Re: What kind of "nationalism" would that be? Korean style?

Media Intimidation in Japan
A Close Encounter with Hard Japanese Nationalism
by
David McNeill
Foreign Research Fellow
Institute of Socio-Information and Communication Studies
University of Tokyo
e-mail the Author
About the Author


The Encounter

In the wake of a series of recent incidents that seem to point toward a
resurgent nationalism in Japan, Brian McVeigh draws a distinction
between "soft" and "hard" nationalism in postwar Japanese politics in a
recent Japan Policy Research Institute paper (McVeigh, 2001). Hard
nationalism, found in the noisy flag-waving antics of
ultra-nationalists, in historical denials by academics and politicians,
and the increasingly unembarrassed displays of patriotism by cabinet
members, is less pervasive and dangerous, he seems to suggest, than the
soft nationalism "implicated in the mundane practices of everyday
life." By soft nationalism he means the set of hegemonic practices
embedded in the education system, in state ideology, and in culture and
social life.

But are these static categories? Where does hard nationalism end and
soft nationalism begin, and do the high-profile activities of hard
nationalists in Japan have a wider role in helping to legitimize
previously taboo ideas and positions within society? These were the
questions that came to mind after a recent close encounter I had with
the Japanese ultra right.

My wife Keiko and I host a weekly talk show on local radio in Western
Tokyo that tries to take a jaundiced, opinionated approach to the clash
of East versus West. Just before Christmas 2000 we talked briefly about
a trip we had made a year earlier to Nanjing[i] in China, the site of a
notorious massacre by the Japanese imperial army at the end of 1937.
Walking through the museum in Nanjing that commemorates the incident,
reading the testimony of hundreds of Chinese and non-Chinese survivors,
looking at countless photographs of corpses and indeed their bones,
some of which lie beneath the museum site, it's impossible to deny what
happened. And we said so, adding that those who do should pay a visit
there themselves.

Thirty minutes after the show was broadcast, three members of a local
"political group" arrived at the studio and asked to see the
management. The station director, Sato-san, said he spoke for the
station and, after exchanging name cards, everyone sat down.[ii] The
only member of the group who spoke was the sempai (senior member) who
softly and politely explained his displeasure. The Nanjing Massacre had
not been "officially announced" (koshiki happyo) by the government, so
we shouldn't have mentioned it, he said. If we were going to use the
radio to talk about communist countries, why didn't we tell our
listeners that Japan had exported thousands of tons of rice to help
famine-stricken North Korea, he asked. Why, he wanted to know, were we
going on about China? Was our radio station communist? Sato-san
carefully noted these points, including the last, on a writing pad
before escorting the visitors to the elevator, bowing and thanking them
for their visit.

Two days later the senior station manager called a meeting. He
apologized for taking our time and explained that from now on he would
be very grateful if we would not discuss political issues on the radio.
If someone sent a fax or email in giving their opinions, it was fine to
read it out over the air but not to give our own opinions. He said we
would need to apologize over the air for the Nanjing comment. If we
didn't, the men and their friends would drive their gaisensha, or black
sound trucks, outside our sponsors (two ramen, or Chinese noodle,
restaurants, a bar, and a couple of real estate agents) and harass them
until they withdrew their support. Violence was unlikely, but he
couldn't rule it out. He apologized again for asking us to apologize.
He handed us a *** of paper the station had prepared for us to read
on the next show. It said that we humbly apologized for the
"inappropriate comments" (futekisetsu na hyogen ) we had made the
previous week.

My wife and I were stunned. Far from being angry at a crude, thuggish
attempt to shut down a public discussion, the station's management had
gone along with the rightist's suggestions and upped the ante,
out-censoring the censors by requesting an end to all political
discussion. While we argued over the next couple of days about whether
to call the station's bluff, about a dozen faxes arrived at the studio
in response to our comments, all of them supportive. One read: "I was
so surprised to hear the two of you discussing the Nanjing Massacre. I
remember my own crazy uncle showing us photographs he brought back from
the war of the bodies of the Chinese he said he had beheaded." All
messages ended with pleas to continue, to take courage, and to stick it
out. When we met the director to discuss the next show we proposed to
apologize for any "misunderstandings," instead of the more specific
"inappropriate comments," and to read the faxes over the air. Sato-san
did not look pleased. Despite the reassurances of the senior station
manager that we could safely read other people's opinions, there
followed two hours of heated discussion about which faxes could safely
be broadcast. Sato-san favored bland messages of support without
specific references to Nanjing; for us, the more specific the better.
In the end we read four faxes with only one referring to Nanjing. We
didn't read the station's apology and there, or so we thought, the
episode had ended.
The Investigation

