After the war, our brutal side was completely hidden, but I believe it is just hidden — Yukio Mishima on Japan

Turkey, the nation of the Antichrist, will be allying with Japan, the most powerful nation of the Far East. Many people will deny this, and say there is no that Japan will ever be enemy. What needs to be understood is the European mind.

In the West, brutality is sheerly obvious; it is done within a developed and diplomatic code of ethics, and finished with treaties, compromises and alliances. In the East, brutality is hidden under a facade of elegance; cruelty is intertwined with an oriental style, and sadism is made into an art, and it is all finished with heartless massacres and slavery.

Such is the nature of the relation between America and Japan. The war ended with a treaty, alliances were made, and now there is a seemingly steady relationship, with America perceiving Japan as a trustworthy ally against China and a balancer in Far East Asia that will keep in check both the Chinese and Russia. Japan, on the other hand, deems America as both a means to their goal — the revival of a Japanese empire — and a hinderance to that goal, because of all of the policies imposed on Japan after WW2.

Japan is now working to become militarily independent from the US, and will be working on the creation of its own fighter jet in the near future. Japan is also on its way to having nuclear weapons, with enough plutonium to create more than 5000 nuclear bombs, and with production efficient enough to produce these very weapons within six months. Most people do not know about Japan’s alliance with the antichrist nation of Turkey.

The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, agreed that Japan would be providing Turkey with its second nuclear power plant. The pact also adds that Turkey will be allowed to enrich uranium and extract plutonium, a potential material for nuclear weapons.

The providing of nuclear technology from Japan to Turkey, has provoked criticism in that it goes contrary to Japan’s official stance against nuclear weapons. The pact will not be carried out until 2023, unless the Japanese parliament approves of it. Japan’s foreign ministry official is pushing for the parliament to agree with the pact, stating:

(The agreement) will not be in time for the first reactor scheduled to start operations in 2023 unless it is approved by the Diet soon

While Japan is giving the facade of friendliness and amiability, and while everyone in the West accepts the Japanese as our trustworthy ally, an aspiring brutality lies underneath the body of the nation, and is tightly lodged within its soul, hidden and waiting to be unleashed. Many Americans always say that they have Buddhist Japanese friends, or Muslim friends, who are very friendly, and say that they can never imagine them being dangerous. What they need to understand is the Eastern spirit.

In the Eastern spirit, there are two contradictory natures: cruelty and elegance, and with both of them intertwined like two serpents, the outcome is a horrendous savagery underneath the shell of beauty and sophistication. Such is the ways of the Orient.

The Turks conducted massacres of ineffable brutality and indescribable sadism, but they at the same time, had their poets, their rhythmic music, their gentle manners, their animate paintings and ornamental arts pleasing to the eyes.

The same can be said for Japan: while there is cruelty and maliciousness, it is hidden behind an appearance of peace. Westerners did not understand the contradicting nature within Islamic culture, until September the 11th.

It wasn’t until the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked, that Americans began to know what Jihad and taqqiya were. I believe the same nonchalant attitude that existed toward Islam before 9/11, is today of the same degree toward Buddhism, specifically Zen Buddhism, which is what permeates the spiritual state of Japan.

We must stop simply focusing on the current appearance of friendliness that Japan is presenting, and look underneath, into the very soul of Japan.

There was a religious activity done by Shinzo Abe in April of this year, in which he sent a message to the Koyasan Okuno-in Buddhist temple. In this temple there is a shrine which is believed to be a house of the souls of 1000 “Showa martyrs.”

Showa is the name given to the Emperor Hirohito, who led Japan against America in WW2, and for whom the Japanese soldiers fought, killed, and died for. Hirohito, or Showa, was worshipped as a literal god, and the souls of those who died for them — the Showa martyrs — are revered as ‘kami’ or gods who live in the shrine. A number of these “martyrs” were actually convicted of war crimes.

