"if thy right hand offend thee" - Doraemon since 1969

Mt. Fuji from Tokyo 

Doraemon since 1969

Doraemon is one of the most popular manga (cartoon) titles created in Japan and accepted overseas.

Doraemon is a robot cat that came from the future to save a boy, one of whose future descendants is associated with Doraemon.  Doraemon helped the daily life of the boy named Nobita, meaning the knocked-down, with various fantastic and super-high tech goods, since Nobita is a weak boy always suppressed by a big and strong bully and a sly and rich boy, though he has a pretty girl friend.  This manga comic story was originally intended for primary school children.

Doraemon was first issued in 1969 when the Vietnam War was still going on and many anti-Vietnam War students were active in Japan, since there were many US military bases in Japan.  Japan was marking high growth in economy at the time, partly because of Vietnam War-invoked special procurement boom, with people's lives rapidly changing from a simply highly growing economy after WWII to a country starting to lead the world economy.  Japanese youths were also being influenced by hippyism that started in the US in the middle of 1960s, requesting more freedom and equality while denying traditional ethics.

The world of Japanese manga works was also undergoing a big change as baby boomers who had enjoyed juvenile cartoons in their childhood became young adults who wanted more realistic, satirical, and sometimes violent manga works.  Many of manga artists changed their styles to match feelings and demands of growing manga readers along with this social trend.  But, the author Fujio F. Fujiko never changed his touch.  F. Fujiko continued to create and issue juvenile cartoons for readers of every generation.

So, F. Fujiko's Doraemon survived those politically turbulent years, symbolized by the Vietnam War, and psychologically unstable years with social value standards drastically changing due to the coming of affluent society in Japan.  In fact, he proved that what is welcomed by children is the same if times are changing.

Fujio F. Fujiko (ne Hiroshi Fujimoto) came to Tokyo from Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of Japan to become a manga artist with his friend Fujio Fujiko (A) (ne Motoo Abiko) in early 1950s when they were 20 years old or so.  They respected Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese King of Manga Art.  As their works had been praised by Tezuka, they decided to become professional manga artists.   Actually, the two young manga artists started to live in a humble room of a humble wooden apartment house Tezuka just moved from.  Their drawing touch even resembled Tezuka's.

Even the great manga-world leader Tezuka tried to change his style aimed at children to that more appealing to young adults in 1970s along with the change in the mood of the Japanese society.  But F. Fujiko firmly stuck to his old style targeting children.  However, his friend Fujiko (A) gradually changed his style to appeal to adult readers.  Till Doraemo, F. Fujiko and Fujiko (a) created and issued works together as co-creators, using the common name Fujio Fujiko.  But, Doraemon was a work produced only by F. Fujiko.

Fujio F. Fujiko died in 1996, though his best friend and old co-creator Fujiko (A) still lives.  Fujiko (A) wrote some books where he admired F. Fujiko who seldom went out for playing golf or drinking with famous actors, actresses, authors, and other celebrities while Fujiko (A) enjoyed such a colorful life in Tokyo as a successful manga artist.  F. Fujiko concentrated on his juvenile works for children while always trying to come up with new ideas.


One night in 1969, F. Fujiko was suffering as he had promised to present a new manga work to a magazine company as his old title had been finished.  But, F. Fujiko couldn't flash an idea into his mind.  Fujiko (A) who had come to Fujiko F.'s house to help him already returned to his office for his work.   Alone all through the night F. Fujiko tried to find a theme and a main character of his new manga work in vain.  He remembered when he and Fujiko (A) were working hard and living poor in the humble wooden apartment house when they were young.  He remembered there was a cat in the apartment house.  Finally, the morning came.  He felt desperate.  Shouting, "I'm finished", F. Fujiko ran down stairs in his house to stomp over a tumble doll of his little daughter.  At the moment, he got an idea of a robotic cat that helped a weak boy who was like his old self.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doraemon
      

Today, even Chinese children are enjoying animation films featuring Doraemon.  Once when F. Fujiko visited Vietnam, one boy asked him, "Do you have the 4-dimensional pocket Doraemon has?"  F. Fujiko answered, "There is one spare suit of clothes with the 4-dimensional pocket in addition to Draemon's.  But it is kept secretly.  So, I unfortunately have not."  Doraemom takes out various dream hi-tech goods from the four-dimensional pocket.




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Mat 5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

"not commit adultery" - 20 Years Ago in Gaza, etc.

Around Tokyo

20 Years Ago in Gaza, etc.

A some 50-year old Japanese author, not so popular, traveled Israel and the autonomous areas of the Palestinians 20 years ago.

He met a young worker in a hotel in Jerusalem.  One day they were in an elevator all alone together, so that the Japanese asked, "Where are you from?"  The immigrant valet, whose English was not so fluent, answered, "From Russia."  "Which is better, Russia or Israel?"  Then, scornfully the valet said, "Of course, Israel."

The Japanese author went to Gaza.  A taxi driver requested an extortionate taxi fare when they arrived at the entrance to Gaza.  The requested fare looked like 10 times higher than a normal fare.  So, the Japanese and the Israeli taxi driver started a quarrel.  Then, an Israeli soldier stationed there interfered, resulting in payment of half an initially requested fare.

From the entrance point, he took a bus.  Among local Palestinians, there were three different types of bus passengers.  In addition to the Japanese traveler, there were a German businesswoman who spoke Arabic and a rich and young Palestinian who dressed well and spoke with the German woman.

The rich and young Palestinian said to the German woman, "Hey, look at this Japanese writer.  He looked so cheap.  Such men should not come to Gaza."  The German woman didn't reply.  At a bus stop around which big and luxurious houses were built, the arrogant young Palestinian man got off.  In the middle of a market, the Japanese author left the bus to observe the street.  Gaza was full of poor houses and poor people, though there seemed to be such rich Palestinians as he had met in the bus.

In Bethlehem, he met an old man who said he had been a journalist and once worked for a newspaper of Jordan.  The Japanese traveler bought him a glass of beer in a restaurant of a hotel.  The poor old Arab said that when he was working in Paris as a correspondent, he taught Arabic to the wife of Arafat.  But when they parted, the old man said, "I cannot work as a journalist any more."  So, taking compassion on him, the Japanese gave him a wrist watch he was wearing as a present of friendship.