As perhaps one of the few gaijin (foreigner) to experience ultra-right
intimidation first hand I thought I owed it to myself to investigate
who these groups are and what motivates them. Was our experience
anomalous, or does the extreme right play a wider role in helping to
control and frame public discussion in Japan?

The best estimates are that there are more than 100,000 far-right
members in Japan belonging to almost 1000 groups throughout the
country, 800 of which are affiliated through an organization called
Zennippon Aikokusha Dantai Kaigi, or the National Conference of
Patriotic Associations (Masayuki, 1989 and Van Wolferen, 1993). In a
personal communiction to me, journalist Andreas Hippin, who follows
their activities for the German press, claims the number of rightists
increases if members of cult religions in Japan, which also espouse
conservative, rightist ideology, are included.

The exact number is clouded in controversy because there is overlap
with yakuza (Japanese mafia) gangsters. Many yakuza groups transformed
themselves into rightist political organizations from the 1960s after
the Political Fund Regulations Law prohibited extortion, but allowed
legitimate political groups to raise money and claim preferential tax
treatment as long as they presented income and expenditure statements
to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Ideologically, both uyoku, as the
ultra-right are known, and yakuza see themselves to some extent as
patriots and defenders of traditional codes of honor, although
"genuine" right-wingers make a firm distinction between plain old
gangsters and what they call minzoku-ha, or nationalists.[iii] It is
nevertheless clear that since the 1970s a new branch of radical
nationalism or shin-minzokushugi (new nationalism), with a much more
articulate and politically committed membership, has emerged in Japan
(Szymkowiak and Steinhoff, 1995). While the neo-nationalists, whose
members and sympathizers include academics, authors and well-known
manga-artists, often use similar methods to the older uyoku
(intimidation using gaisensha and loudspeakers is still their weapon of
choice), there are a number of important differences between the two
groups.

Anti-communism and patriotism remain a common plank, but
emperor-worship has been toned down in the newer groups who are more
media-savvy and much more likely to stress Japanese independence and
self-sufficiency in the face of American "hegemony." (Matsumoto, 2000
and Daiki, 2001). There is also good deal of disgust by
neo-nationalists with the criminal activities of yakuza-uyoku, typified
by the involvement of the notorious postwar rightist Kodama Yoshio in
the Lockheed bribery scandal, and the corruption that infests
establishment politics.

Besides Nanjing, the current list of ultra-right taboos includes the
so-called comfort women, or sex slaves, forced into prostitution by the
army during World War II, and Unit 731, the army laboratory in wartime
Manchuria that experimented with chemical weapons on live Chinese
prisoners. Yoshida Yoshihisa, a professor at Sagami Woman's University
who helped to publicize the comfort women issue in Japan was hounded
for two weeks by a convoy of vans after his name was publicly linked to
the issue. "They drove round and round my university screaming at me to
come out," he says. "I thought it would never end." War veterans who
come forward to tell their stories can also expect the attention of
right-wingers. Shiro Azuma, who served for four years in China and kept
a detailed diary that he subsequently published, and Yoshio Shinozuka,
a member of Unit 731 who agreed to testify in the current lawsuit
brought by 100 surviving Chinese victims, both tell stories of threats
and intimidation. A Chinese movie on Nanjing, which was screened in a
single small Yokohama theater three years ago, was attacked and shut
down at about the same time as the Japanese revisionist war movie Pride
was showing in hundreds of cinemas nationwide.

