Christian Kessler is a historian and professor at the Athénée Français and Musashi University in Tokyo. His publications include Japanese Kamikaze in the Pacific War, 1944-1945 (Economica, 2018).
In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Japanese government cautiously observes the neutrality it is often accustomed to when conflicts break out, pleading for the humanitarian cause and criticizing all forms of violence. On the other hand, in the streets, some rallies in support of the Gaza Strip took place, for example on November 7, the first day of the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Tokyo, or on November 24 with demonstrators in front of the Israeli embassy calling for Gaza to be saved, for the genocide to be stopped, or even more clearly, for example, for example, for the genocide to be stopped. speaking out in favour of a free Palestine. While no pro-Israel demonstrations have taken place, it would be difficult to draw a conclusion, even if the Jewish community remains on alert. On November 16, a far-right activist drove his car into the protective barriers of the Israeli embassy, injuring a police officer, a rare act in Japan.
It should be remembered that Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism had penetrated Japan in the 1920s, all the more easily since Mein Kampf, partially translated into Japanese in 1925, was full of praise for Japan. There were only a few hundred Jews in Japan in those years, but dozens of books denounced the Jewish global conspiracy associated with the United States. In January 1943, the Mitsukoshi department store, which still exists, organized an exhibition in which the Jewish influence on American cinema and morality was denounced. Many Japanese therefore shared the Nazis' view of the Jews. But if the former military attaché in Paris, Shioden Nobutaka, translator of the Protocols of Zion, slayer of the Jews accused of plutocracy, was elected to the Diet in 1942 with the largest number of votes, anti-Semites are often only second-class characters and no leader allowed himself to be dragged in their wake.
In the 1970s, anti-Semitic publications also appeared: here too, they showed a great ignorance about the Jewish people. These texts are often the expression of a disguised anti-Americanism, exacerbated in times of economic conflict.
Christian Kessler
Pragmatic as usual, some soldiers put an end to the exactions of the White Russians and the Kempetai (the famous Japanese political police that had nothing to envy to the Gestapo) against the Jews in Manchuria, even seeking to encourage their immigration from Europe and especially the investment of their capital. There were already some 16,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai when Joseph Meisinger, head of the Gestapo in Warsaw, came in July 1942 to propose to the Japanese the extension of the genocide to the areas under their control. Matsuoka Yosuke, the foreign minister who had signed the Tripartite Pact (September 27, 1940) with Germany and Italy and lived in the United States for fifteen years, confided that the signing of the pact did not commit him to anti-Semitism, an opinion shared by the government. However, it was decreed that the Jews were concentrated in camps in China, where they were mixed with other populations. There was therefore no genocidal plan on the part of the Japanese, even if, it should be remembered, the camps for civilians and prisoners of war in China and Southeast Asia were as appalling and sometimes more so than those of the German Nazis.
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In the 1970s, a whole literature of essays on the Japanese (nihonjinron) appeared, whose success in bookstores can be explained by the simplicity of an argument far from any scientific truth, but playing on emotion, not hesitating to compare the Japanese to the Jews, a people apart! In the same vein, anti-Semitic publications also appeared: here too, they show a great ignorance about the Jewish people in a country where specialized research is most of the time cut off from the public, who content themselves with fanciful publications. These texts are often the expression of a disguised anti-Americanism, exacerbated in times of economic conflict. But when, in January 1995, the monthly magazine Marco Polo denied the existence of the gas chambers, its publication was quickly suppressed.
More recently, in 2005, the controversy over a revisionist textbook, drawn up by a group of intellectuals supported by the right wing of the LDP (ruling Liberal Democratic Party), denounced the masochistic vision of history inherited from the Americans. Among them was the famous manga artist Kobayashi Yoshiniro, who made disconcerting remarks denouncing the Jewish-American plot to nuke Japan in 1945. Of course, he was speaking in his own name, but his impact and the lack of knowledge of history leave the way open to a rampant anti-Semitism that is still relevant in bookstores.