However, it was more impressive to read his experiences of seeing a young beautiful Arab woman buying a chicken whose head was cut off before her in a shop and holding and carrying out the miserable bird so coolly on the street, and an old woman squatting down on a street of Jerusalem while reading the Torah and sometimes holding and shaking a metal can to which some people threw coins as she was a beggar.

Anyway, the Japanese unpopular author didn't seem to meet God in Palestine though he left Japan after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo cult terror of attacking Tokyo subway trains with poisonous sarin gas.

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Today, I saw two cars in about 10 minutes that had the car license number "11-11."  It was very rare since other hundreds of cars had banal numbers such as "19-95."






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Mat 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

"suffered many things of many physicians" - Endless is This Road

Around Tokyo Bay

Endless is This Road

There was a very popular female singer who suddenly appeared after WWII as a low-teenager genius singer.

Hibari Misora (1937 – 1989) was a Japanese singer, actress and cultural icon.[1][2] She received a Medal of Honor for her contributions to music and for improving the welfare of the public, and was the first woman to receive the People's Honour Award which was conferred posthumously for giving the public hope and encouragement after World War II.[3][4]
Misora recorded 1,200 songs, and sold 68 million records.[5] After she died consumer demand for her recordings grew significantly and by 2001 she had sold more than 80 million records.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibari_Misora  

In one of her songs titled "Kawa-no Nagare-no Yoni" (like the flow of a river), there is an interesting phrase:

Ikiru koto wa, tabi-suru koto, 

Owari-no nai kono-michi.

It can be translated:
Living a life is making a journey,

Endless is this road.

When a Japanese professor who taught Japanese in a foreign country (Canada or Europe) took this song as a material for his lecture, many students asked what "Endless is this road" meant, since any way had its end.

The meaning of this sentence is that one would feel, if he had been living a hard life,  as if he had been walking on an endless road as he could not even see the future while concentrating on every current step (every day's toil and burdens). 

This road is not a physical or geographic road.  It is a passage of life.  Of course there is an end in life.  But if you concentrate on every moment, living can be felt in the phase of endlessness.  It is a metaphor.

When a European or an American hears "Living a life is making a journey; Endless is this road," he would surely imagine a concrete road that has a start and an end.  And he would think that he is walking on a road.  The road has the start and the end.

But when a Japanese hears "Living a life is making a journey; Endless is this road," he would surely imagine a state of walking on part of a road, and he would think that there is no end of this road for him, since he has to repeat a movement of his legs till his death.  There is no exit from a painful life.  He has to live and die.  But after his death, the road is still stretching ahead without anybody, probably, walking there.

The point at issue is the concentration on the moment.  From the point or the moment, outside elements look like belonging to the phase of eternity that is endless.

Of course, every life has the start and the end.  The life of Christ Jesus had the start and the end as depicted in the Bible.  But his will or the road he was walking on has been stretching endlessly.

In Buddhism, it is said that if you concentrate on holy exercise, trying to realize enlightenment at every moment during ascetic training, you might get truth and your soul might enter Nirvana, the supreme paradise where one's existence is completed.  Such a holy man enters Nirvana or eternity through a hole of time, namely a moment.

Put simply, the only way for us to enter the domain of eternity is to concentrate on a moment and enter the domain through the entrance called a moment (which can be the time of death).  But, it is not easy.  You have to try it at every moment endlessly.  And you might luckily jump into eternity through a hole of time or a moment.

However, this theory should not apply to a kamikaze-style (suicidal) attack in war.  Do not apply a holy theory for purity of human souls to a bloody human act of war.

Nonetheless, people suffering a tragic war somewhere in the world might feel their difficult and dangerous situations would continue forever or till their death.  They must be able to understand the phrase of the song: "Living a life is making a journey; Endless is this road."

All I can hope is that God or Allah would send angels to them at every moment endlessly.

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Mar 5:25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,
Mar 5:26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,
Mar 5:27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.
Mar 5:28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
Mar 5:29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.
Mar 5:30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?
Mar 5:31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?
Mar 5:32 And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.
Mar 5:33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.
Mar 5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

"glorifying God" - What American Novels Tell

Tokyo

What American Novels Tell

I recently checked some short novels written by American authors after 2001.

They are not good.

Life in America doesn't seem meaningful for anybody that is looking for God.  Most of Americans seem to forget the duty of mankind to find and reinforce the relationship between the God and mankind.  They look like living aimlessly while enjoying their materially abundant and politically free lives and dreaming of big money.

However for American super-rich men to enjoy their lives, they need the mighty defense industry and a huge national defense budget.

What is worse, the situation around people in China looks worse than that in the US.

No matter how grave Muslims' living conditions are in war-torn Islamic regions, the US would not become the great savior for them, though the US military might destroy the so-called Islamic Nation militias.


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Today at some 60 km north of Tokyo an M5.6 earthquake occurred at 2:28 p.m., though no casualties around Tokyo.

There is an unignorable possibility that an M7-class earthquake could happen immediately underneath Tokyo when the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is held in Tokyo in 2020.




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Luk 5:25 And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.
Luk 5:26 And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.

"but is passed from death unto life" - The Basic Racial Issue in the Pacific War in WWII

Around Tokyo, Japan

The Basic Racial Issue in the Pacific War in WWII

There is a big issue that has never been discussed openly after WWII in terms of Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia during WWII.

 After the Japanese-Russo War (1904-1905), the US Government or American political elites changed their view on the Empire of Japan.  During the Japanese-Russo War, the US supported the Empire to stop Russian invasion of East Asia.  But when the war ended while the Empire of Japan had defeated the mighty Russian fleet and troops around Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula, the US came to prepare for a future war against the Empire over the hegemony around the West Pacific Ocean.

Japanese immigrants in California and other states of America gradually faced growing racial discrimination.  Anti-Japanese sentiment also grew stronger in the US without any rational reasons.  It is as if some racists in the US were working behind the scene to lead the two leading countries in the Pacific to a fatal war.

Today, we don't see almost any racial hatred toward Japanese in the US society.  But, Japanese immigrants to the US before WWII had to experience very difficult situations as minorities.  Especially in 1930s or after the Great Depression, this anti-Japanese mind-set dangerously expanded in the US society.

That is why both the countries reinforced their navies as if preparing imminent war on the Oacific.  Otherwise, both Imperial Japan and the US didn't need to build and maintain such large fleets:

The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty among the major nations that had won World War I, which by the terms of the treaty agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference, which was held in Washington, D.C., from November 1921 to February 1922, and signed by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers and submarines, were not limited by the treaty but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement.

