chapotraphouse

A long time ago, as a lib and for a film class, I watched The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. It's a documentary that follows Okuzaki Kenzō, as he searches for answers about Japanese war crimes. Okuzaki had been a solider in WWII, but he had exposed himself to the enemy with the intent of getting himself killed, but was captured instead and spent most of the war as a prisoner in Australia.

He held the Emperor chiefly responsible and got arrested on multiple occasions, once for firing pinballs at the emperor, and another time for making pornographic cartoons of him and throwing them off rooftops. He was also known for driving around in car covered in slogans with a loudspeaker blaring them as well.

Okuzaki reasoned that "killing Hirohito per se would not solve the problem", though "Hirohito deserves capital punishment for his crime of driving hundreds of thousands of Japanese men to their death in war" and that he would not mind killing the Emperor "if that would bring truly eternal peace, freedom, and happiness to us." (Wikipedia)

In the film, Okuzaki confronts other veterans in search of the truth, just showing up at their house and pressing them very directly, even resorting to physical force, stating, "Violence is my forte." He very brazenly violates both the law and Japanese cultural norms, which would normally allow them to talk around the matter and leave it buried. By doing so, he's able to extract several confessions regarding acts of cannibalism by soldiers stationed in New Guinea, though the testimonies are somewhat unreliable and conflicting about certain details.

But perhaps the most moving thing about the film is not the confessions themselves, but understanding Okuzaki's motivation. He understood the horrors of the war, that he had seen first-hand. But as nobody wanted to talk about them or confront the reality, they were being forgotten. The only people who remembered were dying off, and new generations were being born with no memory of what had happened, sheltered from the ugliness, and ignorant of the emperor's guilt. He saw the signs of the return of nationalism, and he resolved to do everything in his power, no matter who he offended, no matter what consequences he faced, to force people to confront their country's past.

This monument is disgusting. Defacing it is praxis.