Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

I've heard from one Japanese student living in Shanghai that those who participated in the demonstration march were small portion of Chinese. China has a big population. Even 20,000 demonstrators is not big scale.

It is said Chinese government is using anti-Japan sentiment to distract people's attention from failures of the government's economic policy that created wider gap between the rich and the poor.

But yes there are problems on our side which provoked such riots.

One is Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine that enshrined A-class war criminals of WWII. A-class war criminals were political leaders of that time including PM Tojo who ordered to attack Pearl Harbor. They are the invaders for Chinese but heroes or victims for Japanese right wingers. Koizumi and ruling party is backed up by such right wingers. The right wingers claim Tokyo tribunal that convicted A-class war criminals was unfair because the judges there were all from victors' countries. Also they claim Japan's war in China and against US was just war.

The other reason is related to the right wingers' interpretation of the history between China and Japan. They believe Japan is always right. They believe we should deny any unfavourble facts in our history such as atrocities in Nanjing, 1937. They've been campaigning to delete such facts from textbooks with politicians.

As a result, this year's newly published textbooks reduced such facts telling from previous edition.

This is outrageous. The right wingers believe it is good for our country. No. They are wrong. They are just embrassing our country.

As for A-class war criminals, I agree with their claim of unfairness of the court at that time, but we have to be aware of their responsibilities of the wrong corrupt war.

The below picture is taken in Nanjing (Nanking) last September. I was at the grave of victims of Nanking Masscre. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were brutally murdered by Japanese army.

I do not support the riots but I understand the anger of Chinese people.

I am now just back from China. I visited Beijing and its neighboring cities.

Beijing was beautiful. I visited Forbidden city where last emperor lived, The great wall that was built thousands of years ago. I saw cute pandas.

Chinese people were so kind to me. I could never imagine in the past the two nations fought each other.

What was surprising to me is although China is known as communist nation, there were many capitalistic American things in the city. I saw KFC, McDonald, and HBO.

Dear Bloggers,

Thanks for reading my posts!

I am flying to China for a few weeks. I might not be able to add any post until I come back home.

I might be able to add a post from China.

Anyway, I'll be reporting my trip to China to you. Please look forward to reading new stories.

The attached picture is Southern China's biggest city, Shanghai, where I went last time.

This time I am visiting Beijing and neighboring cities.

Do you know Robert S. McNamara?

This is the documentary film based on the interview recently conducted with of Robert McNamara who was Secretary of Defense during Kennedy and Johnson administration. He is now nearly 90 years old.

He is also important for Japanese history.

Exactly 60 years of today, the city I live, which is the capital of Japan, Tokyo was bombed by US air force. 100,000 civilians including children were killed by B-29 airplanes over one night. At that time, Mr. McNamara was under the command of Colonel LeMay, who directed the bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945. McNamara was part of this bombing project as a statistical analyst.

He seemed regretted what he did. He also mentioned his supervisor LeMay said if the US lost the war, he would have been convicted as war criminal.
Then, McNamara said “Can we get away with this immorality because we won the war?”

Again, I wouldn’t want to blame him for what the US army has done to our country. Yes, US has done too much for its objective. But Japan started the war by bombing Pearl Harbor and we’ve done as brutal things in China as Hiroshima and Tokyo.

There are many other important messages in this film. I recommend you to see it.