Monday, July 27, 2015

Japan and Korea as seen by a Woman Korean Intellectual

     Koreans of different background would describe Japan, or Japan-Korea relations in different ways.  Here is what a woman intellectual from Korea spoke to the Asahi published on 22 July.

     She was born in the former Manchukuo, the Chinese Northeast under de-facto Japanese rule, in 1929.  Her father came to Japan in 1910, the year Japan incorporated Korea, studied technology there, and became successful as a businessman in Manchukuo as a manufacturer of footwear.  She went to the kindergarten and schools meant for the Japanese ruling classes, and the Japanese language became her virtual mother-tongue.  She used to call her parents in Japanese way, having been accustomed to think primarily in Japanese.  Even now she reads Japanese much faster than Korean, and the interview itself was given in Japanese.

     In her view, Japan since the Meiji period became successful because she had got translated a lot of foreign literature and thought into her language.  In fact, she read Shakespeare in Japanese translation, by Tsubouchi Shouyou, by which she made up her mind to study English literature as her life's work.  (After Tsubouchi's, we have two more complete translation of Shakespeare. However, in terms of import and export, I am afraid we are overwhelmingly import-oriented in the fields of literature and ideas.)

     Her family was back in Seoul when Japan surrendered.  They suffered from the Korean War. She does not discuss Japan's surrender itself, but I would wonder if there had been the War if Japan had surrendered a little early, by, say, ten days, before the Soviet intervention in the War against Japan.  There would have been no atomic bombs also.  If Korea could have remained united then is a different question.

     When the relations were established between the two countries, many of her students went to join the demonstration against it, in 1965.  She herself was in favour of it, as she thought Korea needed economic ties with Japan.  But she also understood how the students felt then.

     She is worried about the move virtually to change the present Constitution in Japan.  She thinks Korea needs to hear more words to appeal to their mind.  She would like the Prime Minister of Japan not to push his neibhbour to the point where relations would worsen.             

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Selma, King's victorious battleground

     A few days ago I saw a film called "Selma".  It was a moving film on Martin Luther King Jr., his colleagues, their struggles, and the race relations in the US.  It was not a biography of King, but focused on a rather short period of time when he was at Selma, Alabama, to lead a civil rights struggle in 1965.
   
     In many ways it reminded me of the life of Gandhi.  In 7 March of that year, for example, which turned into a "Bloody Sunday", people tried to march from Selma to Montgomery, of the bus boycott fame of ten years ago, the distance of 80 km, in a non-violent way, to be brutally attacked by the State Troopers, even by the mounted police, at a bridge just outside Selma.  It was reminiscent of Gandhi's "Salt March".  In the latter case the March itself was peaceful, but afterwards when the marchers tried peacefully to occupy a salt depot, they were severely treated by the police.

     Gandhi's method was called by an eminent Indian historian as "Struggle-Truce(negotiations)-Struggle".  King's method may be called the same way, in the sense that he was also not averse to negotiating, even with the President.  Like Gandhi he also, quite naturally, selected moments to attract the attention of the papers, radio and the TV.

     King was not at Selma on the first march.  He led the second, but when the State Troopers withdrew he led the people back to Selma.  This brought about differences.  On the third occasion, however, after President Johnson had to submit a Bill and concluded his speech with the famous "We shall overcome", which must have been sung so often before, the third march led by King finally reached Montgomery, the State Capital.

     I wondered if the impact of the on-going Vietnam War was fully incorporated there in the film.  However, the importance of the voting rights, and that both for the Black community and the segregationists, was overwhelming.