Shōichi Watanabe

Shōichi Watanabe (渡部 昇一 Watanabe Shōichi, born 15 September 1930) is an English scholar and one of Japan’s foremost cultural critics. He was born in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture. A graduate of Sophia University, where he obtained his Master’s degree, he completed his doctorate at University of Münster in 1958. Two volumes of autobiography on his years in Germany narrate his varied experiences during this period.[1] Returning to his alma mater, he became successively lecturer, assistant professor and full professor, until his retirement. He is now emeritus professor at the same university. A passionate book-collector, he is chairman of the Japan Bibliophile Society. His personal collection of books on English philology (see Bibliography) is perhaps his most important contribution to the field of English philology in Japan, containing many rare items.

Political position in historical controversies

A conservative opinion-leader affiliated to the openly revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi,[2] Watanabe is known for his dismissal of the Nanking Massacre as a historical delusion, attributing the known killings to the standard revenge of regular soldiers in war against guerrilla combatants whom they have captured.[3] As he later clarified, in his view, the concept of massacre in war should properly be reserved for atrocities against a civilian population, where the numbers roughly exceed the range of 40–50 victims, as opposed to the wholesale killing of irregular insurgents.[4] Generally Watanabe's perspective closely echoes the line taken by Japanese generals before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in the Tokyo War Crimes Trial of 1948.

Again, with regard to the Japanese history textbook controversies, which followed on Saburo Ienaga's suit against the Japanese Education Ministry, Watanabe was almost alone in controverting the general consensus of editorialists writing for the Japanese mainstream press (Mainichi Shinbun, Asahi Shinbun), and upholding the Ministry's prerogative to intervene directly in the content of textbooks used in Japanese primary and secondary schools.[5]

In Watanabe's view, the decisive incident leading to Japan's full-scale war on the Chinese mainland, namely the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, is to be read as an underhand Chinese Communist Party plot against Japan, and the versions of history taught in pre-war Japanese school textbooks are more reliable than those available today to students.[6]

Watanabe remains a controversial figure, but predominantly on the Japanese scene. He is little known abroad, even in his own academic area of specialization. He has disconcerted foreigners by telling them that Japan's "racial purity" was to be cherished.[7] His prolific writings include a number of books on the "Japanese spirit".

Hata Ikuhiko has claimed that Watanabe's book on the German General Staff [8] is characterized by wholesale borrowings from a German source.[9]

Critics

Books criticizing Watanabe include:

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Watanabe Shōichi,Doitsu ryūgakki, Kōdansha Gendai Shinsho, Tokyo 1980, 2 vols.
  2. ↑ Watanabe also contributed to the lobby's publication (e.g. September 2012 edition: nipponkaigi.org/publication/details?id=202
  3. ↑ Watanabe Shōichi, Nihonshi kara mita nihonjin – Shōwa hen
  4. ↑ "永久保存版 - 三派合同 大アンケート", Shokun!, February 2001, 166.
  5. ↑ Watanabe Shōichi,Banken uso ni hoeru
  6. ↑ Watanabe Shōichi, Nenpyō de yomu. Nihon no kin-gendaishi
  7. ↑ Ian Buruma, "What Keeps the Japanese Going?", in New York Times Book Review, Vol.35, No.4, March 17, 1988
  8. ↑ Watanabe Shōichi, Doitsu Sanbō Honbu - Sono eikō to shūsen, Kuresuto Sensho, Tokyo 1997.
  9. ↑ Hata Ikuhiko, Shōwa-shi no nazo o ou, vol.2, Bungei Shunjū, Tokyo 1999

See also

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