Category: History

New photos in Flickr

Some of you may have noticed that the links to my old photogalleries are gone, replaced by Flickr. For those who care, the old galleries still exist at the address Mutantfrog.com/gallery2/ but I was convinced by my friend Joe to try Flickr, and I decided that it was just an easier way to deal with uploading photos, and in particular a good way to avoid bandwidth charges.

That said, with the new service I’m going to try and post photos more often and regularly, and also with blog entries that provide more informative text.

Ritsumeikan Swords


Continuing the recent trend of writing about alma maters, here’s something really fun I spotted when googling “Ritsumeikan.”

SWORDS OF THE RITSUMEIKAN TANRENJO

Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto had a small forge (tanrenjo) set up during World War II which made swords for the military and the war effort. The forge was led by Sakurai Masayuki, the second son of Sakurai (Manji) Masatsugu, a well known early gendai swordsmith. He originally signed Masatsuna. He worked in Fukuoka, Osaka, and Kyoto (Ritsumeikan University). He was an early teacher of Seiho Sumitani (Sumitani Masamine), who became a Ningen Kokuho Tosho (Living National Treasure Swordsmith) from Kanazawa.

Good lord, you have no idea how much I want one of these things. I’ve never been a big fan of class rings and that sort of junk, but a class SWORD-sign me up! Does it just seem like a good idea because I spent all of yesterday reading the new Harry Potter book inside as the typhoon raged across Taiwan?

Check out the original page for more photos and information.

Headlines

New light thrown on origins of Chinese culture as lost civilization emerges

One of the world’s great cities once flourished here at Jinsha village in China’s southwest, the 1000 B.C. equivalent of New York or Paris, and then inexplicably vanished, leaving no trace behind in the historical records.

Until recently, locals had no idea they were living on top of a great lost bronze-age civilization.

Myanmar Woman ‘suddenly grows penis’

Medical doctor Aye Sanda Khaing put it in layman’s terms in a local journal: “Her penis appeared at the site of her clitoris,” the doctor was quoted as saying.

Regardless of the official findings, local villagers and other curious Myanmar nationals are flocking to the Aung Myay Thar Yar pagoda, in this new satellite township 19km from Yangon, to see Than Sein for themselves and make donations to him or the temple.

Up to 400 gather at the pagoda each day, often in a courtyard under colorful umbrellas to ward off the sun’s rays, waiting for the chance to talk with and touch Than Sein.

Japanese researchers invent promising new HIV drug

The drug’s main feature is that it shuts out the AIDS virus at the point when it tries to intrude into a human cell.

Current AIDS medicines can lose their effectiveness in a few days when the virus changes and develops a resistance to those drugs. But AK602 is different because it reacts to human cells instead of attacking the virus, Mitsuya said.


Developers and purists erase Mecca’s history

Sami Angawi, an expert on the region’s Islamic architecture, said 1,400-year-old buildings from the early Islamic period risk being demolished to make way for high rise towers for Muslims flocking to perform the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city.

“We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Mecca,” Angawi told Reuters. “Its layers of history are being bulldozed for a parking lot,” he added.

Angawi estimated that over the past 50 years at least 300 historical buildings had been leveled in Mecca and Medina, another Muslim holy city containing the prophet’s tomb.

Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s dominant doctrine which promotes a strict narrow interpretation of Islam, was largely to blame, he said.

Reporter convicted of revealing state secrets

No, I’m not talking about Judith Miller, but considering that a judge has just ordered her incarceration, this story from yesterday’s Japan Times is particularly timely.

Trial opens over denial of secret accord with U.S.

A court battle opened Tuesday on a damages suit filed by a former Mainichi Shimbun reporter who claims his career was ruined after he was wrongly convicted for reporting on an alleged secret pact between Japan and the United States over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa.

Takichi Nishiyama, 73, is seeking 33 million yen in compensation and an apology from the government, arguing his report that Japan secretly shouldered $4 million of the costs for Okinawa’s reversion from the U.S. has been backed up by the release of U.S. government documents in 2000 and 2002.

“It is a state crime to submit a false treaty text to the Diet for discussion and approval, and it is an abuse of power to indict a reporter who tried to inform the public of the state crime,” Nishiyama says in the complaint.

[Read the rest of the article at the original site]

Napoleon ‘tried to learn English’

Living in countries like Japan or Taiwan (and probably S Korea and some other countries) where the vast majority of westerners are employed as ‘English teachers,’ one is keenly aware of the English-learning obsession.

Thanks to the Beeb for telling us who really started the craze.

Napoleon had his first lesson on 17 January 1816, when he asked las Cases to dictate to him some sentences in French, which he then translated, using a table of auxiliary verbs and a dictionary.

The surviving sentences appear to indicate Napoleon’s feelings towards his exile. He wrote:

“When will you be wise.

