, from the capital. If you talk to Okinawans they're angry & disappointed that for over 60 years now they’ve been asked to essentially shoulder the American-Japanese military alliance. The military alliance with America is also accompanied by what critics would say a subservient attitude towards Washington in general. Japan rarely balks against what Washington wishes on foreign policy.”
The bases are now expanding even to pristine parts of Okinawa, like Haneko Bay.
Okinawan scholar Masaki Tomochi has expressed alarm by what he perceives to be the imperialist tendencies of both the US & Japan. He is well aware of the suffering of local people:
“We think that US imperialism uses Japanese colonialism against us. The Japanese government made a security treaty with the US, & then the United States used Japan to force us, Okinawans, to accept the US military bases,” he explained.
There is no doubt that the bases are there to antagonize, to provoke China & North Korea, as well as Russia. Many believe that the WWIII could easily begin from Okinawa.
Geoffrey Gunn, a leading Australian historian & Professor emeritus at Nagasaki University, is concerned about Japan’s increasingly aggressive role in the region:
“All changed when the Abe government nationalized the Senkaku/Diaoyu [Islands]. The status quo changed because now Japan declares that there is actually no dispute over these so-called disputed islands. Therefore the Tokyo government has angered China. China is indignant with this change of the status quo.”
Japan, land of contradictions
For many years, Japan was able to boast of the smallest disparities between rich & poor anywhere in the world, as well as developing an incredibly compassionate social model. No matter how right wing some its rulers may have been, in many ways, Japan could easily pass as a ‘socialist’ country.
But there is one essential problem: It is ‘socialist’ only for its own people.
For decades, Japanese corporations have been behaving like colonialist thugs all over East Asia. For instance, I was told repeatedly that Japanese car manufacturers had destroyed many cities, corrupting local governments, forcing them not to build comprehensive public transportation systems. Now numerous megalopolises like Jakarta or Surabaya, which are choking on car & scooter fumes, lack a single subway line or light rail system.
The reason for this is largely explained by Japan’s efforts at indoctrinating Asian peoples with a pro-Western worldview. For decades, Japanese universities had been offering ‘scholarships’ to students from poor Southeast Asian nations. They would indoctrinate these students with pro-Western dogmas, breaking the revolutionary spirit, while converting young people to behave as servants of the Empire; essentially doing to other Asians what was done to the Japanese.
After being defeated in WWII, Japan eventually became loyal to its Western masters. Many Asian leaders, including former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, demanded that “Japan return to Asia.” It never did. It became rich during the Korean War, manufacturing goods & equipment for the Western military might. It continued doing the same during the Vietnam War. It is on the same course now.
David McNeill, Irish professor at the prestigious Sofia University in Tokyo, also works for the NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster. He is increasingly critical of the new, militarized & indoctrinated Japan:
They are rewriting text books; they skip through WWII, dedicating to it only 8 pages... Nationalism is rising. Naoki Hyakuta, a comedy writer, published a novel about Kamikaze fighters, entitled ‘Forever Zero’… The novel sold 5 million copies! You know that nothing sells 5 million copies in Japan!
“Abe read the book & loved it. He put him on board of directors of NHK! And the director of NHK is another right-wing thug. There is so much self-censorship in Japanese media, now. And the government is issuing ‘guidelines’, so called ‘Orange Book’, for instance: how to treat anything that is ‘contagious’... or anything related to history. There are instructions to writers & translators. For instance: ‘never use words like Nanking Massacre, except when you quote foreign experts’. Or ‘Yasukuni Shrine – never use word “controversial” in connection to it.’ We cannot write about ‘sexual slaves’ from WWII.”
I am also told that the Japanese public is given a one-sided interpretation of current affairs. When it comes to topics like Russia, Syria & China, Japanese people are made to consume Western propaganda exclusively.
“And they actually believe what the NHK says,” says David.
As we are implementing images from Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella Revolution’ into my film with Noam Chomsky, my film editor, Hata Takeshi, smiles:
“In Japan, people will not understand that the West is behind those ‘color revolutions’ & recent events in Hong Kong. Here, there is total consensus that HK was a movement for freedom & democracy. It is because there are hardly any alternative sources of information available.”
Even in the places like Abu Dhabi & Beirut, television channels like RT are available in every major hotel. Not in Japan. In all big international chains, it is mainly a diet of local channels, plus CNN, BBC & Fox.
Discontent with politics as usual
It appears that dissatisfaction with Japan’s present political course is visible everywhere, and not only in some small, anti-establishment circles. Former vice-president of a major civil engineering company, Segi Sakashi, 79 years old, recently expressed his outrage to me:
With an extremely close relationship with the US, & an antagonist approach towards Russia, China & others, Prime Minister Abe appears to be highhandedly bringing the country into military conflict with its neighbors, namely Korea & China, while the population is completely ignorant of this & stuck with ever shrinking social services.
“What is absurd & ridiculous about all this is that there does not exist any need whatsoever to antagonize our neighbors. China is one of the main trading partners of Japan. So is Korea. We have been growing (or shrinking) economically, through mutual gains & losses. Honestly, Abe is playing a very stupid game thinking that because of the 1960 Security Treaty with the US, we should be behaving like this.”
...
... Japan is working hard to support the West at the very moment when the West is pushing the world towards a possibly fatal confrontation with peaceful but mighty nations, like China & Russia.
For this, Japanese leaders are facing fury in many parts of Asia, but great support & admiration in the West. It is timely to recall the words of the great Japanese philosopher, Tenshin Okakura, who wrote more than 100 years ago in his work, ‘The Book of Tea’:
“The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another instance of the thousand-and-one oddities which constitute the quaintness & childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.”
The Asian continent would be delighted if Japan would stick to its tea ceremonies, especially after sending Prime Minister Abe to his ideological adopted homeland across Pacific Ocean.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker & investigative journalist. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” & “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. "Point of No Return" is his critically acclaimed political novel. Andre is making films for teleSUR & Press TV. Vltchek presently resides & works in East Asia & the Middle East.
As always, with these kinds of articles, I ask one question: Is this democracy? Would you consider Japan a democratic country when you come to know that a sizable majority of Japanese are against militarization of Japan & want nothing to do with America?
I specially loved the quotation from a Japanese philosopher, Tenshin Okakura, that “the average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another instance of the thousand-and-one oddities which constitute the quaintness & childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.”
That's always been the way for the West. You are a disease to the world as long as you are doing something good for your own people & which might be going against the wishes of the West, but you are civilized & appreciated profusely, if you are slaughtering thousands, as per the wishes of the West. Current case in point is full American support for Saudi Arabian war against Yemen. Past examples include American & British support of Saddam Hussein when he waged war against Iran, or the full support of Uganda's Idi Amin.
And there are many, many more examples of the West's full support of terrorists & despots around the world as long as the actions of those terrorists & despots support the vision of the West. As soon as those "terrorists" stop being subservient to the West, they are removed from power & replaced with another thug.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Japan is ready to change its post-war pacifist constitution; it is rapidly arming itself to the teeth, building battleships & purchasing fighter jets. Recruitment posters are everywhere. Meanwhile, Japan is standing - obediently & loyally - by its occupier & closest ally, the United States.
In light of the situation, one has to wonder what is really ‘nationalist’ about Abe? His loyalties appear to lie towards the West, particularly the US. Definitely not towards his own country & the Asian continent.
All that the US desires, Japan supports. Washington is dreaming about a ‘Pacific Century’, in which it would play a decisive role; it is relentlessly promoting its ‘Pivot to Asia’ doctrine, which envisions Japan firmly by its side, militarily & demagogically; it is pushing for 12-nations Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), & Japan claps.
Kuril Islands dilemma
In Wakkanai - the northernmost city in Japan from which the Russian island of Sakhalin can be seen - military radars & surveillance systems are humming & coastguard ships are standing by in the historic harbor, ready for action.
...
