SDHF Newsletter No.67 Open letter to Ambassador Kennedy by OGAWA Eitaro

0pen letter to Ambassador Kennedy by OGAWA Eitaro
Over the Issue of Yasukuni and “Suicide Attack” as Described by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

April 16, 2014

Mr. OGAWA Eitaro, well-known writer for his best-seller book Day of Promise—Preliminary Essay on Abe Shinzo (Gento-sha Library), wrote an essay “A Letter to Madam Ambassador Kennedy: Over the Issue of Yasukuni and the “suicide attack” Described by Your Cousin –There Are Several Things I Would Like to Convey, As A Japanese, to Madam Ambassador, Who Recognizes the Importance of Honestly Discussing Diverse Points of View,” for a leading political monthly magazine Seiron’s April, 2014 issue.
He explains the reason why Prime Minister Abe paid a visit to Yasukuni from a historical and cultural background, referring to the Japan-America War of the past. In this context he touches on the book entitled Danger’s Hour, written by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, Ambassador Kennedy’s cousin. He greatly appreciates Mr. Kennedy’s fair evaluation of the Kamikaze suicide attack pilots in the book. Even though fair in this regard, Mr. OGAWA finds a lot of serious misunderstands regarding Japan and the Japanese in the book. Here is one example.
Mr. Kennedy writes “Their fundamental precepts stressed ultimate loyalty and ideal fealty throughout the lives of every citizen. Ogawa and his fellow college students had known no other type of regime.” This is far from the truth. Mr. OGAWA notes that many of the Japanese youths were in fact highly literate, at a rate that was one of the highest in the world at that time. It was usual practice for sons and daughters of poverty-stricken peasants to read difficult novels and philosophical books in Pre-War Japan. In the 1930’s, a Japanese scholar of French literature named Kuwabara Takeo went to see Alain. Kuwabara told Alain that 100,000 copies of the pocket-book edition of The Red and the Black by Stendhal were sold in Japan. Alain, in disbelief, said to him, “It’s unbelievable. Here in France, Stendhal is read only by several thousand readers.” But the former number was no exaggeration.
Mr. OGAWA does not fault Kennedy’s lack of knowledge but blames the Japanese for not having done enough to explain Japan to Western people. Thus, he emphasizes that in order to have Western people understand Japan, we Japanese should exert more effort in this regard.
With Ambassador Kennedy’s appreciation and understanding of the nature of this letter, I believe that the open letter to Ambassador Kennedy will lead to a new horizon of mutual understanding between Japanese and Americans.

Full text:　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/111_S4.pdf
Author profile:　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/111_S3.pdf

Sincerely,

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Secretary General
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact