Does only Murakami have the courage to speak out?

In early November, renowned novelist Haruki Murakami spoke to the Mainichi Shimbun criticizing Japan's revisionism over World War II and comparing it to the government secrecy over Fukushima. He will now no doubt face the usual hollow death threats from right-wing groups more interested in publicizing themselves than actually harming anyone. It will also be interesting to see how much air time he gets for this from a media notoriously afraid of rocking the boat. Japan Inc. faces quite a dilemma: what to do with a Nobel-winning national hero who says something so...unpatriotic?

The reason that Murakami openly condemning the past is such a big deal, is that so few prominent figures in Japan have shown such courage. In the early days of Japan's democracy there was an effort to address the wrongs of the past, evidenced in the San Francisco treaty of 1951, where Japan agreed to pay compensation to Asian nations that had suffered from its aggression. Back then college curricula e did not shy away from wartime atrocities.

But as Japan solidified into a virtual one-party state under the LDP, a backlash against the truth began. MacArthur's occupation never 'de-Nazified' the government. Bureaucrats with much needed expertise from before the war were left in place, and they kept their old ideas. Politicians simply changed hats and ran for office in the new Japan. This ensured that a nationalist streak ran through the new government and the ruling elite now had the confidence to take on Japan's Imperial past – and bury it.

The denials started even as Nanking burned. One General Iwane, noted for his straight-laced opposition to harming civilians, was quietly removed from the area. The sixties and seventies were littered with the careers of those who ran afoul of the new revisionism. Journalists who exposed Japan's wartime atrocities – such as Katsuichi Honda and Tomio Hora - were threatened and slurred. Academics were demoted or dismissed. Apologists gained in confidence and stature, seeking to undermine the facts and present a romanticized ideal of Japan's Imperial wartime role.

The vernacular of modern propaganda is the same as during the war itself: liberation, modernization, co-prosperity and freedom from 'Western tyranny'. Over the decades such euphemisms have seeped into education, along with the censorship of any texts that dare explain the atrocities as they really were. Even the most irrefutable of admissions has been rebranded. Japan's military presence China can hardly be denied, after all it was a Japanese army in Manchuria not the other way around. But this was famously termed in one standard textbook an 'advance' as opposed to the obvious 'invasion'. Only in a war of 'liberation' from a vague third party could the rapine and slaughter of outright invasion be dismissed as a mere military maneuver.

Coupled with such denials, for several generations, Japanese school children have learned by rote a series of mantras that define their understanding of Japan's role in the world. We've all heard them from no-doubt well-meaning Japanese seeking to educate the foreigner: Japan is a peaceful country; it is a very small country; our ancestors were farmers and yours were hunters. Hiroshima's peace dome is held up as a beacon to that lights the way to a peaceful future, free of nuclear weapons. Such ingrained conceptions serve to color the Japanese view of the past.

When students grow old enough to ask questions, not only has their education conditioned them against questioning authority, but it has plowed a field ripe for denial. How do the Japanese square away the brutality of Nanking, the viciousness of enslaving women for sex or the horrors of Unit 731, when they have heard all their lives that peaceful little Japan is committed to just the opposite?

In steps the media, led by the government mouthpiece NHK, to explain it away: these are just pernicious foreign lies spread by jealous rivals China and Korea; the rest of Asia is envious of Japan's success; the comfort women just greedy old prostitutes. There is no need to examine the evidence or even attempt to refute it. Politicians and a pliant media simply repeat a whole new mantra until everyone believes it – that there is no evidence to begin with.

Though the retreating Japanese military authorities managed to destroy much of the records that covered atrocities, hundreds of documents have survived along with the testimonies of many victims, witnesses and perpetrating soldiers. These remain available in government and university archives. But with the tight lipped media marching in lockstep and authority figures such as Governor Ishihara, Mayor Hashimoto and even some cabinet-level ministers repeating the mantra that there is no evidence, the average citizen can be forgiven for not looking it up.

That such world figures as US President Barack Obama have called on Japan to acknowledge the past gets only a passing mention. That western victims of Japan's aggression in Asia - including comfort women – have come forward too, is usually ignored. This is all about China and Korea baiting Japan for their own domestic purposes. Peaceful little Japan is a victim again. And how can today's victim have been yesterday's aggressor? Such questions were easily answered before the revisionists got their hands on the textbooks.

Why then Murakami and why now? He clearly sees parallels between the historical cover up of the war and the current opaqueness surrounding the Fukushima disaster. Looking to the pre-war years, it is no doubt apparent that denial of truths and a complicit media are not just stumbling blocks to progress but a slippery slope toward authoritarianism – the kind that got Japan in trouble in the past.

Murakami knows that he speaks out at the risk of censure and slander, but as Japan's most celebrated novelist and an internationally renowned intellectual, he at least has a platform. Small wonder that more people of his stature and celebrity do not come forward to speak truth to power. Thanks to the efforts of the establishment over the past fifty years, precious few have even heard the truth to begin with.