2023/1/25, Wed.

  どうしようというんだろう

 どうしようというんだろう
 目をこんなにくもらせて
 このわびしい涙は むかしから
 この目にまだのこっているのだ

 あかるくかがやくいろんな涙もあったが
 すっかりながれ去った
 なやみやよろこびといっしょに
 夜と風とに消え去ったのだ(end221)

 あのよろこびやなやみを
 この胸にほほえみながら
 投げこんだ青いちいさな星も
 霧のように消えてしまった

 ああ おもえば恋さえも
 むなしい息吹のように消えた
 むかしからのわびしい涙よ
 もうおまえも流れ失せよ

 (井上正蔵 [しょうぞう] 訳『ハイネ詩集』(小沢書店/世界詩人選08、一九九六年)、221~222; 「どうしようというんだろう」(Was will die eimsame......); 『歌の本』)



Outrages in Nanjing: Guardian cable again stopped
From our correspondent
22 January 1938

Shanghai, 21 January
A second telegram that I tried to send to the Manchester Guardian to-day dealing with outrages by the Japanese military in Nanjing was suppressed by the Japanese authorities. The message was based largely on an outspoken leading article that appeared in to-day’s North China Daily News.

As a result of this action I have written to the British Consul-General, Mr Herbert Phillips, in the following terms:

This is the second occasion upon which a telegram to my paper has been arbitrarily, and, as it seems to me, unwarrantably suppressed by the Japanese authorities. I have already expressed to you verbally the hope that you will take steps to see that I am not subjected to such interference. On behalf of myself and of my paper I must now formally request you to make representations to the Japanese authorities protesting against such interference and insisting that my telegrams be neither suppressed nor censored by the Japanese.

My message that was suppressed on Sunday also dealt with the Japanese outrages in Nanjing. Other correspondents’ messages on the same subject were allowed to pass.


Brutality in Nanjing: 10,000 people killed
From our correspondent
29 January 1938

Shanghai, 28 January
The Japanese cable censorship has led to three written protests by Mr Herbert Phillips, the British Consul General, to Mr Okamoto, the Japanese Consul General. Mr Phillips protests against the proposed censorship of commercial telegrams, the suppression of a Press Association-Reuter telegram, and the second suppression of a telegram from the Manchester Guardian correspondent in Shanghai, and the deletion of 90 words from a telegram handed to the cable office by the Manchester Guardian correspondent yesterday. The Americans are understood to be taking similar action with regard to commercial telegrams.

The suppressed cable
The cable from the Press Association-Reuter Shanghai Bureau suppressed by the Japanese military censors in that city last Friday ran as follows :–

A leading article in this morning’s North China Daily New says:

“On Christmas Day this journal had occasion to refer to the scenes of horror perpetrated in Nanjing after the occupation of the Japanese forces. It was believed then that the outrageous behaviour of the Japanese troops was the result of temporary indiscipline and of blood-lust aroused by the heat of battle, and it was hoped that order would be rapidly restored and the civilian population of Nanjing relieved from the horrors they were suffering. It was even suggested in some quarters that the Japanese were taking revenge for the outrages of 1927.

It is learned with astonishment, however, that these outrages have been continued and that ever since the occupation of Nanjing until the present moment the abduction of women, rape, and looting have been carried on with an industry which would do justice to a more praiseworthy cause.

Numbers of Chinese have been stabbed with bayonets or recklessly shot, and it is estimated that more than 10,000 people have been killed, some of whom were not even guilty of the trivial offence of having had the hardihood to fight for their country.

This journal does not believe, and never has believed, that these things occur by reason of any set purpose of the Japanese High Command, and prefers to think that these men, in the high tradition of their profession, must as deeply deplore what is happening as any right thinking man, but that does not relieve the Japanese commanders of the imperative duty of stopping these unruly soldiers from further insulting the uniform they wear.”

Nanjing was occupied by the Japanese on 13 December, nearly six weeks before the publication of this article.

[Our Shanghai correspondent also attempted to cable a message on this matter, but was stopped by the Japanese censor.]

A pre-war Guardian correspondent who exposed the notorious Nanjing massacre by Japan's occupation army in China in 1937 has become the target of Japanese historians seeking to prove that it never took place.

Harold Timperley, the China correspondent of the Manchester Guardian (the newspaper's original name), chronicled the massacre in his dispatches from Shanghai and in a widely read book, The Japanese terror in China.

His cables reporting the massacre were censored by Japanese officials in Shanghai, provoking a diplomatic protest.

Timperley is accused of creating a "massacre myth" in a new book by a Japanese historian, Kitamura Minoru, who claims that he was an "agent of the Chinese Kuomintang" - the nationalist party then in government.

The conservative Japanese journal Shokun says he was part of a conspiracy "to present Japan in the role of absolute evil".

This revisionist version of history says that only a few thousand Chinese were killed and that most of them were soldiers in the defeated nationalist army.

Last week was the 30th anniversary of Tokyo's restoration of relations with Beijing, but as Japan becomes more concerned about China's new strength and influence, there is a ready market for reinterpretations of the past.

Timperley's book was based on the world of a small group of foreigners in Nanjing who risked their lives to protect thousands of civilians from rape and murder after the city - the capital of nationalist China - was occupied in December 1937.

Talked to survivors

One missionary saw 50 civilian corpses dumped in a pond and talked to survivors of groups who had been machine-gunned. Several of the foreigners physically dragged Japanese soldiers off the Chinese women they were raping.

Hundreds of disarmed Chinese soldiers and civilians who had worked for the army in a labour corps were roped together and killed.

The record of burials, said one observer quoted by Timperley, showed that "close to 40,000 unarmed persons were killed within and near the walls of Nanjing, of whom some 30% had never been soldiers."

Timperley, an Australian journalist who had worked for the Guardian in China since 1928, was known for being dedicated to his work and fighting injustice. In Shanghai he organised medical aid for hundreds of apprentices who worked without pay in industrial sweatshops.

He urged help for the families of refugees from the Japanese invasion who were sleeping in alleyways "with only a thin ragged cotton blanket as protection".

As Japan turned to outright invasion after years of encroachment in northern China, he privately begged Britain to protest, hoping that a strong western line would deter conflict. Furious that British diplomats in Nanjing had gone on summer holiday despite the growing crisis, he accused the staff of "criminal negligence".

He married Elizabeth Chambers, a young American working in Nanjing, in between air-raids. "Our married life this far", he wrote to the Guardian, "has been punctuated by Japanese bombs."

They moved to Shanghai, from where Timperley reported Japan's campaign in the Yangtze delta. Later Ms Chambers took some of the secret reports from Nanjing by boat to the US.

"You can scarcely imagine the anguish and terror," wrote one informant quoted by Timperley in the Guardian. "Seventeen soldiers raped one woman successively in broad daylight. Practically every building in the city was robbed repeatedly."

The revisionist scholars accuse Timperley of inventing an improbably high total of 300,000 civilian deaths: the figure now used officially in China for the Nanjing massacre. The controversy about the number is then used to cast doubt on whether a massacre occurred at all.

But evidence found in the Guardian archives shows that Timperley used this figure to refer to the much larger number of civilian deaths throughout the Yangtze valley, rather than claiming that it was the death total for Nanjing alone.

In a crucial cable - the first of three censored by the Japanese in Shanghai - he wrote on January 16 1938: "[A] survey by one competent foreign observer indicates [that] in [the] Yangtze delta no less than 300,000 Chinese civilians [have been] slaughtered, [in] many cases [in] cold blood."

The cable was copied by the Japanese foreign office to its embassies, warning them to expect criticism of the massacre. But Timperley's reference to the Yangtze delta was omitted, and this misleading version is the one which has been misquoted ever since.

Villages destroyed

The publicity given to the Nanjing massacre obscured the fact that tens of thousands of civilians were killed elsewhere, and entire villages destroyed.

A recent study ( Scars of War, by Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnnon) said: "Hundreds of other massacres are still unrecognised by the outside world, and even by China itself."

Timperley's book, far from being "commissioned" by the Chinese intelligence service, as some Japanese scholars now insinuate, was prompted by members of the "international committee" of foreigners in Nanjing. It was they who asked him to cover other massacres in the delta area as well.

"We feel that there is a certain moral necessity to make known the terrible facts," a missionary, Miner Searle Bates, wrote. The book would help to "impress a distant public with the brutality of warfare waged as this one has been".

Timperley had, not surprisingly, developed close professional links with officials in the nationalist government during his work in China. The Guardian archives show that although he was critical of Chiang Kai-shek's "one-man-band" style of authoritarian rule, he was impressed by the "spirit of patience and fortitude" shown by the ordinary Chinese citizen.

He described how boy scouts and pedicab drivers carried the wounded in Shanghai to hospitals, where the volunteer nurses included former "taxi dancers" (prostitutes) who were working for nothing.

Timperley helped to set up a neutral "safety zone" in Shanghai with the support of local Japanese friends, which provided refuge for thousands of Chinese. Many other foreign correspondents felt sympathy for China in the face of what was seen as brutal aggression.

Timperley left journalism to become an adviser to the Chinese ministry of information in 1939, but continued to be consulted by the editor of the Guardian, WP Crozier. In 1943 he became a UN official, and after the war he worked in Indonesia. He died of a tropical disease in 1954.

His role in history had been largely neglected until it was disinterred by the Japanese revisionist offensive.

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Tuesday October 15, 2002

Our story on the disputed scale of the Nanjing massacre of 1937 said that Harold Timperley, the Manchester Guardian's China correspondent, became a UN official in 1943. Since the United Nations was not formed until 1945, some clarification is necessary. The title of UN was adopted by the allied powers in a declaration of 1942. It was an agency of this organisation - the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration - that Timperley joined. UNRRA subsequently became part of the enlarged UN that we know today.

The Tokyo high court on Wednesday cleared Tsunehisa Katsumata, the former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), along with former vice-presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto, of professional negligence resulting in death.

The court said the defendants could not have predicted the massive tsunami that crippled the power plant and triggered the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl in 1986.

The three men were indicted in 2016 for allegedly failing to take measures to defend the plant against tsunamis, resulting in the deaths of 44 people, including elderly patients at a hospital, who had to be evacuated after the disaster.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant, on Japan’s north-eastern coast, was hit by a massive tsunami caused by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in Japan’s recorded history.

More than 18,000 people died in the tsunami, but no one was recorded as having been directly killed by the nuclear meltdowns, which caused massive radiation leaks and forced the evacuation of more than 150,000 people living nearby – some of whom have only recently been given permission to return to their homes.

Wednesday’s ruling affirmed a similar verdict delivered by the Tokyo district court in September 2019.

The trial focused on whether the former executives should have foreseen the massive tsunami and taken extra precautions, such as constructing a bigger seawall, to prevent a catastrophe.

A government evaluation of earthquake risks published in 2002 estimated that tsunami waves of up to 15.7 metres (51ft) in height could strike Fukushima Daiichi. The findings were passed on to Tepco in 2008 – three years before the disaster when a 14-metre wave struck, the Kyodo news agency said.

Tepco has argued it was powerless to take precautions against a tsunami of the size that struck the plant almost 12 years ago, and that it had done everything possible to protect it.

The original district court ruling, however, cast doubt on the credibility of the government’s evaluation, saying the defendants “could not have logically predicted tsunami waves over 10 metres in height”, Kyodo reported.

Although they have twice been acquitted in the only criminal case against Tepco executives arising from the disaster, a separate verdict in July in a civil case against the same three men and Tepco’s former president, Masataka Shimizu, ordered them to pay ¥13.32tn (£80bn at the time) for failing to prevent the disaster.

In contrast to Wednesday’s decision, the court said the government’s assessment had been reliable enough to oblige Tepco to take preventive measures.

  • いま二八日の午前一時をまわったところだが、おどろいたことにこの水曜日の記事にはなにひとつ文が記されていなかった。うえの英文記事が記録されてあっただけ。とうぜんながら起床時のことや部屋内にいたあいだのことなどなにもおぼえていない。労働のため二時半くらいには発たなければならず、起きたのもたしか一〇時くらいでそんなに猶予はなかったため、からだをととのえるのを優先して出るまでにはなにも書かなかったのだ。二時三五分に出発した。今冬一の寒さとかいわれていたのでさすがにジャケットを着たほうがよいかとおもったが、肩がおもくなるのをやはりいやがって、いつもどおりベストまでのすがたにモスグリーンのモッズコートを羽織った。道に出るとひだりへ。まだ陽は高く、日なたもあって、アパートの斜向かいにあたる道沿いの一軒、夏のあいだは庭に草がよく茂り伸びていて無人なのかとおもったこともあった家だが、いまや草がおおかた除去されたその塀内で家のひとがうろついているのも、視界を横切るひかりの具合ではっきり見づらい影となっている。公園の横まで来るとそのさきで建設中の福祉施設の敷地に、二階や屋上までのぼっていけるスロープらしき通路ができているのが目にはいる。徒歩はもちろん、車椅子でも移動できるのだろう。前方には低学年のちいさな小学生が三人下校しており、公園と施設のあいだの角でひとり横に別れつつ、敷地を画す格子柵に寄ってそのすきまからのぞくようにしながらすすむふたりに別れのことばを放っていた。道に面した柵の内は一棟の側面にあたり、そこはまだ基本土がむき出しで、小型ショベルカーが鎮座しているのもたびたびみられ、ほかにもいろいろなものが置かれてあり、通り過ぎるいまは人足がふたり、棟のきわでなにか作業をすすめていた。ランドセルの子どもふたりはといえば前方で道端に寄りながらジャンケンをくりかえしており、グリコの要領で勝った手におうじてなにかことばをいいながら歩をすすめていたのだが、それで競争するのではなく、どちらが勝っても声にあわせてふたりともおなじようにいっしょにすすんでいくのだった。
  • 南の車道沿いを西に行く。コンビニのあたりまで来るとひだりがわ、道路を越えた南の建物群のむこうの空に太陽がまばゆくひろがっているのがみえる。職場では朝雪が降ったという声もきいたが、たしかこのころには晴れていたのではなかったか。空のようすをおぼえておらず、もしかしたら雲が湧いていて、太陽はそれにひっかけられていたかもしれないが、日なたもけっこうあったのはたしかなはずだ。コンビニ前を過ぎると植込みが歩道を左右に分けているが、その左側、道路に接したほうを行っていると、近間の中学校の男女が制服姿で対岸からぞろぞろわたってきて、こちらとすれちがって帰っていく。さらにしばらくすすむと向かいにあらわれる(……)の会館が太陽をかくして、その輪郭線にふれるあたりの空はみなもとのみえないひかりのつやで青さを希釈しており、建物の足もとにはさきほどの一団とは分かれてわたらずに別方向にすすんだ中学生の数人がみられる。横断歩道を越えてまもなく踏切り、きょうは止められて、上下に往復する巨大な虫の目のような赤色灯と遮断器のまえで立ち尽くし、電車がいっぽん通過してあくかとおもえばまだまだ間がはさまって、ちょっとしてから反対方向からもういっぽん来て過ぎるのを見送ったが、待っているあいだサイレンを鳴らしたミニバンっぽいかたちの救急車両がやってきて、踏切りに車が止められているからいまは一台もいない対岸の左車線を逆行するかたちで線路前まで来ると、ランプのうごきはそのままに音を一時消していた。踏切りがひらくと再開して、運転手があたりの車に会釈をおくりながら、車両のあいだを先んじて抜けていく。わたったすこしさきには「(……)」という中華料理屋があって、いつもはその表側をふつうにとおるがきょうは歩道から右にそれて建物裏を抜け、穂草に満たされた空き地を縁取る道のとちゅうに出る。女子中学生ふたりが立ち話している横を歩道に出て右に折れれば、方角は最寄り駅のほう、踏切りのまえから裏道が西へ伸びる角に向かうことになる。空き地はススキらしき穂をもった草やその他の直立族がおしなべて色の抜けたすがたで白っぽく統一されたみだれのないうつくしさで、穂草のほうは意外と褐色をふくんでおり、背の低い種は水平気味にうなだれかかった先端だけ一部ガラス化したかのように密な白さを塗られて微細な反射光の波頭をつくったぐあい、穂のない種族は飾り気なく色彩を抜き取られていかにも老いの茎色だった。
  • 角で曲がって西に向かうが、駅のすぐそばのそこではけっこうまえから建設工事がすすめられていて、近頃はちいさな山門風の門がみえるなかでクレーンが樹木を吊るし上げたりしており、日本庭園みたいなものでもできるのか? という雰囲気だったが、きょうはその門がみえなくなっており、というのはどうも道沿いに垣となる草木があしらわれてそのむこうにかくされたようだったが、あらためてみてみればその足もとに設置された保安灯を夜目に留めていた壁の向こうにも低い木の先端がのぞいている。なにかできるのかは一向知らない。現場の縁には掲示があって再開発事業がどうのとか書いてあったとおもうが、道のむかいだし足もとめないしさだかに読めていない。病院前まで来ると裏道のさきは青く冷たそうな日陰が敷かれているので、こっちは寒そうだときらっておもてへ曲がった。南向きになるその歩道はほぼ一面日なたでなじみやすい。おもてがわの角は、空き地前で道路か水道管か工事をしているのでガードマンがひとり立っている。しかしこちらは反対側に曲がるので関係がなく、病院前を過ぎていくと公園が来て、その入り口付近で低木にはさまれた一角をいまハトがたくさん占めてみな地面をつついており、だれか餌を撒いたのかというようすだったが、さらにあらたななかまが大挙して宙をわたり、そこにくわわっていた。きょうも文化施設に寄って小便をすることに。自動ドアを抜けてはいると手を消毒し、フロアをわたって通路奥のトイレへ。放尿し、手を洗って引き返して、出たところで時計をみるとすでに四時、電車まで一五分ほどしかなく、え、もうそんな時間? 意外とやばいな、とおもった。おれはここまで来るのに二五分もかかったのか? と。とちゅうで道すじを変えて遠回りになったこともあるが、たぶんふつうのひとがまっすぐくれば一五分程度のはずだ。
  • このままだとふつうに行けば遅れるか、乗れてもギリギリになる。それでしょうがねえ、ここからは急ぐかとめずらしく歩調をはやめて、(……)通りへとつづく交差点をわたると、そのまま直進はせず、右に曲がってひとつ駅側の通りにはいることにしたのだが、それは(……)通りには信号がおおいから赤にひっかかるとめんどうだというあたまだったのだ(とはいえ、容易に無視してわたれるようなみじかい横断歩道がおおいのだが)。北へ向かう車道沿いにはセブンイレブンがあり、そのまえをとおっているとき前方から自転車に乗った中年の、きっちりスーツを着込んで細身の男性が、座席をまたぐのではなく片側に脚をうつして、ペダルに乗せた片足のみを支えとしながらもう片足をそのまえにクロスさせるようなかっこうになりつつ、ガードレール脇に停まってこちらとすれちがった。コンビニに寄るのかなとおもった。まもなく左に曲がって美容室やランドセル店やらなにやらわりと商店のおおい通りにはいり、行っていると背後からけたたましいクラクションが鳴って、音のもとを見はしなかったがそれからすこし経つと向かいにわたってしまうことにした。というのは南側の歩道を行くとそのさきに高い建物を建設中の現場があって、さいきんはそこがとおれなくなっているからだ。それで車の来ない隙をうかがって先んじて向かいにわたってしまい、北側の歩道を行けばそちらがわにも建設中だったり解体中だったりする現場はふたつみられて、蛇腹状の引き戸みたいな仕切りでくぎられたひとつのまえにはガードマンが立って道行くひとびとに会釈をしたり、左右に手をしめしたりしている。そこからすこしだけさきのもうひとつはずいぶんまえから白壁でかこまれたひろい敷地となっており、どうもだいぶの戸数をかまえる巨大なマンションかなにかできるようで、クレーンがじつに高々とまっすぐ屹立しているのをあざやかにみることもたびたびある。
  • めずらしい足のはこびでじぶんなりにすたすたとあるいていき、駅南口の階段をのぼると人波にさわぐ駅舎内へ。ひとびとのあいだを縫っていき、改札を抜けるとしかし頭上の掲示板にはすでにすぎた時刻の電車が表示されていて、どうも遅れているらしい。(……)ホームに下りるといちばん先頭の待ち位置に立った。そこそこ寒い。足や肩に無意味で無目的なうごきが生じる。じきに三〇代後半くらいか中年にかかるくらいとおもわれる男女がやってきて、おとこおんなともにやたらおおきな声でなんやかやしゃべっており、昼間っから酔っ払ってんのか? とおもうような声調で、女性のほうはめちゃくちゃ失礼ないいかたをするがあたまがちょっと弱いような、思考の輪郭のくずれぐあいがそのまま発話の輪郭のゆるみに移されているようないかにも締まりのないしゃべりかたをしており、え、ここ(……)線? (……)線? とかかのじょがいうのに、男性のほうはおまえなんとかだよなんとかかんとか、とか、なんかちょっと馬鹿にするような調子で受けていた。(……)行きが先に来る。それは見送ってもうすこし待ち、(……)行きが来ると乗って、車両のいちばん端の角、南側の隅に立つ。FISHMANSの『Oh! Mountain』をたしかひさびさに聞いていたのではなかったっけ。時刻はまだ四時前、目をあけて扉のガラスのむこうをみればかすむような西陽のひかりが遮断的に電車にそとにかかっているが、それをながくながめる気にもならない。とはいえ道中、すぐ左の窓からのぞく運転席のむこうの景色を、ふだんみるのとは方向と空間性がちがうので新鮮にながめるひとときもあった。電車の正面にもうけられた窓の左右、車両のそとがわから電柱やら家屋やら線路脇のものたちがあらわれては視界の奥にむかってすべり去ってみるみるうちにちいさくなっていくそのさまが順々とつづき、あらたな事物の供給がとめどないいっぽうですでに視界内におさまったものたちは遠のきのスピードをゆるめながらかなたに堆積し、やがてただ遠方をあらわすだけの、見分けもつかず圧縮された景色の一部に同化していくのだ。時刻も比較的はやくてひともすくないため緊張もなく乗ることができ、早々に座席の端もあいていたのでとちゅうで座った。
  • そうして(……)に着くと職場へ。電車の遅れのために予定より猶予がなくなったのですぐに降りて向かった。勤務。(……)
  • (……)
  • (……)
  • (……)
  • (……)
  • (……)
  • (……)退勤。八時半は過ぎていた。帰路にたいしたことはない。さむくて水も栄養も脂も抜けたからだがたよりなく、左肩のあたりがまたうっすらこごるようになっていたし、肩周りがかたかったので、ときおり深呼吸してそれをほぐしつつ電車に揺られ、とちゅうから携帯で(……)さんのブログを読んだおぼえがある。楳図かずおわたしは真悟』についての怒涛のいきおいといってよい分析的感想。(……)について乗り換えると遅れていて発車までしばらくあり、そこでも車両のいちばん端に立ちながら、口から息を吐きつつ首をまわしたり肩をうごかしたりしてそのへんをあたためようとこころみ、その甲斐あって発車してからも緊張にさいなまれることなく最寄り駅まで行くことができ、降りると帰路へ。やたらさむいがことさらいそいだわけではない。帰ってのちの記憶はない。