True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 239: Mooned in Nara Aired: 2022-07-15 Duration: 01:16:38 === Talking Like a Kardashian (12:19) === [00:00:00] Ready? [00:00:01] Okay. [00:00:02] Yeah. [00:00:03] Yes, I am ready. [00:00:04] We are starting the podcast. [00:00:06] Ready? [00:00:07] Okay. [00:00:08] Why are you talking? [00:00:08] Don't talk like that. [00:00:09] What if I just talked like that for the rest of the day? [00:00:11] Ready? [00:00:12] Okay. [00:00:13] What's because so people accuse you of having vocal fry? [00:00:16] You don't even have vocal fry, do you? [00:00:18] I don't think I do. [00:00:20] But I could if I wanted to talk like that. [00:00:23] Wait, can you talk like that? [00:00:25] Hold on. [00:00:27] Oh my God. [00:00:27] Oh my God, Brace. [00:00:28] You look so good. [00:00:33] Thank you. [00:00:34] My favorite way to do vocal fry. [00:00:36] Beautiful. [00:00:36] My favorite way to do it. [00:00:37] My favorite was like whenever I would do my impression of the Kardashians. [00:00:41] Yeah. [00:00:42] This is kind of old school. [00:00:43] So this isn't like an updated impression, but it would be like, it would be like. [00:00:49] So they would always say like, thank you really quickly after they were like asking a server like at a restaurant or something. [00:00:55] So be like, can I get a glass of water? [00:00:57] Thank you. [00:01:00] Oh my God. [00:01:01] So I'll have a chicken, Caesar, salad. [00:01:03] Thank you. [00:01:06] Yeah, that's sick. [00:01:07] Gotta look at that kind of death rattle, the Kardashian death rattle. [00:01:10] Thank you. [00:01:11] If that's what vocal fry is, you don't have vocal frying. [00:01:14] Of course not. [00:01:15] So let me tell you this: the haters that say Liz has vocal fry, you're just sexist. [00:01:20] They literally just don't have a palate. [00:01:22] They don't know how to differentiate women. [00:01:24] Yeah, which, you know what? [00:01:26] fair enough ready oh Okay. [00:01:54] Look, the ladies will know. [00:01:55] I've watched the three and the gays. [00:01:57] The gays will know too. [00:01:58] Triple X. [00:01:59] Well, all our fans are gay. [00:02:01] Hello, everyone. [00:02:02] Hello. [00:02:03] I'm Liz. [00:02:04] My name is Brace. [00:02:06] Of course, we are joined by producer Young Chomsky, and the podcast is called One, Two, Three. [00:02:13] True or not. [00:02:14] Gotcha. [00:02:15] You thought I was going to do it, didn't you? [00:02:16] Hell no. [00:02:17] You did get me. [00:02:18] Yeah, I got you. [00:02:19] That was funny. [00:02:21] Hey, big announcement. [00:02:23] Yes, Liz is leaving the podcast. [00:02:28] That's so mean. [00:02:30] She's leaving the podcast because I'm getting pushed out. [00:02:33] She is because why you'll be hearing from my lawyer. [00:02:36] Yes, I will. [00:02:37] Her lawyer that's representing her as head of Taramar. [00:02:42] She's taken over, and Liz has become an NGO person. [00:02:44] That name was a really good one. [00:02:46] And frankly, we're here to save the oceans. [00:02:49] Yes. [00:02:49] Stop drinking that shit. [00:02:51] Yeah. [00:02:51] Don't drink it. [00:02:52] Because also, yeah, you're not supposed to do that just before I got an NGO. [00:02:56] You can drink salt water. [00:02:57] Don't. [00:02:58] Okay. [00:02:58] I don't really think we need to rehash this every other week. [00:03:01] You can definitely drink salt water. [00:03:02] This is like the Trump staring at the. [00:03:04] Remember when he stared straight at the eclipse or whatever it was? [00:03:07] And the thing is, people are like, you so stupid for doing that? [00:03:10] He was fine. [00:03:10] How else are you going to see it? [00:03:12] He was totally fine. [00:03:13] Everybody's like, let's go out and look at the eclipse. [00:03:15] But then you're not supposed to look at it? [00:03:17] Yeah. [00:03:18] Everyone else looked at their phone or on the ground and stuff. [00:03:20] Trump was just like, yeah, what's wrong with looking at the blocked out sun? [00:03:25] Like men and women have been doing for centuries. [00:03:28] I think I mentioned on the podcast before, but the family member of a well-known crust band went blind from looking at the sun. [00:03:38] Wait, really? [00:03:39] Yeah. [00:03:39] How long did he look at it? [00:03:41] Unknown. [00:03:42] I just sent new information out last year. [00:03:44] Here's my thing. [00:03:45] Just look at it real quick. [00:03:46] Never want to do it again. [00:03:47] I look at the sun constantly. [00:03:48] That's how you get your shit. [00:03:50] This is what I'm saying. [00:03:51] Yeah. [00:03:52] That's how you, if you're on drugs and you want to like your previous booth to look normal, that's how you say pupils where I'm from. [00:04:00] Just stare at the sun for a while. [00:04:01] You're good. [00:04:02] This is all awful. [00:04:03] Here's the thing. [00:04:04] What? [00:04:04] We actually do have an announcement. [00:04:06] Yes. [00:04:06] And it is nothing that we have said up until now. [00:04:09] And the big announcement is drum roll, please. [00:04:15] We're going on tour. [00:04:16] We are going on tour. [00:04:18] Did we not announce that yet? [00:04:20] Not on this episode. [00:04:21] You know what? [00:04:22] If we did the podcast. [00:04:23] Don't remember. [00:04:24] We definitely don't care. [00:04:26] You know what? [00:04:26] I'm reminding then. [00:04:28] And if you forgot, you're going to be thankful that I'm saying it now, which is we're going on tour. [00:04:35] Yes, yes. [00:04:36] Just like in the last two episodes, we told you, we are going to. [00:04:39] Do you not remember giving the date? [00:04:41] I thought it was just Patreon episode that we did that. [00:04:44] Okay, yeah, fair enough. [00:04:46] Oh my God. [00:04:46] So I was right. [00:04:47] No, but we did it. [00:04:48] Big announcement. [00:04:49] We did announce it. [00:04:50] And we also got all of our social media. [00:04:53] Well, hey, to all of our friends without smartphones and, you know, don't listen to a podcast, Liz. [00:05:00] On their computers. [00:05:02] That's actually how my dad does it. [00:05:04] Really? [00:05:04] Yeah. [00:05:04] That was so gentle. [00:05:06] See, I like that. [00:05:07] So to all our friends and little buddies out there who didn't know, like I said, we're going on tour. [00:05:14] That's right. [00:05:15] We're like a whole month. [00:05:16] Indeed we are. [00:05:18] In fact, this is, I can't wait until I can find the email with the precise dates that I can read off. [00:05:28] No, that. [00:05:28] You had one job. [00:05:30] I actually have a lot of jobs. [00:05:32] I'm a father. [00:05:33] I'm a lover. [00:05:34] Ew. [00:05:35] What? [00:05:35] Those are two separate jobs. [00:05:37] You are not either of those things. [00:05:39] I have them. [00:05:40] I have them. [00:05:42] So we're going to Byrack. [00:05:46] Can you just say the normal name? [00:05:48] Iraq, the most bisexual city in America, Chicago, on November 1st at Talia Hall. [00:05:59] You got to up the enthusiasm here. [00:06:01] Yo, we are going to, we're swinging them both ways out there to Chicago to Byrack on November 1st at Talia Hall. [00:06:10] Ticket link. [00:06:11] Oh, I can't. [00:06:12] That's like a hyperlink in there, but it'll be in the description. [00:06:14] And then on November 3rd, 2022, in Philly Delphia, Jokesylvania, we are playing at the Union Transfer. [00:06:23] That's Philadelphia for people who just had to think about it for too long. [00:06:27] And then on 11-4-2022, that is the fourth day of November, we are going to Washington, D.C. at the Black Cat. Classico. [00:06:39] I feel like the Black Cat is a Classico venue. [00:06:41] We are playing there with SOA, the Teen Idols, Discharge, and Mad Ball. [00:06:51] I'm not looking forward to that show because you're going to make DC hardcore jokes. [00:06:55] No, I'm not. [00:06:56] DC hardcore is not that good. [00:06:59] But you know what is good? [00:07:01] New York hardcore. [00:07:02] Because we will be appearing with the band Agnostic Front on 11-6, 2022 at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City. [00:07:11] That's the sixth day of November at the Bowery Ballroom. [00:07:14] Agnostic Front will be opening for us. [00:07:16] If you don't see them on the flyer, then whoops. [00:07:20] The next day, we are going to BK, where I was born and raised, along with many celebrities and well-known figures on the seventh day of November at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. [00:07:33] You are saying this so that no one will ever retain any of this information. [00:07:38] And then the day after that, we're also going to be in Brooklyn, but in a different part of it at the Bell House. [00:07:44] Yeah, our old favorite Goanese. [00:07:46] Uh-huh. [00:07:47] And you better go on and get your ass to that show. [00:07:53] You better do that. [00:07:55] And then the next, not even the next day whatsoever. [00:07:59] In fact, a full week later, we will be appearing in Los Angeles, California, City of Angels in the state of California. [00:08:10] And we are playing at the Terragram Ballroom. [00:08:13] Yes, downtown. [00:08:14] And it's downtown, right? [00:08:15] You know what I heard about many of you listeners out there in Los Angeles? [00:08:18] You definitely have a lot of room for balls. [00:08:21] We are playing there the next day as well at the Terregram Ballroom. [00:08:25] That is on 11-16, 2022. [00:08:29] Just a mere three days later, in November 19, 2022, we are playing in Seattle with Sound Garden at N-E-U-M-O-S. [00:08:42] Oh, my God. [00:08:42] So I'm told that. [00:08:46] Told that is pronounced Nemos. [00:08:48] Did you say Nemo? [00:08:49] Yeah, I was saying Neumos. [00:08:51] Yeah, you've been saying, you think that because I've been saying that since we've been. [00:08:54] You know why? [00:08:55] Because if you see Noy, it's like the band. [00:08:57] It's Noy. [00:08:58] Noi. [00:08:58] Noi. [00:08:59] Noimos. [00:08:59] Yeah, Noimos. [00:09:01] That's the Mexican version of Noy. [00:09:03] Yeah, if it's called Nemo, first of all, there's a movie. [00:09:08] Finding Neumos. [00:09:10] Well, maybe they trademarked it. [00:09:12] N-E-M-O- Anyway, what day is that? [00:09:14] Say it normal. [00:09:15] That's on November 19th. [00:09:16] There you go. [00:09:17] So if you want me to say it normal, write it normal. [00:09:19] Don't write it with a bunch of numbers. [00:09:20] I didn't write that. [00:09:21] That's true. [00:09:22] Also, you can use your brain. [00:09:24] Two days later, we will be over-dosing on heroin in Portland, Oregon, on November 21st, 2022. [00:09:32] That's an angel number. [00:09:34] At Mississippi Studios. [00:09:36] That is M-I-S-S-I-S-S-S-I-I-P-P-I. [00:09:40] There you go. [00:09:40] And guess what? [00:09:41] I will piss not only your eye, but all over your fucking face because we're doing another show there the next day, too. [00:09:48] At Mississippi Studios on 1122. [00:09:53] The devil number. [00:09:55] And then to round all this out, just a mirror three days later on November 26th. [00:10:02] November 25th. [00:10:04] November 25th. [00:10:05] Gotcha. [00:10:06] November 25th in Slam Francisco, Skankafornia. [00:10:12] We are playing at the Great American Music Hall where I actually once went to a bar mitzvah. [00:10:18] That's so crazy that we're playing there. [00:10:20] That's so crazy that they did a bar mitzvah there. [00:10:23] Are all those places still open, like Edinburgh? [00:10:25] Is that still open? [00:10:25] Edinburgh Castle? [00:10:26] Yeah. [00:10:27] I would have. [00:10:28] Yeah, it is. [00:10:28] I'm like thinking about that area. [00:10:29] What about no, Hemlock? [00:10:31] First place I read a heroin was two blocks from there. [00:10:34] Well, I don't want to go there. [00:10:35] Hemlock's closed, though, right? [00:10:37] Hemlock is not only closed, but demolished. [00:10:39] Damn. [00:10:40] They salted the earth. [00:10:41] And then after that, wow. [00:10:44] Oh, no. [00:10:44] Liz, do you see what it says here? [00:10:47] It says that you're going to, Johnny Cash style, play San Quentin prison all by your lonesome. [00:10:52] And it says that, oh, in fact, it just says from 1127 San Quentin, and then there's just a hyphen, and then it says question mark, question mark, question mark, but Liz only. [00:11:03] So it appears that Liz will be unfortunately be in a federal prison for the rest of her life. [00:11:09] Okay, well, I'm looking forward to that. [00:11:12] Yes. [00:11:13] And if you want that means I'll be away from you. [00:11:16] Yes. [00:11:16] Unfortunately, they have added podcasting equipment to the prison. [00:11:19] So you will be doing this remote. [00:11:22] One thing we have to mention is that Brace is making many jokes, but we actually do have a big opening act for all of our shows. [00:11:36] Let's write live sets from Young Chomsky at every single show before and after Sound Gardens performance. [00:11:43] That's true. [00:11:44] Not only will we be able to see Chris Cornell, but you'll actually be able to see Young Chomsky come out, join Chris Cornell on guitar, and then you will see Soundgarden leave the stage to the smaller green room than us, and you will see Young Chomsky perform a full set of not only songs you know and love from the show, but songs that you've never heard before in your life. [00:12:02] Yes. [00:12:02] That part is not a joke. [00:12:04] And fully nude. [00:12:06] It's crazy. [00:12:07] His shit's going to be, as he says it, all over the fucking place. [00:12:12] He says, he says, he says, you're going to think this is a damn airfield from all the shit taking off and flying around like a rotor. === Japan And The Cold War (16:13) === [00:12:19] He also says he might drop a few bombs. [00:12:22] If you know what I mean. [00:12:24] And he says that soon. [00:12:28] Okay, you both are shaking your head. [00:12:31] Yeah, we're both kind of glaring right now. [00:12:34] Anyway, guys, we're going on tour. [00:12:35] All this information, it's a lot easier to read and understand and digest in the internet form. [00:12:42] We'll link to it. [00:12:43] Yes. [00:12:43] We want to see you there. [00:12:45] Yes, tickets are on sale now. [00:12:49] What the month? [00:12:49] 7.1522. [00:12:51] Yes. [00:12:52] Oh my God. [00:12:53] Is that today? [00:12:54] I don't know, but they're on sale. [00:12:56] Depending on when we put this episode out, that's true. [00:12:58] Yes, they are on sale and they do sell out quick. [00:13:02] Just like me, the moment anyone offers me money to leave this podcast. [00:13:07] With all that, we can now move on. [00:13:11] Yes. [00:13:12] So today we're talking about the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. [00:13:18] What? [00:13:20] Now you get serious? [00:13:22] Oh, I'm sorry. [00:13:22] Today, we're talking about the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Little Abe. [00:13:31] See, it sounds a lot better when you act normal. [00:13:32] So maybe. [00:13:33] Yeah, well, you never can act normal, which is why we got a great guest on to help explain what's going on. [00:13:41] And I think we should just get into it. [00:13:43] Yes. [00:13:47] Let's roll the Japanese mini cassette. [00:13:50] All right, ladies and gentlemen, having surmounted a veritable Mount Fuji of technological problems, we finally have captured Timothy Chirac. [00:14:11] Shorrock, even look at this. [00:14:13] I can't even do it right this time. [00:14:14] Mispronounced the last name. [00:14:15] It's a difficult one. [00:14:16] He did good. [00:14:17] A DC-based journalist who grew up in Japan and in South Korea during the Cold War. [00:14:22] He's been writing about the region since the late 1970s, and he is here to really help us try to tie together the different strands of that history that basically culminated in Shinzo Abe's assassination at the hands of a former member of the self-defense forces and his homemade projectile weapon. [00:14:40] I hesitate to call it a shotgun. [00:14:43] Timothy, welcome to the show. [00:14:44] How you doing? [00:14:45] I'm doing well. [00:14:46] Thank you for inviting me. [00:14:47] Thanks so much for coming on. [00:14:49] So for those of you who have not been following the news, Shinzo Abe was shot dead on July 8th in Nara, Japan by a member of, a former member of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. [00:15:02] They're kind of navy. [00:15:04] I mean, I don't know if that's technically the word to call it, but it's functionally a navy, if a small one. [00:15:11] And it later came out that, or it has emerged and more details have emerged, that it is ostensibly due to the shooters' mothers having given the Unification Church, a.k.a. the Moonies, a substantial amount of money. [00:15:26] And that, every single part of that is really a summation of so much of Japanese in Korean post-war history. [00:15:36] And Timothy, I wanted to ask, like, what were your kind of initial reactions to something like this happening? [00:15:41] Well, of course, I was shocked that someone would be assassinated in Japan by gunfire. [00:15:47] I mean, guns are so rare in Japan and gun violence is almost virtually unknown. [00:15:54] I think in 2021, there was one person killed by a gun in Japan. [00:16:01] And, you know, we have mass shootings every day here in the United States. [00:16:07] So just, you know, that was shocking in itself. [00:16:10] And, you know, it was a very public assassination. [00:16:14] And so I was shocked like a lot of people just to see that. [00:16:20] But, you know, Abe has generated a lot of, you know, intense positive and negative in Japan. [00:16:27] And so he's, you know, he's a very prominent politician. [00:16:30] He's Japan's longest serving prime minister. [00:16:34] He was hoping to return as prime minister again. [00:16:37] And he's the leader of the largest faction in the so-called liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power in Japan basically since 1955. [00:16:49] So this was a pretty shocking event. [00:16:50] To me, there's been other assassinations of public figures in Japan, but the one I remember most was in 1960 when a socialist leader was assassinated on live television with a right-wing guy with a big knife that was about 14 inches long and just stabbed this guy on TV while millions of people were watching. [00:17:15] So these kinds of things have happened periodically in Japan, but it's usually knives, not guns. [00:17:24] So it's funny you actually mention a stabbing and especially a stabbing of a political figure because Shinzo Abe's grandfather, Nobosuke Kishi, was also stabbed, I believe, when he was prime minister. [00:17:35] And I think it's kind of hard to sort of explain who Shinzo Abe was without, I think, first talking about his grandfather. [00:17:42] You know, I think his grandfather was pretty emblematic of a certain generation of Japanese right-wing politicians in that he came out of this like hard right milieu from World War II. [00:17:54] He was a war criminal. [00:17:56] And he really rose to power, much like a lot of ex-Nazis in West Germany, kind of on the back of anti-communism. [00:18:06] Well, he was, you know, World War II, he was actually the minister of commerce in the Tojo cabinet that declared war on the United States. [00:18:16] And Kishi was also responsible for running the Japanese colony of Manchukuo, which was, you know, after they invaded Manchuria in the 1930s. [00:18:28] He ran that. [00:18:28] And Manchuria, of course, was linked to Korea, which was Japan's colony for 35 years. [00:18:35] And especially the northern part of Korea with its heavy industry was linked very closely to Manchuria. [00:18:42] And so he was in charge of this whole colonial operation, which was very cruel and violent toward Chinese and Koreans. [00:18:51] And he was, after the war, he was arrested as a war criminal and put into termed a Class A war criminal, meaning he was a high level war criminal. [00:19:04] And along with quite a few others, there was, you know, for a couple of years, you know, first of all, you know, the U.S. occupied Japan in 1945, September 1945, after the unconditional surrender. [00:19:21] And General Douglas MacArthur was in charge of the U.S. occupation, who had spent much of his youth in the Philippines and his adulthood in the Philippines, you know, sort of running what was essentially a colony in the United States. [00:19:35] Satrap, I would call him. [00:19:36] I'd call him a sat-rap. [00:19:37] Sat-rap. [00:19:40] You know, so he's familiar with like sort of American military control over another country. [00:19:46] And, you know, but they had a mandate from President Truman and the government, U.S. government, to basically destroy militarism in Japan. [00:19:59] And that meant like dismantling these giant zaibatsu, these conglomerates that had profited from the war and of course, you know, fueled and financed Japanese overseas expansion and then invested in all those places, bringing in slave labor from Korea to work in their factories. [00:20:18] And they, you know, they started dismantling these. [00:20:22] The occupation ruled indirectly through the Japanese government, which is something a lot of people don't know. [00:20:30] It didn't have absolute power to just make declarations and have them become law. [00:20:35] they had to be passed by the Japanese government, which was kept in place by the United States, including with a lot of the wartime politicians who were in that, who were in that government, in that assembly. [00:20:48] But they pretty much had to pass certain things, including the Constitution that had a peace clause in it, that Japan would not take up arms again as a way to resolve international problems. [00:21:01] And women were given the right to vote. [00:21:05] Labor unions were released from very strict controls and labor unions began to organize like wildfire in the immediate years after the occupation. [00:21:16] And even a lot of Japanese leftists and communists at the very beginning felt like the occupation was somewhat of a liberating force. [00:21:26] I mean, it's when you when you when you read about that period from the point of view of Japanese, you know, the union organizing was incredible. [00:21:37] I mean, like workers really, you know, took power and like they, when, when business owners wouldn't, you know, wouldn't invest and wouldn't keep the factories going, the workers took them over and ran them themselves. [00:21:51] There was this really strong sense of worker power. [00:21:54] And of course, people were looking for, you know, answers after their empire had collapsed after 5,000 years and wanted something different. [00:22:06] And so people began, but also people wanted to get rid of these militarists who had run Japan, get rid of that whole politics. [00:22:15] So it was, you know, for a couple years, it was very positive. [00:22:19] But, you know, during that time, of course, Japanese were flat on their backs. [00:22:23] I mean, it's hard to describe, you know, I mean, Japan was completely destroyed. [00:22:28] Nearly every city except Kyoto was completely demolished by American firebombing led by General Curtis LeMay. [00:22:37] And, you know, of course, they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons. [00:22:42] So there's a lot of suffering. [00:22:44] And that's, you know, the occupation brought in food and then tried to sort of restore some kind of, you know, bring back some democratic institutions to Japan. [00:22:56] And it worked for the first couple of years. [00:22:59] Yeah, you say for the first couple of years, and I think that that, you know, we kind of want to key in on that moment because I think the best way to put it, and I think this is how you put it in your writing in the past, is that there was a real reversal, of course, where it was like, you know, that occupation and kind of, you know, I don't know, resetting, rebuilding of the Japanese society and the economy and, you know, post-war, in the post-war situation, [00:23:25] like completely and totally turned around with now the U.S. looking at the dual threats from the Soviet Union and China. [00:23:34] Right. [00:23:35] Like starting around, you know, 1947, the occupation forces themselves and MacArthur got to be really concerned about the rash of strikes and worker organizing that was going on. [00:23:48] And that spring, there was going to be a massive general strike by leftist public employee unions that ran a lot of the trains and the public institutions. [00:24:04] And MacArthur outlawed that general strike, and that was kind of the beginning of the reversals. [00:24:11] But the critical part in the reversal of these reforms was played by a group of former American diplomats in Japan, including the former U.S. ambassador to Japan, and all these business groups, business people that had investments in pre-war Japan. [00:24:33] Like General Electric, for example, was the largest investor in Japan up to World War II. [00:24:42] And so the big U.S. financial interests had major interests in Japan, the Morgan interests in particular, J.P. Morgan, which owned GE. [00:24:52] And these companies, together with these very conservative American politicians who felt like, you know, if we could just remove the rot at the very, very top of Japan and work with all the same people that were there during the war, then if we could just remove those top nasty people, then everything, Japan would become a good ally. [00:25:14] And they began to really focus on like restoring the Japanese economy and then also building up Japan as an ally against, as you said before, the Soviet Union, communist movements in China and Korea and Southeast Asia. [00:25:30] And they wanted to incorporate Japan into the growing militarization of U.S. policy toward communism. [00:25:39] And Truman, of course, declared the Truman Doctrine in 1947, intervened in Greece and other places in Europe, undermined democratic elections in Western Europe to make sure the communists didn't win. [00:25:55] And there was this whole shift in American policy in the growing Cold War. [00:26:00] And at that time, a lot of the prisoners who had been people like Kishi were released from prison. [00:26:09] And the people that had been in jail during World War II, such as the leaders of the Communist Party, were put back in prison. [00:26:17] Classic move. [00:26:18] Classic move. [00:26:20] And it's all linked, you know, what's important for people to understand is that what was going on in Japan at the time was also closely, very much closely linked to what was going on in Southern Korea at the time. [00:26:33] Absolutely. [00:26:34] You know, the U.S., you know, they occupied Japan, of course, but they occupied other parts of the Japanese empire, right? [00:26:43] And so Korea was divided at the very last day, almost the last day of World War II. [00:26:49] you know, over in a basement office at the White House down the street. [00:26:54] And they just, they drew the line at the 38th parallel and they said, you know, the Soviets will take the north. [00:27:00] This was part of an agreement they had reached with Stalin months before that the Soviet Union would occupy the northern part of Korea and the U.S. would occupy the southern part of Korea. [00:27:11] But they didn't try to bring democracy to southern Korea like they did in Japan. [00:27:17] Instead, they were immediately faced by a very anti-colonial movement, left-wing, communist-led, anti-colonial movement in Southern Korea that wanted a united Korea, independent Korea, want to get rid of all the people that collaborated with Japan. [00:27:36] Instead, the U.S. put in place a government in Southern Korea that was made up of collaborators, Korean officials who collaborated with the Japanese, business people who had profited under Japanese colonialism. [00:27:48] So there were close ties between these Japanese interests in Korea and, of course, Japanese politics. [00:27:56] And that's when you were talking at the beginning about seeing the connections in this assassination, it's all there. [00:28:04] Because like, you know, one of the interesting points of change in the Korean War happened one of the, you know, a few days before the Korean War actually began when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel. [00:28:19] John Foster Dulles was at the DMZ, was not the DMZ, he was at the border with North and South Korea, staring down the North Koreans and pledging support to South Korea and its struggle against communism. === Shared Hegemony and Empire (15:22) === [00:28:33] And then his primary reason for going to Asia, though, was to go to Japan and negotiate a peace treaty with Japan that would be a peace treaty that excluded the other war powers, including the Soviet Union, China, and England. [00:28:50] And it was just a unilateral peace agreement between US and Japan. [00:28:55] That was actually negotiated in 1952. [00:28:58] And it basically kept American forces in Japan indefinitely. [00:29:04] And of course, they're still there. [00:29:06] Yeah, they're there to this very day. [00:29:08] And Japan, the U.S. bases in Japan and Okinawa is the largest concentration of American forces in any country overseas. [00:29:18] And then when you combine it with American forces in South Korea, it's a massive military structure. [00:29:24] And then, of course, it includes Guam, where the U.S. has big base and so on. [00:29:30] The Philippines as well. [00:29:32] Not as big of a base. [00:29:34] Not as big. [00:29:34] But now they got their guys over there still. [00:29:38] Yeah, no, definitely. [00:29:40] But anyway, to go back to 1955, that period of time. [00:29:45] So then, you know, after Dolas was in. you know, at the border, went to Tokyo, and like two days before the war began, he was meeting with all these Japanese industrialists, members of the imperial family, right-wing political people. [00:30:03] And a few days after, and Japan at the time was really struggling economically. [00:30:09] And the U.S. had sent this banker named Joseph Dodge, who imposed what later became a model in the IMF imposing on developing countries, right? [00:30:20] You know, beat inflation by slashing public work, slashing public workers and breaking unions and so on. [00:30:30] And that's what they started to do. [00:30:32] But the Japanese economy was really in the doldrums. [00:30:35] And what's amazing is you can still see in official State Department history on the web, and the Department of State's history, Korea came along and saved us. [00:30:48] Because when the Korean War began, and then two days after the North Korean crossed the 38th parallel, Truman said, we're going in there big, right? [00:30:59] Massive intervention. [00:31:00] And this rejuvenated the Japanese economy. [00:31:05] They still call it in Japan the Korean War shock, the Korean War growth. [00:31:12] It's just Japanese steel industry, car industry, by fulfilling American orders for military equipment, the Japanese economy got into full steam. [00:31:26] And also the world economy was greatly boosted. [00:31:30] It's good for business. [00:31:31] I mean, that's very good for business. [00:31:33] That's the thing about Japan. [00:31:35] And that's the thing that a lot of, I think these like these nationalists and fascists basically, that seems to have been a lot of their strategy for the post-war period, where they realize, okay, they've sort of made it so that we can't have an army, we can't have a military force. [00:31:52] But if we make this alliance with America and they function as essentially like a military force in alliance with us, we can dominate Asia economically and become this huge economic powerhouse. [00:32:04] And that will sort of, that will function as, you know, in place of a military hegemony, we'll have that economic hegemony. [00:32:12] What it was was a shared hegemony. [00:32:16] So the U.S. supplied the military part of the empire, the bases and soldiers. [00:32:22] Japan was sort of the economic backbone of this. [00:32:26] So it was a jointly run U.S.-Japan empire, but of course with the U.S. completely in charge. [00:32:33] But that was the model that was set. [00:32:36] And so basically what happened was, you know, the Japanese ruling class that had been in power through the war and still some of whom remain in power after the war, they're like, okay, well, we want to get our empire back and what American officials would call the hinterland, Japan's hinterland, where it could export stuff and import stuff from, right? [00:33:01] We have to have that so Japan can survive. [00:33:06] And so Japan became like sort of this economic pillar of U.S. empire in Asia. [00:33:12] And it began in Korea because what I've found in my research into the National Archives and other archives that I've been investigating over the last couple of years is that the U.S. was talking about bringing back Japan into Korea as early as like 1947. [00:33:32] I mean, you know, two years after war against a country that had cruelly colonized, I mean, just very colonization, right? [00:33:42] And the U.S. wanted Japan back because they assumed that Korea would forever be divided and that South Korea could not exist without Japanese support. [00:33:51] So they began to seek this early on. [00:33:56] And what made it possible, there was a dictator that the U.S. helped install, Sigmund Rhee, in Korea. [00:34:02] And he was really anti-Japanese. [00:34:04] That was a problem for the U.S. [00:34:06] Yeah. [00:34:06] And he was. [00:34:07] This is a constant problem. [00:34:08] Yeah, yeah, it's always a problem. [00:34:10] It's a funny irony for the kind of the United States plans kind of always going awry because you actually can't, it's, it's. [00:34:19] There's some wacky dictator that gets in the way, right? [00:34:22] But Rhee was really, he would always like attack the U.S. even while he was getting all its aid and stuff like that. [00:34:30] But he, you know, one of the sort of big moments of my life was when I was in South Korea in 1960, April 1960. [00:34:39] I was nine years old, but I, you know, I certainly remember it very well and made a, you know, cut out clippings of the newspaper when this Sigmund Rhee was overthrown in the revolution. [00:34:50] And there was a year after that when people were trying to, they wanted Korea to be reunified. [00:35:01] And there was this big push, progressive left-wing politics from 60 to 61. [00:35:06] And then in 1961 in South Korea, Pak Chung-hee, who was a general who had been trained in the Japanese Imperial Army and all his officers and all the leading forces in the leading generals in the South Korean army had all been trained in the Japanese military during World War II. [00:35:27] They became the core of the South Korean military. [00:35:30] He declared martial law in 61 and took over, and he was a military dictator for 18 years until he was assassinated. [00:35:39] But getting back to Japan, this long wish by the U.S. to get Japan back into Southern Korea came to fruition under this military dictatorship when in 1965. [00:35:55] there was a normalization treaty signed between South Korea and Japan. [00:35:59] And that was that brought back in the form of reparations, but it was just basically capital, you know, finance and capital investment. [00:36:07] That was the first, you know, that laid the seeds and the capital for the Korea's initial spurt of export growth in the late 60s and 70s. [00:36:20] And it just continued through the 70s. [00:36:23] But so, you know, that's where they were linked. [00:36:25] And these politicians around Pak Chung-hee, and of course, in 1960, there was Kishi, and then his brother, he was followed by his brother, Sato. [00:36:34] They all had very, very close ties with the Korean right and military and the corporations who had collaborated with Japan. [00:36:43] And of course, binding them all was this unification church, Sung Young-moon. [00:36:50] I was about to say, so you're talking about the revolution or not, excuse me, not the revolution, the coup by Park Chung-hee. [00:37:02] Well, a lot of the people that participated in that were members of the Unification Church. [00:37:07] And following that coup, I mean, the Unification Church basically became a major tool of the Korean CIA, the KCIA, which I think we last talked about in our episode about K-pop. [00:37:18] Yeah, seriously. [00:37:20] I was just thinking. [00:37:20] I was like, wow, it's been a minute. [00:37:23] They have a thing or two to do with that as well. [00:37:26] But, you know, the Unification Church basically became a tool of not only like influence operations, which is sort of what they're most famous for in the U.S., but they really became leaders in the global anti-communist movement and really spearheaded organizations like the World Anti-Communist Army. [00:37:42] I mean, it's come up a lot on this. [00:37:45] Because imagine, for those of you who have never listened to one of our episodes that mentioned this storied organization, imagine you took basically everybody who killed peasants, Jews, Or any kind of minority did any kind of genocide, all of the worst guys from World War II, and then the people who really wanted to be like them in the post-war period. [00:38:07] Imagine you put them in a kind of Rotary