Shiori Yamazaki translated Hoshino’s September 29, 2007 online journal entry, which you can see here, for a class I taught a while back. You can see the original post for that class blog here. Shiori was my teaching assistant and an MA student in Japanese literature at the University of Iowa. She has been involved in bringing atomic bomb survivors and their testimonies to communities in Eastern Iowa, and she did an exclusive radio interview with Noriaki Imai, a Japanese student who was held hostage in Iraq. You can access that radio program by clicking here. Shiori has translated writings by Hoshino, the anarchist activist and punk singer Naoki Shiga, and others into English. She is currently pursuing an MSW at the University of Iowa’s School of Social Work.
Mr. Kenji Nagai [pictured here], who was a freelance journalist, was
killed by security troops in Myanmar. Why hasn’t Prime Minister Fukuda
said something like “it’s annoying when someone goes to such an area
without permission”? As far as I’ve seen in the media, there have been
no words such as “it’s their fault (Jikosekinin = personal responsibility)” or “He deserved to die”, although I don’t know what’s been said on the internet.
I
wonder what could possibly be different between this and the hostage
incident in Iraq three years ago. Does this mean that being killed is
harrowing and heroic, like Mr. Hashida, who was also a freelance
journalist and was killed in Iraq, but being alive and a hostage makes
one annoying?
I thought about the difference between this incident and the one three years ago.
The
government of Myanmar wants to control the information inside Myanmar.
They want to justify their armed oppression by making this demonstration
look small, both inside the nation and internationally. This is why
they’ve been trying to shut out all of the media.
The one who
wanted to shut out the media in Iraq was the American government and
military. That’s because they feared they couldn’t justify their attacks
if the media was there to record the times they launched inhumane
assaults. During a situation like that, the hostage incident occurred
and then Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda (now Prime Minister) said
something meaning “nuisance” at the very beginning, as if he spoke for
America’s sense of irritation. He led the public opinion in every
possible way towards the “personal responsibility theory” by leaking
fake information which says “there exists a suspicion this is just a
performance” with the former Prime Minister, Koizumi’s Secretary Iijima.
That is to say, if the side they want to control is their enemy
or not, who steps forward differs. It needn’t be said that journalists
and volunteers who support humanity exist independently and separate
from the intentions of those authorities. The authorities are not
supposed to be able to exclude those individuals if the state is truly
democratic, and not despotic.
We can’t be allowed to use Mr. Nagai’s death as a tool for our own catharsis.
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