TOKYO — Early last month, a quarter century after Emperor Hirohito’s death in 1989,
Japan’s Imperial Household Agency released the official record of his life. The 61 volumes contain a great wealth of previously unavailable material and some fascinating trivia: Who knew that the imperial family has been exchanging Christmas presents since at least 1907? The Japanese media have been digging in.
I haven’t waded through the books, but scholars are already noting that they studiously avoid addressing Hirohito’s part in Japan’s actions leading up to and during
World War II.
A couple of weeks ago, the historian Herbert Bix
wrote in an op-ed for this paper that he had received an email from “an employee at one of Japan’s largest newspapers” asking him to comment on an embargoed excerpt from the record of Hirohito’s life. “But there was a condition,” Bix explained. “I could not discuss Hirohito’s ‘role and responsibility’ in World War II.” And so Bix refused, he said. Some 70 years after the end of the war, the subject is considered taboo in Japan’s mainstream media.
Which only makes it that much more remarkable that almost four decades ago, a Japanese journalist named Koji Nakamura asked Hirohito the question no one dared to ask. On Oct. 31, 1975, a few weeks after a visit to the United States, Hirohito and his wife held a public press conference at the palace. Nakamura, who participated as a representative of the London Times, was one of the very few reporters called upon to ask an unscripted question.
“At the White House, your majesty referred to ‘that most unfortunate war, which I deeply deplore,"’ he began. “May we interpret this to mean that you yourself feel responsible for the war itself, including the fact that Japan waged it in the first place? In addition, may I ask you to share your thoughts about so-called war responsibility?”
In a sense, the question was pointless. Hirohito did not answer anything meaningful: “Since I have not delved much into literary matters, these little tricks of language are beyond me, and I am unable to answer such a question.”
Yet this was a moment in postwar Japanese history without parallel. Although Hirohito lived for another 14 years, to my knowledge, he held no other press conferences; if the journalist had remained silent, the emperor would have died without once being publicly asked by a citizen of Japan to take responsibility for his catastrophic failures. Nakamura’s question may have gone unanswered, but he deserves a place in history simply for asking it.
Instead, he has been all but forgotten. The one reporter to have touched on Nakamura’s challenge to Hirohito is David Tharp, the only non-Japanese participant at that 1975 press conference. In an article published the next morning in the English-language Mainichi Daily News, he said Nakamura had “swept aside” the “ultimate taboo in Japanese newspaper circles.” He described the reaction of their Japanese colleagues: “It was the one question that seemed to freeze the reporters with collective interest. Pens poised over notebooks as if for lack of knowing how to move for a brief instant.” He added, “Then there was what appeared to be a mutual relaxation because the question which everyone secretly was tensed to hear had finally been asked.”
I spent the past month trying to track down information about Nakamura. I have been unable to contact David Tharp, and an email I sent to the chief of this paper’s Tokyo bureau went unanswered. I did succeed in meeting a few former colleagues and acquaintances, though, and gleaning a few facts about the first half of this unusual journalist’s life.
Nakamura was born in 1918. When he was 13 he got a job as a gofer at the Mainichi newspaper offices in Kobe. In his free time, he took English classes at the YMCA’s foreign language school and the Palmore Institute. In 1942, Mainichi sent him to Manila to work at a new local newspaper. He stayed after the defeat of Japan in World War II, as an interpreter for soldiers accused of war crimes; many could not speak English.
He wrote about this experience after he returned to Japan in 1949. From those writings it appears that in addition to interpreting at trials, he also translated the letters that soldiers wrote “in a special prison with a gallows” immediately before they were hanged. It was his task to take dictation of their final wishes.
He was well aware of the brutality of the Manila massacre of February 1945, in which Japanese soldiers slaughtered some 100,000 civilians. The fundamental horror of that event, he wrote, stemmed from the fact that Japan’s militarism, pegged to a cult of the emperor as a living god, was devoid of any respect for “the value or the sanctity of human life.”
I’ve pieced together a timeline of the assignments Nakamura took as a special correspondent until he died of stomach cancer in 1982, at the age of 63. I’ve gathered enough of his writings to see that the question he put to Hirohito at that press conference in 1975 stemmed from his awareness, based on his own experience, of just how much wrong this other man had done. I know I can never assemble a proper record of Nakamura’s life — certainly nothing as hefty as the official life of Hirohito. And yet for me, the fact that Nakamura asked that one question is as great a contribution to history as those 61 volumes, which seem so determined, like Hirohito himself, to avoid answering it.
Norihiro Kato is a literary critic and a professor emeritus of Waseda University. This article was translated by Michael Emmerich from the Japanese.
因此，有一件事就更加不同尋常：近40年前，一位名叫中村康二(Koji Nakamura)的日本記者問了裕仁天皇一個無人敢提的問題。1975年10月31日，裕仁天皇和皇后在美國之行的幾周後在皇宮舉行了一次公開的新聞發佈會。作為倫敦《泰晤士報》(The London Times)的代表，中村康二是少數獲得即興提問機會的記者之一。
「天皇陛下，您在白宮說，『我深深地為那場不幸的戰爭感到悲痛，』」他開始問道。「這是不是可以理解為您對戰爭感到負有責任，包括日本率先發動了戰爭的事實？另外，我想問陛下對所謂的戰爭責任是如何認識的？」
然而，這仍然是日本戰後歷史上一個絕無僅有的時刻。儘管裕仁天皇此後又活了14年，但據我所知，他再未舉辦過新聞發佈會；如果這名記者當時選擇了沉默，那麼在裕仁天皇有生之年，將沒有任何一名日本公民公開要求他為自己災難性的失敗承擔責任。中村康二的問題或許是沒有得到答案，不過，單是因為他提出了這個問題，他就應該在歷史上佔有一席之地。
然而恰恰相反，他幾乎被徹底遺忘。只有一位記者提到過中村康二對裕仁天皇的這次挑戰，那就是新聞發佈會上唯一的非日籍與會者戴維·撒普(David Tharp)。在第二天早上發表在英文版《每日新聞》(Mainichi Daily News)上的一篇文章中，他說中村康二「拋開了日本報界的大忌」。他描述了那些日本同行的反應：「唯有這個問題似乎讓擁有共同興趣的記者們呆住了。在短暫的瞬間，他們的筆停留在筆記本上方，似乎不知道如何移動。」他接着寫道，「然後似乎彼此都放鬆了，因為大家背地裡都害怕聽到的這個問題，終於被提出來了。」
過去一個月里，我在努力搜尋有關中村康二的信息。我一直未能聯繫到戴維·撒普。我給本報的東京分社社長發了一封郵件，但未收到回復。不過，我的確成功地見到了中村康二的一些前同事和熟人，搜集到了這位不同尋常的記者前半生的一些事實。
中村康二生於1918年。13歲時，他得到了在《每日新聞》位於神戶的辦公室當勤雜工的機會。在空閑時間裡，他在基督教青年會（Young Men\'s Christian Association，簡稱YMCA）的外語學校和帕爾默爾學院(Palmore Institute)修了英語課。1942年，《每日新聞》將他派往馬尼拉新辦的一家地方報社工作。日本在二戰中戰敗後，他仍留在那裡，為被控犯有戰爭罪的軍人充當翻譯，因為他們中的許多人不會說英語。
1949年回到日本後，他寫到過這段經歷。從這些作品來看，除了在庭審時做口譯員外，他還幫忙翻譯即將接受絞刑的士兵在「一座設有絞刑架的特別監獄裡」寫的信。記錄他們的臨終遺願是他的工作。
他很清楚1945年2月發生在馬尼拉的大屠殺暴行。在那場大屠殺中，日軍殺害了大約10萬名平民。他寫道，這次事件根本上的恐怖之處源於一個事實：與把天皇當做活着的神來崇拜密不可分的日本軍國主義，完全缺乏對「人生命的價值或神聖性」的尊重。
1982年，中村康二因胃癌去世，享年63歲。我拼湊出了一份時間表，列出了他擔任特派記者期間接受的任務。我還搜集到了他足夠多的作品，可以看出他之所以在1975年的新聞發佈會上向裕仁提出那個問題，是源於他從自己的經歷中意識到裕仁做了多少惡。我明白，我永遠無法搜羅出一份像樣的中村康二的生平紀錄——當然比不上官方公布的裕仁的一生那麼詳實。然而，對我來說，中村康二提出了那個問題，而這一事實對歷史的貢獻與官方傳記同樣重大。似乎和裕仁天皇本人一樣，那部61卷的傳記鐵了心地決意避免回答這個問題。
傳知行在幫助被非法囚禁的陳光誠逃至美國駐華使館的過程中扮演了重要角色
取締、刑拘、批捕
一年後的7月18日，傳知行研究所被北京市民政局以"沒有在民政部門註冊"為由取締。只有傳知行社會經濟諮詢有限公司得以作為企業繼續運行。
2014年10月9日，郭玉閃被北京警方以"涉嫌尋釁滋事"罪名傳喚和刑拘，並關押在北京第一看守所。之前他曾公開表態支持香港佔中行動。今年1月3日，北京警方以 涉嫌非法經營罪將郭玉閃正式逮捕。傳知行行政主管何正軍同日也被當局以涉嫌非法經營罪逮捕。４月１５日，兩人同案被移送海淀檢察院審查起訴，並移至海淀公安局關押。8月中旬，郭玉閃、何政軍被指涉嫌非法經營罪的案子第二次被檢察院退回公安機關補充偵查。
取保候審
郭玉閃的律師李瑾對德國之聲說："郭玉閃就是第二次退偵期間被取保候審的。從法律角度取保候審並非終結，而是變更強制措施。"李瑾希望郭玉閃的案子不會再次進入審理程序，而是能夠就此告一段落。
據先前披露的的起訴意見書，郭玉閃等人被指成立傳知行社會經濟諮詢有限公司，利用"德國博爾、諾曼、美國CIPE、加拿大PI等境外基金會、非政府組織及美國使館提供的資金，針對中國稅制改革、教育平權、法制改革、社會民生等多個社會領域進行調研，撰寫相關領域調研報告及文章，在大學等社會場所開辦演講會，編制演講稿文集。郭玉閃、何正軍負責將調研報告、文集非法印刷成書籍並進行發放。2007年至2014年北京傳知行社會經濟諮詢有限公司印製非法出版物圖書1萬9千餘冊（已鑑定）。"傳知行公司則指出，這些研究資料均係免費贈閱，從未收取分文。
李瑾律師表示，傳知行現已不能正常運轉。郭玉閃將在家中休整，陪陪家人，暫時沒有更多的打算。