The uyoku often reserve their greatest firepower for any attempt to
degrade the ultimate national symbol, the emperor. The liberal-left
Asahi Shimbun has been a target of attack for, among other things, its
failure to use proper honorific terms for the emperor. Tomohiro Kojiro,
an Asahi reporter, was killed by a shotgun-wielding rightist in 1987.
In October 1993 a man named Nomura Shusuke killed himself in the Asahi
offices because he felt the paper had been making fun of rightists. The
mayor of Nagasaki, Motojima Hitoshi, a mild-mannered Christian, was
threatened for months by right-wingers, egged on by academics and a
handful of senior politicians, for suggesting that emperor Hirohito
bore some responsibility for the war. He was eventually shot in the
back, but survived, in January 1990, but not before 3.8 million people
had signed a petition supporting what he said.[iv]

Isolated cases of extremist political violence are a feature of life in
many advanced countries, but the Japanese version has several distinct
characteristics. First is the sheer number of attacks, thousands of
them, from low-key intimidation of the type we experienced at the radio
station to high-profile assassinations of union leaders and political
figures. Even accepting that the extreme right in Japan is not an
entirely coherent group and that its members are often in ideological
dispute with one another, taken together, its activities add up to a
massive and organized intimidatory presence. Every large media
institution in Japan, and many small ones, have experienced political
harassment of some sort.

The second major difference is its relationship with people in power.
The common view of the people who cause this mayhem, even among the
"serious" nationalist right, is that they are lowlife thugs, but the
lowlifes can always take comfort from pronouncements by pillars of the
establishment. Prime Minister Mori's recent slip, that Japan was a
"divine nation centered on the emperor," is only the latest example of
how apparently extreme rightist posturing, like calls for the
restoration of the emperor's powers and denials of well-documented war
crimes, find echoes all the way up to the top of Japan's dim political
corridors. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kajiyama Seiroku's claim in 1997
that Korean comfort women were just prostitutes; former education
minister Okuno Seisuke's similar claim in 1996 that the comfort women
were "in it for the money"; Justice Minister and Army Chief of Staff
Nagano Shigeto's protestations that accusations of Japanese wartime
atrocities were all "fabrications"; Ishihara Shintaro's famous
pronouncement in Playboy that Nanjing was a lie made up by the Chinese
? the list is long and undistinguished. There are also well-documented
ties between ultra-right figures and Japan's most senior politicians
who have used them to harass and attack the left. The most famous of
them all, Kishi Nobusuke, found time to be Prime Minister and mix with
the some of the most notorious rightist and yakuza figures in Japan
(Kaplan and Dubro, 1986). Another famous rightist, Sasakawa Ryoichi,
became one of Japan's richest businessmen with connections right to the
heart of the country's business and political worlds. Last year's
resignation by Chief Cabinet Secretary Nakagawa Hidenao for consorting
with the boss of an ultra-right organization, is part of a long and
venerable political tradition in Japan.

I am not suggesting the existence of a massive, organized conspiracy
cooked up by the conservative political mainstream and extreme
nationalists in Japan to prevent the expression of controversial
political ideas. The relationship between the yakuza-uyoku, the
neo-nationalists and established political figures is a complex matrix
of financial, political and personal ties with conflicting and
contradictory elements. However, what is abundantly clear is that the
practice, by actors within what Van Wolferen (1993) calls "the system"
of calling on the services of the hard nationalists to intimidate or
silence unwieldy or troublesome elements has helped to give them a
legitimacy and influence arguably beyond what would be tolerated in any
other advanced industrial country. Moreover, ultra nationalists are
often aware of their role in not only preventing discussion of taboo
topics, but also in helping to legitimate fringe ideas. As the chairman
of the neo-rightist group Issui-Kai, Kimura Mitsuhiro explains:

The government uses uyoku to express ideas which it cannot openly say.
Just like the lighthouse on Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands.[v] We built it on
our initiative. The government did not ask us to. But afterwards there
were politicians who said, "I told them to build it." They are liars.
(Daiki, 2001)

