In a letter to a friend recently, I countered the saw of “history is written by the victors” with “history is written by the aggressive.” Steve Clemons has a good example of that. He tells the story of to men in Japan.
I know both of these writers/intellectuals — and Komori has established a kind of franchise on the debate about Japan’s historical memory. He is the authoritative right-wing commentator on the politics of Japan’s war memory and on Japan-China relations. He’s part of a group that understandably argues that Japan needs to get beyond its kow-towing to China and other nations in the region over World War II — particularly given the behavior of the Chinese government towards its own people in the 1960s and 1970s.
Which one is the more aggressive?
I mostly agree with Tamamoto’s analysis of Japan’s foreign policy portfolio — but Komori has put out the clarion call to zealots and fanatical right-wingers in Japan to protest Tamamoto as an an anti-Japanese, extreme leftist intellectual, according to one observer, “in essence a panda-hugging traitor.”
Komori obviously learned more than English while in DC.