There's been a lot on telly this week about Hiroshima, being the anniversary of the dropping of infamous Little Boy. I don't understand the vast majority of the commentary that goes with the vision, but the images themselves often convey a lot. On one channel you see smoking battleships listing in Pearl Harbor and on another, an old man recounting his story. You see Prime Minister Koizumi visiting Yasukuni Jinja, the shrine where class 1 war criminals are enshrined... and then images of protesting youths in China, cursing Japan for the blood it shed. I saw one show where a Japanese reporter went to visit the relatives of U.S. servicemen and asked them about their experience - thankfully for me it wasn't dubbed, as is often the case - they just had subtitles, so I could listen and follow!
In this land where so much is unsaid and, I suspect, untaught, it is strange, but heartening to see all this discussion and depiction of the war. I might be naive not knowing 95% of what is being said, but that's my impression. My friend Hiroshi-san said that he heard one of the pilots of the Enola Gay ( the B-29 Superfortress that delivered the bomb) say, when questioned on how he comes to terms with what he did: "Remember Pearl Harbor". Hiroshi said "I can understand that. Saying that to the people of Hiroshima though, I cannot. I can't understand that." I don't think I've ever seen Hiroshi that earnest before.
From the cute adventures of Astroboy, the little nuclear-powered hero, to Godzilla's dual role of menace/saviour, to Akira's post-apocalyptic NeoTokyo (realising what never happened in WWII - the threatened nuclear bombing of Tokyo that the Emperor feared...well he might have - he lived there)... the holocaust of Hiroshima has left an indelible mark on Japan's psyche. Having been to both Yasukuni shrine, it's museum and the Hiroshima peace memorial and its museum, I can see that there are differing feelings about Japan's role in the war and about war in general. In the approach to Yasukuni is an imposing column topped by a figure of the guy who brought about the modernising of Japan's military in the Meiji Restoration - replacing disjointed groups of samurai with a conscripted, offensive and mechanised army - ready to make war with Russia and China. The yakuza-linked uyoku far-right groups make sure you've got the idea by doing laps around the block in shiny black vans and trucks bearing the gold chrysanthemum of the Emperor, blaring nationalistic anthems and propagangda through loudspeakers. I've seen one of these trucks once at Sanda station. That's one sentiment...
Then I was very impressed by the museum in Hiroshima - it presented a very balanced view of things. It didn't cry "victim!" - it squared up to the fact that Hiroshima was, apart from being a city, a military base - from which troops that ended up in Nanking/Nanjing were despatched. It looks beyond nationalism and just laments war in general - but as a start makes a strong plea to stop nuclear proliferation and to reverse it.
From the sweeping scale of all that to the domestic stuff that usually occupies the news bulletins here - tales of corporate scandal, negligence, child abduction, child murder... the human heart remains the problem, right? Whether the weapon is a harsh word, the desire to dominate another, the shape of a blade or the size of a warhead.
Sorry to soap box - I'm just reading the account of a Jewish guy who escaped Auschwitz, so it's probably not great timing! But yeah, I'm convinced more than ever that humanists have their heads in the sand. We need fixing! I do anyway... Come Lord Jesus

Night