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2014 June 25 - July 1 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Mr. prime minister, are you saying lives are as light as feathers?

Akahata ‘current’ column

Naito Miyoko was a teacher supporting Japanese militarism. Before her death at the age of 94, she said to her daughter, “I’ve never dreamed of such days coming again. It looks similar to the prewar period. I’m scared.”

She died two years ago. Her daughter, a journalist, has released her mother’s memoir “Vow for Life” subtitled “What I, once a militarist teacher, want to pass down”.

In 1938, the Sino-Japanese War began. The following year, Naito became a teacher at a higher elementary school. She spent her childhood during the uplifting atmosphere of Taisho Democracy, the liberal climate in the 1910s through the 1920s in Japan. She used to think a lot, read a lot. However, by the time she finished teachers’ training college, she became an uncritical thinker. “I stopped wondering. All I did was to strictly teach every word in the textbooks to children,” she wrote in her journal.

What made her change like that? The Japanese education system at that time was rapidly moving toward militarism. Young teachers were instilled with the idea to serve the Emperor. The “Underlying Principle of National Polity”, required teaching material, said, “Without loyalty (to the Emperor) there is no patriotism, and without patriotism there is no loyalty.” In her notes, Naito wrote that some teachers had forced even pupils suffering from fevers to come to school in order to be given good evaluations as the Emperor’s loyal subjects by having good class attendance.

After the war, she met members of the Japanese Communist Party and devoted the rest of her life to work for peace and democracy. She wrote in her notes that she still found herself boiling with anger at the memory of August 15 when looking up at the blue sky, realizing that she had been deceived. She also wrote that she still vividly remembers and regrets that she had taught children that lives are as light as feathers.

Today, the Abe government intends to turn Japan into a country fighting wars abroad by authorizing Japan’s use of the collective self-defense right. Does the government want teachers to again teach children that lives are as light as feathers?