Atomic Bomb

On July, Defense Minister, Kyuma was forced to resign for a slip; he said in an address at a university, “I now have come to accept in my mind that in order to end the war, it could not be helped that an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that countless numbers of people suffered great tragedy."　His resignation finally resulted in a big reason of general resignation of the Abe cabinet in September.

This was an interested incident which represented a few particular aspects of Japan. On the other hand, I wonder if the foreign press exactly understood how significant this was. In my view, most Japanese citizen privately agrees with Kyuma and feels the atomic bombing partly is inevitable as he said (except for people actually influenced by atomic bombing). Also, we feel others think in the same way, so we share a kind of consensus. However, he confused that “private consensus” with the “public consensus.” The atomic bomb is never accepted publicly even if most we accept it by each privately. Therefore, it could be a misunderstanding, in spite of his resignation, that Japanese never accept the atomic bombing.

It is a particular tendency of Japanese culture to separate private consensus and public consensus, but that isn’t the main topics now (You can see a more explanation in “The Anatomy of Self” written by Takeo Doi).

Anyway, most Japanese actually understand what Kyuma said; if the war had been more protracted, Japan might have been divided by Soviet Union as well as Berlin. Moreover, this probably is the biggest reason; we suppose if Japan had been in the US’s situation, we still must have decided to use the atomic bomb. On the other hand, when Korea and China forcefully demand an apology for the damage during the war, Japan always is embarrassed. The reason is just that those invasions are “inevitable” in order to protect its interest from the influences of European imperialism at that time. Japan expects them to behave in the same way as that we behave toward the US. As long as you don’t understand this particular tendency of Japanese, you can’t exactly understand several conflicts concerned with Japan.

It isn’t clearly distinguished between my own stance and other’s stances under this tendency. While one sympathizes with other’s stance, the other is expected to understand one’s stance in order to share each other’s stance. In such the relationships, the idea of “responsibility” is no longer necessary. I think this is a great Buddhist thought, which can be developed in an Island country with relatively peaceful long history.