Tonnage limitations
Country	Capital ships	Aircraft carriers
British Empire	525,000 tons (533,000 tonnes)	135,000 tons (137,000 tonnes)
United States	525,000 tons (533,000 tonnes)	135,000 tons (137,000 tonnes)
Empire of Japan	315,000 tons (320,000 tonnes)	81,000 tons (82,000 tonnes)
France	175,000 tons (178,000 tonnes)	60,000 tons (61,000 tonnes)
Italy	175,000 tons (178,000 tonnes)	60,000 tons (61,000 tonnes)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty

The Pacific theater battles in WWII were destined in 1920s, since the Empire of Japan needed such strong naval power only against the US as well as the UK, since Russians had lost their naval presence in East Asia since their defeat against the Empire in 1905.

And, behind this building up of Japan's military power, there were racial issues against Japanese in the US as well as in the UK.

When the US Government froze Japanese assets in the US and imposed total embargo of crude oil, iron products, etc. for the reason that Imperial troops were fighting Chinese troops in mainland China as if intending to occupy whole China around 1941, the Imperial Government decided to occupy Southeast Asia where natural resources, including crude oil, were rich.  Some anti-American politicians in Tokyo dreamed of constructing a kind of Imperial Commonwealth in East Asia that could totally compete with the US and European powers.  The Imperial Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia during WWII was partly forced by racial discrimination in the US before WWII.


History textbooks used in schools in the world today should clearly state that the Empire of Japan finally attacked American naval bases in Pearl Harbor partly because of the racial issue against Japanese in the US.



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Joh 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Joh 5:25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

"we found no man within" - How a Jewish Couple Survived in Poland in WWII

Public Park (ex-samurai castle remains) around Tokyo

How a Jewish Couple Survived in Poland in WWII

During WWII, a Polish Judaist was saved, with his wife, by a poor Polish citizen and his wife.

The young Polish Judaist got out of the ghetto in Warsaw occupied by German troops that were searching for Judaists to capture and send them to concentration camps.  It was not easy for Judaists to get out of the ghetto and mingle in a crowd in Warsaw without being noticed by German soldiers or unfriendly Polish citizens.  But, he and his wife had some reasonable money as he helped a group of anti-German Judaists in the ghetto seize big money from a safe in the office of a Jewish organization that was donating money periodically to a Polish authority in exchange of their safety.  Money would help them was the only hope.

So, on an occasion when a German troop ordered Judaists in the ghetto to come out of houses, form a line, and walk to cargo trucks waiting for them on the street of the ghetto, the young Polish Judaist, with his wife, boldly and quickly sneaked out of the queue and jumped in a building to run down to a basement.

Days later on the Warsaw street, their identities were soon exposed and they were surrounded by some Polish young ruffians who were looking for chances to extort money and any valuable things from Judaists disguising their status, since there were many such Polish youths at the time.  In a series of this kind of episodes, the couple was finally sent to a poor house in a forest in the suburb of Warsaw by a shrewd Warsaw man who took all the money left for the couple.  The Warsaw guy told the Jewish couple that the owner of the house was his old brother and he was a kind of German.

The resident of the house was a poor worker in a printing factory and his wife was from a Protestant family (that might be why the man was called a kind of German).  The husband and wife lived on selling cigarettes they made with tobacco leaves and sheets of paper, because the factory stopped its operation due to the war.  The Jewish couple helped make hundreds or thousands of cigarettes per day manually.

While secretly living together this way, the young Polish Judaist told many stories to the host husband and wife because he had been studying German literature in Berlin before the war though he had been rejected by German universities when he applied for enrollment.  The poor Polish husband and wife enjoyed the stories the future German literature critic told by arranging stories he had once read and studied.  Though money they could earn by selling hand-made cigarettes was not big and they were always hungry, they could rather friendly spend the difficult days under occupation of Warsaw by the German Army.

At the time, in villages of Poland there were many illiterates or those who could read but could not write.  There were many families in villages of Poland that had almost no books except the Bible or the like.  So, this young intellectual Polish Judaist became a respectable guest and a honest co-worker for manually producing cigarettes.  

In this way, the young Jewish couple could survive in a suburb of Warsaw till Soviet troops came to drive out German troops out of Warsaw, while the parents of the young Jewish man and his old brother as well as his wife's mother were killed by Nazis.    

One day after a battle between Soviet platoons and German artillery around the house, a Jewish Soviet soldier happened to check their hiding house, and the owner of the house called the young and poor Jewish man to see the soldier.  Then, the poor Jewish fugitive realized that he was a free man now, since the soldier said to him, "Are you Jewish?  I am Jewish.".

Their parting was so warm and heartfelt, though the Jewish couple were almost skin and bone.  The husband and wife asked the young Jewish couple to remember that there were some Polish people who saved Judaists by risking their lives, since they could have been killed by German soldiers if they had been found hiding Judaists.

Subsequently, the young Jewish couple went to a Polish military command center.  Polish officers in the command center assigned the young Judaist to a job of censorship as he could read German.  It became the start of a somewhat mysterious career of the Jewish young Pole in association with the Polish Government and the Polish Communist Party, though he later came to quit believing communism.

The Polish Judaist who survived WWII this way later became a notable critic of literature.


This is a story that has moved me recently so impressively.

Anyway, cigarettes don't always kill people but help some people survive even in Poland in WWII.




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Act 5:22 But when the officers came, and found them not in the prison, they returned and told,
Act 5:23 Saying, The prison truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors: but when we had opened, we found no man within.
Act 5:24 Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow.
Act 5:25 Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people.

"angry with his brother without a cause" - A Chinese Communist Army Officer in 1945 Summer

Mt. Fuji Viewed from a Tokyo Suburb

A Chinese Communist Army Officer in 1945 Summer

A retired general of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, Mr. Genkawa,  was 12 years old or so when WWII ended or the Empire of Japan surrendered to the US on August 15, 1945.

At the time, Genkawa's family happened live in a city of Manchuria, north east China, that had been under control of the Imperial military (till the Soviet Army started to invade Manchuria several days before August 15), though formally Mnchuko was an independent country.  As the boy's father was an Imperial Army officer, he had to travel to another city for post-war procedures to control Imperial troops.  So, he instructed his son to go to a certain town where his friend lived.

