This translation work into Japanese of Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini, which I has spent for 7 years and 3 months, finally completed on this last issue. At the same time, my long-standing question also seems to be able to finish together.
The question of long-standing, ultimately, stems from the “discomfort of being Japanese”. And that it is able to finish connects to the elimination of this “discomfort” on a process of self-evolving. To say metaphoricaly, I am getting a feeling to find the very place at where I can finally unload a luggage which I somehow have shouldered, as the first post-war generation born in 1946, by bridging between two burdens of the pre-war and post-war generations.
If it is daid directly, the “discomfort of being Japanese” derives from that I am one of the Japanese who were notoriously brutal in the war finished in 1945.
Yet, the “elimination” connects to the awareness of “planted product”, in two aspects. That is, it was my discovery of the fact that was not due to the racial nature of myself, or of the Japanese per se.
The “two aspects” are, firstly, the Japanese has been divided intentionally since the defeat. In other words, “divide and rule” which is a universal principle of the rule, has applied on the people. I.e. Japanese total has divided into the “bad Japanese” who supported military aggression and mass murder and then led the country to defeat, and the “good Japanese” who was, together with the “peaceful Emperor”, critical of the military. Of course, it has been made deliberately by the cunning winner, America.
The second of the “two aspects” relates to that the Japanese who don’t de-parent have been deliberately fixed through the authority of Emperor has been excessively iconized and deified more than the historical fact so that the ruling Japanese dominate over the Japanese people. As a result the loyalty to the Emperor who is the “great father” by the “Japanese subject” who lacks de-parenting has been glorified and reformed into the state religion.
I have called the “lack of de-parenting” as the “lack of separation from Emperor” or the “lack of separation from King”.
The dually divided Japan eventually formed unharmonious consciousness of Japanese which differentiated between the “modern rational and democratic Japanese” and the “conventional and traditional old-fashioned Japanese”. In other words, it has made the self of Japanese difficult to be more vivid, wider, more comprehensive and combining the both.
In this way, the fabrication which I call “Emperor as Double Fiction” has been existed as the amalgamation of the first and second division mentioned above.
So, if the Japanese whole overcome those internal fetters by the “elimination”, and de-shackle from unnecessary social internal frictions, the overall social uplift and total amount of their energy produced by the match of their all feeling is to be expect to be a remarkable leap to Japan. Exactly, it is the birth of the “independent Japan”.
The “elimination” is a product by reading experience of Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy for me. So it is only a personal experience. But I’m sure that it is not an exceptional and special experience. At least for the people of my generation, the “discomfort of being Japanese” should be shared to everyone in their deeper consciousness.
As I have pointed out repeatedly, the tough and well-balanced argument of the book for both to Japan and the US makes me be aware of the bizarre structure which covers Japan as mentioned above.
The author, David Bergamini has concluded this book stating in the last paragraph as following:
To face reality, to earn the goodwill of neighboring peoples, and to make Asia a responsible fourth force which can stand apart from America, Russioa, and Europe are hard tasks without glamor. They can be achieve only by exorcising the spell of the ancestors, by blowing away the heavy halo of taboo wich encircles the Throne, and by shattering the devout silence which makes conspirators of all who enter service in the palace. Japanese know and dread the alternative, which is to dive back into the Pacific to grapple once again with Commodore Perry’s leviathan.
This was written at the beginning of the 1970s. Nevertheless, the conclusion can be still applicable today, or rather, be stated for today as it were.
As I was the case, this book presents the way which the Japanese overall can eliminate the “discomfort of being Japanese “.
In that sense, in spite of the poisonous title, it is, neither an “outrageous book”, nor even deflected one. For the Japanese, this book is a “good book” you-must-read.
( September 6, 2013 )