In other words, Shinzo Abe sent a message to commend the souls of those who fought and killed Americans, and who he adulates as literal gods or divine beings.

The religious fanaticism behind this ritual should most definitely seize our concerns, but it is not. Muslims were revering their jihadist martyrs, and very few cared, until 9/11. If we focused more on the demonic religions that make terrorists, rather than terrorist attacks themselves, then we would not be scattering about in shock when the attack does actually happen.

Some few media outlets here and there reported the story of Abe sending a message to the Buddhist temple to adore people who murdered American soldiers. The AP reported:

China and South Korea yesterday urged Japan to stick to history and reflect on its wartime aggression after Tokyo confirmed that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a note earlier this year to a ceremony honouring more than 1,000 second world war-era war criminals, praising their contributions.

Abe sent the message in April to a ceremony at the Koyasan Buddhist temple in central Japan in his capacity as head of the ruling party, not as prime minister, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.

In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry said Japan should reflect on its wartime aggression and make a “clean break with militarism” to rebuild relations with Asian neighbours.

“We urge Japan to adhere to its commitment to reflect on the invasion and take solid action to win the trust of Asian neighbours and the international community,” spokesman Qin Gang said.

A Vietnamese publication also reported:

Abe sent a message in April to a Buddhist temple in western Japan housing a monument to more than 1,000 “Showa Martyrs”, including wartime leaders convicted by Allied tribunals who were executed or died in prison, an official of a group sponsoring the event told Reuters on Wednesday.

The term “Showa” refers to the late Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought World War Two.

We have forgotten the fact that it was just only about 70 years ago, that Japan attacked the United States in Pearl Harbor where they slaughtered 2,403 Americans, wounded another 1,178, and destroyed 188 U.S. aircraft .

We have become despicably indifferent toward this horrendous massacre, and this is evidenced by America now helping Japan grow more militarily independent. With this, it can be said that American have grown careless toward 9/11, because so many politicians, elected by the American people, on both Republican and Democratic sides, have supported the arming and training of Muslim jihadists.

America is helping two enemies, both of whom executed the two worst attacks on America in our country’s history: Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

We have forgotten that Japan is the only country in the world that America nuked (and the only nation that was ever nuked), and the sheer severity of the attack indicates how dangerous the Japanese are, and how much they needed to be subdued because of the intensity of the threat they posed.

Now, 70 years later, America is allowing them to conduct collective self defense, work on creating a new and original fighter jet, and become nuclear (which only leads to the production of nuclear weapons, of which Japan is very capable).

A focus and investigation on Japanese Buddhism is just as essential as a knowledge of Islam was before 9/11. With the absence of prudence, we only focus on dangerous religions once their followers begin doing massacres.

Abe gave worship to the souls of Japanese soldiers who died fighting Americans, and their souls are believed to live in a Buddhist temple. This combines religious with military politics, and it is this element of fanaticism that should compel us to study the violent nature of Buddhism.

Let us see how these “Showa martyrs” are perceived through the lens of Japanese Buddhism. The Soto Zen master, Reirin Yamada, who thrived as a spiritual teacher during and after WW2, and who was a great supporter of the tyrannical Japanese expansion in Asia, wrote a book in which he described the souls of those died fighting for the emperor:

The true form of the heroic spirits [of the dead] is the good karmic power that has resulted from their loyalty, bravery, and nobility of character. This will never perish. …The body and mind produced by this karmic power cannot be other than what has existed up to the present. …The loyal, brave, noble, and heroic spirits of those officers and men who have died shouting, “May the emperor live for ten thousand years!” will be reborn right here in this country. It is only natural that this should occur. (Yamada Reirin, Zangaku Yawa, pp. 53-54, quoted by Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 9, p. 132)

Sugimoto Goro, a Japanese army officer and Buddhist scholar, whose book, Great Duty, sold 1,200,000 copies from 1938 to 1945, and who was known for his Zen Buddhist fanaticism and tenacity in battle during WW2, explained the deification of the martyrs of Japan as such:

