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Each July, the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (JINF) presents its prestigious Kokkiken Japan Study Award to scholars whose work represents the best of Japanese scholarship and understanding.

Many of the works recognized by the awards over the years also reflect the dangers facing Japan. This year, the awards highlight with particular clarity how academics who study Japan must navigate dangerous territory in order to speak the historical and geopolitical truth.

The awards, announced on July 2, 2021, are to be celebrated this year at an online awards ceremony and separate online conference later in July.

US analyst Toshi Yoshihara’s research highlights security threats between Japan and the United States

Toshi Yoshihara, Principal Investigator at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, received the eighth Kokkiken Japan Study Award for his 2020 book Dragon Against the Sun: Chinese Perspectives on Japanese Maritime Power. As reported in the July 2, 2021 issue of Sankei Shimbun, Yoshihara is a highly respected People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) navy expert and in 2010 published Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to US Maritime Strategy. “To sound the alarm bells in Japan on the gap in combat potential with the Chinese navy”, the Sankei title reads.

Editor’s description of Dragon against the sun makes the same point with the same urgency:

“Over the past decade, the Chinese navy has overtaken Japan’s maritime service in critical power measurements, including fleet size, total tonnage, and firepower. China eclipsing Japan in naval power could introduce unwanted strategic tendencies. This could well fuel even more intense competition between Tokyo and Beijing, two marine rivals who already view each other with deep suspicion. Japan’s relocation to sea could increase the likelihood of deterrence failure in the next crisis. This threatens to undermine U.S. confidence in Japan’s ability to fulfill its allied responsibilities, sowing acrimony within the security partnership.

Focus: Toshi Yoshihara

“For over a decade,” Yoshihara says, “I have watched in dismay China’s naval modernization erode Japan’s security.”

He adds, “To me, the change in naval power is a symptom of a much deeper challenge for Japan and its closest ally, the United States. Beijing’s ambitions to achieve primacy in Asia suggest that an even stronger China, if not thwarted, will destroy the long peace that Japan and the United States have presided over in Asia.

The prospects of acquiescence to the People’s Republic of China’s ongoing takeover attempt over Asia-Pacific are daunting, Yoshihara continues.

“As Tokyo and Washington are fully committed to defending the current regional order against Chinese predation,” he said, “China’s rise will require ever greater Allied resources and cooperation to thwart Beijing’s plans. If Japan, the most capable and critical frontline state in the Western Pacific, cannot keep up with China, then the Allies’ prospects for success will dim. This is why Japan’s relative decline is so worrying.

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Lee Woo Young and Hwang Ui Won fight for historical truth

China is unfortunately not the only malicious actor in East Asia.

This year’s Kokkiken Japan Study Special Award goes to two South Korean scholars fighting for historical truth about the Korean Peninsula, Lee Woo Young and Hwang Ui Won.

Lee, a former board member of the Naksungdae Institute for Economic Research, and Hwang, CEO of MediaWatch, were instrumental in the publication of the Korean translation of the book by renowned Japanese history and political scholar Prof Tsutomu Nishioka, A complete production: the question of requisitioned workers in wartime.

Professor Nishioka’s work underscores a point that Lee, Hwang, and many other conscientious South Korean scholars have long emphasized: Korean Peninsula war workers were not forcibly recruited by Japan, but rather freely went to work. on the Japanese islands, where they would benefit from better pay and better working conditions.

Professor Lee also contributed to the historical two-volume series Anti-Japanese tribalism: the root of the Korea-Japan crisis, edited by Lee Woo Young’s colleague at Naksungdae and former economics professor at Seoul National University, Lee Young-hoon.

Focus: Lee Woo Young

In his remarks on winning the Kokkiken Prize, Lee Woo Young (aka Lee Wooyoun) highlighted the perilous state of South Korea-Japan relations as one of his main motivations for wanting to see Professor Nishioka’s work published in Korean.

“The Moon Jae In administration effectively rescinded the 2015 agreement between the Republic of Korea and Japan on the issue of comfort women,” Lee said. “In 2018, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Korea, in ruling on the issue of wartime workers (requisitioned workers), rejected the legal basis of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between the Republic of Korea and Japan, the basis of their bilateral relationship. As a result, relations between the two countries are in an unprecedented state of fragility. “

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Focus: Hwang Ui Won

The extent of the threat posed by anti-truth forces in South Korea was revealed in Hwang Ui Won’s remarks on winning the Kokkiken Prize.

“The Republic of Korea has been plagued by the problem of censorship – censorship mainly by the ‘right-wing political force’ until the 1990s and that by the ‘left-wing press power’ between the 1990s and today. hui, ”Hwang noted. “This new censorship regime has continued to manipulate information in our society. As for overseas goals, it has been carried out most vehemently against liberal conservatives in Japan, especially the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and others who represent the liberal conservative camp in Japan. Its consequences were so severe that even in 2018, just three years ago, a public opinion poll found that in the Republic of Korea, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was twice as popular as Japan’s Shinzo Abe. .

Japan National Fundamentals Institute President Yoshiko Sakurai wanted to encourage Lee and Hwang in their quest to tell the historical truth in South Korea, according to a report by The Sankei Shimbun.

Background to the Kokkiken Prizes

A committee of academics and thought leaders, such as University of Tokyo Emeritus Professors Sukehiro Hirakawa and Takashi Ito, and JINF President Yoshiko Sakurai, decide on papers that present major research related to Japan for a given year.

In 2019, for example, Kobe University professor Tosh Minohara won the Kokkiken Japan Study Encouragement Award for his research on Japanese immigration to the United States, and prominent historian Ikuhiko Hata won the Kokkiken Japan Study Special Award for her masterful study on the issue of comfort women. .

In 2016, Mongolian-born researcher Yang Haiying (Ohno Akira) won the Kokkiken Japan Study Award for his groundbreaking research on the modern history of the People’s Republic of China, Mongolia and Tibet, and researcher Robert D Eldridge, former Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff of the United States Maritime Forces in Japan, won the Kokkiken Japan Study Encouragement Award for his political history of Okinawa and the Senkaku Islands.

In 2017, former New York Times Tokyo bureau chief Henry Scott Stokes was honored for his insight into Allied historical perceptions of Japan, while June Teufel Dreyer, professor of political science at the University from Miami, won an award for his book. Middle Kingdom and Empire of the Rising Sun: Sino-Japanese relations, past and present.

It takes courage more than ever

The need to encourage those who speak the truth became even more evident earlier in 2021, when some South Korean and American academics launched a death threat and smear campaign against Harvard law professor J. Mark Ramseyer. Professor Ramseyer had written an article recounting the historical facts about Comfort Women, after which he was subjected to months of continuous abuse by the academic institution in the United States and South Korea. As Ramseyer, Hwang, and Lee amply demonstrate, courage is essential in speaking the truth.

The format of this year’s Kokkiken Awards ceremony – online, due to the devastation of the Wuhan virus – also underscores the need for courage.

Japan faces threats on multiple fronts, and the Kokkiken Awards are a timely reminder that the Land of the Rising Sun is at the forefront of freedom in East Asia and around the world.

Author: Jason Morgan