However,  a turmoil after the war was so bad.  The friend of his father also faced a difficult situation as Chinese, Manchus, Koreans, and Russians started to attack Japanese civilians now getting ready to go back to mainland Japan.  Young Genkawa had to leave the family of his father's friend to live and work in a restaurant run by a Korean.

The young boy Genkawa worked hard in the restaurant while being treated badly by the Korean master and observing violent acts of invading Soviet soldiers.  Finally he decided to run out of the restaurant to see his father.  The poor Japanese boy alone in Manchuria immediately after WWII got on a train secretly as the railroad line led to an area where his father must have been with ex-Imperial troops.  But he was captured by Chinese communist soldiers in the train.

Despite his fear, the boy was helped by a certain officer of a Chinese communist troop.  The officer had pity for him.  The officer treated boy Genkawa kindly to protect him.  And since it was impossible for the boy to find and meet his father in the post-war turmoil in Manchuria with full of Chinese and Soviet soldiers, the officer sent him to an organization of Japanese citizens waiting for a chance to return to Japan.

But, unluckily to Genkawa, the organization could not feed him eventually as almost all the assets of the Japanese citizens had been stolen or forcibly taken away by Chinese, Manchus, Koreans, and invading Soviet troops.  Genkawa had to live on a farm run by a Chinese family.  It was a cruel life for the 12-year old boy.  He was used by the host family like a slave.  He was desperate.

Then again, the Chinese officer, who had helped Genkawa in the train, happened to know the plight of the boy.  The officer invited him to work in his troop unit.  So, Genkawa started to work as a kind of attendant of the unit.  Chinese soldiers were satisfied with Genkawa's work.  They liked the Japanese boy.

In August 1946, Genkawa heard news that the Japanese-citizen organization he had once sought help from was to finally leave Manchuria by train and ship.  Genkawa wanted to join them, so that he asked his dismissal from the Chinese military unit.  But Chinese soldiers now so familiar with the boy strongly requested him to stay.  Yet, the Chinese officer finally persuaded other soldiers to allow Genkawa to return to Japan.

Genkawa could return to his hometown in Japan in September 1946.  Then one month later, his parents could also very luckily came back to their old house in Japan.  The family was reunited.

Nonetheless, life in Japan after WWII was so severe.  Genkawa's family became so poor that he could not go up to university due to a lack of a source for school expenses.  But he found that the newly built National Defense Academy didn't collect tuition fees but paid a salary to students who were regraded as a kind of public officers.  So, young man Genkawa became a member of the inaugural class of Japan's National Defense Academy.

Now 81-year-old Genkawa looked back on his past life as an officer of the Japanese Self-Defense Force.  He had sometimes a stark difference in opinion with some senior officers who were ex-Imperial Japanese Army officers.


He also thinks that the military of the Empire of Japan was for the Emperor but the Self-Defense Force is the military of the people.  Based on his experiences in Manchuria immediately after WWII, ex-General Genkawa stresses that Japan should not launch or be involved in war.  He is cautiously watching how the Japan-US Security Treaty is managed and put into actual operation.


Anyway, it is a lesson of profound significance that the largest benefactor of a Japanese Self-Defense Force general, one of graduates from Japan's National Defense Academy as  a member of the inaugural class, was a Chinese communist army officer he happened to meet in Manchuria in the dangerous summer of 1945.

http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/manchukuo_(Dizionario_di_Storia)/

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Mat 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

"he was nigh unto the sea" - From Napoleon to a Homeless Person in Japan

Tokyo

From Napoleon to a Homeless Person in Japan

Some issues drawing my attention:

1) Tolstoy wrote the famous novel War and Peace where he depicted Napoleon as an arrogant, snobbish, and mysteriously lucky (till his invasion of Moscow) guy.  Tolstoy claimed in the novel that it is movement and sentiments of a multitude of ordinary people but not the so-called heroes or great leaders that decide the course of history.

But did Hitler read this novel in a German version?  At least some around Hitler must have read it.  Nazis got big support from the German people, so that they probably thought that their invasion of the USSR could be supported so zealously by the German people.

Though Tolstoy did not clearly state, the general trend of the human history following the will of God must have had a decisive influence on any big wars.  In 1812 Napoleon was destined to be defeated, and in 1941 Hitler was destined to be defeated.  The history denied rule by Napoleon and Hitler.  And, we know today that it was fair, since we needed democracy by peoples more than Napoleon and equality among peoples, including Judaists, more than Hitler.

2) Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz, the author of On War, was on the Russian side when Napoleon invaded Russia.  He worked as an officer in the Russian Army in the war, though he was German.   Based on his experience of Russia's war against Napoleon, Clausewitz thought that advancing troops would get more vulnerable as they invaded an enemy's territory deeper and deeper.  Did German generals read On War before WWII and before launching a war against the Soviet Union?

3) A European (French?) woman who had studied philosophy and communicated in person with some notable authors and philosophers in Europe decades ago wrote: One day when she was travelling by train, she was watching forests out of the window.  And then suddenly she realized that woods existed there for God.  Above any natural and human reasons, they existed for God.

So, when we look up at the sun in the daytime and stars at night, must we think that those heavenly bodies exist for God more than for us?  Of course, we have to think so.  The earth exists for God more than for mankind.

4) The house of Rothchild in Paris secretly donated money to the movement of Judaists to move to, and stay on the permanent basis in, Palestine and Jerusalem before WWI.  Money from rich European and American Judaists helped and supported Zionism movement, but due to changes in situations in Europe and the US, this trend did not expand enough to establish a kind of shelters in Palestine for Judaists in Europe before WWII.

Does God today want Judaists to continue to stay in Palestine on the permanent basis?

5) Money is the largest criterion of value for some people.  Money can be the biggest motive for their behaviors, activities, and planning for most of people.  Money never loses its power and value in the human society.  However, money makes people more foolish.  Without big money, people can enjoy some spiritual pleasure.  But the more their minds stick to money, the less they can enjoy spiritual pleasure.  Conversely, the more a man has money, the more he finds pleasure in evil matters.

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Today I was looking for a certain comic book (created by a Japanese manga artist for Japanese readers).  It is not for children.  This comic series depicts how a young worker in a consumer credit business grows.  The volume I was looking for was the last one of this series.  I went to a  big  used book shop around Tokyo.  I found it.  In one of many and layered shelves of the shop, the whole volumes of the series were present.  And there were two last volume books, while only one book for each of other volumes.  I got one, since I thought some angel had prepared one for me.  It was a sign that this volume had some holy meaning to me. 

