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Japanese Anti-Semitism
| Article
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13084 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1987 |
4,892 Words |
| Author
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David G. Goodman
David G. Goodman is associate professor of Japanese and
comparative literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. He is the author of three books in Japanese,
including two on the Jews and Israel. His works in English
include After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki (1986) and Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s:
The Return of the Gods (forthcoming). |
IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE JEWS, YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THE WORLD
Masami Uno
Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1986
(in Japanese)
IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE JEWS, YOU WILL UNDERSTAND JAPAN
Masami Uno
Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1986
(in Japanese)
Japanese anti-Semitism? It seems impossible, and yet over the past two years explicitly anti-Semitic books have been selling in Japan like the proverbial hotcakes.
The most popular of the recent anti-Semitic authors is Masami Uno, the forty-five-year-old director of the Osaka-based Middle East Problems Research Center. Uno, who has written other books with titles like Great Prophecies of the Old Testament and More Great Prophecies of the Old Testament, professes to be a fundamentalist Christian and a minister in the Osaka Bible Christian Church.
Because of their popularity among Japanese readers, two of Uno's recent anti-Semitic books have alarmed Jewish residents in Japan, prompted the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo to protest to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and brought an angry letter to Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone from an American congressman and senator. According to the publisher, Tokuma Shoten, the books, If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand the World (April 1986) and If You Understand the Jews, You Will Understand Japan (November 1986), have sold 1.1 million copies; and although Japanese publishers routinely overstate sales in their advertising, even if the number of copies is only half what the publisher claims, sales have still been phenomenal. Moreover, similar books with titles like The Jewish Plot to Take Over the World, Secrets of the Jewish Powers that Control the World, and How to Read "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" have become so numerous that Japanese book stores have set up special "Jewish corners" to better serve their clientele.
Anti-Semitism and economic woes
Recent economic troubles are behind the current spate of anti-Semitic books. Over the course of the last two years, the value of the U.S. dollar relative to the Japanese yen has dropped precipitously. Where the dollar was worth 240 yen in
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