Arriving “back in the arena,” gearing up to take one’s place as the head of multiple and perpetually modulating learning communities in the Puget Sound, setting up to perpetuate yet another minor and potentially futile but nevertheless wholly morally necessary cycle of historical amelioration, I find this curious (yet somehow wonderfully timed) message in my inbox. For your delectation:
February 9, 2011
Dear Adam Cathcart ,
The mainstream view on the Second Sino-Japanese War is that Imperial Japan was bent on destroying China, and the rest of Asia, for purely selfish reasons. However, careful analysis of the global situation, particularly of the social and political development of China and the attitudes of the Chinese leadership, indicates that the Chinese were not the innocent victims of “aggression” as is currently claimed.
In the book “The Reluctant Combatant: Japan and the Second Sino-Japanese War” (PHP, Tokyo, 2008), authors Prof. Kitamura and Mr. Lin recount the circumstances that ultimately lead to the Second Sino-Japanese War, demonstrating that the war was neither a Japanese“war of aggression” or that China was a “helpless” victim.
A complete translation of this is book is now available at our Website.
* Summary: http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/78_S2.pdf
* Full text: http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/78_S4.pdf
* Author profile: http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/78_S3.pdfQuestions are welcome.
Sincerely,
MOTEKI Hiromichi, Secretary General
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact
Phone: 03-3519-4366
Fax: 03-3519-4367
Email moteki@sdh-fact.com
URL http://www.sdh-fact.com
Adam Cathcart 
Adam. You’re the expert here. In dot points, what are the textual strategies employed in the full text by these characters?
No wonder my press office did not receive this communication, since we still follow the Curtin line: “Have the hung the bastard (Hirohito) yet?”
Who is Curtin? (Perhaps this question will be delegated to one of your staff?) I think I will check out the text at present; the danger of refuting such types out of hand is that occasionally, just occasionally, they unearth a new source or call into question a paradigm in a helpful way.
“Reconciliation between Japan and China will be extremely challenging at best”. With this type of revisionist garbage spouting from Japan and floating around, no wonder the Japanese are much resented, not just by the Chinese.
Ultimately it was because the Chinese had the nerve to put up a fight against the Japanese on Chinese soil. Damn those pesky Chinese people. Didn’t they know the Japanese came to be their savior, to “kick the white man out of Asia”?
Nippon banzai!!!11111
Apparently Prime Minister Kan was shaking his fist at Russia recently (in public!) about the northern islands issue; I have yet to monitor what the Chinese press said (or didn’t say) about that, but one can be sure that the Chinese media probably didn’t try to hide this.
Glad to see you back in the fray, JCM!
Snickers. That’s a nice way to stir some controversy, Adam – simply republishing a polit-missionary e-mail (I’m not sure if I should ever start reading documents aiming for the dissemination of historical fact or anything that promises to reveal the truth.
Have you read all the document’s 112 pages? 😉
I am working on it, slowly but surely, JR! Will likely report on my Japanese War Crimes page….
Curtin was the Australian PM until his death in 1946.
Anyway, having read and enjoyed enough of that historian populariser Stirling Seagrave, I’m giving the 112 pages a big miss. A skim thru the Nanjing stuff looked creative to put it mildly.
The persistence of the militarist-nationalist thread in Japan can be likened to a HIV-type virus, which is resistant to the penicillin of basic facts, voluminous evidence and Nippon imperial military history.