The most important result of years of dedicated service by both
establishment and fringe rightists may have been, in the words of Dr.
Ivan Hall, author of Cartels of the Mind, to have shifted the center of
debate, and of political consensus in Japan, well to the right. One
would have thought that as they survey the current Japanese political
landscape, the uyoku would be quite happy with their lot. The hinomaru,
or rising-sun flag, once the dividing symbol of left and right,
flutters across the nation's school yards, the kimigayo national anthem
belts out of lungs too young to remember the battles fought over it,
both having been officially recognized in August 1999. Their archenemy,
the Communist Party (whose chairman, Miyamoto Kenji, they attempted to
assassinate in 1973), has swung to the right since the collapse of the
USSR. The Socialist Party (whose chairman, Asanuma Inejiro, they
stabbed in 1960) disintegrated after their leader Murayama Tomiichi
rang in the post-Cold War era by recognizing the hinomaru and
kimigayoand the Self-Defense Forces. The teacher's union, Nikkyoso,
another hated enemy, is a shadow of its former militant self. The
battle for control over the content of textbooks, into which Nikkyoso
threw most of its troops, seems to have slipped off the national
agenda, and the union has not even been able to defend the 250-odd
teachers disciplined for not raising the flagor for not singing the
anthemin the past two years. Watching television surely brings more
smiles to ultra-right faces. Discussions on previously unthinkable
issues, such as Japan's right to a modern army, are now quite common.
Visits by politicians to Yasukuni Jinja, the shrine to Japan's war
dead, are no longer considered taboo. The yazuka, despite a police
crackdown that began in the early 1990s, are not in bad health either.
According to a recent report in the Far Eastern Economic Review,
although a host of smaller gangster groups have been smashed, the
largest of them all, the Yamaguchi Gumi, has grown into a "colossus"
during the recession, now boasting 16,500 full-time members (Kattoulas,
2000).

In the relatively small number of incidents these days when the mass
media broach a taboo topic, the extreme right can still have a
significant impact on public discussion. The magazine Shukan Shincho
reported in February 2001, for example, that NHK, the national state
broadcaster, censored a program on the mock trial of the emperor by a
group of comfort women and their supporters in Tokyo in December 2000
(Struck, 2000 and Yoneyama, 2001). The program, Senso to josei e no
boryoku (War and violence against women) failed to report the final
judgment of the court, that the emperor was guilty of war crimes
against the women, and instead gave over much of its airtime to an
academic known for his rightist views. The article suggested that the
self-censorship was not unrelated to a number of visits to NHK's
Shibuya headquarters by gaisenshas blaring loud martial music. It was
notable, indeed, how little coverage the comfort women "trial" received
in the daily Japanese press.
The Aftermath

Helping to set and control the agenda for political discussion is one
thing, but the question of why censorship finds such fertile soil in
the Japanese broadcasting and newspaper world is another. Hard
nationalism in Japan may well, as I have argued, have a distinctive
function in helping to shift the ideological consensus rightwards. But
control of the media through intimidation (what U.S. scholars Herman
and Chomsky (1988) call "flak") is not an exclusively Japanese
phenomenon. Nor is the rightward drift, which has been a feature of the
political landscape of the U.S., Britain and elsewhere since the 1970s,
although it is especially alarming in Japan with its militaristic past.
On the surface at least Japan has a modern, competitive, pluralistic
and open mass media, with thousands of outlets and a diversity of
views. A casual glance at Japanese television or Japan's weekly
magazine output shows an often lively and critical force with a healthy
disrespect for people in power. As Pharr and Krauss suggest, in the
sense that both controlled and pluralistic elements, freedom and
restraint coexist, Japan is no different to other democracies (1996,
pp. 358). Nevertheless, we need to ask: is there something distinctive
about the mass media in Japan that makes it more docile and easier to
control and manipulate than equivalent systems in the advanced
economies with which it is invariably compared? There is not the space
here for a full analysis but I offer the following observations in the
light of my experience at the radio station.

A common pole of analysis is to suggest that the apparent failure of
media gatekeepers in Japan to confront intimidation may be the result
of the group-centered nature of Japanese society which translates into
negotiation and ultimately compromise with elements within the system
that threaten to disrupt harmony (Takeshita and Takeuchi, 1996 and
Pharr and Krauss, 1996, pp. 359). Sociologists in Japan stress the fear
of difference, of being the nail that sticks up, the value attached to
conformism and the subtle and not so subtle differences used to achieve
it. At one point Sato-san said, for example, that our program was too
"provocative" (chosenteki) and "one-sided" (katayotteiru) and seemed
unable to comprehend our point that provoking public discussion and
taking sides against false or malicious arguments might be a good
thing.

