Tokyo. Tense relations with China and Korea reawaken Japanese national pride, the Japanese feel surrounded and misunderstood, and, as often happens, the extremist fringes gain strength. The Land of the Rising Sun is witnessing a resurgence of Nazi sympathies, the latest manifestation of which was the rally that took place a few days ago in Ikebukuro, in the Toshima district, one of the liveliest and most active areas of the capital.
Swastikas appeared alongside anti-Korean and anti-Chinese slogans, and the waving of national flags, and one of the attendees at one point shouted, "We will redeem the honor of the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany!"
These neo-Nazis say they are convinced that Hitler's work was justifiable, if not downright meritorious, as it was nothing more than an attempt to protect Germany from the threat posed by the Jews, just as - and this is the decisive step – Today's Japanese are trying to protect their country from the growing power of China and Korea.
Of course, the number of those who profess such a creed is very small, but it would be wrong to dismiss them as ignorant fanatics of history. “Surfing the Internet” says Mitsuharu Akao, a professor at the University of Osaka specializing in Jewish culture, “it is not difficult to come across statements hostile to the presence of Chinese and South Koreans in Japan. It is also not so infrequent that the idea of driving them all away from Japanese territory is mooted, in the name of defending Japanese identity”.
"As China and South Korea have assumed importance in the sphere of world politics and economy" the professor continues, "Japan has felt threatened in the positions reached up to that moment and tolerates even more with difficulty the accusations that these countries address to him for what happened during the Second World War".
There are groups on the Internet who deny that the Nanking Massacre - perpetrated by the Japanese army in 1937 against the people of that Chinese city - ever took place. On the same sites it can also be read that the bloody Japanese occupation of a large part of Asia had no other objective than to free the Asian nations from the Western yoke. One of the strong points of this line of thought is that books testifying to the atrocities of Nazism such as "The Diary of Anne Frank" are a forgery artfully written to discredit Hitler and him.
A few months ago the publishing house Nihonbungeisha Company distributed a book with the disconcerting title "The truth about Hitler that will grip you so much that you won't go to sleep" in 8000 shops of a minimaket chain. The text, which - reads the preface - intended to shed light on what good Nazism had done, was withdrawn from the market after a month, but must be judged symptomatic of the new trends that are spreading throughout the country.
Attachments: Asahi
