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<DIV class=headline>(I always wonder if and when these contradictions will come
to a head. The national anthem issue is not a small thing. A few years ago a
Hiroshima high school principal committed suicide over the issue. Last year,
right-wing nationalists shot at the window of a school union office in
retaliation, as it were, over that incident. By wierd coincidance, that happened
right in front of my apartment. Shootings of any type are extremely rare in
Japan but I can now say that I have lived in both Los Angeles and Mexico City
and never heard gunshots in front of my house until I moved to Hiroshima- Peace
City!</DIV>
<DIV class=headline>Also, the Japanese anthem is downright funebrial. Even
soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata suggested they don't play it before games.)</DIV>
<DIV class=headline> </DIV>
<DIV class=headline><STRONG><FONT size=3>Japan's agonised wrestling with its
past</FONT></STRONG> </DIV><!--Smvb--><BR><!--Smvb-->By Jonathan Head <BR>BBC
correspondent in Tokyo <!--Emvb--><BR><!--Emvb-->
<DIV class=bo>
<P><B>We had been summoned to the headmaster's study. </B>
<P></P></DIV>
<DIV class=bo>
<P>Toru Sato runs one of the top high schools in Tokyo. His 900 pupils are some
of the city's best academic performers, yet he was sweating and nervous.
<P>Would we agree not to show any of the faces of the students we had filmed, he
asked.
<P>Could we assure him we had not recorded any of the national anthem? He looked
desperate.
<P>"Why?" I asked. He had given us permission to film what seemed to be a
perfectly ordinary ceremony, welcoming the new students on their first day.
<P>We had watched them walking in under the cherry blossom, accompanied by proud
parents, and sitting down in the school assembly hall.
<P>The only difference from previous years was the distinctive rising sun
Japanese flag, placed centre stage next to that of the city government. Nothing
obviously controversial about that.
<P>But as they were about to strike up the national anthem, we were told to
leave.
<P><B>Identity crisis </B>
<P>Nearly 60 years after it surrendered to the United States and renounced the
militarism of the 1930s and 40s, Japan still cannot decide what kind of country
it wants to be. </P>
<DIV class=bo>
<P>This manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from the agonised debate over
sending a few hundred troops to Iraq and the furious attacks on the prime
minister's visits to the national war shrine, to the row today over playing the
national anthem in school.
<P>Many of the symbols of the disastrous era of military rule still survive in
Japan - the emperor, the flag, the national anthem - but their exact status has
been left deliberately vague.
<P>It was only in 1999 that the ancient poem Kimigayo, calling for the reign of
the emperor to last "for all eternity" was formally declared the official
national anthem once again, as it had been before the war. But many Japanese
still object to it.
<P>So when the Tokyo city government this year decided to enforce playing
Kimigayo at the beginning and end of the school year, hundreds of teachers
registered their objection by refusing to stand up.
<P>They did not reckon with the determination of Shintaro Ishihara, the
unapologetically nationalist governor of Tokyo.
<P><B>Left-wing dissent </B>
<P>Toru Kondo has had an unblemished career as an English teacher for 31 years.
<P>Now, spluttering with rage, he opens an envelope to show me his first ever
official warning from the Board of Education. He is one of those who refused to
stand.
<P></P></DIV>
<DIV class=bo>
<P>"Japan changed after the war," he says. "Our constitution gives us freedom to
follow our consciences. This cannot be a democratic country if they insist on
punishing us."
<P>Like many teachers in Japan, Toru Kondo's politics are left-wing, and like
most left-wingers here, he has an unforgiving view of anything connected to his
country's shameful past.
<P>Never mind that the lyrics of Kimigayo are innocuous, and today's emperor has
only symbolic, not divine status.
<P>The city government, though, takes an equally uncompromising view.
<P>Takayuchi Tsuchiya is a city councillor who wholeheartedly backs Governor
Ishihara's new rule. "Singing Kimigayo will help promote a sense of national
unity," he told me. </P>
<DIV class=bo>
<P>In his view, Japan's hazy sense of national pride is to blame for its low
profile in the world and for its weakness in the face of provocations, like
North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens.
<P>Mr Takayuchi has no sympathy for rebel teachers. He dismisses them as
communists who want to indoctrinate the children.
<P><B>National denial </B>
<P>And what about the majority of Japanese who fall in between these militant
guardians of Japan's history? It is almost impossible to know what they think.
<P>The Japanese are fond of referring to their two sides - Honne and Tatemae -
their true thoughts, and the face they show to the outside world.
<P>Open debate on divisive issues is strongly discouraged for fear it would
disturb social harmony.
<P></P></DIV>
<DIV class=bo>
<P>So there has been little public soul-searching about what went wrong with
Japan before World War II.
<P>While hard-liners on the left and right battle it out with their
irreconcilable interpretations of the past, most Japanese seem happy to have
drawn a line at 1945, and moved on.
<P>They have a constitution written in haste by American occupiers, which
technically bars Japan from even having an army, although its defence budget is
now as big as Britain's.
<P>They have an emperor whose status is vague. They allow right-wing politicians
to make ludicrous denials of Japanese atrocities during the war - at great cost
to Japan's relations with its Asian neighbours - all in the interest of avoiding
uncomfortable issues.
<P>This is why headmaster Toru Sato was so nervous that morning. Any hint that
his teachers might have refused to respect the national anthem would not just
get him in trouble with the city government, it would confront him, and the
parents of his students, with an unresolved debate about their country they
would prefer to avoid.
<P>And that is why, even today after 60 years of unrivalled economic and
scientific achievement, Japan still finds it hard to take its proper place in
the world. </P>
<P><A
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3632699.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3632699.stm</A></P></DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>