{"id":155917,"date":"2026-04-26T15:25:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T22:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=155917"},"modified":"2026-04-26T15:25:59","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T22:25:59","slug":"kasi-hideakis-vote-of-thanks-to-senaka-weeraratnas-speech-at-the-japanese-parliament-on-november-14-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/04\/26\/kasi-hideakis-vote-of-thanks-to-senaka-weeraratnas-speech-at-the-japanese-parliament-on-november-14-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Kasi Hideaki’s Vote of Thanks to Senaka Weeraratna’s\u00a0speech at the Japanese Parliament on November 14, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

History<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Introduction:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Senaka Weeraratna, Attorney \u2013 at \u2013 law, delivered the keynote address at a
Symposium held on the premises of the Japanese Parliament (Conference Room No. 101 of the Diet) on 14th November, 2018 on the topic titled \u2018 Japan\u2019s attack on Pearl Harbour ignited the liberation of Asia from Western Domination \u2013 Time for Asia to express gratitude to Japan\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Symposium was organized by the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
Mr. Weeraratna was the first Sri Lankan and first Asian to thank Japan on the premises of
Japan\u2019s Parliament for making huge blood sacrifices of Japanese soldiers and thereby paving the
way for the liberation of Europe’s Asian colonies including British occupied Ceylon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his speech Mr. Kase Hideaki, Diplomatic critic and Chairman of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, proposed the Vote of Thanks. His speech was entitled ‘THE GREATER EAST ASIAN WAR: HOW JAPAN CHANGED THE WORLD’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.sdh-fact.com\/CL\/Kase-Speech.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Mr.
Senaka Weeraratna for his kind words, especially those pertaining to my father, Kase
Toshikazu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


September 2, 1945 was a day of humiliation for my entire family. My father, then aged
42, was one of the envoys present at the ceremony during which Minister Plenipotentiary Shigemitsu Mamoru signed the Instrument of Surrender. My father stood next to Mr. Shigemitsu as the haughty Douglas MacArthur looked on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mr. Weeraratna was kind enough to say a few words about my book, ‘The Greater East
Asian War: How Japan Changed the World’. My father, who lived to the ripe old age of
101, had a habit of looking me straight in the eye and saying, We may have lost the
battle, but we won the war because we liberated the Asian and African peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


I am seldom moved to tears by anything I see on television, but I do remember one
exception. In September of this year American actress Meghan Markle and British Prince Harry got married. Their magnificent wedding ceremony was held at Windsor Castle (the residence of the British royal family, known as the House of Windsor). As it
approached St. George\u2019s Chapel, the horse-drawn carriage bearing the royal couple
looked as though it had been taken straight from a fairy tale, and the silver armor worn by the escort guards gleamed in the sunlight. I was deeply moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Inside the chapel an African-American clergyman invited to participate in the ceremony
preached about the power of love, speaking in the African-American vernacular.
When I heard a black gospel choir (also from the US) sing Stand by Me\u201d (originally a
spiritual entitled Stand by Me, Father\u201d), tears streamed down my cheeks. I imagine
many of you reacted in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Ms. Markle\u2019s father is white; her mother is African-American. Throughout the long
history of the British royal family, the idea that an African American might become the
consort of a prince who is sixth in the line of succession to the British throne would never have crossed anyone\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Japan deserves credit for helping make this remarkable turn of events possible. We
fought a huge war at great human cost and sacrifice. All the nations of Asia won freedom, and the momentum behind their liberation then spread to Africa, whose nations broke the yoke of colonialism, one by one.

