A Forbidden Phrase Resurfaces

"Hakko ichi-u" (八紘一宇) is found in the Nihon Shoki, the words of the prayer "ama no shita oite is to nasamu" (掩八紘而爲宇) the ancient era Emperor Jimmu is reported to have said at his accession.

(By the way, Foundation Day, February 11, is the day of Emperor Jimmu's accession.)

This "Hakko ichi-u", in simple terms, "Shall I not found a nation where all can live together as one family?"

The text "Building of a Nation" (建国) written in Showa 13 [1938] says:

"Hakko ichi-u" means that the whole world should be tied together as though one family. What that means is as in a single family, the strongest member does not exploit the weakest. In a family the system is that the strongest works for the weakest. Has this been the basic principle demonstrated in standard international behavior? No, standard international behavior has been "the strong devour the weak as prey." Strong countries exploit the weak. Anything is allowed, based upon strength. A strong country thrives; the weaker races are laid low. When throughout the whole world a system is put in place where the very strongest countries work for the weak nations and weak races, that is when the world will know peace. Japan has become the strongest of countries, where the hearts of all that stand in between Heaven and Earth beat as one. Is it not commanded that we work on behalf of the weaker races? (1)

It is not often that Minister of Finance Aso Taro is struck speechless. He almost never intimidated by a microphone. More often than not, Aso Taro's tongue and public manner are way too loose, resulting in outrageous, off-the-cuff bombshells that are the despair of his bureaucrat handlers.

On Monday, March 16, however, Aso Taro was struck speechless. Well, not exactly speechless, just wishing desperately, hopelessly, in sweating, head-shaking abandon that he could find a way to get away from a microphone WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING.


Mihara Junko, House of Councillors Budget Committee Session, 16 March 2015

LDP member of the House of Councillors Mihara Junko has been turning heads since she was 13 years old. In that year she appeared in her first television drama. Her reward for her precociousness was getting herself kicked out of her elite private school, having not cleared her appearance beforehand. She finished her middle school years in a public school.

Two years later, Mihara dropped out of high school when she rocketed to fame as a cold-blooded juvenile delinquent in a television drama. Her character's explanation on how to properly abuse a victim

"Not the face. The face is bad. Do it to the body, the body."

became a catchphrase for calculated evil, famous enough for Mihara to reprise as a joke in a personal healthcare product ad years later:



At 16 she began a singing career. Her debut single "Sexy Night" (no, I am not making this up. Here is the cover)



was a surprising (?) hit. Her burst of hit singles landed her a place on NHK's end-of-the-year Kohaku Gassen program two years later.

From then until her marriage in 1999 Mihara appeared in numerous acting roles, though always seemingly typecast as either the villain or the evil accomplice. She was also a much sought after model and product spokesperson.

In 1991, she took up competitive auto racing (again, I am not making this up):



Over seven years she compiled a record of 23 finishes out of 31 starts in three different car classes, her highest finish being a 9th place in 1995 (Link). Her driving career also reportedly featured seven accidents resulting in broken bones.

In 1999, Mihara married television celebrity and talent agency manager Coala (real name: Miyatani Nobuya) and settled down to what she must have thought would obscurity with her husband as the breadwinner.

In 2007, however, her husband's talent agency went bankrupt. The couple divorced (as it turns out, it was to be her husband who was to fade into obscurity. Nikkan Gendai found him in 2014 running a production company organizing shows at shopping malls). A year later, Mihara was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had a complete hysterectomy to save her life.

Recovery from cancer transformed Mihara. She became an activist for women's health issues, primarily the free provision of the HPV vaccine. It is in this role of health activist that she won international recognition. (Link)

The political recruiters came knocking, and soon. In addition to her fame, her inspirational story of cancer survival, her looks (she caused a stir when she had her face remade on camera, having botox, laser spot removal and minor facial surgery done live) Mihara had also revealed herself to be a rock-ribbed conservative. She said (and continues to say) all kinds of internationallly problematic things about comfort women, about the Asahi Shimbun and about Yasukuni (she pays her respects at the Spring and Autumn festivals as well as on August 15). She is against separate surnames for married couples (Link - J) -- kind of surprising, given her former profession and divorce.

