[Transcript]

Hello! Dr. Pattberg here, from the ‘Todai‘ – also known internationally as the University of Tokyo.

Today I want to talk about Japan as a US satellite state and what US hegemony means for the situation in Japan, the Japanese economy, culture and language.

I had been studying here at Tokyo University for my doctoral studies – namely here, at the Historiographic Institute… I had worked on and researched the translation history of Buddhist terms.

The Historiographic Institute, The University of Tokyo

 

The Institute is not far from the Akamon Gate, the “Red Gate”, the famous sight often seen on postcards.

The Historiographic Institute protects historical writings; it’s some kind of super-secret library. It’s all underground, of course, and you can only get in there with an ID.

I don’t think many people know this, but most elite universities have underground passages and catacombs for miles. Ancient writings are stored there, often dating back to the 16th century.

Tokyo University Huge Secret Underground Library System

A few years later I was again working as a researcher at Tokyo University; this time at the Institute for Advanced East Asian Studies.

Here, too, the focus was on the history of translation.

Now many will probably think: “Translation history, that’s boring!” No! A study of history in general always gives us insights into the present.

When the European powers successively discovered East Asia in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and fell in here like barbarians, they copied everything. They had learned new ideas, concepts, and terms, and instead of meeting the Asians on an equal footing, they had simply scooped up all the Asian names, terms, and concepts and translated them into European terminologies. Mostly into Latin of course, initially… [then] Biblical concepts and Hellenic-Greek concepts.

It’s something like this: let’s imagine the Japanese come to Europe and take a look at what we have in Germany. Well, we have Volkswagen and BAYER there, and the city of Cologne and Goethe – and what do we do with them then? Well, all terms, names and brands are now immediately “Asianized.” We call them Toyota and Suzuki, and Yokohama and Ikeda! Everything is renamed.

And then we turn our backs on the Germans and say: “You see, they had no originality at all! They had no creativity or inventiveness at all! They didn’t discover anything!”

Then, in practice, the Japanese could have claimed that the Germans had no “bunko” [small paperbacks] at all. “They didn’t know about it, but we gave it to them!” Well, then that will be the official history.

Bunkos are Japanese small paperbacks

 

Now you might protest: That wouldn’t be possible at all. Something like that could never happen to us in Europe. It would be unimaginable robbery, misinformation and historical distortion! But that’s exactly what happened here in East Asia. The Europeans, and later the Americans, turned everything inside out here.

We can also say that the West completely took the Asian concepts and names and rebranded them.

Confucius was at one time a Christian “saint” who supposedly knew about the Flood. The Taoists were all [Hellenic] “philosophers”. The Buddhas, or Fojia, also became “saints,” and their wisdom was declared a “religion.”

Confucius is a Western installed religious leader

 

The methodology is almost entirely western. As is well known, Christianity was named after Jesus Christ. So in China, the old Katai, they desperately sought out a miracle figure from the Ruxue.

Ruxue is a Chinese wisdom school; a school of thought much like Plato’s school of thought. Actually, the real name is ‘Ru’ – but of course the missionaries really wanted to find a Christ figure somewhere. And then they came up with the well-known Kong Fu-Tze, he became the namesake. ‘Ru’ flew out; ‘Kong’ came in – and became Kong-Fu-cianism.

With such a brutal translation strategy, the Europeans flattened and westernized all the stories of Asia. That is why George Hegel postulated the ‘end of history’ even then. He believed that nothing and nobody could stop the Europeans.

 

George Hegel wrote The End of History

For example, Gottfried Leibniz, long before Hegel, had seen through English language imperialism very well. That’s why Leibniz called for the Germans not to adopt foreign words under any circumstances, but to rename everything in German abroad. This is the only way the German Reich – the German Empire – could expand. Which then happened. After all, the Germans got a colony in north-eastern China.