From the window of my hotel I can see Sakhalin, if weather allows. During the summer, two mighty sea vessels are shuttling Japanese tourists between Wakkanai & the Russian town of Korsakov, situated on Sakhalin Island. Russian fishing boats regularly visit Hokkaido Island, where there are cultural exchanges & even some trade.
In the Pechika restaurant, delicious Russian food is served, beer flows & Russian songs are sung (a popular tune is ‘A million red roses’). Across from the parking lot, the Fukakō-ichiba complex proudly displays old black-and-white photos from the days when Sakhalin, & in fact all of the Kuril Islands, belonged to Japan.
The islands constitute an issue that has never been resolved. Japanese propaganda is constantly repeating the claim that the Soviet Union grabbed the Kurils at the end of WWII. For decades Japan has been demanding their return.
But even in Wakkanai, not everyone is convinced that Russia should be compromising on the issue. A captain of a small Japanese fishing vessel explains:
“We have an extreme-right-wing prime minister here in Japan. He is very close to the US, a country that is antagonizing, & in fact most likely wants to destroy, both Russia & China. If the Kuril Islands & Sakhalin go back to Japan, they would be immediately converted into another Okinawa; full of US Air Force & naval bases, very near the Russian mainland.”
Some 3,000km away, the former ancient kingdom of Okinawa is living a continuous nightmare of occupation & consequent militarization. From here, thousands of US & Japanese aircraft regularly provoke China & North Korea. At the same time, local residents are outraged at the occupation as massive demonstrations shake the islands; people are demanding an end to the US military presence & want the US bases dismantled. But Abe’s government wants more US hardware, more runways & more war games.
I worked in Okinawa on 2 occasions. The last time was in 2013/14 when I was involved with a documentary film about the American bases, ‘Battle of Okinawa’, for South American network TeleSUR.
Douglas Lummis, an ex-US Air Force pilot who is now a writer & professor, explained the situation to me in the city of Nahu:
“Okinawa hosts about 75% of the American troops & American facilities in Japan. It's out of sight & out of mind of most of the Japanese people on the mainland. Okinawa is a thousand miles away from Tokyo, from the capital. If you talk to Okinawans they're angry & disappointed that for over 60 years now they’ve been asked to essentially shoulder the American-Japanese military alliance. The military alliance with America is also accompanied by what critics would say a subservient attitude towards Washington in general. Japan rarely balks against what Washington wishes on foreign policy.”
The bases are now expanding even to pristine parts of Okinawa, like Haneko Bay.
Okinawan scholar Masaki Tomochi has expressed alarm by what he perceives to be the imperialist tendencies of both the US & Japan. He is well aware of the suffering of local people:
“We think that US imperialism uses Japanese colonialism against us. The Japanese government made a security treaty with the US, & then the United States used Japan to force us, Okinawans, to accept the US military bases,” he explained.
There is no doubt that the bases are there to antagonize, to provoke China & North Korea, as well as Russia. Many believe that the WWIII could easily begin from Okinawa.
Geoffrey Gunn, a leading Australian historian & Professor emeritus at Nagasaki University, is concerned about Japan’s increasingly aggressive role in the region:
“All changed when the Abe government nationalized the Senkaku/Diaoyu [Islands]. The status quo changed because now Japan declares that there is actually no dispute over these so-called disputed islands. Therefore the Tokyo government has angered China. China is indignant with this change of the status quo.”
Japan, land of contradictions
For many years, Japan was able to boast of the smallest disparities between rich & poor anywhere in the world, as well as developing an incredibly compassionate social model. No matter how right wing some its rulers may have been, in many ways, Japan could easily pass as a ‘socialist’ country.
But there is one essential problem: It is ‘socialist’ only for its own people.
For decades, Japanese corporations have been behaving like colonialist thugs all over East Asia. For instance, I was told repeatedly that Japanese car manufacturers had destroyed many cities, corrupting local governments, forcing them not to build comprehensive public transportation systems. Now numerous megalopolises like Jakarta or Surabaya, which are choking on car & scooter fumes, lack a single subway line or light rail system.
The reason for this is largely explained by Japan’s efforts at indoctrinating Asian peoples with a pro-Western worldview. For decades, Japanese universities had been offering ‘scholarships’ to students from poor Southeast Asian nations. They would indoctrinate these students with pro-Western dogmas, breaking the revolutionary spirit, while converting young people to behave as servants of the Empire; essentially doing to other Asians what was done to the Japanese.
After being defeated in WWII, Japan eventually became loyal to its Western masters. Many Asian leaders, including former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, demanded that “Japan return to Asia.” It never did. It became rich during the Korean War, manufacturing goods & equipment for the Western military might. It continued doing the same during the Vietnam War. It is on the same course now.
David McNeill, Irish professor at the prestigious Sofia University in Tokyo, also works for the NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster. He is increasingly critical of the new, militarized & indoctrinated Japan:
They are rewriting text books; they skip through WWII, dedicating to it only 8 pages... Nationalism is rising. Naoki Hyakuta, a comedy writer, published a novel about Kamikaze fighters, entitled ‘Forever Zero’… The novel sold 5 million copies! You know that nothing sells 5 million copies in Japan!
“Abe read the book & loved it. He put him on board of directors of NHK! And the director of NHK is another right-wing thug. There is so much self-censorship in Japanese media, now. And the government is issuing ‘guidelines’, so called ‘Orange Book’, for instance: how to treat anything that is ‘contagious’... or anything related to history. There are instructions to writers & translators. For instance: ‘never use words like Nanking Massacre, except when you quote foreign experts’. Or ‘Yasukuni Shrine – never use word “controversial” in connection to it.’ We cannot write about ‘sexual slaves’ from WWII.”
I am also told that the Japanese public is given a one-sided interpretation of current affairs. When it comes to topics like Russia, Syria & China, Japanese people are made to consume Western propaganda exclusively.
“And they actually believe what the NHK says,” says David.
As we are implementing images from Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella Revolution’ into my film with Noam Chomsky, my film editor, Hata Takeshi, smiles:
“In Japan, people will not understand that the West is behind those ‘color revolutions’ & recent events in Hong Kong. Here, there is total consensus that HK was a movement for freedom & democracy. It is because there are hardly any alternative sources of information available.”
Even in the places like Abu Dhabi & Beirut, television channels like RT are available in every major hotel. Not in Japan. In all big international chains, it is mainly a diet of local channels, plus CNN, BBC & Fox.
Discontent with politics as usual
It appears that dissatisfaction with Japan’s present political course is visible everywhere, and not only in some small, anti-establishment circles. Former vice-president of a major civil engineering company, Segi Sakashi, 79 years old, recently expressed his outrage to me:
With an extremely close relationship with the US, & an antagonist approach towards Russia, China & others, Prime Minister Abe appears to be highhandedly bringing the country into military conflict with its neighbors, namely Korea & China, while the population is completely ignorant of this & stuck with ever shrinking social services.
“What is absurd & ridiculous about all this is that there does not exist any need whatsoever to antagonize our neighbors. China is one of the main trading partners of Japan. So is Korea. We have been growing (or shrinking) economically, through mutual gains & losses. Honestly, Abe is playing a very stupid game thinking that because of the 1960 Security Treaty with the US, we should be behaving like this.”
...
... Japan is working hard to support the West at the very moment when the West is pushing the world towards a possibly fatal confrontation with peaceful but mighty nations, like China & Russia.
For this, Japanese leaders are facing fury in many parts of Asia, but great support & admiration in the West. It is timely to recall the words of the great Japanese philosopher, Tenshin Okakura, who wrote more than 100 years ago in his work, ‘The Book of Tea’:
“The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another instance of the thousand-and-one oddities which constitute the quaintness & childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields.”
The Asian continent would be delighted if Japan would stick to its tea ceremonies, especially after sending Prime Minister Abe to his ideological adopted homeland across Pacific Ocean.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker & investigative journalist. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” & “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. "Point of No Return" is his critically acclaimed political novel. Andre is making films for teleSUR & Press TV. Vltchek presently resides & works in East Asia & the Middle East.
