![]() ![]() I still remember what many Japanese in their twenties replied to the question ‘What is happiness?’ They said it was having a car, a television and a washing-machine like the Americans. After a period of misery and deprivation the Japanese started to find satisfaction in material rather than spiritual things. Once we lost the tradition of respecting our forebears, a more egoistical society developed. Since Buddhism does not teach moral values in the same way as Christianity does, before the outbreak of war Japanese society benefited from the moral certitudes that centred on the family in a society that highly regarded its ancestors. ![]() This may sound strange to Europeans, but altruism has a tendency to dissipate as family bonds and respect for one’s elders diminish. Respect for ancestors and age-old family tradition ebbed away. This is significant when considering the post-war development of the country. In confusing traditional ways with the dire consequences of latter-day feudalism and martial aggression, Japan’s population jettisoned customs going back centuries, and consequently much of value was lost in the decades that followed. Nevertheless, although we revelled in our newfound freedom of expression, I can’t help feeling that we lost something crucial to our national identity. I imagine the people of the former communist countries of Western Europe have been appreciating the same sense of liberation since the recent fall of the Berlin Wall. I was still at university but enjoying freedom of speech and religion for the first time in my life. Japan in the post-war period was impoverished and frequently short of food. The Japanese people recognized the contradiction that something human intelligence had created could send humankind to hell. We learnt the cruelty of warfare from the depth of our being through the mercilessly destructive force of the atom bomb. This catastrophic event taught us a number of lessons, the most important of which was the cruelty and suffering war can cause. Our nation was defeated after the ultimate weapon, the atom bomb, was dropped on two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the USA. Many wrote, ‘I am fighting to protect my mother and my sisters.’ They were not fighting for their country. It is clear from the journals of the youth forced into military service, including those who would end up as kamikaze pilots, that they did not support Japan’s cause. In truth we could hardly love a homeland that had become politically so aggressive and so insular. When I read the letters and journals written by those young men who, as conscripts, waged war at the front I find that they expressed the same grave doubts about the morality of warfare as I felt during those years, and I feel an ineffable sadness at this discovery. These days I realize that many of my fellow students felt the same way as me. For me Japan had become hostile, a nation from which I felt apart, and I was in a permanent state of anxiety wondering how to prepare myself for the day I would have to fight for my country. ![]() Although I was never physically attacked, I spent much of my time at university feeling despised for my religion. I received Christian baptism as a young boy, and people regarded me as a Japanese attached to a faith from an alien world. Thus we were compelled to exist in a permanent state of unease throughout the course of the Second World War. The reason for its leaders’ bellicosity was never made clear to its citizens, and we were kept in the dark as to the true nature of our enemies, the democracies of the West. Around the time I went to university it was at war with the USA and other nations of the world. By the time I had started at junior high school Japan was waging war on China. Within a few years there was economic depression, and gradually the country was taken over by military rule. The massive earthquake was a turning point in Japan’s fortunes. That year there was a major earthquake in my birthplace, Tokyo, and half the city was burnt down, although I have no memory of this cataclysmic event. In 1923 I was born in Japan, a country regarded as an island nation by Europe. ![]()
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