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“From Third World to First”はおしまい。昨日発見した事実誤認は、昨夜（と言うか、けさ）のうちにＳＰＨにメールで指摘した。*
それから、募集が締め切られたようだった仕事、別のサイトで同じ会社の同じ募集を見つけたので、履歴書を送付した。ダメでもいい。何か行動しないと。*
楽天の連勝が７でストップした。監督さん、31年前と同じですね。当時の阪急のように圧倒的に強いチームがないので、今年はチャンスですよ。ところで、楽天は「楽天ゴールデン・イーグルス」のはずなのに、「ゴールデン」が忘れ去られているようなのはどうしてなのか？しかし、「タイガース」で散々だったノムラさんにとっては、「ホークス」「スワローズ」とともに「ゴールデン・イーグルス」は鳥類で縁起がいいかも。*
One interview I gave to… Foreign Affairs… was published in February 1994, causing a minor stir among Americans interested in the Asian values versus Western values debate. In my answers, I avoided using the terms “Asian values,” of which there are many different kinds, and instead referred to Confucian values, the values that prevail in the cultures of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam… There are also some 20 million ethnic Chinese among the peoples of Southeast Asia…There is no Asian model as such, but there are fundamental differences between East Asian Confucian and Western liberal societies. Confucian societies believe that the individual exists in the context of the family, extended family, friends and wider society, and that the government cannot and should not take over the role of the family. Many in the West believe that the government is capable of fulfilling the obligations of the family when it fails, as single mothers. East Asians shy away from this approach. (p. 545)
As a prominent dissident, Kim Dae Jung had spent many years in the United States and become an advocate of the universal application of human rights and democracy regardless of cultural values. [He] had written an article in… Foreign Affairs in response to my interview with the editor, Fareed Zakaria. He did not agree that history and culture made for different attitudes of a people and different norms of government. Foreign Affairs invited me to reply. I chose not to. The differences in our views cannot be resolved by argument. It will be settled by history, by the way events will develop in the next 50 years. It takes more time than one generation for the political, economic, social and cultural implications of policies to work themselves out. It is a process of attrition, of social Darwinism. (pp. 596-597)
… Because of fear and hate arising from the suffering of the occupation years, I had felt the satisfaction of schadenfreude when I read of their hunger and suffering in their bombed and burnt cities. This feeling turned into reluctant respect and admiration as they stoically and methodically set out to rebuild from the ashes of defeat… (p. 558)
My first post-war dealing with the Japanese was over a cold-blooded massacre committed when they captured Singapore in 1942. By chance, bones in a mass grave were discovered during earthworks in February 1962 in Siglap, a suburb in the eastern end of the island. There were 40 such sites… I had to be seen to raise the matter with the Japanese government and decided to see for myself this revitalised Japan. In May 1962 I made my first visit to Japan…
The only important business I raised with Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda was the “blood debt,” compensation for their wartime atrocities. He expressed his “sincere regrets” – not apology – for what had happened. He said the Japanese people would like to made amends for the “wrong done to the spirits of the departed”… They wanted to avoid making a precedent that would lead to a deluge of claims from other victims elsewhere… We eventually settled this “blood debt” after independence, in October 1966, for $50 million, half in grants and half in loans. I wanted to establish good relations to encourage their industrialist to invest in Singapore. (pp. 558-559)
[During my unofficial visit in April 1967, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato] accepted my invitation to visit Singapore. He was the first Japanese prime minister to visit Singapore after the war.
Sato was dignified and serious-looking until he broke into a friendly smile… He spoke in a deep vice and did not waste words. For every three sentences by his foreign minister, Takeo Miki, he uttered one, the more telling one…
… The only reference he made in his speech to the Japanese occupation was “There were times in the history of Asia when we had a number of unhappy incidents,” a monumental understatement.
I paid a return official visit a year later, in October 1968…
Because it was an official visit, the emperor and empress of Japan gave us lunch at the Imperial Palace. The main palace had been bombed so they received us in one of the outer buildings… Coming face to face with this demigod was a memorable moment in my life… Here before Choo and me was this small man with a spare stooped frame. He looked utterly harmless. Indeed, he was friendly and courteous, speaking in a very low whisper… [After a photo opportunity] we sat down for a conversation, inconsequential except that a the appropriate moment he expressed his regrets for any suffering caused to the people of Singapore during the war. I nodded but did not say anything. I was not prepared for it, and thought it best to stay silent.
… One of my last acts as prime minister was to attend his funeral in February 1989… [During the war] I could not have imagined then that I would represent Singapore to pay my respects to the Japanese emperor at his funeral… The world came to pay tribute to Japan’s outstanding success. (pp. 560-562)
The right of free passage through the Straits of Malacca was uppermost in the minds of almost all the Japanese leaders I met in the 1960s and ‘70s. Sato had first expressed his concern in 1967 that big tankers might not be able to the Straits of Malacca because of its shallowness in certain parts… With advanced technology the straits could be deepened and lighted buoys could mark out the lanes… He was preoccupied with their sea access to raw materials, especially oil, and to their markets. These issues had led them into World War II… The next prime minister, Kakuei Tanaka, also raised this issue in May 1973 when I went to Tokyo. When I told him that we could work together to resist any proposal by other countries in the regions to collect toll from ships passing through the straits, he was visibly reassured. (p. 563)
The Japanese prime ministers I met, from Ikeda in 1962 to Miyazawa in 1990, were all men of considerable ability. One stood out as a rough diamond – Kakuei Tanaka…
It was refreshing to talk to a Japanese leader who was ready to express his views without inhibitions, even on sensitive subjects like anti-Japanese sentiments in Southeast Asia…
… He exuded enormous self-confidence. (pp. 566-567)
Because most Japanese prime ministers after Sato did not remain in office more than two years, it was difficult to establish deep personal relations with them…
Yasuhiro Nakasone,,, was able to stay as prime minister for five years from 1982. He could speak English but with a heavy Japanese accent…
He had none of the self-effacing ways of most Japanese leaders. When I visited him in March 1983 he… was concerned over Asean’s reaction to what he termed “a slight increase in Japan’s defence expenditure”… He wanted to assure apprehensive neighbours that Japan was not becoming militaristic simply because it improved its self-defence forces so as to be able, in an emergency, to defend the three straits (Soya, Tsugaru and Tsushima) around the Japanese islands. This, he claimed, had been the policy of previous cabinets, although it had not been publicly declared.
When he visited Singapore in 1983, I recounted that 10 years previously, in the same cabinet room, General Ichiji Sugita (retired), who as a lieutenant –colonel had helped to plan General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s invasion of Malaya, had apologised to me for his role. He had returned in 1974 and 1975 together with his surviving officers colleagues to brief Singapore Armed Forces officers on their experience during the campaign in Malaya and their final assault on and capture of Singapore… We must not allow ourselves to be blinkered by the past but work towards a future free of suspicions. [Nakasone] expressed in English his “heartfelt gratitude” for my position. (pp. 570-571)
[Noboru] Takeshita was prime minister at a time of excitement and hope among the Japanese of getting the Kurile islands back from the Soviets… In Tokyo, at the funeral of Emperor Hirohito in February 1989, Takeshita told me that the Soviet Union had not relented in its occupation of the islands. Later, he sent me a message asking me to put in a word of support for the return of the islands when Soviet Prime Minister Ryzhkov visited Singapore in early 1990… When Ryzhkov visited Singapore, I raised the subject of the four islands. His response was totally predictable: there was no dispute over the four islands; they were Soviet. (pp. 572-573)
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