Japan Institute for National Fundamentals

The Sixth [Kokkiken Japan Study Award]

The works of Recipients of Kokkiken Japan Study Award

Remarks on the selection of award recipients

In 1906, a year after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the San Francisco Board of Education attempted to oust Japanese students from the city’s public schools and force them to attend segregated schools. The board’s move triggered an exclusion movement in California against Japanese immigrants. The state’s anti-Japanese sentiment culminated in the adoption of the California Alien Land Law of 1913, prohibiting Asian immigrants from owning agricultural land. Though the law was implicitly directed at the Japanese, it did little to halt Japanese immigration to the state. As a result, the California Alien Land Law of 1920 was adopted to fill the earlier law’s loopholes. Four years later, the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which finally stopped Japanese immigration. As the federal law included a special anti-Japanese provision, it remains better known as the anti-Japanese immigration law.

This series of Japanophobic developments in America is said to have been the underlying cause of the 1941-1945 war between Japan and the United States. Emperor Showa is known to have expressed such a view.

As the title of this book indicates, Prof. Minohara analyzes Japan-U.S. relations in great detail by combing through an enormous volume of primary documents regarding the anti-Japanese movement and relations between Japan and the United States.

As mentioned in the introduction, the author, who is a yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese American), has written the book not to trace the history of Japanese immigration or focus on certain Japanese Americans of the past as in the case of several past boos. His book deals with international relations, looking into how the anti-Japanese movement had affected Japan-U.S. relations.

In his book, Prof. Minohara asserts that the issue of Japanese immigration did not directly cause Japan and the United States to eventually go to war against each other. He argues that Japanese immigration was as serious an issue from the perspective of Japan-U.S. relations as the issue of Japanese activities in China. Then, he interprets the passage of the anti-Japanese immigration law not as the direct cause of the Japan-U.S. war but as one of the key factors in the “multifaceted and multi-tiered” process leading to the war.

It has been commonly accepted that the phrase “grave consequence” Japanese Ambassador to Washington Masanao Uehara used in his letter to U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes was interpreted in the U.S, Congress as a “veiled threat” and that the U.S. lawmakers got so enraged that they quickly moved to pass the anti-Japanese immigration law. For his part, Prof. Minohara disproves the commonly accepted theory by providing the results of his exhaustive fact-finding research.

His book shows that international relationships are influenced by emotional impulses, depending on circumstances and that constructive international relationships can hardly be built as long as emotional reactions continue to result in further emotional reactions.

I believe that Prof. Minohara genuinely deserves the Kokkiken Japan Study Encouragement Award for his book.

By Katsuhiko Takaike
Vice President of the Japan Institution for National Fundamentals,
Member of the Kokkiken Japan Study Award Jury and Lawyer

Pema Gyalpo：“Giseisya 120 mannin Sokoku wo Chugoku ni Ubawareta Chibetto Jin ga Kataru Shinryaku ni kiduiteinai Nihonjin ”- English translation: “A Warning to the Japanese from a Tibetan Whose Country Was Invaded by China with 1,200,000 of Its People Victimized: Be on Alert for the Terror of China’s Inherently Aggressive Expansionism”

A Tibetan boy who knew the tragic fate of his fatherland quite well came to Japan, studying at public junior and senior high schools and graduating from a Japanese university and finally becoming a naturalized Japanese citizen. His name is Pema Gyalpo, who has now lived in Japan for 53 years. In his award-winning book, he allocated a quite lot of pages to give Japan an advice, based on his extraordinary experiences, on how to deal with China.

I think the title of the book and remarks on an accompanying obi strip depict the crux of the author’s criticism of China. The title reads A Warning to the Japanese from a Tibetan Whose Country Was Invaded by China with 1,200,000 of Its People Victimized: Be on Alert for the Terror of China's Inherently Aggressive Expansionism and the attached remarks read “Wouldn’t you Japanese mind if your country became a subject state of China? China began its devious maneuver to invade Japan when both countries normalized diplomatic relations!” To some Japanese people, it may sound exaggerated, but I am sure that even they will fully understand why Prof. Pema is so wrathful of China once they know that the Tibetans were unreasonably deprived of their mother country and that China’s dreadful oppression of the Tibetans continues even today.

At the same time, this book stimulates us Japanese to review the way our country has paved since the end of the past war. With respect to the Great East Asia War, China continues to put all the blame on Japan, but the author takes a position completely opposite to that of China. He feels chagrined at the attitude of those Japanese people who admire the Constitution as a “pacifist constitution” even though it has no Japanese identity. This intellectual who was born in Tibet and educated in India seems to fully know how ignorant Japan is of the reality.

By Tadae Takubo
Vice President of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals,
Vice Chairman of the Japan Study Award Jury and
Professor Emeritus at Kyorin University

Ikuhiko Hata：“Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone”

Dr.Ikuhiko HATA, professor emeritus of Nihon University, is recognized as one of the leading authorities on Japan’s modern history, including the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War Ⅱ.

For more than twenty-five years Hata has tackled difficult and highly controversial ‘comfort women’ issue. For his original Japanese book Ianfu to Senjo no Sei, and for his related historical researches Hata has been given Kikuchi Kan Prize, the Mainichi Publishing Cultural Award and the Sankei Shimbun Seiron Award.

The reason the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals gives its 6th Kokkiken Japan Study Special Award to Dr. Hata on the occasion of the appearance of its English translation under the title of Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone by Hamilton Books, USA, 2018, is as follows: We most welcome this timely publication, a project realized thanks to the goodwill, donation and dedication of some private individuals. The English translation is due to meticulous efforts of Prof. Jason Morgan together with some volunteers’ assistance. Now that this solid academic work, duly annotated, is available for the first time to all people who are interested in this issue world-wide, many an intentional Japan-bashing will be found misplaced. Hata tells us: it is essential to listen to the accounts of those who were involved ― former comfort women, brothel operators, military police and doctors who supervised comfort stations, and soldiers who used the facilities ― in addition to consulting existing documents and materials. Readers will know what were realities and what were myths of ‘comfort women.’ I am also curious to know what will be reactions of North American scholars who refused correction of factual errors in McGraw-Hill Textbook. We ask not only historians but also general readers to peruse carefully what Hata has found and written so lucidly, by examining extensively official and private sources in Japan, Korea, and other places under Japanese control during WWⅡ.

Dr.Hata is well-known not only in Japan but also abroad: He contbuted a chapter on “Continental Expansion” in Vol. 6 of the Cambridge History of Japan. He is also the author of Hirohito, the Shōwa Emperor in War and Peace (Global Oriental, 2007).

By Sukehiro Hirakawa
Professor emeritus, Tokyo University, author,
Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West, Brill

Award Jury

Award Recommendation Committee