Bridges

By Jeremy Hoare

Bridges: Anglo-Japanese Cultural Pioneers 1945-2015 cover interviews with ten prominent people in the field of Anglo-Japanese exchange, showing the rich culturaldiversity and interaction between professional people in the UK, Europe and Japan during the last 70 years since 1945.  Coming from diverse backgrounds, diplomats, scholars, musicia

• Language: English
• Publisher: Upfront
• Release date: Nov 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781784569785

Book preview

SIR HUGH CORTAZZI GCMG

FORMER AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN AND HISTORIAN IN ANGLO-JAPANESE RELATIONS

"I’m neither what you might call pro-Japanese nor anti-Japanese. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t attach importance to Japan, of course I do. I attach a great deal of importance to people understanding what makes Japan what it is today.

But I think we mustn’t approach this in a racial, or a nationalistic, or a prejudiced way. I’d like us to approach Japan, and to see Japan as a key factor in the world, which it is, to appreciate its good points and to see where there are problems. But don’t let us ever do so in a way which is not at least self-critical.

Sir Hugh Cortazzi GCMG

First connections with Japan

My connections with Japan go back some seventy years, because I first began the study of Japanese in the late summer of 1943 when I joined the Royal Air Force. I’d been at St Andrews University where I had begun a degree course at the age of seventeen; I was there for the best part of five terms before being called up. I’d decided to do French and German, and when I joined the RAF I suppose I was thought of as having linguistic abilities and was therefore sent on a Japanese course at SOAS. I was a willing volunteer because I thought it would be interesting and a sensible way of using my abilities during the war.

I was in India during the final months of the War, then in Singapore for the Japanese surrender, where I arrived with the Tactical Head Quarters 14th Army. I was in Singapore with the British Forces from September ’45 until June ’46. In Singapore I became involved with a few War Crimes Trials, but was mainly occupied with trying to discover the history of the Japanese air forces in South-East Asia during the war. I did some translation but I’d been trained as an interrogator, and therefore I was doing a lot of my work speaking with Japanese officers who had been members of the air services; one I remember was Lieutenant General Kinoshita, Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Air Army.

At that stage I wanted to go to Japan and saw an opportunity of joining the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF) in Japan. One element of BCOF was the British Commonwealth Air Contingent (BCAIR) with its headquarters at Iwakuni. There were three air force stations, manned by the RAF, RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) and RNZAF (Royal New Zealand Air Force). These were at Iwakuni and Bofu in Yamaguchi prefecture, and at Miho, which was in Tottori prefecture and very near to the city of Yonago.

I first visited Hiroshima in August ’46 as I was asked by the commander of the British Air Forces, Air Vice-Marshal Bouchier, to take a senior Foreign Office man to see what remained of the city. He turned out to be Robert Scott (later Sir Robert). I drove him to Hiroshima from Iwakuni in a Jeep and we saw what we could. The place was an appalling sight, nothing around the Dome; the whole mountainside seemed to be burned; it was horrific. I remember then taking him on to Miyajima, not very far away where we could enjoy one of Japan’s most famous beauty spots. Obviously we had some idea about the effects of radiation but I don’t think that we or others yet appreciated the damage it could cause. I was greatly moved by the famous book ‘Hiroshima’ by John Hershey, published by Penguin some time later, which was the first impact of Hiroshima on people. One of my friends in Japan was Mr Ueno Yutaka, who lives in Kamakura; he was in, or near, Hiroshima at the time of the bomb, and he must be nearly a hundred by now! Of course, radiation hits some people badly.

As I was a security and provost officer, I was allowed to live off the base when I was appointed to take charge of the Provost and Security Flight stationed in Yonago in January 1947. I then stayed at Kaike Onsen just outside Yamago. It was a fascinating period and I became very interested in Japan and its culture. I determined that when I eventually returned to England, which was towards the end of 1947, I would need to improve my Japanese. I’d already done a certain amount of written Japanese – although I’d been trained as an interrogator I felt that I had to know more. I could read reasonably well, but not as much as I would like, and I also felt very strongly that in order to understand Japan I needed to know more about the culture, history, religion, and so on. So I took a degree in Modern Japanese at SOAS and graduated in the summer of 1949.

Moving to Japan with the British Foreign Office

I’d applied earlier to join the Foreign Service, as it was then called, but was not able to achieve the marks required. So I re-applied in 1949 and achieved the same marking, but fortunately they hadn’t got enough candidates with the necessary marks that year and they took me in! I joined what was then the Foreign Office in October 1949, and remember working for my first three months in the South East Asia department. I was posted in January 1950 to Singapore, and served with the Commissioner General’s office for eighteen months. I was then posted to Japan, where I arrived in October 1951, and was there from ’51 to ’54.

On my first arrival in Japan I saw that the infrastructure had been practically destroyed by the air raids. Iwakuni was not exactly obliterated, but there was a lot of damage around the air base, and certainly all the industrial cities.

Attitudes towards Japan

I was fascinated by Japan but I never had any doubts about some of the cruelties of the Japanese forces. I had an uncle as well as a Dutch cousin who suffered as POWs working on the Burma-Siam railway. I was pretty well aware of what went on, also from the War Crimes Investigations in Singapore. It was not just the British and the Dutch who suffered; the people of Singapore, especially those of Chinese origin, had suffered even more, and I understood how much hostility the Japanese had aroused. So, while I was fascinated by Japanese culture, I don’t think I ever took a romantic view of all things Japanese. I’ve never been a particular fan of Lafcadio Hearn, although I admire some of his writings. There is a certain ‘Hearn-ism’ which has coloured some people’s view of Japan and perpetuated false romantic images of Japanese women, Mount Fuji, cherry blossom, and so on.

When I went back in 1951 and joined the Embassy, I found myself up against Japanese bureaucracy, and saw how maddeningly arrogant some of those Japanese bureaucrats could be. So I suppose my attitude to Japan has had its ups and downs; I hope I now take a more objective, reasonable view. I think I do because I don’t take the view that you condemn a people, or a country – you may condemn certain actions which said country has done, or said people have done, but I think you treat people as individuals. There are good, bad, and just mediocre people in every country, and so I’m neither what you might call pro-Japanese, nor anti-Japanese. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t attach importance to Japan, of course I do. I attach a great deal of importance to people understanding what makes Japan what it is today.

When we consider the behaviour of the Japanese in World War Two, we should not forget there are a number of episodes in our own history which need, as they say, jiko hansei – self-reflection. We must try to look at Japan as objectively as possible, because only by doing so can we actually understand it. We mustn’t look at other peoples and cultures in racial, nationalistic or prejudiced ways. Only if we suppress such feelings can we understand Japan properly and see Japan as a key factor in the world – which it is; to appreciate its good points and to see where there are problems. But don’t let us ever do so in a way which is not at least self-critical.

Japanese nationalism

After the War we were in Germany, from 1958 to 1960. We were in Bonn, and of course I came across ex-Nazis there. Now, I don’t want to compare – comparisons are difficult to make – but I do think that the Germans have made more effort, as Ian Buruma and others have written and pointed out, to come to terms with their past. So when I look at modern Japan, I do get worried by the extreme nationalism of certain elements. I don’t think we should exaggerate that danger, but I dislike the remarks made by Taro Aso, for instance, about the Weimar Constitution and some of the other things which Japanese nationalists have said publicly. I equally abhor official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine.

I used to walk frequently to the Yasukuni Shrine, indeed almost every day from the Embassy, because it was a good walk and I regarded it as a park. I don’t think we should necessarily object to a country having a memorial to its war dead, we have our own to our war dead, but we don’t memorialise them. You may argue that the War Crimes Trials – (IMTFE, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East) – had made mistakes. I don’t think it was entirely objective ‘world justice’ there was an element of rough justice in its methods and conclusions. It had to be seen to be done at the time. However, I don’t think there can be any doubt about the guilt of most of the people condemned by the court, although probably the condemnation of Mamoru Shigemitsu was an injustice.

That said, I abhor the attempts made by some Japanese nationalists to argue that those condemned by the tribunal were heroes. I regret greatly that the memorial at the Yasukuni only covers ex-soldiers, ex-military people. Let’s bear in mind that more Japanese died, many more died, as a result of the air raids and by what, in my view, was criminal negligence at the end of the war by the Japanese leaders – they failed to recognise that Japan was defeated, and therefore they inflicted more unnecessary suffering on their own people.

I often debate with myself about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I’m not sure that, in all the circumstances, I can condemn the decision, bearing in mind what happened in Okinawa in 1945. I would not have liked to have to go and join, as I might have had to do, an attack on Japan. If it had not been for the bombs inducing Japan at the last hour to accept the Potsdam Declaration, allied prisoners of war in Japan faced a probable massacre. The then-leaders of Japan in their refusal to face up to the inevitability of defeat with what can only be described as criminal irresponsibility inflicted on the Japanese people, avoidable suffering and destruction by adhering in cowardly fear of military extremists to a loyalty which no longer had any real meaning and was certainly immoral. By January 1945 at the very latest it was clear that Japan faced defeat and destruction but they were arrogant, blind, prejudiced and afraid of appearing ‘disloyal’. One could argue that these attitudes date back to the ethos of state Shinto and of Bushido, so-called code of the warrior.

