Foreign Conquerors

Top 10 Reasons Why Japanese Loathe Gaijin (foreigners) …

10. Little Boy
9. Fat Man
8. Missionaries
7. Unfair Trade (!)
6. Cruelty to Women

There are a few proud moments in the history of Japan when women fought bravely against their foreign conquerors who lived privileged lives that were made comfortable with the service of about 100 native slaves per family.

“[The native women] were not allowed to refuse the demands of their T’ang Chinese and Korean masters, and had no choice but to give birth to children of mixed racial origin. They brought up their children, but were never legitimized by their masters. Perhaps this is the reason we call ourselves shomin (the illegitimate people), even under today’s democratic system.” Notes Toshihiko Abe, in Japan’s Hidden Face.

The T’ang Chinese invaded Japan in the 7^th century (664 CE). They created the Japanese social order, which formed the origin of today’s vertical society in Japan [see note]. The Chinese separated the society into two classes: ryo, T’ang Chinese or Kudara court nobles (aka, Tou, or Fuji-wara), and sen, the humble slaves, comprising all other races—Kogoryoe, Silla, Ya, Gen (aka,Yottsu), Zoshiki, joined later by Khitan (aka, Kitsu), Heike (aka, Pei), Sanka (a mix of Ya and Yottsu).

[“The origin of racial discrimination in Japan also began in the 7th century. It was generally recognized by the Japanese intelligentsia and the ruling class till the Meiji reform that only nobles of either T’ang Chinese or Peakche (Korean) blood had the legitimate right to rule Japan.” Notes Abe.]

In the 8th century, aboriginal rebel armies that emerged in northeastern Japan revolted against the T’ang Chinese and threatened their power base in Yamato. The armies “consisted of many clans, each commanded by a bold female leader or okami (woman general). Female leaders trained male corps, but dissatisfied with men’s fighting spirit, organized special corps of women only.”

Masako Hojo (1157-1225), one of the most remarkable women in Japanese (and world) history, married the head of Yottsu people, Yoritomo Minamoto, who established the Kamakura Bakufu (the military government was called Bakufu meaning tent government because the soldiers lived in tents). Masako gathered an army of 190,000 fighters and defeated the imperial forces after the imperial court had declared war against the Bakufu in 1221. She ousted the imperial families and confiscated their lands. Masako’s victory was regarded as a Ya woman’s revenge on the Chinese conquerors, the Fujiwara (Japanese name for the T’ang Chinese conquerors).

“During the civil war age women showed courage and resourcefulness by fighting as bravely as men. To appear more formidable, they shaved off their eyebrows, painted horrible, frightening ones with ink, and died their teeth black to scare enemies when they opened their mouths. Female daimyos and samurai proliferated until after the age of the Tokugawas, when female succession was prohibited.”

After Buddhism became Japan’s national religion, women were prohibited from becoming daimyos (feudal lords). “Buddhism was introduced from China via Korea, both countries being ‘men first’ races.”

“The fate of women in the countryside was cruel. Priests had the right to rob a woman of her virginity before sending her into prostitution, where she would be forced to serve numerous men until death. In the family of the daimyo or samurai, all female servants were vassals of the lord; if the lord wanted a female servant’s chastity she could not refuse.” Writes Abe.

As the tide of ultra nationalism and militarism grew stronger in the prewar Japan, “women’s standings slipped further, until women came to be seen only as instruments to breed men for the military, or as the objects of man’s sexual desire.”

In the late 19^th century, cotton and yarn spinning factories employed many female workers who worked long hours in adverse labor conditions for very low pay. Many died as a result and many more were stricken with disease and fatigue.

The lives of farming families were equally miserable. Brokers sold young daughters of indebted tenant farmers to houses of prostitution to settle their debts.

The women’s suffrage movement in Japan emerged during pre-war days, centering on the Women’s Suffrage League. Ironically, the Japanese women’s right to vote and be elected was conferred on them after the war ended in 1945.

[Note: “Vertical Society. In Japan, a vertical chain of submission begins with the emperor and then moves downward to the president and members of the Liberal Democratic Party; the prime minister & cabinet; president, directors, executive offices, and managers of companies; and finally the workers.” ~ Toshihiko Abe, Japan’s Hidden Face.]

Oriental Witches

Top 10 Reasons Why Japanese Loathe Gaijin…

10. Little Boy
9. Fat Man
8. Missionaries
7. Unfair Trade (!)

A long civil war called Ounin-no-Ran broke out between Hosokawa and Yamana, Japanese daimyos (feudal lords), in 1467 which lasted for about 150 years.

Ashigara, the lowest class of samurai, were used as human shields during the civil war. Eventually, the samurai learned the sword was no match for the gun. Saltpeter, the main ingredient for making gunpowder, became the sole factor in winning the war. Saltpeter was not produced in Japan, but was imported from overseas.

The Jesuits controlled the import of saltpeter to Japan, since their arrival on August 15, 1549. In Japan’s Hidden Face, Abe wrote, “Many daimyos converted to Christianity in order to gain more favorable access to saltpeter. Between 1553 and 1620, eighty-six daimyos were officially baptized, and many more were sympathetic to the Christians.”

“Guns were introduced in Japan during the witch hunting age in the West. Believing that the great leader of the witches fled to the east, the Pope ordered the militant Jesuit order to hunt them down, at the same time propagating Christianity to the yellow skinned races. The Jesuits built a base in Macau, where they stored saltpeter, the main ingredient of gunpowder. In Europe, Chilean saltpeter with much higher explosive power was replacing conventional saltpeter, which was dumped by the army and sold in the east, were the Jesuits used the profits to pay the expenses of their mission.”

The daimyos bartered women for the Jesuits’ “magic” powder at a going rate of 50 baptized Japanese girls for a barrel of saltpeter. As many as 500,000 Japanese girls were sold on the slave markets and shipped to South America and Europe.

“The most powerful Christian lord was Sorin Otomo [daimyo for the Kyushu District] who “traded” in medicines, pepper, gunpowder, slaves etc. with Xavier, Luis de Almeida (1525-1583) and other Jesuits, which had made a huge amount of money for Portugal and the Roman Catholic Church for years.” Eishiro Ito wrote.

“The tradition of the great witch who fled to the east is still alive.” Wrote Abe, quoting Tomeo Yagiri’s reference to books that advertise: “Let’s take a flight to the country of witches and try to find out… If witches’ genital organs really open horizontally.” Abe adds, ” the Japanese are proud of the nickname given for the women’s Olympic volleyball team, ‘Oriental Witches.’”

 

Top 10 Reasons Why Japanese Loathe Gaijin (Foreigners )

Top 10 Reasons Why Japanese Loathe Gaijin…

10. Little Boy
9. Fat Man
8. Missionaries

The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story
by Gary G. Kohls

62 years ago, on August 9^th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of aggressive war (against essentially defenseless civilian populations) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only “doing their job,” and they did it efficiently.

It had been only 3 days since the first bomb, a , had decimated Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government and the Emperor had been searching for months for a way to an honorable end of the war which had exhausted the Japanese to virtually moribund status. (The only obstacle to surrender had been the Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an intolerable demand for the Japanese.)

The Russian army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim of entering the war against Japan on August 8, so there was an extra incentive to end the war quickly: the US military command did not want to divide any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.

The US bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the conventional bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for targeting relatively undamaged cities with these new weapons of mass destruction was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings – and their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead.

Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock’s Car, took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. (Its bomb was code-named “Fat Man,” after Winston Churchill.)

The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named “Trinity,” had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lavarock that resulted, still found at the site today, is called trinitite.

With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s Car arrived at Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.

Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549, a Christian community which survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier’s planting of Christianity in Japan, Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests began to be accurately perceived by the Japanese rulers as exploitive, and therefore the religion of the Europeans (Christianity) and their new Japanese converts became the target of brutal persecutions.

St. Mary’s Cathedral, aka Urakami Cathedral (Japanese: 浦上天主堂 Urakami Tenshudō) a Roman Catholic church located in the district of Urakami, Nagasaki.

Within 60 years of the start of Xavier’s mission church, it was a capital crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity had been stamped out.

However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government – which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the Japanese Christian community built the massive St. Mary’s Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.

Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary’s Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki that day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the drop.

At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero.

Nagasaki Temple: “a graveyard with not a tombstone standing”

And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.

The above true (and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the 509^th Composite Group (the 1500-man Army Air Force group, whose only job was to successfully deliver the atomic bombs to their targets) was Father George Zabelka. Several decades after the war ended, he saw his grave theological error in religiously legitimating the mass slaughter that is modern land and air war. He finally recognized that the enemies of his nation were not the enemies of God, but rather children of God whom God loved, and whom the followers of Jesus are to also love. Father Zabelka’s conversion to Christian nonviolence led him to devote the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence in all its forms, especially the violence of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.