On Monday, Mihara was the seventh and penultimate questioner in a session of House of Councillors Budget Committee session. Sitting in the front row of the seats reserved for Cabinet members were Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Finance Minister Aso Taro, Economics Minister Amari Akira and Rural Revitalization Minister Ishiba Shigeru. They waited for the questions Mihara was to put to them.

They waited a long time. Mihara began with a long and pretentious speech about the social and government response to the Jogan Earthquake in 869 CE. It seemed a bit of a stretch to start out with a tale of Emperor Seiwa reducing taxes in the affected provinces of Mutsu and Dewa (the modern Tohoku) in a question time session supposedly about getting tough on corporations. However the tale of Emperor Seiwa's response to an earlier Tohoku disaster did set up Mihara's introduction of the supposed Emperor Jimmu prayer for hakko ichi-u as a model of modern international behavior.

Mihara's hobby horse, upon which she was to ride into controversy, is corporate tax avoidance. For her (and for many others, all around the world) it is wrong for "companies like Amazon to make use of Japan's infrastructure and yet pay no taxes to maintain it." It is also wrong in Mihara's view (and again, for many, many others) that corporations can claim tax exemptions through legal but clearly spurious corporate registrations in places such as the Cayman Islands and Guernsey.

It was in this context that Mihara introduced, or reintroduced, the phrase hakko ichi-u. Would it not be better, she asked Finance Minister Aso Taro, if the global standard of corporate behavior be one of hakko ichi-u, where the strongest corporations play the role of leaders and protectors and providers in their countries? She then read out the passage, paraphased in the blog post above, from Shimizu Kentaro's Kenkoku (1938).

Aso Taro is not a man necessary familiar with the thought of economic and social writers of the pre-war era. He knows when to steer clear of the land mines of public discourse, though.

The phrase hakko ichi-u is one of those landmines. While the text at the top of this post exhibits an admirable desire for a post-imperialist world of the strong defending the weak (a world which we live in now, more or less) the final two sentences of the passage foreshadow the interpretation of the phrase favored by pre-1945 Japanese leaders and intellectuals. For those running and leading in Japan in 1938, hakko ichi-u was the justification for the presence of Japanese soldiers and colonists in Korea, Manchuria, China and the South Pacific. Japan was not invading or occupying these non-Japanese territories of East Asia. It was protecting them, in the stern and possessive way a father protects members of his family, from the invading forces of the western imperialists. (Link - J)

Since 1945, the phrase hakko ichi-u has been toxic and explosive. How explosive? The U.S. Occupation directive ordering the dismantlement of State Shinto has a specific ban on the use in public documents of two phrases. One is of those phrases is Daito'a senso - "the Great East Asia War." The other is hakko ichi-u. (Link - J)

For an equivalent event, think of the response if a member of the Christian Democratic Union were to ask the Labor Minister, in a live televised Bundesrat session, about modification in Germany's apprenticeship programs, with this:

"You know, we used to have a phrase in this country 'Arbeit Macht Frei' that really expresses the liberating feeling of being involved in gainful employment. Mr. Minister, what do you think of this idea as a model for our contemporary era?"

To Mihara Junko's blithe resurrection of a forbidden and fraught phrase, the normally loquacious Aso Taro could only offer a spluttering, shuddering response:

Well, uh, there were only two of use here (gesture) born before the end of World War II. Uuhhhh. There isn't anyone else here I think. Uh, there is standing in Miyazaki Prefecture a so-called Hakko Ichi-u tower. Noone from Miyazaki Prefecture here? (gesture). There is a hakko ichi-u tower, isn't there? You don't know yes or no? Well, uh, oh, Fukushima-san [former leader of the Socialist Party Fukushima Mizuho - Ed.] you know about it? I have no connection to Miyazaki Prefecture but uh hakko ichi-u is that kind of thing, you know.

You see they brought all these stones from every prefecture of Japan, piled them all up and called it hakko ichi-u, and it is in Miyazaki Prefecture, I think...and it appears in pre-1945 songs, like in Ike, hakko to ie nashi and such...there are lots of such songs. Anyway, that there was this kind of thing where, well it was one kind of mainstream thought, I think.

