From: masuda@fcs280b.ncifcrf.gov (Michiaki Masuda)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Japanese exprisoners of war
Date: 23 Jul 92 23:59:40 GMT
Organization: Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center

In article <604@wakasato.cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp> nakano@suncom1.cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp (NAKANO Yasuaki) writes:
>In article <AAO1dPgSg5@ibc2.irkutsk.su> loa@ibc2.irkutsk.su writes:
>>     Firm "Arkom" suggests a map  of  location  of  dead  Japanes
>>prisoners of  war,  which  were  internmented to the territory of
>>Irkutsk Region after the end of the Second World War.
>
>>     We'll consider the  question  about  selling  the  right  of
>>realisation of this map in Japan by mutually beneficial conditions.

>I strongly recommend you and "ARCOM" to abandon the project.
>
>Why most Japanese dislike the Soviet Union, or Russia ? 

   It may be true if you mean that Russia is not the most popular country 
among Japanese, but being a Japanese, I personally have never felt a distaste 
for Russia actively. (I'm not a communist if I should mention that.)
I have some friends from Moskow, Russia is one of the places that I want
to visit some day, and above all, I love borsch and piroschki 8-D.

>Of course, there is the problem of the four north islands. But the
>greatest reason will be in that SU attacked Japan violating the Peace 
>Treaty between Japan and SU, after the defeat of Japan became definite. 
>Moreover, SU employed surrendered Japanese soldiers as slaves in Siberia. 
>Many soldiers died in the hard labor. 

   These are probably historical facts although I cannot go in detail.
   However, if we said, "Russia is a bad country, and Russians are evil by
nature because their previous generation did something wrong to our
previous generation," that would be the same logic as the one by which 
we are criticized by our neighbors. I can understand the emotional
background of this logic, but I don't think it is very constructive.
   
>You are just planning to earn money
>utilizing the sad event.

   I agree that it is not ethical to take advantage of someone else's
unhappiness or bereavement.

   However, the more profound problem, I think, is that they assumed that
there may be some Japanese or Japanese companies that would be interested 
in making money that way. If I'm allowed to use an old cliche, "Economic
Animal" is still the prevailing reputation of our nation. What people
associate with the word "Japan" would be, in most cases, SONY, Panasonic, 
Honda, Toyota, Nikon, SEIKO etc. and some other economy-related matters.
By looking at what Japan has done for the last few decades, those Russians
might expect that their offer would be reasonable. Well, actually, there may 
be some Japanese who started to negotiate with them although I hope that is
not the case.

   I don't say that the economic prosperity of Japan is something negative.
It is something that we should be proud of, and I believe that it has been
achieved largely due to a solid and sound motivation, diligence, and hard-
working all of which are based on a good ethics. The problem is that only
the commercial products and a negative part of our ethics flooded all over 
the world while a minimal or no effort was made to demonstrate a positive 
aspect of our culture.

   I think that Japan has now become a country that can afford the cost of
exporting our culture and philosophy. In order for us to be accepted in
doing that, we should probably try to improve their quality even more
as we did for an automobile.

Michiaki Masuda   
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan