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Emily Parker: Who Will Tell the Story of Japan?

... There are other reasons why some in Japan would be wary of [novelist Haruki Murakami]. The writer ventures where many Japanese fear to tread: exploring the nation's notorious World War II misadventures in Asia, a taboo subject in Japan and a continuous thorn in relations with neighboring China and South Korea. Mr. Murakami's widely acclaimed "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," published in the U.S. in 1997, contains long, gruesome interpretations of the past.

In his book "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche," Mr. Murakami describes preparing to write "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle": "I did in-depth research into the so-called 1939 Nomonhan Incident, an aggressive incursion by Japanese forces into Mongolia. The more I delved into the records, the more aghast I became at the recklessness, the sheer lunacy of the Imperial Army's system of command. How had this pointless tragedy gone so wantonly overlooked in the course of history?" Nothing was learned from these mistakes, Mr. Murakami laments. "Two years later, Japan entered World War II, and the same insanity and tragedy that happened at Nomonhan was repeated all over again on a massive scale."

Yet while the historical sections of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" riveted the attention of readers overseas, Mr. Murakami tells me that in Japan they got almost no reaction at all. The historical passages were even critically dismissed as "kazari," or decoration.

This all fits into a larger, peculiar pattern of historical amnesia, which is easily caricatured or misunderstood. Japan is undoubtedly a free country, and China's strident complaints about whitewashed Japanese history textbooks can sound tiresome, considering Beijing's own state-sponsored censorship and carefully tailored historical accounts. Japan's problem isn't censorship per se. According to Mr. Murakami, all the information is there, it's just not being taught. Educators don't want to take responsibility for opening up a Pandora's Box. "Teachers are afraid of criticism from the parents or administration," he says. Mr. Murakami describes his own experience in high school. The problem was not omissions in the textbook. Instead, history was abruptly cut off around 1925, when class time was up for the year. At which point the teacher told the class: Please read the remainder on your own. Mr. Murakami says that such high-school experiences were not at all uncommon.

Japan is often criticized by China and Korea for shirking responsibility for its wartime behavior, in particular the brutal Nanking Massacre. Mr. Murakami draws a sharp contrast between Japanese and German postwar repentance, offering his own explanation: "In Germany, the Nazi Party was elected more or less . . . but in Japan, the emperor system was not a democratic system. So German people think they are kind of responsible . . . but we Japanese don't think we are responsible for the war, because the system was evil and wrong."

Of course, one could argue that a war that ended some 60 years ago has nothing to do with Mr. Murakami's readers, many of whom are in their 20s and 30s. So why does history matter so much to this writer? "If we don't learn from the past, we might repeat it in the future . . . many people are remaking the facts," he says. Furthermore, Japan's avoidance of history only exacerbates the yawning gulf that separates it from its neighbors. "Koreans and Chinese are still accusing us: You did evil things during the wartime. So those facts are still alive and kicking in them. They are very conscious about history. But we are not. There is a big difference between us and them."

Perhaps most important, today's Japan may be particularly ripe for revisionism. ...
Read entire article at WSJ