This analysis, that there is some central drive within Japanese
culture, to harmonize and transform "discordance" into consensus is
superficially plausible but fails to explain where this drive comes
from or what interests might be served by it. As Van Wolferen says,
"The term ‘consensus' implies positive support for an idea or a
course of action" (Van Wolferen, 1993, pp. 441). This notion of
consensus, reinforced through the education system and other state
apparatus, often boils down, in practice, to the imposition of power
over dissenting, minority, and sometimes even, majority opinions. The
myth of consensus also arguably helps to make codes of practice,
systematic rules and abstract rights and concepts, such as those
enshrined in the American constitution (‘freedom of information' and
such like) contingent on the situational context. Comfortably wrapped
in the notion that Japanese life is ruled by harmony and consensus, and
in the relative absence, even as an ideal, of the conceptual freedoms
built up over generations in other societies, it is not difficult to
understand why in many instances compromise comes easiest. Laurie Anne
Freeman calls this phenomenon "soft censorship within the context of a
weakly developed civil society" (2000, pp. 173).

Within this context it is not unheard of for media gatekeepers, those
who might otherwise be expected to most strongly defend rights of free
expression, to use the threat or implied threat of intimidation to
silence difficult and marginal voices (Kogawa, 2000). This has the
added bonus of allowing the strongest and the loudest political actors,
tolerated and often nurtured by the establishment, to dominate and set
the agenda for what passes for rational public discourse here. As
Freeman says:

Some observers in North America have criticized the role of the media
in the political process because of their power in setting the agenda
of discourse. What Japan suggests, however, is a situation even more
problematic: one in which the media do not set, but rather limit, the
agenda, thereby letting others (notably political actors) set it
instead.
(Freeman, 2000, pp. 197)

It seems to me that one of the most notable developments of the last
ten years in Japan has been the collapse of the few organized poles of
resistance that might once have challenged the agenda-setting role of
the extreme right. Alternative perspectives on contested historical
events like the comfort women and Nanjing are as likely to come from
citizens groups (such as the mock trial of the emperor mentioned above
that was organized by women's groups) and individual journalists (Iris
Chang, Honda Katsuichi), than the organized pillars of the left like
Nikkyoso and the Socialist or Communist parties.

In the weeks following the uyoku visit, there were two more incidents
of censorship at the radio station. In the first we had interviewed the
headmaster of a local junior high school during the course of which I
asked how, in the light of the recent changes to the law, he felt about
flying the once disputed national flag. In the event his answer was
essentially a defense of soft nationalism. "It's a shame that we have
to be the only country in the world that is embarrassed to fly our
national flag because of events that happened before any of us were
born," he said. He denied any of his teachers had protested against the
changes. The entire episode was cut from the broadcast. Sato-san said
it had been a "technical error" but we were informed by another member
of staff that it had simply been too sensitive. The segment seemed to
indicate that even to raise the issue of the once controversial
revisions was taboo.

In the second incident, Yoshida Yoshihisa came on to discuss the media
furore about the drunken antics of young revelers at seinenshiki
(Coming of Age) ceremonies around Japan in January this year. We argued
that the ceremonies were a waste of money and that making loud,
disruptive noises in the middle of boring speeches by local politicians
was an entirely understandable response (Keiko disagreed). Yoshida
sensei further claimed that it was becoming more common at these
ceremonies for the participants to be asked to sing the national
anthem, a trend he personally found objectionable. This entire segment
was also cut. Sato-san said that to air it was asking for trouble. When
we challenged him on this he said that his role, as the director of a
small radio station, was to protect the jobs of himself and his staff,
not to support abstract concepts of free speech. He couldn't do this if
the uyoku bankrupted him. He personally sung the national anthem "with
pride" and couldn't understand anyone who didn't. Nowhere did he refer
to national broadcasting regulations that might explain or justify his
prohibitions.