Club international. [00:38:11] It's like the Fascist Justice League. [00:38:14] Yes. [00:38:16] And they had like obscure fascists in there too. [00:38:19] They had like Albanian, like fascists from countries of like 2 million people in that motherfucker. [00:38:24] And the Unification Church was a huge part of that, along, of course, with the KMT out of Taiwan, a huge part of that. [00:38:32] Right. [00:38:33] Taiwan. [00:38:35] At the time, it was like the World Anti-Communist League, South Korea, elements in Japan, Taiwan. [00:38:41] They're all bound together. [00:38:43] And I remember in the late 60s, my dad, when he was at this university in Tokyo in the late 60s, he had actually, when he was working as a church relief worker administrator, he went to Vietnam in 1962 on behalf of the World Council of Churches and came back and said, you know, we shouldn't do anything. [00:39:07] The churches should not be helping the South Vietnam government because there's a counterinsurgency going on. [00:39:13] And he really turned against the Vietnam War and he actually led in 1968, we had a demonstration of Americans against the war in Vietnam, downtown Tokyo. [00:39:25] But my dad was so attacked by World Communist League and all these kind of people. [00:39:30] They'd write letters to the editor of the English language paper. [00:39:33] So I'm very familiar with that kind of that whole milieu of politics. [00:39:39] But it was really, you know, so like there was this anti-communist, you know, alliance between these governments. [00:39:48] But then, you know, the U.S. began to be, especially particularly toward Japan, when Nixon became president, there was all this protectionism in the U.S., right? [00:39:58] And it's like, oh, Japan's taking over our car industry, steel industry, and we got to stop this. [00:40:04] And because, you know, Japan had basically unfettered access to the U.S. market in return for hosting all these American forces. [00:40:14] And so Nixon, I mean, Japan's supposed to be this really close ally, right? [00:40:19] Yeah. [00:40:20] And, you know, after the war, all the LDP and all the businesses that supported LDP, they really wanted to get back into China, but they couldn't because the U.S. didn't even recognize China. [00:40:31] And so Japan, LDP, wouldn't recognize China either. [00:40:35] And then Nixon suddenly announces he's going to go meet with Chairman Mao and Zhou and Lai. [00:40:41] And he gave the LDP Sato, he gave him 15 minutes notice of this massive change in policy, right? [00:40:51] I just feel very Nixonian. [00:40:54] I forgot to mention I'm touching down in Beijing at 15. [00:40:56] You guys are good to go. [00:40:57] Don't worry about it. [00:40:58] Yeah, don't worry. [00:40:59] We're still here for you. [00:41:00] But like the story is that Sato broke down and wept. [00:41:07] You know, he was so upset by this. [00:41:10] But of course, after that, Japan, you know, open relationship with China and lots of Japanese businesses went in. [00:41:17] But my point is that this LDP that's been in power for so long, and especially Abe, these are so, they're like such obsequious pro-American. [00:41:31] You know, they never stand up to the U.S. [00:41:33] They will do whatever the U.S. wants, basically. [00:41:36] And what's what's the situation is epitomized by the fact that U.S. military in Japan has basically complete access to Japanese skies with aircraft, right? [00:41:50] There's been reports in the Japanese newspapers recently, particularly the Asahi newspaper, with showing these photographs of American military helicopters flying low over Tokyo. [00:42:01] And like, no Japanese aircraft are allowed to do that. [00:42:05] But Americans, fine, you know, I mean, how can you call a country sovereign when American military has so much power? [00:42:13] I mean, can you imagine being in New York and having like, you know, French helicopters flying around Manhattan and like American can't? [00:42:22] I mean, it's kind of obscene. [00:42:24] But like American politicians love the obsequiousness of the Japanese LDP. [00:42:31] And that's why everybody from Stephen Miller to Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump to Biden to Blink and all these people are just rapturous about Abe as this great champion of, you know, and how he's friends. [00:42:48] All the Democrats and Republicans. [00:42:51] It's just, it's just nauseating to watch because I guess it just, I mean, what makes me really angry about it is that they know very well, especially people like, you know, Clinton, who've served at high levels in the U.S. government, [00:43:07] they know very well from intelligence they could get access to of how, you know, like Abe's position on, you know, the Japanese war crimes, denial, denial, denial, you know, calling, you know, ridiculing the idea that these comfort women who were so-called comfort women who were kidnapped to serve in Japanese comfort stations where they serve Japanese soldiers all over the warfront. [00:43:34] You know, they deny this. [00:43:35] And that was the big, you know, the big point of the right wing of the LDP led by Abe was that, you know, Japan's problem in World War II was not, you know, human rights violations and its bloody invasions, slaughter of people in China, Nanking massacre and that kind of thing. === Discomfort With Denial (05:59) === [00:43:55] The problem was that they attacked the United States. [00:43:58] So, you know, everything else, fine. [00:44:01] We did so great in Asia. [00:44:03] You know, Japanese, the Korean people loved us for what we did and so on and so forth. [00:44:07] And so they're the denialists. [00:44:09] I mean, Japan never went through a kind of denazification that Germany did. [00:44:16] Well, I would say that the German denazification was sort of very, very limited to a select few people who might not be of any use in the post-war effort. [00:44:25] Nevertheless, the German schools are, you know, very, they will not let you, you can't promote Nazis. [00:44:32] Yeah, yeah, that is true. [00:44:33] Yeah, that is a major difference in that it is, it is, it is illegal to promote that stuff. [00:44:38] I mean, very illegal, even if you, you know, are in another country, they will block your website if it, if you, you know, think you're promoting that. [00:44:45] Whereas in Japan, it's like it seems to be really, really actually pretty mainstream, especially in the nationalist movement. [00:44:53] And, you know, I know, you know, I'm no, by no means even not an not an expert, let alone, I mean, I'm barely even mildly familiar with how Japanese society is structured now. [00:45:04] But I do know that like, you know, there's quite a lot of racism towards Koreans there in the present day. [00:45:10] A lot. [00:45:11] And that like it is pretty mainstream to essentially believe that like, yeah, all this talk about comfort women and these rapes and these massacres are, if not overblown, actually totally, totally false and invented to sort of get back at Japan. [00:45:25] And now they have, you know, these Japanese reactionaries have their whole echo chamber in American academia. [00:45:32] You know, you have this white professor at Harvard who wrote this paper saying, oh, these, you know, they were just women. [00:45:37] They were just working girls. [00:45:39] You know, they were just trying to do a job. [00:45:43] And they just play down the absolute cruelty. [00:45:46] I mean, you know, these comfort women were all over, like I said, all over China, all over Okinawa when U.S. forces went into the Pacific Islands. [00:45:56] Comfort women were there and many of them were killed, killed by U.S. bombing during the war. [00:46:03] They suffered, especially in Okinawa, which was a terrible battle. [00:46:08] Many of these women were killed along with the Japanese forces. [00:46:13] And to deny them is just inhumane. [00:46:17] And that's the kind of thing that the feminist Hillary Clinton endorses, right? [00:46:21] I mean, it's basically endorsing the kind of denial that goes on in the ruling party of Japan. [00:46:29] And a lot of Japanese are very uncomfortable about it. [00:46:34] I mean, they still, they managed to win the pluralities in these votes. [00:46:39] But, you know, there's still a segment of Japanese society, old and young, that are ashamed of what they did in World War II and know very well what they did in World War II. [00:46:49] And I think one of the big aims of Abe, which he'd never accomplished, was to get rid of the peace clause, Article 9 of the Constitution. [00:47:00] And they say, you know, this was imposed by the United States and it's kept us from being a full-scale military power. [00:47:08] But starting in the early 70s, U.S. officials, U.S. military, and all the think tanks here really began pressing Japan to become more of a military power. [00:47:22] And so the U.S. has been behind these changes as well. [00:47:26] But the most change that Abe could get through was in 2015, seven years, what's that, eight years ago, seven years ago, when they passed a law in the Japanese parliament to allow Japanese ships to accompany American ships in overseas conflicts. [00:47:49] And that sparked the biggest demonstrations in Japan since the 60s. [00:47:55] So there's still an element of Japanese that don't want this change. [00:47:59] And I think Abe had campaigned about now if we win good, win big in the next election, we can change, we can get rid of Article 9. [00:48:12] And Kishida, who's the prime minister, he said that a couple days ago. [00:48:18] He said, they did win a big majority a couple days after he was killed. [00:48:23] And so now they have the chance to get rid of this. [00:48:26] It takes a two-thirds vote in the upper and lower house in Japan to alter the Constitution. [00:48:33] And then it goes to a public plebiscite. [00:48:36] And so the people have to approve it by a simple majority in the population in the votes, right. [00:48:45] And it's really hard to know if that'll pass or not. [00:48:49] I mean, you can bet that the U.S. government and the CIA and everybody will try to get that passed if it does come to a vote of plebiscite. [00:49:01] But I really don't know if they have the votes to do that among the Japanese people. [00:49:07] I mean, I sure as hell hope they don't. [00:49:10] But they're going to try to ram this thing through. [00:49:13] And of course, all the American politicians that wax eloquently about Abe, I mean, they're going to say, see, Japan now really wants to be a good ally of us. [00:49:23] They're going to help us. [00:49:24] But it's under, you know, it's like the U.S.'s own army. [00:49:30] Have Japanese self-defense forces? [00:49:33] Uh, absolutely yeah, and you know, Japan is still one of the biggest military powers in the world. [00:49:38] Its military is very top heavy, in other words, there's a big officer class right uh and, and they have, you know, they have, of course, they have incredible technology and they can make all kinds of sophisticated weapons and rockets and so on. === Kodama's Funeral Scandal (11:57) === [00:49:55] Uh, and so you know, big Japanese corporations are really hungry to get into sure uh, those kind of, those kind of markets uh, but i'm, i'm really i'm, i'm really not sure about the, the people that that remains to be seen. [00:50:20] Well, we mentioned, we mentioned just briefly the Unification Church and there, like when we're talking about the anti-communist league, and I kind of want to like circle back to that because that is at the heart of the assassination story. [00:50:31] And I mean, my understanding, and you know, we can get into this here, is that the Unification Church also has quite a large presence in Japan. [00:50:42] Yes. [00:50:43] In daily life, and that like the Japanese, I mean, in Japan, that's like their entire economic base. [00:50:51] Basically, it's weird, because Japan is such a, I mean, it's ironic that you know, when my parents went there, as missionaries Macarthur had just said. [00:51:02] You know, bring us a thousand missionaries. [00:51:04] We, you know we, Japan has to be Christian to avoid becoming communists. [00:51:08] You know, we need them to fight the communists and the the amount of Christians in Japan is about one half of one percent of the population, which it was before the war. [00:51:20] Right, it's never, it's never really grown. [00:51:22] But if you go to, if you're like if you're in Tokyo and you're on a building and look around Tokyo, you hardly see any churches. [00:51:29] I mean, you'll see one or there, one or two. [00:51:31] If you go to Korea and sit in a high building, all you see is crosses and churches. [00:51:37] They're everywhere and it's. [00:51:40] We don't have time to go into what, the why that is, but you know, i'm always astonished when I, when I go to Korea and you know the, the amount, the number of Christians there and deep Christian believers, it's uh, it's pretty incredible, Incredible. [00:51:55] So the unification church is really because there's so few Christians in Japan, it's really a cult. [00:52:02] And it's a cult, it's a right-wing cult. [00:52:05] And, you know, they try to influence politics in all kinds of ways. [00:52:12] And their believers, I mean, like they beg money. [00:52:16] Apparently, this killer's mother, you know, what she donated like $750,000. [00:52:22] It's crazy because Japan is really, I mean, so the Mooney's get money from all sorts of sources, including Yakuza, Japanese intelligence, yeah, at Korean CIA, obviously, but sort of their and the good old-fashioned American one too, of course. [00:52:43] But let's say, let's, yeah, well, of course. [00:52:46] But the real grassroots fundraising, as far as I've understood it, comes in large part from essentially going door to door in Japan and finding widows and being like, listen, your husband's in hell. [00:52:59] I'm really sorry to tell you this. [00:53:01] However, for a gigantic monetary donation, I can not only get your husband out of hell, I can get him into heaven. [00:53:09] And so it looks like Tetsuya the killer, his mother had joined sometime in the 90s following the father's suicide, which is also there's pretty high suicide rates in Japan too. [00:53:21] So again, a lot of these things kind of, I mean, it's just a lot of strands of Japanese and Korean history coming together had donated a huge amount of her husband's life insurance settlement, almost three quarters of a million dollars, a million yen to the unification church. [00:53:43] They were able to get some of that back, but looks like Tetsuya, who had been a member of those self-defense forces, which is so wild. [00:53:50] Like this very same self-defense forces that, you know, that Abe wants to massively and now, well, now just the elderly. [00:53:57] They can do a regular army. [00:53:58] That's what he wants. [00:53:59] Exactly. [00:54:01] You know, his family was basically stricken into poverty by this. [00:54:07] And this is, this is, I mean, this is a story that we sort of are able to piece together here. [00:54:13] And the reason I think a lot of people were confused because Abe is not a member of the Unification Church by any means. [00:54:19] But the Unification Church has a lot of very high, high-profile friends and allies. [00:54:25] In a lot of ways, they're kind of like a much scaled-up version of the MEK from Iran, where they don't need to get Rudy Giuliani. [00:54:32] They can get Donald Trump. [00:54:34] They can get Shinzo Abe to speak at their events. [00:54:37] I mean, there was a coronation ceremony they held in DC with like senators and congressmen where Reverend Moon was given a crown. [00:54:48] And so Abe, Abe's, in fact, his grandfather was pretty instrumental in the Mooney's rise in Japan and in furthering them for Japanese Korean intelligence roles. [00:55:02] And then the grandson, Abe, himself, you know, a supporter of them and essentially looks like he was killed for it. [00:55:11] That's what it looks like. [00:55:13] There's all this murky stuff in Japanese politics that rarely, you know, rarely comes out. [00:55:19] Like you mentioned, Kodama, Kodama Yoshio was like this. [00:55:23] You know, he was Japanese intelligence during the war, and he was a gangster, leader of some of the Yakuza. [00:55:33] And he was, you know, Kodama was like a go-between between the CIA and the Japanese leadership. [00:55:42] You may remember there was a huge scandal in Japan. [00:55:45] The biggest scandal of the post-war history was when Tanaka Kakwe, who was the prime minister a few terms after Kishi, was found guilty of being bribed by Lockheed, right? [00:56:01] And that whole bribery scandal was uncovered here in Washington by the Senate Committee on Corporations that was chaired by Senator Frank Church and his investigators. [00:56:14] One day someone showed up with a box of files. [00:56:17] They don't even know. [00:56:18] They're still not sure where it came from. [00:56:20] They had all these files about people like Kodama, who was the middleman for getting the money from Lockheed, whose top executive, by the way, was in the CIA, was a CIA asset. [00:56:34] And they actually gave money to the sitting prime minister, and he gave a huge deal to Lockheed for this really this passenger plane they were building at the time that if they hadn't gotten orders, Lockheed would have gone bankrupt. [00:56:50] And so Nixon, this was Nixon's way to keep them alive. [00:56:53] But Kodama was the key guy. [00:56:55] He was the middleman. [00:56:58] And they call these people like him kuromaku, which is like, you know, they're like in these Boon Raku plays where people were all black and they're in the shadows. [00:57:08] You know, they're the shadow people behind the politics. [00:57:12] And it only comes out at big incidents like this. [00:57:15] You know, when the Lockheed scandal broke, it just opened the floodgates to this right-wing connection between people like Kodama, the Yakuza, and Japan's right-wing ruling party. [00:57:29] Just the same way now, we'll see how far it goes, is that this relationship with the Unification Church and their right wing around Asia is being opened up now because of this assassination. [00:57:43] Yeah, that's actually a question I wanted to ask you, too, is what do you think the repercussions for this might be in Japanese politics? [00:57:50] As you said, there was an election. [00:57:52] I mean, Abe was campaigning in an election. [00:57:54] There was an election immediately after the assassination. [00:57:57] The LDP got a huge majority. [00:58:01] You know, do you see Abe's assassination galvanizing people to sort of like take up his