Background:
Things seem to be changing these days in Japan. First, a small number of Japanese troops are sent to Iraq and then the old national anthem makes a comeback in schools. And, while the rest of the world seems to be unconcerned with these developments, some Japanese are. Many Japanese see this as symbolic of the disastrous era of military rule and do not want in any way to return to its past. This article examines a conflict between patriotism and ones right to freedom of expression.
Toru Sato runs one of the top high schools in Tokyo. His 900 pupils are some of the city's best academic performers, yet he was sweating and nervous. The difference from previous years was the distinctive rising sun Japanese flag, placed centre stage next to that of the city government. Nothing obviously controversial about that?
As they were about to strike up the national anthem, the cameras were told to leave. Nearly 60 years after it surrendered to the United States and renounced the militarism of the 1930s and 40s, Japan still cannot decide what kind of country it wants to be.
This manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from the agonized debate over sending a few hundred troops to Iraq and the furious attacks on the Prime Minister's visits to the national war shrine, to the row today over playing the national anthem in school. Many of the symbols of the disastrous era of military rule still survive in Japan - the emperor, the flag, the national anthem - but their exact status has been left deliberately vague.
It was only in 1999 that the ancient poem Kimigayo, calling for the reign of the emperor to last "for all eternity" was formally declared the official national anthem once again, as it had been before the war. But many Japanese still object to it. So, when the Tokyo city government this year decided to enforce playing Kimigayo at the beginning and end of the school year, hundreds of teachers registered their objection by refusing to stand up.
However, they did not reckon with the determination of Shintaro Ishihara, the unapologetically nationalist governor of Tokyo.
Toru Kondo has had an unblemished career as an English teacher for 31 years. Now, spluttering with rage, he opens an envelope to show me his first ever official warning from the Board of Education. He is one of those who refused to stand.
"Japan changed after the war," he says. "Our constitution gives us freedom to follow our consciences. This cannot be a democratic country if they insist on punishing us."
Like many teachers in Japan, Toru Kondo's politics are left-wing, and like most left-wingers here, he has an unforgiving view of anything connected to his country's shameful past. The city government, though, takes an equally uncompromising view.
And what about the majority of Japanese who fall in between these militant guardians of Japan's history? It is almost impossible to know what they think. The Japanese are fond of referring to their two sides - Honne and Tatemae - their true thoughts, and the face they show to the outside world.
So there has been little public soul-searching about what went wrong with Japan before World War II. While hard-liners on the left and right battle it out with their irreconcilable interpretations of the past, most Japanese seem happy to have drawn a line at 1945, and moved on.
They have a constitution written in haste by American occupiers, which technically bars Japan from even having an army, although its defence budget is now as big as Britain's.
They have an emperor whose status is vague. They allow right-wing politicians to make ludicrous denials of Japanese atrocities during the war - at great cost to Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors.
The unresolved debate about their country is something they would prefer to avoid. And that is why, even today, after 60 years of unrivalled economic and scientific achievement, Japan still finds it hard to take its proper place in the world.
Source: BBC April 18, 2004.
After WWII, the US remodelled Japan's school system on their own
The restored national anthem was first played at a 1999 remembrance ceremony
