KO BUNYU’S
DEFINING HISTORY
A macroscopic analysis of the differences among the histories
of East Asian nations: Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea

By KO BUNYUSociety for the Dissemination of Historical Fact ©

1

Table of Contents
FOREWORD
CHAPTER 1: DEFINING HISTORY
1. Perceptions vs. facts
2. A strict definition of “perception”
3. Using perception and self-preservation to create a common denominator
4. Historical accounts endure when events attract interest
5. Different cultures have different attitudes toward history
6. The role of the self in historical perception
7. Why comparison is necessary to find meaning
8. The deeds of people influenced by historical perception
9. How geopolitics affects historical events
10. Historical theory and historical perception

CHAPTER 2: PRINCIPLES OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Yellow River Civilization: the main source of Chinese culture
Beyond nations to the world
The significance of war as the essence of Chinese civilization
The logically flawed political theory behind dynastic revolution
Common characteristics of people and subjects
Comparison of “national civilizations” with other modern nations

CHAPTER 3: THE BRUTAL HISTORY OF CHINESE WARFARE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Chinese warfare in ancient times
Early Chinese “monuments”
Ho Jing initiates a massacre in Nanjing
Tang dynasty: the golden age of cannibalism
Warfare in the Ming dynasty
Qing dynasty and the Chinese civilization
China after the Xinhai Revolution

CHAPTER 4: JAPANESE HISTORY: PROGRESS WITHOUTMURDER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Japan viewed from an archeological perspective
The Jinshin War: Major conflict arising from imperial succession dispute
Taking of life anathema to Japanese culture
Defining bushido
No tradition of cannibalism in JapanCHAPTER 5: EMPEROR SYSTEM PAVES WAY FOR PEACEFULPROGRESS IN JAPAN1.

Japan’s first emperors

2

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Japan’s emperors in the Middle Ages
Emperors during the Edo era
Emperor helps surmount crisis in last days of Shogunate
The Meiji Renovation: A grand achievement
The Charter Oath and the Meiji Constitution
Strange explications of the current Constitution

CHAPTER 6: HOW JAPAN CAN WIN THE HISTORY WARSINSTIGATED BY CHINA
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Why Japan must not lose the history wars
Acquire the ability to develop a broad historical perspective
Efforts to win the history wars begin at home
Utilize the UN and other international organizations
Resolve territorial disputes at the UN
Appeal for an end to history wars
Beyond history wars

3

FOREWORD
A multitude of factors color our historical perceptions. Some of them are nationality,
ethnicity, culture, religion, and our best interests. Furthermore, the historicalperceptions of individuals and groups may change, influenced by world trends or thepassage of time.
In Japan there has been dissent over perceptions of postwar history. The same is true of
Taiwan, whose government approves history textbooks. The revision of history textbooks
has given rise to unrest. For instance, in the 1990s a group of mainland Chinese launched
an attack at a public event intended to explain the reasons for revising Taiwan’s history
textbooks. When Lee Teng-hui was president of Taiwan (1988-2000), the principal of a
middle school that employed mainland Chinese refused to adopt a new civics textbook.
Japan’s high school students pour all their energy into preparations for college entrance
examinations. But in 2014-15 the attention of Taiwanese university students was drawn
to the publication of pro-PRC history textbooks. Their reaction was to form the Sunflower
Movement, whose advocates occupied the Legislative Yuan; high school students soon
followed their example.
Postwar North and South Korea share the same history, culture, ethnicity, and language.
Nevertheless, each nation has conflicting interpretations and perceptions of Korean
history, from the Kingdom of Goryeo (918-1392) to the Kingdom of Joseon (1392-1897).
The most extreme manifestation of the conflict is both nations’ refusal to recognize theother’s existence, despite the fact that both are members of the United Nations. The
Japanese government, too, has been browbeaten into refusing to recognize North Korea,
instead accepting the South’s unrealistic claim that the North Korea is part of South
Korea! And of course there is disagreement among political parties in South Korea overhistorical fact, historical interpretation, and historical perception. North Korea
sympathizers and conservatives are polar opposites.
One of the more famous disputes pits Korea against the PRC over Goguryeo (37 BC-668
AD), namely, which country’s history it belongs in.
Opposition over the historical perception of China (both the PRC and Taiwan) has been
raging from several thousands of years. Now that we have entered into the modern era,
there is opposition not only between the CPC (Communist Party of China) and theChinese Nationalist Party of Taiwan, but also within the CPC about how the Cultural
Revolution (1966-76) is to be characterized. CPC factions finally agreed upon “decade ofturbulence.” Historical evaluations of Mao Zedong are currently evenly divided between
positive and negative.
Shitong (Historical Perspectives) compiled by Liu Siji between 708 and 710, recognizes
both the Northern and Southern dynasties as legitimate. However, in Zizhi tongjian(Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government), published in 1084, historian Sima Guang
affords legitimacy only to the Southern Dynasty. The fifth Qing emperor, Yongzheng, whoreigned between 1723 and 1735, wrote Dayi juemilu (A Record of Rightness To Dispel
Confusion). Yongzheng describes the Manchu conquest of China as morally legitimate.
Did China disappear from the world map during the Yuan and Qing dynasties? Chinese
4intellectuals are at odds over the answer to this question. Even in the 20th century, bothSun Yat-sen, considered the father of the revolution, and Zhang Binlin, who devised
Zhonghua Minguo, the Chinese name of the Republic of China, commented that China
had twice been a lost kingdom.
Incidentally, the East Indians and the Chinese hold historical perceptions that are
diametrically opposite. Indians view history as a phenomenon marking the passage oftime. They believe that humans should focus on the most essential, basic matters (suchas religion, because it examines the meaning of life and death). The Chinese may go on
and on about the correct historical perception, but Indians take no interest; they really
don’t care. Indians and Pakistanis are of the same ethnicity, but they have embraced
different religions. Each nation goes its own way. Indians do not view Sri Lanka as part ofIndia, or inseparable from India; nor do they seek consolidation with Sri Lanka.
Then do the Chinese truly have a passion for history? Not in the least. They prefer the
famous novel Sanguozhi yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) to the more historicallyaccurate Sanguozhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms). Even historians, with the exceptionof those specializing in the Six Dynasties (220-589), do not read Sanguozhi. On the other
hand, Mao Zedong read and reread Sanguohi yanyi. He was looking for ideas that would
help him win political battles.
Postwar history education in Japan was heavily influenced by the Comintern historicalperception (whose goal was social revolution) from Russia, and the Tokyo-Trials historicalperception from the US. In the 1980s the Chinese historical perception came to the fore. I
believe that the Comintern and Tokyo-Trials historical perceptions are things of the past.
However, the demands from Korea and China for Japan to embrace an “accurate”
historical perception are very much alive.
Since I was a recipient of the traditional Taiwanese history-education curriculum fromthe fifth grade through high school, I was not brainwashed by the Comintern or TokyoTrials historical perceptions. I did grow up under the influence of the Chinese historicalperception. But most Taiwanese view the postwar ROC system as an imported overseas
Chinese kingdom. Citizens of Taiwan and the PRC do not share an identity. Moreover,they disagree about almost everything; to use Mao’s words, “conflict and contradiction /antagonistic contradiction].”
Therefore, the Taiwanese historical perception isanti-PRC. .
How should we define the Chinese historical perception? In simple terms, it originatedfrom distinctions made between Chinese and foreigners in Chunqiu dayi (Exegesis of theSpring and Autumn Annals), and “revere the emperor, but expel foreigners,” as stated in
the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals). It is also the emperor-centric position adopted
by Shiji. It is legitimacy, as cited in Zizhi tongjian, and the Sino-barbarian dichotomy
strongly advocated by the three great Neo-Confucian scholars Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming,and Wang Fuzhi. And it is tianzhu (punishment from heaven), the term used to justify
the massacre of barbarians, i.e., non-Chinese tribes.
Among Taiwanese who were brainwashed by the Chinese mindset and Chinese historicalperceptions are many people whose minds the Chinese still control. But there are morethan a few who oppose the Chinese: people with clear eyes, whose outlook includes theworld’s past, present, and future. I am one of them.

5Pressed by the PRC and Korea, the Japanese government put on a series of performances
after World War II, shows of remorse and apologies. They were politics, not history.

How do we perceive history? In arriving at a value judgement by deciding whether aperception is or is not accurate, we must consider how close it is to historical fact. But
there is no need to be intimidated by the likes of remorseful political acts.
Positive freedom — the freedom to adopt one’s own historical perception, and negative
freedom — freedom from being coerced to adopt a particular historical perception, aremainstream values in a liberalistic society. A liberalistic nation or regime is founded on
the recognition of that freedom, which does not exist in a totalitarian state.
Therefore, what the PRC means by the “correct historical perception” is the historicalperception of a totalitarian state, which does not allow for diversity or pluralism
regarding opinions or perceptions. Simply to admit or recognize that not only goesagainst Japan’s national polity and system of government, but also violates Japan’sConstitution (Article 20: Freedom of religion; Article 21: Freedom of expression).
The only conclusion we can reach in an evaluation of modern Japanese history, after the
analysis and examination of history that most closely approaches historical fact, is thatJapan’s most serious crime was losing the war. At least that is the perception that I andother Taiwanese of my generation, for the most part, share.
To the best of my knowledge, after the Manchurian Incident (1931), only Matsuoka
Yosuke, in a speech delivered at the League of Nations, portrayed Japan as a victim. If we
expand the scale of history objectively, and broaden the span of historical time, we
discover that in the modern era Japan’s contribution to the global community has been
immense, so immense that it is impossible to exaggerate when describing it.
In this book I shall reexamine modern Japanese history in the context of historical fact.
My goal is to equip readers with historical insight and eliminate the curse of thetotalitarian historical perception.
I have written a great many history books, but consider this one to be the culmination of
all my works. I dedicate it to my readers.

6CHAPTER 1: DEFINING HISTORY
1. Perceptions vs. facts
The word history is on occasion defined as “the truth about past events.” That definitionis then extended to “past events as they actually occurred.” Going by that assumption, we
might conclude that history exists in the realm of objective reality, and is unbiased,
impartial, immutable, and precise.
But a closer examination reveals that this definition does not reflect the meaning of theword history as we use it. A more accurate description would be “past events as weperceive them.” In other words, when we speak of history we are talking about past
events created (or recreated) by human perception. So history is not past events as they
actually occurred. We enter into various debates about past events, but we must
remember that we are discussing past events as we perceive them, not as they actually
happened.
I beg your indulgence as I rephrase my argument. Readers of this book have at yourcommand a wide variety of fragmented knowledge pertaining to history: Japanese history,
Chinese history, Korean history, world history, the history of biology, the history of the
Earth, the history of the universe. The first definition of history I offered, i.e., past eventsas they actually occurred, colors every bit of that fragmented knowledge. But again,
history is not past events as they actually occurred. It is simply history being made realby our perceptions.
But is it acceptable to perceive history arbitrarily, in any way that pleases us? Of coursenot. Historical fact must take precedence. Perceptions must be subordinate to the truth ofpast events.
When a controversy arises over an event in history, the argument that is closest to the past
event in question must prevail. The conclusion must never be in favor of the argument
farthest from the past event in question. Hence, history may consist of human perceptions,but it is clearly restricted by past events.
However, when we look at history as the actions of human beings beginning with thedawn of civilization, we must bear in mind that history is not those deeds as they
happened, but as we perceive them.
Therefore, the meaning of the word as we most commonly use it is perceived past events.
When we compare perceptions with past events as they actually happened, there arebound to be aberrations and biases.
China’s first official history was Records of the Grand Historian,1 compiled by Sima
1

Shiji; completed ca. 94 BC.

7

Qian; its main focus is “Basic Annals” (chronicles of periods and dynasties). Huangdi(the Yellow Emperor), the four-eyed, many-faced emperor considered the first ruler ofChina, and the horned Yandi (the Flame Emperor) were legendary figures. In fact, theThree Sovereigns and Five Emperors, China’s earliest rulers, were all mythological. But
nevertheless, they are included in China’s history. We see the same phenomenon in earlyJapanese historical works like Records of Ancient Matters2 and Chronicles of Japan,3
which begin with creation mythology and then transition to human rulers. As far as
historical perception is concerned, both chronicles adhere more closely to historical fact
than their Chinese counterparts.
In Records of the Grand Historian, the account of the Chu-Han Contention (206-202 BC)
written by Sima Qian’s father is believed to closely approximate historical fact because of
his close connection to Emperor Wu of Han (141-87 BC). But all this means is that weare being informed of historical information that resembles historical fact, nothing more.
It is quite difficult to arrive at an accurate perception of history.
2. A strict definition of “perception”
Now we must construct a strict definition of perception, as in “perceived past events.”
Since my specialty is Western economic history, in graduate school I made use of primarysources written in German and French, as well as English. For that reason, I am able toread a wide range of books. But there is clearly a limit to how many languages one canmaster. All one need do is master the Japanese language. Japan is a translation
superpower; mastery of that language enables us to read each and every classic andmasterpiece ever written, because they have all been translated into Japanese. I studied
German, but did not master it. Nevertheless, in Japan I have access to the works of theGerman philosopher Immanuel Kant. The exponential growth of the internet has given us
access to many outstanding works, but not every classic or masterpiece has beentranslated into every language. But to read a wide selection of them, all we need do ismaster Japanese. Japan’s translators have been rendering huge numbers of works into
Japanese since the Meiji era (1868-1912).
Yi Kwang-su has been characterized as the father of modern Korean literature. He was an
ardent nationalist and author of the Declaration of (Korean) Independence delivered at arally in Tokyo on February 8, 1919. Yi wrote the following about the Japanese language:
The Japanese language incorporates the remarkable Japanese spirit.
Japanese writing absorbs all the world’s cultures. Therefore, when
we are learning the Japanese language, we are learning about theJapanese spirit and, at the same time, acquiring the key to the2

Kojiki; compiled in 711-712.

3

Nihon shoki; completed in 720.

8

repository of the world’s cultures.
I decided to read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in the original German.
Kant writes that things per se are unknowable. We perceive things with a combination ofsensibility and logic. Carrying this idea further, we look at things in the context of an
accumulation of past experiences. In other words, we are not looking at things as
entireties; we are observing portions of things and encoding them. We then combine
those codes, decide what a thing is, and form a perception. Things never become
perceptions. Only the subjectivity of the perceiver creates perceptions of things.
Fragmentary codes derived from things combine with past experiences to form
perceptions.
Of course it is entirely possible to identify a thing and distinguish it from another thing,no matter how fragmentary the code we are using. Therefore, a conversation among
multiple humans about a specific “thing” can take place without any confusion. The codeat the basis of each person’s perception may vary significantly from that of the others.
But the conversation is viable because each person understands exactly what thing isbeing discussed.
Returning to historical matters, a past event captured by a historical record is only aperceived past event. It is possible to use history to identify a past event, but it is not thesame as that past event.
The fact that humans cannot perceive a thing per se is essentially a problem of perception.
When we speak of historical perceptions, we cannot place too much emphasis on the factthat history exists as human perception.
When we stray from the perception of things per se and enter into a world where words
are predominant, history pulls apart from past events and becomes nonsense. When that
happens, we lose patience and complain that we hear nothing but unconvincing,hackneyed political comments and clichés, and demands for more numerical evidence. In
Taiwan, too, an increasing number of people from all segments of society are demanding
such evidence. Perhaps this is a worldwide phenomenon. Numerical evidence is valued asconvincing and objective (because it is considered mathematical).
But we cannot rely even on numbers emanating from the Chinese world, whose
inhabitants are addicted to hyperbole. For instance, historical accounts that mention lives
claimed by a famine or epidemic offer only approximate numbers, like “the majority of
inhabitants ” and “eight or nine out of 10.” Most numerical evidence is based on rumors.
Ethnicity and social climate are also very influential. The nations and inhabitants of theChinese cultural sphere, to which I often refer, lie, brag, and double-cross; they separate
words from facts before they use them. Postwar China’s biggest propaganda coup was the
Nanking “massacre.” At one point the Chinese maintained that the massacre had claimed
a million victims. The CPC later made a party decision in which it settled on “at least9

300,000 victims.”
The number of Koreans “abducted by the Japanese” during World War II was once
estimated at “at least 8 million.” The number of Korean military prostitutes was claimed
to be 200,000, without the benefit of any proof whatsoever.
The basic number from which the planned economies of socialism arise is the population.
Without a grasp of its population, no nation can pass muster as a scientific socialist state.
But here in socialist China there is a consistent gap of 200 million between the lowest andhighest population figures supplied by the PRC’s various administrative departments. The
best estimates the Chinese can provide are “somewhere between 1.3 billion and 1.5
billion.” In the 1980s, when Zhao Ziyang was prime minister, he visited Japan. Asked bya reporter about the population of China, Zhao replied, “Tian xiao de” (Only heavenknows). Post-20th-century China does not have a monopoly on this phenomenon, ofcourse. In the 19th century, during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese referred to China as “aland of more than 400 states” with a population of 400 million. Even then administrative
departments didn’t agree on the population, with differences of 100 million between thelowest and highest figures provided.
Four hundred years ago the Japanese were aware of the amount of arable land in Japan,
thanks to the land survey ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 16th century. But not
until a land survey was done in the 1990s did the PRC discover that unregistered rice
fields accounted for 40% of China’s arable land. Such vagaries give us much food forthought, and cause us to wonder whether the Chinese are capable of an accurate historicalperception. And of course that is one of the limitations on having an accurate perceptionof history in Chinese states.
The lack of precise or complete historical truths makes it impossible to form historicalperceptions. Since the dawning of the modern era in the 16th century gave rise to thedisciplines of evidentiary scholarship (kaozheng) and authentication studies (bianweixue),
scholars have been exposing fake sutras and falsified history.
3. Using perception and self-preservation to create a common denominator
If it is impossible to perceive a thing per se, and a perception is something perceived bymeans of a unilateral act, what does that say about the perceiver? We must consider
carefully what the relationship between the perceiver and the perception tells us. Humanbeings are living creatures, and therefore self-preservation is inseparable from theirperceptions.
Why is death such a sad event? Why do we fear it? Regardless of our reasons, death fills
us with sadness and fear.
We humans gather together, and discuss past events according to our perceptions of them.
We speak of perceiving past events, but the particular aspect of that past event on which
we focus when we perceive is largely dependent on the object of our perception.
10

Past events perceived by humans are often related to death, because death is a perception
we all have in common. In that sense history is very human.
Nineteenth-century German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey shed a great deal of light on
this problem through spiritual science, or science of the mind. According to Dilthey,
self-preservation is the source of human spiritual activity, and spiritual activity is aphenomenon that all humans experience.
Electromagnetic waves that we see as light are within the range of perceptions shared byhuman beings. Red electromagnetic waves look red to anyone and everyone. In our
minds we all have the same impression of the color red.
Some animals can see light that humans cannot see. We humans do not know how thoseanimals see that light. Artists create their work knowing it will be appreciated by otherhumans through shared sensibilities.
In other words, we may define history as looking at the past to form a perception, but thisis not a perception formed from the observation of a subject, the way natural scientists
observe nature. We are perceiving our shared commonality as humans, while we are, atthe same time, significantly constrained by self-preservation, i.e, the impulse to survive.
If we are going to refer to the science that stems from human commonality as spiritualscience, history and historiography are both spiritual sciences. Dilthey was right.
4. Historical accounts endure when events attract interest
Historical accounts may be long or short, or absent, depending on the amount of interestin a particular event. Here are some examples.
According to Japanese Thought: Preserve Our Legacy,4 renowned folklorist Yanagita
Kunio (1875-1962) made the following observation in Methods for Studying Rural Life, avery useful reference work for historians and historiographers.
There was only one peasant revolt during the 300-year-long
Tokugawa reign (1600-1868). In some villages there were no suchuprisings. There is no doubt that they were significant events, butthat was not reason enough for accounts of them to be recorded.
If it had been necessary for magistrates and other officials inaffected villages to issue reports to their superiors about actions they
took during the revolt, they would have done so. But all they would
be conveying to posterity were the disturbances that arose and theagitation of the people at the time. In hindsight, the passing of the4

Kunitake Tadahiko, ed., Kataritsugou Nihon no shiso (Tokyo: Meiseisha, 2015).

11

more than 200 years of peace is more important to us than an
uprising — an extraordinary event.
During that long, uneventful period there was no incentive forvillage officials to keep records and show them to a third party.
Therefore, if we were to attempt to learn about the history of ruralcommunities with only the benefit of extant chronicles, we would
discover that the villages whose officials made the most strenuous
efforts to maintain peace and but if we were to attempt to learn
about the events of the past in a particular village, we would findthat those communities whose officials made the most strenuous
efforts to maintain peace and contentment have no written history.
We might have gotten the impression that, during that era, rural
Japan was a stage for an unending series of uprisings and natural
disasters.5
There is nothing more precious than the gift of a happy life. But historical accounts nevercontain records of peaceful times. In the vast majority of cases, what they describe is thedamage caused by natural disasters and wars (human conflicts).
The same is true of the history lessons we are taught in schools. Textbooks aremonopolized by accounts of events like wars and other violent incidents. Compared with
China and Korea, Japan has experienced many fewer armed conflicts. Even when they
have arisen, they have been small in scale. But a glance at any history textbook will give
you the impression that Japan has been involved in war after war all throughout its
history.
When I was a student, I spent a great deal of time learning the dates of wars and personalnames. I often heard scholars and students lamenting the fact that all they did was learn
who killed whom.
For the most part, historical accounts describe incidents, natural disasters, and accidents,
not peaceful or prosperous eras. Typical of them are the Spring and Autumn Annals6
compiled by Confucius, the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, 7 theContinuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, 8 and theComprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government of the Ming dynasty9 (1873?). There aremany accounts of natural disasters in the “Treatise on the Five Elements”10 included in5

Yanagita Kunio, Kyodo seikatsu no kenkyu ho (Tokyo: Toko Shoin, 1935).

6

Chunqiu.

7

Zizhi tongjian.

8

Xu zizhi tongjian.

9

Ming tongjian.

10

Wuxing zhi.

12

most of the official dynastic histories, and “Strange Events” 11 in Comprehensive
Investigations Based on Literary and Documentary Sources)12 (1319).
Bai Yang, who translated Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government into modern
Chinese, wrote that China has never had a year with no war. He based his conclusion on
the lists of wars in that work. Additionally, accounts of Chinese cannibalism can be foundin historical works. They are included not only in Comprehensive Mirror, but also in
official histories. For instance, special mention is made of instances of cannibalism in the“Book of Heavenly Bodies”13 and “Treatise on Astronomy; 14 they are described asabnormal phenomena like natural disasters.
Some of these accounts are bound to be exaggerations. For instance, according to thehistory of the Liang dynasty in Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, after
General Hou Jing, who lived during the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-589),
perpetrated the Nanking massacre (548-550), the Han people residing in the Sanwu
region (Jiangnan) were sold into slavery in Northern dynasties (420-589) territory, where
every one of them died. However, in the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties,
there were nobles whose ancestors flourished in the Southern dynasties, such as the Jin
dynasty (265-420), as well as nobles of Han Chinese descent (the Sui and Tang dynasties
were a coalition of nobles).
5. Different cultures have different attitudes toward history
Now I’d like to discuss ways in which our cultures determine our attitudes toward
history.
Is historical perception a life-and-death matter over which we must spill blood? Let’s
have a look at India. Indians are not as interested in history as those surrounded by
Chinese civilization. The reason for this difference is that Indians view history as simply
a phenomenon in the passage of time, one that soon evaporates. Indians place more
importance on fundamental problems — delving into the meaning of life (or death), forinstance — problems that involve religion, thought, or philosophy. Therefore, it is not
surprising that they are less interested in history than the Chinese.
Why, then, do the Chinese have such a keen interest in history? One of the main reasons
seems to lie in their use of hanzi, or Chinese characters. The earliest hanzi can be traced
to the Yellow River basin, where they started out as pictographs. They are alsoideographs, which means that they symbolize ideas. They are not phonetic units, so no
close relationship between characters and language has developed.
11

Wuyikao.

12

Wenxian tongkao.

13“Tianguanshu.”

14“Tianwenzhi.”

13

The writing style used for inscriptions engraved on bronze vessels or stone monuments
and classical texts written with wooden or bamboo instruments is different than that used
to produce Confucian texts in the Hundred Schools of Thought,15 written in the Warring
States period (475-221 BC). What today is called classical Chinese writing style is that of
the Hundred Schools of Thought (including the Analects of Confucius). That style became
classical Chinese, and the hanzi cultural sphere has held sway over East Asia for morethan 2,000 years. Some say that classical Chinese literary style was the vernacular of theWarring States period, but they are wrong. Inhabitants of Chu (present-day Hubei and
Hunan) spoke the Chu language, which differed from Han Chinese. The inhabitants of
Wu and Yue spoke the Wu and Yue languages, respectively.
The point I wish to make is that hanzi became tools, or conceptual symbols that enabled
members of a multi-ethnic society to express themselves and communicate with eachother. In specific regions hanzi became associated with specific words. They took on
specific meanings, and functioned as a writing system.
Language (words and their meanings) used at the emperor’s court was joined to hanzithat would be comprehensible to his subjects. In historiographical terms, each character
possessed a meaning that was shared by everyone in the empire, and another meaningthat connected it to the indigenous language. As time went on, the unification andcooperation of inhabitants of the Chinese cultural sphere made it possible forpronunciations and meanings used by the emperor’s court to be shared by everyone.
Of the 5,000-8,000 or possibly more languages used today, Japanese is one of those withthe fewest syllables. It has no complex combinations other than consonants and vowels.
But classical Chinese is based on one concept for each syllable. Even when two-syllable
words come into use, they can be separated. There is no distinction between singular andplural, as there is in European languages. There are no cases, nor are their rules requiring
indicators for past, present or future tenses.
Han Chinese is a written language that is used for communication among people
speaking different languages.
Ancient Chinese civilization originated near the Yellow River. Recent archeologicalresearch reveals that in ancient times there was a Ba-Shu civilization on the upper reachesof the Yangtze River. There was also a Yi civilization along the Huai River, a tributary of
the Yangtze, and there were other civilizations as well.
In ancient times China was a composite culture comprising many ethnic groups andcivilizations. And though we do not have conclusive proof that they existed, records havethe Xia people founding the Xia dynasty (ca. 2070 - ca. 1600 BC), the Yin founding theYin (or Shang) dynasty (1600 - 1046 BC), and the Zhou founding the Zhou dynasty(1046 - 256 BC). All three originally had close relationships with nomads, and eventually
15

Zhuzi baijia.

14settled on the plains, where they engaged in agriculture.
In 770 BC, when the Spring and Autumn period dawned, a powerful state called Qin
came onto the scene. Its inhabitants were non-Chinese peoples who were referred to as“Western warlike people.” Some scholars think they originated in Persia. As China
became unified, the Qin too were assimilated into the hanzi civilization, and began using
the characters as a means of communication.
Toward the end of the Spring and Autumn period, the Wu were conquered by the Yue,then the Yue were conquered by the Chu. The conquered peoples (Wu, Yue, and Chu)
joined the Chinese civilization that arose near the Yangtze River. During that time hanzi
were used for disparate languages, and eventually the pronunciation and meanings of thecourt language gained currency. Central government officials (guan) were posted to otherregions, where they continued to speak their own language. Regional officials (li) who
spoke the court language would translate what the guan said into the regional language.
The Japanese term for government officials, kanri, is a combination of the characters forguan and li.
During that era war followed war, and since the conflicts had such a drastic effect on
people’s lives, they were recorded. Eventually a new tradition developed: when a newdynasty was established, it took charge of compiling the history of the preceding,vanquished dynasty.
As hanzi became ingrained in the Chinese civilization, records were kept at every
opportunity. The Chinese became obsessive about the past, and fell into an
ultraconservative, mindset that considered the ancient times the best times and the ancient
ways the best ways. Even today non-Han Chinese who speak different languages and use
different writing systems are forced to assimilate by learning and using the Chinese
language. Partly because the Jurchen peoples of Manchu ruled the Chinese world fornearly 300 years, the Chinese Communist Party has obliterated their language and writing
systems. Reports have it that only one in 100,000 Manchus can speak Manchurian today.
Because the farmers who lived on the plains near the Yellow River would not havewanted to expand into a region where farming was difficult, they never moved northward
to the grassy plains. On the contrary, fearing that the Northern peoples would rob or
attack them, they built the Great Wall to a height that horses could clear. But against allodds, tribes known as the Five Barbarians (whose numbers included the Xiongnu, theKhitan, the Jurchen, the Mongols, and other tribes considered primitive or uncivilized) all
breached the Great Wall, conquered the farmers, and established a dynasty on the plains.
The tribes who controlled the farmers spoke three language families: Ural-Altaic (mainly
Tungusic, Mongolian and Turkish). They did so at different times, but all of them scaled
the Great Wall and proceeded southward, and became the mainstay of the hanzi
civilization. Some of the farmers were chased toward the south, where they absorbed theYue people, or drove them away. Some of the Yue people moved further south, entering
into Southeast Asia, or were chased into mountainous areas or highlands. Most of the15inhabitants of present-day Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar are the descendants ofpeoples who once lived in China. The Thais and Burmese rejected the hanzi culture andinstead, were influenced by the Indian civilization.
Therefore, when one speaks of the Chinese people, we are talking about an amorphouscreature. The Chinese are an amalgamation of various peoples who were subjected to war
after war, and during the time when war was the norm, they used hanzi to communicate
with each other and to keep records. As they assimilated, they began taking an active part
into the Chinese culture.
The Japanese, too, seem to enjoy history. Perhaps the reason they do is that the Japanese
civilization took shape alongside its Chinese counterpart, and was significantly
influenced by it. Emperor Tenmu ordered the compilation of the Chronicles of Japan,
which was completed in 720. The work is clearly modeled after Chinese dynastic
histories. But there is another important reason: due to the influence of Shinto, there is astrong predilection for revering one’s ancestors. Both cultures have a liking for history,
but for different reasons.
Chronicles such as Spring and Autumn Annals, Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in
Government, as well as what are referred to collectively as the Twenty-Four Histories,16
official histories like Records of the Grand Historian being one of them, are historicalaccounts that outline the historical perceptions of a people and their nation with a focus
on history.
There is a wealth of historical accounts in the Chinese cultural sphere. But the word
history in its current meaning comes from the Japanese word rekishi, which the Japanesecreated from Chinese characters. Its meaning is not the same as the word used in China.
Inhabitants of the Chinese culture have the words li (reki in Japanese) and shi, but thewords put together and construed as an objective view of history based on historical fact
are an import from Japan. In other words, the hanzi civilization records a great many
historical accounts, but it has never sat back and thought philosophically about themeaning of history.
6. The role of the self in historical perception
If history and historical perception are human acts motivated by self-preservation, when
we contemplate the meaning of history, we must confirm most of them with therealization that historical perception is directed toward the self.
Historical perception can be focused on the history of living organisms, of the Earth, or ofnatural science. But the sort of history about which we ask, “Exactly what is history?” isthe perception of past events relating to humans. Furthermore, in the great majority ofcases, whether the topic at hand is an individual or a nation, the focus is the self, in other16

Ershisi shi.

16

words, the historical perception of oneself as an individual, or one’s own nation.
Why do we place such emphasis on the historical perception of the self? The answer isthat because this is history based on self-preservation, our historical perceptions confirm
our pasts, establish our identities, and decide upon our future direction.
If this is a self-centered historical perception motivated by self-preservation, we must beaware that every person’s historical perception is colored or biased by selfishness and selfinterest. We must recognize the fact that with self-oriented historical perception, it isnormal to be greatly influenced by differences or biases stemming from subjectivity andegotism.
When egotism comes into play, it is not uncommon for us, in our historical perceptions,
to tend to maximize past events of which we are proud, and to minimize those that makeus feel inferior.
Of course, if we are thinking about our futures, it is sometimes necessary to maximize
negative events we might prefer to deny. If we fail to do that, we will not have learned
from history. But normally we prefer to emphasize our strong points and overlook ourweak points.
If we believe that it is necessary to emphasize aspects of ourselves that are positive andaffirmative in order to shape a healthy personality (for survival), we must recognize in apositive manner that distortions arise from a self-centered, subjective historicalperception.
Since a subjective historical perception can engender even more aberrations or biases, wecannot speak favorably of such a perception. But since it is a historical perception, aself-awareness for the purpose of survival, we see that humans must be tolerant ofdeviations that arise from subjectivity.
Even if we are discussing not personal history, but a nation’s history, the citizens of thenation in question must perceive its history patriotically. The Chinese historicalperception is a mass of egotistical superiority. It is, after all, the product of Chinese
thought. The notion of stubbornly forcing “correct historical perceptions” on others is,unmistakably, Chinese thought. That is fine for those who live in China, but it is wrong toforce the Chinese historical perception (i.e., the “correct historical perception”) on otherethnicities or nationalities to the point where their own patriotism is threatened.
7. Why comparison is necessary to find meaning
Most historical perceptions are self-oriented, but most perceptions of self derive meaningfrom comparisons with others. It is important to consider this when contemplating themeaning of history.
A historical perception intended to establish an identity must involve a perception of17

one’s own characteristics in the past. Those characteristics typically come to the surface
when we make comparisons with those of others.
Let us look not at individuals, but at national units. What kind of characteristics would
you ascribe to your country? As mentioned earlier, Japanese history textbooks containaccounts of a great many conflicts: rebellions, disturbances of various kinds, and battles.
If we focus on them, we are left with the impression that Japan has had nothing but
conflicts. Comparing Japanese history with Chinese and Korean history, we realize thatJapanese conflicts have been far fewer in number, and much smaller in scale. Japan has
had a calm history. If there hadn’t been any conflicts in China or Korea, only peace andserenity, we would have had to conclude that Japan has had a conflict-ridden history,
even if we omit none of the events in its past.
It is likely that the decisive Battle of Sekigahara, waged at a crossroads in Japanese
history, involved 150,000 combatants (70,000 in the Eastern army and 80,000 in theWestern army). The forces were equivalent to the number of White Wolf (Bai Lang)bandits, gangs of marauders who stormed through North China in 1913-14, in the earlydays of the Republic of China. In Chinese history the famous Battle of Red Cliffs (208-9),
which determined the fate of the Three Kingdoms, and the Battle of Fei River (383),
which determined the fate of the Northern and Southern dynasties, each involved one
million men on the north side alone. In the civil war during the Republic of China era, theCentral Plains War, which pitted Yan Xishan’s Peking government against ChiangKai-shek’s Nanjing government, a total of 1.5 million men were mobilized. Several
million men fought in the three strategic battles waged during the post-WWII Chinese
civil war. Warriors fulfilled the principal roles in Japan’s conflicts; common people weresometimes present, but mainly as onlookers from a safe distance. Chinese wars wererough-and-tumble affairs, involving every single citizen. With fewer combatants,
casualties in Japan were fewer as well.
If we study Japanese history in a vacuum, i.e., without comparing it with the history ofother nations, we cannot describe its characteristics or peculiarities. We might conclude,
after a desultory glance, that Japanese history has been a never-ending series of wars.
But globalization has progressed, and we are expected to examine Japan through a global
lens. Japan’s failure to use a comparative approach in history education is a serious
shortcoming that must be corrected.
Lu Xun (1881-1936), who is considered the father of modern Chinese literature, often
said, “Unless we make comparisons, we cannot distinguish the good from the bad.”
Relentless boasting about one’s own nation is bound to produce an ignorant citizenry.
Today we are seeing new comparative academic disciplines crop up. We have not only
comparative literature, but also comparative music, comparative culture, and comparative
civilization. Why should history, and history alone, be shielded from comparison.
We find different national traits in different cultural; ethnic customs differ also by region.

18

Nations must make an effort to grasp those differences. The philosophy of totalitarianism
embraced by the Chinese states requires everyone to be in agreement, and every decision
to be unanimous. Accordingly, the state insists that all textbooks be approved by it or theruling party. This is what they call a correct historical perception, which they force on not
only their own people and nation, but also on other people and other nations, in a displayof extreme rudeness.
Admitting that there are as many opinions as there are people is the starting point of themost fundamental thought. It is the point at which Japanese and Chinese thought diverge
on the subject of historical perception. The starting point begins with the question “Do
we seek harmony or sameness?”
The difference between Japan and China lies in whether we choose to tolerate pluralismand diversity, or insist on worldwide uniformity.
Early in the Edo period a Japanese military strategist and Confucian scholar named
Yamaka Soko (1622-1685) wrote a book entitled Actual Facts about the Central Realm,
in which he compared Chinese and Japanese history. In it he maintains that China wasnever stable because of its emperor-ordained revolutions. Japan, on the other hand had nosuch revolutions, and with its unbroken line of emperors, Japan was the real Middle
Kingdom. A comparison of the two cultures will help us understand, immediately, that
because of its revolutions, China’s cultural evolution stagnated, and many of its people
suffered greatly. Then we will be able to describe the characteristics of Japan’s history.
Now I would like to address the flaws in Japanese history education. From my viewpoint
as a Taiwanese looking in from the outside, they are obvious.
According to the current Curriculum Guidelines for middle schools, the goal of Japanese
history education at that level is to deepen affection for Japan’s history and by doing so,
foster in the students an awareness of themselves as Japanese by informing them aboutmajor trends in Japanese history in the context of world history, familiarizing them withthe characteristics of each historical era and, their horizons now broadened, having themthink about Japan’s traditions and culture. The goals prescribed by the guidelines seemvery appropriate.
But in their actual studies the students engage in no activities designed to teach them thecharacteristics of Japanese traditions. Nor are there provisions for activities intended todeepen affection for their nation’s history. Educators are encouraged to show theirstudents how to express themselves and to participate in active learning, but they are nottold how to motivate them in that direction. As a result, students are acquiring
information about history, but they are not learning its distinctive characteristics because
no comparisons are made. Therefore, the goals of history education, i.e., learning the true
nature of their country, are not being achieved. I often hear that when students of othernations are boasting about their countries, the Japanese students find themselves unable
to emulate them. This is the result of flaws in Japanese history education. I have also
been told that Japanese students are completely unable to describe the role of the19

Japanese emperor.
8. The deeds of people influenced by historical perception
Historical perception has a strong connection with the formation of our identities, and asignificant influence on our historical activities. These then become important elementsin the formation of a nation’s historical characteristics. I would like to illustrate thisargument by citing an example in which I compare Chinese and Japanese history.
Early in the middle ages there lived a priest named Jien (1155-1225). He was the son ofsenior regent Fujiwara no Tadamichi. In 1220 Jien produced the first politicalcommentary to appear in Japan, a book entitled Jottings of a Fool.
Jien wrote that in studying Chinese history, he had noticed that all dynasties had a certain
lifespan, and that every dynasty led by an emperor was destined to crumble. But Japan’sdynasties did not perish.
The Hogen and Heiji rebellions inspired Jien to write Jottings of a Fool. Here is somebackground about the Hogen Rebellion: Emperor Sutoku, Japan’s 75th emperor, assumed
the throne at the age of five. When he was 23, Sutoku was forced to abdicate and yield
the throne to Emperor Konoe (1139-1155), who was then three years of age. When
Konoe died at the age of 17, Sutoku was hoping to return to the throne or to have his son,Crown Prince Shigehito, crowned emperor. Sutoku’s hopes were dashed, however, when
his younger brother Goshirakawa was installed as emperor. The disappointed Sutoku did
something unimaginable in Japan: he raised an army and attempted a coup d’état. But thecoup failed and Sutoku was exiled to Sanuki (present-day Kagawa prefecture). This
political crisis gave rise to conflict between the Taira and the Minamoto, which in turngave rise to the Kamakura Shogunate, established in 1192 and ruled by the Minamoto.
Jien thought that reason had prevailed at that time, that the dynasty beginning with the
Yamato Court had a finite life span and was vulnerable.
But at about the same time, in 1221, the Jokyu Rebellion erupted. Emperor Gotoba raised
an army to overthrow the Kamakura Shogunate, believing that Hojo Yoshitoki was atyrant. The Shogunate forces emerged victorious, but the Shogunate did not destroy the
Court. It dethroned Emperor Chukyo, installed a new emperor, and exiled three retired
emperors to a distant backwater.
Here we have unprecedented events: a person who ranks below the Emperor, but who
received the rank of Shogun from the Emperor, exiles an emperor (the person with thehighest authority) and even higher-ranking persons (retired emperors). They could havemeant the ruin of the imperial. However the Regent Shogun, Hojo Yoshitoki, realized that
he had received his political power to control politics from the Court, and made no
attempt to destroy it. If he had, it is easy to imagine the repercussions. Armies would
have been raised to defend the Court. No movements resembling the Chinese and Korean
dynastic revolutions (decreed by Heaven when the current emperor is found to lack moral
20

virtue) ever took shape in Japan.
During the battle, there was a particularly Japanese aspect in the comportment of thecombatants on both sides.
Regent Shogun Hojo Yoshitoki appointed his son Yasutoki commander in chief of theforces destined to battle the Court army. In response to a question from Yasutoki,
Yoshitoki replied that if the Court army displayed the emperor’s flag, and retired
emperors were leading attack troops, he would remove his helmet, cut his bowstrings,
make gestures of profound respect, and entrust his fate to the retired emperor. Otherwise,
if attacked, he would risk his life and fight until his 1,000 men were reduced to one.
The historical perception that results from an examination of Japan’s history shows usthat at that historic moment, the Kamakura Shogunate’s warriors behaved as they did
because they had great respect for the Court, unlike the soldiers of China and Korea.
That respect became a Japanese tradition and exerted influence on the actions ofsubsequent rulers.
When a cultural climate persists for a long time, history and tradition are formed, and it
becomes very difficult to change those traditions.
In a different sense, tradition was also strong in China, the land of dynastic revolution(dynastic cycles). The Chinese refer to political reform as “revision of the law.” Since thefirst Qin emperor unified China in 221 BC, not one revision of the law has beensuccessful. Even more famous reforms, like the New Policies of Wang Anshi (1021-86)
in the Song dynasty (960-1299), and the Hundred Days’ Reform (1898), ultimately
foundered.
Even when the Chinese empire met its end with the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, theRepublic of China made an effort to create a nation-state, which backfired and instead
resulted in an unprecedented civil war. The Peoples’ Republic of China, established after
the Chinese Civil War, about 20 years later, launched the disastrous Cultural Revolution(the decade of turbulence) in 1966.
As the 20th century dawned, China made the transition from an empire to a republic, andthen a people’s republic. The nation’s structure and regime had changed in so many ways,
but the outcome was not good.
There was no more emperor, no more ruler with a heavenly mandate. Since the Chinese
had lost the gods that had dwelled in their minds, they became uneasy and rudderless. For
that reason the Republic’s first president, Yuan Shikai, revived the imperial system for atime. He reinstalled the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, Puyi, as emperor in Manchuria.
China is not the only nation where this happened. Even after the French Revolution, thestorms of the Ancien Régime continued to rage. PRC President Xi Jinping is reviving
Maoism because he feels the need to respond to the concerns of the people who feel
unsettled in the absence of an emperor.

21

From time immemorial Japan has had a long line of emperors, all blood relations; they
have become both history and tradition. Even though some powerful men came to thefore (Fujiwara, Minamoto, Hojo, Ashikaga, Oda, and Tokugawa), they were unable toeffect a revision of the law. The most they could accomplish was to effect a division of
authority between the Emperor and the Shogun. Therein lies the power of history andtradition, which stemmed from the unbroken line of emperors.
9. How geopolitics affects historical events
However, there are other factors beside history and tradition that affect important
historical events. We must keep the influence of geopolitics in mind.
When we look at a nation’s history, we realize that geopolitical influence is a decisive
factor.
Surrounded by water as it is, Japan is one nation with geopolitical conditions that make itnearly impossible for a foreign invasion to succeed. When a nation is landlocked, invader
can easily enter it, even though it is at peace and has no wish to wage war. If an armed
group or bellicose nation rises up and attacks, the victim nation becomes a war zone. That
was certainly the case with China and the Korean peninsula. The northern part of Korea
bordered China, and the remainder of it was surrounded by water. Therefore, Korea was
not nearly as likely to be invaded by a foreign enemy as the inland areas of China. That is
why Korea had far fewer dynasties than China. Korea had only three unified dynasties:
Silla (57BC-935AD), Goryeo (918-1392), and Joseon (1392-1897). Moreover, thetransition from Silla to Goryeo did not involve a military conquest by Goryeo. Instead,
Silla yielded. Only Joseon toppled the preceding dynasty through military force andestablished a new one, effecting a change of dynasty. Therefore, Korean history could notproceed the way Japanese history did, i.e., without any dynasty change.
A close examination of the history of the Korean peninsula reveals that in the 14th century,
Goryeo General Yi Seong-gye (1335-1408) was faced with an imminent invasion by theMing, who had destroyed the Yuan dynasty and become a rising force in China. But whenYi realized he had no hope of defeating the Ming forces, he turned back and surrendered
the Goryeo capital, toppled the Goryeo dynasty and established Joseon in 1392. The
Goryeo dynasty enjoyed a great deal of support from the Korean people. If Yi, who was
only a general, had effected his coup d’état in Japan, an armed force would have risen up
to aid Goryeo, and the coup would have been aborted. But Yi’s reality was different:
waiting in the wings were the powerful Ming forces, who had just established a newdynasty. Even if Yi had raised an army to defend Goryeo, he would certainly have been
defeated. The Koreans had no choice but to let Yi do as he pleased. There was aprecedent: Silla’s collaboration with the Tang dynasty (618-907), resulting in theunification of Silla in 676. In other words, the Koreans succeeded by using foreign armed
forces. This historical perception tells us that Yi could not have acted as the Japanesewarriors did. When General Yi overthrew Goryeo, many soldiers were angry with him,
but they were helpless. Geopolitical conditions facilitated the invasion of foreign forces,
22and prevented justice from prevailing.
Even the name “Joseon” was received from Ming Emperor Hongwu. Yi Seong-gye had
asked him to name the new dynasty, Joseon, a tributary state.
Here geopolitical conditions were the deciding factors. The people of Korea were notenthusiastic about a dynasty created by military force. Political power was destroying the
Korean culture, which could not evolve naturally, only diminish.
In Korea under the Goryeo dynasty, the Buddhist culture blossomed. Buddhism, valued
so highly by the Goryeo dynasty, did not sit well with the Yi (Joseon) dynasty, which
opposed and suppressed it. Consequently, Buddhism was banished from Korea, leaving ahuge void in Korean culture.
When Silla unified the Korean peninsula in 676, Buddhism was more entrenched in
Korea than in Japan. Not long before the unification of Silla, a priest named Wonhyo(617-686) went to China, and decided he wanted to study Buddhism, and set out on ajourney. At one point he was living in a mountain cave. In the middle of the night,
Wonhyo awakened, thirsty. He reached for a bowl of water, and drank from it, marvelingat its wonderful taste. The next morning when he awakened, he discovered that the bowlthat he had drunk from was actually a skull. A wave of nausea overcame him, but then ina flash he realized that everything in this world depends on one’s perspective. When hediscovered that the water that had tasted so delicious the night before was contained in askull, he felt sick. Wonhyo grasped the nature of Buddhist enlightenment, i.e., thateverything depends on one’s perspective, in that moment. Realizing that he didn’t need to
go to China to learn Buddhism, he returned to Silla, where he continued his studies.
Buddhism and Buddhist culture had flourished in Silla and Goryeo, but during the Joseon
dynasty temples were destroyed, priests were driven away, and Buddhism disappeared.
The Joseon dynasty converted Buddhist temples to Daoist structures. Instead of Buddha,
the Koreans worshipped the Ming emperors, Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), Zhu Bajie(a character in Journey to the West). The disappearance of Buddhism must be described
as a loss to the cultures of North and South Korea.
What would have happened if Yi Seong-gye’s coup had not involved the destruction of
the Goryeo dynasty, but the establishment of a shogunate, like that in Japan, under theemperor of the Goryeo dynasty, and he had continued to hold the reins of power?
After the Joseon dynasty was established, it killed the last Goryeo king, and though it
promised to provide a safe island where the royal family, then in hiding, could live inpeace, it lured them out, sunk the boat they were sailing in, and killed every last one.
The Korean geopolitical situation made it possible for General Yi to effect a typicalchange of dynasty.
Even the Great Wall could not stop the southward advance of the northern nomads or23

hunter-gatherers. During the Six Dynasties period (220/222-589), which succeeded theHan dynasty, the Five Barbarians drove the Han Chinese farmers southward into theterritory of the Baiyue. Nearly 2,000 years before that nomads had established several
dynasties within the Chinese sphere. And about 1,000 years earlier the Song and Ming
dynasties had tried to revive China, but were defeated by the Yuan (Mongolians) andQing (Manchurians). Han-Chinese China essentially disappeared from the map of history
in Eastern Eurasia and the Far East.
For several thousand years, beginning in Confucius’ time, the Chinese made a clear
distinction between themselves and barbarians, whom they considered no better thanbeasts. But in fact, the Han were not able to assume a dominant role in the Chinese world.
After the Han and Jin dynasties, barbarians continued to control China and East Asia. The
Han Chinese were their subjects.
Xi Jinping repeatedly makes pronouncements about the Chinese people’s dream of agreat revival. Perhaps he is hoping that the third time will be the charm (the Song andMing dynasties being the first and second times, respectively).
Will the dream of great revival enable the Chinese to extricate themselves from the lawsof history or the snare of the history of Chinese civilization? Geopolitical destiny will
surely become a factor here.
10. Historical theory and historical perception
In this chapter I have stated that historical perception is not the perception of a past event,but something that reflects the circumstances of the perception, and is therefore
vulnerable to bias and discrepancy. Furthermore, historical perception of the self
contributes to the formation of identity (self-perception). Therefore, it is colored by
self-love, and thus bias and discrepancy.
That makes us likely to conclude that historical perception is nonsense and completely
arbitrary. But that is not the case. We are simply restricted by past events.
On the basis of what I have written thus far, I would now like to pursue historical thory
and historical perception.
If historiography’s role is to highlight events that took place in the past, then historians
must collect resources pertaining to those events. But for events that are now part of thepast, it is often difficult to find resources or proof in sufficient quantity to enable us toarrive at a judgement. We need an explanation of exactly what happened in the past. In
that case, historians must use their imaginations to fill in the blanks left by the lack ofevidence and resources. The portion left to the imagination will result in a wide variety ofvisions. We call these historical opinions or theories.
Some scholars are of the opinion that in the absence of evidence and resources, historians
should maintain silence. But when the topic at hand is a historically significant incident,
24that will not suffice. For historically important incidents, even when proof and resources
are absent, the imagination must be enlisted to provide explanations.
Here is an example from Japanese history.
Before dawn on June 2, 1582 the Honnoji Incident occurred. There are no resources
available to us that would reveal the state of mind of Akechi Mitsuhide, the instigator of
the incident. But the history of Japan would have been different if this incident had notoccurred, and Oda Nobunaga had not been killed. Toyotomi Hideyoshi would never havebeen ruler of Japan, and there would have been no Tokugawa Shogunate.
In that case, we want accurate information about Akechi Mitsuhide’s motivations. But
there are very few historical records that could serve as proof.
Some scholars believe that Mitsuhide started the revolt to protect the Court. It is very
important to have evidence to support this opinion, but there are no sources that state thisspecifically. At first Nobunaga made lavish contributions to the Court, and demonstrated
his allegiance to it. But ultimately, he did not seek a government appointment from theemperor. Also, he pressed Emperor Ogimachi to abdicate, and interfered in the naming of
the next era. His personality was unusual for a Japanese. He could be cruel, and like
Chinese emperors, tended to resolve disputes with military force.
This may be why Mitsuhide, who venerated the imperial household, risked everything toaccomplish a coup d’état.
Even so, it is very strange that the ever-cautious Nobunaga allowed himself to be present,
defenseless, at Honnoji.
To discover what was on Mitsuhide’s mind, we must backtrack to March 1582, when the
successful assault on the Takeda forces in Koshu (present-day Yamanashi prefecture)
took place. After the battle, in front of a great many warriors, Nobunaga shoved
Mitsuhide’s head against a railing and shouted invective at him. Also on May 15,
Mitsuhide was rebuked while in charge of entertaining Tokugawa Ieyasu, and wasordered to go with reinforcements to aid the lower-ranking Hideyoshi at Bishu Takamatsu.
At that time, Mitsuhide may have recalled a two-year-old incident in Nobunaga cruelly
banished Sakuma Nobumori (1528-82), who had served the Oda for a long time.
Shouldn’t Nobunaga have considered the possibility of rebellion on the part of
Mitsuhide? And if he did not, we would certainly like to know why.
It is possible that Nobunaga was more concerned about entertaining Ieyasu than about
anything else. Now that Takeda was dead, Ieyasu might have thought that Nobunaga
wouldn’t need him anymore. To prove that wasn’t the case, Nobunaga invited Ieyasu foran evening of entertainment, but Ieyasu might have felt uneasy and feared for his life. If
Nobunaga guessed what Ieyasu was thinking, Nobunaga would have to convince Ieyasu
that entertainment was his only objective. But that wouldn’t be possible with ordinary

25

entertainment, since Ieyasu was the suspicious type. For that purpose he assigned
Mitsuhide to entertain Ieyasu, and he rebuked Mitsuhide, intentionally, in Ieyasu’spresence. Then Ieyasu could believe that Nobunaga really intended to entertain him. Thatwould mean that Nobunaga, preoccupied with Ieyasu, didn’t realize that Mitsuhide might
have had a change of heart.
No matter how curious we might be about the Honnoji Incident, there are many aspectsof the event that we cannot know. If we don’t use our imaginations to flesh out the story,
we cannot come up with a full description of the incident. Therefore, it is up to us toapply our imaginations historically. But everyone imagines differently. We end up
competing for the scenario that imagines an event that is closest to historical fact. Thosedifferences in imagination give birth to historical theory.
But historical theory isn’t a matter of letting our imaginations run wild. We areconstrained by the past, and must compete with each other to arrive at a conclusion thatmost closely reflects the past event as it occurred.
Next we have historical perception, meaning not a perception seeking the truth about
individual historical facts, but a comprehensive opinion that we construct, which includes
specific points of view, when we synopsize history. When I say “specific points of view,”
it doesn’t seem that I am speaking objectively. But we are inserting subjectivity to arriveat an entirety.
Since historical perceptions are formed subjectively, it is acceptable to synopsize history
in a patriotic manner when the perception of one’s own nation’s history is involved. If weare discussing the perception of our personal histories, it is acceptable to view themarbitrarily. In other words, we may create a synopsis of history that has subjective aspects,
to a certain extent. But we are constrained by the truth of history. Some historians, whenconfronted with something that is not historical fact, and shown evidence proving that it
is not, will insist to the bitter end that it is a historical theory and that it is true. What
those people claim is theory or historical perception is neither, at least in the context ofhistoriography. And we cannot call them historians.
Once again, since we view history from a special historical perception, historians mustnot believe that historical facts that do not exist, or that it is all right to demonstrate only
those historical facts that match a special historical perception. Historical perception isconstrained by past events, and historical perceptions to which we do not apply suchboundaries is not an allowable historical perception, but one that must be discarded.
I often hear the term “materialistic historical perception” when historical perceptions areunder discussion. This is a historical perception that uses materialism as defined by KarlMarx as a benchmark. But though looking at history with materialism as a gauge may betolerated, often facts about past events are distorted, or disregarded; this means that it is awarped view, and an unacceptably biased historical perception.
In Japan there is an IMTFE historical perception. This is an attempt to synopsize

26

Japanese history to agree with the judgment handed down at the Tokyo Trials. But theproceedings were forced on a defeated nation by the victors; it was not a fair trial and theresulting historical perception must be scrapped.
Additionally there is the “masochistic historical perception.” Since history should byrights be intended to form one’s identity, the practice of looking at one’s own history
from a masochistic viewpoint must be eliminated.
Among historical perceptions, there is a type whereby someone maintains that his
historical perception is accurate, and infallible. Needless to say, the Chinese historicalperception falls into this category. This is Chinese historical perception, which has its
roots in Chinese thought. It is the one and only correct historical perception — all others
are erroneous. Within the Chinese sphere we hear these claims made in all seriousness,but we must ask how many lives this historical perception has ruined. A historicalperception, normally, must be free, and premised on diversity. The Chinese historicalperception must be discarded.
Chinese history as recorded is riddled with errors and, in many cases, spurious. Not until
the Qing dynasty was historical research done in earnest, but after that a great many
historical facts were uncovered.
The Book of Documents, one of the Five Classics and considered to be the oldest, was the
subject of controversy: which was authentic, the new-text version or the old-text version,both dating from the Han dynasty? Finally, during the Qing dynasty, the old-text version
was exposed as a fabrication on the part of Kong Anguo, a descendant of Confucius.
Several schools of thought formed, each arguing its position concerning the Chineseclassics, and the discipline of authentication studies began to blossom.
Chinese history per se was created from monstrous lies. Without the knowledge affordedby historical research and authentication studies, we would not be able to show what istrue and what is false. According to Zhang Zhidong’s Words of Youxuan, if we insist uponknowing what is true and what is not, then we must throw away half of the Chineseclassics.
There are so many false theories, false sutras, and false historical accounts because
Chinese culture is intended to deceive; it is based on a culture of deception. Even today
we hear former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji lamenting, “Everything is false. The only
genuine article is the swindler.”
Therefore, about the historical perception of the “correct historical perception” in theeyes of the Chinese, I say reverse perception, reverse hearing, reverse reading.” This isdecidedly not my idea of a paradoxical rhetoric. Those lies are disseminated for a purpose.
The Chinese create countless fake histories with a political motive. Such fake histories
must be exposed if we are to know the truth and avoid being deceived.