As for myself, well, you know...hmm, how to say this...because this was in a world of more than 1500 years ago, where if one is going to say anything, what we call the country of Japan today, that country, when saying the same word is the same place, for any place other than Japan of these emperors of the unbroken line back to the beginning of time, it's not applicable. Other than Japan there is probably not a country that exists now that existed before the 10th century when Denmark appeared, or thereabouts... where in the 5th century the Nihon Shoki existed as a document written in a foreign language and the Kojiki existed as a document written in the Japanese language, a well established nation state...well there aren't any. That the country has continued to exist in this form, uninterrupted is perhaps what this Mr. Shimizu was trying to say in his writing.

That a person of Mihara-sensei's generation would have this is as a way of thinking, is frankly astonishing to me. (2)

Aso then strode away from the dais, quickly.

The monument to which Minister Aso referred does exist. It is, as he surmised, in Miyazaki Prefecture. It was built in 1939 for the 2,600th anniversary celebration of the accession of the Emperor Jimmu, a 1940 event remembered by few now living. A few years back Kenneth Ruoff of Arizona revisited the all-encompassing commemoration in his Imperial Japan at Its Zenith (2010).

And as you can see in the top photograph and on the website for the park, the incongruously named Heiwadai Koen ("Peace Plateau Park" - Link - J), the monument is a stunning, sinister, Brutalist Angkor Wattish stone tower, with the phrase prominently displayed on the front.

Gotta go there someday. Really.

Here, by way of reference, is the Asahi Shimbun's English language version of the story (Link). I disagree with their characterization of Aso's response. In the archived video on House of Councillors Television (Link - J), Aso looks absolutely furious about being questioned on hakko ichi-u.


Later - Many thanks to reader MK for the link to the Heiwadai Koen website.

Later still - Thanks to reader JK for pointing out that Ken Ruoff is at Portland State. (Link)


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1)「八紘一宇」というのは、『日本書紀』において、初代神武天皇が即位の折りに「掩八紘而爲宇」（あまのしたおおひていえとなさむ）とおっしゃったことに由来する言葉です。
（※2月11日の建国記念日が、神武天皇が即位したとされる日）。

この「八紘一宇」とは、簡単に言えば、「ひとつの家族のように仲良く暮らして行ける国にしていこうではないか」ということなのですが、昭和13年に書かれた「建国」という書物によりますと、

『八紘一宇とは、世界が一家族のように睦(むつ)み合うこと。一宇、即ち一家の秩序は一番強い家長が弱い家族を搾取するのではない。一番強いものが弱いもののために働いてやる制度が家である。これは国際秩序の根本原理をお示しになったものであろうか。現在までの国際秩序は弱肉強食である。強い国が弱い国を搾取する。力によって無理を通す。強い国はびこって弱い民族をしいたげている。世界中で一番強い国が、弱い国、弱い民族のために働いてやる制度が出来た時、初めて世界は平和になる。日本は一番強くなって、そして天地の万物を生じた心に合一し、弱い民族のために働いてやらねばならぬぞと仰せられたのであろう。』ということです。

Mihara Junko blog post "Hakko ichi-u to wa." Retrieved at http://ameblo.jp/juncomihara/entry-12002521691.html

2)

もうここで戦前生まれの方というのは、2人くらいですかね、あの、他におられないと思いますけど、これは、今でも宮崎県に行かれると八紘一宇の塔というのが立っております。宮崎県の人、いない？　八紘一宇の塔あるだろ？　知ってるかどうか知らないけど。ねえ、福島（みずほ）さんでも知っている。宮崎県関係ないけど、八紘一宇っていうのは、そういうものだったんですよ。

で、日本中から各県の石を集めましてね、その石を全部積み上げて八紘一宇の塔っていうのが宮崎県に立っていると思いますが、戦前の中で出た歌の中でもいろいろ「往け、八紘を宇（いえ）となし」とか、いろいろ歌がありますけれども、そういったもののなかにあってひとつのメインストリームの考え方のひとつなんだと私はそう思いますけれども。

私どもはやっぱり…なんでしょうねえ…やっぱり世界の中で1500年以上も前から、少なくとも国として今の日本という国の、同じ場所に同じ言語を喋って、万世一系天皇陛下というような国というのは他にありませんから。日本以外でこれらができているのは10世紀以降にできましたデンマークくらいがその次くらいで、5世紀から少なくとも「日本書紀」という外交文書を持ち、「古事記」という和文の文書を持ってきちんとしている国ってそうないんで。そこに綿々と流れているのはたぶんこういったような考え方であろうということで、この清水（芳太郎）さんという方が書かれたんだと思いますけれども。

こういった考え方をお持ちの方が三原先生みたいな世代におられるのに、ちょっと正直驚いたのが実感です。

Huffington Post, "'Hakko ichi-u' to wa nani ka? Mihara Junko giin ga hatsugen shita kotoba wa GHQ ga kinshi shite ita." Retrieved at http://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2015/03/17/hakko-ichiu_n_6883314.html.

An Absence Of Celebration

On Monday, the 62nd anniversary of the end of Allied Occupation of the Japan main islands, State Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi paid her first visit of the year to Yasukuni Shrine, accompanied by eight members of her Tradition and Innovation Association (pictured).

Nothing really significant or surprising, really. Inada pays a visit to Yasukuni every year on Sovereignty Day. (Link - J)

What is amazing?

After their visit, Inada and her associates had nothing else to do.

Somehow, the government of Abe Shinzo, purported fervent nationalist and diehard enemy of the Occupation's reforms of Japanese society, did not have a Sovereignty Day celebration this year, after putting on the Ritz last year. (Link)

There seems to have not even been a repeat of the private loony fest (Link) in the afternoon either.

Somehow, somewhere the national day of remembrance worthy of not just a speech but indeed an oration (Link) was not worthy of even a hip, hip hurrah.

This absence of overt celebration would not have anything to do with imperial unhappiness with the impromptu, fervid banzais last year, would it? (Link - J video)

Because I cannot think the the lack of pageantry is only because celebrating the 1952 return of sovereignty to the main islands ticks off the Okinawans, who were under occupation until 1972. (Link - J)


Photo courtesy: Inada Tomomi Facebook page.

Suggested Exhibition #2

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Ogikubo Station on the Chuo Line and have a few minutes to spare, you might want to walk up to the Suginami Historical Museum's Amanuma Branch Museum (Suginami kuritsu kyodo hakubutsukan bunkan) for a tiny exhibit of mass-produced toys and toy making in the period prior to, during and immediately after the Occupation.

The impact of the march to war upon the toys children play with is not something that often comes to mind when one considers the social history of the Meiji, Taisho and early Showa periods. Big changes came not just the permissible and suggested themes of play but in the materials as well, with metal disappearing from toy making very early during Japan's adventure on the continent, the tin and iron sucked up into industrial production for the war. By the very end, toy makers were reduced to making toys out of celluloid and thin strips of bamboo.

Particularly fascinating are the pair of Occupation era propaganda films on the postwar birth of a workshop toy making industry. Waste (empty tin cans) from the U.S. military's canteens and clubs became the raw material for an almost entirely hand-powered process producing toy cars for export.

A whole world of asides ("And into tin toys beat our trash/nations shall learn war no more"; "Japanese were exporting cars only a few years after the surrender, only these were made of tin"; "Yeah, and that must have been the last time an American bigshot could be smiling at a display of Japanese cars ready for export"...) come to mind as one watches the films, which are showing in a continuous loop on the video monitor next to the staircase.

Lovers of historical irony will probably like the jellied alcohol-fueled model nuclear power station in the later postwar section of the exhibit, as well as toys of the 1930s proclaiming Japan's military might.

The exhibit runs through December 1. There are special programs on the 20th of this month and on November 3.

Information on the bunkan (Japanese only) can be found here.

The Hashist In The Lion's Den

What should be the hottest ticket in the TMD, if it is not already? Osaka City mayor and Nippon Ishin no Kai co-leader Hashimoto Toru's appearance at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on Monday. (Link)

Hashimoto intends to confront or put up a huge show of confronting foreign prejudice. He will try to deflect outward his comments earlier this month excusing the Japanese Imperial Army's sanctioned brothel system (the ianfu seido, a.k.a., the "comfort women system") and decrying the lack of U.S. military personnel patronage at Okinawa's sexual services establishments. He will try to paint everyone as black, then ask why Japanese citizens -- and by extension Hashimoto Toru -- have been singled out for criticism.

