Kanji Nishio

Kanji Nishio (西尾 幹二, Nishio Kanji, born 1935) is a Japanese intellectual and professor emeritus of literature at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan.

He was awarded a degree in German literature and a PhD in literature from the University of Tokyo. He has translated the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer into Japanese and has written over seventy published works and over thirty translations.[1]

Nishio, regarded as a rightist intellectual,[2][3] was the head of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (新しい歴史教科書を作る会, Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho wo Tsukuru Kai). This was founded in January 1997 by right-wing scholars and cartoonists to devise a new Japanese history textbook because they considered existing ones to be "self-torturing".[4] Nishio has a wide following in Japan.[5] He was quoted as saying "Why should Japan be the only country that should teach kids -- 12- to 15-year-old kids -- bad things about itself? I think it is ridiculous, and very sad and tragic that Japan cannot write its own patriotic history. We lost the war, and a fantasy was born that by talking bad about yourself, you can strengthen your position. I call that masochistic".[3]

He opposes immigration into Japan because he believes it would cause social disorganisation and threaten social cohesion; the subtitle of one of his works is "foreign workers will destroy Japan". Nishio claimed "This is not necessarily an economic problem. Frankly speaking, it is a problem of ‘cultural defense’".[6]

Notes
  1. Profile at the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
  2. Bessho Yoshimi and Hasegawa Eiko, ‘The Logic of Apologizing for War Crimes "as a Japanese"’, Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Vol. 11/12, Violence in the Modern World (Special Issue) (December 1999-2000), p. 42.
  3. French, Howard W. (2001-03-25). "Japan's Resurgent Far Right Tinkers With History". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
  4. Yuri Kase, ‘Japan's Nonnuclear Weapons Policy in the Changing Security Environment: Issues, Challenges, and Strategies’, World Affairs, Vol. 165, No. 3 (Winter 2003), p. 130.
  5. Jennifer Lind, ‘The Perils of Apology: What Japan Shouldn't Learn From Germany’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 3 (May/June 2009), p. 136.
  6. John Lie, Multi-Ethnic Japan (Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 15.
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