SOME FANATICAL JAPANESE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 39, 15 January 1946, Page 3

SOME FANATICAL JAPANESE

BELIEF IN EMPEROR ESTABLISHED PREJUDICES A Japanese Christian, of noted family, living in America > has been telling tbe Press that his countrymen will never believe, that their Emperor has been defeated. The Emperor is regarded as a god, and gods do not surrender, says this American Japanese, adding that the pursuit of revenge is a duty, a.c-! cording to the Japanese religion.

The Japanese certainly do cling to established prejudices states an English newspaper. When Lord Elgin headed the first British misr sion to Japan in 1858, public noticeboards in the towns and villages still bore warnings against a list of crimes considered atrocious. One of these “crimes” punishable with death, was the acceptance of Chris-' tianity. That was a relic, still valid of the pcrsecutio’n and extermination, accompanied by every horror of studied cruelty, 217 earlier. In all that time the Japanese had forgotten nothing and learned noth-' ing.

Whatever their beliefs as to the infallibility and invincibility of their own gods tbe Japanese have shown little' regard for deities sacred to other nations. In the 16th and 17 th centuries they warned against Spanish missionaries and their converts and in 1641 follow-

9 9 9 ing a dreadful series of executions published the following extraordinary warning: “So long as tbe sun warms the earth let no Christian Tie so bold as to come to Japan, and let all know that if King Philip himself, or even the very God of the Christians . . . contravene this pi'ohibition, they shall pay for it with their heads.”

ft was in that spirit that, in defiance of the laws of war, they bet headed some of the first American airmen who fell into their hands and it is this spirit which it will be the hardest task of all for the Allies to purge.