It is likely that Hashimoto will see a measure of success in his quixotic quest. He is a lawyer, which means his capacity for spewing reasonable-sounding nonsense is near infinite. He also a veteran of the pressure cooker world of "wide-show" infotainment programs, as well as of years standing before the microphones in hot pursuit of public office. He has honed a supercilious, in-your-face, bullying style that crushes most questioners, even the experienced journalists.

If I were present at Monday's session, and was given the grace of a moment at the microphone, what would I ask him?

I guess I would question the assumption that war makes men beasts in heat:

"Hashimoto-sensei, let me read to you what you said on the 13th of this month:

'Amidst a storm of flying of bullets, when you are trying arrange rest and relaxation for groups whose members are all wound up psychologically, the sanctioned brothel system is a necessity. Anyone can understand this.'

Are you not making the situation sound a lot more out-of-control and sexier than reality? Were not the patrons of comfort stations mostly assigned to boring garrison duty? Was not the 'Recreation and Amusement Association' created after Japan's surrender in order to procure women not for troops psychologically wound up by a storm of bullets but instead Occupation forces doing desk work and guard duty in a pacified and flying-bullet-free Japan? How did you come to accept occupying forces taking advantage of country's military and economic domination by using its women as sex toys to be instead a kind of sexual psychotherapy treating potential sociopaths? And what is the basis for your belief, seeing as how you have no personal experience of military life?"

Too long. Too complex. I know.

Still I would love to hear his response.

Original image courtesy: Sankei Shimbun

Politics and Poetry: Senryu For The Week Of March 23, 2013 - The Shrieking Begins

It is hard not to applaud, if only while shaking one's head, at the performance of the Abe Administration and the Liberal Democratic Party. Against all odds and all expectations they have steamrollered all opposition to their policy program. The equities, bond and currency markets have sung a tune that the an informed but uncritical lay person can hum, with the unsurprising result of public support for the Cabinet and the party rising ever higher in public opinion polls. (Link - J)

Every single thing Abe and his party have sought to make happen has happened. Unless there is some extraordinary reversal of fortune between now and election day, Abe's LDP will sweep the district and the proportional races, leaving out of courtesy – not necessity—a smattering of seats to their electoral allies, the New Komeito.

With the seeming inevitability of a landslide and the prospects of an Abe administration unleashed following a massive victory in the July elections, the tone of the comic verse published in my Saturday newspaper have taken a decidedly uncomic turn.

国あげて
あとはしらぬと
花見酒

Kuni agete
Ato wa shiranu to
Hanamizake

All over the country
No knowledge of that which is to come
The sake of cherry blossom viewing

It is cherry blossom viewing season (at an unseasonably early time, yet another brick in the wall of worry for those of us wishing a livable planet for our children) and indulging to excess on alcohol is a part of the festivities. However, the oblivion described is far from blissful. The lack of knowledge of the future refers not just to loss of fear of the future from drunkenness but also to the quick scattering of the cherry blossoms, who know no future because they have none. The "All over the country" furthermore does not refer just the geographical space but the people of Japan, who are drinking themselves into a stupor because they do not want to know the future.

労組より
鶴一声で
勝ち取れる

Roso yori
Tsuru hitokoe de
Kachitoreru

Rather than the labor unions
From the voice of ultimate power (one call of the crane)
Comes conquest

It has been the time of the ritualized spring struggle (shunto) in between the labor unions and the managements of the major corporations. The remuneration rate rises won by the major unions become the standard for remuneration in all businesses.

As has been the case for longer than anyone wishes to contemplate, labor union requests for dramatically higher wages – i.e., a sharing of the profits the corporations have made through long term cost-cutting and the recent fall of the yen – have been turned down by corporate executives, even with the Abe government encouraging corporations to be more generous. (Link)

The crane voice of Tsusu hitokoe de is not the crane’s cry of classical poetry, which is associated with a love of one’s children and one’s homeland. Instead it is the voice of ultimate, unquestionable authority (in this cases, the CEOs of the corporations). With a single utterance, it ends all conversation.