        

At the end of the story of the comic book, bad guys are punished and good guys (relatively) are paid off with some additional huge profit.  The key to accomplishment of this result is just a little kindness of the hero, a worker in a consumer credit business, to a poor old man who was thrown out of a Japanese style of pub by his false friend and a stupid pub keeper and later was forced to live under a bridge as a homeless person, though he kept many specialized law books in a hut built on the river bed since he was still an officially qualified specialist in a certain field of law. 

A lesson?  Respect homeless people, since some of them might be officially qualified specialists in a certain field of law.  

  

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Mar 5:21 And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea.

"great in the kingdom of heaven" - Christ Jesus talking through a smartphone?

Tokyo

Christ Jesus talking through a smartphone?

Nepal is still suffering the aftermath of the big earthquake.

Thousands of Muslims are being expelled from Myanmar and drifting in the sea off Malaysian coats.  ISIS has taken Ramadi by force while coming closer to Palmyra.  Saudi Arabia is continuing attacks on Yemen.  Immigrants are trying to reach Italy from Libya over the dangerous Mediterranean sea.

In the US, a train derailed between New York and Washington DC; an Osprey crashed in Hawaii; and bike gang members killed one another in Texas.

All I can say is that all the happy people in the world are responsible.  If we are informed of those tragedies, we have to do something to help those unhappy and unlucky people involved in those incidents.  Advanced technologies must be used to help poor and suffering people.

In principle, we have to use our advanced technology to help one another before using it for making money.  

Even the poorest man in the world must enjoy the benefit of the most advanced technologies, including those in the medial field, as much as the richest man is now enjoying them.  As mankind we have to share this benefit equally regardless of differences in the amounts of personal assets.

However technologies developed for economic profit serve those who have economic power to purchase them.  Such technologies are just other forms of money; thus they are enemies of God.

We should not trust modern technologies having been developed for corporate or individual profits.  Accordingly, the less you use smartphones, the more you are blessed.

Can you imagine Christ Jesus talking through a smartphone?


And remember that modern technologies are mostly other forms of money that is an enemy of God and believers.




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Mat 5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

"Let your light so shine" - Foreign Wars of Japan

Around Tokyo

Foreign Wars of Japan

The overview of the history of the concept of national security of Japan is as follows:

First of all, no countries had ever invaded Japan till the US military occupied Japan after WWII in 1945.  Japan is situated at the eastern end of the world as you can confirm it on the map.  No countries except China had had ability to launch war to invade Japan till the modern era.  Japan is an isolated island country with a size roughly twice the Great Britain's or equal to California.

Accordingly, war against a foreign country had been a very remote and vague concept not only in the general public but also in the elite class of the Japanese people till the start of modernization of Japan in the middle of the 19th century since the beginning of the nation Japan around the first century when a king of Japan, called Wa at the time, sent a mission to a Chinese imperial court.

The major three wars before WWII and after the Meiji Restoration of the imperial authority after the samurai era, meaning the start of Japan's westernization, around 1860s were the Japanese-Sino War (1994 to 1895), the Japanese-Russo War (1904-1905), and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).  Modernized and westernized Japan used modern military forces in these wars to win them all, though the Second Sino-Japanese War was ended with the surrender of the Empire of Japan to the US in 1945.

This era of the three major wars was very different from the current one.  Most parts of Asia were colonized or subject to Western powers.  Japan could avoid being colonized by any Western powers, including Russia.  But to make the country strong militarily and advanced economically and industrially, Japan opted to put surrounding regions under its control.

To cope with advancement of Russia from the north, Japan had to secure neutrality and then subordination of Manchuria and Korea through the Japanese-Sino War and the Japanese-Russo War.  To defend mainland Japan from Western colonialists, Japan obtained and ruled Taiwan after the Japanese-Sino War.  However, China was invaded by Russia, the UK, France, etc.; the Philippines was colonized by the US; Vietnam and Cambodia were ruled by France; the UK also colonized India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.; and the Netherlands ruled Indonesia.  It was not only the Empire of Japan that was aggressive in territorial ambition.

From the start of modernization of Japan, namely the Meiji Restoration, Japan had to defend itself from Western colonialists.  The Japanese public therefore supported the policy of the Imperial Government to build up strong military.  However, this too much emphasis on military capability led to the tragic war with China in 1937 and the fatal war with the US in 1941.

Before the Meiji Restoration, the last overseas war Japan had been engaged in was the war against the Ming Dynasty of China accompanied by the war with Korea.  This war was fought from 1592 to 1598 mainly in the Korean Peninsula.

The then samurai head of Japan Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched this war, since he thought that he had been insulted by the Imperial Ming court of China.  To punish Ming, Hideyoshi mobilized more than 150,000 samurai troops equipped with matchlocks, trying to invade Ming through the Korean Peninsula.  The battles were so fierce, but Hideyoshi could neither decisively defeat Ming troops and the Korean military subject to Ming nor occupy the Korean Peninsula on the permanent base.  When Hideyoshi died of illness and old age in his castle in Osaka, Japan, this great campaign was abandoned by other samurai leaders.  However, the Ming dynasty consumed too much resources in this war, so that it became one of major factors of the collapse of Ming in 1644.

Before Hideyoshi's military invasion of the Korean Peninsula in the late 16th century, Japan experienced one big defensive war against the Yuan Dynasty of China.  Yuan was established by Mongolians, or descendants of Genghis Khan, the great founder of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century.  They requested the then samurai government to bring a tribute to the Yuan Emperor and become a client country to Yuan.  Samurais of Japan refused it bravely, so that Yuan sent huge troops transported by big fleets consisting of about 1,000 ships in 1274 and 4,000 ships in 1281.  Japanese samurai could expel about 40,000 Yuan troops in 1274 and 150,000 troops in 1281 successfully with help of big typhoons (called "kamikaze" in Japanese meaning god wind).

However, before this defensive war against Yuan, which was fought in Kyushu Island of Japan, Japan had not been engaged in any war against foreign countries for 600 years.