. . .

As a lifelong Christian, that comment stung, but it was the sting of a sad and sobering truth. And as a physician who deals with psychologically traumatized patients every day, I know that it is violence, in all its myriad of forms, that bruises the human psyche and soul, and that that trauma is deadly and contagious, and it spreads through the families and on through the 3^rd and 4^th generations – until somebody stops continuing the domestic violence that military violence breeds.

One of the most difficult “mental illnesses” to treat is combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In its most virulent form, PTSD is virtually incurable. It is also a fact that whereas most Vietnam War recruits came from churches where they actively practiced their faith, if they came home with PTSD, the percentage returning to the faith community approached zero.

This is a serious spiritual problem for any church that (either by the active support of its nation’s “glorious” wars or by its silence on such issues) fails to teach its young people about what the earliest form of Christianity taught about violence: that it was forbidden to those who wished to follow Jesus.

If a Christian community fails to thoroughly inform its confirmands about the gruesome realities of the war zone before they are forced to register for potential conscription into the military, it invites the condemnation that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5–6: “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

The purpose of this essay is to stimulate open and honest discussion (at least among the followers of Jesus) about the ethics of killing by and for one’s government, not from the perspective of national security ethics, not from the perspective of the military, not from the perspective of (the pre-Christian) eye-for-an-eye retaliation that Jesus rejected, but from the perspective of the Sermon on the Mount, the core ethical teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5, 6 and 7.

Out of that discussion (if any are willing to engage in it) should come answers to those horrible realities that seem to immobilize decent Bible-believing Christians everywhere: Why are some of us Christians so willing to commit (or support and/or pay for others to commit) homicidal violence against other fellow children of a loving, merciful, forgiving God, the God whom Jesus clearly calls us to imitate? And what can we Christians do, starting now, to prevent the next war and the next epidemic of combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder?

What can we do to prevent the next round of these atrocities, all of which have been perpetrated by professed Christians: the My Lai Massacre, Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps, Dresden, El Mozote, Rwanda, Jonestown, the black church bombings, the execution of innocent death row inmates, the sanctions against Iraq (that killed 500,000 children during the 1990s), the military annihilation of Fallujah and much of the rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, the torturing of innocents at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay plus the many other international war crimes (albeit un-indicted to date) perpetrated by the current “Christian” administration of the United States. And what is to be done to prevent the next Nagasaki?

A large portion of the responsibility for the prevention of military atrocities like Nagasaki lies within the organized Christian churches and whether or not they soon start teaching and living what the radical nonviolent Jesus taught and lived.

The next Nagasaki can be prevented if the churches finally heed Jesus’ call to nonviolence and refuse their government’s call for the bodies and souls of their sons and daughters.

August 6, 2007

Gary Kohls, MD, an associate of Every Church a Peace Church, is a practicing physician in Duluth, MN.

Copyright © 2007 Gary G. Kohls, MD [Emphases were added by Gacuette.]

Related Link: Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb

FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed for research and educational purposes.

War Crimes, USA

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, USA

Top 10 Reasons Why Japanese Loathe Foreigners, Especially the Americans:
.10. Little Boy
9. Fat Man

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after detonating Little Boy.

Sixty-2 years ago today (August 6, 1945), in a shameful act of mass murder, United States of America under President Harry S. Truman dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima killing up to 80,000 people instantly. Three days later on August 9, 1945 the US detonated another nuclear bomb the “Fat Man” over Nagasaki.

 

The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the US nuclear explosion over
Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter.

According to some estimates the total death toll was 237,000 for Hiroshima, and 135,000 for Nagasaki including diseases from the aftereffects based on hospital data.

The overwhelming majority of the deaths in both nuclear attacks were civilians.

The Manhattan Project, led by General Groves and physicist
Oppenheimer, developed the first atomic bombs used in WWII.

The Manhattan Project developed the first nuclear weapons,
and the first-ever nuclear detonation, called the Trinity test.

The Baptist President, Truman - 33rd US President -
the psychopath who authorized the nuclear attacks on Japan.

Other Players: MacArthur and Hirohito

The photo files are from the Wikimedia Commons.