27

CHAPTER 2: PRINCIPLES OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION
1. Yellow River Civilization: the main source of Chinese culture
We can safely say that the region referred to as the central plains, near the middle andupper reaches of the Yellow River, was the cradle of Chinese civilization. Agriculture
flourished on the banks of that mighty river, and a community — a nation, for all intents
and purposes — arose under a powerful ruler. That ancient civilization had much incommon with the three other ancient cultures: the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indus
Valley civilizations.
In those four civilizations a great many people, the majority of them farmers, lived under
an orderly system of government. Three of them eventually vanished, conquered byyounger civilizations; no traces of them remain. Only the Yellow River civilization
persisted, evolving into its present form, the Chinese civilization. The main reason for its
survival is conflicts with mounted nomads to the north, who plagued the Chinese
civilization from the time of its birth. There was constant warfare between the farmers
and the nomads, who were seasoned, powerful warriors. During that process the Chinese
civilization swallowed up other civilizations, for instance, older ones like its predecessor,
the Yangtze River civilization. It continued to expand until it became the Chinese
civilization of today. In that sense, it was different from the other three ancientcivilizations.
The mounted nomads to the north were relentless in their attacks on the farmers, whoreferred to them as barbarians. The barbarians were skillful warriors, partly because of
the advantage their horses gave them. The farmers suffered defeat after defeat until guns
and cannons were invented and became available to them, but they were not annihilated.
The nomads covered a wide range of territory, and carried their culture with them. But
since they had no fixed abodes, they could not create a great civilization. Agriculture,
however, enabled its practitioners to create a strong civilization and to form a massive
community with a sizable population. In other words, they built a nation governed byleaders who routinely conducted politics. A writing system was created out of the needfor various types of records, such as tax rolls, to support a large nation. We know that thehanzi devised by the dwellers of the Yellow River basin can be traced back to inscriptions
on tortoise shells used in divinations. But like the writing systems used by the
Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, hanzi started out as pictographs, and later
evolved into ideographs. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing systems vanished, forthe most part; subsequent civilizations adopted some aspects of them when they createdphonograms. An examination of hanzi reveals that characters for auspicious concepts like
beauty (美) and good (善) include the characters for sheep (羊). One might conclude thatsuch a phenomenon has its origins in interchanges between the farmers and herders, i.e.,
nomads. But it was the farmers who conceived hanzi as a tool for record keeping. The
Yellow River civilization differs from its three counterparts in that hanzi are still used
today, and bear witness to the continuity of that civilization. There were many otherfarming communities in areas near the Yellow River civilization. When one civilization
won wars, and its sphere of influence expanded, hanzi were the only means of28

communication between speakers of different language families. They became
ideographs and a means of communication.
2. Beyond nations to the world
The evolution of the Yellow River civilization was different than that of the
Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indus Valley civilizations. In the regions where they arose,
newer civilizations appeared. Eventually peoples who shared the same religion, language,and lifestyle formed communities called nations, each governed by a ruler. These nations
established boundaries, and while going about their separate ways, coexisted with othernations outside their borders. This new world order allowed for a reduction in the numberof wars. But the concept of the nation was absent from the Chinese civilization, whoseroots were in the Yellow River civilization, and which, therefore, recognized no borders.
Instead, the Chinese lived their lives in a borderless world, or realm, governed by anemperor, whose realm expanded or shrank, depending on his power.
In an empire whose size depends on its ruler’s might, the notion of national borders does
not arise. The Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indus Valley civilizations, all of them verylarge, appeared in specific regions where there was abundant arable land. There were nocomparable civilizations in the vicinity of any of those three, so it is likely that there wasno need to establish borders. Eventually those civilizations declined and disappeared.
They were succeeded by new, more advanced civilizations in territory not far away fromtheir predecessors. However, in the case of the Chinese or Yellow River civilization, andonly that civilization in borderless, seemingly infinite territory, never declined, persistingeven to this day. Since it, like the other ancient civilizations, had no borders, it was an
exception in a world of national civilizations that coexisted peacefully with each other. A
closer look at history tells us that the [first] nation to be formally and legally established
was Germany, via the Peace of Westphalia concluded in 1648 at the end of the ThirtyYears’ War. That treaty also recognized the independence of Switzerland and theNetherlands.
Today all nations have definite boundaries, inside which their citizens reside. The PRC,
the bearer of the Chinese civilization, was forced to establish borders to appease theinternational community. But in Chinese minds the Chinese realm includes all territory
China is capable of controlling through its power. National borders may exist, but they
could expand if the “emperor” acquires more power. According to this concept, theemperor rules the entire world and all people.
Present-day China is governed by a one-party (the CPC, or Communist Party of China)system; there is no longer a single ruler who controls the nation. But if the CPC, which
supplanted the emperor, becomes stronger, China’s territory will expand, as will thenumber of subjects ruled, just as occurred in the era of emperors. The socialist
cosmopolitan notions of world revolution, liberation of the human race, and the abolitionof the state have the same roots, as well as connections to the concept of yixing geming,or dynastic change. This philosophy has endured since the Yellow River civilization, andwe can expect modern China to expand. The CPC, which flatters itself with the notion

29that the Chinese civilization depends on it; the essence of this philosophy has not changed
an iota since the days of the Yellow River civilization.
According to Confucian arguments a righteous man of virtue is ordained by heaven,becomes the ruler, and governs the world’s inhabitants. But China’s rulers are neither
righteous nor virtuous. The founding rulers, for the most part, used military force to gain
their positions. Even those who were described as enlightened or wise rulers, for instance,
Taizong (626-649) of the Tang dynasty and Yongle (1402-1424) of the Ming dynasty,
killed blood relatives and close friends during their quest for power and the throne. The
truth is that only cold-blooded, brutal individuals could become emperors.
Mao Zedong once said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” His words add
ammunition to the view that China is a nation born of war. If it were not for war, the PRC
would not exist.
Let us take a moment to consider the connection between the teachings of Confucianism
as they affect those who support the Chinese civilization, and the concept of “world.”
According to the teachings of Confucianism, humans want to live peacefully under therule of an emperor (son of heaven). Conceptually, Confucianism is a peace-loving way oflife.
But Confucianism under imperialism does not address the barbarians who live on theperimeter of the huge Chinese civilization. Under imperialism Confucian teachings
considered the beginnings of the Yellow River civilization the ideal age, since there were
few conflicts, and religion and rule were one. The emphasis was on li (custom, reason,
rite, mores). Such a teaching made perfect sense in a peaceful world. But everyone
outside the Chinese world was considered a barbarian, and barbarians were not qualified
to enjoy the ideals of Confucianism. The Chinese and the barbarians were completely
separate, and the killing or wounding of barbarians was acceptable behavior.
From the viewpoint of members of the huge Chinese civilization, there was no need torespect the lives of the barbarians outside their world. Confucian scholar Wang Fuzhi,
who lived near the end of the Ming dynasty, said that the barbarians were no better thanbeasts, to whom humanity and justice did not apply. Any Chinese who killed them would
not be committing an inhuman act, and any Chinese who betrayed them would not be
guilty of misanthropy or injustice. Since the Chinese were subject to attacks from thebellicose mounted nomads, they were almost constantly in a state of war. Of course, theywould kill the barbarians if the necessity of doing so presented itself. Genocide against
barbarians was justified as divine punishment according to Neo-Confucian doctrine. In
other words, the Chinese would kill the immoral barbarians in the name of heaven.
As the founder of Confucianism, Confucius is regarded as a holy man. Nevertheless, he isreputed to have enjoyed the taste of human flesh. I cannot state with certainty that heengaged in this practice, but if he did, and if the human flesh he ate was that of barbarians,that is not inconsistent with his teachings, since he viewed barbarians as beasts. There aremany accounts in official histories of Chinese officials eating barbarian flesh. History of30

the Southern Dynasties 17 (completed between 643 and 659), the Book of Liang(completed in 635), and “An Account of the Wa (Japanese)” (completed between 280 and297) all contain numerous accounts that tell us how delicious Japanese flesh is.
It seems that Confucius himself was quite fond of hai, or salted and fermented meat. We
are not certain that it was human flesh he was eating, but in his time cannibalism waswidespread. Confucius enjoyed hai until the body of his beloved disciple Zilu, after hewas killed, dismembered, and pickled, was sent to him.
Confucianism began in the 5th century BC with Confucius and Mencius. It then went
through several phases, including the Neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi school in the 12th century.
Between the 15th and 16th centuries Neo-Confucianism experienced a renaissance in theform of a school referred to as Yangmingism, after Yang Ming. But throughout its
evolution, the philosophy continued to condone the killing of barbarians. This is thedoctrine of tianzhu, or divine punishment. I find it interesting that a Chinese philosophy
that had such a strong influence on the Japanese would be premised on such a doctrine.
3. The significance of war as the essence of Chinese civilization
When a strong animal captures a weak animal, and kills and eats it, there are no
recriminations — no talk of justice or injustice. No matter how cleverly deceitful themethod used to capture the prey, we usually praise the predator for its cleverness, rather
than accusing it of being evil or unjust.
Most animals do not kill others of the same spices. But there are some that kill and even
eat others of their kind. There are even some that kill and eat their own offspring. If such
behavior is instinctive, it is not evil or unfair.
Humans, however, do not eat other humans, under normal circumstances at least, and themurder of other humans, at least those living in the same community, is considered eviland criminal.
Problems arise when murders occur between groups of people. Suppose that a group thathas no food left lives near another group that has some food. The group with no food will
attack the group with food in order to survive, steal its food and, if necessary, killmembers of the other group. In other words, the two groups battle each other. This iscalled war.
Human civilizations have two choices: they can endeavor to prevent war to the extent
possible, or they can simply go about their business without making any attempt tosuppress war.
When people form states, determine borders, and live in those states, they haveestablished what I call national civilizations. These national civilizations, or nations, tend
17

Nanshi.

31

to refrain from waging war. But when people live in a civilization whose ruler isdetermined by the outcome of a war, the conflicts are not fought for the sake of the nation,
but to enable the victor, one individual, to become the ruler (or emperor). Therefore, thewars are interminable.
Since we expect nations to coexist, controls govern wars fought by nations, such asattempts to avoid war or to keep casualties at a minimum. These controls take the form oflaws and regulations, which both the weak and the strong must obey.
But in a civilization involving an emperor and his realm, the strong (or rather, thevictorious) can behave as they wish. The law of the jungle applies, and since wars areintended to establish a ruler, any method of war is tolerated, and the conflicts become
increasingly brutal.
Since the defeated have lost all physical means of resistance, the victors can kill them allif they please. For instance, during the Warring States period (480-221 BC) the Zhao
were defeated by the Qin. More than 400,000 Zhao soldiers who had surrendered to the
Qin were buried alive by Qin General Bai Qi. After the Qin took control, during the“great disorder under heaven” toward the end of the Qin period, 240,000 Qin soldiers
were buried alive by Xiang Yu at Xin’an. A civilization that does not have a system inplace to suppress wars must resort to any means that will enable it to emerge victorious.
If that method promises to be successful, no matter how cruel it may be, it must be used
to slaughter the enemy. To achieve victory, any and every means is permissible. This is
the same logic that prevails in nature. There is no such thing as justice or injustice.
When wars are frequent, communities lose the ability to ensure that justice is done. In
China approximately 2,500 years ago, a man named Sun Zi wrote a work entitled the Art
of War. In the beginning of the book the following sentence appears: “Soldiers mustdeceive their enemies.” What he meant is, “Since we must wage wars to survive, ordinary
morals fall by the wayside.”
For instance, take siege warfare: when an army surrounded a fortress in China, thesoldiers and civilizations surrendered when they ran out of food. Unless the victors had
an ample supply of food, they would massacre all defeated survivors by burying them
alive, or by other means. Massacres have been perpetrated frequently in Chinese history
in imperial capitals, such as the Nanjing massacre, several massacres in Chang’an (thelast occurring in 949), and the Luoyang massacre (311). When they occur, the victims are
not able to resist, so they must resign themselves to being killed. Inside a fortress undersiege, the defeated cannot surrender when their food supply is exhausted. They kill their
weakest (the elderly, women, and children) and eat them. Among 1,008 accounts ofcannibalism in historical documents, 236 pertain to fortresses under siege.
When you have farmers who have a supply of food stored away, and to their north,mounted nomad barbarians, and those barbarians instigate wars, justice has nothing to dowith those wars. Any means that will lead to victory is used, and wars become
increasingly vicious.

32

To survive, victims of defeat attack another group of farmers. They use whatever tactics
they need to win, and each war is crueler than the last. The region in which the violence
rages grows wider and wider as time goes by.
We can summarize by saying that the Chinese civilization, the Yellow River civilizationthat developed in the plains on the middle and lower reaches of the yellow River, wasconstantly under attack by mounted nomads from the north. Even as war followed war,
the area occupied by agricultural regions of China continued to expand throughout theentire continent.
If we were to define rulers as those who could muster an army and wage war, then as
their military strength increased, so did the number of their subjects. The more powerfulthey became, the more their territory expanded.
A bird’s-eye view of the history of Western civilization shows that the new civilizations
that arose after the fall of the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indus Valley civilizations
established nations. Although there were many exceptions, those nations were formed bypeople with a common religion, ethnicity, and language. The rights of the citizens of
those nations were recognized, the right to be treated justly and the right to be treatedfairly — these rights could not be violated by any authority. It became a nation’s mission
to protect its citizens’ lives and property. Nations recognized each other’s sovereignty andautonomy. Then international law, whereby all nations, strong and weak, would abide,
came into being. Attempts were made to suppress warfare, and the number of war
casualties decreased. Because war is cruel and inhuman, national civilizations that madeefforts to prevent it became part of a coalition within which multiple nations coexisted.
Through the ages nations have taken many forms: city-states, feudal states, andnation-states. In China we had the Seven Warring States, the Sixteen Kingdoms, and theFive Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. But for a period of about 2,000 years, after theHan or ethnic Chinese had been driven out of their homeland, the central plains, theleading roles in Chinese dynasties were taken by barbarians, who sought control of theworld —the entire world.
European civilizations developed under Roman law, which is rooted in the recognition
that all humans have rights. The Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648 to put an
end to a long war. The treaty afforded rights in the form of sovereignty to all signatory
nations, whether large or small. Relationships among nations were now governed byinternational law, and it became possible to avoid wars. Now national civilization, theideal form of human civilization, began to take shape.
Since the advent of the nation-state era, national civilization became the main trend in themodern world. But only the Chinese civilization stands out as an exception in this the 21 st
century, with no nation, no people, and no borders. The biggest difference between thenational civilization and the Chinese realm, or tianxia, is that in the relationship between
a nation and its people there are legally defined rights and responsibilities. Systems are33

in place to solicit the will of the people. International law governs relations between
nations. These aspects are nowhere to be found in the Chinese civilization.
4. The logically flawed political theory behind dynastic revolution
In the Chinese civilization, the individual who unites the world is the ruler, the emperor,
who brings order to his realm and enriches the lives of his subjects. Therefore,
ideologically, the emperor is the most virtuous individual, who brings happiness toeveryone in his realm. But to become the ruler, the emperor must win a war and become aconqueror. War is his only instrument for advancement, but he cannot win wars if he istruly a virtuous man. He must renounce virtuous behavior, resort to deceit, and become abrutal conqueror who uses military force. During a war he may end up killing blood
relatives or members of the same tribe.
Danger is a constant companion of war, and a ruler fighting a war is always in its midst.
Looking back at Chinese history, we see that there have been approximately 200
emperors, but one-third of them did not die a natural death. Furthermore, on the Korean
peninsula (part of the same civilization), even fewer kings died a natural death — about
half of them met a violent end. Surrounded by so much danger, a future ruler must tread
an evil path. A dynastic revolution by a ruler could never be defined as a political theory
that benefits the human race.
Dynastic revolution is said to occur when one ruler falls from virtue, and a new ruler
comes onto the scene and displaces him. Thus is virtuous politics restored. The new ruler
has been awarded the mandate of heaven. A ruler who competes with his rivals andemerges victorious is called a virtuous man, and the true ordained son of heaven. This is apolitical theory put forward by Mencius, who lived between the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
When Mencius attempted to establish a world that was peaceful and stable according to
the precepts of Confucianism, China already had a history of power changing hands via
military might. He therefore accepted that tradition, and out of necessity, formulated thepolitical theory of dynastic revolution. It is possible to concede that dynastic revolution asa political theory was unavoidable.
Dynastic revolution is premised on the notion that every dynasty will eventually collapse.
This proved to be a truth of the Chinese civilization, and was thus an inevitable politicaltheory. But according to this theory, anyone who was able to win a war through anymeans could become the ruler. Therefore, wars became increasingly brutal.
Zhu Wen (852-912), who conquered the Tang and established the Liang dynasty, wasoriginally a member of a pack of bandits led by Huang Chao (who is honored today as
the hero of an agrarian rebellion at a museum dedicated to him). Zhu, under orders from
Huang, fomented the Huang Chao rebellion. But when Huang Chao’s position vis à vis
the imperial army looked precarious, Zhu betrayed Huang and joined the imperial forces,
who subdued Huang. For his heroics Zhu was given the name Zhu Quanzhong.
Ultimately he conquered the Tang and founded the Liang dynasty.

34

Neither Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty, nor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming
dynasty, could read or write; reportedly they were drunkards who loitered in the streets.
Both of them were fortunate enough to become emperor, but they ousted men who had
fought bravely under them, and killed many innocent people. Zhu Yuanzhang stands out
for murdering not only one clan of meritorious retainers, but also other residents of thesame village, for a total of approximately 50,000 innocent people.
In a dynastic revolution, the strongest person wins, and when he does he is allowed to do
whatever he wants to the people he conquers. Until the next ruler wins a war and isinstalled, the people undergo unspeakable suffering, and since the new ruler has achieved
his position through military might, they also incur terrible risks due to the arbitrary
behavior of the victors. It is pertinent to note that this principle persists in today’s China
under one-party rule.
The dynastic-revolution concept has its limits. After six dynasties, the Chinese world
experienced approximately 2,000 years of barbarian rule, including the Five Barbarians
era in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Chinese continued to evoke dynastic revolution, evenwhen they were conquered by the likes of Mongolians (Yuan dynasty) and Manchurians(Qing dynasty). What are we to make of a political theory that brings nothing but miseryto the human race?
5. Common characteristics of the people and subjects
In the Chinese civilization, what characteristics do the people, the subjects under thesway of the emperor, acquire?
According to the political principle called dynastic revolution, an individual who has
become emperor by emerging victorious from a war has no time to consider the
wellbeing of his subjects. If necessary, the ruler will kill as many people as possible at thedrop of a hat in order to triumph in war. The people are of no use to him in his battle withhis current enemy. Therefore he ignores them, kills them without compunction when theneed arises, or lets them die.
Even when the ruler is virtuous and his realm is at peace, his subjects become displaced
persons because of famine or pestilence, and chaos ensues. Moreover, since anyone who
wins a war can become ruler, someone who aspires to become emperor will foment a war
amidst the turmoil of famine and pestilence.
As scholar Liang Qichao (1873-1929) said, the people, subjects, are victims whose
destiny is to be slaughtered. Even in present-day China, there are no citizens in the true
sense of the word. Looking back at history, the people have no connection with theircountry. Their purpose is simply sacrificial.
In geopolitical terms, even though the Chinese had the Great Wall, they could not stem
the southward advance of the nomads. The Yangtze River served as a natural defense in
the south. It was difficult to ford, but it could not stop the northern nomads from35

advancing southward. Towards the end of the Han dynasty, there were already barbarians
working as foreign laborers in the Han Chinese homeland. After the Three Kingdoms era(184/220-280), the farmers in the Central plains were half barbarians, and half Han
Chinese. By the time of the Sixteen Kingdoms there were more barbarians than Chinese
on the Central plains. The Sui and Tang emperors were Turkish (proto-Mongols andGöktürks). When the Song dynasty came into being roughly 1,000 years ago, north of the
Yangtze the Liao dynasty arose, founded by the Khitan Mongols, then the Jin dynasty,
founded by the Tungusic Jurchen, and in the northwest the Sogdians founded the Western
Xia dynasty. The Mongol Yuan dynasty crossed the Yangtze River and appropriated land
south of the Yangtze. The Jurchen Manchus controlled the expanded Chinese realm, thecontinent, for nearly 300 years. From the time of the Sixteen Kingdoms for about 2,000
years, until the beginning of the 20th century, barbarians ruled China.
The Chinese on the Central plains bearing the Yellow River civilization were driven
further and further south by the nomads for about 2,000 years, and ended up south of the
Yangtze River.
Whether the force driving them was natural disasters, geopolitical or ecological problems,or war, when the people were displaced and social order collapsed, someone cameforward to become the new leader, whether he was qualified or not. He didn’t need toconsider the wellbeing of his subjects, he just needed to triumph in war. His people, his
subjects, were totally abandoned by their rulers.
As Liang Qichao said, the people living in the Chinese civilization were meant to besacrifice, and could be killed by their so-called ruler at any time. Viewed in this light, theChinese of today are survivors who have had the good fortune to escape beingslaughtered.
What sort of personalities do we find in people who have survived horrible situations?
Throughout the history of their civilization, the Chinese cannot say that they have been
obedient and peace-loving. But once a system is in place, they want to be obedient. Or
they want to be slaves. For details about their desire to be slaves, please consult mybook Arrogant China: Résumé of a Nightmare.18
Eminent writer Lu Xun (1881-1936), who is considered the father of modern Chinese
literature, and who was even more blunt than I, divides Chinese history into two eras: (1)when the Chinese were trying to become slaves but failed, and (2) when the Chinese
became slaves for a time and were satisfied with their lot.
Within the Chinese civilization the Han Chinese were in the majority, but in general they
accepted being controlled by the less numerous barbarians for decades, generations, evencenturies. The Chinese adapted and pandered to them, whether bandits or barbarians. Thisis probably the characteristics people, subjects, acquire as they seek to minimize wars andother conflicts.
18

Ko Bun’yu, Ogoreru Chugoku: akumu no rerekisho (Tokyo: Fukushodo, 2005).

36

When one is confronted with an enemy who is far superior, it is foolish to lose one’s life
fighting an unwinnable war; it makes more sense to surrender as quickly as possible.
When the superior Mongol armies came down from the upper reaches of the Yangtze
River onto the land south of the Yangtze, Southern Song soldiers and civilians alike gavethem an enthusiastic welcome. When the Manchu and Mongol Eight-Banner armies
entered Beijing and Nanjing, all the officials (both civil and military), as well as civilians
welcomed them wholeheartedly, even affixing yellow signs to their houses saying “Wepledge obedience to the great Qing empire,” and burning incense. It is safe to assume that
the Chinese surrender when the enemy seems unstoppable.
At the end of the Ming dynasty patriot Huang Daozhou (1585-1646), who turned against
his Manchurian ruler and attempted to restore the Ming dynasty, was an anti-Manchurian
activist, and a hero for having tried to protect the Ming dynasty established by Han
Chinese. When his attempt at resistance failed and he was arrested and taken away, thevillagers were welcoming the New Year in a celebratory mood, dressed in their finery.
When Huang was being led away, people who had a short time ago been Ming subjects
asked who the prisoner was. They were told that he was a criminal because he had
rebelled against the ruler. As soon as they heard that, the villagers formed a crowd andbegan cursing Huang and throwing stones at him — their hero!
Members of the Chinese civilization, which had evolved from the Yellow River
civilization and was built by farmers, always thought of their non-Chinese neighbors asbarbarians. They made a clear distinction between themselves, the civilized, and thebarbarians. The Chinese placed themselves at the center of a concentric circle surroundedby Eastern, Southern, and Western barbarians. Even though they built the Great Wall tothe north, for more than 2,000 years, the Han Chinese on the central plains were driven
away and ruled by Mongols (Yuan dynasty) and Manchus (Qing dynasty), both barbariantribes. And even though they were treated like slaves in a barbarian colony, they weredelighted with their lot. This means, in Lu Xun’s terms, that they were content to beslaves for a while, and that being slaves made them feel somewhat safe. “I would rather
be the Taiping’s dogs than an ordinary man in turbulent times.”
The one desire of people who have lived through violent times is to avoid a cruel fate;
this is called “clear wisdom and self-preservation” (mingzhe baoshen). Then, whendisaster befalls someone else, they take pleasure. The mentality of rejoicing at someone
else’s misfortune is expressed by xingzai yuehuo in Chinese (rejoicing in another’s
misery).
When people belonging to a tribe whose members have been brutally murdered have an
opportunity to kill, they use the same methods or even more brutal ones.
Recently the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform issued a pamphlet entitled the“Tongzhou Massacre.” On July 29, 1937 hundreds of Japanese were murdered inTongzhou, China. The murderers were, in addition to members of the Peace Preservation
Corps, Chinese students, who were not soldiers but members of a training unit; they37

eagerly participated in the massacre. Photographs of acts of genocide on the part of Han
Chinese against Mongols, Tibetans, and Uighurs are often exposed to the international
community. The Tongzhou massacre was only one of many such acts in Chinese history.
To the Chinese happiness means wealth, offspring, and longevity; the most sought-after
desire in life is a hundred sons and a thousand grandsons (baize qiansun). Even today thekilling of an entire family group (mie men) happens often. Historical examples show that
attacks on non-Chinese peoples has involved cutting off men’s testicles and tearing out
women’s uteruses. This shows determination on the part of the Chinese to eradicate
foreign tribes, even to the extent of ensuring that they have no descendants. Famous
victims of castration include Sima Qian, the father of Chinese historiography, and Zheng
He, a Muslim member of the Semu tribe, who is even today revered in China.
Sun Yatsen often said that the Chinese love peace, but Mao Zedong was speaking his
mind when he boasted, “That’s a lie. They love war, as do I.”
One often hears Chinese say things like, “Unlike militaristic countries, we are a nation ofletters, so it is correct to describe us as peace-loving people.” But in most of the countries
populated by Chinese, you will see a great many scenes in programs, even programs
depicting daily life, where characters, both men and women, are yelling, “Shoot! Shoot!
Shoot! Punch him! Get him! Kill him!” That is why tourists and businesspeople fromJapan ask if there aren’t better, less violent, less frightening programs.
More than 2,000 years ago when the Qin and Han dynasties united the Chinese world, thebalance between the people and Nature was already beginning to collapse. In those days
the population in one county on the south bank of the Yellow River exceeded one million.
The area was so crowded that the average density per square kilometer was, in somecounties, more than 700 people. Then Nature struck back abruptly, bringing famine,
which became the cause of social strife.
In the later Han dynasty, when the Yellow Turban rebellion broke out, and into the Three
Kingdoms era, social strife in the central plains worsened to the extent that there were
mountains of bleached human bones, but no signs of human habitation. Reports have itthat in the Three Kingdoms era, the population dwindled to one-eighth of what it had
been in prosperous times. The central plains became a depopulated area, and the hardy
nomads from the north and the outskirts of the plains went to live there. By the Jin
dynasty, the population there was 50% Han and 50% barbarians.
Driven off by nomads, the original inhabitants of the central plains fled southward,
crossed the Yangtze, and then moved further south. Today they can be found everywhere
on Earth. Those who went southward and then dispersed all over the world did not know
how to coexist with Nature. They not only exhausted natural resources, but also dug up
underground resources, depleted marine resources like fish and sea turtles, and tore redcoral from the ocean floor, never considering the consequences.
In a society where war was an everyday event, the Chinese knew they might meet a tragic
fate at any moment. They sensed that they must grab whatever rewards they could right38

away. Since they always risked suffering an untimely death, and lived constantly in fear,
they felt they had to take whatever they could as soon as an opportunity presented itself,
and that was their goal in life.
Realizing that they might meet death at any moment, they soon became thugs, hoping torise to a powerful position in society. Today’s Chinese are overbearing and make no effort
to conform to standards that the world demands because their “strongman” characteristics
have come to the fore. Lu Xun said, “The subjects of a tyrant are usually more tyrannicalthan the ruler himself. The subjects of a despot hope that someone else will be his
victims; when that happens, they will stand by and watch with amusement. Brutality, thesuffering of others becomes the bystanders’ pleasure and consolation. Their strength lies
in avoiding an unpleasant fate, and only that.” Books and commentary with titles like
“The Chinese Are Annoyed,” “The Chinese Will Be Angry,” and “China Is Strong andWill Call the Shots from Now On” bear witness to that mentality.
One would expect the Communist Chinese government, the current national authority, toencourage its citizens to exercise more restraint, it too is in strongman mode.
Still, I would like to believe that the Chinese character has taken shape for historicalreasons, and has no connection with biological DNA.
Extrapolating from the shared characteristics of the Chinese, let us take a look at how
Chinese soldiers behaved during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Since the concept of nationhood is absent in China, there is no concept of citizenship,
either. And there is no patriotism, at least in principle. Carrying this argument to theextreme, we can say that they were acquiescing to powers mightier than they. There wasnothing for them to defend for someone else’s sake, so they did not approach theirtraining with any enthusiasm. They risked their lives, but not of their own volition.
Conversely, they became violent when in a position of strength. Therefore, armies neededblocking units, which forced retreating soldiers back into the war zone. Without thoseanti-retreat troops, every man would have fled.
During combat, when the enemy was even the slightest bit ahead, Chinese soldiers would
flee, or surrender.
Conversely, if their side seemed to be winning, they would fight furiously. When victory
seemed close at hand, they would launch a violent offensive.
In the early days of the war, Japan’s General Staff Office issued a pamphlet entitled“Attributes of the Chinese Soldier.” It reported that Chinese soldiers were self-centered,irresponsible, and lethargic.
However, they would fight fearlessly and powerfully when (1) they had something togain, for instance, prize money or the opportunity to loot, (2) when they assumed theenemy soldier to be weak, and (3) when they found themselves in a death trap.

39

The pamphlet goes on to say that Chinese soldiers were susceptible to mob psychology
and to false rumors, and would desert when their situation became unfavorable. Officers
would sometimes abandon their subordinates and go into hiding. When Nanjing fell in
1937, Tang Shengzhi, commander of the Chinese forces, abandoned his subordinates andfled the city; he is a typical example of such behavior. Prior to the battle, Gen. ChiangKai-shek and his wife promised to defend the city to their death, but they were one of thefirst to evacuate; General Commander He Yingqin was not far behind them.
After Japan lost the war and there was no longer a Japanese presence in China, theGuomindang and Communist armies fought each other. But when the Communists
appeared to be slightly ahead thanks to help from the USSR, Guomindang troops started
going over to the Communist side; this is another good example of such behavior.
But what about the Chinese military personnel of today? Now that the CPC is in control,
there are no more civil wars. There are national boundaries, and the nation has more orless taken shape. All the criteria for instilling patriotism have been met. Therefore, one
would presume that Chinese soldiers are patriots. The truth is that when they think they
are in a strong position, they are proud and patriotic. But in essence, they are the same as
they were centuries ago. The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) is not a force entrustedwith the nation’s welfare, but the CPC’s private army. Therefore, we shouldn’t expect
much patriotism. The PLA’s PKO troops in South Sudan in 2016 panicked whenapproached by throngs of refugees. Instead of taking action to protect them, they sprayedthem with tear gas and abandoned their stations, becoming the laughingstock of theworld.
6. Comparison of Chinese national civilization with those of other modern nations
Earlier when I mentioned national civilizations created by the Western world, I wrote thatthe ancient Roman civilization established a legal concept called “rights.” The Romans
were the first to establish the rule of law and to afford rights to all citizens. Every Roman
enjoyed equal rights, and their right to live was guaranteed.
Soon Roman law became the law of nations, all humans were afforded rights, nations
guaranteed the right to live to all their citizens.
On the foundation laid by those rights, people who shared the same religion, language,
and ethnicity, i.e., people who got along well together. They built nations, determinedborders, and derived value from coexisting in peace; they had created national
civilizations.
The first national domains were determined by the Peace of Westphalia, treaties
concluded after the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. The treaties recognized the independenceof the Dutch Republic from Spain, as well as the independence of Switzerland.
International law took on greater importance, and war came to be considered an extensionof diplomacy (meaning subservient to politics). When the 20th century dawned, treaties

40

governing the conduct of war on land were signed, and wars were ended when theoutcome was clear. As a result, the number of casualties diminished considerably. The
reality was, however, not always like that. For instance, during World War II, the Allies
violated international law in countless ways. The US, which had become the main forceof the Allies, the victors, did not claim that it could do anything it pleased. Instead, theAllies presented a farce in the form of the International Military Tribune for the Far East,
the rationalization for which was the necessity of obeying the law, an argument that wasconsistent with the logic of national civilization.
Even for victors in war, the logic of civilization remained, i.e., they recognized the rightsof the citizens of the defeated nations, believed that people should be able to live in peace,
and that war should be prevented. Rights and the rule of law are important elements ofhuman civilization.
China is the only national civilization that remains stuck to the ruler-and-ruled type ofcivilization, which has prevailed since the Yellow River civilization. When the 20th
century began, the Xinhai Revolution erupted (1911), and China attempted to create anation-state, but instead descended into unprecedented chaos. First it was an empire, thena republic, then a people’s republic. But even as a people’s republic, the regime of Mao
Zedong differed greatly from that of Deng Xiaoping (1978-1989) and his successors.
Why did the state structure change so many times? Because China was the world, not anation. Attempts to transform a world into a nation resulted only in chaos.
Again, let us compare Western civilization, which established modern nations, with thecurrent Chinese civilization.
Modern Western nation-states are, in principle, agglomerations of special cultures, whichshare a religion, language and customs. Another name for this agglomeration is “nation.”
A nation is based on the common principles that define its role: protecting the people’s
lives and property. From the 20th century on, the common concept is that nations mustcooperate and coexist. In other words, in Western civilization people form nations, andhave created national civilizations in which they live in peace and prosperity.
To that end, in a nation decisions are made about what form politics should take. For
instance, such decisions might concern the separation of administrative, legislative, andjudicial powers. The people’s consensus is sought. The purpose of these decisions is toensure that a nation’s power does not cause it to behave irresponsibly, and that all citizens
benefit from the principles of democracy.
The result was civilizations that refrain from engaging in warfare.
Rome’s contribution to this sort of national civilization was enormous. Roman law wasconceived of at first as the basis for freedom and rights to be enjoyed by citizens of thecity of Rome. Soon this became the law of nations to be enjoyed by all people. In otherwords, even those who were ruled by the Roman army were afforded freedom and rights.

41

Rome had a history of frequent warfare. The Romans destroyed many states andcivilizations, and enslaved people who surrendered to them.
But Emperor Julius Caesar was unlike China’s emperors, who achieved their status only
through military might. His enthronement was not the direct result of military victory, butof being recommended by the Senate. Some Roman emperors, like Nero, used theirpower to further their own designs, but the emperorship was not a status one achieved
through military might alone.
This tradition discouraged emperors from arbitrarily starting wars. The emperor’s
subjects, i.e., Roman citizens, were not permitted to instigate warfare for the purpose of
becoming emperor.
It is not likely that this view of nationhood existed during the age of Mesopotamia andEgyptian civilization. Those civilizations were probably similar to the Yellow River
civilization. When they flourished, there were no other competing civilizations in theirvicinity. Therefore, there was no need for national boundaries. Since ancient, large
civilizations were born together with religions, their leaders, at least in the early days,
were probably also religious leaders. For that reason, in the early days the people could
not have fulfilled purely sacrificial roles, as they did in later years, when there was a ruler
and his subjects. Even in the Yellow River civilization in the age of legend andmythology, there was a cooperative relationship between the ruler and his people, and notmuch difference between that civilization and others.
But once the ancient civilizations perished, Western civilizations, influenced by the Greek
and Roman civilizations, developed rapidly due to the universality of human culture. The
Roman civilization contributed significantly to the formation of nations.
The fact that the Romans devised rights as they pertain to the formation of a nation isparticularly important. In any harmonious community, the concepts of justice and fairness
emerge, and there is order in the community that benefits those who live there. It is
impressive that people crystallized those concepts into the word “rights,” and made theman essential part of our nations. But rights as a legal concept did not exist in Mesopotamia
or Egypt.
Hammurabi’s Code (ca. 1745 BC) is considered to be the oldest code of law. It apparently
mentioned freedom, but not rights. As I mentioned in my Foreword, Japan is a translation
superpower. Iijima Osamu’s translation of Hammurabi’s Code was published (byTairyusha) in 1997.
Hammurabi’s Code is famous for “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” But it does nottouch upon the concept of rights. Even the ancient Greek civilization, which made a huge
contribution to today’s human civilization, had no word for rights. The concept of rights,
which proved to be an invaluable legacy to the human race, was a product of the Roman
civilization.

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Etymologically, the word “rights” includes both the right hand, a symbol of power, andmeans both the image of power that is the right hand, and another meaning of right, i.e.,
moral. Rights should of course be granted, but they are not guaranteed unless theguarantor has the power to enforce them; the existence of power is a prerequisite. They
are not assured, nor can they be assured in the absence of power. The community, in thiscase the nation, acts as the wellspring of the guarantee of power.
According to the philosophy behind Roman law, laws are not made, they are discovered.
Laws are not arbitrarily enacted, but evolve as justice is discovered. The legacy of Roman
law looms large in human history. In medieval Europe, Christianity was a midwife at thebirth of natural law.
Rights are protected by power; the notion that it is a nation’s duty to provide that power is
one that emerged as a basic concept of nationhood. This concept renewed the relationshipbetween the ruler and his subjects, and brought forth the idea that a nation’s first duty wasto protect the lives and property of its people. The right of the various nations to govern
was recognized, and that right became sovereignty.
But the relationship between nations is in principle a disorderly one. At times the interestsof nations will collide, and they must go to war to arrive at a solution. But war is notfought on behalf of a ruler, but to settle a dispute between nations. In that case, the intent
is to stop the expansion of wars that will increase the number of meaningless deaths inboth nations. This is where attempts to suppress wars come into play.
In ancient times wars between groups belonging to different religions or different cultures
sometimes resulted in the civilization of the defeated being destroyed, and its people
becoming the slaves of the victors. But in modern times the necessity of cooperation
between nations was recognized, and international law came into being. That law wasapplied to warfare, and efforts were made to reduce warfare to a minimum. When wars
did break out, combat ceased once the outcome became clear, and efforts were made to
avoid further casualties.
World War II, in which atomic bombs were dropped, and civilians were targeted in air
raids, did not fit this pattern (efforts to reduce casualties). Even though the outcome was
obvious, the slaughter of a great number of civilians in the Tokyo air raids, and thedropping of an atomic bond when surrender was imminent fit another pattern: any and allactions are permitted in order to win, and the more powerful forces may do as they please.
This was a reversion to the ruler-and-his-subjects philosophy. It was nearly a limitless
war, a primitive war between the ruler and the world.
Wars are contests of physical strength. The defeated have no methods to resist physically.
Even in objective cases where losers cannot resist even if the winners kill every one ofthem, when national civilizations wage limited wars, they limit the type of war activity
that they engage in, and attempt to reduce the number of casualties to a minimum. They
clearly wish to steer mankind in the right direction.

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But primitive warfare did not come to an end in the 20th century. Looking back, we seethat along with 21st-century human civilization, built on freedom and rights, the ancient
Yellow River civilization (now the Chinese civilization) also persists. There the law of
the jungle has morphed into political law.
China
did
have
an
opportunity
toextricateitselffromthe
Yellow-River-civilization-turned-Chinese-civilization, and quietly become part of thecivilization built by the Western nations.
Professor Sugihara Seishiro explains this quite clearly in his book, Now Is the Time forthe Democratic Party of Japan to Make Its Presence Known, published in 2005, rightbefore the election that gave birth to a Democratic Party administration. The watershed
was June 4, 1989, the date of the Tienanmen Square protests.
Mao Zedong died, and after the PRC had been adrift for more than 10 years, Deng
Xiaoping took up the reins of power, and moved forward boldly with a campaign of
economic openness. In 1979 Deng introduced a market economy and took resolute action
toward economic reforms. But, as Sugihara states, at that point what China needed was
not economic reforms, but political reform that would incorporate the will of the people
into politics. Even if it would be difficult to introduce democratic elections into nationalor regional politics immediately, a good beginning would be having the people vote forrepresentatives who would form a national body of public officials equivalent to aparliament. That would pave the way for democratic elections. But Deng ousted CPC
General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was trying to guide China more or less in that
direction. On June 4, 1989 Deng declared martial law, sanctioning tanks to run over andkill students demanding democracy.
About the Tiananmen Square Incident, Deng Xiaoping said, “If I yield, the PRC willcease to exist.” The truth is that despite Deng’s pronouncements about the PRC, behindhis suppression of the anti-government demonstration was his desire to protect the Deng
family interests. Behind the demands of the students and citizens who gathered in front of
Tiananmen, though couched under demands for democracy, was a movement opposing
his first son Deng Pufang’s monopoly interests in the Kanghua Gongsi and corruption(called Down with Nepotism and Corruption!).
If Deng had not declared martial law, but moved in the direction of democratization, the
PRC might have been able to extricate itself from the chaos resulting from territorial
expansion, and eradicate corruption. A market economy normally goes hand in hand withdemocratic politics. At that time nations with better national civilizations would have had
to admit China into the market-economy sphere, once they had verified that the Chinese
were headed toward a democratic political system. Zhao Ziyang might haveaccomplished that.
An examination of the Tiananmen Incident shows that more than the Chinese people, theCPC government was being affected by the Chinese civilization and Chinese thought.

44

If China had moved toward the goals of Zhao Ziyang, it might not have become “uglyChina.” Deng Xiaoping’s sins were grievous. The nations of the free world that forgave
him are also to blame. Deng was the wealthiest man in socialist history. After his death,
his family’s power and interests were destroyed by the Shanghai clique. But the Dengclan gathered up assets equivalent to 10 trillion yen, fled to Australia. I understand that
his granddaughter (second son’s daughter) has obtained American citizensh

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CHAPTER 3: THE BRUTAL HISTORY OF CHINESE WARFARE
1. Chinese warfare in ancient times
The Chinese civilization, whose source was the Yellow River civilization, placed norestrictions whatsoever on warfare. The farmers who cultivated the central plains, anarea blessed with fertile soil, were the victims of frequent attacks by mounted nomads,
who were seasoned warriors; no sooner had one war ended than the next began. As time
passed and competition for resources mounted, warfare intensified, eventuallyextending from the central plains to all of China.
In this chapter I will demonstrate exactly how brutal and abhorrent Chinese warfare andsimilar upheavals were in ancient times, referring to historical records.
We are told through legends that when the Chinese civilization dawned, there were eightrulers (three sovereigns and five emperors). The years during which three of the fiveemperors (Yao, Shun, and Yu) ruled were a sort of golden age. Taming the waters of the
Yellow River to prevent flooding was a monumental task, which was inherited from theYao by the Shun, and then from the Shun by the Yun. After the Yu came the Xia dynasty.
During the reign of Jie, the 17th Xia ruler, the Shang ruler Tang wrested the throne awayfrom Jie, and founded the Shang dynasty. Then, during the reign of Zhou, the 30th Shang
ruler, the Wu overthrew the Shang, initiating the Zhou dynasty, a little before 1000 BC.
The years between 770 BC, when the Zhou moved their capital to Luoyi, and 403 BC
are referred to as the Spring and Autumn period. The following era, which lasted until
221 BC, when China was united under the Qin, is known as the Warring States period.
The Spring and Autumn period saw frequent warfare, but the conflicts were neither as
frequent or violent as those of later years. During the Warring States period there wasacademic and political freedom (the Hundred Schools of Thought flourished during thatage). But after all, this was China, the land of warfare. During the 367-year Spring andAutumn period, the major powers clashed 448 times. Wars became even more frequent
during the Warring States period, and also larger in scale. There were 222 major battles,
and countless skirmishes.

46

I would like to present some accounts of events that occurred while there was still anaesthetic consciousness with respect to the means of waging war. The famous Battle of
Hongshui was fought in 638 BC during the Spring and Autumn period. After Duke
Huan of Qi died, Duke Xiang of Song declared himself the leader of China’s city-states.
Because the Song had defeated the state of Zheng, they ended up waging war with
Cheng, the ruler of Chu, then a powerful state.
The Chu and Song forces faced off on either side of the Hongshui River. The Song army
realized they were at a disadvantage when they saw how numerous their adversaries
were. The Chu army began to ford the river. Mu Yi, one of the chief Song retainers,
offered a suggestion: “Why not launch a surprise attack before they set up their camp?”
But Duke Xiang demurred, replying, “A virtuous leader does not engage in such
ungentlemanly behavior.” After the Chu forces crossed the river, they soundly defeatedthe Song. Duke Xiang was hit by an arrow, and later died from his injury. Subsequently
the Chinese came to use the phrase Song Chu zhi ren (Song-Chu benevolence) to mean
misplaced compassion. There is no mention of a similar situation in Chinese history
thereafter. But it demonstrates that entering into a battle imbued with the spirit of fairplay was once considered aesthetically pleasing.
In 341 BC, during the Warring States period (476-221 BC), two of the seven states, Wei
and Qi, collided; Qi won a decisive victory in the Battle of Maling. One year later Qinforces attacked the weakened Wei. Shang Yang, one of the highest-ranking Qin retainers,
sent a letter to Wei General Gongzi Mao, with whom Shang was on friendly terms. In it
he wrote that he was reluctant to fight against an old acquaintance; he wanted toconclude a peace treaty and withdraw his troops. Gongzi Mao rejoiced at this proposal,
since his forces had just suffered a defeat and were not yet ready to fight again. He went
off to the banquet where the negotiations were to be held in good spirits. But when hearrived, armed soldiers attacked Gongzi Mao, and took him prisoner. The Wei had
suffered yet another defeat.
The state of Chu was in turn manipulated by the Qin. Its ruler, Huai, was tricked by Qin
political maneuvers; the Chu fell victim to the Qin. In 299 BC Huai was again lured out
by the Qin. They took Huai prisoner while he was on his way to meet them. One of thechief Chu retainers, Qu Yuan, told King Huai time and time again that the Qin were not
to be trusted. But his warnings fell on deaf ears, and Qu was demoted. Despairing of the47

fate of Chu, Qu Yuan drowned himself. Mao Zedong was a native of Chu (present-day
Hunan province). When Tanaka Kakuei was prime minister of Japan and went to China
on a state visit, Mao presented him with a copy of Qu Yuan’s Songs of Chu. When
consulted to comment on the significance of that gift, Japan’s China specialists had
nothing to say. After the Republic of China was established, Hunan was, for a time, theheadquarters of the federalist movement. It even produced a provincial constitution.
Mao Zedong was opposed to the idea of China as one huge nation. At one point headvocated dividing China into 27 separate, independent states. Mao spent his youth, infact most of his career, living in the Zhongnanhai district of Beijing, but never mastered
the language spoken there. When looking at China, it is important to take the Chu
territory (Hunan) into account. After the defeat of the Chu, the Qin dynasty began, andits first emperor, Shi Huang, united all of China for the first time in 221 BC. In thatdynasty warfare was more brutal and even more depraved.

2. Early Chinese “monuments”
Now I would like to comment on two types of “monuments.” Both involved cruelty, andboth were intended to glorify the military prowess of the victor. One, called jingguan,
was erected by piling up the corpses of defeated soldiers on both sides of a road, andcovering them with soil. These monuments were referred to as pyramids or wujun.
This custom had come into being in ancient times. The founding of China began withwars waged by the legendary Huang Di, or the Yellow Emperor, to subdue thebarbarians. China’s first incarnation was that of a warring nation. War became a normal
state of affairs during the reigns of legendary rulers Yao and Shun. Therefore, to instillfighting spirit as well as with the courage to kill others, and even to enjoy killing, thecustom of putting the corpses of the vanquished on display seems to have become partof war. In 597 BC the southern barbarian Chu army scored a major victory over the Jinof the central plains. On that occasion Chu statesman Fan Dang made a suggestion: “Ibelieve that we must build a monument with the enemy’s corpses to convey this brilliant
military achievement to our descendants.” The Chu ruler responded, “Long ago, when
the corpses of men who had committed profoundly evil deeds were used to erect them,such monuments served as a warning. However, the men who died in this battle gave
their lives defending their country. How could we possibly dishonor them by using theirbodies for a monument?” The ruler then ordered proper burials for the fallen Jin soldiers.
The Chu ruler’s compassion calls to mind China in the ancient days. But on the other48

hand, this account also tells us that corpse monuments were being built with somefrequency.
The word keng (坑), meaning hole, appears frequently in Records of the Grand
Historian. One account tells us that when the Qin ruler Shi Huang attacked Handan,
where he had spent his childhood, he killed men who had once bullied him by throwing
them into a hole and covering them with earth. In other words, he buried them alive.
Another account says that Shi Huang buried more than 460 Confucian scholars. Stillanother mentions that Qin warlord Xiang Yu buried troops defending Xiangcheng alive,
and did the same with more than 200,000 Qin prisoners of war at Xin’an.
The Book of Han states that when Wang Mang, the first ruler of Eastern Han, seized
power from the Han dynasty, he buried Liu Xin, Zhai Yi, Zhao Ming, Huo Hong and alltheir relatives alive because they had opposed him. The same work contains an imperial
rescript issued by Wang Mang stating that the corpses of his victims were used to build
a jingguan measuring 18 x 18 meters.
Burying someone alive is a dastardly deed. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, there was an
all-out war between the Qin and the Zhao in 260 BC, during the Warring States period.
The Battle of Changping resulted in the surrender of more than 400,000 Zhao soldiers.
At a loss as to what to do with so many prisoners of war, Qin General Bai Qi ordered allof them to be buried alive in one night. The Qin had obviously brought warfare to a newlevel of brutality.
Long, drawn-out siege warfare pushed the cruelty level up another notch. One accountdescribes a fortress under siege during the Warring States period. Its inhabitants werereduced to crushing human bones and using them for fuel, and exchanging theirchildren for those of another family, and cooking and eating them.
Another account describes what happened during the Battle of Suiyang, when the Chu
army surrounded Suiyang, the Song capital, and during the Battle of Jinyang, when theZhi, Han, and Wei armies surrounded Jinyang, the Jin capital.
In September 594 BC the Chu ruler’s soldiers surrounded Suiyang. Even in May of thefollowing year, the siege showed no signs of letting up. The inhabitants of the capitalwere desperate because their food supplies had been exhausted. Hua Yuan, the highest

49Song official, held a clandestine meeting with the Chu General Zi Fan. Subsequently, Zi
Fan reported on the meeting to King Zhuang. The king asked, “What is the situation
inside the city?” Zi Fan replied, “They are crushing bones to use for fuel, and cooking
and eating each other’s children.” The king told him that his own forces had only twodays’ worth of food left, and announced that since Hua Yuan had told the truth, hewould discontinue the siege, and order his soldiers to withdraw. This act on the part of
the Chu soldiers is one of the heroic deeds of ancient China, and is certainly more
benevolent than warfare that followed.
Between 454 and 453 BC, the armies of Zhi, Han, and Wei besieged Jinyang(present-day Taiyuan in Shanxi province) for more than a year in an attempt to eradicate
the Zhao. The attacking armies diverted water from the Fen River into the Zhao’s
Jinyang fortress, flooding it until only 2 meters of the fortress stood above water. Inside
the fortress people were exchanging children and eating them. All of the Zhao retainers
had become alienated, and little respect remained for Xiangzi, the Zhao commander.
The fearful Xiangzi dispatched Zhang Mangtan, his leading statesman, in the middle ofthe night, instructing him to communicate with the Han and Wei. The three states
conspired to destroy the Zhi, and divide up Zhi territory. Since the Zhao retainers wereconsidering turning against their leader, and Xiangzi was fearful, this must been one of
the earliest incidences of cannibalism in wartime.

3. Ho Jing initiates a massacre in Nanjing
There was very little civil strife during the Han dynasty, and consequently few sieges.
Historical works like Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government contain manyaccounts of cannibalism resulting from famine that can be traced to natural disasters.
However, there are not many records of cannibalism prompted by sieges. Noteworthy
among them are (1) the siege of Wancheng, which took place in 23 BC during thetransition from the decline and fall of Wang Mang to the establishment of the Eastern
Han dynasty by Guangwu Liu Xu, (2) hostilities in Chang’an from 23 to 25, (3) thesiege of Jicheng in 27, (4) more hostilities in Chang’an in 194 during the transition fromthe Eastern Han to the Three Kingdoms period, (5) the Battle of Yongqiu in 196, and (6)the Battle of Haixi in the same year. Almost every instance of cannibalism took place
during a battle that signaled the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another. In his
masterpiece Critical Essays, Wang Chong (27-ca. 100), the Han dynasty’s foremost
political analyst, wrote: “Those who are defeated in war become cannibals.” From his
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comment we can deduce that cannibalism was a phenomenon that accompanied every
conflict.
But even during the Han dynasty there were exceptions, depending on which side
emerged victorious from a siege. In 35 BC Guangwu Liu Xiu launched an offensive
against the kingdom of Shu. Then, in 36 Eastern Han General Zang Gong attacked
Chengdu (in Shu) with a huge army. Shu ruler Gongsun Shu, personally commanding
forces numbering several tens of thousands, quickly won three battles. However, his
men were exhausted, not having been able to spare the time to eat, and the gates of theirfortress were breached by the Eastern Han army. Desperate fighting continued within
the fortress. After Gongsun Shu was killed in action, General Yan Cen surrendered.
In wars like this cannibalism was rampant. Another heroic deed concerns a man who, ina crisis, served the flesh of his wife and children to a guest. Romance of the Three
Kingdoms includes the story of how Liu Bei Xuande, ruler of Shu, paid a visit to thehome of Liu An, a hunter with the same surname. Despite the fact that Liu An was poor,
he treated Liu Bei to a magnificent meal, including meat dishes. The next morning when
Liu Bei departed, he happened to notice the corpse of the hunter’s wife in the kitchen.
Another account from the Eastern Han dynasty (146) tells how Zang Hong sacrificed
his wife and concubines. As governor of the Eastern Commandery, he was entrustedwith defending Dongwuyong (present-day Yongqiu). One day he was surrounded by themen loyal to warlord Yuan Shao. Soon his food supplies were exhausted and, since heknew he could not expect reinforcements, he prepared himself for the inevitable: death.
First he told his subordinates to escape. But his officers and officials wouldn’t budge;
they just stood there and wept. Soon they had no food left. Zang Hong killed his
favorite concubine, and fed her flesh to his soldiers, all of whom collapsed in tears andcould not look Zang Hong in the eye. Until the enemy took the fortress, 7,000-8,000
men and women died, their bodies in a heap. Not one person betrayed Zang Hong.
Since in his case the degree of cannibalism was relatively minor, his story was told andhis cannibalism forgiven, since it was motivated by loyalty. Still, wars in China were
unceasing, and Zang Hong was soon forgotten.
Now let us have a look at cannibalism connected with famine and war from the Eastern
Han dynasty through the Three Kingdoms period. The Eastern Han capital was Luoyang(today in northwestern Henan province), which along with Xi’an (Chang’an) was one of51

China’s most famous ancient capitals, known as a source of brilliant tacticians. During
the Zhou dynasties Luoyang’s name became Luoyi. During the Eastern Han dynasty thecapital, Luoyang, was visited by severe famines in 109 and 155, resulting incannibalism. Toward the end of Eastern Han the fortresses at Luoyang and Chang’an
were destroyed by warfare and cannibalism. During the Three Kingdoms period, boththe Wei and the Western Jin rebuilt the Luoyang fortress. But in June 311 Liu Yao andWang Mi attacked and conquered Luoyang. Emperor Huai, the Jin ruler, was in a daze
for several days, not knowing what to do. The famine within the fortress was severe,and the people inside the fortress began killing and eating each other, while the farmers
desperately sought an escape route. Eight or nine out of every 10 people died.
Thus the massacre of the people inside a fortress is part of China’s war culture. China’s
cities are surrounded by fortress walls. If a city is captured by an enemy, the people
inside the walls are trapped, and become victims of looting and murder. Now I would
like to describe a massacre that took place in Nanjing, shortly before the Sui and Tangdynasties commenced, during the Liang dynasty (502-587).
Nanjing, the Liang capital (called Jiankang at the time), was the scene of the Hou Jing
Rebellion in 548. Hou Jing began his military career at a Northern Wei garrison. Laterhe was in service to Northern Wei General Erzhu Rong. When Gao Huan of Eastern Wei
came into power, Hou was quick to ingratiate himself. When Gao Huan died, Houturned against the Eastern Wei, took command of a local army and surrendered to Liang
Emperor Wu (502-549). But when it looked as though a north-south peace treaty would
be concluded between the Liang and Eastern Wei, the uneasy Hou Jing turned against
Emperor Wu, raised an army, advanced toward the capital, Jiankang (Nanjing), in 548,and conquered Jiankang in 549. Emperor Wu was imprisoned and starved to death.
Then a three-year-long massacre commenced.
Nanjing’s walls were built of stone and bricks. In the Jin dynasty during the Three
Kingdoms period, the city had double walls, but by the Southern Liang dynasty it had
triple walls. When Emperor Wu ruled, the population was greater than one million. The
Liang empire was a Buddhist state, and Jiankang was home to many Buddhist temples,
as well as 100,000 priests and nuns. According to the Book of Liang, during Emperor
Wu’s reign an important memorial service was held at Changyu temple. It attracted
several hundred thousand men and women, an unprecedented number, and inspired thefollowing lines in a famous poem written by late Tang dynasty poet Du Mu:

52

Southern Dynasty temples,
Four hundred eighty or more,
Towers and terraces
Wreathed in misty rain.19
But the Hou Jing Rebellion in 548 shattered the dream of prosperity for Jiankang, when
Hou Jing turned against Emperor Wu. What ensued was the Nanjing Massacre.
An account in the “Liang” section of Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government
dated 548 tells us that after having exhausted the food supplies in the Changping
storehouses in Shitou (another name for Nanjing), the soldiers did not have enough toeat. Hou Jing unleashed his soldiers on the city; they stole the people’s food, valuables,
and kidnapped women and children. Soon the price of rice soared to 80,000 qian per 1.5
kilograms, and the people resorted to cannibalism. As a result, five or six out of every
10 persons were killed or starved to death.
The same account states that on the day of the attack there were more than 100,000
civilians and over 20,000 soldiers in the city. But as the assault continued, eight or nineout of 10 people died, and in the end fewer than 4,000 persons remained in the city. The
survivors were all emaciated. Corpses littered the streets, and fluids from thedecomposing bodies flowed into moats that had been carefully planted with pagoda
trees and willows.
When the Liang established their capital at Jiankang, there were 280,000 households inthe city. After the rebellion, the roads were impassable. Even though cannibalism ran
rampant for several months, many starved to death. Only about one or two out of every
hundred survived. For years on end Jiangnan suffered droughts and locust plagues. The
situation in Jiangzhou and Yangzhou was even worse. The people drifted from place toplace, wandering through mountain valleys and wading through rivers. They picked andate grass, nuts, and water chestnuts. Strewn everywhere were the corpses of those who
had starved to death, which covered the fields. For miles on end one might notencounter another live human. There were mountains of bleached bones.

19

http://www.mountainsongs.net/poem_.php?id=404 (retrieved 10/16/2017).

53

4. Tang dynasty: the golden age of cannibalism
Reports from Japanese missions to China during the Sui and Tang dynasties give theimpression that China was a magnificent place. But those dynasties also represent the
golden age of cannibalism in China. The time frame begins in the 8th century, after the
An Lushan Rebellion (755) toward the end of the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, who is
so well known in Japan.
We know that cannibalism was widespread then from historical records concerning
cannibalism practiced by the occupants of fortresses under siege, one-third of whichdate from this same period. This was also the time when human flesh and internalorgans came to be viewed as having curative powers. Human flesh was sold openly atmarkets, and humans were captured, killed, and eaten. Toward the end of the Tangdynasty the rebel Huang Chao (835-884) established a great many human-flesh
processing factories called chongzhaizhai, as well as a branch of his army (zaishawu)
whose soldiers were responsible for the husbandry and slaughter of humans being raisedfor their meat. They would make enormous quantities of yanshi (salted corpse) byextracting the internal organs, packing them in salt, and drying them in the sun. The
resulting preparation was fed to the soldiers. In the fluctuating situation that pitted thebarbarians against the Chinese, it was rations for the soldiers that caused problems forthe farmers. (Nor was the problem resolved in the modern era.)In 759 General Shi Siming, An Lushan’s bosom friend, led an army of elite soldiersfrom Fanyang to Weizhou, which they attacked and conquered; Shi proclaimed himself
the Great Yan Wang. Then the government forces launched a counterattack, surrounding
the fortress. They then proceeded to flood the city.
The inhabitants of the city began exchanging children and eating them. Si Chaoyi
turned against his father, Shi Siming, and surrounded Siming’s base, Fanyang fortress.
As a result, several thousand people inside the fortress died over several days. For
hundreds of miles around the defeated Luoyang, cannibalism was rife. Every village andtown in the area was in ruins.
A century later, in April 881, Huang Chao’s troops slaughtered the citizens of Chang’an.
For several consecutive years thereafter, cannibalism was prevalent in Chang’an.
Furthermore, the city became a trading post offering the flesh of both government and54rebel soldiers. Additionally, the entire area around the capital came to serve as hunting
grounds where both government and rebel troops preyed on civilians. Huang Chao’s
troops reportedly established special redoubts they referred to as “grinding andpolishing forts” in which they ate the flesh of several thousand civilians each day.
A look at records from the late Tang dynasty tells us that during the five years between
887 and 891, even looking only at Tang records in the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in
Government, soldiers preyed on civilians.
1. When food supplies ran out in June 887 inside the Yangzhou fortress, and thewoodcutters’ paths ended, the soldiers from Xuanzhou began to eat the flesh of
civilians.
2. In February 888 Li Hanzhi’s unit neglected their duties. Instead they looted,
appropriating money and goods. They also captured civilians and served theirflesh as food.
3. In July 891 warlord Sun Ru burned all the houses in Yangzhou. They ambushed
men in the prime of life, as well as women and girls, crossed the Yangzi River,then killed the old and weak and ate them.
Dynastic historical accounts that describe soldiers preying on civilians show a sudden
increase in the Sui and Tang dynasties and thereafter, but the ethos was at least as strong
in the Yuan dynasty and thereafter.
The cannibalism culture, which blossomed during the five dynasties that followed Sui
and Tang (Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou) soon became
the model for China’s dynasties. Subsequent cannibalism during siege warfare followed
the same pattern as those eras.
Japan adopted many aspects of Sui and Tang culture, such as Buddhism and ritsuryo, alegal system based on Confucianism. However, the latter days of the Tang dynasty,
when Japanese missions to China ceased, represented the golden age of the Chinese
cannibalism culture.
After the Tang dynasty ended, and during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period,
the military established a new department called zaishawu. It was reportedly charged
with the husbandry, slaughter and serving of higher mammals, or primates. An official

55

record that deals with the zaishawu can be found in the section of the Comprehensive
Mirror for Aid in Government dealing with the Later Liang Emperor Taizu in about 909.
At that time Yan warlord Liu Shouguang had surrounded Cangzhou. Inside the fortressprovisions had been consumed. Civilians were eating clay, and troops were eating thecivilians. “Lugun separated the men from the women, and the weak from the strong,raised them in the same way as other livestock, and killed them and served their flesh to
the soldiers; this was a zaishawu.”
Incidentally, Later Liang Emperor Taizu was a subordinate of Huang Chao, the one whostarted the rebellion against the weakened Tang dynasty during its last days. Still, when
Huang Chao’s prospects looked dim, Taizu went over to the government army. He
received the name Zhu Quanzhong from the 18th Tang emperor, then toppled the Tangand began the Later Liang dynasty.
Another noteworthy aspect of Chinese military history is the fact that the Chinese oftenchose cannibalism, which required little effort and instilled fear into the hearts of theenemy, rather than attacking a fortress, which was a huge effort. They often chosecannibalism as a means of achieving their strategic objectives.
In 963 during the Northern Song dynasty, when Song troops, seeking to conquer China,
were advancing southward to Hunan, the cannibalism strategy of Li Chuyun, dispatchedto lead them, was obvious. When the Song army reached Aoshan fortress, the enemy
abandoned the city and fled; many enemy soldiers were captured. Chuyun ordered his
men to kill several dozen corpulent soldiers, whose flesh they ate. They tattooed young,strong prisoners of war and ordered them to act as the vanguard and enter the fortress at
Langzhou. As soon as they entered, the rumor spread immediately that all prisoners of
war had been eaten. The residents of Langzhou were terrified, and proceeded to burn thefortress to the ground and flee.
Emperor Taizu, crowned by his subordinates, founded the Song dynasty. However, heprotected the young emperor of the Later Zhou dynasty, the last of the Five Dynasties
and Ten Kingdoms that had served him, and his family. Taizu named his younger
brother as his successor.
For a Chinese emperor, Taizu was a gentle soul, but it is noteworthy that thecannibalism strategy was enabled him to unite China in the Song dynasty.

56

5.

Warfare in the Ming dynasty

After the Song dynasty the Chinese began using gunpowder and artillery. Siege warfare
underwent a significant change as far as strategy and tactics were concerned. The
Mongols’ main weapons in their assaults on fortresses were ladders and traction
trebuchets introduced from Western Asia. Methods of attack had changed, but warfare
remained relentlessly brutal.
In 1275 the intrepid Yuan General Ba Yan surrounded Changzhou. He then ordered
Wang Liangchen, who had submitted to him, to round up some people outside the city
to bring soil and build a stronghold. However, whenever a crew came with soil, they
were buried in the soil. Additionally, Ba Yan killed people and extracted oil from theirfat, which he used to lubricate the cannons used to attack the fortress.
In terms of ethnic policy, of all China’s dynasties, Ming was the one that most favoredthe Han Chinese. For instance, barbarian languages, costume, surnames, and customs
were strictly forbidden; agriculture was encouraged, but commerce was suppressed.
Politically, the Ming established a rigid autocracy. The emperor had supreme authority.
Officials were under strict supervision, and to facilitate a politics of fear, a secret
military agency was established called the Embroidered-Uniform Guard, as well as theEastern Depot, an agency operated by eunuchs designed to spy on all officials.
Most of the siege warfare involving cannibalism during the Yuan and Ming dynasties
was waged at transitional junctions. Cannibalism fueled by natural disasters and famine
also came into the picture and, along with siege warfare, hastened the collapse of thosedynasties.
Cannibalism was practiced by starving people for 11 years due to a terrible famine that
extended for 21 years between 1342 and 1362 toward the end of the Yuan dynasty.
However, cannibalism resulting from siege warfare also took place during the late Yuanrebellions. There was the Red Turban Rebellion, instigated by the White Lotus sect of
Buddhism in which farmers and refugees placed their hopes, and whose mission was
toppling the Yuan dynasty. That in turn engendered the Yellow Turban Rebellion,
fomented by Zhang Shicheng, Chen Youliang, and Zhu Yuanzhang, who established theMing dynasty. There were instances of cannibalism associated with siege warfare in57

Huai’an (1355-57), Xinzhou (1359), Anfeng (1363), and Qingyang (1369).

6. Qing dynasty and the Chinese civilization
The Manchu population numbered no more than several hundred thousand.
Nevertheless, the Manchus managed to control the Chinese, who outnumbered them
exponentially for nearly 300 years, a feat unprecedented in Chinese history. Not only
did the Qing empire established by the Manchus embrace the political legacy of the
Ming empire, it also embraced the several-thousand-year-old Chinese cultural legacy,
and built upon it. With the exception of its last years, the Qing dynasty was anexceedingly stable, comfortable age, and one in which the Chinese lived more contently
than any other. It was not an accident that the 300-year Manchu rule went so smoothly.
Throughout its 2,000-year history, China had far more foolish rulers than wise ones. Butof the 12 Qing emperors, with the exception of child Emperor Xuantong (Puyi), who
was forced to abdicate, not one was witless or imprudent. That can be explained by thefact that the Qing did away with primogeniture in the succession of imperial power, andinstituted a system whereby the most competent and virtuous individual was chosen.
Thus the Qing were able to avoid the intrigue instigated by maternal relatives andeunuchs.
Ever since the Han Chinese civilization arose on the lower reaches of the Yellow River,
it had continually been expanding southward. But by the end of the Ming dynasty, that
expansion had reached its limits. Socioeconomic development had stalled and washeading straight for ruin. Through his entry into the capital, Li Zicheng had effectively
put an end to the Ming dynasty. Then the Ming General Wu Sangui, who had fought
against the Qing forces mustered by the Jurchens, surrendered to the Qing, buried Li
Zicheng’s Shun dynasty by welcoming the Qing, marking the advent of the Qing
empire.
The Manchus of the Qing dynasty expanded the territory of China like never before.
Chinese territory now extended far beyond the northern defensive line provided by theGreat Wall, solving the problem of possible incursions from the north. It was in the
Qing dynasty that the Chinese moved beyond the Great Wall and entered Manchuria.
They also migrated to Xinjiang in East Turkestan, as well as the Yunnan-Guizhou
Plateau in southwestern China, and to Southeast Asia. The population of China surged
from several tens of millions to several hundred million.
58

The vast territory of present-today China is the legacy of the Qing dynasty. It not only
put the finishing touches on the Chinese empire, but also on the Chinese culture. Every
aspect of today’s culture, thought, and art was perfected during the Qing dynasty.
But when the 19th century dawned, Western Europe, with its huge warships and cannons,
shook the very foundation of the Qing empire. In the face of such a threat, China’s
massive city walls were useless.
In the waning days of the Qing dynasty the Taiping Rebellion, led by Hong Xiuquan,erupted. This uprising, which resulted in the loss of some 50 million lives, began in1851 with a revolt in the village of Jintian in Guangxi province. In 1853 the revel army
occupied Nanjing and declared it the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom,
renaming it Tianjing (heavenly capital). For 15 years the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
launched expedition after expedition, wreaking havoc throughout much of China.
In June 1861 the Xiang Army, formed to quell the Taiping Rebellion and led by Zeng
Guofan, surrounded a Taiping Army that had holed up in the walled city of Anqing on
the coast of the Yangzi River. At that point Zeng, through the British Consulate inShanghai, asked the Qing court to keep foreign merchant ships from using the Yangzi.
According to an account in History of the Qing Dynasty pertaining to Hong Xiuquan,
the guards at the fortress, who were near starvation, began leaving it and surrendering.
Those who remained inside survived by eating human flesh.
In The Ever-Victorious Army, Andrew Wilson wrote the following:
In November 1861 Nganking [Anqing] fell, after having been
defended heroically for three years by Yeh Yun-lai, On entering,
the people were found dead in the streets by hundreds. They had
been reduced to the last extremity; for human flesh had been soldas their food at 40 cash per catty, or one penny per pound; and it isworthy of note that, almost at the same time, the Imperialists
besieged in Hangchow were reduced to the same dreadfulextremity. 20

20

Andrew Wilson, The Ever-Victorious Army: A History of the Chinese Campaign Under Lt.

59

This is an important record, emanating as it did from a Western writer.
Before the Xiang Army surrounded Nanjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had
already been weakened by sudden internecine strife. In January 1864 Zeng Guoquan,
Zeng Guofan’s youngest brother, led the 50,000-strong Xiang Army to Nanjing, which it
attacked and surrounded.
As the days passed, the food supply within the city walls began to dwindle. Grass was
the last substance Zeng Guoquan ingested before he died. On July 19, more than half ayear after the Xiang Army surrounded Nanjing, explosives were used to breach thewalls in nine locations. The Xiang Army rushed into the city. For a month its men
rampaged, killing, raping, setting fires, and looting. They used tanks to remove theirplunder from the city. For a time Nanjing was the scene of a massacre perpetrated by the
Xiang Army, the 19th-century Nanjing massacre. In his diary Zhao Liewen, one of Zeng
Guofan’s right hand men, who had been assigned to observe Guoquan, Zeng’s younger
brother, described in detail the Nanjing massacre perpetrated by the Xiang Army.
With the advent of the 20th century, there was a shift in the main weapons of warfare tocannons and machine guns. Since firepower and mobility often determined the outcomeof a battle, the usefulness of mammoth fortified cities declined, and siege warfare
became a thing of the past. The traditional Chinese cannibalism strategy ended, for all
intents and purposes, with the Taiping Rebellion, the 14-year period over which theuprising raged (it ended in 1864) marking the greatest civil war in human history.
During the rebellion, which comprised more than one massacre, the population of China,
estimated at approximately 400 million, shrank by one-fifth. In Japan at that time, China
was described as the land of 400 million people and more than 400 provinces.

7. China after the Xinhai Revolution
Having been sobered by the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Empress Dowager Cixi set China
on the path toward a constitutional monarchy, having in 1908 promised her subjects aCol. C.G. Gordon and of the Suppression of the Tai-Ping Rebellion (Edinburgh and London:
William Blackwood and Sons, 1868), p. 74.

60

constitution and a parliament by 1918.
But it was already too late. When Cixi died that same year, a rebellious mood had
permeated all of China. Inspired by the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1912, 14 outof China’s 22 provinces declared independence. This was what came to be known as the
Xinhai Revolution.
The newly formed Revolutionary Army selected Sun Yatsen as its interim president inNanjing on January 1, 1912, and proclaimed the establishment of the Republic of China.
Yuan Shikai, prime minister of the Qing dynasty, was supposed to react to these eventsby leading a campaign to suppress the rebels. However, he negotiated with therevolutionary government in Nanjing, convinced the last Qing Emperor Xuantong(Puyi) to abdicate, and assumed the office of interim president instead of Sun Yatsen,
and then president in the following year. However, Yuan died in 1916, and Sun in 1925,
leaving these words behind: “The revolution is not yet successful.”Ever since the Republic of China’s government in Beijing was defeated by the National
Revolutionary Army, the Nationalist government in Nanjing came to be recognized by
the rest of the world as the government representing China. However, the truth is thatthe struggle for control of China continued, and after Sun Yatsen’s death, the militarist
factions of the Nationalist Party began establishing governments willy-nilly, and theconflict continued. After World War II ended, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) led
by Mao Zedong gained supremacy, and in 1949 the People’s Republic of China wasestablished. The Nationalist government inherited by Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan.
The Xinhai Revolution can be credited with extricating China from its traditional
system whereby power was concentrated in the emperor, and enabling China to adopt anational civilization like that of Western nations. However, the armed conflicts that
subsequently erupted were exactly the same as traditional power struggles in the
Chinese civilization; to prevail, any means could be used. Given that any means could
be used, although the revolutions were supposedly intended to benefit the Chinese
people, absolutely no consideration was given to their welfare.
Looking back at ancient history, we see that warlord Xiang Yu of Chu was taken in by
Liu Bang’s scheme involving “Chu songs on all sides” (Han soldiers sang Chu songs todemoralize Xiang’s men; convinced Xiang that his homeland had been captured). Xiang

61

Yu fled straight south to the Wu River. Lamenting that he could not face the village
headman east of the river, he committed suicide. But the extraordinary Sun Yatsen was
entirely the opposite. Even though his revolutions kept ending in failure, he establisheda military government in Guangzhou in his home province, three times, and evenperpetrated a massacre there. Why did he do that? The answer is that unlike powerful
warlords, Sun did not have an army. To launch a government in his native Guangzhou,
he needed an army. So he borrowed armed men from northern armies, and drafted
outlaws and welcomed them to Guangzhou. They were called guest soldiers. Once they
set foot in Guangzhou, they occupied every facility that made money, like the railroads.
Then they locked horns with the Guangdong region’s commercial, engineering, andagricultural defense units, Sun Yatsen’s forces squabbled with the commercial unit overstate-of-the-art weapons needed to launch a government. The result was a massacre. No
one cared about protecting the lives of the people.
One of the evils of the Nationalist Army that no one can explain away was the Yellow
River flood of 1938. To halt the advance of Japanese troops, the Nationalists destroyed
dikes on the Yellow River, thus creating an artificial flood. As a result, between 10 and
12 million Chinese were affected, and 890,000 lost their lives.
The PLA ultimately prevailed; there may be some who believe that they valued the livesof Chinese citizens, but they were no different from the warlords.
On the morning of January 10, 1927, the PLA occupied the city of Guangdong. They
committed every imaginable offense, acting as if civilian residents were an opposing
army, setting fires, looting, raping, and killing. On the morning of January 13, however,another army counterattacked, and eradicated the PLA troops. The residents’ hatred for
the PLA and the atrocities they committed ran deep. They slaughtered more than 2,500
PLA soldiers, including women soldiers. They committed terrible acts, too, such as
exposing the genitals of female soldiers, sometimes penetrating them with sticks. Such
brutal scenes were photographed by Japanese residents of Guangdong. The photographs
are included in Higashinakano Shudo’s The Front Line of research on the Nanking“Massacre.”21

21

Higashinakano Shudo, ed., Nankin “gyakusatsu” kenkyu no saizensen: Nihon Nankingakkai nenpo 2002 (Tokyo: Tendensha, 2002).

62

Warfare between the Nationalists and the PLA worsened after World War II ended.
Noteworthy is the encircling operation initiated by the PLA at Changchun, where the
Nationalists had taken over. It lasted for 150 days, between May 23 and October 19,
1948.
Civilians tried to escape, but PLA soldiers forced them to turn back. They were
determined to starve the Nationalists to death.
According to PLA reports, 150,000 people did starve to death. Since China had entered
the modern era, there were probably no blatant acts of cannibalism. Still, when one
realizes that 150,000 died, there must have been some instances.
Estimates have it that after the PRC was established, in a three-year period at the
beginning of the 1960s during the Great Leap Forward, tens of millions of Chinese
starved to death. An examination of memoirs and other records reveals that there weremany instances of cannibalism involving several villages.
During the chaos that was the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, there were somany rumors circulating about cannibalism that we must assume that some of themwere true, especially given the many instances of cannibalism in wartime. This writer
provides a detailed description of a case of mass cannibalism in the latter half of the 20th
century, quotes from CPC officials’ cannibalism diaries, and an account of a
middle-school principal who was killed and eaten by his students during the Chinese
civil war in Zheng Yi’s Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China.22
The Chinese Communist government has been aggressively broadcasting its claim thatin 1937, when the Japanese attacked Nanjing, they unlawfully murdered civilians inwhat they call the Nanjing massacre. Needless to say, this claim is baseless. But in 1949
when the PLA entered Nanjing, its troops went on a rampage that targeted the wealthy,
killing, raping, and looting. There have been many Nanjing massacres over the years,
but the most recent one was perpetrated by the PLA.
22

Zheng Yi, Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China, trans. T.P. Sym(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996); see also Shokujin enseki: massatsu sareta Chugoku

gendai shi (A cannibal’s banquet: obliterated modern Chinese history), trans. Ko Bun’yu(Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1993).

63

Nationalist oppression of the Taiwanese is another instance of unlawful murder ofcivilians that must be mentioned. When Japan surrendered to the Allies after World War
II, the Nationalist Army was to enter Taiwan and take over its administration, according
to the first order issued by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. But on February 28, 1947, there
were clashes with the Taiwanese, who had previously been Japanese citizens, and a
massacre ensued with the approval of Chiang Kai-shek, who was still on the mainland
at that time.
Within the short space of two weeks, the Nationalists murdered or executed some
30,000 Taiwanese. These were all unlawful killings or executions of civilians by their
new government; this could not have happened under Japanese rule. Two hundredfishermen from Okinawa also lost their lives, caught up in the indiscriminate, gratuitousslaughter spree.

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CHAPTER 4: JAPANESE HISTORY: PROGRESS WITHOUTMURDER
1. Japan viewed from an archeological perspective
I have no intention of addressing the question of how and when the Japanese settled onthese islands in this book. Textbooks inform us that the Jomon period commenced
approximately 16,000 years ago. The pottery of that era (Jomon ware) is markedly
different from pottery crafted by the agricultural people of the succeeding culture (theYayoi culture). For a time that difference led scholars to suspect that the Jomon people
were not the ancestors of the Japanese of today. However, thanks to advancements inarchaeology, we now know that the Jomon people were the forebears of subsequentcultures and of the present-day Japanese. That being the case, we must look to the
Jomon culture for the roots of the Japanese people and of Japanese civilization.
According to the edition of the New History Textbook23 (compiled and edited by theJapanese Society for Textbook Reform) currently in use, when we look at Japan from analtitude of 10,000 meters, we see that it is surrounded by water. In geopolitical terms,
Japan’s location puts it in the best possible position for resisting foreign invasions. We
also notice that Japan is covered with dense forests. The Jomon people hunted wildboars and deer. They fished, and engaged in small-scale agriculture as well. They may
have formed communities or villages; if so, the villages must have been far apart. There
was nothing for them to fight over, so they did not wage wars, probably because thecommunities were so scattered.
Through recent archeological advances we know that the Jomon people kept dogs,
which they used in hunting. They bonded with their dogs; they never killed them. In fact,
they grieved for the dogs when they died.
People who live in the world of ice (Siberia, for instance) use dogs to pull their sleds.
When the sled dogs die, they eat them. Perhaps the Siberians’ environment tolerates
such behavior, but in comparison, the Jomon people seem to have been gentle souls.
They were radically different from the Koreans and the people of Guangdong, who are23

Shinpen: Atarashii rekishi kyokasho (New history textbook, revised edition) (Tokyo:

Jiyusha, 2016).

65

so fond of dog meat.
Eventually the cultivation of rice was introduced into Japan, and agriculture began toflourish. Such progress propelled the unification of Japan behind the Yamato court. The
rice-growing culture harvested and stored its crops. Wars were bound to break out overstockpiled food. Pottery from the Yayoi period was decorated with images of warriors,and from them we know that there were wars then. But such conflicts were far smallerin scale and much less brutal than battles fought in China at that time. Moreover, there
were no instances of great numbers of people being buried alive, as in China during theShang dynasty.24
In China a writing system had been invented, and when a ruler died, xunzang (the ritualsuicide of his wives, retainers and servants so they could accompany him in theafterlife) was practiced. The Chinese crafted and used bronze and iron vessels. All thesearticles were used in warfare. But the Japanese did not yet have access to tank-likevehicles drawn by four horses, nor to crossbows made of bronze, which were moreaccurate than ordinary bows.
Here I would like to cite an example from Japanese mythology: the story of the transferof the land of Izumo. Amaterasu (goddess of the sun and earth) requested the transfer of
Izumo, then ruled by Okuninushi, a descendant of Susanoo. Okuninushi asked her tobuild a great shrine at Izumo, which would serve as his home, and to worship him there.
Amaterasu honored his request and the transfer was consummated. Not a drop of blood
was spilled. The shrine mentioned in the myth is Izumo Taisha, and we learned only
recently that the shrine described in Japanese mythology was indeed built (see thesection pertaining to Emperor Jinmu’s eastern migration in Chapter 3 of the Chronicles
of Japan). There you will find no mention of the massacre or annihilation of defeatedsoldiers. On the contrary, Emperor Jinmu took the daughter of the head of a powerfulclan who had surrendered to him as his wife. Jinmu was tireless in his efforts to effectreconciliation with those he had defeated. Once the Yamato court was established andBuddhism, with its taboo against killing, came to Japan, the Japanese were even moreloath to take the lives of other humans.
Buddhism is a philosophy and a religion that spread throughout East Asia in ancient24

China’s earliest dynasty (ca. 1600-1046 BC).

66

times. It prohibits murder precisely because one of its tenets is that all living creatures
are entitled to live life to its fullest. With its emphasis on the contemplation of the pastand the future, Buddhism would continue to have an extremely powerful influence on
the Japanese, augmenting the Shinto culture created by farmers.

2. The Jinshin War: Major conflict arising from imperial succession disputes
In 608, when Prince Shotoku dispatched the third mission to Sui China, there wasdebate over what language to use to convey the Japanese emperor’s title. The consensus
was that the appellation used in China (huangdi) would not be appropriate. On the other
hand, it would be equally inappropriate to describe the Japanese emperor as “king,”
since that would make him subordinate to the Chinese ruler. Then someone hit upon
tenno, or “celestial sovereign.” In Chinese the word (tianhuang) is used to describe thehighest-ranking Daoist deities or, specifically, the North Star, around which all stars
rotate.
By using the word tenno, the Japanese were being courteous to the Sui court and to theTang court, which followed it, as well. But they were also demonstrating that theJapanese ruler had attained a status equal to that of the Chinese emperor, and that there
was another realm beyond that of the Chinese world.
Now I would like to draw readers’ attention to Prince Shotoku’s 17-Article Constitution,
which exemplifies the mindset of a nation’s ruler. Even today it represents thefundamental principles by which the Japanese live. Article 1 contains a prime example:
Harmony should be valued and quarrels should be avoided.
Article 17, the final article, reads in part:
Decisions on important matters should not be made by one person
alone.
This is the underlying principle of the Japanese respect for discussions andconsultations.
Article 2 offers the following instructions:67

The three treasures, which are Buddha, the (Buddhist) Law and the(Buddhist) Priesthood, should be given sincere reverence, for they
are the final refuge of all living things.
Prince Shotoku designated Buddhism, which has served through the ages as a solid
foundation for the Japanese spirit, as Japan’s second national religion.
Blessed with a natural barrier that enabled them to live their lives without the constantfear of being invaded by a foreign power (China, in this case), the Japanese succeededin creating a new, separate world. All the conditions necessary for the establishment of anation whose citizens could live in peace and prosper, should those governing them sodesire, were satisfied.
China, on the other hand, was always at risk. Not even the most gifted ruler, not eventhe ideal relationship between ruler and subjects, could protect the Chinese frominvasions and possible annihilation. They could build a glorious nation, but that nation
would always be vulnerable to attack by a military force from outside.
But the Japanese did not need to worry about a foreign invasion, and could instead
focus on forging the ideal relationship between a nation and its people.
The Jinshin War erupted in 672, not long after the death of Emperor Tenji. It was
triggered by a dispute over Emperor Tenji’s successor between Prince Oama, his
younger brother, and Prince Otomo, his son. Since neither side would give way, victoryin war seemed to be the only possible solution. This was the first armed conflict inJapan that resulted from an imperial-succession controversy among blood relatives. In
China, such wars were often blood baths involving several tens of thousands ofcombatants.
The Xuanwu Gate Incident (626) resulted in the enthronement of Li Shimin as thesecond emperor (Emperor Taizong) of the Tang dynasty. Li killed his older brother (thecrown prince), his younger brother Li Yuanji, and every member of their families, for a
total of tens of thousands of victims. After his father, Emperor Gaozu, relinquished thethrone, Li became the wisest ruler in Chinese history, but until he grasped the reins of
power firmly in his hands, he was fighting a war originating from a vicious family

68dispute.
Japan’s Jinshin War was a large-scale conflict over imperial succession. But comparedwith Chinese conflicts with similar causes, it was a minor clash, and far less brutal.
On June 24 Prince Oama fled from Yoshino, where he had been living the secluded lifeof a priest. On July 23, Prince Otomo committed ritual suicide after having been
defeated in battle. The war had lasted exactly one month. According to Chronicles ofJapan, Prince Oama’s warriors numbered 23,000 (20,000 from Owari and 3,000 fromMino). However, judging from population estimates, he probably had fewer than 10,000
men under his command. If Prince Otomo’s army was about the same size, there were
20,000 combatants at most. Moreover, the great majority of them were farmers. The
general commanding Prince Oama’s forces, Otomo no Fukei, issued a warning: The
mission of these soldiers is not to kill farmers, but to kill evildoers. Therefore, do not killat random. This was an official notice prohibiting the killing of farmers. The Jinshin War
was small in scope, and it was likely that there were not many casualties. Prince Oama
had already embraced Buddhism, and therefore was averse to killing others. Even so, in
previous eras there was no precedent for brutal wars, such as the ones waged in China.
Perhaps for that reason, after the death of Prince Otomo, the victors treated the defeatedmercifully. Eight people were held accountable and executed, and an unspecified numberof persons were exiled. No one else was punished.

3. Taking of life anathema to Japanese culture
In 673 Prince Oama was installed as Emperor Tenmu. He proceeded to have the Great
Treasury of Sutras copied at Kawahara Temple. In 680, when his wife (later Empress
Jito) became ill, Tenmu prayed for her recovery, promising to build Yakushi Temple if
his prayer was answered. Emperor Tenmu also announced that the Omi code, which had
already been enacted, would be further refined. This became the Asuka Kiyomihara
Code, which took effect during the reign of Empress Jito. One of the provisions of thiscollection of laws was the termination of the current appellation of Japan, Wa, and its
replacement with Nippon. Furthermore, work began on a compilation of Japanese
history; the fruits of these labors were Japan’s first histories, Records of Ancient Matters
and Chronicles of Japan.
In any case, the Jinshin War was fought to resolve a dispute over imperial succession,69

but it was small in scale. Apparently Prince Oama modeled his strategy after that of theHan Emperor Gaozu, who ruled from 256 to 195 BC. He did not, however, adopt
Gaozu’s brutal methods. The fact that once the outcome of the war was clear, there wereno additional killings for the purpose of revenge, set a precedent that would be observedin the future. Previous conflicts involved no needless brutality, but even in the Jinshin
conflict, a furiously waged war, there was no cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
Any discussion of the Japanese aversion to killing must mention the ban on eating meat
issued by Emperor Tenmu in 675. That imperial order prohibited the consumption of theflesh of cattle, horses, dogs, monkeys, and chickens. The reason for the ban on monkeys
was their close resemblance to humans. Chickens were included because roosters’ crows
tell humans what time it is. The prohibition against eating cattle and horses (because
they help farmers by working in the fields) was limited to the growing season. In 676
Emperor Tenmu issued the Animal Release Order, which states that birds and fish are to
be released into the wild. Together with the ban on eating meat, it adhered to Buddhist
teachings, which stress kindness to animals.
Later, prohibitions against killing were issued several times, as late as the Kamakura era(1185-1333), when one was ordered by the Kamakura Shogunate. The Tokugawa
Shogunate issued them as well. Among them were the noteworthy Edicts on
Compassion for Living Things decreed by Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. Here I would like toemphasize the fact that even as late as the Edo period, which falls into Japan’s modern
era, the Tokugawa Shogunate issued an order banning the killing of cattle and horses,
and another prohibiting the consumption of meat. Cattle and horses were included
because they served humans. This prohibition was adhered to strictly during the Edo
period, aided by Buddhist precepts honored by the common people. Today the Japanese
eat beef and other meat without any hesitation. But it was not until the Meiji period andWesternization policies instituted then that they begin eating meat. In 1871 Emperor
Meiji set an example by eating beef, and the Japanese were advised to improve theirhealth by emulating this Western world.
However, the multitude of orders and decrees prohibiting the consumption of meatsuggest that these prohibitions were not observed to the letter.
The warriors who emerged in the late Heian period (794-1185) were professional
combatants who had to be prepared to kill, and resolutely so, when necessary. Therefore,70refusing to eat meat for fear of descending into a Buddhist hell would have been a markagainst their honor. So they steeled themselves and ate it.
Common people too also ate meat, using such excuses as “animals caught in traps
weren’t killed by humans, so it’s all right to eat them.” Furthermore, there were no
prohibitions against consuming fish or shellfish, as they were important sources ofprotein in the Edo period.
It is important to emphasize the fact that so many prohibitions against killing were
issued in Japan because the Japanese had an aversion to killing humans.