“Never as long as I should be in this isle.

“But I shall become wise after having crossed the line.

“When I shall land in France I shall be very content.”
[…]
According to historian Dr Peter Hicks, las Cases describes how Napoleon hated being sat down to work like a schoolboy but steeled himself for the task.

Dr Hicks said: “He was not necessarily anti-English. He had to fight because it was the enemy of France.”

He added: “In France people are amazed to find that he was learning English. But he didn’t do it for pleasure. He wondered how much money he could have saved in translation if he could have learnt English.”

More on Kissinger and China

I mentioned earlier that Henry Kissinger was either lying about or woefully ignorant of Chinese history and implied that this was due to his personal biases.

Jonathan Mirsky’s review of “Mao: The Untold Story” in the June 2005 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review (pg 59) contains this quote:

Mr. Kissinger, for instance, was so star-struck by Mao and Zhou Enlai that he committed many indiscretions and security breaches with both of them while serving Nixon.

The previous page also states that Zhou Enlai:

the most attractive man [visiting statesman like Henry Kissinger] had ever met.

For more information on Kissinger’s early negotiations with China, see this article at the National Security Archive at GWU. This article was written in 2002, shortly after a number of relevant records were declassified in mid-2001, so if you think you know the history of US/Chinese diplomacy based on pre-2002 information, you should probably read this article. There are also links to a number of original, formerly classified documents, such as this

These documents also illustrate some differences between Kissinger’s public statements regarding China and Taiwanese policy and his private diplomatic efforts.

As important as this exchange was, in his 1979 memoir Kissinger misleadingly wrote that “Taiwan was mentioned only briefly during the first session.”(5) Yet some 9 pages, nearly 20 percent, of the 46-page record of the first Zhou-Kissinger meeting on 9 July 1971, include discussion of Taiwan, with Kissinger disavowing Taiwanese independence and committing to withdraw two-thirds of U.S. military forces from the island once the Vietnam War ended. Moreover, Kissinger told Zhou that he expected that Beijing and Washington would “settle the political question” of diplomatic relations “within the earlier part of the President’s second term.” Kissinger did not say what that would mean for U.S. diplomatic relations with Taiwan but undoubtedly Zhou expected Washington to break formal ties with Taipei as a condition of Sino-American diplomatic normalization.

This memo from Kissinger to Nixon actually lists Taiwan as the first issue discussed at the Kissinger/Zhou Enlai (spelled Chou here) meeting.

[Page 3]He immediately moved to their fundamental concern, Taiwan, and I rejoined with our position on Indochina.

Some other interesting statements from this particular memo include:

Chou spoke of the Chinese fear of a remilitiarized Japan, and a violently and contemptuously attacked Soviet imperialism, which he claimed had learned its lessons from the U.S.

Clearly China’s current attitude towards Japan is not as divorced from their historical attitudes as some might think.

According to Kissinger’s secret memo to the president, Zhou’s primary themes of discussion were as follows:

the preoccupation with Taiwan; the support for the North Vietnamese; the spectre of big power collusion, specifically of being carved up by the US, USSR, and Japan; the contempt of the Indians, hatred for the Russians and apprehension over the Japanese; the disclaimer that China is, or would want to be, a superpower like the Russians and we who have “stretched out our hands too far”; and throughout the constant view that the world must move toward peace, that there is too much “turmoil under the heavens.”

Most of those are already clear, but the last is particularly interesting. In his recent editorial Kissinger claimed to believe that “Military imperialism is not the Chinese style. China seeks its objectives by careful study, patience and the accumulation of nuances.” I still believe that his understanding of Chinese history is fundamentally wrong, but based on the contents of his 14 July 1971 “Eyes Only” memo to President Nixon-where one would expect total honesty-he actually seems to have believed China’s claims the whole time. The fact that Kissinger believes (and believed) that China’s foreign policy is basically one of peace does not excuse such blatant misinformation as “The Chinese state in its present dimensions has existed substantially for 2,000 years”, but it does perhaps relegate it from sinister propaganda to mere incompetence.

Coolness from Wiki: Inukai Tsuyoshi

Inukai Tsuyoshi

Inukai Tsuyoshi (犬養 毅, April 20, 1855–May 15, 1932) was a Japanese politician and the 29th Prime Minister of Japan from December 13, 1931 to May 15, 1932.

He was born in Okayama Prefecture. Initially working as a journalist, he turned to politics and became Minister of Education in 1898. In 1929 he became president of the Seiyukai party and was elected as Prime Minister in 1931.

Inukai’s assassination by young naval officers in Tokyo on May 15, 1932 was a key event in Japanese history, known as the go ichi go jiken (May 15 incident). It marked the end of party political control over government decisions until after World War II.