Related Link: Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb

Back from Hiroshima…

While searching for articles on [US] Gaijin in post-Hiroshima Japan, Gacuette found the following message posted at ACHIKOCHI and Cool Observer

Today, nothing is as nauseating in Japan as the postmodern US conquistador, or pomocon, lording it in the main street, especially those who learn Japanese to teach the American “values.”

With equal if not exceeding zeal as the missionaries who exported Christianity, pomocons export American “democracy” completing third conquest of Japan.

Pomocons come in three types:

The “A” group: People from different walks of life who all end up teaching English, despite having no training, or academic background. For every ten carpenters, plumbers, failed DJs… there is probably just one qualified gaijin teaching English.

The “B” group: Mainly the ex-military and high school dropouts, who become English teachers on arrival.

The “C” group: A more “sophisticated” hodgepodge of “professionals” like the Temple University alumni, or anyone with a paper degree.

Stirred on by the starry-eyed high school girls, the pomocon sees himself as savior to the enslaved Japanese women who are crying out for help begging to be rescued.

Japanese women kowtow to HIM because only HE in his “shining armor”—printed T-shirt displaying vulgar sexual innuendos—can liberate them female salves. He sees in himself the exceptional qualities needed for releasing them from their shackles. Historian Howard Zinn calls this attitude “American exceptionalism,” the belief that Americans are superior to everyone else!

On the surface, the pomocon marriage to his Japanese “subject” is comparable with the “nobleman” who breaks off with traditions and over “knocks up” the “serf’s daughter.” The roots of the problem, however, run much deeper. The union carries an undertone of egoistic fulfillment satisfied through symbolic sexual aggression bordering on sadistic violence. It seeks total submission: “We incinerated Japan before punching the last breath out of you with our atom bombs. Then we saved you… Now, I am going to DO you until you’re seriously hurt. Beg me to ease your pains!”

The pomocons try to assert “superiority” at every turn. Just in case anyone is too young to know how Japan capitulated, or dare doubt their superiority in violence, the phantasmagorical episodes of never-ending bloody US “victories” in Korea, Vietnam… and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq refresh the memory.

I met a pomocon, an extreme “C” type who first struck me as a “freak” because his gender seemed unclear, despite playing “superman” to a “feeble” female. Desperate to spread American values, he made the ultimate “sacrifice” for the Fatherland and became a naturalized Japanese citizen—a process in which the candidate must purge himself of old identity and adopt a Japanese name!

Sinon the perjurer made a similar sacrifice for Greece when he played decoy and deceived the Trojans into taking the infamous wooden horse inside their kingdom…

A “teacher” by default, “R2-D2” [though his effeminate demeanor made him a perfect C-3PO as in Star Wars] assumed a Japanese name to qualify for naturalization.

Imagine the shock when proprietor of a communal bathhouse, or sentō, refused him entry. When he produced his new passport as proof of nationality, he was told in no uncertain terms to tear up the pages and fold them into squares with sharp corners…

Was he barred entry because he looked like the uninvited American soldier with “Born to Kill!” tattooed on his arm, or a male prostitute sampling the countryside?

Could you blame the proprietor? How would you feel sharing your bath making “skinship” with a trained assassin taking a cleansing dip as the blood of Iraqi children drip from his elbows, or an amorous male prostitute?”

As unpleasant an experience as it might be, being barred from a Japnese sentō, especially when you need a good wash, it certainly beats the heck out of being “invited” to the American “foreign relations” center at the Gitmo gulag.

Scorned, R2D2 tried to sue the authorities for the unfavorable decision. Unable to make waves, he contrived an elaborate plot “stalking” them at every turn until he could figure out a way to sue for the breach of human rights or a similar offence and make the government cough up for their sins. To that extent, he now wears his human rights mask mingling among the Amnesty and UN crowds.

As for the pomocons marriage, the B group last the shortest. The “unholy” matrimony usually breaks up in 6-12 months. Divorce ensues after the newlywed arrives in Japan because the pomocon cannot keep his pants up liberating other women.

Unfortunately, the main victim is not the young Japanese “widow” whose American dream is assassinated by “Leonardo DiCaprio,” “Matt Dillon” or “Tom Cruise”; the main victim is the “prisoner,” the Japanese student who is force-fed the American values by the ill-equipped American “prison guard.”

Posted by tm on from 04/07 at 12:00 AM

FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed for research and educational purposes.