4. Defining Bushido
Now I would like to examine Bushido, the moral code of Japanese warriors, or samurai,
to shed some more light on Japanese history, which progressed without killing.
Samurai came onto the scene during the Heian period, when the power of the imperial
court weakened. Privately owned parcels of land increased in number (in spite of thefact that shouldn’t have been any private holdings). The self-proclaimed owners wereforced to protect their property. Military groups were formed, which aligned themselveswith specific nobles. The result was the formation of two large groups of warriors, theMinamoto and the Taira.
Through the 15th and 16th centuries (the Age of Warring States), and in the Edo period,
when the government created a social order (with samurai at the top, followed by
farmers, artisans, and merchants), the samurai headed the social order.
A detailed description can be found in Bushido: The Soul of Japan, written by Nitobe
Inazo and published in 1899. In its preface, Nitobe tells us that the distinguished jurist
Emile de Laveleye once asked him if religious instruction was given in Japanese
schools. When Nitobe responded in the negative, de Laveleye said, “No religion! How
do you impart moral education?”25 Nitobe was at a loss for an answer right then, but
after giving the question a great deal of thought, he realized that the teaching of Bushido,
which took place in the home, was the Japanese form of moral education. He then25

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm (retrieved 11/20/2017).

71

proceeded to write the aforementioned book.
Some of the virtues of Bushido, according to Nitobe, are:
1. Rectitude or justice (gi)
Refrain from dishonorable deeds.
2. Courage (yu)Retain your self-possession even in the presence of danger or death.
3. Benevolence or compassion (jin)Use your strength to help others.
4. Politeness (rei)Avoid disrespectful behavior.
5.

Veracity and sincerity (makoto)
Abandon thoughts of personal gain

6. Honor (meiyo)
Take pride in doing what is just.
7. The duty of loyalty (chugi)
Be loyal to the bitter end when such loyalty is deserved.
These virtues resemble aspects of chivalry, which arose in Europe in the 9th century, andwas observed through 15th century. It was developed by knights and other military men
and constituted a way of life, though not codified, for them to follow. In that chivalry
stressed sacrificing the welfare of individuals for a greater good, refraining fromcowardly behavior, and respecting justice, it had much in common with Bushido.
In Korea, for a short time in the 7th century, during the Unified Silla dynasty (668-935),
72

groups of young men called Hwarang, or Flowering Knights, were active. The Hwarang
did not spring up spontaneously, but were selected by the Korean court. They do nothold up to comparison with Japanese samurai, but it was an honor to be chosen as a
Hwarang. They were warriors who despised cowardice, and took pride in their ability todemonstrate strength and compassion.
In other words, both samurai and knights had chosen an occupation that involved
participating in warfare. But both also had adopted a value system whereby they
avoided meaningless conflicts and needless killing.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a samurai from Saga who lived during the Edo period, wrote
Hagakure (In the shadow of leaves), which was destined for great acclaim. In it hewrote, “Bushido is the way of death.” By that he meant that a samurai must obey any
and all orders issued by his master, no matter how unreasonable they may seem. If his
master orders him to die, he must obey right then and there. Such conduct smacks ofstoicism, but this is a principle by which samurai lived. When they followed theprecepts of Bushido to the letter, they were able to conquer all their lowly desires andlive as ideal samurai.
Therefore, even when samurai took their own lives to take responsibility for some
infringement, they were not dispatched (for instance, decapitated) by someone else, butthey retained their honor by committing ritual suicide (seppuku). Apparently there is atremendous difference in the fear and pain that accompany death when one is killed bysomeone else or by one’s own hand. And that represented pride and honor for samurai.
The samurai of the Edo period who adhered to the principles of Bushido did not indulge
in showy luxuries. They had great compassion for the common people in their charge,
and made great efforts to insure that the common people were safe and contented. Led
by such distinguished warriors, the Edo period persisted for 260 years. It was followedby the Meiji Renovation, and with the declaration that all social classes were equal,
Japan became a modern nation. Bushido then became, at least to some extent, thenational character.
For that reason, there was no need to offer religious instruction per se in Japanese
schools, just as Nitobe explained. It is because of Bushido that the Japanese are honest,
brave, and kind.

73

Even in the Greater East Asian War (which includes World War II), the Japanese drew
upon the spirit of Bushido.
I believe that if the Japanese were pitted against any army, and the two sides had similarequipment, the Japanese would prevail. In battles waged during the Second
Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese fought with all their might. They were subjected toharsh criticism to the effect that the rank and file were quite capable, but the higher therank, the more ineffective the officer. It’s true that there may have been a few
incompetent officers, but I am confident that Japanese officers were generally capableand honorable.
There is a saying that goes, “The cherry among flowers, the samurai among men.”
Cherry blossoms open suddenly and fall just as quickly. Samurai of ancient times gave
their lives for their masters. Ever since Japan opened up to the rest of the world thebasic Japanese moral principle of patriotism has been held in high respect. Though some
may disagree, when soldiers vowed to die for the Emperor, they were not spouting
ideology, they were expressing a basic Japanese moral principle. The Japanese had so
few resources, and as they approached the Battle of Leyte Gulf, they realized that tostrike a severe blow against the US, and perhaps gain some leverage in peace talks, their
only recourse was suicide attacks. The Japanese military took that drastic step.
The Japanese have every reason to be proud of their patriotic martyrdom, with its basis
in Bushido; it is a respected national characteristic. For that very reason, it is of theutmost importance that accounts of suicide squads and those Japanese who chose death
before surrender be passed on to future generations.
Now I’d like to discuss the view that Bushido would never have come into being if
Japan had not been at peace, which may seem, at first glance, contrary to conventional
wisdom. But the fact is that while samurai kept Japan at peace, a spiral turning in afavorable direction was at work, and Bushido became even stronger in a peacefulsociety. If the spiral had been broken from outside and a great number of people were
killed unjustly, it would soon have disappeared. One need only look at the tragedy of the
Hwarang on the Korean peninsula. There the threat of foreign invasion was constant,the spiral was cut, and Bushido never came into being. Objective conditions differed
between Japan and Korea where Bushido was concerned.

74Since warfare was the objective of the samurai, a casual glimpse makes one think thatthe existence of samurai and warfare were two faces of the same coin. In that case, then
one could conclude that the mere existence of samurai was harmful to peace because
they destroyed peace and caused wars. But this was a simplistic conclusion.
While samurai needed to be strong, they were also required to be kind. Since they wereable to kill, when Bushido, which restrains them from killing meaninglessly, was born,
the objective of the samurai became maintaining and preserving peace. The two Chinesecharacters used to write bushi or “warrior” are 武士. The right-hand side of the firstcharacter (戈) means “halberd,” and the left side (止) means “stop.” The word formed
when we combine these two components and then follow them with the character for“man” means “someone who stops wars.” My aversion to Chinese characters
notwithstanding, I believe these two characters express the raison d’être of the samurai
quite eloquently.
But from a Chinese perspective, the characters for bushi seem quite incongruous. In
Chinese the second character means “scholar-official.” The Japanese notion of the dual
path of cultural and martial arts is totally alien to the Chinese. A man of letters and aman of the sword are considered two separate beings, and since the Song dynasty, theChinese political structure has given precedence to men of letters.
To elaborate a little more, suppose a man knows that he will eventually be going into
battle and that he may be killed. He would, normally, be terrified. For a warrior the firsthurdle to overcome is the conquest of that fear. In other words, a warrior must begin byacquiring the self-control to overcome the fear that his survival instinct gives rise to. He
must accomplish that by controlling his will to live, which is the most important aspectof the human spirit. If he manages to succeed, he deserves to be proud of himself.
He must be kind to the weak, and never torment them. He must not kill recklessly, andhe must also be prepared to die when a great cause is presented to him. He is able,
ultimately, to become an ideal human being, an ideal member of society, when he is able
to conquer his fear of death. Therefore, as Nitobe Inazo wrote, samurai do not need toundergo moral education by means of religious instruction, because Bushido provides
the moral path to tread.
Compared with Westerners, or with Muslims or East Indians, East Asians are less75

religious. Views on life and death differ by ethnicity. Bushido, like religions, tells you tocontemplate death and to always be aware of death, but besides that, samurai also seek
aesthetics as a “practice” that transcends religion; Bushido is superior to religion, andeven to the standards of good and evil.
Earlier I mentioned how warriors and peace form a spiral, and I would like to mention it
again. Warriors are prepared to engage in battles of all sorts at any time. But for suchwarriors to emerge in society, that society must be largely free of war. If not warriors
will not emerge. If warriors must conquer their fear of death, and take pride in doing
that, then society must admire and value them.
In societies where unjust deaths are a matter of course, there is no latitude that will
permit the luxury of admiring the proud warrior. When the will to live is denied andhumans are casually killed, humans cannot be faulted for doing whatever is necessary tosurvive. Even if in their midst there are kind people who do not kill and who are kind to
the weak, society does not have the leisure to appreciate such behavior.
In China where the people are sacrificial lambs, caught up in someone else’s battles andcasually killed, samurai warriors will definitely not appear. The good spiral between
warriors and peace will never form.
In a battle arena of a Japanese war, warriors fulfill the leading roles. Farmers, artisans,and merchants are something like spectators, as at a sporting event. The civil wars
fought in China during the modern age, where every member of the population wasforced to participate, were entirely different. That is why, in Japanese wars, warriors or
soldiers play the leading roles; Japanese wars are sporting and fair play prevails.
The fact that warriors and knights appeared in Japan and the Western world is proof thatat those times society was orderly, and that unjust killings were not common practice.
The fact that warriors appeared in Japan means that the Japanese had built a peacefulsociety.
The presence of warriors created peace, and peace encouraged the appearance of morewarriors. In other words, the spiral of justice functions. If a foreign people were to
invade Japan and war broke out, with cruel deaths being the rule rather than the
exception, Bushido would disappear. But since Japan is surrounded by water and was76

provided with a natural barrier, there were no foreign invasions, and Bushido advanced
by leaps and bounds. Japan became a peaceful nation with few wars.
Of course, even in Japan there was an Age of Warring States (1467-1603) during which
there was continuous warfare, beginning with the Onin War in 1467, similar to the
Spring and Autumn period in China (771-476 BC).
But warfare in Japan differed from that in China in that it did not involve the common
people or farmers. Historians indicate that when warrior leaders went into a battle, they
believed that the gods would not favor them if they behaved unjustly. They did not killneedlessly. Unlike the Chinese, they did not mow people down for no reason.
Battle methodology during the Age of Warring States closely resembled that employedduring the Spring and Autumn period. But even so, in Japan warriors were the leaders,and civilians did not get caught up in the fighting. It was different from China, where
the entire state was in utter chaos. Though battles were fought during the Age ofWarring States, it was not truly an era of warfare.
When battles were fought in Japan, farmers became spectators; they knew that theywould not be harmed. At the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, toward the end of the Age ofWarring States, farmers reportedly took their boxed lunches up to spots high in themountains from which they could safely enjoy the proceedings. In Japan, once theoutcome of a battle was determined, and the leaders of the losing side had committed
seppuku or otherwise acknowledged their defeat, there was no massacre of the men who
had served under them or of farmers living in the losing domain. One exception was
Oda Nobunaga. He reacted to Akechi Mitsuhide’s revolt (just before Nobunaga had
achieved control of all Japan) by disemboweling himself. Nobunaga had also burned
temples on Mt. Hiei in 1571 and killed priests on Mt. Koya. He refused to allow
opponents to surrender, and massacred them. But his methods made him an exception in
Japan. He must have adopted Chinese methods of warfare. Perhaps he thought heneeded to emulate the Chinese since he was a commander during the Age of Warring
States. He seems to have been dispassionate about his actions.
In 1572 after Nobunaga defeated Odani Castle, he drank sake from the defeated Azai
Nagamasa’s skull. This act also had a Chinese precedent. Furthermore, in the Battle ofNagashino in 1575, Oda lined riflemen who were to shoot at Takeda Katsuyori’s men in77

three rows, and ordered each row to shoot and then reload, in succession. This way there
was someone shooting at all times as long as the barrage lasted. I believe that thisparticular story was invented after the fact. But if true, it too has a Chinese precedent.
The first Qin emperor lined soldiers armed with bows that took a long time to load andhad them shoot in succession.
Additionally, Nobunaga’s economic warfare should be taken into account. Textbooks
mention his emphasis on economics, particularly commercial activity such as freemarkets and open guilds.
He may have been inspired by conflicts that took place during the Yuan dynasty, which
also waged commercial warfare.
If the cruel methods of waging war that Nobunaga employed had become common
practice, a great number of people would have been killed unjustly. It would havebecome impossible to predict death, and Bushido would not have developed. However,Nobunaga disappeared from the scene before that could happen.

5. No tradition of cannibalism in JapanMy intent for this chapter was to elucidate on Japan’s history and how its annals containvery few accounts of killing. Now I would like to address cannibalism.
A scrupulous examination of any nation’s history will reveal instances of cannibalism.
But China is the only nation where wars gave rise to cannibalism, which became
ingrained — part of the culture. In other nations cannibalism had one cause: famine.
The Marxist economist Kawakami Hajime (1879-1946) produced a book entitled
Agricultural Administration. In it he refers to a travel journal kept by a physician named
Tachibana Nankei, who was travelling in western Japan toward the end of the Edo
period, during the Great Tenmei Famine. Tachibana recounted a story told him by apilgrim he encountered on the road. The pilgrim stopped at a certain house where hediscovered an old man and his daughter who were starving, just barely alive. His heart
went out to them, and he offered them his own food, but they wouldn’t accept it. The
old man told him that even if he ate it he would still have no food on the following day.

78

Accepting the pilgrim’s kind offer would only prolong their agony.
In Tachibana’s journal kept during his travels in east Japan, he mentions someone in
Tsugaru who resorted to cannibalism, eating even his own child.
Therefore, there have been instances of cannibalism in Japan. Kawakami’s book relays
an account of someone in 14th-century England who killed and ate his own child to fend
off death from starvation. And I have heard that during the Greater East Asian War,Japanese soldiers lost in the jungles of the Pacific islands and Southeast Asia ate theflesh of dead soldiers. Such tales cannot be completely dismissed. But all of them differ
greatly from the Chinese tradition of cannibalism becoming so entrenched that it
became part of the culture; its practice could be triggered by even the slightest sign offamine.
As I wrote in Chapter 2. I doubt that Confucius, who taught the precepts ofConfucianism, ever ate human flesh, but I think that people he knew were certainly partof the cannibalism culture. Even today, illegal organ transplants are being done without
a second thought.
My conclusion: Japan’s history tells the story of a culture that flourished without killing.

79CHAPTER 5: EMPEROR SYSTEM PAVES WAY FORPEACEFUL PROGRESS IN JAPAN1. Japan’s first emperors
From the time that the Japanese people were first unified by the Yamato Court up to thepresent day, a single dynasty of emperors has reigned over Japan. By contrast, China
has been ruled by many successive royal families. The fact that Japan has only had one
Imperial House contributed greatly to its historical development and the happiness of its
people. This is something that I, as a Taiwanese man observing Japan from the outside,
am able to understand better than the Japanese themselves do.
When the monk Chonen of Japan's Todai-ji Temple visited China in the late-tenthcentury, he mentioned to Emperor Taizong of the Song dynasty that an unbroken line ofemperors had reigned over Japan since the earliest times. Emperor Taizong was struck
with admiration for Japan's stable imperial succession, lamenting that this had beenachieved on a mere "barbarian island". On the other hand, Japanese monks who visited
China during the late-Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties took one look at China's drearylandscapes, devoid of temples or forests, and lamented having ever come to study there.
In fact, Emperor Taizong was suspected of having murdered his elder brother Taizu. He
is also said to have killed more than ten thousand people and the entire family of thecrown prince. Naturally, familicide within the royal family was certainly not limited to
the Song dynasty. About two hundred people have been crowned as emperors in China's
successive dynasties, but only one third of them died natural deaths. History was evenmore unkind to Korea's kings. About half of the kings belonging to Korea's Silla andKoryo dynasties were killed, often by members of their own families. According toConfucian philosophy, a man of great virtue would become emperor of all the peoplesof the realm on the authority of the "mandate of heaven", but should his dynasty lose
virtue, the mandate would pass to another person. In China, this is known as theprinciple of "dynastic revolution". Nonetheless, even China's most virtuous rulers
oversaw considerable bloodshed, slaughtering not only their brothers' families, but also,
in the case of Han Emperor Wudi, his sons, or, in the case of Tang Empress Zetian, herbrothers, sisters, and children. Even Tang Emperor Taizong, reputed to be one of China's
wisest rulers, ascended to the throne by launching a bloody coup d'état in 626 at
80

Xuanwu Gate and executing tens of thousands of people, including his elder brother
Crown Prince Yin, his younger brother Prince Qin, and their entire families.
As I explained in Chapter 3, it appeared to be a law of Chinese history that no newemperor could be crowned without massacring much of his own family and countlesscommon people. For example, the emperors of the Liu Song dynasty fought among
themselves so much and engineered so many mass murders of their own family
members in Nanjing that eventually there was no one left to ascend the throne and thedynasty ceased to exist.
Of course, this is not to say that the succession to Japan's imperial throne has always
gone smoothly either. In ancient Japan, the Yamato Court was for a time in danger ofcollapse when Emperor Buretsu failed to produce an heir. Ultimately, a fifth generation
grandson of Emperor Ojin, who reigned over two hundred years earlier, stepped forward
to claim the throne as Emperor Keitai and preserved the imperial lineage.
Sushun, the thirty-second emperor, came to power in 587 following a violent clash
between two rival clans that saw the Soga clan, led by Soga no Umako, defeat andexterminate the Mononobe clan. Sushun himself soon came into conflict with Soga no
Umako, who had Sushun assassinated by one of Sushun's own vassals. Thus, it is truethat even in Japan an emperor has been killed by his vassal, though Emperor Sushun's
death was the only case of this occurring.
As the power of the Soga clan grew, it seemed increasingly likely that they would usurp
the imperial throne for themselves and, in the style of the Chinese, found a new dynasty.
However, Prince Naka no Oe, later known as Emperor Tenji, and Nakatomi no Kamatari,
the founder of the Fujiwara clan, formed an alliance and slew Soga no Iruka in theImperial Palace in the year 645. This event, referred to as the Isshi Incident, averted thepossibility of a "dynastic revolution" in Japan.
In spite of the Isshi Incident, the next phase of Japanese history would see the emperors
gradually give up de-facto political control.
The emperors of ancient times served as both chief priests of the Shinto faith andleaders of the Japanese government. However, as state functions became more and more
complex, the emperors began to disengage from day-to-day government administration81and lost de-facto political power. Between the eighth century and the tenth century, real
power was held by the Fujiwara clan. A closer examination of the period reveals thatmany reigning emperors passed the throne to their heirs as soon as possible and became
retired emperors (daijo tenno). The few political functions that the reigning emperor
still had left were actually exercised by the retired emperor, further diminishing thede-facto political power of the imperial throne. Many young children received the titleof emperor in name only.

2. Japan’s emperors in the Middle Ages
In 1192, Minamoto Yoritomo established the Kamakura shogunate, under whichsamurai warlords working outside the Imperial Court wielded de-facto political control.
In 1333, Emperor Go-Daigo seized power, but this imperial restoration, known as the
Kemmu Restoration, proved short-lived. The samurai Ashikaga Takauji rebelled against
Go-Daigo, overthrew his government, and installed another emperor in 1336. There
were now two men on the imperial throne, the emperor of the Northern Court selectedby Ashikaga Takauji and the emperor of the Southern Court aligned with Go-Daigo.
After a brief period of civil war, the Southern Court was absorbed into the Northern
Court and disappeared. The modern Imperial House descends from the lineage of theNorthern Court. Still, the fact that the Imperial House was for a time split into two rival
branches is a problematic point for Japan's "unbroken line of emperors" that we cannot
simply disregard.
By the time of Japan's Warring States period, the Imperial House was threatened withextinction, having lost not only its power, but most of its wealth as well. The man who
saved the emperors from financial ruin through his generous contributions was thegreatest warrior of the era, Oda Nobunaga. And yet, as I wrote in Chapter 4, Nobunaga
had been influenced by the Chinese historical theory of "dynastic revolution", and he
was uncertain about what he would do with the imperial institution in the end. As I
noted, Nobunaga refused to accept the court ranks that the Emperor tried to offer him.
He also urged Emperor Ogimachi to abdicate and pressured him to change the era namethat the Imperial Court had selected. There was a real risk that he might abolish theImperial Court entirely. Though this is largely speculation, as I mentioned in Chapter 1,
Akechi Mitsuhide may have been motivated to rebel against Oda Nobunaga to protect82the Imperial House. It seems reasonable to say that this was at least one factor behind
his revolt.
Judging from how he waged his wars, Nobunaga must also have adapted his battlefield
tactics from Chinese models. Once he had seized absolute power in Japan, could
Nobunaga have proceeded to abolish the Imperial Court and remove the Emperor? To
me, it seems almost unfathomable. Almost unfathomable, but not entirely so.
Nonetheless, I can safely say that, even if Nobunaga had removed the Emperor, he
could not have taken the title of emperor himself. Though he may have had the power todestroy the emperors, he could never have become emperor. The imperial institution
carried the weight of over a thousand years of history within it, which, I can say withconfidence, no amount of military might could ever have erased.
Even if Nobunaga had used force of arms to wipe out the imperial institution that is so
intimately linked to even Japan's earliest legends, he surely could never have occupied
the Chrysanthemum Throne and called himself "Emperor". History is not to be trifled
with, for it carries within it the totality of the human experience.

3. Emperors during the Edo era
Japan's next rulers were the Tokugawa shoguns, who had unified the country throughstrength of arms and dominated the political system with an iron fist. Though they often
forcibly meddled in the affairs of the Imperial Court, including their unilateral
imposition of the Laws for Court Nobles, they never tried to abolish the Imperial House.
If they had wanted to abolish it, they certainly wielded the military might to have done
so. In that case, why did the emperors survive? The living ought to bear a sense of
responsibility to future generations, and I believe that Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, being
keenly aware of the history that lay behind the imperial institution, most likely also
understood that.
Nevertheless, the Imperial Court maintained only a meager existence under the stiflinghegemony of the Tokugawa shoguns. In such circumstances, what societal purpose wasleft for the Imperial Court to fill? Myself excluded, foreigners observing Japan fromabroad often reflexively view the Imperial Court as just a senseless waste of money, andeven a fair number of Japanese people would say the same thing.
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Was it true that the emperors of the Edo period who discreetly occupied the Imperial
Palace in Kyoto lived out their lives for no real purpose? This thought must surely havecrossed the minds of even the emperors themselves.
What, on closer consideration, were the emperors actually able to do without realpolitical power? The answer is that they dutifully performed the religious rites passed
down through the imperial line, and prayed for the peace and happiness of the people ofJapan.
Under the Tokugawa shogunate, the only societal purpose of the Imperial House wasthus to offer prayers for the peace and happiness of the people. And yet, precisely
because the shoguns had been ceremonially granted the authority to govern Japan fromthe emperor, they were unable to disregard the wishes of the people and rule arbitrarily.
Officially, the leaders of the Tokugawa shogunate held only the imperial title of seii tai
shogun, meaning "barbarian-subduing great general", and for this reason it was
impossible for them to become despots and exercise power tyrannically as the Chineseemperors did.
In 1779, as the reigning Emperor Go-Momozono lay dying without a male heir tosucceed him, he hastily adopted the sixth son of Prince Kanin Sukehito, Prince Sachi,
who later took the name Tomohito. Tomohito ascended to the throne the following year
as Emperor Kokaku at nine years of age, but, just a few years later, Japan was grippedby the Great Tenmei Famine lasting from 1782 to 1787. The desperate masses began tocongregate around the Imperial Palace and pray for relief. They gave up on the
Tokugawa authorities, who had turned a blind eye to their plight, and instead came tothrow money offerings over the palace gate and beg the Emperor for help. What was atfirst just a few passersby became, within ten days, an enormous crowd of 70,000
surrounding the entire palace. Emperor Kokaku was so moved to witness this that hepersonally asked the governor of Kyoto to distribute aid to the people, and made surethat his request was carried out.
This was the first time since the formation of the Tokugawa shogunate that an emperor
had intervened in the shogun's domestic political jurisdiction. Moreover, what made theevent so consequential was that the shogunate did obey the Emperor's wishes.

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Komei, the 121st emperor, reigned from 1846 to 1867 and was the father of Emperor
Meiji. The years that elapsed between his ascension to the throne at age sixteen anddeath at age thirty-six encapsulated the momentous fifteen-year period between thearrival of Commodore Perry's fleet at Uraga in 1853 and the death knell of theTokugawa shogunate just before the Meiji Renovation. This was truly Japan's time oftrials. Deep within the recesses of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, Emperor Komei
endured great loneliness and composed poems like the following ones.
The ships of foreign lands
Haunt my soul that desires onlyThat my subjects may live in peace.
This spring I forsook
Even the smell of flowers and chirping of birds
For the sake of my subjects.
Without knowing the will of the deities
It pains my foolish heart
To sit upon this great throne.
Through these poems, we see that the Emperor's mind was always preoccupied withJapan's territorial integrity and the wellbeing of its people. However, because he was afirm advocate of "expelling the barbarians" and opposed to opening Japan to foreign
influence, there have been rumors that he was secretly poisoned. Still, no one can doubt
the sincerity of his heartfelt commitment to the needs of his subjects and the fate of his
country. None of his thoughts or actions betrayed a hint of the selfish motivations that
dominate the hearts of so many ordinary people.

4. Emperor helps surmount crisis in last days of Shogunate
Under the aegis of the emperors, who reigned in an unbroken line since the country's
foundation, how did Japan manage to overcome the unprecedented national crisis
confronting it between the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the subsequent
Meiji period?
The conflict that broke out in the final years of the Edo period was, to put it in plain85

terms, a power struggle between the Tokugawa shogunate and the domains of Choshu
and Satsuma that had been shunned by the shoguns since their defeat at the Battle ofSekigahara in 1600. If Choshu and Satsuma had rebelled against the Tokugawa with theintention of forming their own shogunate, the struggle would definitely have been a far
bloodier affair, not unlike a Chinese-style "dynastic revolution" fought for control of the
shogunate. However, Satsuma and Choshu always affirmed that their objective was notto establish a shogunate, but rather to restore power to the Imperial Court. The leadersof the Tokugawa shogunate thus found it easier to surrender to the Emperor than to theirinferiors, the rebel domains of Choshu and Satsuma.
In 1868, the forces of the shogunate and the Satsuma-Choshu alliance clashed at
Toba-Fushimi in Kyoto. Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, was aware that his army
was at least equal to those of his enemies, and yet he lost heart the moment that he sawthem hold aloft the golden Imperial Standard. Though not yet willing to admit defeat, he
immediately fled Osaka with his closest subordinates such as Matsudaira Katamori andreturned to Edo in order to avert further loss of life. Some Japanese people have seen
Yoshinobu's desertion of his own men and retreat to Edo as a cowardly act, but thissentiment may be unfair. If Yoshinobu had remained where he was, the fighting would
inevitably have continued, but his bold withdrawal from Osaka Castle prevented that.
Therefore, Japan was able to overcome one of its greatest crises thanks to the prestige of
its Imperial House, the venerable Yamato Court.
After this, the army of Japan's new Meiji Government attacked the northeasterndomains, initiating the so-called Boshin War, which did produce many casualties.
However, apart from that, the dramatic political revolution known as the Meiji
Renovation was achieved largely without bloodshed.
Even if France and Great Britain had wanted to intervene, the speed of the transition
permitted them no such opportunity. Yoshinobu was offered military support by the
French minister, but he refused.
The inescapable conclusion is that Japan only survived this national crisis thanks to theexistence of the Imperial House. The fact that the emperors have existed since theearliest times carries great value. I was born in Taiwan, but I cannot overstate theglobal significance of Japan's imperial institution, which is truly enviable from theperspective of China or Korea. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping sought to elevate his86stature as he rose to power in China by receiving an audience with the Emperor ofJapan. This palpably demonstrates how globally respected, and how truly unparalleledamong nations, is the Imperial House of Japan.

