Anti-Semitism in Japan With only about 2,000 Jews living in Japan, the Japanese have little firsthand experience in relating to Jewish people and culture. There have been, however, numerous books and magazine articles published in Japan about the Japanese and the Jews, or Nihonjin and Yudayajin. These writings have increasingly, within the last decade, adopted anti-Semitic themes that blame shadowy international Jewish cartels and conspiracies for Japan's current economic problems. Whole sections of bookstores, since the mid-1980s, have been given over to books about Yudayajin with such titles as "The Jewish Plot to Control the World," "The Expert Way of Reading the Jewish Protocols" and "The Secret of Jewish Power That Moves the World."
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"For the survivors of the Holocaust, the Marco Polo article is akin to a public denial of the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima." -- Rabbi Cooper, Los Angeles Simon Wiesenthal Center |
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The anti-Semitic tone of such books, educators, authors and officials believe, is borne not so much out of hatred as out of ignorance and economic uncertainty. Goldstein credits it "not (to) race or religion, but economics." (1989) A Japanese professor of Jewish history says, "The Japanese don't know anything about the Jews. That's why they imagine things." (Sakamaki, 1995)David Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa in "Jews in the Japanese Mind" write, "Various attempts have been made to account for the intensity of Japanese interest in Jews, and particularly to explain the persistent chimerical belief in a global Jewish conspiracy bent on destroying Japan." Arie Dan, first secretary for press and information of the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo notes that "Japanese high school students do not study World War II. They have no sense of their, or anyone else's, history." (1995) Still, the pervasiveness of the "Jewish conspiracy" sentiment is alarming, called by an American journalist "a persistent theme in Japanese intellectual life that has taken on a new virulence since the Persian Gulf War" and by a Japanese journalist "not a fad but a dangerous phenomenon that needs to be stopped." (Goozner, 1989) Two books by leading anti-Semite author Masami Uno, "If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand the World" and "If You Understand the Jews You Will Understand Japan," have sold more than 1 million copies. Arie Dan points out that millions more Japanese are familiar with Uno's claims against the Jews because they are highlighted in lengthy advertisements for the books carried -- uncritically, Dan complains -- by Japan's leading newspapers. "They see the headlines in bold type: statements that the Jews are responsible for Japan's economic crisis. That's all they see, that's all they know, that's what they come to believe." Dan recounted his own two years of graduate study in business administration at Tokyo's prestigious Keio University: "In my classes, my own professors, learned men, would espouse international Jewish conspiracy theories to control the Japanese economy." (1995) Yoshito Takigawa, a former journalist and chief information officer for the Embassy of Israel, adds his dismay that the newspaper advertisements for Uno's and other conspiracy theory books also boost their sales "from under a total of 5,000 to 30,000 or more a month," giving them an aura of credibility as best-sellers. Because of the increased sales following the advertisements, "the newspaper itself starts quoting the book's thesis as valid economic theory. The Yomiuri (Japan's largest newspaper with 10 million daily circulation) did that," Takigawa said, a concern echoed by Goodman and Miyazawa, who also noted that Uno's theories were given credibility through inclusion in Bank of Japan discussions and that Uno himself was subsequently invited to a lecture series by the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party. (1995) The Nihon Keizai (Nikkei) Shimbun, Japan's counterpart to The Wall Street Journal, and Bungei Shunju?s own Shukan Bunshun, a popular general interest weekly, carried advertisements in 1993 for "Get Japan, The Last Enemy: The Jewish Protocols for World Domination," described by Goodman and Miyazawa: "Emblazoned with Jewish stars and an image of Satan, the ad claimed that 'Jewish cartels surrounding the Rothschilds control Europe, America, and Russia and have now set out to conquer Japan!' It outlined the Jewish scenario to destroy the Japanese economy, blaming the Jews for everything from the cut in Japanese interest rates in 1987 to the Gulf War and predicting the 'reoccupation' of Japan by Jews by the end of the decade." (1995) The anti-Semitic success phenomenon is not restricted to relatively unknown authors boosted to fame through media advertisement and coverage. The "Secret of Jewish Power to Control the World" was written by Eisaburo Saito, a member of the Upper House of the Japanese Diet. A book by Yoshio Ogai, an influential official of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, prescribes Hitler as a role model for winning office in "Hitler Election Strategy: A Bible for Certain Victory in Modern Elections." Even Shoko Asahara, leader of the doomsday Aum Shinrikyo cult responsible for the 1995 subway gassing, published a book "Manual of Fear" that attacked Jews as the "world shadow government" (Pipes, 1997, 180) that controlled the emperor, President Clinton, and Madonna. (Kaplan & Marshall, 1996, 219-220) Daniel Pipes (1997) sets three basic elements of a conspiracy theory: - A powerful, evil and clandestine group that aspires to global hegemony;
- Dupes and agents who extend the group's influence around the world so that it is on the verge of succeeding; and
- A valiant but embattled group that urgently needs help to stave off the catastrophe. (22)
Pipes states conspiracism -- the basaltic belief in conspiracy theories -- "tends to come disproportionately from two broad groups of people: the politically disaffected and the culturally suspicious (2) ... Benign and malign views of Jewish power have coexisted in Japan for nearly a century, leading to confusion so intense it has a near-comic quality." (190)
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