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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2025
In recent years, the Japanese public has hailed a new national hero, the late Lieutenant General Higuchi Kiichirō. Unlike other notable military figures of his era, Higuchi’s heroism is unconventional, if not unique. Despite playing a leading role in the defence of Hokkaido against the Soviet Red Army in 1945, it is humanitarian efforts that have cemented Higuchi’s lasting legacy in public memory. Presently, a plethora of publications, TV documentaries, a museum, and monuments praise his actions during the ‘Otpor Incident’, in which he is said to have saved up to 20,000 Jewish refugees stranded in the winter of 1938 along the Soviet-Manchukuo border. This article questions the authenticity of Higuchi’s acclaimed rescue efforts, highlighting discrepancies that cast doubt on the entire narrative. It suggests the possibility of the ‘Otpor Incident’ being a complete fabrication or, at best, an extremely exaggerated account of a minor event, aimed at enhancing post-war personal and national reputations. Critically, this piece contends that Higuchi’s current recognition is part of a strategic move by nationalist groups in Japan to use Holocaust narratives to divert attention from Japan’s history of wartime aggression and colonialism. To substantiate this view, this article assesses the evidence of Higuchi’s involvement in the supposed rescue, examines the narrative’s post-war evolution, and analyses the motives for its initial dissemination and recent surge in popularity.
1 See, for example, ‘Higuchi Kiichirō, rekishi ni umoreta kōseki ni hikari o’, 樋口季一郎、歴史に埋もれた功績に光を, available at https://rarea.events/event/190387, [accessed 1 November 2024].
2 See, for example, Stewart Ain, ‘Japan, Home to the Summer Olympics’, Forward, 18 June 2021; Robert Eldridge, ‘Pacific War Hostilities Didn’t Exactly End on Aug. 15, 1945’, Japan Times, 18 August 2022; Matthew Hernon, ‘Spotlight: Kiichiro Higuchi—The Other Japanese Schindler’, Tokyo Weekender, 11 October 2011; Kenji Katayama, ‘Museum Tribute for Army Officer who Helped Jewish Refugees’, Asahi Shimbun: Asia and Japan Watch, 31 August 2019.
3 In 1984 Sugihara was recognized by Yad Vashem as the Righteous Among the Nations and has remained the only Japanese to carry this title. For Sugihara’s background and 1940 visa issuance, see Levine, Hillel, In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat who Risked his Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust (New York: The Free Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Kowner, Rotem, ‘The Puzzle of Rescue and Its Memory: Sugihara Chiune and the 1940 Exodus of Jewish Refugees from Lithuania Redux’, Journal of World History, vol. 35, no. 2, 2024, pp. 297–332CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For his post-war commemoration in Japan and beyond, see Kowner, Rotem, ‘A Holocaust Paragon of Virtue’s Rise to Fame: The Transnational Commemoration of the Japanese Diplomat Sugihara Chiune and its Divergent National Motives’, American Historical Review, vol. 128, no. 1, 2023, pp. 32–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 For the place of the tokumu kikan within the Japanese military intelligence and the Guandong Army in particular, see Samuels, Richard J., Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019), pp. Google Scholar. In his autobiography, Higuchi explained that his role was to provide ‘internal guidance’ to the young Manchukuo, although he claimed that by the time he arrived, the country was no longer willing to accept this sort of guidance. In Higuchi Kiichirō 樋口季一郎, Attsu Kisuka gunshireikan no kaisō アッツ・キスカ軍司令官の回想 (Tokyo: Fuyō Shobō, 1971), p. 351.
5 See Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, pp. 345–370.
6 The identity of the refugees has been debated. According to Captain Inuzuka’s wife, the refugees were Austrian. See Inuzuka Kiyoko 犬塚きよ子, ‘Yudayajin o hogo shita teikoku kaigun’ ユダヤ人保護した帝国海軍, Jiyū 自, no. 15, February 1973, p. 239. Another source asserted that 30,000 ‘White Russian Jews’, who had been living in Germany, composed the bulk of the group. See Yoshida Toshio吉田俊雄, ‘Yudayajin to tokumu kikanchō’ ユダヤ人と特務機関長, Bungei Shunjū 文芸春秋, no. 41, December 1963, pp. 159–160.
7 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, p. 351. This figure appears no less than five times in the book (pp. 346, 351, 352, and twice on p. 363).
8 Ibid., p. 352.
9 Miyazawa Masanori 宮沢正典著, Yudayajin ronkō: Nihon ni okeru rongi no tsuiseki ユダヤ人論考: 日本における論議の追跡 (Tokyo: Shinsensha, 1982), pp. 112–113, 117–118.
10 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, p. 364. The story of the protest also appears on the Higuchi Kiichirō Museum’s website, available at https://higuchi-museum.jp/gallery/img/panel8.pdf, [accessed 1 November 2024].
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid. Sagara Shunsuke 相良俊輔, Ryūhyō no umi, aru gunshireikan no ketsudan 流氷の海: ある軍司令官の決断 (Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 1973), pp. 60–63.
13 See Kovalio, Jacob, The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 19–48.Google Scholar
14 See the correspondence at the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (DAMFAJ), ‘Minzoku mondai kankei zakken: Yudayajin mondai’ 民族問題関係雑件ユダヤ人問題 folders.
15 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, p. 353.
16 See, for example, Higuchi Kiichiro Museum, https://higuchi-museum.jp/about/about.html, [accessed 1 November 2024].
17 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, p. 356.
18 Sagara Shunsuke 相良俊輔, Ryūhyō no umi, aru gunshireikan no ketsudan 流冰の海: ある軍令官の決断 (Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 1973), p. 54.
