 |
2012年8月 月次レポート（マヤ?ヴォドピヴェッツ オランダ）
Report on the fifth month (August 2012) of my research at Leiden Institute of Asian Studies (LIAS)
Maja Vodopivec
In August, I read and analyzed an old book of Katō Shūichi, "Tōkyo nikki" (Tokyo diary). It is a series of his writings in form of letters to a foreign friend, first published in Asahi journal in the period 1959-1960. The 1950s and 1960s are important part of Japanese postwar history and a part on which I concentrated the most in trying to show in what way Katō has changed after the 1990s. In this work Katō wrote (or touched upon) issues that he did not write much about (or even avoided), such as Algerian war or workers mass-movement, such as in the case of "Miike-sōgi". He also extensively wrote on Anpo-tōsō. A book is very important in terms that it is very obvious in what way Katō is making a distance between himself and the events, although he is, without doubts, very critical towards "irresponsible militarism of that time Japanese government's high officials". The book offers a lot of legitimate arguments in favor of my hypothesis on continuities and discontinuities in Katō thought. However, what I was thinking and what is my important goal is to reflect on Katō's thought regarding the post-3.11 Japan. Since Katō in above mentioned book writes on mass-movements, and since at the end of his life he advocated activism as a part of protest culture, I am hoping to produce a paper on this issue. From a member of Siebold-kai in Leiden and honorary professor of Leiden University, Prof. Morioka, Katamitsu I received Japanese translation of Oe Kenzaburo's interview to Le Monde on March 17, 2011 in which Oe Kenzaburo is quoting Katō. Also, with a former TUFS researcher and present doctoral student in Leiden (who spent last year in Tokyo), I organized an international symposium on 3.11 which will be held in Leiden University College, campus The Hague on September 17, 2012. I will present and I will write more on my presentation, the symposium and its guests in report for September. The topics I dealt with in August regarding Kato's thought were mass-movements and protest culture, war-regime heritage in postwar Japan and oblivion of the inconvenient past.