Fear of intimidation party explains these sentiments but not them all.
With the passing of the high-profile ideological struggles over the
historical weight of once-controversial national symbols like the
kimigayo, the way is clear for more unabashed displays of soft-national
pride of the kind Sato-san treated us to.

In a recent JPRI paper Chalmers Johnson (2000) outlines the recent
drift rightwards in Japan and what he calls the deteriorating security
situation in East Asia under Japanese and American pressure. He cites
the 1999 New Year speech by the Minister of Justice Nakamura Shozaburo
denouncing the Japanese constitution denying Japan the right to engage
in war; the chief of the Japanese Defense Agency, Norota Hosei's
announcement in March 1999 that "under certain circumstances Japan
enjoyed the right of "preemptive attack" (sensei kogeki) and that it
was thinking of making such an attack against North Korea." He
continues:

During the spring and early summer [of 1999] the Japanese government
then did the following things one after another: it passed a law
allowing the police to tap citizens' telephones (the Tsushin Bojuho);
it legalized the rising sun flag (hinomaru) and made the prewar song
celebrating the emperor's reign (kimigayo) the national anthem, and
ordered them to be displayed and sung in schools; it established
Constitutional Research Councils (Kempo Chosakai) in both houses of the
Diet in order to study revisions to the "peace constitution"; it
enacted legislation to support the new "Defense Guidelines" with the
United States, giving the U.S. the power to take over Japanese
airports, harbors, roads, and hospitals in times of an emergency in
"areas surrounding Japan," a description that is said to be conceptual
and not geographical; it forged a three-party coalition (the Ji-Ji-Ko
alliance) giving the Liberal Democratic Party control of over 70
percent of the seats in the Diet and the ability to pass any laws that
it wants to; and, in October 1999, it saw the newly appointed vice
minister of defense, Shingo Nishimura, urge the Diet to consider arming
the country with nuclear weapons.
(Johnson, 2000)

What was unthinkable has now become commonplace and the categories of
soft and hard nationalism are shifting very quickly. Before writing up
this paper I showed Sato-san my research. I asked him if his children
knew about Nanjing. "They study it at school," he said, "so I'm sure
they do." Later, at home, I had a look at a current Japanese history
textbook: Nihonshi. The Nanjing Massacre is not mentioned. The Nanjing
Incident is, as a footnote on page 234 to a one sentence report that
the Japanese army captured Nanjing after fierce resistance. The
footnote reads: "konotoki, nihonhei wa hisentouin wo fukumu tasuu no
chugokujin wo satsugai shi, haisengo, tokyosaibande ookiina mondai
tonatta (Nangking Jiken)". My translation of this: "During this time,
the Japanese army killed many Chinese, including noncombatants,
something that became an important issue at the Tokyo war crimes court
after Japan's defeat (the Nanjing Incident)."[vi] Revisions are
currently in debate which will further dilute any reference to this and
other war crimes (Japan Times, 2001).
Acknowledgements

This paper was produced with financial assistance from the Japan
Foundation Endowment Committee.

In addition, the author wishes to thank Brian C. Folk for his help in
the compilation of this article.
References

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Emperor on Mock Trial, International Herald Tribune, 8 December, 2000,
pp. 2
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Something Long: Intimidation and Violence by Right-Wing Groups in
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265-298
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Krauss, (eds), Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of
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Personal Communications

Andreas Hippin(Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienst GmbH, Germany)
Shibuichi Daiki (Department of Political Science, National University
of Singapore)
Dr. Ivan Hall (Temple University Japan)
Tetsuo Kogawa (Media Critic and Professor, Tokyo Keizai University)
Ino Kenji (Author)
Further Reading

Irish Chang's (1998) book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust
of World War II (Penguin) has, despite some well-documented errors,
done much to bring the issue back into the public arena. The Japanese
journalist Honda Katsuichi, who did most to bring the Nanjing Massacre
to the attention of the Japanese public, has also written extensively
about it. His book (edited by Frank Gibney), The Nanjing Massacre: A
Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame, has recently been
published in English by the Studies of the Pacific Basin Institute, and
includes a commentary by the veteran Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira.