5. The Meiji Restoration: A grand achievement
And so, Japan handed power back to the emperors with minimal violence andestablished a centralized government. To make the government's new direction clear, it
had to officially return the land and people to the authority of the emperors. Under the
old Tokugawa shogunate, Japan was divided into domains, and local feudal lords ruled
both the land and people of these domains as their personal fiefs. What was needed wasa restoration of the system of "emperor's land, emperor's people" that had first been
instituted under the Taika Reforms of 645.
To achieve this, the Meiji Government declared, in the name of the Emperor, theabolition of the domains. In 1871, all the domains were abolished and replaced by
prefectures responsible for local administration. Due to this reform, all of Japan's
samurai, who earned their salaries from the lords of the domains, were put out of work.
The samurai were Japan's warrior class, who during the Edo period openly wore theirswords at their sides. They were a force to be reckoned with and, one would think,ought to have rebelled rather than accept the new order. And yet, they did not rebel. Thiswas partly because the reform had been carried out in the name of the Emperor, andJapanese society had been long inculcated with the notion that submission to theemperor was a virtue. It was also partly because the now unemployed samurai acceptedthat the reform was necessary to make Japan stronger and, as warriors, they felt that it
was their duty to die for the sake of a greater cause. One might call this the triumph ofthe spirit of self-sacrifice.
New History Textbook, which was compiled by the Japanese Society for History
Textbook Reform and used in middle schools between 2012 and 2016, contains theaccount of William Elliot Griffis, an American citizen who was working in Fukui at thetime. According to New History Textbook, "When the news arrived from Tokyo that thedomains had been abolished, there was uproar and a great deal of anger from the now
unemployed samurai of the domain. And yet, even amidst this tumult, several of Griffis'
samurai students at the local domain school enthusiastically told him that, 'Now Japan
will take a position among the nations like your country and England.'"87

The samurai of Japan, who had held all the positions of power in the shogunate,accepted the new reforms at the cost of their own careers and livelihoods, and agreed togo quietly into the night to ensure the success of the Meiji Renovation. Japan shouldrightly be proud of this remarkable accomplishment, which was unlike any the world
has ever seen.
However, it was only possible thanks to the authority of the emperors and the bushido
spirit of the samurai.
Next, let's turn to the subject of the Meiji Constitution, promulgated in the year 1889.
A constitution, needless to say, outlines the nation's fundamental character. A society
must already have accumulated a common repository of national wisdom and developed
national institutions before a constitution can be drawn up and enacted. If it does not yet
have such an accumulation of experiences, the rashly enacted constitution will end up
having no effect.
As is well known, the Meiji Constitution was the first constitution promulgated in Asia.
First of all, what is a nation? The modern nations that arose within Western civilization
have delineated national borders and came into being for the purpose of preserving andpromoting the safety and happiness of the citizens living within those borders. Thesenations, both large and small, all enjoy the same right of "sovereignty". As such,
sovereignty within the international community means recognition of a society's
achievement of nationhood. Fellow nations respect each other's sovereignty andultimately aspire for the happiness of all human beings. In other words, nations are
man-made creations that are constructed at certain stages of history. I referred to thisstage as "national civilization" in Chapter 2 where I discussed how the people ofWestern civilization came to organize themselves into nations.
Since the dawn of history, the protective barrier of the sea has provided Japan with its
own natural border, behind which the people lived their lives in peace. They grew into
their own community, naturally fulfilling the prerequisites to become a "nation" andentering the stage of national civilization.

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In the West, communities that usually had common languages and religions formed
nations guaranteeing the rights and liberties of their citizens, often with a king as theirhead of state embodying the nation's sovereignty.
There were also nations like France and the United States that did away with themonarchy and, arguing that the nation's sovereignty lied with the people, elected apolitician such as a president as their head of state. Nations can come in diverse forms,
but in all cases they have defined borders and exist to preserve and improve the peace
and prosperity of citizens residing within those borders.
Japan has had a national border and a government committed to the safety andhappiness of its people since the dawn of its history. Therefore, it would be fair to saythat Japan had already effectively realized nationhood long before the Meiji Renovation.
In summary, Japan did not become a realm within the orbit of Chinese civilization, or
tianxia, as the Chinese referred to their governing philosophy. Rather, Japan developed
a unique form of national civilization. As a general rule, a multiplicity of nations coexist
within each modern civilization. Nonetheless, as Samuel Huntington noted in his book
The Clash of Civilizations, Japan is unusual in being a civilization represented by only asingle nation.

6. The Charter Oath and the Meiji Constitution
In response to Tokugawa Yoshinobu's announcement that political power would betransferred to the Imperial Court, the Emperor released the Decree for the Restoration ofImperial Rule on January 3, 1868 (December 9, 1867, under the old calendar). On
September 8, 1868, the era name in use in Japan changed from Keio to Meiji, marking
the start of the Meiji period. During this time, the Charter Oath was released. It was on
March 14, 1868, that Emperor Meiji gathered the court nobles, feudal lords, andgovernment officials to the Kyoto Imperial Palace's Hall of State Ceremonies for theswearing ceremony. On behalf of the Emperor, Senior Councilor and Vice President
Sanjo Sanetomi read aloud before the deities all five articles of the Charter Oath,
starting with "Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters
decided by open discussion." All the Emperor's vassals, with the Emperor himself
standing before them, swore to the deities to support the new government. However,this was not an order issued by the Emperor to his vassals. The Emperor also took the89same oath to the deities as a demonstration of solidarity between sovereign and subject.
The Charter Oath•

Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided
by open discussion.
•

All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out theadministration of affairs of state.

•

The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all beallowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.

•

Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon thejust laws of Nature.
•

Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen thefoundation of imperial rule.

After swearing the oath, the Emperor passed down an imperial rescript declaring that,"We will lay down the government's policies and forge a path that shall safeguard all
people." In this manner, the Meiji Government made clear that the objective of its
policies would be "a path that shall safeguard all people."
In other words, by proclaiming this as its nation-building goal, the Meiji Government
showed that Japan was already endowed with the conditions for nationhood on aconceptual level. It would be fair to say that the Meiji Constitution did nothing morethan express this fait accompli on paper. For this reason, the process of enacting theconstitution proved no great national trial for Japan.
Indeed, the concept that the nation exists for the betterment of the people and citizenry
was already recorded in one of Japan's oldest works of history, The Chronicles of Japan,
which includes a famous story about Emperor Nintoku. According to The Chronicles ofJapan, Emperor Nintoku noticed that smoke was no longer rising from residences andbecame concerned that the people might be too poor to cook their food. In response, hedecided to cease collecting taxes for three years. Three years later, he ascended a nearby
hill and, seeing once more the smoke rising from the ovens of private homes, heremarked, "The deities permit an emperor to rule solely for the sake of the common
people. Therefore, it is the emperors who serve as the foundation of the people."
Emperor Nintoku may have said this while recalling the legends of China's old90emperors of virtue, but, at least from the time that the country was unified under Qin
Shi Huang Di, China had never actually had an emperor like that. It would be no
exaggeration to say that none of China's emperors since Qin Shi Huang Di attempted
any achievement beyond personal self-gain through force of arms. Chinese people havethemselves referred to their political system as a "family-owned realm" (jiatianxia),
which derives from the concept of tianxia and appears to be synonymous with the"patrimonial bureaucracy" of which Max Weber spoke.
Regardless, Japan did learn new ideas through contact with the national civilizations of
the West. Japan had not previously conceived of people as having individual rights andliberties. Moreover, the concept of parliamentary politics, that the direction of the nation
was to be determined through discussion in an open assembly, did not exist in Japan
until the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate.
On the other hand, Japan had already naturally evolved the institution of constitutionalmonarchy, which in the kingdoms of the West was only achieved through a long,
hard-fought historical process. In a constitutional monarchy, monarchs "reign but do notrule", meaning that they do not participate in national decision-making and thus arenever responsible for misrule. In Western monarchies, the notion that the monarch bore
no political responsibility was established at least in theory, if not always in reality.
And yet, the idea of constitutional monarchy was already influencing Japanese politics
during the Heian period (794-1185) and was put into practice under the shogunate
founded at the start of the Kamakura period.
I stated earlier that the idea of establishing a national parliament was entirely absent inJapan until the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate. Still, it is worth pointing out that the
final article of Prince Shotoku's Seventeen Article Constitution, which was written in604, is, "Decisions on important matters should not be made by one person alone."
Making decisions on the basis of dialogue with the people is the principle behindparliamentary politics. One could also go back even further and make the argument thatthe Divine Assembly convoked during the Age of the Gods was the origin of Japanese
democracy.
The Meiji Constitution, officially titled the Constitution of the Great Japanese Empire,
was promulgated on February 11, 1889.

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Article 1 of the Meiji Constitution reads, "The Great Empire of Japan shall be reigned
over by a line of emperors unbroken for ages eternal." Inoue Kowashi, who wasinvolved in drafting the constitution in May, 1887, decided to use the Japanese word
shirasu to mean "reigned". His intention was to make Article 1 an assertion of imperial
sovereignty over Japan. Inoue submitted the draft to Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, who
ultimately decided to replace the word shirasu with tochi prior to the promulgation of
the constitution. Although the word tochi can mean "to rule" in Japanese, Inoue
explained its intended connotations in the following excerpt from Goin Sonko, aposthumously published collection of his writings.
"In ancient times, what word did we use in Japan to refer to the notion of governing thelands and peoples of our country? In the ancient history text, Records of Ancient Matters,
it is written that Takemikazuchi was sent by the deities to confront Okuninushi, and hetold him, 'Okuninushi, the lands that you rule are to be given to the child of Amaterasu
as the land over which he should reign! What do you say to this?' In ancient times, we
utilized the verbs 'rule' (ushihaku) and 'reign' (shirasu) in reference to the relationshipbetween the sovereign and his lands and subjects. In that case, isn't there a distinction to
be made between 'ruling' on the one hand and 'reigning' on the other? I believe that there
is a stark difference between the 'rule' of Okuninushi and the 'reign' of Amaterasu's child.
If we follow the interpretation of Motoori Norinaga, the word 'rule' is entirely
equivalent to the European occupare or the Chinese fuyou yanyou, which mean wielding
total control. The conduct of a powerful clan emulates the style of Okuninushi, whoregarded the land and people as his own personal property. The proper emperor, whoachieves glorious ascendency over our country, is one who reigns rather than rules."Remarkably, the Western principle of monarchs who "reign but do not rule" can befound in reference to the emperors of Japan within the ancient myths about the inceptionof the Yamato Court.
Partly for this reason, there was no resistance whatsoever to this principle being
enshrined in the Meiji Constitution. Both the Emperor and his subjects were able toaccept as natural the idea of "reigning but not ruling".
Because Japan had already fulfilled the prerequisites of nationhood by this point in time,
the Meiji Constitution was in many ways just a formalization of the preexisting situation.

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No further effort was necessary but to officially recognize Japan as what it had long
been, a nation.
This is testament to the greatness of the long reign of the Japanese Imperial House. It isalso an important reason why Japan's history ought to be carefully observed by all thepeoples of the world.
7. Strange explications of the current Constitution
While we are on the subject of the constitutions, let's also examine Japan's current
constitution. Its Article 1 stipulates that, "The emperor shall be the symbol of the stateand of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people withwhom resides sovereign power."This text has been unashamedly interpreted to mean that the emperor is a symbol of thestate, but is not Japan's head of state. This is a serious problem. It is apparent even to a
Taiwanese man like myself that this is an absurd interpretation with no grounding inJapanese history. Of what could the emperor be a symbol outside the context of thenation's history? The emperor is neither a representative of a certain political party norof a certain social class. Rather, he is the representative of the citizenry as a whole, andtherefore the representative of the nation. Does that not make him Japan's head of state?
Taking a historical perspective, the emperor was the country's sovereign, and should thatnot still be the case in Japan's current constitution that was officially ratified under theamending procedure of the Meiji Constitution? I have heard, though I have notresearched the matter in detail, that even General Douglas MacArthur, who imposed thepresent constitution on Japan, regarded the emperor as Japan's head of state.
Given that the present constitution was pushed through the very amendment processcontained within the Meiji Constitution, why do Japan's legal scholars and others
involved with Japanese law refuse to uphold the interpretation used in the Meiji
Constitution based on the historic position of the emperors? This bizarre analysis needs
to be called out for what it is. What could the legal establishment, from Japan's legal
scholars on down, possibly be thinking? This made-in-Japan interpretation is making
the Japanese constitution even worse than it already is.
Even though Japan lost the war with the United States, why must Japanese people93continue to do harm to their own country by inventing a constitutional interpretation
beyond what MacArthur himself envisaged?
According to Article 4, paragraph 1, of Japan's present constitution, "The emperor shallperform only such acts in matters of state as are provided for in this constitution and heshall not have powers related to government." However, this article appears to be
essentially no different than the contents of the Meiji Constitution. Is it not the basic
definition of a constitutional monarchy?
That is to say, the constitutional monarchy, under which the emperor is not involved in
actual political decision-making, was at the very heart of the constitutional law put inplace by the Meiji Constitution.
According to the Meiji Constitution, "The Great Empire of Japan shall be reigned overby a line of emperors unbroken for ages eternal." In Japan, this text has caused some
confusion owing to the fact that it uses the word tochi, which tends to mean "to rule".
Nonetheless, tochi in this case stands for the older Japanese verb shirasu, meaning "toreign". The clear intention of the Meiji Constitution was to enshrine the principle ofmonarchs who "reign but do not rule".
In consideration of these facts, a "head of state" and a "symbol" are just two sides of thesame coin. One might say that Japan's constitution has itself proved that the emperor
cannot be a "symbol" without also being a "head of state". And yet, the Japanese legal
establishment seems to insist on reading the constitution in a manner so wrongheaded
that even the US occupation army did not expect it.
Concerning the right of collective self-defense, successive Director-Generals of the
Cabinet Legislation Bureau, which provides legal advice to the government, havethoughtlessly clung to the peculiar interpretation that Japan retains the inherent right ofcollective self-defense, but cannot constitutionally exercise it. They have consistently
maintained this deluded notion of Japan "retaining but being unable to exercise" theright of collective self-defense, despite that this problem puts the country's very security
at stake. In light of this, should we really say that the Director-Generals of the Cabinet
Legislation Bureau serve the Japanese government?
In order to do away with such ridiculous interpretations, it should ultimately be our94elected government that decides how it will interpret the constitution, without relying on
the bureaucracy. The problem is that Japanese society is still suffering the consequencesof the War Guilt Information Program, the propaganda operation undertaken by the US
Army during its occupation of Japan to indoctrinate the Japanese people with the ideathat they needed to atone for the war.
Nevertheless, the continuing impact of the War Guilt Information Program over the past
sixty-five years is no longer the fault of the occupation, which ended in 1952. Rather, itis the fault of Japanese people. The occupation army withdrew to the United States
sixty-five years ago, and the Japanese people have since then been masters of their own
destiny.
In regards to World War II, it has been said that Japan lost, but not every Japaneseperson lost out. It is those that profited from Japan's defeat who have assumed the US
Army's role of instilling war guilt and who have attempted to portray Japanese history
with a deliberately masochistic slant. Most of the beneficiaries of the defeat, whoembraced the War Guilt Information Program and perpetuated its influence after thewithdrawal of the US Army, are bureaucrats, scholars, and journalists who did not fightin the war and know nothing of the bushido spirit. They have slandered Japan time andagain, and, by doing so, they are not only damaging their own country, but are also
causing great trouble for Japan's neighbors.
Over the course of their existence, which stretches back to the Age of the Gods, theemperors of Japan certainly have experienced a fair share of crises, albeit nowhere nearas bloody as the history of the Chinese emperors. Nevertheless, each generation ofJapan's forbearers did their part to overcome these crises and strived to preserve theimperial lineage. Because of that, the Imperial House of Japan today stands out as by far
the world's oldest dynasty.
As I described in Chapter 4, the preservation of this dynasty has been an inestimableboon to Japan's development. I believe that I have sufficiently explained how theImperial House mitigated warfare in Japan and thus guided the nation through its long
history with relatively little bloodshed. However, I would like to discuss one more
pertinent topic that can be easily pinpointed as a historical phenomenon, namely
religious culture.

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When the Choson dynasty seized control of the Korean Peninsula, it launched a mass
suppression of Buddhism, a religion that had been cherished by the Korean people forover a thousand years between the Three Kingdoms Period and the end of the Koryo
dynasty. Buddhism was completely extirpated from Korean society. Until then,
Buddhism was regarded as one of Korea's most precious spiritual pillars, but all thatwas wiped out in a stroke by the violent persecution campaign engineered by the
Choson dynasty. The Korean people had no power to oppose the force of arms that was
brought to bear against them.
In thirteenth century Japan, the Jodo and Nichiren schools were born amidst a floweringof popular Buddhist movements in the style of the Tendai school headquartered on
Mount Hiei. This was not the product of any policy of force, but came from the natural
growth of the faith itself within Japan. By contrast, as I recounted in Chapter 1, Yi
Song-gye overthrew the Koryo dynasty in the Korean Peninsula in the fourteenth
century with the military support of Ming China. China bestowed Korea with the name
"Choson" and, in return, Korea revered the Ming Emperors as deities.
The Chinese people were also devoted to Buddhism, delving into the innermost secretsof the faith. And yet, in 664, Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei charged Buddhist monks
with depravity as a pretext to wreck havoc on the growing religion. Temples andpagodas were demolished, and monks were banished. The persecution was an imperial
order backed with military might, and no one dared resist it.
Furthermore, the Liang dynasty was founded in 502 in the southern half of China by
Emperor Wu, an ardent disciple of the Buddhist faith. Regardless, he was repeatedly
betrayed by the devious Ho Jing and his dynasty destroyed.
In Japan, Buddhism flourished around the city of Nara since the time of Prince Shotoku,
and it did come under criticism for a time. Nevertheless, at no point were any of Nara's
temples or Buddhist statues razed. Japan's capital was transferred to Kyoto by Emperor
Kammu, Buddhist devotees set up a new headquarters on Mount Hiei, and the old
Buddhism of Nara was left unmolested. As Buddhism spread to the masses, theJapanese people never attempted to attack or destroy the country's historic Buddhist
temples by force, with the one exception of Oda Nobunaga.
After World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the96

Allied Powers, did make efforts to Christianize Japan under the US occupation, but theywent nowhere.
Today, the Japanese people still deeply treasure Buddhism. If Buddhism was aspreponderant in the Korean Peninsula as it is in Japan, would the South and North
Koreans be a more calm-tempered people than they are now? At the least, I doubt thatthey would be continually cursing Japan under the sway of primitive shamanistic social
traits.
Thanks to the preservation of Japan's imperial line, neither Buddhism, nor any otherJapanese cultural trend, tried to wipe out what came before it. Instead, Japanese history
has progressed by gently overlaying the new culture onto the old culture. WhenJapanese history is observed from the perspective of an outsider, the significance of thislooks very clear. Just as Buddhism and Shinto fused together as one, I can see that the
principle of "syncretism" has always been alive and well in Japan.
Japan has a great history, and if the Japanese people were to show more pride in it, theywould help not only themselves. The Japanese people must do this for the sake of we
Taiwanese as well, and for sensibly-minded people in Korea and China. In Japan, there
is no shortage of corrupt individuals who despise their own country, and the work ofthese self-loathing Japanese hurts not only Japan. It is important to know that they arealso hurting other countries. Those who realize what is going on in Japan should clearly
identify who these self-loathing Japanese are, what they are doing, and what they havedone, so that their malicious influence will be condemned by society.
In this chapter, I illustrated how fortunate Japan is to have been reigned over by theemperors and the many ways in which they have facilitated Japan's development.
However, I would like to close this chapter by noting that, regrettably, it is the Japanesepeople themselves who often fail to fully grasp this important reality.

97

CHAPTER 6: HOW JAPAN CAN WIN THE HISTORY WARSINSTIGATED BY CHINA

1. Why Japan must not lose the history wars
To conclude this book, I would like to consider what the history wars are really all about,and, from the perspective of a Taiwanese writer, encourage Japan to fight and win thebattle for history.
I say this because, should Japan lose the history wars being waged by China and Korea,
it will not be a detriment to Japan alone. In Taiwan as well, these history wars are noirrelevant matter. Taiwan is constantly being subjected to the poisonous influence ofChinese civilization, and the defeat of our neighbor Japan will only add to our woes. For
Taiwan's sake, I have good reason to want Japan to win.
On behalf of the world of today and of the future, we must reject the totalitarian theoryof history euphemistically referred to as a "correct historical perception". Defending
positive and negative freedom of history is absolutely essential to protect a society
where liberty of values is practiced and diversity is tolerated. Therefore, we absolutely
cannot afford to allow any totalitarian-inspired view of history, whether from thecommunist left or fascist right, to prevail.
As I made clear in the preceding chapters, Japan is a nation with an inherently beautiful
history that its people can take pride in before the whole world. For building such anadvanced and non-violent culture, Japan has become the moral leader of the world.
Thus, if Japan were vanquished in the history wars instigated by China and Korea anddecayed into irrelevance, it would have dire consequences for the rest of the planet.
Although Japan was right next door to the civilization of China, which never had any
claim to being a moral leader, the Japanese people were protected by the natural barrierof the sea and managed early on to forge a nation not unlike the national civilizations of
the West. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the white peoples of the Westcolonized Asia and Africa and extended their dominion across the globe. Only Japantenaciously held onto its independence, liberated the colonized peoples of Asia, andsought to create a world united by the principle of racial equality.
98

In spite of the fact that Japanese history was a model for human development, China
and Korea now treat Japan with contempt and have senselessly made it the target of
their history wars. This is not solely Japan's problem, but rather, is a problem for theentire world.
What does the phrase "history war" mean? A history war is when one nation dwells on
the events of another nation's history in order to denounce and demean it, often followed
by a demand for "repentance and apology", or sometimes reparations.
It is important to remember that the outcome of a history war cannot alter the past. Whatcan be altered is the future. Even if some facts of the past are worthy of censure,continually opening old wounds in the present day is a different matter. Denouncing
historical incidents of the distant past serves no purpose unless one is using it as ameans to resolve a problem of the present day. Without a problem of current interest,
dragging up old history is just denunciation for the sake of denunciation, and that doesno good to either the countries denouncing or the countries being denounced.
Often, the reason why China chastises Japan is because the Communist Party of China,
which today maintains an iron grip on China, wants to dampen the pent-up distrust anddissatisfaction that the Chinese people feel towards their own government. The
Communist Party's strategy is to create a hated external enemy out of another country
and direct popular anger towards it, which has proven to be very effective in distracting
the people from the true source of their resentment.
Because the communists founded their regime at the end of a long, bloody power
struggle, it does not bother their consciences to tell lies any more than it did theemperors of China. The notion of "might makes right" is the basis of Chinese
civilization, so it is all too natural for the Communist Party to distort or fabricate history
as it suits its interests.
In 2015, China pressured UNESCO to include in its Memory of the World Registercertain historical documents that were said to be related to the so-called "Nanjing
Massacre", an alleged massacre undertaken in 1937 of 300,000 Chinese citizens by
Japanese soldiers occupying the city. Nonetheless, China did not even publicly release
the documents. Because the "Nanjing Massacre" was a fabrication from the outset and99

the documents in question surely had nothing to do with it, China could not havedisclosed them even after registration. China simply disregarded these obvious
problems and had the documents registered by force. In Chinese civilization, "might
makes right", and consequently China is actively testing the theory that the strong can
do whatever they like. China fills its history books with lies and, in accordance with thenature of Chinese civilization, shows no hint of shame in repeating these lies again andagain. China's vision of history is, in the end, pure fiction.
In the case of Korea, there is the matter of the forced recruitment of comfort women. In
1982, a man named Yoshida Seiji falsely claimed to have worked with Japanese
authorities on Korea's Cheju Island who were rounding up young Korean women andforcing them into brothels. Yoshida's "testimony" was published in the Japanesenewspaper Asahi Shimbun.
This would have been a crime worthy of denunciation, had it been true. In fact, a fieldsurvey conducted on Cheju Island by the historian Hata Ikuhiko ten years later in 1992
exposed Yoshida's story as a total fabrication.
And yet, even after the truth was revealed, the fury of the Korean people did notdiminish. Private groups installed a statue of a comfort woman in front of the Japanese
embassy in South Korea with a plaque insisting that over 200,000 Koreans were
sexually enslaved by the Japanese. Not limiting themselves to Korea, they have evenbeen erecting comfort women statues worldwide at sites in Australia and the UnitedStates.
It is true that the Japanese military utilized the services of brothels called "comfort
stations" where comfort women, including Korean women, worked. However, thewages of the comfort women were very high, and since plenty of people applied
willingly, there was no need for the Japanese to kidnap or forcibly recruit anyone. It isalso a fact that the Japanese military became involved in the operation of the comfort
stations, but it did so in positive ways, such as providing health inspections to the
comfort women. Such stations were identical to those that the Korean government itself
has established in Korea during and since the Korean War for use by American soldiers.
The outrage in Korea began before it was known that Yoshida Seiji's tale of having
hunted down and abducted Korean women was a lie. In that case, why did this anger not100cool after the facts were discovered?
This reaction is indicative of the Korean people's perspective on their history, or what I
call, "fantasy history". Korea is located some distance from the Yellow River, thefocal point of Chinese civilization, and borders on continental Asia along only one ofthe peninsula's four sides. Korea was not endlessly attacked from all quarters the waythat the territories surrounding the heart of China were, and, to that extent, invasions of
Korea were relatively few. Still, Korea did suffer tragedies as a result of its connection
to continental Asia where political control was hotly contested. Korea had no means ofdefending itself against any enemy forces descending from the continent. It also meantthat Korea became addicted to having Chinese troops put down internal upheaval.
Korea's unification by the state of Silla in the seventh century was facilitated by thearmed forces of Tang China. The foundation of the Choson dynasty in the fourteenth
century was likewise backed by military aid from Ming China. In the nineteenth century,
the Choson dynasty easily crushed a budding, Korean-led reform movement, not with
its own army, but with the army of a foreign power, Qing China.
It is not surprising, in consideration of their past history, that the Korean people feel adeep-seated bitterness. The Koreans may not have experienced as much sheer brutality
as China did throughout its history, but, time and time again, the great things theirpeople ought to have been destined for never materialized. From this was born Korea's"culture of resentment" (han in Korean).
Korea never managed to sit at the center of Chinese civilization and call the shots, as the
Mongols and Manchus did. Instead, Korea was continually ordered to submit to eachsuccessive dynasty that rose to power in mainland China. The bitterness felt by the
Korean people manifested itself as the culture of resentment, which in turn produced"fantasy history". The fantasizing of the Korean people, that is to say their vain
expectations of how things ought to be, morphed into their view of their own nation's
history.
In this context, the comfort women statues are a form of "Japan bashing" intended toaffirm Korea's moral superiority. The Korean people endured a long succession ofunfulfilled dreams while their country languished in servitude to China. Because of
these many centuries of pent-up resentment, Korea lashes out at Japan whenever Japanshows signs of weakness.

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As I noted earlier, denunciation of the "Nanjing Massacre" is carried out in China
primarily to bolster the Communist Party's grip on power. By contrast, the politicalsystem in South Korea is more or less democratic, and it is not necessarily the case that
the South Korean government has been proactively denouncing Japan for its own profit.
The Korean people bash Japan through the mass media as an outlet for their own
frustrated desires. Though the government often rides the anti-Japan wave in the hopesof currying favor with the mob, it is the people who take the initiative.
To what extent has this harmed South Korea's own interests? How much damage isbeing done to tourism alone? In addition to North Korea, the authoritarian regime in
China represents a growing threat to South Korea, and I should not need to elaborate on
how critical it is for South Korea to cooperate with Japan on these matters.
The South Korean government ought to always be serving the function of tempering thepassions of its people. In spite of Korea's culture of resentment, or rather because of it,
the government should be providing its citizens with enough benevolent guidance toprevent this resentment from being directed abroad. When Korea's political leaders
exploit popular emotion to court popularity, they are doing damage to their own country
and are thus committing truly unpatriotic deeds. From the outset, denunciation of theimaginary "forced recruitment" of comfort women and the subsequent false descriptionof the comfort women as "sex slaves" has debased the Korean people. When thegovernment also joins in, the people are debased even further. For this reason, Korea's
leaders are themselves guilty of anti-Korean acts in the true sense of the term.

2. Acquire the ability to develop a broad historical perspective
When I consider how history should be scrutinized and discussed, I have long argued
against various "theories of history".
A theory of history is a means to interpret historical events. What I have come to acutely
understand is how often such historical theories fail to look at history from a broad
perspective, which in turn is the main cause of dogmatic and biased interpretations ofevents. Theories of history tend to miss the big picture because they are constructedfrom preconceived ideas before the truth has been seriously examined.