In Basil Hall Chamberlain’s book Things Japanese, in the 6th edition, the version published in the west, there’s an article on Bushido, which describes it as an ‘invented religion’. The Japanese censors objected to this description and cut out the pages which dealt with Bushido before it could be sold in Japan. So there were two versions of the 6th edition. I’ve got copies of each edition, including the two versions of the 6th edition. The development of Japanese imperialism is a fascinating subject. Professor Beasley’s book on Japanese imperialism The Rise of Modern Japan, which I reviewed is a good book. One could argue that Japanese nationalism had its roots in much earlier times. The Unequal Treaties were one excuse, but to blame the treaties for the growth of Japanese imperialism is similar to attempts to justify the rise of Nazism by the Treaty of Versailles.

The re-editing of history goes on today. When I received the Yamagata Banto Prize in Osaka I gave a little speech in Japanese to the audience, in which I tried to look objectively at 20th century history. In the course of my speech I mentioned the Nanking Massacre. Now I have no doubt whatsoever that appalling things happened there. These facts were recognised by important Japanese as having happened. But someone like Watanabe Shoichi, denies it. Well, it’s a bit like denying the Holocaust. I don’t think anybody will ever know how many people died in Nanking, but that isn’t the point. You might just as well say there weren’t three million Jews killed in the Holocaust, it was only two and a half, or whatever…

One could go on discussing this, it’s an on-going subject, but I think it does emphasise the importance of our attempting to understand the way in which modern Japan developed. We can’t ever justify cruelty, but we can understand how it occurred. But this doesn’t actually alter the fact that we need to balance the evil against the good. The good are the positive things, and there are many. I have great admiration for Japanese art, Japanese culture, literature, and I believe that we should understand more about them. The war is an important issue, but it isn’t the totality – our relationship with Japan is a much broader one, and must be so.

Importance of Japanese studies

I’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to work for the expansion of Japanese studies. I don’t want to put in too much of the ‘I’, but when I was Ambassador and I heard from Carmen Blacker that there was a real danger that Japanese studies at Cambridge would end, I did my best. I managed to put a piece into the Rondan (London) column of the Asahi Shimbun about the dangers and problems, and talked to Mr Hiraiwa of the Keidanren. Probably if I hadn’t done that it is possible that the Keidanren would not have come up with the money, which enabled the Chair of Japanese to be established at Cambridge, and the further development of Japanese studies at the University. I also supported the establishment of the Parker Committee in 1984/85. Peter Parker was an old friend. We had had a number of different reports covering Japanese studies; there was the Scarborough Commission at the end of the war, then the Hayter Report, then the Dainton Committee and the Parker Report. All these have helped but the future of Japanese studies in the UK is not secure. It isn’t just a question of language. One of the basic problems is that we don’t have a sufficient corpus of Japanese specialists and we don’t have enough young British scholars doing Japanese, taking the PhDs. As a result, appointments in Japanese studies are more and more likely to go to foreigners. One issue for young people interested in Japan is what career it will lead to. Some may go into business or banking. In the 1960s, when I was commercial counsellor in the British Embassy in Japan, there were practically no British businessmen who spoke any Japanese at all. It is somewhat different today, but British business leaders are inclined to say, Everyone speaks English these days; we don’t want to recruit linguists; we want people with business experience. Another problem which lies in the university system is that of over-specialisation. If you’re a historian, you tend to specialise in an ever-narrower period or aspect.

Modern Japanese Scholarship

This was the problem when I was asked to write a book on Japanese civilization for Sidgwick & Jackson’s series Great Civilizations of the World. I didn’t feel that I was necessarily the right person to do it because I was not an acknowledged scholar, I was an amateur. But there was nobody else who was prepared to take it on. I had an exchange of letters with Donald Keene. I’d just done a review of his latest book and I sent it to Donald, because he has always sent me his books; he’s a year or two older than me, and we’ve known one another for many, many years. He said to me, Thank you for your review, I suspect that no-one else will, there won’t be another review. Which I think is depressing. I’m regarded by some Japanese scholars as a ‘populariser’. Donald Keene, who is to my mind, the outstanding living Western scholar on Japan, and there are some very good ones, writes for the general reader as well as for specialists.

You know, it’s the