Interestingly, in the original assassination plot, the plan included killing Charlie Chaplin, the film star who happened to be visiting Japan at the time. When the prime minister and his family members were killed, his son Ken Inukai was watching a Sumo wrestling match with Charlie Chaplin, which probably saved Ken.

The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I hadn’t mentioned this when it was first posted, but noticing that Plunge has just linked to one of my recent posts I remembered that I had meant to.

Plunge over at Plunge Pontificates has written a very long article in five parts on the history and ramifications of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan that bears reading. I do wish he had included footnotes on cited sources within each page, but he promises that a bibliography is forthcoming, so hopefully we’ll be able to see that soon.

The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Truman: A Modern Day Hero

As the war was coming to an end, President Truman was faced with an incredibly difficult decision. The fighting in Europe was basically over and the focus turned towards Japan. The decision facing President Truman was how to force Japan to surrender. Not just surrender, but to surrender unconditionally. He could call for an invasion of Japan, an action that would likely result in millions of casualties, he could call for a blockade and continued bombing raids, a strategy that would take untold time, tie up massive resources and cause millions of civilian deaths, or he could try a new weapon, one of unknown but suspected massive power. As we all know, he chose the later.

From that point on, his actions have undergone a scrutiny of unbelievable proportions. He has been savaged as a war criminal, compared to Hitler and condemned a mass murder by some. Others consider his actions heroic. I would like to explain why I feel he is one of the later, a hero.

Yasukuni: Behind the torii

The Yomiuri Shinbum, one of Japan’s major newspapers, has an excellent three part series online on their English website entitled Yasukuni: Behind the torii.

Part 1 – From govt-run shrine for war heroes to bone of contention

Prior to World War II, shrines were usually managed by the Interior Ministry. But Yasukuni Shrine was categorized as a special government shrine and operated by the army and the navy ministries.

The deities enshrined at the shrine are not mythical or historical figures, but the war dead who gave their lives for the nation. Yasukuni is different from a tomb in that it contains neither the remains of the dead nor memorial tablets for them.

The collective enshrinement of the war dead was informally approved by the army and navy, and then given formal approval by the emperor. Not only military personnel and civilians serving with the military are enshrined at Yasukuni, but also bureaucrats, civilians and cadets.

At the end of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Japan-China War (1937-45) and World War II (1939-45), a ceremony was held to enshrine the war dead, and bereaved families were invited to the ceremony. The shrine thus became a place to honor the memory of the war dead.

Part 2 – How the govt and people forgave those convicted by tribunal

When the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in 1952 and the Allied Occupation ended in Japan, there was a nationwide movement for the release of war criminals, and more than 40 million people signed a petition for their release.

In 1953, the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors adopted a resolution calling for a pardon for the nation’s war criminals. In the same year, a law to assist bereaved families of those wounded or killed during the war was revised so that bereaved families of war criminals would be eligible for pensions and compensation.

In 1954, the Public Officials Pensions Law was revised to widen and improve measures to assist war criminals. The government designated the executions of war criminals as deaths incurred in the line of duty and did not establish provisions that would disqualify Class-A war criminals from seeking public office.
[…]

In the end, Class-A war criminals, and Class-B and -C war criminals, including suspects, were released by 1956 and 1958, respectively.

Part 3 – Doctrinal disagreements hamper move

Yasukuni Shrine said it would be impossible to enshrine Class-A criminals elsewhere due to Shinto doctrine.

Procedures by which war dead are collectively enshrined are as follows:

— Their names and addresses are written in India ink on traditional Japanese washi paper.

— A ceremony is held to invoke the spirits of the dead and connect them with their names on the paper so that a list can be made.

— The list is placed behind the main shrine.

Yasukuni Shrine has two artifacts in which spirits are enshrined.

The spirits of Class-A criminals were enshrined with more than 2.46 million others in one artifact, while the other enshrines the spirits of Imperial Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa and Prince Kitashirakawa Nagahisa and their families.

According to Yasukuni Shrine, some observers say all the shrine needs to do to move the Class-A criminals is to erase their names from the list. But shrine officials do not agree. The shrine says it is as impossible to extract the spirits of the Class-A criminals as it is to return liquid to a cup after pouring it into a tank of water.

In terms of Shinto doctrine, spirits can only be enshrined separately when they already have been enshrined in a separate artifact, which can be at the same shrine, as there is no way to retrieve specific spirits that already have been enshrined.

Spirits enshrined at one shrine can be moved to another through a procedure that copies them, in a sense. But this procedure can only copy the entire group rather than specific spirits and therefore, does not provide a solution to the problem, the shrine said.

If bereaved families ask the shrine to separate the spirits of the 14, shrine officials said they would tell them that such an action was impossible under Shinto doctrine.