The most readable English account of the relationship between Japanese
gangsters and the extreme and mainstream right, although a bit dated,
is Kaplan, David E. and Dubro, Alec (1986). Yakuza: The Explosive
Account of Japan's Criminal Underworld. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
You will also find some information (although it is mostly rehashed) in
Robert Whiting (1999). Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life
of an American Gangster in Japan. New York: Vintage Books.

Some of the best known critical Japanese accounts are:
Hori, Yukio (1993). Sengo no uyoku seiryoku. Tokyo: Dososhoho.
Hori, Yukio (1991). Uyoku jiten. Tokyo: Dososhoho.
Matsumoto, Kenichi, Shiso to shiteno uyoku. Tokyo: Ronso-sha.
Tendo, Tadashi, Uyoku undo hyakunen no kiseki. Tachibana-shoboi.
Readers might also want to take a look at right-wing author's Ino
Kenji's (1987) Uyoku For Beginners (Gendai shokan).

There are many good, critical essays available on the Japan Policy
Research Institute website. (Please note that some of the articles
listed require a password.) They include:
Robert M. Orr, Jr. (1998), The Rape of History, JPRI Critique, Vol. 5,
No. 6 (details the controversy surrounding Iris Chang's book The Rape
of Nangking.)
Chalmers Johnson (2000), Some Thoughts on the Nanjing Massacre, JPRI
Critique, Vol. 7, No. 1
Ivan P. Hall (1998), Gagged on the Ginza, JPRI Critique, Vol. 5, No. 9
(an account of Ivan Hall's own problems with censorship)
Readers might also like to visit the Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars website, which contains an index of many important articles
and reviews on Japan and the rest of Asia, including Ienaga Saburo's,
"The Historical Significance of the Japanese Textbook Lawsuit."
Okamoto, Tomochika, The Distortion and the Revision of History in
Postwar Japanese Textbooks, 1945-1998, is a very interesting survey of
changes to Japanese texbook content over the years. The Chinese
University of Hong Kong hosts a memorial website for the victims in the
Nanjing massacre at and it includes resources in Chinese, Japanese and
English.
Notes

[i] There are a number of different spellings of the word "Nanjing"
including "Nangking" and "Nanking." I have used the more common English
spelling of Nanjing except when listing book and essay titles.
[ii] I have not used real names here for obvious reasons. According to
the leader's name card, the group, which was described as a "political
association," was called the Japanese Nationalist Youth Federation. The
radio station broadcasts over a radius of about 15 kms in Sagamihara,
Hashimoto, Tsukui, Kamimizo, Shiroyama and Yamato.
[iii] Our experience with the station management illustrates how
difficult it is to disentangle genuine nationalists from gangsters. A
number of people we talked to said it was not unlikely that the station
had paid our visitors a "contribution" not to come back. When I
interviewed prominent nationalist author, Ino Kenji, for this article,
he was nevertheless furious at the constant failure to distinguish
yakuza activities from shinminzokushugi (new nationalism) which he
said, was the "future."
[iv] While the primary motive of this attempted assassination was
obviously political, the victim himself feels that there was also an
element of blackmail involved. "I felt that if I had paid them off they
might have stopped bothering me." (Personal interview, January 5th,
2001).
[v] Kimura was a member of the first group to attempt to build a
structure on island, whose ownership is disputed between Japan and
China, in 1978.
[vi] This is a 1993 textbook. Many newer textbooks are inclined to make
even less of it. The Japanese History Section of the Kodansha
Encyclopaedia of Japan, now part of the popular Bilingual Books series,
contains a total of one page on the Pacific War, with no mention of
Nanjing.
About the author

David McNeill studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of
Ulster in Northern Ireland before becoming a Monbusho scholar at the
Institute of Socio-Information and Communication Studies (ISICS),
University of Tokyo. He completed his PhD on the Japanese information
society at Napier University, Edinburgh in 1998. He has taught at
universities in Ireland, England and China and is currently a foreign
research fellow at ISICS, as well as editor of the National Institute
for Research Advancement's NIRA Review in Tokyo.

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