Friday, September 20, 2013

"which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk" - Kishi and Churchill





A Humble Zoo, Japan


Kishi and Churchill


Nobuskuke Kishi (1896-1987) was a grandfather of the incumbent Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe.

Kishi was Prime Minister of Japan between 1957 and 1960.  Kishi had been an elite bureaucrat of the Empire of Japan before WWII and had served the Empire as a state minister in the notorious Tojo Cabinet during WWII.  Accordingly he was indicted for war crimes when the US military led by General MacArthur occupied Japan after the summer of 1945.  Kishi was housed in a prison in Tokyo from 1945 to 1948.

But after he was released, Kishi recovered his status rapidly to be elected as a parliament member in a national election in 1953.  Due to his political backgrounds rooted in the Chosyu Region full of heroes of the Meiji Restoration of the imperial authorities in 1868  and his newly established tie with the US Government and especially with CIA, Nobuskuke Kishi became Prime Minister of Japan in 1957.  His Cabinet was strongly focused on extension of the Japan-US Security Treaty which was realized in 1960 despite strong and violent protests from liberal Japanese.

Even after voluntarily stepping down from the premiership, Kishi kept some degree of influences on the Japanese politics, since his younger brother Eisaku Sato (1901-1975) assumed office of the premiership in 1964.

When Winston Churchill died in 1969, then former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi was sent to England as representative of the Japanese Government in the funeral held for WWII hero Churchill.   But while Churchill was still alive in his residence near Hyde Park, Kishi visited Churchill.

Kishi found a bronze horse on a table in Churchill's house.  Churchill explained that his parents had bought it in Japan when they visited the Empire of Japan after the Japanese-Russo War.  Old man Churchill said to Kishi, "This bronze horse was not a work of art.  But it was designed and produced very elaborately.  A craftsman finished it in impressive detail.  It is a big surprise that an ordinary artisan exercised  his best workmanship in an exquisite manner for such a common stationary article to be sold at a commercial price.  It tells what Japanese are."

So, Kishi invited Churchill to Japan so that the great political and cultural figure of England would paint Mt. Fuji.   However, Churchill said that he could just walk only with aid of someone then.  It was impossible for Churchill to follow the passage to the Far East his parents had taken almost 65 years ago.

It is not widely known how his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi told Shinzo Abe about Churchill, when current Prime Minister Abe was very young.       






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Rev 9:20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: