| Here are two articles on Japan and the Jews from Usenet you might find
interesting.
Martin.
Article 2226 of soc.culture.jewish:
From: [email protected] (G. Levine)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.japan
Subject: Japan and the Jews
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 16 Nov 89 17:12:48 GMT
Organization: AT&T CSEd/CET, Piscataway, N.J.
It is virtually as true today as in the past that Jews have resided
almost solely within the Japanese imagination. Nevertheless, over
the course of the last 70 years, there has been a lively series of
debates in Japan over the Jewish people.
Three influences helped shape the way the Japanese have conceptualized
Jews. The ban on Christianity, in effect since the mid-17th century,
was lifted in 1873 and by 1880, 30,000 Japanese had been baptized.
Within a few years, that number tripled. At about the same time,
the New Testament was translated into Japanese. For the Japanese, who
read their Bible faithfully, words in the Gospel according to John
describing the Jews' rejection of Jesus, suggested a particular image
of Jews.
Second was the translation of Shakespeare's _The Merchant of Venice_
in 1877, which appeared subsequently in various adaptations with
titles like "The Mysterious Western Flesh Pawning Trial" and
"Ephemeral as Cherry Blossoms, The World of Money." The text continues
to be studied today in Japanese high schools, both in regular textbooks
and in supplementary readers. _The Merchant of Venice_ has provided
the Japanese with an image of the Jews that is even more popularly
accepted than the image appearing in the New Testament.
The third influence is an "common ancestry" theory which emerged in
1908 when a man named Saeki Yoshiro published an essay which argued that
the Japanese and the Jews shared a common heritage. He told of
Osaki shrine in the city of Kyoto, believed to have been the site where
Chinese immigrants once lived. Saeki asserted that this shrine is
really the shrine of David, where King David is revered. He concluded
that the Chinese who made their way to Japan were Jews.
Similar "common ancestry" theories continue to appear. For example,
in his 1956 book, _Research into Japanese Hebrew Songs_, Eiji
Kawamorita cited a claim that the grave of Jesus is to be found in
the village of Herai, a place name that resembles _Heburai_,
the Japanese word for "Hebrew." Most people are skeptical of such
claims, but some visit the sites out of curiosity.
The first period of Japanese-Jewish relations corresponded to
the period following World War I. The infamous antisemitic forgery,
_The Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, provided one way to rationalize
troubled times that saw the rice riots of 1918, labor unrest, and
the women's sufferage movement. Resistance from the right wing was
rampant. Numerous ultranationalist groups were formed. The failure
of Japan's Siberian Intervention (1918-1922), when Japan sent a total
of 74,000 troops into Siberia in an attempt to reverse the Russian
Revolution, also came as a shock to the nation.
Army officers stationed in Siberia brought copies of _The Protocols_
back to Japan and became the forebears of later antisemitic ideologues.
According to these ideologues, the Russian Revolution was proof
positive of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. After
the collapse of the three great imperial powers--Russia, Germany, and
Austria--and since they saw England as already Judaized to a large
extent, they warned Japan, as the last imperial power had become
the final target of the Jews.
They called the movement for women's rights, labor unrest, and
republicanism Jewish plots to disrupt domestic Japanese tranquility and
depicted Japan as facing a moral crisis. Their outlandish claims did
not go unchallenged. Leading theoreticians of democracy criticized
them. Even as Japanese intellectual life was being polluted by
antisemitic pronouncements, responsible men resisted the trend with
rational arguments.
In the early days of the hitler period, Japanese journalists were highly
critical of the nazis and their antisemitic ideology, but as Japan
itself was transformed into a facist state, it, too, began to produce
nazi-like propaganda.
At the same time, Japanese antisemites were coming into their own.
They organized a Society for the Study of International Political
Economy. The organ of this group, which published its first issues in
1936, was titled _Studies of the Secret International Powers_. In
1941, it began to publish a monthly magazine called _Jewish Studies_
and to issue a large number of antisemitic tracts called a "research
series."
Japan's antisemites welcomed the military alliance among Japan, Germany,
and Italy as an anti-Communist, anti-Jewish alliance. However, Japanese
government policy toward the Jews did not follow the German lead.
In fact, at a December, 1938 meeting of the five top ministers in
the government, the following three principles were affirmed:
--Jews living in Japan, Manchuria, and China were to be treated fairly
and in the same manner as other foreign nationals. No special efforts
to expel them were to be made.
--Jews entering Japan, Manchuria, and China were to be dealt with on
the basis of existing immigration policies pertaining to other
foreigners.
--No special efforts to attract Jews to Japan, Manchuria, or China
were to be made. However, exceptions were to be made for businessmen
and technicians with utility value for Japan.
This policy remained essentially unchanged even after the outbreak of
war with the United States. Moreover, there was no active antisemitic
movement as such among the Japanese people. Perhaps this was because
Jews did not settle in Japan. Nevertheless, even though it did not
translate into action, the idea that Jews were dangerous and a race not
to be trusted gained considerable currency in Japan.
After their defeat of 1945, it was all the Japanese could do to survive,
so intellectual speculation about the Jews was for the moment forgotten.
Until 1950, antisemitic theorizing and even the establishment of
the State of Israel attracted little attention in Japan.
(Parenthetically, even today, more than one-third of Japanese college
students do not know that Israel is a country whose population is
primarily Jewish.)
A new phase began with the discovery by the Japanese of what their
former allies--the Germans--had done during the Holocaust. Anne Frank's
_Diary of a Young Girl_ was translated and published in 1952. There is
hardly a Japanese college student who is unfamiliar with Anne Frank, and
most have read the _Diary_ as high school students. Victor Frankl's
_Man's Search for Meaning_ (1956) and Alain Resnais' 1955 film _Night
and Fog_ served to raise Japanese consciousness about the actual
situations of Jews during the war. The trial of adolf eichmann in 1961
was the natural extension of this trend and was the high point.
