The following is from today's Sankei Shimbun reading column.
As I have already mentioned, I am the one who was told by my mentor at my beloved alma mater forever to stay at Kyoto University and stand on the back of that university.
At that time, the following commentary was circulating about the difference between Tokyo University and Kyoto University.
"The University of Tokyo is a world of Monkey Mountain. It is a vertical society dominated by a single professor with absolute power. On the other hand, Kyoto University is a horizontal society where interdisciplinary research is possible regardless of ideology, from right to left, with the Institute of Humanities on the right, Yuji Aida on the left, and Kiyoshi Inoue on the right."
In my first year of high school, the late Takeo Kuwabara and the late Toshihiko Tokizane gave a joint lecture in Sendai, and I chose Takeo Kuwabara as the lecturer.
The comment above was one of the factors that made me decide that Kyoto University was the place I should go to.
In retrospect, I can only be glad that it did not turn out that way.
I thought, "I am the only one who can succeed Takeo Kuwahara."
It is well-known that he was the director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at Kyoto University.
I had never read this book, so there was no way that anyone else in the world had.
Read the long seller.
Aaron's Camp by Yuji Aida (Chuko Bunko, 770 yen)
The Shock of "British-Style Atrocities"
The National War Memorial Ceremony was held again this year on the 15th, the last day of the war.
August in Japan is the season of repose of souls.
Many bookstores have sections devoted to books about the last World War, and people are also tempted to pick up a copy of Showa history or war memoirs at this time of year.
Among the books I read this way, the one that left a strong impression on me was "Aaron Camp," a book about the Battle of Burma.
The book was written by historian Yuji Aida, professor emeritus at Kyoto University (1916-97), who was forced to work as a POW by the British after the war and discusses the cultural differences between Japan and Britain.
A small‐sized paperback book version was published in 1962.
It is said to have shaken the Japanese view of the West.
When I first read the book in 1998, it was exclusively about the atrocities committed by the Japanese military based on the masochistic view of Japanese history, such as the mistreatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese army, so-called "comfort women," and the "Nanking Massacre."
Therefore, this book, which claims the existence of "British-style atrocities," came as a great shock to me.
In 1943, the author joined an infantry regiment as part of his training conscription and was sent to the fierce battlefield of Burma (now Myanmar).
More than 300 men were in his company, but at the end of the war, there were only 14 or 15.
He was a prisoner of war from immediately after the war ended until May 2010 and "came back with a burning antipathy and hatred toward the British."
The tiny, unkempt military Camp in Rangoon (now Yangon), where the author was placed in November 1945, was opposite a garbage dump.
An unbearable stench and swarms of flies assaulted the author.
He could only assume that the British military had a clear purpose in placing the soldiers in "a miraculously dirty place" amidst an endless supply of vacant land.
There is no standard for what is cruelty.
The author begins by saying that there is no common standard for determining whether the Japanese or Europeans were more cruel and writes about the British troops, "There was almost no direct action, such as punching or kicking. However, beneath their seemingly rational actions was an extremely relentless, extreme contempt and revenge, like a cat attacking a mouse."
The most striking case was one the author heard from a prisoner who had been captured during the war and surrendered, asking Japan to let them know because he might not be able to return home.
His unit, which had been interned in the middle of a large river on suspicion of mistreating British prisoners of war, was so starved that they could not resist eating raw crabs, which the British military had warned were contagious.
The British soldiers who watched them all die reported that the Japanese soldiers, with their lack of hygiene, had eaten raw crabs.
The authors were forced to do tasks such as cleaning British barracks, loading and unloading cargo on the docks, and transporting supplies, and "the series of meaningless, excessively heavy, monotonous labor eventually caused the soldiers to lose their rebellious spirit, lose hope, and become dejected."
He also referred to the absolute superiority of British soldiers who did not treat Orientals as human beings.
The author believes that some of the atrocities that are now believed to have been committed by the Japanese are the result of misunderstandings that arose from "fundamental differences in thinking" that were formed in different historical environments over thousands of years.
He discusses the differences between Europeans, accustomed to raising and dismantling livestock, and the Japanese, who lack such skills.
If the battlefield was an opportunity to come into contact with different ethnic groups, it may have something in common with the immigration problem of today.
Aaron's Camp was also published in 1973 in a paperback edition.
The small-size paperback edition sold 340,500 copies, and the paperback edition sold 303,500.
The book is still selling well today, perhaps because of the author's observational eye, which also discussed the nature of the Japanese, Burmese, and Indian soldiers.
The author also describes the life of prisoners of war amusingly, for example, by stealing food from the British troops.
According to the afterword to the book's paperback edition, the criticism of fellow prisoners of war was generally that the author "wrote too much about life in the camps in a joyful way."
(Rie Terada)
2024/8/24 in Kojima, Okayama
