Mr. Abe

I know that I should be careful when I speak or write English, making sure to avoid any misunderstanding due to my limited English ability. Especially, when I talk about politics, I need to be extremely mindful of what I am going to say, because the views on touchy issues easily offend other people and your ideas about political matters would be critical factor through which people understand what kind of person you are, even though it is not crucial. So here I am talking about politics, I should be very aware of that.

As for our prime minister, Mr. Abe, he is, I would say respectfully, a fucking arsehole. I don’t know much about English words, but I would tend to say politely, he is conceited, pompous, self-righteous, suburban, small-minded, chauvinistic, curtain-twitching snob. All the things he has done so far as prime minister are crock of shit.

Whenever he opens his mouth, he talks about the beautiful country. To make Japan a beautiful country is his watchword. Although I have never TOUCHED it, he published the book, “Toward a beautiful country” last year, which immediately became the best-seller. But how could you make your country beautiful by whitewashing your own history?

The other day, Minister of Education has publicized their screening results for new textbooks, which will be put on use from next April at junior and senior high schools. The most contentious point is that screeners virtually ordered the authors of history textbooks to delete all the phrases that said that the Imperial Japanese Army forced residents of Okinawa to commit mass-suicide during the World WarⅡ.

It is a historical fact that during the war about 200,000 people, including 12,500 U.S soldiers, died in Okinawa, which constituted almost one-quarter of the population. This is widely considered as the result of Army’s strategy that Okinawa needed to be sacrificed to delay American invasion into Japanese mainland. It is also a historical fact that the Army indoctrinated their subjects not to fall into enemy’s hands, rather to choose the death when the time comes in order to avoid any humiliation. “Never be subject to humiliation as the captives” was our cardinal slogan at that time. In some cases, they handed out hand grenades to local residents for final moment, and in other cases, they coerced residents into small caves and threw grenades into them. At lease, that’s what I learned in school.

Here is an example for their trick.

・ (original) “Japanese forces made residents commit mass suicide and kill one another using hand grenades that the Japanese forces has distributed.”

・ (after screening) “Using hand grenades that Japanese forces had distributed, mass suicide and the killing of one another took place”.

・ (original) “There were many incidents in which prefectural residents were forced to commit mass suicide and infants were killed by Japanese forces because they were considered an impediment to military combat and …(prefectural residents) were killed because they were suspected (by Japanese forced) of being collaborators.”

・ (after screening) “There were many incidents in which prefectural residents were driven to mass suicide because they were considered an impediment to military combat and…infants were killed by Japanese forces and (prefectural residents) were killed on suspicion (by Japanese forces) of being collaborators.”


When students read this sentence in their textbook, they would wonder why Japanese forces had distributed hand grenades. So how would you answer to that question?

According to The Japan Times, screeners assessed the textbooks from the viewpoint of whether specific Japanese army units issued concrete orders for mass suicide. Oh! Give me a break! Who has a power to hide or burn or conceal or whatever such documents? If there is no concrete evidence, would you ignore voices of survivors or brave ex-soldiers who stepped forward to depict what they had done or what they were ordered?

By taking the narrowest approach to contentious issues and trying to extenuating or even sugarcoating our unfavorable history, our current government is taking the exactly same path regarding Okinawa as Sax-slavery issues. While they claim that there is no evidence “in a narrow sense” that the Imperial Japanese Army coerced women in other countries into sax-slaves, they announced their sincere sorry for the victimized women. How could you be trusted through this insincere way?

Governing a country is not something like domestic chore, I think. You can’t clean up and make it beautiful by whitewashing your history, nor get any trust from your neighbours. As long as Mr. Abe couldn’t get that point, my vocabulary will be piling up to the ceiling, only certain kind of negative words though.