Japan Through Yellow Lenses

By Stephen Ling

How did the author arrive at the title JAPAN THROUGH YELLOW LENSES? The idea of yellow lenses happened when he was invited to talk about THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNA

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jun 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781684867585

Stephen Ling

The author pursued journalism and economics at the University of Texas. He lives in a country house outside Seattle because he loves the peace and quiet outside urban American. “I grew up in a farm.” After spending 7 years in China as a visiting professor, he continues his mission to share his front-seat, first-hand experiences in China with the publication of THIS IS CHINA. BONSAI KIDS (9th book) is his third book about China. PRETENDER is his 2nd fiction.

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Japan Through Yellow Lenses

Copyright © 2024 by Stephen Ling. All rights reserved.

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Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-68486-755-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-758-5 (Digital)

16.04.24

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

Twenty Seven

Twenty Eight

Twenty Nine

Thirty

Thirty One

Thirty Two

Thirty Three

Thirty Four

Thirty Five

Thirty Six

Thirty Seven

Thirty Eight

Thirty Nine

Forty

Forty One

Forty Two

Forty Three

Forty Four

Forty Five

Forty Six

Forty Seven

About the Author

DEDICATION

This book is for everyone or anyone

With enough curiosity and objectivity

To learn, understand and appreciate

How others might see you

Because of who or where

You were or are

In the world

Through different lenses!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Peter for helping me move into an apartment in Toshima City, Tokyo, that is close to anything and everything that one might need to live well and comfortably in any modern city in the world. Without Peter’s kindness and generosity I would not have spent the time to get to know Japan intimately while writing this book.

Thanks to my dear friend Tausif Ahmad, Pakistan, a graduate student pursuing his master degree in civil engineering for designing, with his computer skills and creativity, the cover of this book.

Thanks to Dena Hughes for her passion for a good book for reading the manuscript. We started teaching in the same public school many moons ago in Washington state.

And thanks to all the people I met in Japan, natives and foreigners, for allowing me to experience Japan, personally.

ONE

How did I arrive at this title for my book? JAPAN THROUGH YELLOW LENSES?

It was my 2nd summer as an international scholarship student from Malaya (now Malaysia), and I had the opportunity to work for the same church in the USA. The first summer I was an international staff member in a youth summer camp in Ohio state. The second summer I was assigned to work with people who populated a particular lake in Ohio every summer and my task was to introduce myself and to get to know as many people as possible and to invite them to an open air Sunday morning church service by the lake. Everything was very informal. For the whole summer. It was like a vacation for me. I had known Americans and Brits since I attended a mission school all my life in my country, Malaya, and later in college in Singapore.

Strangely, it never occurred to me what a Chinese college student was doing somewhere in a remote area in America? Pursuing some kind of summer work related to church? Maybe in a big city like Seattle or Los Angeles where Asian faces are part of the human landscape, but not in a small town somewhere in the state of Ohio.

It happened in a small town and the local restaurant would provide me free daily lunch during my service to the community. It was their contribution to the local Presbyterian church, which was partly responsible for my presence in Ohio. I was then a faithful Methodist!

Out of the blue, I was invited to give a speech on the American War in Vietnam by the local rotary international club which would meet regularly at this same restaurant. I would soon learn this was a favorite hangout for many men who lived in this community. A regular gathering place for a cup of coffee or a piece of local pie.

Why was I invited to give a speech on the American war in Vietnam? Till this day I suspect they thought since I came from Singapore, a country very close to Vietnam, I must be very familiar with or knowledgeable about the American involvement in the war in Vietnam. Or the country of Vietnam. Far from the truth. I had just graduated from college in Singapore, and worked and lived a simple life without access to the local newspaper, national TV or a radio. I knew nothing about the war in Vietnam. So near yet so far…Vietnam was a complete foreign country to me. I don’t recall any of my college professors talking about the war or any of my classmates or friends mentioning it. I was preoccupied with how to find my way to study in the USA, beginning with procurement of a scholarship and then seeking money for transportation from Singapore to Los Angeles! I was busy trying to find myself, and my role in the world. Vietnam was not in my radar.

Before I was to deliver my speech at the rotary international club meeting, my American host, a local respected doctor, came over to me on the stage and whispered: Be careful of what you are going to say about the war. It might jeopardize your legal status in the USA!

I was caught by surprise. What legal status? Maybe the doctor heard a voice! To me, no head no tail, the Chinese would say! But it did suddenly make me realize who were in the audience that day: members of the local rotary international club, members who were known or labelled then as the hawks, not the doves. Yes, the hawks were for the war in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam had divided the American nation into two camps: the hawks and the doves.

I remember thinking what would the natives in Ohio think of someone of my nationality, color, skin, stature, beliefs, culture, tradition, history, and education and spoken English doing in a small town in Ohio, far away from the more advanced, sophisticated and cosmopolitan cities like Chicago or New York? Probably looking suspiciously at me like an exotic animal in a cage in a modern zoo in America? Granted by then many ordinary Americans across the American continent were exposed, for the first time in television history, to the daily evening television news about the American soldiers’ confrontation with the Vietnamese and the Viet Congs and the Buddhist monks in Vietnam. They said what happened elsewhere around the world was coming to the living rooms in America every evening as they watched the news while having their dinners. As I would discover sadly later, most Americans did not and could not see the differences between Vietnamese or Chinese. To many of them, they all look the same to us!

My legal status in America? That was a serious matter to a foreign student. Suddenly it seemed I must or had to do something with my prepared speech. It suddenly dawned on me that I was like a Christian thrown into a den of hungry lions in the days of ancient Rome, that most men in the audience before me were members of a rotary international club, men who, at the time of the American war in Vietnam, were labelled or classified as the hawks, those who supported and believed in the domino theory of the war, that it was America’s duty to go to Vietnam and killed all those bastards or sons of bitches before, like the dominoes, they would take over the rest of Southeast Asia. It was America’s duty to kill them all.

Yes, the domino theory was a Cold War policy, suggesting a communist government would lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, with each falling like a row of dominos. And the Americans used it, I suspect, to justify our presence and war in Vietnam. In fact, communism failed to spread to the neighboring countries in Southeast Asia. I should know because I came from there.

Remember the crisis and confusion American soldiers confronted in Vietnam then? They could not differentiate the innocents from the guilty ones in communist-infested villages or country-sides. Their explanation? They all looked the same! They simply murdered them all! Remember the outcry in America and the world community against the brutalities inflicted on the innocent ones? Remember the famous My Lai massacre?

According to one report: The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children, and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. U.S. Army officers covered up the carnage for a year before it was reported in the American press, sparking a firestorm of international outrage. The brutality of the My Lai massacre and the official cover-up fueled anti-war sentiment and further divided the United States over the Vietnam War.

What was the trouble with my original speech as planned? I was a Christian, a dove, and I was essentially opposed to the war, something I learned during my first year at the Southern Methodist University, a Christian university in Texas. That was my moral inclination: to condemn all the hawks in the world! Yes, Steve, be careful of what you are going to say because it might jeopardize your legal status. I had the long summer ahead of me and I would meet many of the men in the audience every day when I would come for my free lunch at the local restaurant. And I wanted to avoid that awkward daily confrontation with the men in town!

It was a categorical imperative that I must do something with my prepared speech. And out of the blue, in front of the crowd of hungry hawks, I said something that was not in my prepared script: What a great honor to be invited by the local rotary international club today to share with you all my Chinese perspective of the American war in Vietnam. Yes, I came from Singapore, a short distance from the country of Vietnam. Though we are geographically a close neighbor, ironically, I knew very little of the conflict in Vietnam until I came to study at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. And if I see things yellow because of the yellow lenses I am wearing, I do not owe you any apology. I am a Chinese, not a Vietnamese …

That was the first time I would use the word yellow to describe my perspective of the Vietnam war. It came to me naturally as yellow was and is always my favorite color in my life. And I like the color of gold, too.

To save my skin or my life amid the hungry hawks in town, I ignored every word I had written in my speech…and became something of a hawk in one quick second and I avoided saying anything remotely that Americans should avoid killing more innocent Vietnamese and pack and return home to America! Diplomacy is my name! Or was it survival for the smartest for the rest of the long summer in Ohio! I sought peace not angry confrontation with the hawks in town. Why would I endanger myself because of my views on the American war in Vietnam! I was a quick thinker! Essentially a very pragmatic person!

The color yellow is very important in my Chinese upbringing and culture.

There is a Chinese saying Yellow generates Yin and Yang and that implies that yellow is the center of everything in my Chinese culture.

The Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization. Yellow was the emperor’s color in Imperial China.

Yellow often decorates royal palaces, altars and temples, and the color was used in the dragon robes and attire of the emperors.

Yellow also represents freedom from worldly cares and is thus esteemed in Buddhism. Monks’ garments are yellow, as are elements of Buddhist temples.

Yellow is also symbolic of heroism. More than anything else, yellow best describes my views and perspectives of the world around me.

JAPAN THROUGH YELLOW LENSES best describes and reflects everything I know, encountered or experienced about Japan.

TWO

My first encounter with the Japanese in my life was not in America but where and when I grew up in a small country somewhere in southeast Asia. I grew up and spent the formative years of my life in Malaya (now a part of Malaysia, which was founded in 1963).

Surrounded by the Philippines to the east, Indonesia to the west and southwest, Thailand to the north and Singapore to the south, the Malay Peninsula is strategically located in the heart of Southeast Asia. No small wonder ancient traders aptly called it The land where the winds meet. And meet they did.

Down the centuries, strong winds had uprooted and swept many Portuguese, Dutch, and English to the irresistible, legendary, powerful trading kingdom of Malacca, first established in the late fourteenth century, located in the south-east corner of the peninsula. Today, Malacca is an important tourist destination in that part of the world. I had the privilege of spending some months there one year when I was in college in Singapore. Now a tourist destination with its tempting old traditions and culture in Malacca, one of the oldest cities in Malaya.

The last to claim Malaya were the English in 1795. Eventually the tentacles of English intervention and protection permeated the length and breadth of the Malay Peninsula, flying the Union Jack by 1919. Soon thereafter Malaya became a British protectorate and remained in that status until the coming of the Japanese in early 1940s.

Not only was I denied the prerogative to choose who my parents were, but I was born at the worst of times, on the eve of the Japanese assault on Malaya and Singapore. I was told my biological mother died when I was a baby, and my father gave away all his four children: one girl and three boys. My eldest brother is the only surviving member of my biological family, now living in Malaysia with his children and grandchildren. I was the youngest. And I would be reminded I grew up in an opium den because my adopted father was someone who pursued a career in selling and smoking opium. I was raised in an opium den because the rest of the family had to work on the farm to survive during the Japanese Occupation.

After bombing the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the Japanese did not stop there but turned around and the following year conquered Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Philippines, and northern New Guinea. A very brave act then to show that Japan was unstoppable and must be taken seriously by the rest of the world! Did Japan recognize every act has a consequence, according to our Asian concept of karma? Karma is a dominant and prevalent concept in Asian thinking.

The Japanese air force was invincible over Malaya. Using bicycles, hordes of Japanese intruders swooped down the Malay Peninsula from Thailand. They were violent and aggressive and unstoppable. And fiercely lusting for power. It was Japanese way to show the western powers what she was capable of in her own backyard! Right after they bombed Pearl Harbor!

The British, in their omnipotence, thought the jungle north of Singapore would protect them from the advancing Japanese troops. Instead it became perfect camouflage for the Japanese. The land magnanimously provided them shelter and food. And Singapore, once the towering, impregnable colonial center of the British operation in the Far East, surrendered unconditionally to the Japanese within two weeks in 1942.

And for many, especially the Malays, the natives or the indigenous people of the land, behind closed doors, it was an auspicious time to celebrate the demise of the myth of the white man’s dominance and superiority in that part of the world. In fact, many ordinary Malays, those denied superior education or privileges because of their birth or without strong ties to the British administration, blamed the British policies for their backwardness and lack of opportunities because the British had brought many Chinese and Indians into Malaya, essentially taking away their jobs.

We lived very close to a Malay kampong and growing up I would learn that the Malays were not as ambitious or diligent like the Chinese people who had settled in Malaya from mainland China. The Chinese were making money operating major businesses throughout the Malay Peninsula, while most Malays were pursuing their laid-back lifestyles in rural areas throughout the peninsula. The seeds of racial tension, especially between the Malays and my people, the Chinese, were sown. By the British. And would slowly be allowed to germinate.

For one quick moment, our allegiance shifted radically from England to Japan. And it was down with God Save the King and up with Hail to Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Now we were to kowtow reverently to the north, for the Japanese emperor, since ancient times, was believed to be descended from Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.

In Japanese history, Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) became emperor in 1926 at a time of rising ultra-nationalism and militarism in his country. His sixty-three-year reign (1926-1989) is the longest in Japanese history. It is said the first twenty years were characterized by the rise of extreme nationalism and a series of expansionist wars. For example, the Kwantung Army, stationed in China, took over Manchuria and set up the puppet government of Manchukuo (the Last Emperor of China) without the knowledge of the Japanese government. International criticism of Japan followed the invasion and led to Japan to withdraw from the League of Nations. The prime minister who tried to restrain the Kwantung Army was assassinated in 1932 by right-wing extremists.

Needless to say, Japan’s expansionist vision grew very bold, aspiring to acquire new territory for resource extraction and settlement of surplus population, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. After defeat of the Chinese capital, the Japanese military committed the infamous Nanjing massacre. Japan’s aim was to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a pan-Asian union under Japanese control. But the United States opposed Japan’s invasion of China and responded with economic sanctions to deprive Japan of all resources to continue its fight in China.

And Japan responded by forging an alliance with Germany and Italy in 1940. On 7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, a way to break the US-led embargo. In 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy began deploying squadrons of kamikaze pilots to crash their planes into enemy ships. In 1944, the US Army captured the island of Saipan, allowing the USA to begin widespread bombing raids on Japan, destroying over half of the total area of Japan’s major cities. And on 6 August 1945, the USA dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 people. And on 9 August, Nagasaki was struck by a second atomic bomb, killing around 40,000 people. Finally, Japan surrendered to the Allies August 14 and broadcast by the Emperor on national radio the following day. Japanese people heard the voice of their emperor for the first time in Japan.

Was the Emperor a powerless constitutional monarch? Did he play an active role in the war effort? All we do know is that after Japan’s surrender in 1945, he became a figurehead with no political power in Japan!

And from 1945-1952, US General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, served as Japan’s de factor leader and played a central role in implementing reforms, including demilitarization and democratization of Japan’s government and society. Of course, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East tried the war criminals. Interestingly the Emperor was permitted to remain on the throne. Japan’s new constitution came into effect in 1947 and through Article 9, Japan renounced its right to go to war with another nation. And the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 officially normalized relations between Japan and the United States. The American occupation ended in 1952.

America continues to operate military bases mostly on Okinawa, as part of the US-Japan Security Treaty.

THREE

I was told by family members I knew nothing of what was happening to our country or family because I was an adopted baby from the city of Ipoh, spending most of my time in the serene opium den with my father and his opium smoker friends. Or with people who would come to the den and pay my father to serve them the opium. Somewhere in a remote God-forsaken poverty-stricken farm. The smokers were paid customers of my father.

The shape of my skull supported the notion I was a baby and would turn my head to face the spirit lamp, located in the middle of the bed between the host (my father) and his client. I grew up as a baby in an opium den with my opium father while the rest of the family was working on the farm to survive. Imagine as a baby that you were always looking sideways because of the opium lamp and what it would do to your developing fragile skull. Plainly speaking, it was out of shape! It does not take a barber to tell me that!

Let me paint a picture for those of you who have never spent a minute in a traditional opium den. Some of you lucky enough might have caught a glimpse of it in a movie. Of course, the spirit lamp is lit. A critical part of the paraphernalia required in smoking opium. In most places, the only light in the dark room. The host and the client make themselves comfortable in a reclining position, facing each other, with the spirit lamp between them. Then the host would start with a pea-sized ball of the opium paste at the end of a long needle and hold it over the flame until the paste starts to swell and sizzle and turn golden. And that aroma could travel a distance beyond the four walls!

The host knows how to cook it, stretching the gooey mass into long strings over the flame several times and would eventually roll it back into its pea shape and quickly push it into the hole in the bowl of the long opium pipe. Then the host would hold the bowl close to the flame to allow the flame to hit the ball of opium. And this is the time the host turns the pipe to the guest who would take a deep pull at the pipe until the opium is completely consumed. Usually, the guest would drink some Chinese tea after a smoke.

Growing up with my father, I witnessed this a million times! The family would always remind me: you grew up in an opium den with your father and his opium friends.

And the host would continue the same process, again and again. And I had witnessed this countless times because when I was growing up, I would visit my father in his opium den, in the village or in another town, to say hello to him, but mostly to get some spending pocket money from him. He was not a