Prime Minister Takaichi, attending the Okinawa Memorial Service for War Victims, delivered the following speech,
「今日私たちが享受している平和と繁栄は、この地で命を落とされた方々の尊い犠牲と、沖縄の歩んだ筆舌に尽くし難い苦難の歴史の上に築かれたものです。そのことを改めて深く胸に刻みながら、静かに頭を垂れたいと思います」
"The peace and prosperity we enjoy today are built upon the noble sacrifices of those who lost their lives on this land, and the indescribable history of hardship that Okinawa has endured. Engraving this deeply in my heart once more, I wish to quietly bow my head."
I simply cannot stomach the phrase "noble sacrifice."
Modifying the word "sacrifice" with "noble" attaches a nuance of voluntary devotion, a willing surrender of one's life for a sublime cause. The reality of the Battle of Okinawa was that it was merely a stalling tactic to buy time for the defense of the mainland. To slap the label of "noble sacrifice" on deaths forced upon people stripped of any avenue of escape by the military and the state—on gruesome deaths they were simply dragged into—is nothing short of a desecration to those who died in profound despair.
There are many anime series I love, but there are also those I simply cannot accept, specifically, the tropes common in shōnen manga, "With enough willpower, you can overcome anything," or "Sacrificing oneself for the sake of one's comrades." While many extol these narratives as "touching" or "passionate friendship," to me, they look like nothing more than totalitarian propaganda.
The ethos that "strong willpower can overcome any hardship" easily flips into a cruel, illogical fallacy: "If you couldn't overcome it, it's because you were weak-willed." It reeks of wartime Japan, where citizens practiced thrusting bamboo spears to shoot down B-29 bombers, somehow believing that sheer spirit would somehow get the job done.
The glorification of "self-sacrifice, the casting aside of one's own life and happiness for a cause or for one's companions" is nothing less than a barbaric set of values that stands in direct opposition to the spirit of Article 13 of the Japanese Constitution, which guarantees supreme respect for the individual. Is there any entertainment more unsettling than consuming the sacrifice of others as an inspiring story?
What is truly noble is ensuring no one has to be sacrificed in the first place. The belief that sacrifice itself is noble is profoundly dangerous.