In addition to feeling sympathy for the Jews and what they had suffered,
the majority of Japanese came to support Israel, which they perceived as
a nation struggling to establish itself in the midst of Arab animosity.
Japanese images of the Jews were more favorable during this period than
at any other time.
Another peculiar aspect of this period was the phenomenon of former
antisemites proclaiming that they were friends of the Jews. In 1950,
one of these men, Minoru Saburo, published a book entitled _The Mystery
of the World: Japan and Israel_. The book had two themes: The first was
a version of the common ancestry theory. The second made the claim that
from the 1920s through the war years, the majority of prominment
antisemites "were in fact philo-Semites who had allowed themselves to be
carried along by the tide of domestic opinion, but who were, in fact,
motivated by an excessive sense of awe and respect for the Jews."
Starting in 1967, the images of "a strong and intolerant Israel" and
"the beleaguered Palestinian people" began to be implanted in the minds
of the Japanese and sympathies gradually shifted toward the Palestinians.
Journalists who supported the trend tended to be soft on the Palestine
Liberation Organization and hard on Israel. The Arab oil embargo of
October 1973 resulted in a pro-Arab tilt in Japanese foreign policy.
At the same time, articles claiming that Zionism was the equivalent of
antisemitism and that nazi Germany and Israel were essentially
indistinguishable were carried prominently in some of Japan's leading
magazines.
Publications promoting the Arab point of view also began appearing
around 1970. These included _The Arab Review_, _Arab Topics_ (published
by the office of the Arab League in Tokyo), _Filastine Biladi_
(published by the Palestine Liberation Organization's Tokyo office),
_Palestine Quarterly_ (published by the Palestine Communications
Committee), and _Middle East Report_ (published by the Middle East
Survey Committee, presently titled _Middle East Research_). In addition,
the weekly news magazine _Asahi Journal_ made itself a major venue for
pro-Arab opinion. The only pro-Israel publication is _Israel Monthly_,
published by the Japan-Israel Friendship Association.
A further phenomenon was the 1970 publication of _The Japanese and
the Jews_ by a Japanese author using the pseudonym Isaiah Ben-Dasan.
The book became a best-seller and boosted interest in the Jews to new
heights. A flood of best-selling books further popularized and
vulgarized this trend. Among these were _The Jewish Way of Doing
Business that Moves the World Economy_, _How the Jews and Overseas
Chinese Make Their Money_, _Thinking Like a Jew can Change your Life_,
and so on. These vulgarizations culminated most recently in three
best-selling tracts by Masami Uno: _If You Understand the Jews, You Will
Understand the World_; _If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand
Japan_ (both 1986), and _If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand
the Age We Live In (1988).
At the same time, books and magazines articles criticizing Uno were also
conspicuous and widely read. Herbert Passin's _A Jewish Conspiracy?
Don't Be Ridiculous!_ which appeared in the April, 1987 issue of _Bungei
Shunju_, and Masahiro Miyazaki's _If You Spend All Your Time Thinking
about the Jews, You Won't Understand Anything_ (1987) are examples of
attempts to counter Uno's influence.
The Japanese of the 1910s and early 1920s had no contact with Jews and
knew nothing about Judaism. Having no experience to rely on, they
developed an image of the Jews based on one-sided propaganda from abroad.
It is healthy and natural to recognize a crisis situation and react to
it. But that assumes that the crisis is real and that the response is
appropriate. In this respect, I see the warnings of a Christian peril
at the end of the Tokugawa period and the fear of a Jewish peril during
the 1910s and 1920s as examples of a healthy Japanese response to
a perceived crisis, and of an unhealthy response in the form
of ideology.
In a similar fashion, Masami Uno's books that U.S.-Japan trade friction
as a crisis situation and, by claiming that the Jews control America,
use the Jews as a tool for Uno's mini-crisis ideology.
I think it unlikely that Japanese actions will be affected by this kind
of noxious crisis ideology but there is no doubt that Japanese
intellectual life will be polluted by it and that it will lead to no
constructive end.
It is of the utmost importance that neither Japanese nor Americans
allow themselves to be exploited by these ideologies. It is essential
that they be taken to task for their irresponsibility and that
continuous efforts be made to disseminate clear and accurate information.
Masanori Miyazawa
ADL Bulletin
National Publication of the ADL
October, 1989
reprinted with permission
Article 2227 of soc.culture.jewish:
From: [email protected] (G. Levine)
Subject: Re: Japan and the Jews
Summary: A scholarly Synposium
Date: 16 Nov 89 17:58:38 GMT
Organization: AT&T CSEd/CET, Piscataway, N.J.
The National Headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League and the Japan
Society in New York City were the setting for a two-day symposium on
"Japan and the Jews: Past, Present, and Future."
Cosponsors of the international gathering of leading Japanese and Jewish
scholars were ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Maurice
Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford.
The meeting was called to explore Japanese relations with and attitudes
towards Jews. Discussions ranged from earliest contacts in the late
19th Century to the present. The conference critically examined
negative trends such as the popularity of contemporary antisemitic
literature in Japan and that country's compliance with the Arab League's
boycott of Israel.
Also considered were such positive experiences as Japanese protection of
Jewish refugee communities during World War II and the role of Jacob
Schiff, a leading American Jewish financier, in providing funding for
Japan's war against Czarist Russia in 1904-1905.
ADL Bulletin
National Publication of the ADL
October, 1989
reprinted with permission
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