Asahiko Yara

　“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Code of Hammurabi)

　This is the principle of “equivalent retaliation,” devised more than 3,500 years ago by wise men of the West to keep “excessive revenge” from laying society to waste.

　“When you are wounded, returning the same pain to the other party” may indeed be justice. Yet it is difficult to measure out such retaliation, and so an exchange of reprisals leads to an accumulation of grudges, and the conflict is slow to end. The fighting between Hamas and Israel symbolizes that difficulty.

　I believe that what the international community needs from now on is not “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” but an idea that might be called (as I once saw in a gag manga) “eye drops for the eye, a toothbrush for the tooth.”

　Just as we treat a sore eye and care for our teeth every day, is there not a way of responding, even to a conflict started by the other side, not with retaliation but with efforts to heal the other party and to prevent the harm and the conflict from recurring?

　Originally, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a principle that restrained unlimited revenge and sought a balance between injury and punishment. But when states and armed groups repeat their reprisals, that balance is lost, and the loss of life and the hatred pile up. If one side beats the other utterly into the ground, will a life of true peace of mind really follow?

　Here I would like to compare the Japanese and the Jews. As everyone acknowledges, the two peoples have in common that they have handed down their traditions and valued education and intellectual effort. Both have produced outstanding scholars and many Nobel laureates. This is less a quality inborn in either people than the fruit of a culture and of efforts nurtured by families and communities.

　On the other hand, there are great differences between their homelands and histories.

　Japan has a history of 2,700 years since its founding, with the Imperial House’s “unbroken line.” It means a great deal that the Yamato people have maintained cultural and political continuity on the Japanese archipelago over so long a period. Living on the same land for generation after generation, and being able to foresee the future of one’s descendants, became a foundation for nurturing a society of coexistence and mutual prosperity.

　The Jewish people, for many years, experienced dispersion, discrimination, and persecution. The Holocaust above all gave rise to a deep anxiety about entrusting their safety to the judgment of others. Behind the founding of Israel in 1948 lay the earnest wish to regain the land given by God. But the many Palestinians who had been living there were driven out and became refugees. The rebuilding of one people’s homeland brought about the loss of another people’s home.

　While understanding Jewish history, I wish to question severely the stance of the Israeli government, which has given priority to strengthening its military power and applying pressure over a political solution leading to coexistence. In the West Bank, the expansion of settlements, violence by settlers, and situations in which residents are forced to leave their homes are causing heartache throughout the world. Moreover, military attacks on neighboring countries such as Lebanon are so grave a matter that they could develop into a third world war.

　Terrorism by Hamas against Israeli civilians cannot be condoned, but retaliation and national security do not justify endlessly harming the lives, livelihoods, and dignity of others. Deepening the despair of those who have lost their families and homes also endangers future security. This is not a criticism of the Jewish people as a whole, but a question addressed to the violent policies of the Israeli government and their consequences.

　As a contrasting practice, I find value in Japan’s support for peace in Mindanao. The conflict in the southern Philippines is not a simple religious confrontation between Catholics and Muslims. It is a long armed conflict in which problems of land, poverty, political marginalization, and autonomy overlap.

　Japan has supported peace efforts between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and others, building up diplomacy and development cooperation. Under J-BIRD, which began in 2006, Japan has cooperated in building schools, clinics, and roads, in developing human resources, and in rebuilding livelihoods. It has also dispatched development experts to the International Monitoring Team. These are efforts to foster conditions in which residents can actually feel the benefits of peace.

　In 2011, a meeting between President Aquino and MILF Chairman Murad took place in Japan. The trust cultivated through many years of support on the ground helped to advance political dialogue. Since then, Japan has continued to cooperate in peace and development, including improving the administrative capacity of the autonomous government and supporting elections. The main actors in these achievements are the parties concerned and the residents themselves; Japan has played the role of supporting their progress.

　Israel, which is itself exposed to attack, and Japan, which supports peace as a third country, differ in position and circumstances. Even so, the choice of where to direct one’s efforts in order to reduce the roots of conflict can be compared. Stabilizing people’s lives and broadening political participation form a foundation for peace that military power alone cannot build.

　Within Japan, too, there are experiences that should be shared. Universal health insurance, realized in 1961, is a system in which society shares the burden of illness. Long-term employment and human-resource development at companies also embodied the idea of linking an organization’s growth to the lives of those who work there. While we confront issues such as inequality and discrimination, this wisdom of mutual aid can also be of use in cooperation abroad.

　Japan itself has experienced both inflicting and suffering the harm of war. It is precisely because we face that history squarely that there is meaning in aiming for a diplomacy that heals wounds rather than one that adds to them. For more than 80 years since the war, down to the present, the Japanese have not invaded other countries and killed people under the pretext of war. “We cannot become happy through profits gained by killing people” is, I believe, a feeling shared by the Japanese.

　Rather than wounding the other in return, heal the other’s pain.

　Do not wound others; do not earn their resentment; give aid to those who are exhausted. Do not kill. Killing darkens us. What matters is a “bright governance” like that of Japan, which does not kill. Hence “eye drops for the eye, a toothbrush for the tooth.” It is in this very idea that the peace diplomacy Japan should show the world is to be found. “Coexistence and mutual prosperity through bright governance.” I ask the leaders of powerful nations above all to keep this in mind as they conduct their politics and diplomacy.

Why Propaganda Matters in Both “Business” and “Politics”

Edward Bernays’s “Propaganda,” published in 1928, is a work on the techniques of forming public opinion and guiding the behavior of the masses. The author’s central claim is that modern democratic society does not run merely on people judging independently and rationally, but is sustained by a small number of people who organize information and attention and guide them in a certain direction.

Democracy is regarded as a system in which citizens think for themselves and choose the shape of politics and society. In reality, however, individuals cannot adequately research and judge every question in politics, economics, science, culture, and other fields. People therefore entrust their judgment to politicians, experts, newspapers, religious figures, the leaders of organizations they belong to, and so on. What they consider an important issue, which products they prefer, and what kind of life they feel to be desirable are also influenced by these intermediaries. Bernays calls those who operate this mechanism the “invisible government.” It is not a single secret organization but refers to the work of leaders and experts who direct the perceptions and choices of the masses in each field of society.

For the author, propaganda is the organized spreading of support for a particular idea or activity. The word generally calls to mind falsehood and war propaganda, but its good or evil is determined by the validity of its aims and the accuracy of the information conveyed. Corporate product sales, the promotion of party policies, university fundraising, public health improvement, and charitable work also use propaganda, insofar as they require society’s understanding and cooperation. The propaganda activities of the First World War showed that large-scale opinion formation was possible, and those methods came to be applied in peacetime society as well.

At the foundation lies an understanding of mass psychology. Human beings do not always accurately understand the reasons for their own behavior. Even in buying a product, not only practicality and price but also longing for social status, the desire for recognition by those around them, a sense of security, habit, and the like are at work. Merely repeating a product’s merits, therefore, cannot sufficiently change people’s behavior. It is necessary to find out what generates desire or resistance and to link the product or idea to the emotions lying beneath.

Society, moreover, is not a collection of homogeneous masses. Numerous groups overlap according to occupation, religion, region, hobby, class, and so on. Each group has persons and authorities it trusts. For that reason, gaining the approval of group leaders and experts is sometimes more effective than directly persuading every individual, because people use the judgment of those they trust as a clue for their own judgment.

From this way of thinking, the author emphasizes not only the wording of advertising but also methods of creating the very circumstances in which people make judgments. If exhibitions, competitions, ceremonies, survey announcements, and the like are planned to produce newsworthy events, interest spreads through newspapers and magazines. A soap sculpture competition, for example, is an activity that fosters art education and children’s creativity, and at the same time an opportunity to instill familiarity with the product in the home. Activities in which participants take part for their own purposes end up cultivating goodwill toward the company.

The professional who designs such activities is the public relations counsel. The role is not only to convey the client’s claims to society but also to convey society’s expectations and dissatisfactions to the client. If public antipathy arises from the actual conduct of a company or organization, changing the expressions used in publicity will not solve it. The product, management policy, treatment of workers, operation of the organization, and so on must be reformed. Public relations is the work of adjusting the relationship between an organization and society.

Regarding politics as well, the author argues that politicians cannot exercise leadership by merely chasing existing public opinion. They must set policy goals, investigate people’s interests and the circumstances of each group, and convey what the policy means for people’s lives. Rather than relying only on speeches or a candidate’s popularity, they are required to bring policies, actions, symbolic events, and means of communication together into a single plan. At the same time, he holds that campaign promises should be sincere and that the raising of political funds requires openness.

In education, welfare, and the arts as well, valuable work is not necessarily understood of its own accord. Universities need to explain the significance of their research to society, welfare organizations need to make people feel the need for support, and artists and cultural institutions need to create points of contact between daily life and art. The author believes that through such activities propaganda becomes a force that breaks society’s inertia and spreads new ideas and behavior.

This book explains such opinion formation as an inevitable mechanism of democracy and actively defends its operation by experts. Yet a tension remains between citizens’ self-determination and guidance by a small number of people. The author emphasizes the accuracy of information and professional ethics, but his answer to the question of who monitors the aims of those doing the guiding is insufficient. In light of this, the book is both a practical treatise on public relations and a work for considering how the judgments we feel to be our own will are shaped by social influences.
(The original text is here → Project Gutenberg)

Chaplain Kagao Shunin

← To Part 5

The Secret Execution Order

　On January 19, at four in the evening, I visited the office of Warden Bunye on an errand.
　Then the Warden said, in a rather formal tone,

“Mr. Kagao, tonight let’s have dinner at my place, together with my secretary, Borja.”

he said.

“Please wait a moment. I believe something has arrived for me from Japan, so, for your children perhaps…”

　Answering thus, I returned to my room, and when I went back to the Warden’s office, he was nowhere to be seen.
　Thinking he might have gone home…, I stepped out to the main gate.

　And there… I came upon four or five Filipino soldiers, of the kind I had often seen at the war crimes tribunal in Manila, standing about.
　Why on earth were they there? — I looked outside and saw two jeeps.

　But even that was not particularly unusual, so I returned to the Warden’s office once more.
　There, Dr. Nelson was seated on a chair together with Mrs. Dyer, with a very grave expression.

“Good evening, Doctor.”

　When I greeted him, the doctor, looking startled in a way quite unlike him, said abruptly,

“Mr. Kagao! Something terrible has happened…”

he said in a heavy, sorrowful tone.

　Startled, I searched his expression, and I sensed at once: this might be an execution.
　The day before, one of the war criminals who was working at the hospital had said to me,

“Father, the hospital has prepared a dozen or so new blankets this time.”

　He had said it offhandedly, but I recalled his words and linked them to the doctor’s.
　Then Dr. Nelson asked,

“How many are connected with you?”

　“So it is…” — the question came so fast that I had no time even to think that, and I was flustered.

　Dr. Nelson, assuming that I already knew, was asking how many among those to be executed were connected with me — that is, how many were Buddhists.
　But since I had been told nothing at all, even when asked such a question I could not quite judge, and

“Well, let me see—”

　I was hesitating when Warden Bunye strode briskly into the room.

“The execution is about to begin. Please make ready at once.”

　He said this to me out of the blue.