オスプレイ
頭上に祝う
主権の日

Osupurei
zujo ni iwau
shuken no hi

Ospreys
overhead celebrate
the day of return of our sovereignty

The LDP in its December 2012 election manifesto promised to establish a national day of remembrance of Japan’s Occupation. On March 12, the Cabinet ratified the establishment of a public commoration, choosing April 28, the anniversary of the entry into effect of the San Francisco peace treaty, as the day. While shuken no hi will not be a national holiday, there will be a formal government ceremony with the emperor in attendance
.
The establishment of this day of national liberation has understandably infuriated Okinawans, for whom April 28 is a day of shame. (Link)

The author of the senryu mocks the pretentions of the Abe administration, pointing out that the same week the Cabinet established a day celebrating the end of the Occupation, U.S. Forces Japan began conducting training flights of the highly controversial V22A Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft over Japan’s main islands.

公約と
詐欺と分かるも
時遅し

Koyaku to
sagi to wakaru mo
toki ososhi

Even if you can differentiate
campaign promises from fraud
it's too late

One cannot get more negative than insinuating the campaign promises of the ruling party are fraud (sagi).

The negative view of the author is nevertheless one very much of the minority. Cabinet approval is riding high at over 70%. When voters who support the Cabinet are asked why they are doing so, an overwhelming (possibly historic) majority say, "faith in the Cabinet's policies."

The popularity of the government's programs and the reality that the election has already happened prompt the bitter final line of toki ososhi -- translatable as "It's too late for that now" or "That ship has sailed."

The sense of hopelessness reached its apogee this week in the poem that the editors of my local paper published at the top of their weekly feature of poems sent in by readers.

あんなにも
反対したのに
もう賛成

Anna ni mo
hantai shita no ni
mo sansei

After opposing it
So much
You are now agreeing to it

In contrast to the topicality of most senryu, the lead poem is transcendent, without a clear link to a specific incident or government act. It might be a reference to the Democratic Party of Japan's voting in favor of the appointment of former Finance Ministry bureaucrat Kuroda Katsuhiko as Governor of the Bank of Japan five years after the DPJ provoked a major crisis in rejecting two Finance Ministry old boys for the post. Then again, the author may be referring to another betrayal of conscience.

Very possibly the author is making a sweeping accusation of all, cursing all for surrendering to the new regime, abandoning principles and beliefs without a fight.

Imperator

Hmmm...Tommy Lee Jones as General Douglas MacArthur...with a script seemingly by someone from the George Lucas School of Overstating the Obvious (There is a right time to set a spark to a powder keg?)

(Link - video comes on in a few seconds' time)

Strangely, I do not think that MacArthur would have had any problem in knowing what to say to a god.

As for guessing games, Nishida Toshiyuki, who has been running himself ragged crusading for his native Fukushima, plays...I'm guessing, Yoshida Shigeru?

Ibu Masato plays...the Showa Emperor?

Nakamura Masatoshi (featured in the clip) plays...an impossibly wooden and black-haired Shirasu Jiro?

The film opens in U.S. theaters on March 8. Japan release will not be until the summer. (Link - J)

Speaking of Tommy Lee Jones -- his BOSS commercials in the wake of 3/11, where Mr. Jones signs up for another stint on Earth, were uplifting at a hard time for this blessed land -- a damn difficult thing for a canned coffee commercial to be.

Japan's Strange Ally

Let me see if I have this straight.

After World War II, the United States occupies all of Japan.

In 1952, it ends the Occupation of the main islands but continues to occupy the Ogasawara Islands (the Bonin Islands, according to the Unites States Geological Survey) and the Okinawan Islands, including, at the time, the Senkaku Islands (the Senkaku-shoto, according to the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency) -- the last of which the U.S. Air Force and Navy use for bombing practice.

In 1968, the U.S. returns the Ogasawaras to Japan.

In 1972, the U.S. returns the Okinawan Islands, including the Senkakus, to Japan.

Now in 2012, the United States government says that it takes no sides on issue of sovereignty over the Senkakus.

Uh...yes do...