Shintoism is the Japanese official religion. The Japanese emperor is their god on earth.
Under that innocent smile that radiates and spreads on Japanese faces, lies a steely disposition.
This manifested in historical time in Nanjing in 1893 and at Pearl Harbour, during the Second World War.
When an illogical ideology grips the ruling clique in any state, bizarre occurrences take place. For example, Nazism in Germany, McCarthy and Ku Klux clan ideology in America, racism in the world, war as an instrument of national policy, Muslim/Christian divide.
Irrationality, mindless violence, degradation of human values take place in satanic proportions.
Shinzo Abe’s second term has been successful so far and this could kindle in any politician personal pride.
Abe talks less and thinks more. So, I do not accept his plea that he did not mean to offend Chinese and South Koreans, who are still deeply afflicted by pains inflicted on their people by Japanese militarism. He did.
Japan has put out elaborate military and economic programmes that could lead it to nullify its treaty obligations and revert to militarism.
“ A tiger they say, never changes its spots.” Japan has formidable ecological, environmental and tight space problems that need full attention.
Haggling over out-of-the-way islands, showing military muscle is hardly what the men and women in Tokyo, Okinawa and Fukushima need now.
Leaking nuclear plants pose more formidable national problems that grand-standing in the South China Sea and in the Pacific region.
In Shanghai, an elderly Chinese lady joked during our seminar on Sino-Japanese studies that China needs to send five hundred million Chinese to stand and stamp their feet on Tokyo and the Island would sink.
When I visited Nanjing in 2007, I was shocked during the excursion that took us to bombed areas of Nanjing, during the massacre! I was shocked by man’s inhumanity to man.
With this backdrop, it is understandable that Chinese feel deeply hurt by Shinzo Abe’s pouring salt on festering old wounds.
I had reviewed royalists and anti-royalist theories which pushed Emperor Hirohito to reckless militarism in Russia. I applaud the peaceful reign of Emperor Akihito. Long may he reign!
He should rein in Shinzo Abe’s geo-political eccentricities, buoyed by his apparent economic success.
The long standing belief in the divinity of civil authority had made it difficult for Japanese kings to push any military agenda since 1945. May limited royal power continue to be.
Japanese should bow to Jesus Christ and not to Shinto shrines, AMEN !!!