mantle, essentially, when it comes to remilitarization or any of the policies that he, you know, I know he was really big into, well, you know, the Japanese birth rate, obviously famously not too hot in the past few decades. [00:58:21] That was a big thing that Abe championed. [00:58:23] There's been an economic downturn for quite a while too there. [00:58:26] I mean, do you see, what sort of repercussions or after effects do you see kind of happening in Japanese politics and society from this? [00:58:33] Well, the media one was this big election victory, which they, you know, they got a big majority because they were allied with certain, some other parties. [00:58:43] What the LDP government is going to try to do now, apparently they're going to have a state funeral for Abe, which is highly unusual. [00:58:53] Very rare to have these state funerals. [00:58:56] But like it's Japan, the way that the government works at times of crisis and big events like that is they try to use these like a funeral to push a kind of new kind of politics, impose a new kind of politics on the country. [00:59:15] So like, you know, when the first, when Emperor Hirohito died, I mean, it was just like, you know, the country like shut down for a few days. [00:59:24] And then they had all these, it was sort of a way to kind of restore, you know, Japanese might in the people's minds. [00:59:32] Right, right, right. [00:59:33] But it's elaborate. [00:59:34] It involves every aspect of the national government. [00:59:38] And I think that's what they're going to try to do with this funeral, you know, build them up and try to, you know, say, you know, his legacy, he wanted to get rid of Article 9 of the Constitution. [00:59:50] And he just wants to make Japan a normal, you know, quote unquote nation again and make Japan strong again, you know. [00:59:58] And that's what I think that's what they're going to try to do. [01:00:01] And that's why they're going to have this state funeral. [01:00:04] And it's really hard to say. [01:00:07] I haven't lived there for a long time. [01:00:08] I have a lot of friends who are still there and have been there, you know, people I went to school with when I was growing up. [01:00:18] And it's, and of course, they're like, they can't believe the adulation that Abe gets here. [01:00:28] A lot of Japanese despise this kind of right-wing politics, you know, and just, it just grosses them out. [01:00:36] It's sickening. [01:00:37] But I think that's what the government's going to do. [01:00:41] I mean, the Japanese state, it's unbelievable how they can mobilize. [01:00:46] It's just, you know, when you're there at times like that, like a state journal when American presidents have visited, I mean, the police all over the country are completely mobilized. [01:00:59] I mean, I remember once when I guess it was Reagan was there, this friend of mine who lives in Tokyo, American friend of mine who lives in Tokyo, was in Osaka, you know, far to the south, and he was stopped on the street by police and they were asking who he was, what he was doing there, what he was planning to do in the next couple of years. [01:01:16] And they do this, you know, everywhere, right? [01:01:19] I mean, it's really, they can really do this massive mobilization of police and security forces. [01:01:26] And it's always there. [01:01:28] But I think it's just, it's just, I don't, I think there's a lot of people in Japan, you know, they don't want Japan to get involved in a war. [01:01:37] I mean, I mean, you know, what are they going to send troops to Afghanistan? [01:01:41] It's no more, we're pulled out of Afghanistan, but like a war like that, people don't want to have Japanese soldiers sent to die with American forces in some American imperial war. === People Don't Want War (03:04) === [01:01:53] I just don't think people want that. [01:01:55] And that's what all the U.S. politicians desperately want. [01:02:02] I mean, I think that the real capital of the empire is here in Washington at places like the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where all these former high-level defense people and military people, there's a picture in the Mainichi story today about Abe where there's a picture of him talking to the CSIS when he was last time he was in Washington. [01:02:28] They all go there, you know. [01:02:30] I mean, even Moon Jae-in, when this rather progressive president, his first trip to Washington, his only public speech, except for one speech he gave at the Chamber of Commerce, but the big policy speech was at CSIS. [01:02:48] And I was there for that speech. [01:02:49] And I remember I waited outside because I wanted to, because Moon was going to come out. [01:02:56] And so I was waiting with the crowd outside. [01:02:58] And he was in there for two hours meeting with all of CSIS's board of directors, Madam Albright, all these kind of people from the, you know, and so the pressure from the United, it's Japan does not, LDP does not operate independently. [01:03:18] They've got this U.S. support and pushing them to the right and to a militaristic position, you know, for decades. [01:03:26] And they love it. [01:03:28] The Japanese LDP loves that. [01:03:30] And for America, you know, it gives American Empire enormous. [01:03:37] I mean, all the bases in Japan, you know, they ring China, they focus on North Korea, but they're all linked together. [01:03:47] And now they're pushing this South Korean-Japan-U.S. military alliance with a right-wing leader in South Korea now, who won by the barest of majorities, by the way. [01:03:59] You know, they're going whole hog into this idea of a U.S.-led Japan-Korea military. [01:04:06] Triumvirate. [01:04:08] I think that's really dangerous. [01:04:11] Absolutely. [01:04:13] I just can't see Japan. [01:04:15] I mean, there's talk of like, oh, Japan's, Korea is going to help us in Taiwan, if China invades Taiwan, blah, blah, blah. [01:04:23] It's kind of scary the direction this is going, going, going. [01:04:28] Absolutely. [01:04:28] I mean, I think, too, you look across the world in other places, you're seeing countries remilitarize very quickly. [01:04:35] Germany. [01:04:36] Yeah. [01:04:36] And countries that I think a lot of people, I mean, you know, you can add Japan to this list because if it goes that way, that it is shocking, you know, people of a certain age, it's shocking to see these countries now back at it, Europe, back at, you know, scaling up armies in countries that it just never seemed like a possibility. === Japan's Military Industrial Complex (06:01) === [01:04:57] They're now bringing Japan and South Korea into NATO. [01:05:01] Yeah. [01:05:02] I mean, it's like insane. [01:05:03] It's just psychotic. [01:05:05] It is insane. [01:05:06] You know, during the Cold War, there was like, you know, there was NATO. [01:05:09] There was the Northeast Asia Alliance. [01:05:11] There was CETO in Southeast Asia. [01:05:14] They had these kind of local mini empires kind of, but now they want to make an ATO. [01:05:21] One big, one big NATO. [01:05:24] Yeah, I mean, and it's crazy. [01:05:25] I mean, imagine how the Chinese feel seeing this government that not only hasn't apologized for the, I mean, absolute devastation that they wreaked upon your country. [01:05:38] You know, the colonization, the massacres, starting a war, killing, you know, millions enslaving people. [01:05:47] And then not only to have, you know, no apology or anything like that, not like an apology that really makes up for that, but like not even acknowledgement. [01:05:56] Like, actually, like, well, we didn't do those things, but if we did, that would have been okay. [01:06:03] You know, and it's not really like you say, because you're liars anyways who are just trying to hurt Japan's reputation. [01:06:08] Or there was a few bad apples among them. [01:06:10] Yeah. [01:06:11] And they got punished. [01:06:12] They got hung. [01:06:13] I mean, the U.S. occupation hung seven war criminals. [01:06:17] Yeah. [01:06:18] That takes care of it. [01:06:19] That's all there were. [01:06:20] Just seven of them. [01:06:21] Right, only seven. [01:06:22] I'm sorry. [01:06:23] There was only 40 people living in Japan at the time. [01:06:25] So that's almost a quarter of their population. [01:06:27] All right. [01:06:28] But, you know, I mean, a lot of Japanese felt like, especially during the Vietnam War, looking back at the trials, it's like General Yamashta, who was executed for overseeing, there was this big massacre in Manila at the end of the year when Japanese soldiers went on a rampage. [01:06:49] And they would say like, well, what's the difference between him and General Westmoreland in Vietnam? [01:06:54] I mean, Milai, all these massacres that took place, they were, you know, those people were tried for the same thing. [01:07:01] I mean, Westmoreland wasn't at Milai, but he ordered the strategy that served up Milai, right? [01:07:07] And the same with that Japanese general wasn't even in Manila, but he was executed for what his forces did. [01:07:16] So it was, you know, like it's often been called victor's justice, right? [01:07:20] You win the war, you punish the people that fought you. [01:07:24] But, you know, the United States has never been in that position. [01:07:27] So we never punish our war criminals or anything. [01:07:31] You know, if anyone