The oldest foreign war for Japan was called "Haku-sukinoe no tatakai" in Japanese.  The then Yamato Imperial court of Japan sent more than 40,000 troops to a sea-coast river area called Hakusonko in the Korean Peninsula to help and support a pro-Japanese Korean kingdom in 663.  It was an international war between a coalition of Japan and friendly-associated Korean forces and an ally of the Tang Dynasty of China and anti-Japanese Koreans.  The Yamato court of Japan lost this war.  This defeat had a grave influence on the seventh and eighth century Japan.

The Tang dynasty did not invade Japan, though Japanese were prepared for the worst case building many fortresses in Kyusyu Island and the area between Kyusyu and Yamato, the center of the Yamato Dynasty located south of Kyoto.  However, after this Hakusonko war, the Yamato court aggressively introduced the legal system and the governmental structure of Tang.  Japan imported advanced Chinese civilization in a large scale just like Japan introduced many American advanced democratic systems after WWII.

These are almost all the foreign wars the Japanese race has experienced in the history.  The concept of war against foreign countries is not inherently rooted in the Japanese culture and history.  Truly it came to grow after the Meiji Restoration or the start of the industrialization of Japan in the late 19th century while facing Western colonizing powers.

Japan is surrounded by the seas.  No foreign countries could easily invade Japan.  Japan could not also send huge troops overseas easily.  And, luckily there were no strong and aggressive empires around Japan.  Moreover, the nature of Japan is rich and its cultural level was reasonably high even in the past.  There was basically no need to invade other countries to enrich people's life of Japan.  Accordingly, the Japanese people have not been keen to matters of national security.

So, the current Pacifist Constitution of Japan fits the Japanese people.  It is unlikely that Japan would abolish it in any near future.
   

THE CONSTITUTION OF JAPAN - CHAPTER II RENUNCIATION OF WAR - Article 9
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Finally, the current national security of Japan is not entrusted only to Japanese Self-Defense Force, but US military forces stationed in Japan under the Japan-US Security Treaty take a large part in it, though a situation where US troops have cooperated in Japan's defense battles has never happened since the Treaty became effective originally in 1952 (renewed in 1960), because there have been no such battles after WWII.  

The Mongolian Invasion of Japan in 1274/1281
http://3kstyle.blog104.fc2.com/blog-entry-144.html




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Mat 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

"And they come to Jesus" - Tolstoy, Marx, and Lincoln

Around Tokyo

Tolstoy, Marx, and Lincoln

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy completed his great novel War and Peace in 1869, 20 years after Marx wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848.  The US Civil War, whose symbol is Abraham Lincoln, occurred between the two great works of the Western culture.

Ironically, War and Peace looks like belonging to the older era than the era of Manifesto of Communist Party.  And the US Civil War really looks like having nothing to do with War and Peace and the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Tolstoy believed in God.  Marx believed in his talent that was his weapon against the industrialized Christian Europe.  But Americans believed in their power and freedom.

They were all subject to each environment.  War and Peace is a product of the 19th century's Russia.  The Manifesto of the Communist Party is a product of the 19th century Germany, France, and England.  The Civil War was an inevitable incident of the 19th century America.

Nonetheless, the underlying themes of these three major historical items of the 19th century influenced Europe and America in the 20th century.  And, while peoples failed to address significant issues embedded in these historical items in the 20th century, we now face more complicated historical items of Islam and China.

Western elites have been busy handling Christianity and socialism/communism in Europe and racial issues and building of the free nation in America.  But today, they have to deal with foreign issues such as Islam and China.  But we have no materials that symbolize these new challenges and that could be comparable to War and Peace and the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

However, it is true that it is the US that is most responsible for handling Islam and China in the historical context.  Experiences in Europe might not be effective in tackling these new challenges.  It is probably useless to read War and Peace and the Manifesto of the Communist Party in addressing these new challenges.  Europe cannot solve them.  But, the American experiences of its Civil War might have some relevance in efforts to deal with Islam and China.

Anyway, if War and Peace and the Manifesto of the Communist Party are part of your intellectual bases and identities, you are part of the 20th century Europe, which is however useless in the 21st century Islam and China.

We might need 21st versions of War and Peace and the Manifesto of the Communist Party to solve the problems caused by Islam and China.  Otherwise, the US military power would be the only last resort.






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Mar 5:15 And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.
Mar 5:16 And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine.
Mar 5:17 And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.

"be thou clean" - Artist Hirayama from Hiroshima

Around Tokyo Bay

Artist Hirayama from Hiroshima

Ikuo Hirayama is one of the most highly appraised modern artists of Japan, though he died in December 2009.

Ikuo Hirayama (1930 - 2009), was a Japanese Nihonga painter. Born in Setoda-chō, Hiroshima Prefecture, he was famous in Japan for Silk Road paintings of dreamy desert landscapes in Iran, Iraq, and China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikuo_Hirayama

On August 6, 1945, Hirayama was a 15-year old middle school boy who was forced to work in a factory with other students, instead of learning in school, to produce weapons for the Imperial Army and Navy as the Pacific War was so intensified at the time.

Around 8 a.m., he was prepared for the day's work.  Other students were in a hut near a big factory also preparing for work.  Hirayama was alone outside the hut, looking up at the sky.  Then he spotted a B29 bomber that dropped something.  Soon, a parachute opened from the bomb-like object.  Hirayama went into the hut, saying to his classmates, "Hey, a parachute was delivered by a US bomber!"  The moment, the atomic bomb blasted over Hiroshima City.

Hirayama saw extremely bright light and then a strong bomb blast attacked him.  He thought that ammunition stored around the factory blasted.  But, it was a blast of an atomic bomb.

Hirayama walked around devastated Hiroshima City after coming to himself.  He saw the real disaster of Hiroshima.  Finally, atomic-bombed Hirayama climbed a hill in the city to rest himself.  To the hill many wounded people came to take repose.  As night came, Hirayama slept there while listening to many agonizing voices of the atomic-bomb victims.  But early in the next morning, he woke up in silence; everybody around him died.

Hirayama returned to his hometown in a small island in the Seto Inland Sea on which Hiroshima is situated.  He spent days swimming in the sea.  As the war was still going on, he saw US carrier-based fighters invading the sky around his home-town island for air-raids.  He even observed, while swimming, that Japanese fighters flew up to the sky to engage in an aerial battle.

But on August 15, the Empire of Japan surrendered.  However, the young man Hirayama was neither surprised nor disappointed, since he had seen American advanced vehicles and weapons captured and sent by the Imperial military to the factory in Hiroshima while he was working there.  He had though that the Empire would probably be unable to defeat the US.  So, he heard rather coolly voices of the Emperor announcing, by radio, the Empire's surrender on August 15.

