tdaxp

"Playing with fire: Japan's ruling party wants to inject patriotism into schools," The Economist, http://economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3578090, 20 January 2005.

There are those who hate patriotism. They hate patrios, everything that is of the fathers. They purposefully attack our traditions hopign to divide us from our pasts. Their aim is radical social change. Fortunately, these attacks are weaker now than they have been in a long time. A century of calamnities caused by these reformers, including the disasters of Germany, Russia, and China, have made humanity skeptical of their claims that they can create a New Style Man. They purposefully attempt to destroy the way, the tao or the sharia, of Man so that they can create not just a New Style Tao, but a Perfect Sharia.

Pol Pot was one of these revolutionaries, a very highly educated man who studied in France. The painfully ignorant and simple Mullah Muhammed Omar was too. Because their new styles are unnatural styles, they will either see the people reject or subvert their ideals, or they will kill the people. In the case of Maoist China, both happened.

The postwar politics of Japan are convoluted, but the patrios of Nihonkoku suffered severe setbacks after the war. Many of these were necessary, but the foundation of Sun-Root-Land was almost destroyed.

I bring up this because I believe that there are those who would send the same cultural devestation to us that we unleashed on Nippon. And not foreigners. I believe that a significant fraction of "liberals" in American politics would destroy popular respect for symbols of America in order to make the people more ameniable to radical politics. I believe the athiest-pledge controversy is a symptom of this. (I believe there is also a smaller but real threat from some religious conservatives, but that discussion is for another time).

In that context, I am heartened by Japan's plan to reintroduce aikokushin, or patriotism, into their educational system. It would be better if there were no state schools. But if there must be, they can at least reinforce the stability of culture and society.

The draft revisions, which include platitudes about modern learning and better teaching, say that Japanese schools should foster a sense of aikokushin among pupils. This word could be translated as “love of country”, but to most Japanese it has other—and liberals would say darker—connotations. Many Japanese are indeed discovering things to love about their country these days, but aikokushin, say worried liberals, implies devotion to a particular idea of Japan: as a uniquely entitled nation supported by hard-working but unquestioning citizens. And although a return to militarism and rampant chauvinism seems hugely unlikely, the LDP's latest ideological games risk antagonising Japan's neighbours and reopening deep domestic wounds.

...

The LDP's educational revisions could do even more damage at home. During the cold war, many left-wing teachers embraced extremist notions about Japan's government and its alliance with America, and they were fond of using war guilt as an ideological weapon in classrooms. Over the past 15 years, however, those divisions have faded from politics, and from many classrooms as well. Enacting the patriotism clause now could erase that progress and reignite the ideological wars. Many teachers are already upset with the nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, for pushing devotion to the national flag and anthem in the capital's schools.