was a war criminal, it was general, you know, the general that led the bombing of Curtis LeMay and not only Japan. [01:07:39] A real son of a bitch, yeah. [01:07:41] Not only Japan, but Korea. [01:07:43] I mean, North Korea was, there wasn't any, nothing standing. [01:07:48] And these people talk about that. [01:07:53] I mean, it's amazing to read these generals. [01:07:54] They say, you know, like, like, like, oh, you know, we boiled the Japanese people, the first bombing of Tokyo, this terrible bombing that killed about 100,000 people on March 15th, 1945. [01:08:06] You know, General May brags later, we boiled them and baked them to death. [01:08:13] I mean, it's true. [01:08:13] They did. [01:08:14] They did. [01:08:15] They jumped into rivers and the rivers are boiling. [01:08:18] I mean, it's just the most cruel thing. [01:08:20] And the thing is, what always stuns me about that bombing campaign is that downtown Tokyo with the big peril concrete buildings was intact, right? [01:08:32] It burned down all the wooden houses in all the cities, which is where the working class and poor people lived, right? [01:08:40] That's what burned. [01:08:42] After World War II, terror bombing. [01:08:45] It was unbelievable. [01:08:47] And like, I've been, as I've been writing this book, I've been, you know, researching, you know, reports of eyewitness reports about the bombing of Japan and North Korea. [01:08:59] And people say the same things. [01:09:02] Like, first, there was like P-51 planes would fly over and strafe everybody, you know, and machine gun people. [01:09:09] And then the bombers would come over. [01:09:11] And then the P-51s would come back. [01:09:14] That was a pattern. [01:09:15] So people are out in the street, you know, escaping fire. [01:09:18] And then these planes come over and machine gun you to death. [01:09:22] And a lot of, you know, Japanese people remember that. [01:09:26] Maybe a lot of people are dying out, but there's a lot of people my age that certainly remember the terror of World War II and the Vietnam War and the Korean War. [01:09:35] And, you know, it's pretty hard to get over what happened. [01:09:41] And so, you know, the kind of reversal that the U.S. is trying to push now and that these LDP and Abe-like people are trying to push now is pretty profound reversal of Japan of what it was, you know, since World War II, because it has been, it has not gone to war. [01:10:00] And, you know, I mean, the Japanese people were lucky after the war because they weren't putting all this money into the war machine. [01:10:10] Instead, they could build the Shinkansen and they could build fast trains and this unbelievable transportation network that they have. [01:10:18] And, you know, people and they could have a healthcare system, national healthcare. [01:10:24] And so they were able to put their resources elsewhere. [01:10:28] But I think a lot of people are now concerned that there is a military industrial complex in Japan. [01:10:34] It's all linked to American companies like Mitsubishi and Boeing and so on. [01:10:40] And that's a really dangerous trend. [01:10:45] And so I don't know, certainly the language of the American leaders, Biden and the Democrats in charge now is no help, is not going to, is more militaristic than ever. === Ad Hoc Committee Insights (04:33) === [01:10:59] Well, Timothy, I really appreciate having you on. [01:11:03] Thank you. [01:11:04] You know, you mentioned Yamashita, and now I'm thinking of when I was recently in the Philippines, the big rumor there is, of course, that Marcos Jr. or Bong Bong Marcos has Yamashita's gold and that he's actually going to distribute it to the peasantry. [01:11:22] Yeah. [01:11:22] You know, now that he is the leader. [01:11:24] In fact, his father never looted any money from the nation. [01:11:28] It was actually the gold that they found. [01:11:31] And, you know, I think we're a couple months into his rule. [01:11:35] And he hasn't started the gold distribution to the peasantry yet or announced it. [01:11:39] But that just means that he's really, it's got a lot of gold he's got to collect. [01:11:43] So it's coming out there. [01:11:44] Well, a lot of people think that a lot of the money the CIA got for its operations came from that gold. [01:11:51] And, you know. [01:11:52] John Singlov of the World Anti-Communist League was looking for it out there, too. [01:11:56] Oh, yeah. [01:11:57] But like, you know, the CIA's bait, the CIA had one of its biggest bases in the world in Tokyo during the Korean War and after. [01:12:08] It was massive, massive CIA based in Atsugi Air Force Base near Tokyo. [01:12:14] And, you know, that's where Lee Harvey Oswald was working, right? [01:12:18] Very famous base. [01:12:19] But, I mean, the CIA operations there were very, I mean, they're all over Asia, of course. [01:12:24] You know, Korean War, and then these come up on flying people into North Korea into China and all this kind of stuff. [01:12:30] You too, yeah. [01:12:31] It was a massive, massive program, and the CIA, you know, was you know, they're the ones that funded the LDP at the very beginning. [01:12:41] And I don't know what the relationship is now, but they're certainly happy with what turned out, I'm sure. [01:12:46] Thank you so much, Tim, for coming on. [01:12:48] Before we go, real quick, do you have anything you want to plug? [01:12:52] Or where can people find your work? [01:12:54] Uh, actually, the best place is my website right now, which is Timshorock.com, T-T-I-M-S-H-O-R-R-O-C. [01:13:03] Oh, we'll link to it. [01:13:04] We'll get a little bit hyperlink. [01:13:06] And, you know, I also, I've written, I've written for a long, I wrote for a long time for the Nation magazine. [01:13:12] I haven't had anything there for a while. [01:13:15] But if you do Tim search Tim Shorak and the Nation, you'll find my authors page. [01:13:21] And there are, you know, dozens and dozens of articles going back to late 1990s or even earlier on that, on the Nation site. [01:13:31] But Timshorock.com will, I'm, I'm expanding it now. [01:13:36] I'm going to link into a patron, Patreon, soon. [01:13:40] But that's the best place to reach me. [01:13:42] And I've got a lot of my work on there and, you know, lots, lots of material up there, especially, you know, I wrote a book about spies, right? [01:13:50] Spy for hire. [01:13:52] So, you know, intelligence, privatized intelligence. [01:13:56] You know, I still follow it. [01:13:57] I haven't been writing about it so much, but there's a lot of material on my website about that. [01:14:02] And a lot of people go on just for that. [01:14:06] Well, we would love to have you back on and talk about that sometime too, because that is also a very big interest to us. [01:14:12] Yes. [01:14:13] It's a bizarre industry, but it's very, it is pretty interesting. [01:14:18] But thank you so much. [01:14:19] I really appreciate it. [01:14:21] Thank you. [01:14:21] Thank you. [01:14:34] You know, I'll tell you something that scares me more than the Moonies. [01:14:37] What? [01:14:37] Spoonies. [01:14:40] How long have you been holding on to that one? [01:14:41] I just came up with that. [01:14:42] Really? [01:14:42] Yeah. [01:14:43] I just came up with that. [01:14:46] Fuck, I didn't even read. [01:14:48] I have a book here by the ad hoc committee of members of the unification church from 79 when the congressional investigation was happening. [01:14:54] I got to tell you, you love an ad hoc committee. [01:14:58] I love an ad hoc committee. [01:14:59] All committees should be ad hoc. [01:15:01] Yeah, absolutely. [01:15:02] This podcast is ad hoc. [01:15:04] 100%. [01:15:06] Also, the report, I guess the congressional report came out of Halloween, which is very spooky. [01:15:10] I am afraid to go to Japan. [01:15:12] Yeah. [01:15:13] Yeah. [01:15:14] I understand that. [01:15:15] I feel like I might have to become a yakuza. [01:15:19] I don't think that that is. [01:15:20] I feel like they'd be like, what? [01:15:21] That's like. [01:15:23] I don't really see you in Japan. [01:15:25] Well, yeah. [01:15:26] I mean, I don't really. [01:15:26] But I could see you in China. [01:15:28] I could easily go to China. [01:15:29] Yeah. [01:15:30] Yeah, I would love it. [01:15:31] I'm going to go. [01:15:31] We should go. === China Or Japan? (01:05) === [01:15:32] Yeah. [01:15:33] All right. [01:15:33] We should go. [01:15:34] We should just do this podcast from China. [01:15:36] We should just move to China. [01:15:38] No, maybe we just go next year and we like go see what's up. [01:15:41] Like four months out there? [01:15:42] Yeah. [01:15:43] We go say, hey, hey, you. [01:15:45] How is it? [01:15:45] How's it going out here? [01:15:47] Yeah, I don't know about that. [01:15:49] Yeah, that'd be probably pretty weird. [01:15:50] Yeah. [01:15:50] But we could just love to go to China. [01:15:52] Yeah. [01:15:53] And never leave. [01:15:54] Yeah. [01:15:54] That'd be fine with me. [01:15:57] I love you. [01:15:59] Everyone, my name is Liz. [01:16:02] Sorry, I was on the phone with China. [01:16:04] My name is Brace, and we are joined by producer Young Chomsky. [01:16:11] And the podcast is called Truanon. [01:16:15] We'll see you next time. [01:16:17] Bye-bye. [01:16:30] Jeffrey Dexte. [01:16:34] Just Jack, Jeffrey Dexter. [01:16:36] Come out. [01:16:37] Come out.