Hirayama later learnt in an art institute in Tokyo to be a painter, partly because one of his old relatives had been an artist.  But while he was an assistant in Tokyo University of the Arts, he became ill.  Hirayama understood it was caused by his exposure to strong radiation 15 years ago.  As he had not drunk water and eaten foods in Hiroshima City after the atomic bomb attack, he had not been so badly contaminated.  But his health became deteriorated in Tokyo.

While he was battling this serious illness so desperately, Hirayama one day read a newspaper article telling that Olympic flame would be carried to Tokyo from Greece through the Silk Road route, as the 1964 Olympics was decided to be held in Tokyo.  Suddenly, Hirayama drew inspiration from this article.  He got an image that he was wandering in the desert but was saved to find an oasis, since most parts of the Silk Road ran through the desert.

Based on this image, Hirayama painted one picture he thought could be his last picture in this world.  It depicted two Buddhist monks traveling in an oasis or a tropical forest.  After painting this picture, his health changed better.  The picture titled "Buddhism Coming (Bukkyo Denrai)" wan big attention; it was introduced in a major newspaper.  Hirayama got confidence and determined to take Buddhism as the main theme of his works.

As time went by, Ikuo Hirayama became a successful artist as well as a professor of Tokyo University of the Arts.  He produced many highly appraised pictures related to Buddhism based on the experiences of more than 150-time tours he made mainly around the Silk Road areas in Asia and Europe.


There are many factors of the success of artist Ikuo Hirayama, but the decisive one is his experience of the Hiroshima tragedy.

Some Japanese might say that the most valuable thing the Hiroshima atomic-bomb attack produced is Buddhism-related pictures by Ikuo Hirayama.

Buddhism Coming (Bukkyo Denrai) by Ikuo Hirayama

http://www.artcreation.co.jp/hirayama-bukkyoudenrai.html

Going through the Afghan Desert and the Moon by Ikuo Hirayama
http://www.artcreation.co.jp/hirayamaikuo-ahuganisutanwoikutuki.html

The Buddha Leaving the World by Ikuo Hirayama
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/tenshinn18810801/11729413.html



Now Japan is losing more and more survivors of Hiroshima year after year.  When they have all gone in a decade or so, what would be left even if in any forms of art?



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Luk 5:13 And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.

"at the draught of the fishes which they had taken" - The Imperial Family and Christianity

Tokyo

The Imperial Family and Christianity

The incumbent Emperor of Japan was 12 years old when WWII ended in 1945.

The next year his father the Emperor of Showa thought about an idea to invite an English teacher for his imperial prince from the US.  Some Christian scholars close to the Emperor selected one American woman after some deliberation with consent of the Emperor (and General MacArthur probably).  Then she came to Tokyo still suffering the aftermath of the Pacific War.

Elizabeth Janet Gray, also known as Elizabeth Gray Vining, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 6, 1902. She was a graduate of Germantown Friends School and received an AB from Bryn Mawr College in 1923. In 1926, she earned an MS in library science from the Drexel Institute, and became a librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1]:1000 She married Morgan Fisher Vining, associate director of the Extension Division of UNC, in 1929. The marriage ended in 1933 when her husband was killed in a New York City automobile accident, in which Vining was severely injured. During her convalescence, she converted to the Quaker faith.

Vining soon became known as an author, primarily of children's books, and was awarded the 1943 Newbery Medal for Adam of the Road.[2] She had published eleven books by the end of World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gray_Vining

The condition to choose the English teacher for the prince was, first of all, a moderate Christian woman.  And, one of lieutenants of General MacArthur, the supreme commander of the US military stationed in Japan, who had a strong influence on the Imperial family, was a Quaker.  Further, the wife of a younger brother of the Emperor had once studied in a university in the US associated with the Quakers.   Moreover, at the time, some Japanese Christians who were prominent elite intellectuals in the Japanese society were asked to give a lecture to the Emperor about Christianity.

This inclination of the Imperial Family after WII to Christianity was, however, not informed the Japanese people of.  Though it was soon known to the Japanese public that an American woman would start to teach English to the imperial prince, the fact that many Christians were surrounding the Emperor was not openly reported and discussed by the Media.

From 1946 to 1950, twice every week the imperial prince, namely the current Emperor of Japan, received an English lesson from the American woman, called Mrs. Vining.  But, It was not one-to-one lesson.  Three or four friends of the imperial prince attended the special English class together with the imperial prince.

It is also said that Mrs. Vining (with her sister) was sometimes invited by the Emperor and Empress for dinner or the like in the Imperial Palace.  The Emperor of Showa seems to have wanted to know better what Americans were through this American teacher.  It is also said that Mrs. Vining visited General MacArthur in his office twice with the imperial prince whose English somewhat satisfied the American ruler of Japan at the time.

Interestingly, the imperial prince later married a young woman who graduated from a Catholic university in Tokyo.  She is now the Empress of Japan, though there was a rumor that she must have been baptized when she was an infant.   And later, her son, the current imperial prince, married a woman who graduated from the same Catholic high school (not the university) in Tokyo as the Empress did.

Put simply, the Emperor of Showa was in a very difficult situation after WWII, so that he had to gain strong friendship from General MacArthur, at least, who was well known as having strong faith in Christianity, whatever type of faith it might be.  In fact, due to strong opposition from General MacArthur to handling the Emperor as a war criminal or even indicting him as a war criminal, the Emperor of Showa could survive the difficult time after WWII.

But this inclination of the Imperial Family to Christianity would have been a very shock to the Japanese people who respected so much the Emperor as a kind of god of shintoism if it should have been made overtly public.  Therefore, the relationship between the Imperial Family and Christians was never discussed openly.

Though the religion of the Imperial Family is today still shinto, the Imperial Family is very pro-American.  It would be no surprise that some of the Imperial Family members read the Bible, edited by Americans, every day or occasionally.


Nonetheless, in older days or more than 1,000 years ago, the Imperial Family was very active in introducing Buddhism from Korea and China.  Some notable temples in Kyoto and Nara were built by past emperors, including the notable Horyu-ji Temple and the Colossal Hall of the Great Buddha in Nara Prefecture.

