Well Isn't That Interesting

In his extremely fair article on Prime Minister Abe's paying tribute to Radhabinod Pal during his last Asia tour, Norimitsu Onishi of The New York Times manages to dig up another Indian gentleman with interesting Japan connections:

In many ways, Judge Pal seemed to share the mixed feelings that many Indian anticolonialists had of Japan. As an Asian nation competing with the Western powers, Japan inspired admiration, but also consternation for its colonization of Asia, said Sugata Bose, a historian of South Asia at Harvard.

Mr. Bose said his great-uncle Subhash Chandra Bose, the Indian independence movement leader, criticized Japan’s invasion of China but allied himself with Japan against the British.

“It is a complex view from South and Southeast Asia,” Mr. Bose said. “There is some degree of gratitude for the help that the Japanese provided, to the extent that such help was provided. At the same time, there was also grave suspicion of Japan.”

Still, Subhash Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, a popular armed force formed by Indian anticolonialists, accepted assistance from Japan.

The grandnephew of S. C. Bose is a professor of South Asian history at Harvard.

The grandson of Manchukuo's biggest boss, a prime minister of Japan, gets to spend some quality time the grandson of Judge Pal--when he is not reminding GW of the time his grandpa and GW's grandpa played a round with the President of the United States.

The great grandson of the killer of General Charles George "Chinese" Gordon is an Oxford-educated member of all the best talk shops.

A English-fluent thinktanker from Moscow comes to visit. Despite the pleasant smiles, I cannot shake the sense of hard steel beneath the flesh. I google his name afterward and find out he is the grandson of one Stalin's longtime henchmen.

History lives on, walks amongst us--and it freaks me out.