Lost Decency Called“Japanese Spirit”？ 

作　者：Jim Cheng／前北美台灣人教授會會長

日　期：２００２年１２月２２日

In commemorating Y. Hatta, an alma mater of the Keio University, a student club, Keizai Shinjin Kai, had planned a special gala, the Hatta Matsuri, to celebrate Hatta's distinguished career in early 1900's.  Since Mita devoted his entire life in Taiwan it is most appropriate for the club to ask the former Taiwan President Teng-Hui Lee to give a speech at the occasion.  Lee gracefully accepted the invitation.   Surprisingly, the Japanese government declined to issue a visa for traveling to fulfill the invitation by this distinguished Taiwanese citizen who currently bears no governmental position and duty.  To clarify his stance on this humanitarian mission, Lee disclosed in a newspaper the content of the speech he was to deliver to students.

I was profoundly moved after reading the entire text of the speech.  Lee wished to convey in that speech Hatta's unsurpassed contributions to the agriculture development in a colony called Taiwan, which Japan gained in 1895 after defeating China then in the hands of Manchuria Ch'in.  Hatta built the dam and the irrigation system in the mid-western plain of Taiwan, which is mostly mountainous and in which the flat land is a rare commodity.  The task was proved to be nothing but miraculous and deemed a wondrous achievement in the world history of the agricultural engineering.  Lee, as a Taiwanese representing all Taiwanese, was to express deep gratitude by millions of Taiwanese to the extraordinary accomplishment by this great Japanese. Both the dam and irrigation system led to the most proficient use of a totally unexplored but exceedingly fertile land that Taiwan has come to be known eventually.  The agricultural produces leaped literally exponentially so that, for example, a yearly rice product would surpass more than two years' consumption by six million people censored in early 1940's.  This unparalleled accomplishment not only had benefited Taiwan, but also did so handsomely to the Japanese government, who owned this colonial land.

Must I remind our Japanese friends of that Lee, once a Nobel Peace Award nominee, was invited to give that speech, and, as a foreigner, to address to Japanese the monumental task that a Japanese had done to the people of a foreign Taiwan people?  Such a heroic task can only be done by a great human being with the great heart that surpasses the racial and nationality boundary.  The Taiwan President Lee was about to let Japanese know that Hatta was one of the kinds!

I lamented when I read the ship that Hatta was on board to the Philippines for another mission, was sunk by the allied torpedo.  I wept when I learned that Mrs. Hatta committed suicide at the very site of the reservoir her husband lovingly built, rather than being forced to be herded away by Chinese soldiers full of revengeful hatred to Japanese to return to Japan.  Her affection to husband and love of Taiwan had to be factors for her lamentable deed, too.  However, her deed is perceived as noble and admirable in minds of many Taiwanese!  The profound consolation that I feel and can deeply cherish forever is that I am so lucky to be able to read Lee's speech and palpate the human dignity and decency in her deed as well as Hatta's noblest dedication.

Sadly the core thought, or perhaps the“Japanese Spirit”that Lee implied, is not prized by politicians like Koizumi, Tanaka and many others who would rather succumb to PRC's bullish demands.  These Chinese have been accusing Japanese of worshipping the dead in the Yasukuni Shrine, albeit it being strictly an internal affair, and indoctrinating Chinese to hate Japanese. Chinese police, by breaking every international law, had invaded inside a Japanese embassy compound in China to lawlessly grab the North Koreans seeking asylum.  Aren't these Chinese also looked the other way around to the surmounted crimes committed by their fellow citizens residing in Japan? I wonder if Japan now is really a dignified, respectful and independent nation.  Otherwise why Japanese continue to yield to the PRC for those despicable demands with the tone filled with a master ordering a slave to follow?  Sadly I come to realize the dwindling population of gutsy Japanese that once we admire dearly!

I am compelled to realize how meaningless the term,“Justice”is in the international arena, not even dare to think of what the“Japanese Spirit”is meant!