Foreign religion is more a cultural matter than a spiritual matter for some Japanese.  If ancient China was advanced culturally, there was no problem in introducing Buddhism to Japan from China.  If the US was advanced in modern civilization, there must be no problem in introducing American Christianity.  Some Japanese elite politicians close to the Imperial Family must be thinking so.

Or from a different aspect, at the higher level of politics and even economy, a difference in religion among parties internationally concerned is not a practical matter.  To make communications smooth among them, the international elites would not show strong preference in religion.  But, to show more affirmative attitudes to the religion of an important ally must be more effective in securing good relationship with it.


Objectively observing, the Imperial Family is more pro Christian than the general public of Japan today is.  And its implication might be deeper and more significant toward the future than the general public of Japan today thinks.



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Luk 5:9 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken:
Luk 5:10 And so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.
Luk 5:11 And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.

"for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" - Another Factor of the Pearl Harbor Attack

The Tokyo Tower

Another Factor of the Pearl Harbor Attack

There is an interesting theory about the nature of the Empire of Japan that fought WWII to collapse after the world war.

The monarch of the Empire between 1926 and 1945 was of course the emperor who today called the Emperor of Showa (Emperor Hirohito so rudely in English) as the era in which he presided is called Showa in Japan  (he was also the emperor further between 1945 and 1989 as the symbol of the Japanese people if not the Head of State).  According to the Constitution of the Empire of Japan that was enacted in 1890, the emperor was holy and inviolable.

The imperial government and the imperial assembly functioned like those in European nations.  However the emperor of Japan had real power constitutionally to govern the Empire.  Ministers and the Cabinet were required to support the Emperor.  The Imperial navy and army were directly subject to the emperor.

Despite this constitutional system, real politics, administration, and control of the military were planned and carried out without substantial prior consultation with the emperor by the elite members of the Empire, who were mostly from the ex-samurai class or graduates of imperial universities.  Especially, generals and high-ranking officers of the Imperial military sometimes acted as they wanted while imposing and issuing their orders as if they had been the will of the emperor.

This state of the Imperial Government became so grave when the Empire entered a war against China in 1930s and then joined WWII in 1941.  Communications between the Emperor of Showa and the leading politicians and generals of the Empire were very poor.  There was no custom that the Emperor candidly discussed political or military matters with leading politicians and generals.

Their meetings were always too formal.  Even the prime minister of the Empire did not discuss matters with the Emperor as between two persons intellectually equal at least.  The Emperor was a kind of a god of shintoism, so that any honest, rough, or strong exchanges of words were not allowed for politicians.  Ministers and generals just reported situations, and the Emperor rather euphemistically asked some questions and vaguely expressed his will or hope.  This way of communications at the highest level of the Empire was not changed till the Empire of Japan collapsed when it lost the Pacific War against the US in 1945.

From the beginning, or after the Meiji Restoration of the Imperial authority that had put an end to the samurai era in 1868, it was not expected that the emperor was really involved in real politics and military matters, though the Empire needed the emperor as the highest authority of the Imperial Government.  It was not expected that the Emperor would consult and discuss with politicians and generals.  The Emperor was presented plans or decisions to that had been already made by the Cabinet or the prime minister to authorize them.  The Emperor was not effectively in a process of planning and decision making, though formally he had power and function to plan and make decisions.  He just had to say, "I allow you to do so," even in the supreme conference of the Imperial Government that was placed above the Cabinet, though the Emperor was not a puppet of any body or not manipulated by any body.

(Nonetheless, there were at least two occasions where the Emperor spontaneously expressed his intention in such conferences: one to decide the surrender to the US in August 1945 and another to suppress a coup-attempt by extreme military officers in 1936, which is called the February 26 Incident.)

Therefore, in education of Imperial princes in the Empire, ability to discuss matters and express their opinions was not attached great importance to at all.   Even ability to talk with people was not held in great account at all.  Only limited persons in the Imperial court exchanged words with the Emperor in daily life.  The Emperor of Showa lacked ability and skills to communicate with ordinary people and express his thoughts frankly, plainly, and clearly or in a democratic manner to his aids and politicians.  There were no such experiences as free conversations with friends for the Emperor of Showa since his boyhood.  Everyone paid great respect and spoke so respectfully to the Emperor in any conversations.  No candid discussions with politicians were possible even during WWII.

That is why when the Japanese people for the first time heard real voices of the Emperor of Showa in his radio speech to the nation informing them of his decision of the surrender to the US military in August 1945, the people felt something strange in the Emperor's way of speaking.  His intonation and accents were strange.  The Emperor's speech sounded like a kind of reciting a sutra of shinto.

After the the Constitution of the Empire of Japan was abolished and the new Pacifist and democratic Constitution was enacted in 1947, the style of speech of the Emperor of Showa changed.   Classic and literary words and expressions came to be replaced with plain ones.  The Emperor even gave news conferences, which had been unthinkable under the the Constitution of the Empire of Japan or during and before WWII.

The point at issue is that insufficient or limited ability of speech and self-expression of the Emperor of Showa was probably one of factors of the tragedy of the Empire of Japan in WWII.
 
However, a majority of Japanese people even today do not like to discuss this issue in this way.  They don't want to blame the Emperor of Showa, though all those tragic wars of the Empire of Japan till 1945 were made under the name of the Emperor of Showa.

Most of Japanese people would understand why the Emperor of Showa lacked some crucial communication ability; it was due to the the nature of the Imperial court in Japan linked with the Japanese religion shinto.  To criticize the Emperor of Showa means to criticize shinto that is a major part of Japanese spiritualism and the core of social structure and establishment of the nation.   In this context the emperor is still a kind of holy for many of the Japanese people.


But, it is true that insufficient faculty of speech of the Emperor of Showa was one of factors of the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941.  If he had full ability in communications, he could have exchanged opinions with some influential anti-militarism politicians and might have stopped the war against the US or prevented the Pearl Harbor Attack.  It was so naturally assumed since the Emperor of Showa's intellectual ability was highly appraised as he was also an excellent biologist and a poet who created about 900 pieces of Japanese-style poetry called waka (so far as made public).

Anyway after WWII and during the US occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952, the Emperor Showa met in person with General MacArthur, the supreme commander of the US military stationed in Japan till 1951, 11 times.  General MacArthur showed no intention to prosecute the Emperor of Showa as a war criminal.  The Japanese people have also had no intention to blame the Emperor of Showa for the defeat of the Empire to date.



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Mat 5:10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.