Another Passion of Anne

The first target of despotism is knowledge. Emperor Shi Huang burnt books irrelevant to his belief. Nazis also put fire on “anti-German” books. Now, a number of books written by a girl, who had been a victim of holocaust, were broken by someone in libraries in Japan. It was likely that the criminal upheld the deed of Nazis in wartime Germany. Israeli government is worried about the phenomenon in Japan. Increasing enemies outside, right-wing movements in Japan goes straightforward to isolationism, which covered this nation right before the World War II.

Public libraries in western Tokyo found many broken books written by Anne Frank, a young woman victim of holocaust and left diaries of her last days, or related to her late February. The broken books amounted to over two hundreds. The pages were torn apart and missing. Regardless true intention of the criminal, public saw a sense of frustration against sympathetic sentiment for the inhumane massacre done by insane administration once existed in Germany.

Israeli Embassy in Tokyo offered new books of Anne Frank to those libraries. Reporting anxiety in his home country, a minister of the Embassy told that the criminal was a coward. To those libraries, there also came presents of Anne’s books from anonymous person called Chiune Sugihara, a diplomat in Japan’s Consulate in wartime Lithuania who issued a number of visas to Polish people escaped from Nazis persecution.

There is no clear sign of the government to investigate the case as a matter of law enforcement. Abe administration is keeping its soft attitude to right wing movements, including “hate speech” demonstrations held by racists against the Koreans and Chinese. On the other hand, Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, raises his voice against teachers’ unions, denouncing them to be distorting education. He is as if saying that “Right is ok because I like it, but left is wrong because I hate it.” This is current leadership in Japan.

The incidents in libraries reflected shortened temper of Japanese public. Those frustrated people have no answer for a question “How long do we have to apologize to the world about what our ancestors did in last war?” Meanwhile, most of them have frustration on their poor position in Japanese society. Division between the rich and poor distilled strong resentment on current structure of their society, ignoring the fact that is what bureaucrats aimed to create to distinguish the rulers from those ruled.

Israel is an old friend of Japan. A lot of Israeli folk songs are sung in music class of elementary schools in Japan. The Japanese need to raise voices of denouncing insane book breakers in Tokyo.