Download PDF - St. Catherine's College - University of Oxford
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MESSAGES<br />
STUDENT PERSPECTIVES<br />
the road, and then gave me a lift through a no-man’s<br />
land between Laos and Vietnam, an area which you’re<br />
not allowed to cross on foot. If I had been there in<br />
my grandfather’s time, none <strong>of</strong> that would have been<br />
possible, and whatever the differences between us,<br />
they weren’t seismic enough to stop them from <strong>of</strong>fering<br />
a traveller some food, or to stop me from accepting<br />
their <strong>of</strong>fer gladly.<br />
I did end up learning something very important about<br />
identity, and the way it can be manipulated during war<br />
to exacerbate a sense <strong>of</strong> ideological conflict. Ahead<br />
<strong>of</strong> the bombing <strong>of</strong> Nagasaki, some pieces <strong>of</strong> American<br />
propaganda used inflammatory imagery advocating the<br />
total destruction <strong>of</strong> Japan. Certain Japanese propaganda<br />
described Chinese people as animals, while in Nazi<br />
Germany, medieval imagery and school text books<br />
were used to perpetuate negative and anti-Semitic<br />
stereotypes.<br />
creatures that people work so hard to trick us into<br />
thinking we’re not.<br />
The last thing I visited in Nagasaki was a memorial to <strong>St</strong><br />
Francis Xavier, one <strong>of</strong> twenty-six Christians executed in<br />
1597 as part <strong>of</strong> the outlawing <strong>of</strong> Catholicism in Japan.<br />
The word ‘heaven’ was written there in Japanese, 天<br />
国 , but the gloss for its reading, which tells the reader<br />
how to pronounce the characters, wasn’t ‘tengoku’<br />
which is the Japanese word for heaven, but was instead<br />
‘paraiso,’ the Portuguese word. After a century marred<br />
by racism, war, genocide, rape, and atomic destruction,<br />
if an American can read Chinese characters in<br />
Portuguese by a Christian grave in a Japanese city, then<br />
I think there’s hope. n<br />
I did end<br />
up learning<br />
something<br />
very important<br />
about identity,<br />
and <strong>of</strong> the<br />
way it can be<br />
manipulated<br />
Such propaganda seeks to undermine our humanity. Its<br />
aim is to de-humanise societies and people identified<br />
as ‘the enemy’. It’s worth considering the likelihood<br />
<strong>of</strong> the bomb being dropped had the Americans felt<br />
themselves more similar to their Japanese foes. What<br />
if the American electorate had been told that Nagasaki<br />
was a traditionally Christian city; that along with a<br />
Shinto shrine, they destroyed a church from the 17th<br />
century? That they had killed 100,000 Christians, with<br />
whom they seemingly shared a common identity, rather<br />
than the Japanese as depicted by wartime propaganda?<br />
I think it’s because we are naturally good, caring, loving<br />
ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE 2012/33