102For example, the Chinese Foreign Ministry brazenly insists that China is the only nation
to have never invaded a foreign country.
If we limit ourselves to examining the events immediately prior to the modern era, theworld was in the process of being swallowed up by aggressively expansionist
imperialist powers. Russia continued its advance eastward from around the time of theAge of Discovery, crossing the Bering Strait and reaching Alaska. Later, Russia plunged
southwards from Siberia, threatening first China and then Japan. Upon gaining
independence from Great Britain, the United States also expanded its territory,
advancing westward from the Atlantic coast, crossing the Pacific Ocean, and finallyseizing the Philippines from Spain. After the Iberian nations of Spain and Portugal took
to the seas, the Netherlands followed them. The next imperial powers to step forward,
Great Britain and France, established colonies on all five continents and along all sevenseas. Even the Manchurian people founded the Great Qing Empire, which spent two
hundred years over the course of six imperial reigns conquering a realm three times thesize of Ming China. After subduing China, the Manchus annihilated the Dzungar
Khanate and even annexed Tibet and the Western Regions. Judging from these facts
alone, how can one say that China has never invaded another country?
The old motto of Qing China's Eight Banner Army was, "With 10,000 men, no foe canstand against us!" Regardless, there were essential geopolitical and ecological reasons,and certainly contemporary factors such as the international power dynamics of that
period, that rendered China incapable of launching further invasions. The rise of theworld powers in the wake of the West's Age of Discovery was one historical trend thatthwarted China's attempts at expansion.
How shall we define the word "invasion"? The notion that China was invaded by thegreat powers, including Japan and Great Britain, is well established in the so-called"correct historical perception" espoused by China. However, my interpretation is theexact opposite. According to the Chinese division of the world into the ruler and his
realm (tianzi and tianxia), the sixty years of wars that took place between the Opium
War, the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion were not invasions of Chinaby the great powers, but rather were failed "punitive expeditions" initiated by the Qingemperors against the "western barbarians" and "eastern barbarians". The Qianlong
Emperor, who ruled China for sixty years in the eighteenth century, proudly called
himself the "Old Man of the Great Ten" for having achieved victory in wars launched103

against external foes of ten different regions. However, just one year after he passed thethrone to the Jiaqing Emperor and became a retired emperor, the White Lotus Rebellion
broke out and ushered in a full 180 years of civil war and turmoil that did not cease until
the end of the Cultural Revolution in the twentieth century. During this period, one fifthof the Chinese population lost their lives in the Taiping Rebellion and armed bands of
Han Chinese slaughtered ninety percent of China's Muslims in a genocide known as the"Muslim purge" (xihui). China sunk even further into civil war during the Republican
period. Amidst the prevailing chaos, the great powers struggled to abandon the killingfields of China as a lost cause.
History does not look the same from every angle. Because history is a series ofincidents linked through a chain of cause and effect, what is necessary is to grasp the
big picture. Japan's postwar politicians make the mistake of missing the big picture
every time that they refer to Japan's decisions leading to World War II as "a certain
period in the not too distant past". Unless we view history by expanding the scale ofspace and extending the span of time, we will end up missing the forest for the trees. If
we lose sight of the bigger picture, we cannot understand history in an accurate way.
As I already described, the Silla and Koryo dynasties that ruled the Korean Peninsula
were riven by bloody infighting, and only about half of their kings died natural deaths.
The situation deteriorated further during the subsequent Choson dynasty when thisinfighting extended outside the imperial palace to political factions, known as pungtang
in Korean, whose endless feuds divided the whole country.
Conversely, the most stable and peaceful era of Korean history was the so-called "ThirtyYears of Japanese Imperial Rule" following the annexation of Korea by Japan. If we
include the time immediately prior to the annexation, when Korea was under theguidance of the Japanese Governor General, we could call it the "Forty Years ofJapanese Imperial Rule". During these decades, Korean society achieved an
unprecedented degree of stability. After the annexation, Korea also shared in thebenefits of the wave of modernization, including Westernization and industrialism, that
had occurred in Japan thanks to Japan's "ultrastable" imperial line, unbroken since theAge of the Gods.
Nonetheless, the struggle between the political factions of the Korean Peninsula spilledover into China, Manchuria, and Siberia where they continued fighting. After the end of104

World War II, the bloodshed in Korea carried on where it had left off, and, since the
Korean War, South Korea has held presidential elections every five years to facilitatetransfers of power similar to the Chinese principle of "dynastic revolution".
By stepping back and looking at the big picture, we can conclude that the mostimportant historical factor facilitating Korea's transformation from a withering "hermit
kingdom" to a modern nation was the era of "ultrastability" Korea enjoyed under Japan's"imperial rule".
We can see the same phenomenon in Chinese history as well. As I explained above,
civil wars and disturbances have dragged on ceaselessly across most of China's modern
history from the White Lotus Rebellion of the late-eighteenth century to the Cultural
Revolution. I have proposed that the Second Sino-Japanese War, or "Eight Years' War of
Resistance" as it is called in China, was a moral and humanitarian intervention by Japanin China's longstanding civil war. This argument derives from my perception of Chinese
history viewed in broad, historical perspective, in other words from the time China's eraof internal conflict began in the late-eighteenth century. During this 180-year period of
strife, the Taiping Rebellion alone, which is said to have been the largest civil war inhuman history, took the lives of one out of every five people in China. The Central
Plains War alone, which was a dispute between factions of the Chinese Nationalist Party,
resulted in the mobilization of 1.5 million men by the Beijing and Nanjing Governments.
In the Nationalist Chinese Army alone, eight million soldiers were killed fighting thecommunists before the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Accordingly,
when we study modern history in broad perspective, the Japanese government's"repentance and apology" for the events of "a certain period in the not too distant past"
appears as little more than a performance for the cameras, and in this show themasochist plays opposite the sadist. However, because I believe that we must appreciate
the big picture of history from a broad perspective, I have consistently urged others toseek the counterintuitive truth that is the opposite of what people see, read, and hear
about the "correct historical perception" promoted by Korea and China.
There is absolutely no reason why Japan should either repent or apologize. From adifferent perspective, it is China and Korea that should repent for the internecine
bloodletting that was perpetrated among their own people, and it is they also whoshould apologize to the Japanese, who desired only to put an end to the fighting. This is
the reality I see when I examine history in broad perspective.

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3. Efforts to win the history wars begin at home
The outbreak of the history wars exposed certain problems that were festering within
the heart of Japanese society.
It was in 1982 that Yoshida Seiji fabricated his tale of having hunted down and sexuallyenslaved Korean women during World War II. If this story had instead emerged in theimmediate aftermath of the war, everyone probably would have seen right through theruse, as the conditions of the time would have still been fresh in their minds. However,by the 1980s, memories of Japanese rule over Korea had faded, and few could clearly
remember how things were back then. This, in combination with the masochistic
postwar education system, made the fiction plausible. If such a story were true, it would
pang the hearts of the Japanese people.
Granted, there were some Japanese people who did not seem to have ever bought into
the lie, but their objections were drowned out by the attacks of the mass media and theirmessage was not allowed to circulate very far. However, the historian Hata Ikuhikoproved beyond any doubt in 1992 that Yoshida's "testimony" was a hoax.
The real disaster was the response of the Japanese government. Even though Japan's
honor was being besmirched by baseless aspersions from other countries, it did notrelease any denial of the false claims or do anything else to defend Japan's good name.
The sacred duty of Japan's government, one might think, is to call out such lies for what
they are in order to protect Japan's honor. Needless to say, the government agency that
ought to have been fulfilling this duty was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When theofficials at the Foreign Ministry realized, thanks to the work of Hata Ikuhiko, that
Yoshida's account was fictitious, why did they not immediately issue a statement totransmit the truth to the world?
And yet, the Foreign Ministry was not entirely silent on the issue. Next year, in 1993, it
released the so-called "Kono Statement" on the comfort women problem. Though thestatement contained no direct acknowledgement that the Japanese military had recruited
comfort women by force, the then Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei made comments
at the same time that effectively admitted to forced recruitment.

106Moreover, in 1996 when the United Nations published the Coomaraswamy Report,
which was clearly based on Yoshida Seiji's story, the Foreign Ministry submitted awritten rebuttal to the report, only to withdraw it soon after.
Why does the Japanese government not defend Japan's honor? From the perspective ofany foreign nation, including Taiwan, such a thing is virtually unbelievable. The
Japanese government is the author of its own anti-Japanese policy.
What is even more mysterious, from the perspective of a Taiwanese person like myself,
is the reaction of Japanese citizens at that time. Why did they not criticize thenegligence of the Foreign Ministry on the floor of the Diet? Those Japanese who hadawakened to their country's problems lamented that Japan was still not free from theyoke of the War Guilt Information Program imposed by the postwar occupation seventy
years ago. Why, then, did they themselves not strive to break free? The occupation
forces had certainly been ingenious in their methods, but that argument rings hollow
now that a full seventy years have elapsed. The Japanese people themselves have simply
not risen to the challenge.
The Foreign Ministry is infected with masochism over Japan's history, and its refusal todefend Japan's honor influences the mass media and the formation of public opinion.
Under the effect of this influence, the media and public also remain masochistic. Why
do the Japanese people not criticize the Foreign Ministry for its masochistic
predilections? This is a question of whether the chicken or the egg came first. Still,shouldn't the people be furious when officials at the Foreign Ministry are so blatantly
unwilling even to defend the honor of their own country? Though I have been repeating
myself, it does seem that there are a fair number of people who are extremely upset withthe comfort women disputes pushed by Korea. Why do they get angry at Korea, but notdirect the brunt of their criticism towards their own abysmally negligent Foreign
Ministry?
In addition, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has paid no attention to the actions of
the Foreign Ministry. Why has the Liberal Democratic Party been standing idly by while
the Foreign Ministry fails to carry out one of its essential functions? This is yet another
big problem.
Furthermore, the comfort women issue is not a problem between Japan and Korea alone.

107

It is having negative repercussions around the world. Depending on one's point of view,
Korea can also be considered a victim. If Japan had acted faster to disseminate accurate
information and the Foreign Ministry had officially notified Korea early on that Yoshida
Seiji's story was a fabrication, it is possible that even the Korean people may have
withheld some of their outrage.
Concerning the Kono Statement, thanks to the heroic efforts of Diet member Yamada
Hiroshi, the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time of the release of the Kono
Statement, Ishihara Nobuo, was summoned to the Diet in 2014. According to Ishihara's
testimony, the Kono Statement was drafted at Korea's request without corroborating
evidence, and no documents proving forced recruitment were ever discovered in Japan.
Though all these facts were already known by then, his testimony in the Diet constituted
official acknowledgement that no forced recruitment of comfort women had occurred.
In that case, why are the Korean people unable to let go of the comfort women
problem? Japanese people fail to understand this because they are ill-informed of thetrue nature of Korea's culture and history. From the very beginning, when Tangun,
Korea's legendary founder, was born of a bear-woman, Korea has been a den of sexual
slavery. It is important to know the fact that, even today, Koreans struggle with theirnational commitment to prostitution. Korea is a nation of sexual slavery, prostitution,famine, and refugees, and the ethos and behavior of those born in the Korean cultural
climate resemble nothing else in this world. Far from understanding it, it would
probably be difficult for Japanese people to even imagine it.
Not long after former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Ishihara testified, the Asahi
Shimbun, the newspaper that had printed Yoshida Seiji's account, retracted the articles it
had published relating to the comfort women. It appears that Ishihara's words made theirmark. It took the Asahi Shimbun thirty-two years to get to that retraction.
Taiwanese people like myself found it strange that the Asahi Shimbun did not retract its
coverage on the comfort women much earlier, as its fraudulent nature had been obvious
for quite some time. In the thirty-two years that elapsed before the retraction, the Asahi
Shimbun's reporting had already caused a diplomatic crisis and done incalculable harm
to both Japan and Korea. All that can be said is that the Asahi Shimbun is a shoddy
excuse of a newspaper that betrayed the people of Japan.

108

Why did Japanese citizens choose to ignore what the Asahi Shimbun was doing? The
Asahi Shimbun is a private newspaper that exists only because its readers buy it.
Consequently, why haven't people just stopped purchasing such a dysfunctional paper?
Naturally, the Asahi Shimbun did lose subscribers due to the damage that the recent
retraction did to its credibility. This was to be expected of such a disreputable"newspaper", but I suspect that anyone who still reads the Asahi Shimbun must surely
be of low intellectual caliber.
The bigger problem lies with the Foreign Ministry. When Japan's good name is being
tarnished with invidious lies, the Foreign Ministry, an institution paid for with the tax
dollars of Japanese citizens, opts to do nothing at all. Can the Japanese people be
expected to forgive this? This is a flagrant act of betrayal against the citizens of Japan.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Why would the Japanese government, which is
run with the tax dollars of Japanese citizens, not respond to information slanderous toJapan's honor by presenting South Korea with the real facts of the case? Why did theJapanese people not descend on the Diet, the democratic chamber representing thecitizenry of the nation, to excoriate this negligence? Finally, why did so many Japanesepeople who were angered by Korea's exploitation of the comfort women problem tosmear Japan not also vent this anger towards their own government and the Diet? The
Japanese people themselves are also unmistakably guilty of negligence.
As I have repeatedly emphasized, if Japan is defeated in the history wars, it will not be aloss for the Japanese people alone. Rather, the whole world will suffer.
There is one final point on this subject that I must convey to the people of Japan. The
man who first championed and aggravated the comfort women problem was himself
Japanese. It was a Japanese person who popularized the term "sexual slavery" andpersuaded the United Nations to denounce Japan. In the view of an outsider, themotivations of such a person seem inconceivable. Only a truly morally bankrupt man
would so gleefully traumatize and inflict harm upon his own country. Why, then, doJapanese people ignore the subversion of their self-loathing compatriots? Shouldn't theybe brought before the public and exposed to criticism? They are the ones who are toblame for Korea losing its own senses and injuring its own best interests.
Of course, Japan's interests are also being harmed, but it is not a matter of just Japan or109even just two countries. In the end, it is the well-being of people throughout the worldthat is at stake.
The history wars against Japan were started by the United States and the Soviet Union
in the wake of World War II, and it was only later that Korea and China joined.
Nonetheless, the history wars that we say were waged by foreign countries on Japanactually appear more similar to a civil war that the Japanese people have fought among
themselves for the past seventy years. This reality is best symbolized by the Diet's war
apology resolution, which was passed by devious means in 1995 on the fiftiethanniversary of World War II, as well as the subsequent Murayama Statement.

4. Utilize the UN and other international organizations
I have a suggestion on how we can resolve the politically charged problems of the"Nanjing Massacre" and the "comfort women". No matter what others might think, I
firmly believe that we should use the United Nations. Though the United Nations may
have a bad reputation, Japan still pays ten percent of its operating budget, the largest
share of any country apart from the United States. As long as Japan is contributing somuch money, it would be a waste to not make the most of the UN in diplomatic disputes
involving Japan.
Furthermore, there is no need to treat the "Nanjing Massacre" and the "comfort women"
as diplomatic problems with China and Korea alone. Because Japan is being denounced
internationally for events that never happened, Japan ought to explain the truth of thematter at the United Nations. The platform to do this is the General Assembly. Making
the announcement at the General Assembly, before the eyes and ears of the world, will
be very useful in getting the truth out to other countries. If Japan also explains in detailthe real history of Chinese civilization before the General Assembly and how modern
China is connected to Chinese civilization, it will serve as an effective defense in thehistory wars and will help to enlighten the rest of the world.
Apart from the UN, I also advocate that we utilize many other international groups,
including meetings of the G7 and G20.
If Japan still gets no results, it should gather leading historians to discuss the historicalfacts on the floor of the UN in an academic manner with verifiable evidence. If the110discussion cannot be held in the UN, the Japanese government should instead host aninternational academic conference.
Finally, the United Nations should propose an international treaty for the twenty-first
century forbidding any country from using its public education system to instill hatredagainst another country.
Such an international treaty to ban anti-foreign education was already recommended in2014 by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the most well-known
organization of the textbook reform movement. In any case, hateful, anti-foreign
education is quite inimical to building a peaceful international community.
I believe that the aforementioned proposals are both meaningful and realistic. Moreover,even in the case of past incidents that are grounded in actual facts, it is still problematicto keep harping on about them in the twenty-first century. Even for real events, whether
or not they are still worth condemning in the present day after so much time has passed
is another matter. As a general rule, I advise that we urge others to stop denouncing past
events once a certain amount of time has gone by.

5. Resolve territorial disputes at the UN
Because they are somewhat connected to the history wars, I would now like to touchupon Japan's territorial disputes.
Japan is currently party to several territorial disputes. For example, China's unilateralclaim to the Senkaku Islands is a de-facto territorial dispute. Asserting that the Senkakus
are an inherent part of Japan, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs argues that no
territorial dispute with China exists. However, as long as the islands remain uninhabited,
one can understand the basis of China's claim to a certain extent. Even though the
Senkakus are controlled by Japan, the Japanese government does not allow any weather
observation stations, fisheries infrastructure, or defensive installations to be constructedon them for fear of provoking China. What is the sense in a policy of not provoking
China over a territorial dispute that does not exist? Japan insists that there is no
territorial dispute with China, while also adopting a timid policy that effectively
provides grounds to China's stated position. There have been repeated intrusions by
Chinese state vessels into Japan's territorial waters around the Senkakus. By piling up
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such violations as faits accomplis, China is making good progress in its plans to seize
the Senkaku Islands.
The Senkaku Islands dispute also has grave implications for Taiwan, which is very
worried that it might lead to armed clashes near its territory. Indeed, the whole worldfears that Japan's surrender of the Senkaku Islands under Chinese pressure will set a
precedent that will embolden China to engage in further aggression. Therefore, theSenkaku Islands dispute is not just a problem between China and Japan. Japan must
hold firm and stave off Chinese pressure for the sake of the rest of the world as well.
To deal with this problem, Japan can work through international organizations such as
the United Nations. For the benefit of the rest of the world, Japan will explain to theUnited Nations that it has no intention of provoking any territorial dispute with China,
and then will announce its plan to construct defensive installations on its territory of the
Senkaku Islands. After winning the world's sympathy, I think that Japan should goahead and build the installations. There is no reason to consult with China on thisdecision. Even if Japan does consult with China, I do not expect anything could come ofit. Under its stated international responsibility to not provoke a territorial dispute, Japan
has to affirm its peaceful intentions as it assembles the defensive installations. Next,
Japan should, if necessary, set up weather observation stations, fisheries infrastructure,and facilities to improve navigational safety. By following these steps, Japan will allay
its territorial dispute with China and do a service to the world.
Now let's consider Japan's dispute with Korea over ownership of the Takeshima Islands.
In January 1952, South Korean President Syngman Rhee took advantage of Japan's
powerlessness under the postwar military occupation to illegally and unilaterally
capture the Takeshima Islands, which remain under Korean administration today.
Political bungling at the end of the occupation prevented a resolution of the dispute atthat time, but Japan still should have rectified the issue when the Japan-Korea Treaty on
Basic Relations was signed in 1965. This was a treaty aiming to establish normal
relations between Japan and South Korea, so there was no reason to not settle theTakeshima Islands dispute on that occasion. From the standpoint of fostering friendshipand goodwill between Japan and Korea, it did no good to either side to simply leave amajor territorial dispute outstanding. Thus, the Japanese government committed agrievous error in failing to have the Takeshima Islands returned to Japan in 1965. I
suspect that this dispute will never be solved through only interminable dialogue with112

Korea, so Japan should instead use the United Nations. This is a task for the JapaneseForeign Ministry. Although Japan is sadly cursed to have a Foreign Ministry that is
unable to act decisively at critical moments, that just means that we will have to chide it
into action.
What about the dispute over the Northern Territories, or Kuril Islands as they are known
in Russia? The Russian-controlled islands of Shikotan, Etorofu, Kunashiri, andHabomai are obviously inherent territories of Japan, as was confirmed by both sides in
the 1855 Russo-Japanese Treaty of Amity. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union
illegally occupied the Northern Territories, which were subsequently inherited by Russia.
Russia continues to illegally hold these Japanese islands to this day.
The very act of the Soviet Union having invaded Japan at the end of World War II was aserious crime under international law. On April 13, 1941, the two sides had signed theJapanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Germany went to war with the Soviet Union notlong after, on June 22. Because Japan had concluded the Tripartite Pact with Germany
and Italy in 1940, there was a very real possibility that Japan would join with its ally
Germany and invade the Soviet Union. And yet, Japan stayed true to the non-aggression
pact and ordered no attack on Soviet soil. As a result, the Soviet Union was able toredeploy its forces in the east, which had been bracing for combat with the Japanese,and used them to narrowly defeat the German onslaught. Admittedly, the Soviets did
also benefit from a massive infusion of American military aid, but, even taking this into
account, if the Japanese military had invaded Siberia, it is virtually beyond doubt that
the Soviet Union would have lost the war with Germany.
The Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact came to an abrupt end on August 9, 1945,
when the Soviet Union launched a surprise offensive against Japan. Even though Japan's
faithful adherence to this agreement had saved the Soviet Union from total destruction,
the Soviets showed no scruples in flagrantly breaking it. This attack may have been themost insidious betrayal ever perpetrated by one nation against another in the course of
the twentieth century. It is true that US President Franklin Roosevelt had asked Joseph
Stalin at the Yalta Conference held in February of that year to have the Soviet Union
attack Japan, and a secret deal to this effect was concluded. However, this deal was
acknowledged by the United States as having no legal validity. Even if the United States
had made it binding, the secret deal at Yalta would still have had no validity as far as theSoviet Union's relations with Japan were concerned.

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The Soviet Union surely owed some moral obligation to Japan for having honored the
non-aggression pact. Even if the Soviet Union did have to declare war on Japan, it could
have at least offered Japan a temporary truce, and invaded only if Japan had refused toaccept it. In the end, the Soviet Union could not be bothered to make even a minimal
show of honor.
Given that the Soviet Union's sudden violation of the Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression
Pact and invasion of Japan was obviously a breach of international law, the Soviet
Union must be held accountable for it no matter what deal it secretly arranged with the
USA at Yalta.
Therefore, the Soviet Union attacked Japan and occupied the Northern Territories at theend of the war pursuant only to an informal promise he made to President Roosevelt.
The Soviet Union was completely unjustified in perpetrating the most blatantly immoral
treaty violation in twentieth century history. If Japan filed regular complaints about thiswicked deed at the United Nations and persistently demanded the return of the islands,
wouldn't Russia eventually get overwhelmed and agree to give them back? In fact,
Turkey also faces criticism over its history, but is more than willing to defend its
country's honor on the floor of the UN.
In summary, what Japan ought to do is bring up the illegitimacy of Russia's occupationof the Northern Territories in the UN at every possible opportunity. Japan's leaders
could meet with President Putin a hundred times, but still get no closer to a settlement.
Shelving the dispute and maintaining the status quo are only stopgap measures.
The United Nations, being one and the same as the Allied Powers of World War II, evennow preserves in its charter the so-called "enemy clauses", which label Japan andGermany as enemies of the UN. Moreover, the permanent seats on the UN Security
Council are held by just five nations, the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia,
and China, who wield unrestricted veto power over all decisions. Any proposal can beshot down due to the opposition of just one of those countries. The UN has to be able toadapt in response to changing global conditions, but every reform proposal is vetoed by
one of the permanent members of the Security Council. This means that the UN, a vitalinternational organization, can never reform itself even though its institutions no longer
function in a healthy manner.

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Nevertheless, this does not mean that there is no solution. For example, the UnitedStates and the other leading countries that realize the need for change could withdraw
from the UN and form a new UN based on their reform plans. There are many countries
that should desert the current UN and join the new organization. Such a move might besupported by America's new president, Donald Trump.
The United Nations has reached the stage where thoroughgoing reform has to beseriously examined.

6. Appeal for an end to history wars
How should humans approach history? Let me sum up my observations.
"History", as the term is normally used, does not refer to objective facts about the past,
but rather to the facts of the past as we perceive them. Because of this, history does
usually contain bias and distortion, as I explained in more detail in Chapter 1.
Everything has its own history and, inevitably, its own biases and distortions. We must
be aware that these biases and distortions will be present.
To mature into happier and healthier people, humans need to develop their own
historical self-perception, and we have to tolerate divergences between facts andperceptions.
Each individual person ought to be free to develop his or her own view of history. A
person's historical self-perception belongs to no one else and must never be imposed byanother. Naturally, there are many cases where an individual's historical perception isincomplete and benefits from hearing the thoughts of others with far better-consideredideas. In such instances, one's own historical perception will be enriched and improved.
However, this is not to say that any coercion is involved. Historical self-perception must
ultimately be left solely to the individual's own discretion. No other people can evercompel an individual to accept their historical perception. For this reason, it is
intrinsically wrong to aggressively push one's own historical perception and shrilly
demean that of others. This is even truer in the case of fake history created with apolitical agenda stemming from resentment and bitterness. In other words, freedom ofhistorical perception is the right of every person.
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Considering this question at the level of nations, it is fundamentally distasteful todenounce another country's history. Accordingly, the very worst thing one country can
do to another is manufacture lies about the past to smear its reputation.
The interpersonal and international relationships of today are, of course, all generally
built upon past events. Consequently, there will certainly be many occasions when wemust bring up and discuss old history.
An example of this is the aforementioned territorial disputes. In the case of the disputewith Russia, we cannot bypass the process of investigating the historical context
surrounding the Northern Territories. Therefore, a debate over historical perception is
also inevitable. When it comes to the root causes of the Takeshima Islands dispute andthe historical details of its unilateral seizure by Korea, a discussion of the facts of thepast is likewise unavoidable. The same holds true of the Senkaku Islands dispute with
China where the historical facts of the case and the discussion of historical perception isessential.
Nonetheless, it is not at all constructive in these disputes to simply dredge up matters ofhistory for the purpose of aspersion and moralizing. It's one thing to praise something in
the past that might deserve praise. However, it can be quite a different thing to expressly
single out for denunciation certain incidents from another country's past, even if theincidents do deserve to be criticized. It seems that denunciation of another country's
history begins with an attempt to prove the superiority of one's own history, but this is
not the proper way that a sensible individual or a sensible nation should approach
history. In its pure form, historical perception helps individuals and nations to grow in ahealthy and fulfilling manner. Thus, it need not and ought not bring in the history ofother countries and people for the sake of denunciation. To do so would be an
unacceptable infringement on the freedom of historical perception that is the basic rightof each individual.
Some may be of the opinion that denouncing the history of others to prove one's own
superiority is inescapable. It is, they may say, a natural human impulse that comes as an
intrinsic facet of the production of history. And yet, another impulse that is natural tohumanity is our moral aspiration to coexist harmoniously with one another. With reason,
we can suppress our tribalistic instinct to achieve dominance over others by attacking

116their history, and then do away with the history wars.
China denounces Japan for the alleged massacre of 300,000 civilians by Japanesesoldiers in the city of Nanjing in 1937, and Korea does the same for the alleged
abduction and sexual enslavement by the Japanese military of 200,000 women.
The history wars instigated by both countries attest to the fact that history as a natural
impulse is, because of this impulse, a tool to assert one's own superiority by putting
down others. However, China and Korea need to learn for themselves that they cannot
prove their own virtue through doing evil to others. They ought to handle history
rationally, and, if they do, there will be no more history wars.
The accusations made by China and Korea include much fake and fabricated history
designed to stoke greater animosity against the Japanese people. Regardless, even if weclosed our eyes to the truth and recognized all these accusations as historical fact, it
would still be hard to see what is constructive about incessantly digging up the facts ofthe distant past as fodder for denouncing other countries today. That is not how history
should be.
During ongoing political controversies, there will be situations in which we will
inevitably have to discuss the history of other countries, but, by contrast, the waging ofa history war is inexcusable. Briefly put, history wars between two countries are wholly
negative and should never occur under any circumstances. I strongly reaffirm the points
that I made in Chapter 1 concerning defining history in historiographical terms.

7. Beyond history wars
On May 27, 2016, an event took place that made us reflect seriously on the history wars.
It was US President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima seventy-one years after theatomic bomb was dropped there.
The targeting of an unarmed civilian population with a nuclear weapon was an
unforgiveable act. To pay his respects, Obama visited Hiroshima on the occasion of theG7 summit in Japan and laid a wreath in front of the memorial cenotaph, though he did
not issue an apology. He also spoke with Japanese survivors of the blast.

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The A-bomb survivors graciously welcomed Obama's visit without demanding any
apology. While understanding that circumstances in the United States made an apology
from the president unfeasible, they nonetheless showed their appreciation for America's
gesture and gave Obama permission to place his wreath at the cenotaph.
I am not advocating that we gloss over the past. "Historical truth" ought to always beclarified as far as it can be. However, we must also admit that history will contain
subjective elements, and thus "historical truth" may differ between Japan and the UnitedStates. What is significant is that the USA and Japan did not quibble over thedifferences or denounce one another, but rather respected their reciprocal differences
while setting their eyes firmly towards the future and committing themselves to work
hand-in-hand to forge a better tomorrow.
From Japan's perspective, the United States committed an unforgiveable act worthy ofthe most severe condemnation, but no good could possibly have come from publicly
denouncing it seventy years after the fact. This was true for both Japan and the UnitedStates. Instead, both the victims and the perpetrators decided to accept the errors of thepast for what they were and mutually reconcile for the sake of the future.
President Obama left a paper crane that he folded himself at Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum. This tradition began with Sasaki Sadako, a schoolgirl who was hospitalized
for radiation sickness, but continued to fold paper cranes until her death in 1955 at theage of twelve. The Children's Peace Monument, a statue in Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Park that holds a paper crane aloft in its arms, was modelled on Sadako.
Her older brother Sasaki Masahiro is currently in the United States running a non-profit
organization dedicated to advancing the cause of peace and deepening historical
understanding between Japan and the USA. He founded the organization with Clifton
Truman Daniel, the grandson of Harry Truman, the president who ordered the atomic
bombing of Japan.
The dropping of the atomic bombs has been truly difficult to forgive. And yet, neitherside would gain anything of value from Japan's leaders bitterly denouncing it until theend of time. No matter how terrible it may have been, once the event has long past, wehave no choice but to eventually forgive so that there may be peace. Both sides should
vow to do everything in their power to never allow such a tragedy to happen again.

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Once enough time has transpired, this is precisely what both the citizens of the country
that perpetrated the bombing and the citizens of the country that endured the bombing
must do.
President Obama's state visit to Hiroshima did us a great service by showing us just how
senseless history wars are.
It has already been over seventy years since Japan was defeated by the United States ina war that raged across the Pacific Ocean. The history wars over Japan have beencharacterized as wars against external foes, but, in some ways, it may be more accurate
to call them, "The Seventy-Year Civil War for Japan's History". China and South Korea
launched the war, but they could not have sustained it without the fuel constantly being
provided by anti-Japanese forces inside Japan. It is the Japanese people themselves who
are to blame for allowing these anti-Japanese elements to run rampant. For their own
sake and for the sake of all the people of the world, the time has come for the Japanese
to stop turning a blind eye to this problem.
Finally, I would like to mention two additional unseen topics in the history wars that I
have often tried to call attention to in the last several decades.
The first topic has to do with Yasukuni Shrine. Under normal circumstances, the act of
paying respect to Yasukuni Shrine, just like the formation of one's historical perception,
ought to be an entirely private matter of the heart and soul. At some point in time,somehow or other, it morphed into a political issue, and then a diplomatic problem. Thisis completely unacceptable. On top of that, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs'
inability to fulfil its function as a foreign ministry made the bad situation even worse.
The second topic relates to Japan's culture and civilization, which was long
characterized by its focus on the present and the future, rather than the past. Japan's
forward-looking attitude was symbolized by its traditional purification rites intended tofree the soul of the burden of the past. However, the Japanese have ended up
transforming unwittingly from a forward-looking people into a "backward-facing"people with an obsessive fixation on old history. This is yet more proof of the Japanesepeople's inadequate self-awareness and lack of effort towards healthy self-development.
Does this not all stem from the complacency and weakness of the people?

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These two topics are linked to an unseen "spiritual defeat". The Japanese people
suffered a spiritual or cultural defeat at the end of World War II, and I fear that it may
ultimately lead to Japan's suicide as a nation. It seems to me that this "spiritual defeat" iswhat the Japanese people must truly repent for.

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