Dilip Simeon's blog

As a child, Wishma Rathnayake was fascinated with "Oshin," a popular 1980s' television drama about a young girl who rises from poverty to head a Japanese supermarket chain. Urged by her father to emulate her hero, Rathnayake started learning Japanese with a dream of one day moving to Japan from the small Sri Lankan town of Gampaha, northeast of Colombo. When her father died, the university graduate convinced her mother she could earn enough money working abroad as an English teacher to fund her retirement. The family remortgaged their home, and in 2017, Rathnayake moved to Narita, on the outskirts of Tokyo, on a student visa. Within three years, she was dead. After overstaying her visa, Rathnayake was detained in Japan's immigration system, where she died on March 6, 2021, at the age of 33. Rathnayake's case made headlines in Japan and fueled debate over the treatment of foreigners in the country, where 27 immigration detainees have died since 1997, according to...

Jacques Pauwels: Mythmaking and the Atomic Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki     Truman and his advisors thus fell under the spell of what the renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a “vision of omnipotence”. They convinced themselves that the new weapon would enable them to force their will on the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb was “a hammer”, as Truman himself put it, that he would wave over the heads of “those boys in the Kremlin”...  More Henry Giroux: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Age of Normalized Violence What remains particularly ghastly about the rationale for dropping two atomic bombs was the attempt on the part of its defenders to construct a redemptive narrative through a perversion of humanistic commitment, of mass slaughter justified in the name of saving lives and winning the war...  More Abolish War - Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955 Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction Capitalism and war: The money behi...

Leave Truth to the police and us; we know the Good;   We build the Perfect City time shall never alter;    Our Law shall guard you always like a cirque of mountains... (p 266)    But ideas can be true although men die,   And we can watch a thousand faces    Made active by one lie:   And maps can really point to places     Where life is evil now:  Nanking; Dachau. (p 253)      From W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood; Journey To A War (1939)     When we awoke early next morning the train was crossing a wide valley of paddy fields. The rising sun struck its beams across the surfaces of innumerable miniature lakes; in the middle distance farmhouses seemed actually to be floating on water. Here and there a low mound rose a few feet above the level of the plain, with a weed-grown, ruinous pagoda, standing upon it, visible for miles around. Peasants with water-buffaloes were industrious...

"If  we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” So said  Curtis LeMay  after America obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs in August 1945. LeMay was no bleeding-heart liberal. The US air force chief of staff who had directed the assault over Japan in the final days of the Second World War, he believed in the use of nuclear weapons and thought any action acceptable in the pursuit of victory. Two decades later, he would say of Vietnam that America should “bomb them back into the stone ages”. But he was also honest enough to recognise that the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not regarded as a war crime only because America had won the war. Last week marked the  75th anniversary  of the world’s first nuclear attacks. And while Hiroshima has become a byword for existential horror, the moral implications of the bombings have increasingly faded into the background. Seventy-five years ago, LeMay was not alone...

As they mark 75 years since their cities were destroyed in an instant, the ageing men and women who bore witness to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are struggling to remind the world of the horror of  nuclear weapons . Keiko Ogura was eight years old when the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, dropped a 16-kilotonne nuclear bomb on  Hiroshima  at 8.15 am on 6 August 1945. An estimated 80,000 of the city’s 350,000 people were killed instantly; by the end of the year, the death toll would rise to 140,000 as survivors succumbed to injuries or illnesses connected to their exposure to radiation. Ogura, who was playing outside her home when the force of the blast swept her off her feet and knocked her unconscious, is one of a  dwindling number of survivors  who have made it their life’s work to tell their story. They hope, with  increasing desperation , for a world without nuclear weapons. “My father had said that something didn’t feel right that mo...

As this troubled summer rolls along, and the world begins to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the creation, and use, of the first atomic bombs, many special, or especially tragic, days will draw special attention.  They will include July 16 (first test of the weapon in New Mexico), August 6 (bomb dropped over Hiroshima) and August 9 (over Nagasaki).   Surely far fewer in the media and elsewhere will mark another key date:  July 3. On July 3, 1945, the great atomic scientist Leo Szilard finished a letter/petition that would become the strongest (virtually the only) real attempt at halting President Truman’s march to using the atomic bomb - still almost two weeks from its first test at Trinity–against Japanese cities. AbolishWar - Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955 Dear xxxxxxxxxxxx, Enclosed is the text of a petition which will be submitted to the President of the United States. As you will see, this petition is based on purely moral considerations....

Unit 731 Museum   UNIT 731 was a covert  biological and chemical warfare research and development wing of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. Commanded by General Shiro Ishii, an officer in the Kwantung Army, the exact number of men, women, and children who died within its walls remain unknown, but conservative estimates place it around the several thousand mark.  In the decades since, what has come to be understood is that every single one of Unit 731’s prisoners of war – the vast majority of whom were Chinese – died while being held at this camp in Pingfang, just outside the city of Harbin. Almost all these deaths were in horrific fashion. Prisoners were alternately infected or bombarded with the plague, anthrax, and other highly infectious diseases. They were then vivisected without anesthetic so that military scientists cou...

Even Abe’s friends in the media can’t ignore this,” says Isoko Mochizuki over lunch in between interviews and chasing down the day’s most important political story – a scandal involving accusations that Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, used a taxpayer-funded cherry blossom viewing party to reward political supporters. “I think the prime minister’s office is quite concerned.”  For Mochizuki, a reporter on a left-leaning newspaper covering a conservative government likely to remain in power for some time, sakura-gate is her latest opportunity to make life uncomfortable for Abe and his colleagues. Her combative approach has won her admiration from readers and disdain, bordering on open contempt, from the country’s leadership. It has also earned her a starring role in a recently released film i: Documentary of the Journalist, which follows the Tokyo Shimbun reporter as she travels the length of the country in pursuit of some of the the biggest domestic stories of recent times. D...

In 1931, on his way to the London Round Table Conference, Mahatma Gandhi was asked by a Reuters correspondent what his program was.  He responded by writing out a brief, vivid sketch of “the India of my dreams”.  Such an India, he said, would be free, would belong to all its people, would have no high and low classes, no discrimination against women, no intoxicants and, “the smallest army imaginable.” The last phrase presents a puzzle:  What is the smallest military imaginable?  But the fact that it presents a puzzle is also puzzling.  For what is so unimaginable about no military at all?  The question is not rhetorical, for most people do find the no-military option unimaginable.  It is easy enough to pray for peace, to petition and demonstrate for peace, or to imagine oneself as a perfectly pacifist non-killer.  It is harder to imagine a state with no military. One of the few places where this option is clearly and forcefully stated is in A...

Prime Minister Abe and his political base are members of a Shinto cult and political lobby,  Nippon Kaigi , which believes that Japan must shed the shackles of a “U.S. imposed” democratic constitution, popular sovereignty, basic human rights, pacifism, and gender equality. Abe and most of his cabinet members believe that the Japanese people are divine descendants of the gods, World War II was justified, and that emperor worship should be restored. The name of Japan’s new imperial era,  Reiwa , was announced on April Fools’ Day with great fanfare and a great big linguistic lie. The official government party line is that it translates as “Beautiful Harmony,” but what it means literally is more Orwellian: “Commanded Peace.” Of course, a certain portion of the Japanese population realizes that the explanation given for the new imperial name is not the truth, but they probably were not surprised. Japan has grown numb to the deceptions and lies of its elected rulers. As o...

Japan’s emperor has marked his last birthday before his abdication next year by calling for his country’s younger generations to be taught accurately about the horrors of war and expressing relief that his reign has been a peaceful one for  Japan . A record 82,850 people cheered and waved Japanese  hinomaru  flags as Emperor Akihito, who turned 85 on Sunday, appeared on the balcony of the imperial palace in Tokyo with Empress Michiko, his eldest son and heir Crown Prince Naruhito and other members of his family. Naruhito, 58, will ascend to the Chrysanthemum throne on 1 May, the day after his father, who has had heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, becomes  the first Japanese emperor to abdicate in 200 years . The last was Emperor Kōkaku in 1817. Akihito returned to the legacy of the second world war in his pre-recorded speech, a subject that has helped define his 30-year reign, known as  heisei , or achieving peace. “It is important not to fo...

Two tiny robots have landed safely on an  asteroid  after a Japanese spacecraft  dropped them there on Friday . The scientists behind the historic mission expressed their delight as the rovers sent back the first images from the surface of the space rock Ryugu. Dubbed MINERVA-II1, the robotic explorers are the first of their kind to be successfully landed on an asteroid. The Japanese space agency JAXA announced that both units were operational after a period of silence between the unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa-2 depositing them and connection being established with the team on Earth. “I cannot find words to express how happy I am that we were able to realise mobile exploration on the surface of an asteroid,” said Hayabusa-2 project manager Dr Yuichi Tsuda. The rovers will use the low gravity conditions on Ryugu to hop across the asteroid’s surface, measuring temperatures and sending images back to Earth via Hayabusa-2... read more: https://www.independe...

The UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression has accused Japan of eroding media freedoms and stifling public debate of issues such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the country’s actions during the second world war. In a report submitted to the UN human rights council, David Kaye said he had identified “significant worrying signals” about Japan’s record on freedom of expression. His investigation – the first into freedom of the press in Japan – was prompted by concern over mounting government pressure on the country’s media. Critics have cited the domestic media’s delay in reporting that the March 2011 accident at Fukushima had caused a nuclear meltdown – a decision believed to reflect official attempts to play down the severity of the disaster. In 2014, the Asahi Shimbun, under pressure from the administration of the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, retracted an article claiming 650 workers had fled the Fukushima Daiichi plant soon after the disaster, defying an order by its ...

An amateur historian has unearthed compelling evidence that the first Australian maritime foray into Japanese waters was by convict pirates on an audacious escape from Tasmania almost two centuries ago. Fresh translations of samurai accounts of a “barbarian” ship in 1830 give startling corroboration to a story modern scholars had long dismissed as convict fantasy: that a ragtag crew of criminals encountered a forbidden  Japan  at the height of its feudal isolation. The brig Cyprus was hijacked by convicts bound from Hobart to Macquarie Harbour in 1829, in a mutiny that took them all the way to China. Its maverick skipper was William Swallow, a onetime British cargo ship apprentice and naval conscript in the Napoleonic wars, who in a piracy trial in London the following year told of a samurai cannonball in Japan knocking a telescope from his hand. Swallow’s fellow mutineers, two of whom were the last men hanged for piracy in Britain, backed his account of having been...

LONDON:  A classified 60-year-old Japanese government document on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's death made public today concludes that the legendary freedom fighter died in a plane crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945, backing the official version. Bosefiles.info, a UK website set up to document evidence on the circumstances surrounding Netaji's death, today said this is the first time the report titled 'Investigation on the cause of death and other matters of the late Subhas Chandra Bose' has been made public because it remained classified by Japanese authorities and was kept a secret by the Indian government. "The report was completed in January 1956 and submitted to the Indian embassy in Tokyo, but since it was a classified document, neither side released it," the website says. The seven-page report in Japanese and a 10-page translation in English reaches the conclusion that Netaji met with an air crash on 18 August, 1945 and died at a Taipei hospital the...

NB: The paragraphs on 'national religion', highlighted in the first-person account below, are particularly significant for the argument that fascism is a form of right-wing atheism - especially given the contemporary emergence of the Nation as a substitute for God:  DS The Tripartite Pact linking Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan was signed in Berlin on September 27, 1940. Less than two months after the pact was signed, a six-member delegation of Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) arrived in Japan. This was actually the second Hitler Jugend delegation to visit Japan, a much larger delegation having first visited in the fall of 1938. In honor of the first delegation's visit, a song was composed entitled Banzai Hitorā Jūgento (Long Live Hitler Youth!). A recording of this song together with photographs highlighting the activities of both the first and second delegations in Japan is embedded below. Members of the second delegation traveled to Daihonzan Eiheiji f...

The deal must be opposed as it unleashes horror on the farmers and fisherfolk of Jaitapur, Mithi Virdi and Kovvada, pushes a disastrous nuclear expansion in India, shreds Japan's long-standing stance on nuclear disarmament and intensifies arms race in Asia. This Sunday, 13 villages of Jaitapur have passed a  unanimous resolution  against the world's largest nuclear power park that Areva is constructing in their area. They have announced that on 12 December they will organise a 'jail bharo' (voluntary arrest) movement to oppose Mr. Abe's visit. Villagers in Jaitapur came out in thousands last year too when Mr. Abe came to India. The resolution adopted is attached here. December 3 would mark the 31st anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy, where the victims are still struggling for justice, decontamination and adequate compensation. They will also issue a statement on the occasion opposing the India-Japan nuclear agreement, as India cannot afford a nuclear Bhop...

The Abe administration is directing the abolition of humanities and social sciences at National Universities in Japan. Although the new Japanese secrecy laws, encouragement of international arms sales, promotion of international roles for Japanese military, the ianfu problems, and history issues have been getting most of the attention from the international press, equally important moves against aspects of Japanese universities have been little noted.  Earlier this year Abe issued a directive that stripped faculty and faculty committees of any decision making powers. By this directive the Presidents of all universities, both public and private, have been given absolute decision making powers with any faculty input being strictly advisory.  This was followed on June 8th of 2015 by the minister of education appointed by Abe directing the national university to abolish their undergraduate departments and graduate school programs in the humanities and the social scien...