Nippon Antisemitism?

The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan (2009)
Author: Jacob Kovalio

One assumes that Japan, being a homogenous country practising Shintoism and Buddhism, would not have issues with Judaism. Surprisingly, Jewish Peril (Yudayaka) has had its roots in Japan's late 19th and 20th-century history.

Only when the Japanese aristocrats landed their eyes on Commander Perry's navy fleet in 1858 did they awake from their slumber. At first, the Japanese thought that the American ships were the mythical celestial dragon that they had heard so much in their legends. This became their wake-up call as they realised that the world had passed them by. Emperor Meiji opened the floodgates for modernisation. For a start, his army was no longer hostile to damaged American whaling boats. Business flourished. Cultural exchanges took place. Loans from American banks (owned by Jews) started trickling in.

The Japanese noblemen and intellectual's first exposure to the Jews must have been Shylock in Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice'. He is portrayed as the miserly, greedy and vengeful moneylender who would charge exorbitant interest and stop at nothing to collect his dues.

The Japanese and the Russians had been perennial enemies fighting at their borders for aeons. In 1918, however, the Japanese Imperial Army was sent to support the Russian White Army to fight the Bolshevik Reds. It is said that here, the elusive Protocols of the Elderly of Zions was distributed to the Japanese soldiers. The Protocol is a notorious document that purportedly outlines the Jewish plan of world domination. Some quarters argue that such a book never existed in the first place. At the closest, there was just a figment of imagination from a fictional novel about cemetery, spirits and Satan. It was a ploy by Europeans who had been persecuting Jews since AD 73 when Emperor Titus ransacked Jerusalem and expelled them.


The ember of suspicion and Yudayaka (Jewish Peril) grew stronger as echoes of their ill-intent were fanned by the academia and media after 1919. The Red movement, the Communists, were mostly run by Jews. Karl Marx was a Jew. So was Leo Trotsky. The Jews alleged run their work by proxy, through the work of the banks, the Masons and the Illuminati.

The alleged modus operandi was by breaking family values, increasing individualism, early sexual activity, spiritual rupture of the parental-children bond, non-arranged marriages, replacement of monarchies and domination of media. These social changes were already apparent in Japanese society as the ruling class (emperor and samurais) lost their grip on society and the people became more assertive.

Commodore Matthew C Perry
(not of 'Friends' fame)

Around that time too, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison started distributing pamphlets about the Jew takeover of the world. Their conniving pursuits go back as early as the French Revolution, it seems. We all know about the 1869 gathering in Lviv, which eventually led to the Balfour Declaration in 1929 and the birth of Israel in 1948.

The bashing goes on even in the 21st century in the likes of Tun Dr Mahathir who still preaches about this grand scheme. He gets a mention in this book.

In the Jews' defence, throughout history, they have always been marginalised by the mainstream. It could be because of the peculiar practices or their conviction that they are the Chosen One. In the fringes, for survival, they had to resort to trades that were shunned by the mainstream. They indulged in moneylending, for usury was prohibited by other religions in their vicinity. They prospered in craftsmanship like diamond trade, photography and publishing. Their exile state of existence not only made them resilient. It became a fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

Antisemitism was debated in the 1930s. Some looked at the Jews favourably as they were of 'Asiatic' stock. During the industrialisation era of Japan in the 20th century, bankers, predominantly Jews, were there to finance them. The military, however, clang upon this Yudayaka. They entered an allegiance with Hitler on his anti-Jews stance. In the South-East Asian countries that they overran in WW2, they perpetuated their idea of the Allied forces (through their association with the Jews) a sure proof of world hegemony, to garner support from their subjects.

The Japanese, in wanting to protect their country, society, economy and way of life, immersed themselves studying and debating the contents of the Protocol. In contemporary times, they are doing the same to ward themselves off the 'side effects' of an unabashed open invitation to foreigners who could possibly derail the progress they have made after being flattened out in 1945. 

The debate on the Protocol amongst the members of academia, civil societies and the elite generated keener awareness that hostile, predatory ideologies from abroad were out there to sway the Japanese culture and to derail their national aspirations. 

Thanks to AqSS for input.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Fear of the unknown?

The Lost City of Z (2017)

It was a time when wealthy British aristocrats would amuse themselves with risky expeditions to savage lands to examine the lesser beings in 'uncivilised' territories. They would study them like guinea pigs, record their habits for future references and in the process rob them blind of precious metals and of a rich civilisation. It was a time just before the onset of World War One and Major Percy Fawcett is seconded to the Royal Geographical Society to do some surveying work in the interiors of Bolivia.

Fawcett does his work and returns but not without realising that, unlike his contemporaries who think that the Amazon natives are anything but civilised, he feels the land holds the remnants of an advanced culture.

After a failed return trip to discover the lost city that he calls 'Z', his life gets embroiled in the Trench War. Injured, he is refrained from pursuing any further expeditions. The calling proved too strong. On the insistence of his eldest son, he made a final attempt to the lost city. The fate and whereabouts of both of these explorers remain a mystery till today. Multiple search parties returned empty-handed. The consensus among most lies between being killed by natives and living blissfully with the natives.

Even though the film is quite slow moving, it did manage to create the tension of the conflict of a man having to decide between leaving behind a young family and missing the crucial growing years of his children, as these expeditions take years altogether, and wanting to achieve something in his life. Should you attempt the hold more than you can grasp or be happy with the strand of straws that you have? Should we let fear of the unknown determine our future? Should we be content with our lives? Is there a limit to satiety? Is contentment the panacea for all evils in the world?

The Lady Vanishes

http://m.historyextra.com/feature/weird-and-wonderful/mysterious-disappearance-agatha-christie?utm_source=Facebook+referral&utm_medium=Facebook.com&utm_campaign=Bitly

The mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie

The Guinness Book of World Records lists her as the best-selling novelist of all time, and according to her estate she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. But what Agatha Christie is perhaps best remembered for is her mysterious disappearance in December 1926.
Submitted by: Emma Mason

At shortly after 9.30 p.m. on Friday 3 December 1926, Agatha Christie got up from her armchair and climbed the stairs of her Berkshire home. She kissed her sleeping daughter Rosalind, aged seven, goodnight and made her way back downstairs again. Then she climbed into her Morris Cowley and drove off into the night. She would not be seen again for eleven days.

Her disappearance would spark one of the largest manhunts ever mounted. Agatha Christie was already a famous writer and more than one thousand policemen were assigned to the case, along with hundreds of civilians. For the first time, aeroplanes were also involved in the search.

The Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, urged the police to make faster progress in finding her. Two of Britain’s most famous crime writers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Dorothy L. Sayers, author of the Lord Peter Wimsey series, were drawn into the search. Their specialist knowledge, it was hoped, would help find the missing writer.

It didn’t take long for the police to locate her car. It was found abandoned on a steep slope at Newlands Corner near Guildford. But there was no sign of Agatha Christie herself and nor was there any evidence that she’d been involved in an accident.

As the first day of investigations progressed into the second and third – and there was still no sign of her – speculation began to mount. The press had a field day, inventing ever more lurid theories as to what might have happened.

It was the perfect tabloid story, with all the elements of an Agatha Christie whodunnit. Close to the scene of the car accident was a natural spring known as the Silent Pool, where two young children were reputed to have died. Some journalists ventured to suggest that the novelist had deliberately drowned herself.

Yet her body was nowhere to be found and suicide seemed unlikely, for her professional life had never looked so optimistic. Her sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was selling well and she was already a household name.

Some said the incident was nothing more than a publicity stunt, a clever ruse to promote her new book. Others hinted at a far more sinister turn of events. There were rumours that she’d been murdered by her husband, Archie Christie, a former First World War pilot and serial philanderer. He was known to have a mistress.

Arthur Conan Doyle, a keen occultist, tried using paranormal powers to solve the mystery. He took one of Christie’s gloves to a celebrated medium in the hope that it would provide answers. It did not.

Dorothy Sayers visited the scene of the writer’s disappearance to search for possible clues. This proved no less futile.

By the second week of the search, the news had spread around the world. It even made the front page of the New York Times.

Not until 14 December, fully eleven days after she disappeared, was Agatha Christie finally located. She was found safe and well in a hotel in Harrogate, but in circumstances so strange that they raised more questions than they solved. Christie herself was unable to provide any clues to what had happened. She remembered nothing. It was left to the police to piece together what might have taken place.

They came to the conclusion that Agatha Christie had left home and travelled to London, crashing her car en route. She had then boarded a train to Harrogate. On arriving at the spa town, she checked into the Swan Hydro – now the Old Swan Hotel – with almost no luggage. Bizarrely, she used the assumed name of Theresa Neele, her husband’s mistress.

Harrogate was the height of elegance in the 1920s and filled with fashionable young things. Agatha Christie did nothing to arouse suspicions as she joined in with the balls, dances and Palm Court entertainment. She was eventually recognized by one of the hotel’s banjo players, Bob Tappin, who alerted the police. They tipped off her husband, Colonel Christie, who came to collect Agatha immediately.

But his wife was in no hurry to leave. Indeed, she kept him waiting in the hotel lounge while she changed into her evening dress.

Agatha Christie never spoke about the missing eleven days of her life and over the years there has been much speculation about what really happened between 3 and 14 December 1926.

Her husband said that she’d suffered a total memory loss as a result of the car crash. But according to biographer Andrew Norman, the novelist may well have been in what’s known as a ‘fugue’ state or, more technically, a psychogenic trance. It’s a rare condition brought on by trauma or depression.

Norman says that her adoption of a new personality, Theresa Neele, and her failure to recognize herself in newspaper photographs were signs that she had fallen into psychogenic amnesia.

‘I believe she was suicidal,’ says Norman. ‘Her state of mind was very low and she writes about it later through the character of Celia in her autobiographical novel Unfinished Portrait.’

She soon made a full recovery and once again picked up her writer’s pen. But she was no longer prepared to tolerate her husband’s philandering: she divorced him in 1928 and later married the distinguished archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan.

We’ll probably never know for certain what happened in those lost eleven days. Agatha Christie left a mystery that even Hercule Poirot would have been unable to solve.