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BOOK
REVIEW
Champion of truth
Japan's Past, Japan's
Future: One Historian's Odyssey
by Ienaga
Saburo
By Victor Fic
Periodically, the
ship of stability in East Asia is buffeted by a typhoon
of right-wing revisionism blowing out of Japan. The
latest storm broke with recent reports that the Japanese
Ministry of Education's school textbooks for 2002 would
again omit or downplay Japan's aggression during World
War II. South Korea, for one, which pledged a new
relationship with its former colonial overlord in 1998,
has threatened to scale down parliamentary and youth
exchanges.
Within Japan, gifted historian Saburo
Ienaga stands out for trying to dissipate such
ultra-conservative tempests. In this inspiring
autobiography, Ienaga recounts how he sued the Ministry
of Education between 1965 and 1997, hoping to end its
certification system for history textbooks. Ienaga
argued that the system permitted the state to issue
distorted works, compromising the freedom of thought
necessary to safeguard peace and democracy.
Ienaga was born in 1913, and little in his early
life prepared him to be a fighter. The boy suffered from
many painful ailments, and remains so easily exhausted
by work that even now recovery takes all his time. His
military officer father lost his post for speaking
candidly to superiors, but Ienaga does not indicate that
this influenced his convictions.
He recollects
that when he was a boy, he deeply loved "a field with
its milk vetch in bloom". On his deathbed, it will be
"the most beautiful memory of my life". Without this
uncommonly personal passage, Ienaga would have been
merely respectable, but now he becomes likable.
When he was a youth in the 1930s, many of his
friends embraced fascism. Ienaga rejected it, not due to
his courage, but because of his intellectual
"stodginess"; he honored the neo-Kantianism liberalism
of the 1920s.
Though admitting that he supported
the emperor system when young, Ienaga insists that he
was a moderate. Unfortunately, he does not state just
when he explicitly rejected the throne, a failing in his
narrative.
As for World War II itself, Ienaga
depicts himself as one of many "spineless characters"
who remained silent as Japan murdered Asia. This is an
accurate indictment; excuses would only compromise his
latter claim to be a champion of truth.
After
the war, Ienaga viewed the mass chanting for democracy
as a new herd mentality. He only became politically
involved when a progressive textbook he penned was
rejected during certification in 1953. He finally filed
suit in 1965 against the Education Ministry, and
displayed the rare conviction to fight until 1997.
His motives included feeling guilty over his
silence during the war. However, Ienaga also correctly
saw how the deeply reactionary Education Ministry - many
former wartime leaders had returned to power by now -
wanted to assault the "sacred" ground of the free mind
that underpinned true democracy.
While filing
three suits in all, he attracted the support of hundreds
of Japanese scholars, though little aid from an
apathetic public. Significantly, Ienaga does not mention
whether any Western Japan experts provided him with
concrete help. Is this an oversight, or an indication
that his foreign colleagues have opined more than
assisted? Ienaga also drew the attention of the powerful
right wing. Its thugs threatened him outside the
courtroom and elsewhere; even now they are a sinister
force in Japan.
The long court cases are
complex. When the Supreme Court handed down its final
judgment in 1997, it ruled that the Education Ministry
could screen books, but insisted that the censors had
wrongly deleted passages on some war crimes. Ienaga sees
his efforts as half-victories legally, but full
victories spiritually.
This book proves that
Ienaga is a world-class champion of democratic integrity
combating oppressive conformity. He is in the same camp
- though on a lesser scale - as Andrei Sakharov and
other opponents of the Orwellian control state. His
admirers are nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Although the latest reports hold that the
Japanese Education Ministry, bowing to foreign pressure,
will issue somewhat more honest books, its soulless
mandarins are unlikely to desist. Ienaga is 83, and his
battle is not over. Now, Asia and the world will be
watching to see whether Japan's intellectuals -
unassisted by a detached public - can produce a
successor with Ienaga's fortitude for speaking truth to
power.
(Ienaga Saburo's
Japan's Past, Japan's Future: One Historian's
Odyssey, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc,
London, 2001.)
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