In the late 1950s I traveled to the US to study at Columbia University. In those days
African Americans could not vote. Furthermore, they risked being lynched if they dared
cross the thresholds of hotels or restaurants patronized by whites. There were separate
drinking fountains and public lavatories for whites and blacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


But when the peoples of Africa won freedom, their nations built embassies near the
United Nations in New York City, and in Washington DC. African diplomats began to
frequent hotels and restaurants that were inaccessible to African Americans. Eventually
African Americans followed their lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s civil rights movement began to bear fruit in the 1960s.
Before then sexual relations between whites and blacks constituted criminal offenses; nor was intermarriage between the two races permitted. Discrimination showed no mercy. African-American baseball players could not work in the major leagues until after World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


When I was studying in the US, African Americans were barred from golf courses
(unless they were caddies). Today tennis champion Osaka Naomi is playing in
tournaments all over the world, but not so long ago the only African Americans seen on
tennis courts were members of the cleaning staff or ball boys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


As I watched the wedding ceremony of American actress Meghan Markle and British
Prince Harry, it occurred to me that the spirits of Japanese soldiers who gave their lives
on the vast battlefields of the Greater East Asian War must also have delighted in these
nuptials. That thought precipitated another flood of tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


At the royal wedding Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, and Crown Prince Charles, all in
formal dress, were present as Prince Harry took an African-American woman as his bride. An ideal world had materialized, thanks to Japan\u2019s strength. Throughout human history, which revolution stands out the most? The French revolution? The Russian revolution? The Industrial Revolution? The IT revolution? None of these. The greatest revolution in human history was the achievement of racial equality in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration. What is noteworthy here
is that between 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry\u2019s fleet of black ships appeared at Uraga and 1868, the first year of the Meiji era, only 15 years elapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Japan had replaced the Edo Shogunate, which had persisted for 260 years, with a new
regime. We greeted Meiji, a new era. This year, 2018, is the 30th year of the Heisei era, which will come to a close in April 2019. How will we remember the Heisei era? It will have been a 30-year period during which we failed to revise the current disgraceful Constitution, crammed down our throats by the Occupation forces.

We were able to recreate Japan during a 15-year period beginning with Perry\u2019s incursion into Japanese waters. But we could not revise the Constitution over the past 30 years. What have we been doing (and I include myself), for the past 30 years?
Between the last days of the Shogunate and the dawning of the Meiji era we Japanese had two immense dreams. One was the revision of insulting, unequal treaties that had been forced upon us by the imperialist powers of the West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


Japan could not set its own tariffs for imports and exports. Foreign fleets stationed
themselves in our ports, in Yokohama and Kobe. We did not have the authority to try
foreigners in our courts. We needed to revise those disrespectful treaties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The other dream was achieving racial equality throughout the world. Many members of
Japan\u2019s warrior class traveled to the West on observation missions between the end of the Edo Shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji era. During their ocean voyages, the
Japanese travelers saw how their fellow Asians were abused by their white bosses, treated like beasts of burden, like slaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The Japanese made truly strenuous efforts to get the unequal treaties revised. At the
famous Rokumeikan, Prince Ito Hirobumi and his subordinates felt obligated to learn
ridiculous Western ballroom dances and to wear Western clothing. Surely such
accommodations would prove that Japan too was a civilized nation, and then perhaps the Japanese could make progress with treaty revision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Until the end of the Edo era (1603-1868) the Japanese wore white when they attended a funeral. However, in the hope of revising the unequal treaties, the Meiji government
decreed that black clothing be worn at funerals, as it was in the West. Such were the
lengths that the Japanese were willing to go to for the sake of treaty revision.
Early in the Meiji era, again looking toward treaty revision, the Ministry of Education
sent notifications to all girls\u2019 schools announcing that students should be prohibited from
urinating standing up. During the war my mother took me to Nagano prefecture to escape the bombing that was occurring in cities. There I saw a young girl urinating, standing up, on a footpath between rice fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


I used to travel to Indonesia on business. When I spotted a woman urinating, standing
up, at the roadside in a rural area of Java, I felt a wave of nostalgia and thought, They\u2019re just like us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


When a foreign head of state visits Japan, a banquet is held in his or her honor at the
Imperial Palace. At these banquets the food served is always French cuisine. At the Great Hall of the People, facing Tian\u2019anmen Square, the Chinese serve Chinese cuisine. The Koreans serve Korean cuisine. The Thais serve Thai cuisine. The Indians serve Indian cuisine. Why do the Japanese serve French cuisine?

By the 1970s Japan had just about caught up with the Western powers; at that point
someone suggested serving Japanese cuisine. I said that French cuisine should be served for all eternity. We should serve French cuisine so that the pains our ancestors took to get the unequal treaties revised would not be forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Apparently we began serving French cuisine at state banquets because Japanese cuisine was deemed barbarian, and no nation would want to conclude treaties on equal terms with barbarians. So the Japanese built the Rokumeikan, imitated the Westerners, wore black at funerals, and served French cuisine. We must never forget these efforts.
We dreamed of and longed for a world of racial equality. In fact, racial discrimination
was one of the primary causes of the Pacific War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The phrase hakko ichiu, meaning all the world under one roof\u201d appears in a decree
issued by Emperor Jimmu on the occasion of his coronation (ca. 660 BCE). It means that in an ideal world the peoples of the world are living together happily under one roof. The Japanese have no history of racial discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Earlier Mr. Weeraratna mentioned my father, who was head of the Foreign Ministry\u2019s
North American Division when war between the two nations broke out. He oversaw
negotiations between Japan and the US from Tokyo. The foreign minister at that time
was of Korean descent. His Japanese name was Togo Shigenori. He was a native of Kagoshima; the name on his census record was Pak Mu-dok. When he matriculated at the Law Faculty of Tokyo Imperial University, he changed his surname to Togo, and adopted the Japanese pronunciation of his given name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Before World War II, Park Chun-gum ran for a seat in the House of Representatives,
using his Korean name. He won, and ended up serving two terms. Tokyo\u2019s Koto Ward,
the district from which he was elected, had some Korean residents, but they were
overwhelmingly outnumbered by Japanese. If the Japanese had discriminated against people of other ethnicities, it is very unlikely that a Korean using his birth name and running from Koto Ward could have won a seat in the House of Representatives, certainly not for two terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Nowhere in Japanese history do you find instances of racial discrimination. Nor have the
Japanese ever kept slaves. I once held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club of Japan in Yuraku-cho. On that occasion I voiced my objections to press coverage of the comfort women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


A correspondent from a leading US newspaper posed the following question: It is
common knowledge today throughout the world that the Japanese condemned young
women to a life of misery by forcing them to become sex slaves. How dare you make a
statement that defies common knowledge?\u201d

I replied,\u201d I would prefer not to entertain a question of that sort, posed as it was by a
reporter from a country that practiced slavery until right before Japan entered the Meiji
era (1868-1912).\u201d Japanese and Asian journalists in the audience, which numbered about 150, applauded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


In August of this year (2018) the Palais Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland was host to a session of CERD (the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination). At that session CERD was reviewing the situation in Japan. Apparently the committee\u2019s members, who represent Korea, the US, Belgium, and other countries had denounced Japan, believing that there is a great deal of racial discrimination there. A delegation from Japan\u2019s Foreign Ministry was present; it was led by Otaka Masato, ambassador in charge of UN affairs; Mr. Otaka speaks excellent English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mr. Otaka provided a careful explanation of Japan\u2019s position. He mentioned that 
The Japanese government had already offered apologies. In fact, his report was so detailed that it sounded as though he was apologizing again. In his place I would have gone on the offense, emphasizing the fact that the Japanese had never kept slaves, and attacking those nations that had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


There is no point in wasting our tax revenue by paying dues to CERD. It is completely
ridiculous for us to be doing this. The Japanese government should tell them that we\u2019ll
stop paying our share unless they rename Palais Wilson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


February 13, 2019 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Paris Peace Conference (also
known as the Versailles Peace Conference), held after World War I ended. At US
President Woodrow Wilson\u2019s suggestion, those in attendance decided to establish the
League of Nations as an organization entrusted with overseeing the postwar world. The
Japanese delegation proposed including a clause advocating the elimination of racial
discrimination in the Covenant of the League of Nations of Versailles. When the proposal was submitted to a vote, there were 11 votes in favor of (some of them from Europe\u2019s smaller nations) and five votes against its adoption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


However, President Wilson issued a pronouncement to the effect that a unanimous vote
was necessary to approve a matter of such great importance, thus quashing the Japanese proposal. Wilson was a dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist. During his presidency discrimination against African Americans worsened. He stated that people of color are intellectually inferior to whites (those who seek proof need only refer to transcripts of his lectures). Like Hitler, Wilson was a proponent of eugenics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


President Wilson once served as president of Princeton University. Nevertheless,
members of the school\u2019s student body (including white students), recently launched a
campaign to remove Wilson\u2019s statue from the campus. In the 1960s the US Congress
sponsored the establishment of a think tank called the Wilson Center. But here too a
movement has arisen that would change the name of the institution, as Wilson\u2019s name is
now an embarrassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The Japanese government delegation should insist that the name of Palais Wilson be
changed. Its members should say that they will refuse to enter the building until it is
renamed. I believe that Japan\u2019s history of equality began with the Jomon era (ca. 14,000-1,000 BCE), even before Japan was born. The Japanese have always valued harmony among people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Perhaps I am engaging in wishful thinking, but I think that next year China will be on the
road to ruin. I am convinced that as long as Japan does not give in to China\u2019s demands,
the world will see the dawning of an Asian era in which Japan takes the lead.
Monotheism has come to a standstill. As Mr. Weeraratna mentioned, Nazi racial
discrimination was religious discrimination. If you read the New Testament, the new
promises of Jesus, you will find the following reference to the Jews: You are the
children of the devil, and his works ye shall do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Since Hitler was the son of a devout Roman Catholic, he carried out Jesus\u2019 teachings to
the letter. Europeans had been massacring Jews for nearly 1,000 years. But the Germans, with their sophisticated technical skills, were able to kill more than 5 million of them. Monotheism is exclusive; it does not value harmony. The adherents of Sunni and Shia, the two main branches of Islam, simply cannot get along with each other. These conflicts have resulted in a great deal of killing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Japanese have always prized harmony. We have harmony when three, or four, or five, or six people gather and say, Let\u2019s work together.\u201d In Japan we have always had harmony \u2014 people working together toward a common goal, with the emphasis on the group rather than the individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


In closing I would like to mention that it has been some time since the world\u2019s attention
has come to focus on Japan like this. From the end of the Shogunate through the Meiji era, Japan exerted considerable influence on the Western world: we had ukiyo-e, Japonisme, Japanese design, and Japanese architecture. But these were visual influences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


However, what has caused Japan to capture the world\u2019s heart and at long last to become the center of attention goes beyond the visual, even beyond the spiritual. As Mr. Weeraratna said earlier, Japan accomplished the most prodigious revolution in the world.  We broached the idea of racial equality to the world. But I do not think we should look to the nations of Asia for gratitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


But we should be grateful to our heroes, our so-called war criminals. When I go to
worship at Yasukuni Shrine, the shrine for our war dead, I will be sure to thank the
heroes who created this wonderful, ideal world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kase Hideaki<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hideaki Kase<\/strong> (\u52a0\u702c \u82f1\u660e, Kase Hideaki<\/em>; 22 December 1936 \u2013 15 November 2022) was a Japanese diplomatic critic known for promoting historical negationism<\/a>.[1]<\/a><\/sup> His father, Toshikazu Kase<\/a>, was a diplomat under Shigenori T\u014dg\u014d<\/a> who negotiated an end to the Pacific war. Yoko Ono<\/a> is his cousin.  Kase died on 15 November 2022, at the age of 85<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hideaki_Kase<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.dailymirror.lk\/opinion\/Did-Japan-contribute-to-Sri-Lanka-and-India-to-gain-independence\/172-105069<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan\u2019s Master Plan for Victory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Japan\u2019s Master Plan for Victory<\/a><\/blockquote>