Japan Institute for National Fundamentals

The Third [Kokkiken Japan Study Award]

The works of Recipients of Kokkiken Japan Study Award

Remarks on the selection of award recipients

In his award-winning work, Dr. Yang Haiying, who is a naturalized Japanese citizen, depicts China and Japan as seen in the eyes of a person of descent from southern Mongolia—Inner Mongolia—where he was born in 1964. His birthplace is part of an area that has remained profoundly affected by international politics. The 1945 Yalta Agreement reached by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States led to the north-south division of the Mongolian population with the southern side subsequently coming under Chinese communist rule in 1949. Even today in the 21st century, Mongolian people, especially those in southern Mongolia, are right in the midst of a fierce struggle for their self-determination.

Dr. Yang points out that the very source of the Yalta accord went back to Japan that had established Manchukuo. At the same time, he decries those who condemn what Japan did before and during the Second World War on the basis of the postwar sense of values. Instead, he appreciates the way Japan ruled Manchukuo and its education there. He particularly focuses on Japan’s endeavors to form cavalry divisions comprising Mongolians, an approach that, according to him, embodied the Japanese people’s spiritual tradition of setting a high value on martial arts and showing high respect to scholarship. He thus highlights the similarity between Japanese people’s penchant for the spirit of bunburyodo (pen and sword in accord) and the Mongolian people’s sense of values as nomads. While sending out his heart to the Hinggan Military Academy of the Manchukuo Imperial Army and its cavalry troops, he empirically sheds light on their sorrowful history of coming under the command of the Chinese Communist Party and being mobilized to crack down on Tibetans.

The award-winning book proves his outstanding abilities to conduct comprehensive and intensive field studies and gather enormous amounts of primary-source materials. Indeed, those who appear in his book are featured in a way true to history. His book also tells us of the structure of the Chinese Communist Party rule that is closely relevant to what we are witnessing today.

Dr. Yang has spent many years studying what happened during the Cultural Revolution as the main theme of his research—which is related to the award-winning book. He has already published an eight-volume, 9,000-page series of books under the title of “Mongorujin Jenosaido ni kansuru Kisoshiryo” (Basic Materials on the Mongolian Genocide). Through his sturdy research, he maintains that the Mongolian genocide that took place during the Cultural Revolution remains an unsolved crime against humanity and that China is obliged to face it. It is too superficial to regard his research as a mere criticism of China. Why is China now trying to undermine the whole of the international community’s order and sense of values? The international community needs to understand China’s national characteristics to cope adequately with the country. In that context, Dr. Yang’s research does give us an exceptionally important clue to the reason for the Chinese behaviors of late.

The comparison of the national characteristics and qualities of the Japanese and Chinese people as presented in his award-winning book reminds us Japanese anew of the cultural distance between Japan and China. Dr. Yang’s work—which is a superb comparative study of the civilizations of Japan and China—seems to be also meant to be an earnest request for Japan to know the real national characteristics of the Chinese to cope better with China. Those countries and territories, including Mongolia, that used to be under Japanese rule have not yet been relieved of the sufferings from the Greater East Asian War at all. Japan will not be allowed to leave the current situations in the Asian countries it once ruled as they are. Japan remains obliged to actively engage in helping those countries and territories restore what they lost because of Japanese rule. In his book, I think, Dr. Yang urges the Japanese to be aware that Mongolia, in particular, has high expectations for Japan to do so.

By Tadae Takubo
President of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals
Japan Study Award Jury

Chen Rou-jin: “Nippon Tochi-jidai no Taiwan” ―English translation: “Taiwan under Japanese Rule 1895-1945:An Insight with Photograhs and Episodes”

About 40 years ago, I visited Taiwan for the first time. As I strolled around Taipei, I became really impressed by the presence of those stores, roadside trees, dim streetlights and people’s communicative gestures, among others, that no doubt dated back to prewar Japan. They were what I saw and experienced in Japan in my primary school days. In other words, it was Japan that had changed so much in the postwar years. Ever since my first visit there, acquaintances and friends of mine in and from Taiwan have told me a lot about outstanding Japanese who greatly contributed to the development of Taiwan—including, among others, Governor of Taiwan Shimpei Gotoh, author and politician Inazo Nitobe and hydraulic engineer Yoichi Hatta. In fact there are quite a few of Taiwanese authors who have published biographies of Gotoh and other Japanese known for their contributions to Taiwan.

Chen Rou-jin’s book, whose Japanese title is “Nippon Tochi-jidai no Taiwan” (Taiwan under Japanese Rule), sheds light on the presence of Japanese people in prewar Taiwan from a completely different angle. Born in the postwar era, Ms. Chen features ordinary Japanese who lived in prewar Taiwan from a standpoint: “How did the generation of my grandparents live when Taiwan was under Japanese rule and feel toward Japanese people?” As such, her book tells us something different from what I have learned from my acquaintances and friends in and from Taiwan as in the case of Shimpei Gotoh. As a columnist, she depicts what she covers in a highly flexible manner.

More than 10 years ago, I travelled along the eastern coastline of Taiwan by train, following Japanese author Ryotaro Shiba’s steps. After leaving Taipei, I went through Banqiao (板橋) or “Itahashi” in Japanese, as mentioned in Ms. Chen’s book. At around lunchtime, I arrived at a station, whose name I now forget, and bought an “ekiben” boxed lunch, which is also mentioned in her book. Ms. Chen refers to Mr. Chang Chao-ying, a Japan hand to whom I am obliged. He used to serve as the spokesman for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan that functions as a de facto embassy in Tokyo of Taiwan. In the final chapter of the book, Ms. Chen touches on the presence in Japan of Japanese prostitutes serving troops of the Allied Powers that occupied Japan after the end of the Second World War. This is an issue we Japanese would rather not be told of, but Ms. Chen does not show any self-restraint, a matter that is unnecessary for a new-generation columnist to care about. Perhaps, such a stance is part of her charm.

By Tadae Takubo
Vice President of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals
Japan Study Award Jury

Robert D. Eldridge: “The Origins of U.S. Policy in the East China Sea Islands Dispute Okinawa’s Reversion and the Senkaku Islands”

The government of Japan incorporated the Senkaku Islands into Okinawa Prefecture in 1895 or the 28th year of the Meiji era. Following Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the area was put under administration of the U.S. military, but in around 1970 when it became known that the continental shelf around the Senkakus was potentially rich in natural resources, such as oil, Taiwan and mainland China began claiming sovereignty over the islands. This is the situation that has been in existence ever since.

This book is an academic work, focusing on the history of the issue of the Senkakus and the stances the U.S. government has taken on the issue over the past decades—from the time when the United States ruled the Senkakus and other parts of Okinawa to the years that followed the prefecture’s reversion to Japan. The author keeps elaborately depicting one fact and another after digging deeply and extensively into archives of both published materials and archives of U.S. diplomatic documents to the extent that there seemed to be no more facts left for him—and for us—to know about the issue. The accuracy of the cited facts is guaranteed by the inclusion in the book of more than 70 pages of footnotes to clarity details.

During its rule of the Ryukyu Islands, the United States affirmed that Japan had residual sovereignty over the territory and thought that the Senkakus belonged to the Ryukyus. Nonetheless, when Okinawa was returned to Japan, Washington, while also returning the Senkakus to Japan, as part of the exercise of its administrative rights over the East China Sea islands, chose to take a “policy of neutrality” as to the question of which country had the territorial rights over the Senkakus, Japan, Taiwan or China. The United States held that the matter should be settled among the three governments. The author concludes that the current state of confusion over the Senkakus has stemmed from Washington’s failure to declare its support for Japan’s sovereignty over the islands in 1972 when it returned Okinawa to Japanese rule.

The book was originally written in English and translated into Japanese. It is particularly praiseworthy that a book focusing exclusively on the issue of the Senkakus has been published in English. Indeed, it is highly helpful for our country.

By Katsuhiko Takaike
Vice President of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals
Japan Study Award Jury

Award Jury

Award Recommendation Committee