The Foreign Correspondents

If I was a teacher on cultural anthropology, the essay written by my fellow correspondent on Toyota’s recent bad rap would be on the must-read list. Sebi went on and listed some of other situations, namely the stupid attempt to ban a documentary on whale hunting from reaching the domestic market, namely the cover up of the “worst kept” secret deal between the U.S. and Japan regarding having nuclear materiel staying inside its ports.

I would add to the list the evidence that the Japanese public had been complicit with this hush-hush culture with the approval of removing the Nanjing rape/massacre from the public school text books. It is a thorny chapter surely. Just as the Germans had Hitler, the Chinese and Mao’s famine, and the recent torture repertoire of the U.S., the Japanese public deserves a chance to start clean. They can do that so long as they don’t try to erase history. German students have to content with the Hitler era and many Italian tabloids today linking their Prime Minister Berlusconi to a certain, unsavory character of their World War II. Why, Mussolini, of course.

This is not finger wagging from a moral high ground. China is not immune to this nationalism and there are plenty of self-denial chapters in the past, with many more are currently writing. China would face its own recognition when the time comes. Japan is simply just ahead of China at the moment. Toyota is the world leading car maker, or as Sebi skillfully observed, the Tiger Wood of automobiles. Its failure, she noted, conjured up a lot of schadenfreude because Ford, GM, and Chrysler do not make that many cars to warrant a Laugh of the Town Toyota now currently enjoying.

One more thing, the funny title to the piece is priceless.

Tagged: china, history, japan