There was a journalist named Soichi Oya. I think it's fair to say he was one of the most representative journalists of the Showa era. He was involved in a wide range of work, from politics to social customs, and left behind many famous quotes that accurately captured the essence of things, making many people who heard them say, "Oh, that's so well said." He was also known for being a sharp-tongued person.
I think it was "If you want to see the Meiji era, go to Brazil." This is what Oya Soichi said when he visited the Japanese community in Brazil after the war. Even though it was after the war, it must be a very old saying, but there are still people in the Japanese community who sometimes bring up this saying. I guess they think it was a very well-spoken phrase.
You may not feel that it is "Meiji," but I think that even those who are now coming into contact with the Japanese community in Brazil for the first time will be able to empathize to some extent with these words.
This too can be classified as a famous quote.
To put it simply, what Oya Soichi was trying to express is that the Meiji era spirit that disappeared from Japan after the war still thrives in Brazilian Japanese society.
How should I respond if someone told me that I still have some of the Meiji era mentality in me?
In modern Japan, where the Meiji era is generally held in high regard, this would be considered praise. After Japan lost the war, it threw away all the good and bad parts of the prewar period. The lost virtues of Japan have been passed down to the Japanese community in Brazil.
However, depending on how you look at it, you could be saying that you are an old, unprogressive person. Japan made great sacrifices after the war and transformed into a new democratic nation. And yet Japanese people in Brazil are just like the Japanese of the past. That's how you could take this comment in a negative way.
After all, these words come from a journalist who is known for his sharp tongue. Perhaps the true value of these words lies in the fact that they can be interpreted in either a positive or negative way.
I once heard an anecdote about the time when Soichi Oya left these words during a lecture tour in Brazil. Even knowing this story doesn't tell us the true meaning of what Oya said, but it does give us some idea of the background to his words.
The person who told me this story was MK, an associate of a Japanese association that at the time hosted lectures by notable Japanese figures, including Mr. Oya.
Although a long time had passed since the end of the war, it was still a rare opportunity for members of the Japanese community in Brazil to hear directly from Japanese people the latest information about Japan. Many people gathered at the venue to hear from well-known journalists.
At the time, the turmoil over the winners and losers that had thrown postwar Japanese Brazilian society into chaos had passed its most violent phase, marked by frequent assassinations, but it was by no means resolved. There were still many people who could not accept defeat, and even if they did, could never forgive those who publicized Japan's defeat.
There were people in the audience that day who found themselves in that position.
MK does not remember what the atmosphere was like throughout the lecture, but he says that the trigger was a comment made by one of the speakers (he is not sure whether it was Mr. Oya).
"This is bad," was the comment even MK, one of the organizers, felt.
From that one word onwards, the atmosphere in the venue gradually became uneasy, and by the end of the talk, the atmosphere was filled with a sense of unease. MK and other people involved in the event began to worry about the safety of the speakers.
The speakers had been scheduled to stay in a hotel in town that day, but some members of the audience began to voice their opposition to letting the speakers leave, so the organizers decided to have them leave town that night.
The situation was so dire that MK said he "just barely escaped with his life."
The speaker's comment was simply a trivial (and overly affectionate) nickname for the Emperor.
It is said that in postwar Japan, people often said this. For Japanese people who lived in Japan and experienced the American occupation before, during, and after the war, saying this phrase openly in public may have allowed them to feel the changes in the world.
The Japanese speakers may have chosen this phrase as a good way to convey to the Japanese people who did not experience the defeat in Japan how much Japan has changed. Also, by the time they were able to travel from Japan to Brazil for a lecture, they would have begun to feel confident that the changes were somehow the right ones.
Just imagining the scene of a speaker speaking with some confidence and some of the audience members' faces becoming increasingly tense in front of him is enough to make you feel nervous.
I haven't done a thorough investigation, but it's possible to imagine that seeing the audience's reaction that day, and perhaps even feeling that his life was in danger, the famous quote came to Oya's mind.
If this is the case, then the background to Oya's famous quote must be, above all, the surprise he felt when he came into contact with the Japanese community in Brazil.
Of course, this was due to his surprise at the existence of a Japanese community in Brazil where traces of Meiji Japan still remained, but at the same time, he must have been surprised at how Japanese people, including himself, had changed so completely since the defeat in the war, and had completely forgotten their previous mentality.
Not because I have revealed an episode that may somehow lower Oya Soichi's popularity, but I would like to conclude by introducing a little-known quote by Oya Soichi within the Japanese community in Brazil.
When I found this in a guest book handed down at a certain Japanese organization, my heart was warmed by the warmth of Soichi Oya's gaze. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget, but it just stuck in my memory. This is a great quote.
"Grafting often produces better fruit than seedlings - for those who are creating a new homeland"
© 2007 Shigeo Nakamura