Warriors who sacrifice their lives for the emperor will not die. They will live forever. Truly, they should be called gods and Buddhas for whom there is no life or death. …Where there is absolute loyalty there is no life or death. Where there is life and death there is no absolute loyalty. When a person talks of his view of life and death, that person has not yet become pure in heart. He has not yet abandoned body and mind. In pure loyalty there is no life or death. Simply live in pure loyalty! (Sugimoto, Taigi, pp. 153-54, Ibid, ch. 8, p. 121)

This is how the souls of those killed in battle were viewed during WW2, and is it realistic to even think that Abe thinks any differently? Shinzo Abe has explicitly denied that Japan forced women to become sex slaves, just as the Turks deny the rapes that were done in the Armenian Genocide. The women raped by the Japanese were called “comfort women,” and Abe rejects the historical fact that they were coerced to have intercourse with imperial soldiers:

There was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested. That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there

Abe deems the Kono Statement, which was an official declaration on the part of the Japanese government repenting for having comfort women, as dishonorable to the glory of Japan:

The Kono statement put dishonor on the back of Japan by indicating that the military stormed into houses, kidnapped women and turned them into comfort women

In 2007, 100 Japanese lawmakers affirmed that there was no massacre in the Chinese city of Nanking, in which 300,000 Chinese were horrifically butchered. One of the lawmakers, Tōru Toid, affirmed:

We are absolutely positive that there was no massacre in Nanking

This year a film was produced in Japan romanticizing the kamikazes, and Shinzo Abe most certainly took pleasure in the movie, not hesitating to see it. As one report tells us:

According to one of Japan’s leading newspaper, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spent part of New Year’s eve watching a movie that celebrates the life of a pilot from the kamikaze team. The film tells the story of a Japanese pilot who launched a suicide attack on the US military during the Second World War. Abe told the newspaper he was “moved” by the drama.

“Eien no zero” tells the story of Kyuzo Miyabe, a young Kamikaze pilot who is obsessed with life and terrified of death. He is repeatedly scolded by his superior officers for being reluctant to participate in the war in the pacific. In the end Miyabe follows orders and carries out a suicide attack against a US aircraft carrier.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was moved by the story.. a comment that has attracted critics who believe the film casts the country’s militarist past in a positive light.”

Abe and his administration are working hard to change the Japanese education system, in order to alter textbooks as a means to praising imperial Japan, and instilling a denial of past atrocities. In November, the Education Ministry advocated a rule that would require all new history textbooks to include imperialist views of Japan that were trumped and preached during WW2.

In October, Abe’s education minister ordered the school board in the town of Taketomi in Okinawa, that a certain textbook, which has nationalistic sentiments, be used. This is the first time that the Japanese government has issued such an injunction.

With all of these facts Abe, it would be quite naive of us to all of a sudden think that he has separated himself from the traditional Japanese Zen Buddhist way of revering the WW2 martyrs.

Abe wants to revive the ‘glory days’ of Imperial Japan, and as time goes by we are going to be seeing the attempt to make this utopia into a reality, and it will not be pleasant, but violent and terrifying.

If only people knew how involved Buddhism was in Imperial Japan during WW2, then we would take Shinzo Abe’s religious actions more seriously. In the year 1935, a prominent Japanese Buddhist master wrote:

The Japanese people are a chosen people whose mission is to control the world. The sword which kills is also the sword which gives life. Comments opposing war are the foolish opinions of those who can only see one aspect of things and not the whole. … All of the people of this country should do Zen. That is to say, they should all awake to the Great Way of the Gods. This is Mahayana Zen. (Quoted in Ichikawa, Nihon Fashizumu ka no Shukyo, p. 163, in Victoria, Zen At War, ch. 9, p. 137)

Since Abe and his ilk are so fixated on Imperial Japan, it is certain that he would agree with Sugimoto Goro, when he wrote that the wars of Imperial Japan were Buddhist holy wars, just as Muslims see their wars as holy Jihad:

The wars of the empire are sacred wars. They are holy wars. They are the [Buddhist] practice (gyo) of great compassion (daijihishin). Therefore the imperial military must consist of holy officers and holy soldiers. (Sugimoto, Taigi, p. 62, Ibid, ch. 8, p.123)

The military ideology of imperial Japan was based on Zen Buddhism, especially on its doctrine of denying the physical mind and body for a selfless mind and body, in order to create fearless and heartless soldiers who would, like machines, be totally detached from any emotions and follow orders without question.

The Japanese had their soldiers use a ritual called Zazen, or sitting mediation, to make them selfless to battle and cruelty, and quite similarly the Ottoman Empire used the Sufi ritual of zikr, or Islamic meditation, to make their soldiers selfless and brave, and such a ritual became the spiritual foundation for the Ottoman Empire.

Zen Buddhism and the imperial Japan ideology fit together like hand in glove. The founder of Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharma, taught that the goal of Zen was to detach oneself from the physical mind and body and go into a state of emptiness (Śūnyatā in Sanskrit), or dharma nature,

The Buddha wasn’t mistaken. Deluded people don’t know who they are. Something so hard to fathom is known by a buddha and no one else. Only the wise know this mind, this called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Neither life nor death can restrain this mind. Nothing can. Its also called Unstoppable Tathagata, the Incomprehensible, the Sacred Self, the Immortal, the Great Stage. (Bodhidharma, Bloodstream, trans. Pine)

Bodhidharma taught this concept of self-detachment as such:

The awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they’re attached to appearances, they’re unaware that their minds are empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearances of things they lose the Way. If you know that everything comes from the mind, don’t become attached. … Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. (Ibid, ellipse mine)

This sort of spiritual teaching, of detaching oneself from the world, enables one to be fearless of death, since death and birth do not limit someone in the state of emptiness, and one will easily obey orders without allowing ego to hinder his violent will. One forgets oneself, and accepts everything as it comes, even murdering and slaughtering innocents can be done without feelings of guilt since the mind is detached from emotions and remorseful sensibility.

Sugimoto Goro exemplified perfectly how these Zen teachings of detachment and Dharma-nature apply perfectly to Imperial Japan’s despotic ideology:

Zen Master Dogen said, “To study the Buddha Dharma is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.” To forget the self means to discard both body and mind. To discard beyond discarding, to discard until there is nothing left to discard. …This is called reaching the Great Way in which there is no doubt. This is the Great Law of the universe. In this way the great spirit of the highest righteousness and the purest purity manifests itself in the individual. This is the unity of the sovereign and his subjects, the origin of faith in the emperor. (Sugimoto, Taigi, p. 101, in Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 8, p. 120)

Bodhidharma taught that the truest essence of Zen was to be found in the mind, saying,

Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware,miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, its all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is zen. (Ibid)

Reminiscently, Muslims believe that their whole lives must selflessly be dedicated to Sharia, which literally means, “the way,” the same as the Japanese dedicated themselves to what they called “the way.” It is no wonder why Christ called Himself the Way; He knew that such wicked men would call their false religions “the way,” and Christ, with full knowledge of the future, declared these words to warn us from such deceptions:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6)

Sugimoto took this ideological concept of the mind and applied it to Buddhist warfare, saying,

An ancient master [Nanquan] said, “One’s ordinary mind is the Way.” …In the spring there are hundreds of flowers, and in the fall, the moon. In the summer there are cool breezes, and in the winter, snow. Laying down one’e life in order to destroy the rebel is one’s ordinary mind. If one does not fall victim to an idle mind, this is truly the practice of Great Duty. It is this that must be called the essence of faith in the emperor. ( Sugimoto, Taigi, p. 101, in Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 8, p. 99)

Such a mindset numbs men’s minds and justifies their indifference to their own lusts for cruelty and sadistic power. Just to illustrate how evil the Japanese were, I would like to present a number of excerpts from the book, The Rape of Nanking, by Irish Chang, that documents the brutalities of the Japanese when they invaded and occupied the Chinese city of Nanking.

Japanese soldiers had no problem in brutally raping any woman, even middle aged and elderly women, as we read from Chang:

Old age was not concern to the Japanese. Matrons, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers endured repeated sexual assaults. A Japanese soldier who raped a woman of sixty was ordered to “clean the penis by her mouth.” When a woman of sixty-two protested to soldiers that she was too old for sex, they “rammed a stick up her instead.” Many women in their eighties were raped to death, and at least one woman in that age group was shot and killed because she refused a Japanese soldier’s advances.

If the Japanese treatment of old women was terrible, their treatment of young children was unthinkable. Little girls were raped so brutally that some could not walk for weeks afterwards. Many required surgery; others died. Chinese witnesses saw Japanese rape girls under ten years of age in the streets and then slash open their vaginas of preteen girls in order to ravish them more effectively. …

The Japanese violated many who were about to go into labor, were in labor, or who had given birth only a few days earlier. One victim who was nine months pregnant when raped suffered not only stillbirth but a complete mental collapse. At least one pregnant woman was kicked to death. Still more gruesome was the treatment allotted to some of the unborn children of these women. After gang rape, Japanese soldiers sometimes slashed open the bellies of pregnant women and ripped out the fetuses for amusement. (Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, ch. 4, p. 91)

Murdering of unborn infants reminds of the Muslim Ottoman troops who were so cruel that they would take pregnant women and bet on whether the infant was male or female; they would then rip the child out of the womb, and the bet would be settled. According to one archive released by the Vatican, Ottoman troops would bet “on the sex of fetuses in the wombs of pregnant women before they quartered them and with the same knife killed the babies”.

Lets not forget, that these are the rapes that Abe denies ever happened, and its not just Abe. Tōru Hashimoto, a current famous politician in Japan, who is the mayor of Osaka and the co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, said that the raping of 200,000 women by the Japanese imperial military was “necessary” in order to maintain order amongst the soldiers. While admitting that they were indeed raped, he said:

In the circumstances in which bullets are flying like rain and wind, the soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives …If you want them to have a rest in such a situation, a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that.

The Japanese even went so far as to eat the penises of Chinese men, believing that it gave them some special power, as we read:

Even genitals, apparently, were consumed: a Chinese soldier who escaped from Japanese custody saw several dead people in the streets with their penises cut off. He was later told that the penises were sold to Japanese customers who believed that eating them would increase virility. (Ibid, p. 88)

The world was shocked to see a Muslim jihadist cut open the body of a Syrian soldier and eat his liver, and this was what was seen in Nanking. As we read:

One Japanese reporter who later investigated the Rape of Nanking learned that at least one Japanese soldier tore the heart and liver out of a Chinese victim to eat them. (Ibid)

There are many other reports of this gruesome reality, and I believe the presentation of this brutality will suffice to demonstrate my point: Abe and those like him, and many of the politicians in Japan deny that this evern even happened, just as Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide. Nations that deny their massacres, do so only because they wish to repeat them.

These massacres only happened around 77 years ago, and Pearl Harbor only happened around 70 years ago, and yet we are acting as though the Japanese are our friends. Let us also consider, if your country was nuked twice, would you ever forget it? In the East, people don’t forget such events.

If America is attacked, the American society, by and large, experiences its highest point of shock for a few months, and then it becomes distant memory (like Pearl Harbor). The Eastern mind, on the other hands, does not think in terms of days, weeks, months, or even years, but in decades, centuries, and millennia.

Japan has never forgotten what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they are preparing to make a violent comeback. America has forgotten Pearl Harbor, and they are helping Japan make that very comeback. But this time the Japanese will have