The world has finally found a face worthy of the Japanese who have led the world.

The following is from Masayuki Takayama's latest book, "Henkenjizai: Who Buried Shinzo Abe?
This book is the latest in a series of bound editions of his famous columns in weekly Shincho, but the original text has been polished to make it even easier to read.
He deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature for this one book alone.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people worldwide.

The World Finally Finds a Japanese Face　
I was on a plane bound for Tehran when the Japan Airlines plane crashed at Mount Osutaka.　
It was still in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war, and I was to be stationed there as a war correspondent.　
When I arrived, I first visited a bazaar.　
I went there to buy pots, pans, and shampoo, but I was shocked at how bad the smell was.　
First of all, the fragrance was terrible.
Food, clothing, and everything else smelled of saffron and cloves.　
The body odor of Iranians was also strong.
Even my assistant, who said he was a clean man, only bathed once every two weeks, so his body smelled as bad as a sock on the third day.　
And then there was the smell of gunpowder smoke.
Every night, Iraqi planes fly in and drop bombs.
Last night, a 250-kilogram bomb fell near here.　
When I was fed up with the smell, the vendor said, "Shoma, shine, korie.
He meant, "Are you Chinese or Korean?
I answered, "Naa, japone. I said I was Japanese.
Everyone around me looked at me in surprise.　
The assistant told us the reason for their surprise with a look of reverence.　
It goes back to the days of Emperor Pahlavi when he was a crown prince.
A Japanese plane had flown all the way to Iran to celebrate his wedding to Princess Fawzi of Egypt.　
At the time, Iran was threatened by Britain and the Soviet Union, and in fact, the following year, Iran was divided and occupied.　
It was then that the Japanese plane arrived.
Iran had beaten the Soviet Union and Russia in the past and was still doing its best to remain unyielding to the white powers.　
The king asked the Japanese plane to join the celebratory flight, and its heroic figure remained in many people's memories.　
Then the war broke out.
A Type 96 land attack plane, the same model as that Japanese aircraft, sank the British battleship Prince of Wales.　
The Iranian people again remembered the image of the Japanese plane participating in the celebratory flight.　
After the war, Emperor Pahlavi said "Japan in the west of Asia" as a guideline for industrialization.　
The word "Japanese" may have reminded him of such an old story, but the image of the small, thinly bearded Asian man before him did not seem to fit.　
Something similar happened when I went to Chaykhana on the outskirts of Syria.　
When I told them I was Japanese, they stuck out their chin and clicked their tongues.
In a gesture of outright denial, they said, "You are not Japanese.　
In their collective opinion, Japan is an industrialized nation located near the American continent and is associated with the image of a "big white guy.　
The roots of such an impression go back to the days of the Russo-Japanese War.　
Gertrude Bell, a Middle East researcher and Churchill's trusted advisor, wrote in "Travels Across Syria" that "at night, Bedouin youths taking care of the packs would gather and talk passionately about the Russo-Japanese War that was now being fought.　
In the Muslim world, where pilgrims to Mecca come and go, information travels faster than expected.　
When Ms. Bell joined the group of young men and told them that she had visited Japan twice, including in 1903 on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, they asked her many questions about Japan.　
She said, "They couldn't imagine what I looked like, but they seemed to have created on their own an image of the Japanese as intelligent, strong, and with a strong sense of justice.　
During British Burma, Tan Tat, a professor emeritus at Rangoon University, saw a documentary about the Russo-Japanese War and said, "The Japanese people looked like huge giants."　
That is why he was surprised at the small size of the Japanese troops that entered Burma in the last war.　
The Japanese defeated the Russians.
They invented gunpowder to burn steel battleships and created the world's most potent fighter plane.　
Not only were they strong, but they also preached racial equality and solved the plague that afflicted humankind.
They invented integrated circuits, miniaturized diesel, and quartz, and made the world richer.　
The Japanese have always been very successful.
Surprisingly, little is known about what these Japanese look like.　
When former Prime Minister Abe fell, his face was projected on the wall of a building in Abadan.
Time magazine put the same face on its cover, and the Taliban sent their condolences after seeing it.　
The world has finally found a face worthy of the Japanese who have led the world.
(August 25, 2022 issue)

2024/1/11 in Kyoto