19 Kawamura Aizō 川村愛三, ‘Nazisu ni owareta yudayamin niman no tsuioku’ ナチスに追われたユダヤ (猶太) 二万の追憶, Nihon to Isuraeru 日本とイスラエル 8, November 1973, p. 27. For Kaufman, see Shmuel Rabinovits, ‘Ha-yishuv ha-yehudi be-Sin, sigsugo ve-khurbano’ וחורבנו שגשוגו ,בסין היהודי הישוב, Gesher, vol. 2, no. 11, July 1957, pp. 108–121; Chizuko, Takao, ‘Prewar Japan’s Perception of Jews and the Harbin Jewish Community: The Harbin Jewish Community under Japanese Rule 1932–1941’, Journal of the Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions, vol. 10, 2014, pp. .Google Scholar
20 Kawamura, ‘Nazisu ni owareta’; Kawamura Aizō, ‘Kaisetsu: Man-So kokkyō no Yudaya nanmin kyūshutsu ni tsuite’ 解説 満・ソ国境のユダヤ難民の救出について, in Higuchi, Attsu, Kisuka, p. 362; Kawamura Aizō, Takashima Tatsuhiko and Takeyama Michio 川村愛三、高島龍彦、竹山道夫, ‘Nihon rikugun to Yudayajin’ 日本陸軍とユダヤ人, Jiyū 自, vol. 15, June 1973, p. 193.
21 Nishihara Yukio 西原征夫, Zenkiroku Harubin tokumu kikan: Kantōgun jōhōbu no kiseki 全記録ハルビン特務機関: 関東軍情報部の軌跡 (Tokyo: Asahi Shibunsha, 1980).
22 By the end of 1938, the number of Jews in Harbin was estimated to be 2,251. See ‘Zai Harubin Yudayajin no jōkyō’ 在ハルビンユダヤ人の状況, Gaiji keisatsu-hō 外事警察報, vol. 199, 1939, p. 118, cited in Takao, ‘Prewar Japan’s perception’, p. 38.
23 For the state of the Harbin community, see Joshua Fogel, ‘The Jewish Community of Harbin: Its Meteoric Rise and Fall under the Shade of Three Empires’, in Jewish Communities in Modern Asia: Their Rise, Demise and Resurgence, (ed.) Rotem Kowner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 227–250. For the Japanese policy and its impact on the number of Jews in Harbin, see Avraham Altman, ‘Controlling the Jews, Manchukuo Style’, in From Kaifeng … to Shanghai: Jews in China, (ed.) Roman Malek (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2000), p. 315.
24 While Russian Foreign Ministry data suggest that 22,000 Russians returned to the Soviet Union, contemporary Jewish sources mentioned a figure of 25,000, including about 1,000 Jews. For these figures, see Mark Gamsa, Harbin: A Cross-cultural Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), p. 9; a letter sent by Abraham Kaufman to the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 5 November 1935, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, S6/3809, cited in Takao, ‘Prewar Japan’s Perception’, p. 44.
25 Miyazawa, Yudayajin ronkō, pp. 112–113. At the time, Yasue was the head of the tokumu kikan in Dairen (present-day Dalian, China). Both he and Inuzuka had experience of earlier episodes of antisemitism. As early as 1922, Yasue published the first full Japanese translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion under the title Shion seiken shūkai no giteisho シオン聖賢集會の議定書.
26 The primary source of information about this plan is the controversial book written by Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II (New York: Paddington Press, 1979). Tokayer (b. 1936), a former rabbi of the Jewish community in Tokyo, is neither a historian nor fluent in Japanese. Moreover, the sources of the book are not specified and their authenticity is in doubt. Cf. David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 133, n. 1.
27 Maruyama Naoki, ‘Facing a Dilemma: Japan’s Jewish Policy in the Late 1930s’, in War and Militarism in Modern Japan: Issues of History and Identity, (ed.) Guy Podoler (Kent: Global Oriental, 2009), pp. 27–28.
28 Kranzler, David, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945 (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976), pp. 225–226Google Scholar; Maruyama Naoki 丸山直起, Asia taiheiyō chiiki ni okeru Yudayajin shakai アジア太平洋地域におけるユダヤ人社会 (Yamato, Niigata, Japan: International University of Japan, Center for Japan-U.S. Relations, 1986), pp. 22–23.
29 Sugita Rokuichi, Kobayashi Masayuki and Miyazawa Masanori 杉田六一, 小林正之, 宮澤正典, ‘Taidan: Nihon ni okeru Yudaya mondai rongi (1)’ 対談: 日本におけるユダヤ問題論議 (1), Yudaya Isuraeru Kenkyū ユダヤ・イスラエル研究, vol. 5–6, October 1970, p. 65.
30 For the Japanese policy toward Jews after 1938, see Medzini, Meron, Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016), pp. 71–148Google Scholar; Kowner, Rotem, ‘The Japanese Internment of Jews in Wartime Indonesia and its Causes’, Indonesia and the Malay World, vol. 38, no. 112, 2010, pp. 349–371CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rotem Kowner and William G. Clarence-Smith, ‘Jews in Japan: The Winding Road of a Business Community’, in Jewish Communities in Modern Asia, (ed.) Kowner, pp. 281–285; Bandō Hiroshi 阪東宏, Nihon no Yudayajin seisaku: 1931–1945: Gaikō shiryōkan monjo ‘Yudayajin mondai’ kara 日本のユダヤ人政策: 1931–1945: 外交史料館文書「ユダヤ人問題」から (Tokyo: Miraisha, 2002), pp. 240–315; Maruyama Naoki 丸山直起, Taiheiyō sensō to Shanhai no Yudaya nanmin 太平洋戦争と上海のユダヤ難民 (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2005), pp. 87–226.
