(Mt. Fuji some 15 miles far past six o'clock in August 2009; the photo taken from a 200Km/h running Shinkansen express-train by EEE Reporter.)I woke up past the noon today. I could not stop writing about Emperor Jin-mu and Xu Fu (Jyufuku) on this blog late last night.
I had a little job to do today; the sky is cloudy and not sweltering hot; yet, they are broadcasting live a baseball game between senior-high school teams at Koshien, a yearly national event of the summer in Japan.
You might think that how foolish I am writing something about the Japan's history nobody in the world would mind and read.
But, there are thousands of students in the world studying Japan and Japanese.
Besides, my past writing about the Imperial Army of Japan advancing so overwhelmingly and swiftly from Shanghai to Nanjing in 1937 seems to have attracted some attention from Western viewers. (I am extremely sorry for some grave and illegal activities of Imperial Army officers; but Chinese leaders responsible for Nanjing defense actually neglected helpless citizens and left them behind in a desperate turmoil, running away from the great city Nanjing before the Imperial Army launched attacks, while some civilian clothed Chinese soldiers were fighting back abusing helpless civilians...)
Anyway, Confucius (551?-479 B.C.; "Ko-shi" in Japanese) did not exalt democracy but Confucianism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius
Shang Yang (? -338 B.C.; "Sho-ou" in Japanese) did not exalt democracy but Legalism, thus leading Qin to be the first empire in China around 200 B.C.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_Yang
Just like the great conquest by Alexander the Great in 330's B.C. has a fundamental influence on today's situations around the Middle East, the two schools of ancient Chinese philosophy, Confucianism and Legalism work as an underlying code of behaviors of people and the elite in East Asia since the First Chinese Empire so established around 200 B.C.
Roughly speaking, China has been observing Legalism formality more, especially after WWII; Japan has been respecting ethical Confucianism more in these 2000 years, except in a very exceptional short period leading to WWII.
The coming of Xu Fu from Qin to Japan, leveraging the Qin's First Emperor's desire for eternal life believed to be realized by a secret elixir kept in legendary holy land Japan, is emblematic of this historical context, since Xu Fun and his followers never tried to return to battle-fatigued Qin governed in accordance with cold-blooded teachings extracted from School of Law.
http://www.asiawind.com/hakka/history.htm
Hence, some historians of today imagine that Japan's First Emperor Jin-mu was a kind of Xu Fu who was officially and directly dispatched virtually to the Japanese islands by the China's First Emperor of Qin around 200 B.C.
Finally, I do not recommend all the politicians in Japan to continue their profession unless they review and learn again this history of East Asia, even if the DPJ should oust the LDP/New Komeito Government by a huge margin through the coming general election.
(You had better indeed view the EEE Reporter blog rather than watch a TV political debate program supported by neither a divine mandate nor a divine revelation...This is an era of Mr. Barack Obama, the African American U.S. President, to whose ascendancy no Japanese journalists have contributed but EEE Reporter, dare I say it...)
Ok, now I've got to go!