31 Kovalio, The Russian Protocols, pp. 24–26.
32 Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews, p. 177.
33 A major figure in the earlier introduction and promotion of the Protocols, as well as the term ‘Jewish Peril’ (猶太禍 yudayaka), in Japan in the early 1920s, was Higuchi Tsuyanosuke (1870–1931). He had served as a professor of Russian in army schools and taught Yasue in the sixth class of the Army Cadet School in 1905. Although it is highly unlikely that he was related to Higuchi Kiichirō, this scholar was attached to the Japanese Army in Siberia as an interpreter for 39 months. See Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, pp. 80–81; Takao Chizuko 高尾千津子, ‘Shiberia shuppei to “shion gitei-sho” no denpa 1919 – 1922’ シベリア出兵と『シオン議定書』の伝播 1919–1922, Jews-Israel Research ユダヤ・イスラエル研究, no. 27, 2013, p. 24.
34 Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews, p. 206.
35 Attached to the General Staff, Higuchi himself visited Berlin in March 1937.
36 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, p. 356.
37 Ibid., p. 353.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., p. 355.
40 The convicted murderers, members of the local Russian Fascist Party, were acquitted in January 1937. For this affair, see Takao, ‘Prewar Japan’s Perception’, pp. 38–42; Dan Ben-Canaan, The Semion Kaspe File: A Case Study of Harbin as an Intersection of Cultural and Ethnical Communities in Conflict, 1932–1945 (Harbin: Heilongjiang University, 2008); Scott D. Seligman, Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2023).
41 Theodore (Teddy) Kaufman, Yahadut Harbin asher be’libi בליבי אשר חרבין יהדות(Tel Aviv: Agudat Yotz’ei Sin, 2004). I used the English translation: T. Kaufman, The Jews of Harbin Live on in My Heart (Tel Aviv: The Association of Former Jewish Residents of China in Israel, 2006), p. 117.
42 For this party and Rodzaevsky’s role in it, see John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925–1945 (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 56, 160; Erwin Oberländer, ‘The All-Russian Fascist Party’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 1, no. 1, 1966, pp. 158–173; Susanne Hohler, ‘Russian Fascism in Exile. A Historical and Phenomenological Perspective on Transnational Fascism’, Fascism, no. 2, 2013, pp. 121–140. For Higuchi’s pressure on Rodzaevsky in 1938, see A. V. Okorokov, Fashizm i russkaiia emigratsiia (1920–1945 gg.) Фашизм и русская эмиграция: 1920–1945 гг (Moscow: Russaki, 2002), pp. 152–153; Chizuko Takao, ‘Russian-Jewish Harbin before World War II’, Japanese Slavic and East European Studies, no. 32, 2011, pp. 50–51.
43 Dan Ben-Canaan, Nostalgia vs. Historical Reality (Harbin: Heilongjiang University, 2007), p. 3.
44 Kaufman, The Jews of Harbin, p. 117.
45 ユダヤ難民の入国は人道的というよりむしろ、高度な政治判断に基づくのであったという。すなわち、日米関係の化を憂慮、在米ユダヤ人への働きかけを企図した日本側の動機に依拠している。関東軍はこれを黙認したのであり、樋口のその後の昇進はユダヤ難民の救済が単なる人道問題ではなかったことを示唆しているといえる. Ex-Army Major Onouchi Hiroshi, in an interview with Maruyama Naoki, Tokyo, 14 February 1978. This citation appears in Maruyama, Asia taiheiyō chiiki, p. 50 n.100. For a slightly more elaborate English version made more than 20 years later, see Maruyama, ‘Facing a Dilemma’, pp. 29–30.
46 Maruyama Naoki, in an interview with Rotem Kowner, Kyoto, 10 April 2024.
47 Maruyama, Asia taiheiyō chiiki, pp. 23–24. Maruyama notes that the figure of 20,000 originates from Higuchi and lacks corroboration from other sources (p. 50).
48 Watanabe Katsumasa 渡辺勝正, Shinsō: Sugihara biza 真相杉原ビザ (Tokyo: Taishō Shuppan, 2000), pp. 200, 213. However, Watanabe does not offer any details about the source of this testimony. Nonetheless, he concludes that these 18 refugees (six men, four women, and eight children) are the ones to appear in a photo that is in Sagara, Ryūhyō no umi, p. 59.
49 Yasue died in a Soviet labour camp in Khabarovsk in 1950 but decades later his son used his surviving papers to write an article on his pre-war relations with Jews. See Yasue Hiroo 安江弘夫, ‘Manshū ni Isuraeru o’ 満州にイスラエルを, Shokun! 諸君!, vol. 27, no. 8, 1995, p. 187; Bandō, Nihon no Yudayajin seisaku, p. 218.
50 Arita’s second term in office began on 29 October 1938 and ended on 5 January 1939.
51 See Teikoku Gikai Kizokuin Iinkai sokkiroku. Shōwa-hen 帝國議會貴族院委員會速記録: 昭和篇 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1990), pp. 203–204.
52 Martin Kaneko, Die Judenpolitik der japanischen Kriegsregierung (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2008), p. 82.
53 Abraham Kaufman, ‘Testimony of Abraham Kaufman, born in Mglin, Russia, 1885, regarding his experiences in Harbin’, (1967–1968), Yad Vashem Archives, file number 3168 (ק-2435/208), p. 17.
54 Ibid., p. 17. Birman’s name appears on p. 38.
55 Ibid., p. 37.
56 Ibid., p. 38.
57 Yaacov Liberman, My China: Jewish Life in the Orient, 1900–1950 (Jerusalem: Gefen, 1998), pp. 17, 44, 64, 81, 91–98, 111–112.
58 Kaufman, The Jews of Harbin, p. 118.
59 Among other things, Theodore Kaufman noted erroneously that ‘General Higuchi fell in the war against the Americans.’ See ibid.
60 Rotem Kowner and Xu Xin, ‘The Jews of Shanghai: The Emergence, Fall and Resurgence of East Asia’s Largest Jewish Community’, in Jewish Communities in Modern Asia, (ed.) Kowner, p. 214.
61 For the departure of these refugees from Lithuania during 1940–1941 and their subsequent passage through the Soviet Union, see Levine, In Search of Sugihara, pp. 161–279.
62 The Japanese figures for 1938 do not include Austria, which was annexed by the German Reich in March of that year.
63 For a breakdown of Eurasian train passengers exiting and entering Manzhouli by nationality and year, from 1934 to 1940, see Ito Akira, The Path to Freedom: Japanese Help for Jewish Refugees (Tokyo: Japan Travel Bureau Foundation, 2002), p. 7.
64 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka, p. 351.
65 ‘Summary of Jewish policy’, cable no. 3544 from Foreign Minister Arita Hachirō to Japanese diplomatic missions overseas on 7 December 1938, JFM, JP, folder 5. See also Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees: A World War II Dilemma (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), p. 11; Maruyama, ‘Facing a Dilemma’, pp. 32–33.
66 Kaufman, ‘Testimony’, p. 39.
67 For the Tokyo embassy’s cable to Berlin, see ‘Auftreten des japanischen Generals Higuchi auf dem Kongress der jüdischen Gemeinden des Fernen Ostens in Harbin’ (Attendance of Japanese General Higuchi at the Congress of the Jewish Communities of the Far East in Harbin), Nr. 115/38, Tokyo, 27 January 1938. In Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, VII, Japan Pol. 2, Band R104880.
68 This assumption is confirmed by historian Maruyama Naoki, in an interview with Rotem Kowner, Kyoto, 10 April 2024.
69 Major Onouchi Hiroshi shared this perspective. See note 36.
70 For this promotion, see ‘Taiwan gunshireikan ni: Ushijima chūjō shinpō’ 薹湾軍司令官: 牛島中将親補, Yomiuri Shimbun 読売新聞 (evening edition), 2 December 1939, p. 1.
71 See cable no. 407, dated 4 February 1938, folder 3, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan Archives. Maruyama Naoki suggests that with this support for the conference, Germany may have recognized anti-German sentiments within the Imperial Japanese Army (personal communication, 19 February 2024).
72 See Rotem Kowner, ‘When Strategy, Economics, and Racial Ideology Meet: Inter-Axis Connections in Wartime Indian Ocean’, Journal of Global History, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 228–250, especially pp. 230–235.
73 There are similar post-war suggestions that Germany lodged protests over the actions of Sugihara Chiune, who issued more than 2,000 transit visas to Jewish refugees stranded in Lithuania in the summer of 1940. For the refutation of these arguments, see Kowner, ‘The Puzzle of Rescue’.
74 For this suggestion, see, for example, Higuchi Kiichiro Museum, https://higuchi-museum.jp/about/about.html, [accessed 1 November 2024]. For similar views in non-Japanese sources, see, for example, Ben-Ami Shillony, The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders (Tokyo: Charles Tuttle, 1991), pp. 182–183; Heinz Eberhard Maul, Warum Japan keine Juden verfolgte: Die Judenpolitik des Kaiserreiches Japan während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (1933–1945) (Munich: Iudicium, 2007), p. 49.
75 Established in 1953, Yad Vashem (lit. A Monument and a Name) is the state of Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. For the commemoration activity of this organization, see Kabalek, Kobi, ‘The Commemoration before the Commemoration: Yad Vashem and the Righteous Among the Nations, 1945–1963’, Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2011, pp. .Google Scholar
76 Jewish National Fund, n.d.
77 JNF’s ‘Golden Book’, vol. 6, nos. 4026 (Higuchi), 4027 (Kaufman); 4028 (Yasue).
78 Kaufman, ‘Testimony’, pp. 36–37. See also Takao, ‘Prewar Japan’s perception’, p. 45.
79 This figure is accurate as of 1 January 2022. See ‘Names of Righteous by Country’, https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/statistics.html, [accessed 1 November 2024].
80 KKL-JNF, ‘Grandson of Japanese general who saved Jews visits KKL-JNF books of honor’, 13 June 2018, https://www.kkl-jnf.org/about-kkl-jnf/green-israel-news/green-israel-news-2018/kichiro-higuchi-golden-book-jerusalem.aspx, [accessed 1 November 2024].
81 See, for example, ‘Embassy of Japan in cooperation with the Israel Japan Friendship Society: Kiichiro Higuchi, my grandfather’, Embassy of Japan in Israel, 2018, https://www.israel.emb-japan.go.jp/html/FridayLecture_Higuchi_June152018.html, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Okabe Noburu, ‘A Lesser-known “Japanese Schindler”: Lieutenant General Higuchi Kiichirō’, Nippon.com, 13 August 2022. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g01097/, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Okabe Noburu 岡部伸, ‘Manshū de Yudayajin o sukutta rikugun chūjō (zenpen): “Higuchi rūto” de ikinobita shison ga kataru jiyū e no tōsō’ (満州でユダヤ人を救った陸軍中将 (前編): 「ヒグチ・ルート」で生き延びた子孫が語る自由への逃走 Nippon.com, 2023. https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/g02307/, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Higuchi Ryūichi 樋口隆一, Rikugun chūjō Higuchi Kiichirō no ikun: Yudaya nanmin to Hokkaidō o sukutta shōgun 陸軍中将樋口季一郎の遺訓: ユダヤ難民と北海道を救った将軍 (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2020), p. 58.
82 Kowner, Rotem, ‘The Mir Yeshiva’s Holocaust Experience: Ultra-orthodox Perspectives on Japanese Wartime Attitudes towards Jewish Refugees’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 36, no. 3, 2022, p. .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
83 Takao, ‘Prewar Japan’s perception’, p. 45.
84 Meron Medzini, Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016), p. 58.
85 See, for example, Matsumura Kōzō 松村浩蔵, ‘Shōgun Higuchi Kiichirō no shōgai’ 将軍 樋口季一郎の生涯–ユダヤ人の救出とアッツ・キスカ戦での決断 Seinan Gakuin Daigaku Daigakuin Hōgaku Kenkyū Ronshū 西南学院大学大学院法学研究論, no. 21, 2003, p. 65; Hayasaka Takashi 早坂隆, Shikikan no ketsudan: Manshū to Attu no shōgun Higuchi Kiichirō 指揮官の決断: 満州とアッツの将軍樋口季一郎 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 2010), p. 242.
86 Among other Japanese officers, Kaufman fondly mentioned Yasue several times, as well as Lieutenant-General Yanagida Genzō (1893–1952), who served in the same position as Higuchi in 1940. See Kaufman, ‘Testimony’, pp. 24, 36–37 and p. 23, respectively. Kaufman’s view of Yasue was not far-fetched, as he embodied a Japanese antisemite who also held philosemite convictions. For his pro-Jewish activity, see, for example, Bei, Gao, Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees during World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 58–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
87 For a four-stage framework in which the commemoration of individual heroism may advance, see Kowner, ‘A Holocaust Paragon’, pp. 39–40.
88 Mimura Saburō 三村三郎, Yudaya mondai to uragaeshite mita Nihon rekishi ユダヤ問題と裏返して見た日本歴史 (Osaka: Nichi-Yu Kankei Kenkyūkai, 1953), p. 180.
89 Ibid., pp. 171–172.
90 Yoshida, ‘Yudayajin to tokumu kikanchō’.
91 See, for example, ‘Gen. Higuchi Buried; Saved 20,000 Jews’, Herald Tribune, 21 October 1970.
92 Kawamura, ‘Nazisu ni owareta’, pp. 28–29.
93 Higuchi, Attsu Kisuka.
94 For the historiographical constraints associated with autobiographies as a historical source, see, for example, Popkin, Jeremy, History, Historians, and Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Aurell, Jaume and Davis, Rocio G., ‘History and Autobiography: The Logics of a Convergence’, Life Writing, vol. 16, no. 4, 2019, pp. 503–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
95 The book was reissued in 1999, 2020, and 2022. These editions were edited by Higuchi’s grandson, Higuchi Ryūichi.
96 ‘Report Reveals Japanese General Personally Saved 20,000 Jewish Refugees in 1938’, Jewish Telegraph Agency Daily Bulletin, 4 January 1971, p. 2.
97 Sagara, Ryūhyō no umi. The book was reissued in 1988, 1994, 2003, and 2010. On this book, see Kaneko Martin 金子マーティン, Kōbe Yudayajin nanmin 1940–1941: ‘shūsei’ sareru senjika Nihon no Yūdaijin taisaku 神戸・ユダヤ人難民 1940–1941: 「修正」される戦時下日本の猶太人対策 (Kobe: Mizunowa Shuppan, 2003), pp. 104–105. In 1978, Sagara also authored a book for young readers entitled Jinrui ai ni ikita shōgun Yudaya nanmin kyūshutsu hiwa 人類愛に生きた将軍 ユダヤ難民救出秘話.
98 Both books do refer substantially to Higuchi’s involvement in the Far Eastern Conference. See Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews, p. 225; Tokayer and Swartz, The Fugu Plan, pp. 56, 123.
99 Shillony, The Jews and the Japanese, p. 182. Shillony seemed unaware that Higuchi’s term in Manchuria had ended four months before the Five Ministers Conference took place.
100 Shillony, The Jews and the Japanese, pp. 182–183.
101 Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese mind, p. 112.
102 Ibid., p. 113.
103 Levine, In Search of Sugihara, p. 134.
104 Wikipedia (Japanese): Higuchi Kiichirō, 28 March 2004. https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%A8%8B%E5%8F%A3%E5%AD%A3%E4%B8%80%E9%83%8E&oldid=8936848, [accessed 1 November 2024].
105 By February 2024, nearly 20 years after its creation, the Japanese entry was edited no less than 487 times, reaching a size of 65,060 bytes.
106 Wikipedia (English): Kiichiro Higuchi, 17 January 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiichiro_Higuchi&oldid=184978111, [accessed 1 November 2024].
107 Wikipedia (Japanese): Higuchi Kiichirō, 11 November 2006. https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%A8%8B%E5%8F%A3%E5%AD%A3%E4%B8%80%E9%83%8E&oldid=8936848, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Wikipedia (English): Kiichiro Higuchi, 27 March 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiichiro_Higuchi, [accessed 5 December 2024].
108 Watanabe, Shinsō, p. 208.
109 Kaneko, Kōbe Yudayajin nanmin, pp. 115–116.
110 Ibid., p. 118.
111 Kaneko, Die Judenpolitik, p. 89.
112 Jordyn Haime, ‘Researchers Say Japan has exaggerated the Story of Chiune Sugihara, the “Japanese Schindler”’, Jewish Telegraph Agency, 19 July 2023.
113 Irena Steinfeldt, director of the Righteous Among the Nation Department, Yad Vashem, in an interview with Rotem Kowner, Jerusalem, 29 May 2016; Dr Joel Zisenwine, director of the Righteous Among the Nation Department, Yad Vashem, personal communication with Rotem Kowner, 25 March 2024.
114 See ‘Yudaya nanmin tasuketa gunjin’ ユダヤ難民助けた軍人, Asahi Shimbun 朝日新聞 (evening edition), 31 March 2010, p. 8.
115 For Professor Higuchi’s involvement in this book, see ‘Introduction’, in Higuchi, Rikugun chūjō; Watanabe, Shinsō, p. 222.
116 Kase mentioned Higuchi’s rescue of Jews in an interview he gave to Hillel Levine in 1994. See Levine, In Search of Sugihara, p. 293, n.16.
117 For Kase’s political views, and relations with Jews, see Rotem Kowner, ‘Hideaki Kase, the Ultranationalist Figure who Wanted to Make Japan Great Again’, Haaretz (English edition), 25 November 2022. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/00000184-abc1-dd96-ad8c-ebe924c10000, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Rotem Kowner, ‘Kase Hideaki’s Revisionist Vision for Twenty-first-century Japan: A Final Interview and Obituary’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 21, issue 1, no. 1, 2023, Article 5760. https://apjjf.org/2023/1/kowner, [accessed 1 November 2024].
118 Among 22 honorary members of the association were Rabbi Mendi Sudakevich, the head of the Chabad Japan Center; Dr Edward Luttwak, an American Jewish scholar of international relations; and Dr Meron Medzini, an Israeli scholar of Japanese studies. See ‘Yudayajin kyūsai kōseki tsutaeru moto rikugun chūjō Higuchi Kiichirō no dōzō keikaku magora hokki jin’ ユダヤ人救済功績伝える元陸軍中将樋口季一郎の銅像計画孫ら発起人Yomiuri Shimbun (evening edition), 2 June 2021, p. 8; Okabe Noburu, Shishei no Nihon interigensu: Sekai ga shōsan shita teikoku rikugun no kiseki 至誠の日本インテリジェンス: 世界が称賛した帝国陸軍の奇跡 (Tokyo: Wani Books, 2022).
119 See Okabe, Shishei no Nihon, pp. 132–133; Okabe, ‘A Lesser-known “Japanese Schindler”’; Okabe Noburu, ‘Finally, a Statue for General Higuchi who Saved Thousands of Jews from Nazi Persecution’, Japan Forward, 18 May 2021, https://japan-forward.com/finally-a-statue-for-general-higuchi-who-saved-thousands-of-jews-from-nazi-persecution/, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Okabe Noburu, ‘“Ningen toshite tōzen” Yudayajin kyūshutsu kara miru Higuchi Kiichirō no Nihon seishin’「人間として当然」ユダヤ人救出から見る樋口季一郎の日本精神, NewsCrunch, 30 April 2022, https://wanibooks-newscrunch.com/articles/-/3073, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Okabe, ‘Manshū de Yudayajin’.
120 See, for example, ‘Yudaya nanmin sukutta moto rikugun chūjō’ ユダヤ難民救った元陸軍中将, Asahi Shimbun 朝日新聞, 17 June 2018; ‘Kyū rikugun kanbu no kōseki’ 旧陸軍幹部の功績, Nihon Keizai Shimbun 日本経済新聞, 9 January 2021; Okabe Noburu, ‘Mō hitori no “Tōyō no Shindorā”: 2 man-nin no Yudaya-jin o sukui, Hokkaidō o mamotta Higuchi Kiichirō Rikugun Chūjō’ もう一人の「東洋のシンドラー」: 2万人のユダヤ人を救い、北海道を守った樋口季一郎陸軍中将, Nippon.com, 28 June 2021; ‘Higuchi Kiichirō no kōseki shōkai’ 樋口季一郎の功績紹介, Chūgoku Shimbun 中国新聞, 8 December 2021; Shinonome Kuniyoshi 東雲くによし, ‘Hokkaidō o mamotta otoko–Higuchi Kiichirō’ 北海道を守った男―樋口季一郎, WiLL, no. 12, December 2022.
121 See, for example, ‘The Miracle of General Kiichiro Higuchi’, HiramekiTV, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYSvrgFWTAQ&t=2s, [accessed 1 November 2024]. As at March 2024, this YouTube video has one million and 10,000 views in its Japanese and English versions, respectively. ‘Soren-gun no Hokkaidō jōriku o soshi shi, Yudayajin o sukui, mukizu de no tettai sakusen o seikō sa seta kiseki no Nihon gunjin/ Higuchi Kiichirō’ ソ連軍の北海道上陸を阻止し、ユダヤ人を救い、無傷での撤退作戦を成功させた奇跡の日本軍人/樋口季一郎, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR7eCg9JvR8, [accessed 1 November 2024]. As at March 2024, this YouTube has been viewed 925,000 times.
122 See, for example, ‘Umoreta ijin kōseki tsutaeru Esaki Mikio-san 68’ 埋もれた偉人功績伝える江崎幹夫さん (68), Yomiuri Shimbun 読売新聞, 18 November 2022, p. 32.
123 See Katayama, ‘Museum Tribute’. For the museum webpage, see https://higuchi-museum.jp/about/about.html, [accessed 1 November 2024].
124 This form of commemoration, especially in shrines, is not uncommon in modern Japan. However, the post-war erection of statues of military officers is rare. Among the 859 new statues Sven Saaler identified as having been erected since 1952, only 43 (5 per cent) are of military officers. This ratio is not only significantly lower than that in the first decades of Japan’s modernization (17.9 per cent), but among the post-war military figures, the number of Second World War officers is extremely small. See Sven Saaler, Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 257, 260–261, 128.
125 See ‘Higuchi Kiichirō, rekishi ni umoreta kōseki’, https://rarea.events/event/190387, [accessed 1 November 2024].
126 See, for example, Rotem Kowner and Joshua Fogel, ‘Questionable Heroism’, Number 1 Shimbun, December 2022, https://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun-article/questionable-heroism, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Takigawa Yoshito, ‘Kyō no rekishi shūseishugi “Yudaya nanmin kyūshutsu” de susumu Higuchi-shi no gūzōka’ 今日の歴史修正主義「ユダヤ難民救出」で進む樋口氏の偶像化, Myrtos みるとす, August 2023, pp. 20–23. For reactions, see Higuchi Ryūichi, ‘Benevolent Samurai’, Shimbun No. 1, April 2023, https://www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun-article/benevolent-samurai, [accessed 1 November 2024].
127 See ‘Kaisan kōkoku’ 解散広告, Kanpō 官報 (Japan Official Gazette), 27 April 2023, pp. 90, 41.
128 Higuchi Ryūichi, ‘About my Grandfather Higuchi Kiichiro and Japan’s Wartime Policy for Jewish Émigré’, Text of a lecture given at a conference held in Ritsumeikan, Kyoto, 5 March 2024, p. 5, https://masahisadeguchi.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Higuchi-Ritsumeikan-Uni.-Kyoto-20240305.pdf, [accessed 1 November 2024]. See also Higuchi Ryuichi, ‘Über meinen Großvater und dessen Aktivitäten im Zusammenhang mit der jüdischen Emigration nach Osten’, University of Vienna, 15 June 2023, https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/startseite/einzelnews/news/higuchi-ryuichi-ueber-meinen-grossvater-und-dessen-aktivitaeten-im-zusammenhang-mit-der-juedischen-emi/, [accessed 1 November 2024].
129 See, for example, Okabe, Shishei no Nihon interigensu, pp. 152–153. It is possible that Watanabe Katsumasa was the one to coin this term. See Watanabe, Shinsō, pp. 198, 217.
130 See https://higuchi-museum.jp/about/about.html, [accessed 1 November 2024].
131 Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews, p. 174.
132 Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, pp. 155–156.
133 Mimura, Yudaya mondai, p. 179.
134 Anne Frank, Hikari honoka ni: Anne Furanku no Nikki 光ほのかに : アンネ・フランクの日記 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū Shinsha, 1952).
135 Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, pp. 155–156.
136 Decades later, this notion was adopted by the Association in Honor of Higuchi. Its no longer available website stated: ‘20,000 Jewish refugees were saved by the “Higuchi Route”, which passed through Eastern Europe, entered Manchuria from Otpor Station (the end point of the Trans-Siberian Railway), and then boarded the South Manchuria Railway from Manzhouli Station. If this information had been known, Anne’s family probably would have survived, adding adventure and hopeful content to Anne’s Diary.’ See Silvia Pin, Jews in Japan: Presence and Perception: Antisemitism, Philosemitism and International Relations (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2024), p. 166.
137 See, for example, ‘Jindōshugi no gunjin Higuchi Kiichirō: shinnen tsuranuki Yudaya nanmin sukuu’ 人道主義の軍人樋口季一郎 : 信念貫きユダヤ難民救う, Yomiuri Shimbun 読売新聞 (Western morning edition), 13 August 2021.
138 Mimura, Yudaya mondai,p. 180.
139 Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, pp. 149–154.
140 Kowner, ‘A Holocaust Paragon’, p. 41, n. 54.
141 Izaya Bendasan イザヤ・ベンダサン, Nihonjin to Yudayajin 日本人とユダヤ人 (Tokyo: Yamamoto Shoten, 1970). For this book, see Shillony, The Jews and the Japanese, p. 124.
142 Watanabe, Shinsō, pp. 208–209.
143 Higuchi Ryūichi, in an interview with Rotem Kowner, Tokyo, 8 April 2022.
144 Hayasaka, Shishikikan, pp. 139–140; Shiraishi Masaaki 白石仁章, ‘Nihon-Yudaya kyōzon kyōei kōsō no shinsō. Higuchi Kiichirō Yudaya jinmyaku’ 日本・ユダヤ共存共栄構想の真相 樋口季一郎とユダヤ人脈, Rekishi Dokuhon 歴史読本, vol. 58, no. 8, 2013, pp. 92–97.
145 See, for example, Kurt R. Grossman, ‘Antidemocratic DPs’, The Washington Post, 2 January 1949, p. B4; Alvin Mars, ‘A Note on the Jewish Refugees in Shanghai’, Jewish Social Studies, vol. 31, no. 4, 1969, pp. 286–291. For a recent view of the number of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, see Steve Hochstadt, ‘How Many Shanghai Jews Were There?’, in A Century of Jewish Life in Shanghai, (ed.) S. Hochstadt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019), pp. 3–26.
146 See, for example, Kowner, ‘Hideaki Kase, the Ultranationalist Figure’.
147 For the controversy surrounding the Nanjing Massacre, see Yoshida, Takashi, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 129–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
148 Yoshida, Yutaka, ‘Debates over Historical Consciousness’, in Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History, (eds) Saaler, Sven and Szpilman, Christopher (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), p. .Google Scholar
149 Kowner, ‘A Holocaust Paragon’, pp. 43–44, 51–52.
150 Kase Hideaki, in interviews with Rotem Kowner, Tokyo, 22 April and 19 May 2022.
151 AFP, ‘Abe Visits Memorial to “Japanese Schindler” in Lithuania’, The Times of Israel, 15 January 2015, https://www.timesofisrael.com/abe-visits-memorial-to-japanese-schindler-in-lithuania/, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Andrew Beatty, ‘Japan PM Hail Holocaust Hero Sugihara’, The Times of Israel, 28 April 2015, https://www.timesofisrael.com/japan-pm-hails-holocaust-hero-sugihara/, [accessed 1 November 2024].
152 This is part of a recorded speech by Abe read at a conference in honour of Higuchi in 2021. Cited in Okabe, Shishei no Nihon, p. 133. While no longer available online, Abe’s congratulatory letter sent to the Association in Honor of Higuchi was previously available on their website, at https://www.higuchi-season-one.jp/shykuji/syukuji-index.html, [last accessed 26 January 2023].
153 See, for example, Sugano Tamotsu, Nippon Kaigi no kenkyū 日本会議の研究 (Tokyo: Fusōsha, 2016); Shibuichi, Daiki, ‘The Japanese Conference (Nippon Kaigi): An Elusive Conglomerate’, East Asia: An International Journal, no. 34, 2017, pp. 179–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
154 For overviews of the re-emerging discourses on these affairs in the 1990s, see, for example, Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker (eds), The Power of Memory in Modern Japan (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2008), especially pp. 17–53; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Truth, Postmodernism and Historical Revisionism in Japan’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, no. 2, 2001, pp. 297–305.
155 For the 1990s as a turning point in global historical revisionism, see, for example, Evans, Richard, Lying about Hitler (New York: Basic Books, 2002)Google Scholar; Kopeček, Michal (ed.), Past in the Making. Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, Barbara (ed.), Historical Revisionism (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2019)Google Scholar.
156 See, for example, Tawara Yoshifumi and William Brooks, ‘What is the Aim of Nippon Kaigi, the Ultra-right Organization that Supports Japan’s Abe Administration?’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 15, no. 21, 2017, article 5081.
157 For the Japanese government’s role in promoting historical revisionism, see, for example, Tomomi Yamaguchi, ‘The “Japan is Great!” Boom, Historical Revisionism, and the Government’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 15, no. 6, 2017, article 5021; Jeff Kingston, ‘Japanese Revisionists’ Meddling Backfires’, Critical Asian Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, 2017, pp. 442–443; Rumiko Nishino et al., Denying the Comfort Women: The Japanese State’s Assault on Historical Truth (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). For its promotion of the notion of wartime Japanese humanitarianism, see Kowner, ‘A Holocaust Paragon’, pp. 53–54.
158 ‘Higuchi Ryuichi Meiji Gakuin Kyōju Kōenkai’ 樋口隆一明治学院教授講演会, Embassy of Japan to the Holy See, 10 August 2023, https://www.va.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/kouhoubunka_00010.html, [accessed 15 November 2024].
159 Japanese Embassy in Austria, ‘Mizuuchi-taishi ni yoru Uīn Daigaku Nihon gakka de no Higuchi Meiji Gakuin Daigaku meiyo kyōju kōen ni okeru supīchi’ 水内大使によるウィーン大学日本学科での樋口明治学院大学名誉教授講演におけるスピーチ, https://www.at.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/12_taishi20230615.html, [accessed 15 November 2024]. Mizuuchi’s translation of Medzini’s work—a book referencing only a handful of bibliographical items in Japanese and not a single document or other primary source in the language—is frequently cited as academic support for claims about Higuchi. Interestingly, the back cover of the book’s English edition states, ‘During World War II, some 40,000 Jews found themselves under Japanese occupation’, while the publicity for Ambassador Mizuuchi’s translation claims, ‘Japan saved 40,000 Jewish lives.’ See Medzini, Under the Shadow; Meron Medzini, Nisshōki no moto de yudayajin wa ikani ikinobita ka: Yudayajin kara mita Nihon no Yudaya seisaku 日章旗のもとでユダヤ人はいかに生き延びたか: ユダヤ人から見た日本のユダヤ政策, (trans.) Mizuuchi Ryuta (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppansha, 2020).
160 Japanese Embassy in Austria, ‘Mizuuchi-taishi’.
161 ‘Jindōshugi no gunjin’, p. 21.
162 Uesugi Chitoshi 上杉千年, Yudaya nanmin to hakkō ichiu 猶太難民と八紘一宇 (Tokyo: Tendensha, 2002), pp. 65–69; Hakamada Shigeki, ‘Sugihara Chiune wa yūmei nanoni…Higuchi Kiichirō chūjō wa naze bōkyaku sareta no ka’ 杉原千畝はゆうめいなのに…樋口季一郎中将はなぜ忘却されたのか, Sankei Shimbun 産経新聞, 26 September 2017, https://www.sankei.com/article/20170926-TDA5SY6ECZMXFIZBMF55LQ6AUY/4/, [accessed 1 November 2024]; Okabe, ‘“Ningen toshite tōzen”’.